Where Is ... the Park Bench?

From Where Is ...

This is another in an occasional series of photos for which readers are challenged to identify the location where the photo was taken. Today's challenge: where is the park bench?

As always, readers who identify the location win a year's free subscription to "Ed Cognoski." Bonus points for identifying which recent blog topic inspired the choice of subject.

Previous challenge: Where is ... the Angel?

Dinner at Gary's

Dear Abby,

I went out for dinner Wednesday night to an old restaurant under new management called Gary's. I ordered an appetizer, a salad, an entree and a glass of wine. The total came to $40, which I considered affordable, but not cheap. The food and wine were good, the restaurant location superb. At the end of the evening, I was satiated. I reached into my wallet, pulled out two twenties and placed them on the table. Then, the waiter, a nice young man named Dan, came with the check and a special offer. He said that if I allowed him to place my $5 glass of wine on a separate bar bill, that would free up $5 on my meal bill for me to order dessert. It sounded like a free dessert to me, so I reached back in my wallet, pulled out a five, placed it on the table on top of the two twenties already there, and picked up the dessert menu. Later, in the car, my dinner companion asked me if I knew what that extra five dollars that I pulled out of my wallet had just paid for. I said my glass of wine. She said it was my dessert. It caused a bit of an argument between us, but now I'm wondering. Was she right? Was Dan's offer just some fast talking?

Signed,
$5 Poorer in Richardson

Richardson Storm Water Utility Fee

Sleight of hand in budget-making

Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, does as good a job as possible presenting the City of Richardson's case for a new utility fee to pay for projects related to storm water drainage. Unfortunately, the explanation just doesn't hold up.

In short, Richardson has been paying for drainage-related operations out of the general fund. Because "greater obligations are looming in the future," the city council wants to create a dedicated fee for such operations, presumably to raise more money to pay for these greater obligations.

On the surface, it sounds straightforward, but follow the money and it begins to look like a shell game. It looks like a way for Mayor Gary Slagel to finance a new "redevelopment fund" by imposing a new storm water drainage utility fee. With a new utility fee in place, there will be $1 million in the general fund no longer needed to pay for storm-related operations. Instead of reducing the tax rate a like amount, mayor Gary Slagel proposes keeping the tax rate and putting the million dollars into a "redevelopment fund" that McCann describes as "more fuzzy than the utility spending itself." The net result? Richardson residents will be paying, on average, $3.50 more per month and the council will have a million dollar redevelopment fund to disperse.

No wonder the topic was saved for the last item on a long night's budget session agenda. No wonder the utility fee is being left out of the budget. Look, I'm inclined to support a dedicated storm water utility fee. It's good for residents to see exactly how much they are paying for what. I'm also inclined to support a redevelopment fund. Richardson needs significant redevelopment, especially in the Coit/Spring Valley area and along the southern part of Central Expressway. What I'm not comfortable with is how the city council is selling this to the residents of Richardson. The juggling of fees and funds may be a necessary, if messy, part of any budget-making process. But sleight of hand shouldn't be part of it.

Blog Reset

Ed Cognoski 2.0

When the blog "Ed Cognoski" made its debut almost four years ago, it was conceived as a place to comment on the day's news, or rather, on how that news is presented by the north Texas media. Rather than shouting back at my television or tossing my newspaper to the ground in disgust, I began blogging. And that's how it's been ever since.

Lately, for a variety of reasons, I've found that there are fewer journalistic abuses that prompt my criticism. Not necessarily that there are fewer journalistic abuses, mind you, just that either I see fewer of them now or the ones I do see bother me less. The World Wide Web and TiVo offer me more control over what I read and hear. Content that fails to live up to my standards of intelligence and reason has been crowded out of the marketplace, or at least out of the marketplace where I find myself shopping. This year's Richardson City Council election drew my focus away from national, state and Dallas news and more towards the hyper-local news of Richardson. Unfortunately, there just isn't that much news coverage of Richardson, Texas, to comment on.

