Ridiculous Cost of The Bridge

Costing $130 Million and counting, this bridge dumps onto Singleton Blvd, which is a dump if I’ve ever seen one. This street is a shit hole, and why they opted to put a bridge to it has far more to do with this cities dysfunctional politics than anything else. How you can place a gorgeous bridge over a questionable river and have it dump into an area with such great businesses as Huerta’s Garage and the Taqueria across the street is a travesty.  Maybe I need to get a used car from Abra Motors, or a something else from one of several dozen run down industrial arm pits located on this street.  But, fear not, go down a few miles and its more of the same crappy industrial shit, pretty much we spent 13oM installing a sexy bridge to Harry Hines.

I suppose some dipshit in city hall figured, “build it and Neimans will come, ” trust me, Neimans ain’t coming anytime soon to this area nor is anyone else. It will take decades to turn that part of town around. By then the bridge will be rusting and costing us more to maintain it. Of course, I have always thought Oak Cliff would be better off at the bottom of a cliff anyway. There is absolutely nothing down there to sustain that area. That is also due to this cities politics of the past. I am sure all the ” save oak cliff” people are going to be upset that I expressed my feelings. They can go drown their sorrows at a Chilis, Walmart, Target, Neimans, Old Navy or Whole Foods… if only they could find one in their own neighborhood. At least I can pull a permit to build a bridge on Jefferson.

The problem is their are millions of people who were told to work hard, get an decent education ( even go into debt 10′s of thousands of dollars to do it) and the results would pay of in the form of a good job. There are also millions more who used to be able to get a decent manufacturing job with a high school degree and a little elbow grease. Those days are gone and are not coming back form many and both of these crowds are now feeling cheated. Stagflation appears to be the new norm, real income for the middle class is down 10%+ (below 1997 levels), and housing… ohh what a handshake many Americans made with the Devil when they bought that house that has dropped 10% or more.

So the stage is set for a small reaction to explode on the stage of the American Dream and turn huge. It could be something like a police confrontation with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, it could be another protest not yet set, or it could be an organization bent on causing chaos. “Escape from New York” and its post apocalyptic scenario  seems a lot closer to reality these days. That brings me to my comparison to the lead up of the French Revolution.

From Wikipedia….

• Economic factors included hunger and malnutrition in the most destitute segments of the population, due to rising bread prices…
• rising food prices, and an inadequate transportation system and drought…
• state’s effective bankruptcy due to the enormous cost of previous wars… The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt…
• the growing commercial dominance of Great Britain.
• the royal court at Versailles was seen as being isolated from, and indifferent to, the hardships of the lower classes… opponents in the parliaments successfully thwarted  attempts at enacting much needed reforms.
• Those who were opposed to Louis’ policies further undermined royal authority by distributing pamphlets that criticized the government and its officials, stirring up public opinion against the monarchy.

Eerie how much of that applies now. Substitute Congress, President, China and Tea Party in there and  I think we have smoldering keg. I know plenty of people are going to say this was an oligarchy and absolute power, blah blah blah. But, while the players are different, the results have been the same up to this point. We are all look for change and neither party seems to be able to make any difference. The system is broken. Food for thought…

So to honor the not so grand Rick Perry, I offer a top five things to do with Rick.

5. Cheap Toilet Paper: Paper thin, no brains, and after a second in the lime light, full of shit. Is there a Kohler big enough to flush RIP away.

4. Dinghy: All air and no substance, Perry would be a great Dinghy, and we could sink him at sea if he sprang a leak or tried to pass a law.

3.Formula 409: Known for its ability to clean up oil messes, no one needs to know you ever spilled oil , and the EPA can suck it.

2.Kong: Add a little peanut butter inside ‘em and at least my dog will enjoy listening to him, or chewing on him. Maybe my dog will bury him in the yard.

1.Velcro: With hair like that he and Trump ought to see if their hair will stick together. Siamese hair twins…Trump for VP?

His slogan could be ” The buck stops in my hair.”

But, I always check my facts first, so I watched the video and downloaded the certificate just he did and opened it in illustrator. Sure enough, there are multiple layers and it is evident that the BC has been dramatically altered. Here are some layers to show some points.

As you can see here on this screen shot of this layer ( I hid the green layer) the date of Obama's BC appears to be altered. There are 2 colors in letters. The gray appears to have been edited into the ceertificate.

