Ups and downs
Recalling a Texas senator, the city’s new top cop and the Trump phenomenon.
Fines coughed up by BP for dumping 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon explosion can’t be used to rebuild an Alabama hotel. U.S. District Judge Charles Butler told the state to use restoration money for natural resource remediation and repair.
It’s a shame South Carolinabound Ted Cruz can’t be here this weekend to take in an Alley Theatre production about a Texas senator who made just about everyone in his state proud. “All the Way,” a Tony-winning play about Lyndon Johnson’s fight to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has one showing tonight and two tomorrow. Go see it and the gleaming new building.
Our quote of the week is one Sen. Cruz won’t appreciate. It comes from Mike Barnicle of MSNBC. He’s been covering politics since, it seems, the days of Abe Lincoln. Referring to the Trump phenomenon, Barnicle said, “This is pretty much going to be the end of the Jeb Bush campaign in South Carolina … to be confronted by this unstoppable machine that is the Trump campaign. It is literally unstoppable. I’ve never, ever encountered anything like it in my life covering politics, writing about politics. I’ve never heard of anything like it. It’s all-consuming.”
It’s important symbolism that Mayor Turner named Martha Montalvo as interim police chief. Like a quarter of the city, the native of Ecuador wasn’t born in the U.S. But there’s troubling symbolism as well. The move implies we’re content with the old guard at HPD, where there’s been little management imagination and resulting horrendous results on solving crimes.
Downtown rush hour traffic, which Bill White fixed about 30 minutes into his term, remains abysmal with the worst spot in front of HPD headquarters. We urge the new chief to look out her window and maybe send some cops downstairs to help alleviate morning gridlock.
With the “L-word” frightening city employees, Mayor Turner found $8 million budget savings in accounts that had become mad money for city councilmen. He’s cutting their $1 million discretionary funds to $250,000 each.
“Houston is famously scattershot, with no single center of style gravity but rather little constellations of like-minded shops, cafes and restaurants sitting a few doors from one another,” wrote Andrew Ferren in a New York Times Travel section feature, highlighting a number of eateries and tourist sites. Google 36 Hours in Houston.
Even though it’s an oxymoron, we applaud RodeoHouston for prohibiting concealed and openly carried handguns from the NRG complex. It’s probably best to keep weapons away from people two-steppin’ to songs like: “I’m Gonna Put a Bar in the Back of my Car and Drive Myself to Drink” and “My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him.”
With all due respect to our friends in College Station, there’s Aggie math going on in Austin. The University of Texas System one month spends $450 million to buy 300 acres for expansion into Houston. The next month, its Austin campus jacks up tuition by 6 percent. Still, we’re cautiously optimistic about the Houston play even though our bet is that this will end up being more for undergrads than research.