All of this has led me to the conclusion that it's time for a blog reset. I'm going to relax this blog's self-imposed structure of commenting only on how others present the news. That means the blog will shed some of its negative character :-). It also means topics not in the headlines will have a chance to make it onto these pages. I also intend to relax this blog's self-imposed requirement to react to some news story each and every weekday. That means I won't have to reach to find a topic worth commenting on, as I sometimes find myself having to do. Finally, I'd like find a way to get more reader input into the blog, but I don't have control over the lurkers, so there can be no promises on that front.

We'll see whether Ed Cognoski 2.0 is more like Windows XP or Windows Vista. No, scratch that. All Windows releases have been Crap®. No, again. On further thought, maybe the question is apt after all. We'll see.

RISD Teacher Ratings

What does it take to be proficient?

Dunno. Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, does a service to the public by seeking and publishing data from the Richardson ISD's teacher evaluation database. Only two teachers were rated "unsatisfactory" in any of the eight rating criteria used. Only 41 of 2,346 teachers were rated less than "proficient" in any criteria. Weiss says he's reminded of Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon where "all the children are above average."

Wait a minute. Weiss leaves the impression that the laws of mathematics demand that the raw scores should be plotted on a graph and every teacher below the mid-point be judged to have a performance "below expectations." But that's not what's being measured. The teachers aren't being rated against each other but against a standard. The goal, the plan, is that *all* teachers meet that standard, that is, all teachers should be "proficient" in their profession. If they aren't, they shouldn't have been hired in the first place. If they somehow slipped through the hiring process, they ought to receive mentoring and training to become proficient. If they are unable to, they ought to be let go. If the administrators are doing their jobs, any competent ISD (which the RISD arguably is) ought to have a very high percentage of teachers judged "proficient." Such a result does not mean that all the teachers are above average and the RISD is not making such a claim.

I suspect Weiss knows this, but was trying to be clever by bringing up the saying about Lake Wobegon's children. Weiss promises "more serious journalism about it anon." Let's hope so. Perhaps he'll explore how "proficiency" is measured, how objective it is, and whether it's a meaningful measure of the quality of classroom instruction or correlates with student achievement. Because even though the goal might be to have every teacher be proficient, a claim that as many as 98% or 99% are proficient just might be a tad optimistic.

Birthers

DMN, tell us what you really think

Myth. Screwy idea. Embarrassment. Paranoia. Off-base. Baseless. Dishonest. Vicious. Disgusting. Dangerous. Fringe. Conspiracy mongers. Wing nuts.

This is how The Dallas Morning News describes the phenomenon of the "birthers," the name given to those who believe that Barack Obama somehow isn't eligible to be President of the United States because of their insistence, against all evidence, that he was really born in Kenya, not Hawaii; or because his father was Kenyan and that makes him not a natural born citizen of the US; or because he lived in Indonesia as a child and that somehow forfeited his US citizenship; or maybe because he is really a socialist Muslim terrorist. Whew!

The Dallas Morning News, like many before it, debunks the myth:

"Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed Obama's 'certificate of live birth' as a valid birth certificate. Never mind that a birth announcement was printed in a Hawaii paper in 1961. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court last year dismissed a legal challenge to his citizenship."

Don't expect facts to stop the birthers. Last week, Michael Landauer, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, pointed out that "attacking Obama myths is hopeless, I'm afraid." His Wednesday blog posting has now attracted 123 comments, many from birthers reiterating their debunked myths, as if repetition alone has now cemented them as fact. Friday's DMN editorial quickly attracted 101 comments of its own.

Expecting the birthers to come to their senses is probably hopeless, as Landauer fears. But the DMN reserves some criticism "for those who should know better to fuel this paranoia." Agreed. All of us ought to save our breaths arguing with the birthers themselves and focus our criticism on those who exploit the birthers for partisan advantage, the "elected officials who seem most interested in playing to the worst instincts the political fringe has to offer."

