Ups, downs
It’s the time of year we open our eyes to fall colors, holiday lights and festive children. Not today. We begin with a couple of items from the Un-see Department:
It’s difficult to turn both thumbs down when our hands are covering our eyes at the horrific sight of the nude photo of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis. It’s unclear how the corpulent 68-year-old ended up with his junk exposed in the Twittersphere, but let’s just say it makes us long for the days when people stuck to tweeting out cat photos.
We’re covering the kids’ eyes in Fort Bend County where the pickup truck driver with a bleep Trump bumper sticker added a second message on her GMC Sierra: bleep Sheriff Troy Nehls. This came after the sheriff won our Turkey of the Week award for arresting Karen Fonseca on an outstanding — and unrelated — warrant. The only thing good to come out of this were the internet comments, including a quote from dearly departed Texas journalist Molly Ivins: “I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”
’Tis the season of giving, and there’s no better place to celebrate than Houston — we were just rated one of the most charitable cities by Charity Navigator. Houston came in second for 2017, behind San Diego, but we earned the highest scores for accountability and transparency.
But that instinct to give might quickly turn to penny-pinching when you see the annual letter from Ann Harris Bennett, Harris County tax assessor-collector. Property tax bills are hitting the mailboxes. Just because death and taxes remain the two certainties of life doesn’t mean we have to like it. November is not the most wonderful time of the year.
It’s time to update the city of Houston seal. We say a bright-orange traffic barrel should replace the locomotive. If you thought construction was bad around here, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Officials broke ground this week on a six-year rebuild of the intersection of Loop 610 and Interstate 69, which already is the most congested interchange in Texas. “Construction crews will work night and day, seven days a week,” wrote transportation writer Doug Begley. If the rebuild of Interstate 10, a few miles north of this project, is any indication, it will be obsolete when finished in 2023.
Texas’ longest serving state senator, John Whitmire, has just under $8 million in his campaign finance account, the most — by far — of any sitting legislator. So what does a 68-year-old in that position do? He holds another fundraiser, of course. In an effort to scare off a potential challenger, he sucked in more cash at the Four Seasons last week.