So far, Texas' own leading politicians seem to be keeping a safe distance from the issue. That's something, I guess, but they really ought to show some statesmanship on this issue. As the DMN editorial puts it: "There should be more politicians ... who say what needs to be said - the truth."

Where Is ... the Angel?

From Where Is ...

This is another in an occasional series of photos for which readers are challenged to identify the location where the photo was taken. Today's challenge: where is the angel?

As always, the first reader to identify the location wins a year's free subscription to "Ed Cognoski." Bonus points for identifying which recent blog topic inspired the choice of subject.

Second DART Line Downtown

DART at a crossroads

Jim Schutze nails it again. Whether he's reporting on the Trinity Tollroad or the downtown convention center hotel or, in this case, DART, he offers an insight that you just don't get from The Dallas Morning News, the mayor, or, in the words of Schutze, "the tiny group of business people who make decisions about downtown Dallas."

In this case, he gets his insight from John C. Tatum Jr., a downtown developer from way back who has a vision of downtown as the region's biggest "transit-oriented development." But only if Dallas avoids bottlenecks and facilitates riders transferring between lines.

The most likely route for a second downtown DART line diverts away from the Pacific Avenue route of the existing line, taking it way to the south in order to go past the proposed convention center hotel. Like most people, I was inclined to favor that route. If we're going to build a hotel, it only makes sense to have light rail access. But Tatum explains persuasively why such a route, although friendly to the convention center hotel, is likely to be the worst possible route to foster transit-oriented development downtown.

Why? Because two separated lines guarantees a bottleneck where they cross, where congestion is sure to result, where the experience of transferring between lines is bound to be unpleasant. Instead, Tatum proposes running the second line down Elm Street (or, rather, under Elm Street), with multiple connections to the Pacific Avenue line like rungs on a ladder. This creates multiple intersections, all just an escalator ride away. It also expands the zone of maximum development potential along a spine the length of downtown, instead of at a single intersecting point.

The downside? It isolates the the convention center. And the mayor, the city council, the newspaper, the business people who make decisions about downtown, all have much invested in that hotel. DART is being used to help make the hotel successful, rather than using the hotel and DART together to make downtown successful.

This may not have been Jim Schutze's insight, but maybe it takes someone like him, with no personal financial interest in DART, the hotel, or real estate tracts on the far southwest side of downtown, to talk to someone like John Tatum and recognize his vision as being what's in the best interest of Dallas as a whole.

Redistricting Collin County

Do the commissioners know how to count?

Bill Baumbach, in The Collin County Observer, reports that the Collin County Commissioners Court is proposing using its own county GIS estimates to draw new commissioners district boundaries now rather than wait for results of the 2010 federal census.

The argument in favor of the proposal is that the county has experienced booming population growth since the last census in 2000 and the current districts are unrepresentative of the current distribution of population in the county. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that the current boundaries are so out of balance that waiting for the 2010 census data is intolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

The argument against is that allowing the commissioners to be in charge of both counting heads and drawing boundaries creates too much opportunity for abuse. No doubt, that's true. The argument is that living with the current boundaries until 2010 census data is available is tolerable. Perhaps, that's true.

Baumbach comes down on the side of using independent federal census data, even though it's outdated. He's willing to live with boundaries known to be inaccurate, resulting in one person's vote carrying more weight than another's, until after 2010, in order to eliminate a source of potential abuse.

I come down on the side of using the most accurate information available. Sometimes, that's census data. Sometimes, it isn't. In this case, nine-year-old census data is clearly out of date. County GIS estimates might very well be more accurate. Baumbach doesn't say so, but I infer he believes that when the 2010 census data becomes available, it will be more accurate than the county GIS estimates. He says,

"[Collin County GIS staff] have plotted every home in the county, and then they use what they believe is the current average number of people per home to estimate the current population. The GIS staff believes this system, with some adjustments, is superior to methods used by state and COG demographers. The US Census uses a different method. It actually counts the number of people living at each address. A few years ago, attempts by some members of congress to allow the use of statistical estimates on 'hard to count' populations were shot down. Legislation was passed into law requiring that only actually counted people, instead of estimated counts be used for redistricting."

Counting people is not as simple as it sounds. Counting the homeless, the transient, those hiding from authorities, creditors or maybe just their families, all can be devilishly difficult. So much so that it's very easy to distort the results of a census just by how much effort the administrators decide to put into rooting out every last head to count. It's almost certainly true that the decennial federal census is not as accurate a count of heads as cross-checks and statistical corrections could make it.

If Baumbach opposes what's happening in Collin County because he thinks the current federal census methodology is the best possible way to count people, he's mistaken. It might or might not be more accurate than the county GIS estimates, but it's not as accurate as modern statistical methods could deliver if the census takers weren't forbidden by law from using modern methods. But as long as Baumbach sticks with his argument that Collin County commissioners can't be trusted to count people accurately, whether by doing a head count or by relying on methods of estimation, Baumbach may be on firmer ground.

HOV Lanes

Why should cheaters have all the fun?

On The Dallas Morning News Transportation blog, Rodger Jones asks, "Should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters?" Seattle runs a program where drivers report offenders who then are mailed educational materials about rules and regulations for use of the HOV lanes. Opinions about the effectiveness of the program are mixed, but it is popular with the driving public.

HOV lanes are a popular source of complaint. Some drivers can't find them (e.g., on US 75 north of LBJ). Some drivers find the frequently broken pylons a driving hazard. Some drivers just hate to see open lanes when they are stuck in traffic. Some drivers think that building more lanes open to all would do more to relieve congestion.

There's some validity to these complaints. But the bottom line is that America's love affair with the automobile running on imported oil can't go on forever. Some combination of car-pooling, public transportation, denser development and alternative fuel development is essential. Wishing HOV lanes would just go away is just that -- wishful thinking. Even if they did, our transportation problems wouldn't be solved. We've got HOV lanes now. Let's make the most of them.

So, should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters? Sure. Not because it necessarily increases compliance, but because it will make the law-abiders feel better. The cheaters probably have been deriving some satisfaction from flouting a hated law. Now, if the law-abiders were to derive some satisfaction with sticking it to someone else, so be it. Why should the cheaters have all the fun?

Once we're all having fun, how about we get on with those other, better solutions: public transit and alternative fuel development?

Health Care

Sam Johnson fights change. Steve Blow says bring it on.

Steve Blow and Sam Johnson both address our current health insurance crisis, but from different angles. Blow, in The Dallas Morning News, reports how his wife switched from her husband's employer's policy to her own employer's policy and was subjected to months of red tape rigmarole. Blow concludes:

"We're in the midst of a great debate over reforming our health care system. And I know that change is scary. But frankly, I'm not that big a fan of what we've got now."

Blow has it exactly right. Health insurance in this country is mired in insurance company bureaucracy. As infuriatingly complex and redundant and repetitive much of the insurance paper chase is, it's business for the insurance companies. Getting rid of it means getting rid of a revenue source for them, so expect them to fight change and fight to preserve the existing system. Which is what they are doing.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), according to a The Dallas Morning News Neighbors story, takes issue with Democratic plans to place an employer and individual mandate on Americans to have health insurance. He argues:

"If you like your health care plan, you should be able to keep it. Surely we can make health insurance more affordable, more accessible and more available without the government taking over the health care industry and Big Brother bulling people and employers. In essence, the Democrats are telling the American people that they must have health insurance -- or else. That's not right."

Johnson does three things in this short paragraph to mislead his constituents.

First, notice how Johnson implies that Democrats are threatening to take away your private health insurance. In truth, they are offering to give everyone the same opportunity that those with insurance already enjoy, although "enjoy" isn't the right word as Steve Blow's earlier comments explain.

Second, notice how Johnson says we can make health insurance more affordable and accessible. Don't expect solutions from Johnson. If he had any, they would already be in place. Johnson was in the Congressional majority for a decade and didn't do what he says we can do now. Instead of offering a plan to do that now, he obstructs those who are trying to do something now.

Last, he says requiring everyone to have health insurance is not right. Why not? Everyone will get emergency medical treatment when he or she is in a car accident or suffers a heart attack, whether or not he had the foresight to have health insurance or not. President Bush in 2007 even argued that that emergency rooms constitute a form of health insurance for all. Why is it wrong to require that everyone pays for it?

LexisNexis and blogs

In The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers blog, Robert T. Garrett comments on a Vanity Fair piece by Todd S. Purdum that explains that former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had a "horse whisperer" from Texas, Mark McKinnon, to serve as a calming presence during the stressful early days of her campaign. The article claims McKinnon's role was as yet unreported, a claim Garrett disputes, saying that the DMN's own Wayne Slater reported on McKinnon's presence in the campaign on the DMN Trailblazers blog.

It's not Sarah Palin or the intriguing notion that she needed a "horse whisperer" that's the subject of this blog item. What caught my eye was Garrett's explanation for why Purdum didn't credit Slater: "blogs such as this one aren't easily scoured by Nexis-type search engines ..."

I'm thinking that can't be true. Maybe LexisNexis chooses not to index the DMN blogs, but there isn't much of a technical barrier to doing so. A quick search with Google (which itself has no trouble indexing blogs) provides a suggestion of what might be going on. Mere Rhetoric reports that LexisNexis is contacting bloggers before syndicating their content. Back in 2007, a quick search indicated the number of blogs indexed and the selection of posts indexed both seemed somewhat random, but it was being done. I'm thinking LexisNexis must have gotten more thorough in the meantime.

Maybe the DMN ought to contact Lexis and let them know of the proliferating number of blogs the DMN is creating. Or maybe the DMN ought to concentrate on branding its blogs, so companies like Lexis (and readers like me) don't have so much trouble keeping track of them. Then, fine writers like Wayne Slater would get more credit when credit is due. Just a thought.

Dallas Blog Strays From Home

Now your BBC news clipping service

Several years ago, Tom Pauken, Scott Bennett and others with strong reputations in local politics and journalism started a blog they named Dallas Blog and described it as "the Blog of Dallas." From the first, they said the blog wouldn't be restricted to local issues, but readers could be forgiven for assuming that Dallas would be a primary subject of a blog titled Dallas Blog and featuring Texas writers.

I was an enthusiastic early reader, buying in to the blog's goal of being "be an independent voice for those 'forgotten Americans' who don't have lobbyists in Austin and Washington representing them, but who simply want a better community, better state, and better nation." I accepted Tom Pauken's invitation for readers "to respond to our stories and viewpoints by posting comments on our site", at least until I was blocked from commenting for unstated reasons.

I still subscribe to the RSS feed of Dallas Blog, but find it takes less and less time to dispose of the content. Here, for example, are the most recent headlines, all summaries of stories in other news sources lifted by the only remaining daily contributor, Tom McGregor.

• Japan's Lawmakers Pressure PM to Quit
• China's Economy Regains Rapid Growth
• Palestinian President Shuts Down Al-Jazeera
• India Issues Biometric Cards to 1.2 Billion Citizens
• Love Hotels Remain Popular in Japan
• Religious Controversy Ensnares Malaysia
• Ousted Zelaya Calls For Honduran Insurrection
• Al-Qaeda to Target China
• N Korea Insults S Korea President 10 Times-a-Day

Six of the stories are lifted from British news sources. If I want to read The Daily Telegraph, I'll subscribe to their RSS feed. Who knows, I might also read about Dallas there more often than I do at Dallas Blog.

Maybe Tom Pauken intends to revive Dallas Blog as a real alternative news source. Maybe Tom McGregor is just housesitting while Tom Pauken is away in Austin. Or maybe, like millions of other bloggers, Pauken started his blog and soon lost interest and abandoned it, in this case leaving only a parked domain with semi-automated postings by Tom McGregor. In any case, it just seems like such a waste. It could have been so much more.

Gail Lowe

Creationist named head of SBOE

Gov. Rick Perry has named Gail Lowe as chair of the State Board of Education (SBOE), replacing Don McLeroy, who couldn't win approval from the Texas Senate for reappointment. Like McLeroy, Lowe is a creationist. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) reports that, in 2009, Lowe voted for reintroducing the "strengths and weaknesses" clause in the Texas school science standards; in 2008, she Strongly Favored rejecting textbooks that do not teach weaknesses of the theory of evolution; and in 2002, she Strongly Favored treating intelligent design as a viable theory on the origin of life.

So what can William McKenzie, editorialist for The Dallas Morning News, be talking about when he says, "For the record, she voted against including creation teaching in science classes"? In a narrow, technical sense, that might or might not be true, but for the sake of journalistic clarity, McKenzie owes the readers more explanation about what vote he is talking about and what Lowe did vote for.

McKenzie does place Lowe in the camp of social conservatives. He also states that he would have preferred Perry pick someone from the moderate-conservative/Democratic minority side of the board, but didn't expect it. He got that right. Texas voters need to turn out of office all of the creationists on the SBOE, so Texas parents can rest assured that their children are learning science in school science classes and not religion dressed up in the pseudo-scientific jargon of intelligent design. The creationists on the SBOE include Gail Lowe, Don McLeroy (who retains his membership on the SBOE, if not his chairmanship), David Bradley, Barbara Cargill, Cynthia Dunbar, Terri Leo, and Ken Mercer. District 12 (Dallas) is represented by Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, who voted against reintroducing the "strengths and weaknesses" wording in the science standards, but she, too, should be voted out of office unless she takes a strong public stand in favor of science and against creationism in any of its guises.

DFW Business News Headlines

Still ugly out there

Getting back to the news after a two-week hiatus, this is what I find in my RSS feeds from Dallas Business Journal. It's enough to make me wonder if coming back was such a good idea.

• Texas Industries Inc. reports $42.4M Q4 loss
• AMR Corp. posts $390 million net loss
• Lone Star state's millionaire count drops
• Texas health premiums skyrocketed this decade
• Tuesday Morning: Q4 sales drop 4%
• Tandy Leather: Year-to-date sales drop 2%
• Texas sales tax revenue down 11 percent in June
• Office rents drop to 2006 levels
• Woodmont TCI Group files for bankruptcy
• D-FW commercial foreclosures up 12%
• Neiman's: Total sales fell 19.4% in June
• J.C. Penney Co.'s same-store sales drop 8%
• Analyst: Capacity cuts loom for airlines
• Southwest's traffic falls, tickets on sale
• Oceanaire files Ch. 11, Dallas eatery remains open
• GM Arlington plant to go in asset sale
• Sun Microsystems lays off 61 in Dallas
• American Airlines traffic drops 8.1%
• Millennium State Bank of Texas fails
• Weil Gotshal to close one Texas office
• Opus West Corp. plans bankruptcy filing
• Crabtree & Evelyn files Chapter 11

So, is all of the news bad? There were some headlines hinting at good news that paradoxically were the result of all of the bad news.

• DFW hotels cutting fees to lure business travelers
• D-FW traffic congestion declines
• Survey: Texans saving more, spending less

Finally, one good news headline suggests that as bad as things look to be in Texas, they are probably worse elsewhere: "Texas faring better in recession."

On the other hand, bad news usually brings good opportunities. So, who is laying the groundwork for reaping the benefits when the economy recovers?

Hiatus

"Ed Cognoski" is on hiatus.