Here is a screen shot of the birth certificate as it is on the whitehouse.gov site. Notice the name

This is the same image with the background layer removed in illustrator CS4. Notice some of the name is now missing and only the altered copy is present.

Obviously who ever did this thought saving the document to a .pdf would prevent too much analysis, but they clearly didn’t know that an adobe pdf can be opened with its layers intact in illustrator. The fact that there are so many layers, or any at all is disturbing. Anyone techy knows that something that is scanned into a .pdf is nothing more than an image and has no layers.

All you need to do is go to whitehouse.gov and download the pdf to see for yourself. It is a really bad editing job, you would think if you’re going to commit fraud with  something this important it would be done right. Its very disappointing and unfortunately, and unless there is one hell of an explanation I’m officially off the Obama train.  Will this be Obama’s Watergate?

Title: Lying Sack of Shit

Content:

Does this man have any truth in him? How did he get by with all he has done… it is just amazing… and he wants us to trust him…

If you are a veteran or know a veteran you should be totally outraged!

Know Who is Sitting in YOUR White House…

Obama’s father served in WWII? Really?

Of all the things I’ve seen or heard about Obama on the internet, NONE has hit me like this one! How can we not believe some of the charges about citizenship, religion, etc., after hearing what he says on this?

Obama said his father served in WWII?
Barack’s father served in WWII? He said so in a speech.
Here is an 18 second video:

CNN news clip:

Is he a compulsive liar? Were there no reporters who checked or double checked these statements and called the party on this?
They did for everyone else. Why not him?

Like it or not, here are the TRUE facts:

Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (Obama’s father)
Born: 4/4/36 Died: 11/24/82 at the age of 46. He was 5 years old when WWII started, and less than 9.5 years old when it ended.

Lolo Soetoro (Obama’s step father)

Born: 1935 Died: 3/2/87 at the age of 52. He was 6 years old when WWII started, and 10 years old when it ended.
He must have been the youngest Veteran in the war.

Watch the video. RIGHT OUT OF HIS MOUTH!

And the media doesn’t say anything.
If you doubt it, Google both of these guys.

It appears this guy doesn’t know how to tell the truth – or he doesn’t care about telling the truth! – or perhaps he doesn’t know when he isn’t telling the truth (which is also a very scary angle on it).

Talk about STOLEN HONOR!

If this had been Bush the Media would have had a fit.

The CNN clip of Obama is surprising. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this lie wasn’t uncovered, questioned and debated before the Nov. 2008 election. Oh well. He must have just “forgotten” the facts, again. Or perhaps he really doesn’t even know the difference between truth and fabrication?

This should be sent to every Veterans group in the USA! STOLEN HONOR!

I’m insulted… are YOU? I served… Did He serve?

Obama’s grandfather,Stanley Dunham, served in WWII and saw action in Europe. He also was the single most influential man in Obama’s young formulative years and would likely have been the man Obama would have thought of as his father. So when Obama spoke of his “father” serving in WWII in the above youtube video, he meant his grandfather. So, the man slipped and missed one word in his speech and these nasty, malicious, moronic, emails start circulating.  It really is very sad that this is what politics have come to and that the right feels they need to disseminate this trash to try to undermine the President’s authority. Of course, all you have to do is look at the current front runner for the right, Donald Trump, and see why they are so confused and angry. Trump with his wonderful comb over, inflated wealth and ego, and his penchant for pretty women. I can’t think of a better candidate to run against the President in 2 years. Now that is putting lipstick on a pig.

Reaganomics with its trickle down BS has in fact been a trickle up. I personally work 50-60 hours a week and I live sparsely ( so my girlfriend says) and yet I don’t particularly feel like I am getting ahead. I have managed to sock away a little money in this horrific economy, but I’m no Richie Rich. Meanwhile, the rich have apparently zoomed right back and continue to dominate the economy. So I have to ask my fellow non millionaire Republicans why they are in fact supporting this party?

Is it becuase you think the Republican party limits government? G Bush II would love to prove that statement wrong. He increased government spending a whopping 25% during his administration. The most in 30 years, so clearly the Reps. are  worse  or at least no better than the Dems. at managing the US coffers. If you are pro life then I cant really argue with you, you will always view things from a point of view that faith conquers all. I’m not one to argue pointlessly in the religious contradictions of history.

But, the sad reality of the US middle class is this, today’s parents are working harder than our baby boomer parents did and making little or no more. But the rich are definitely picking up the slack. Long term capital gains taxes are down from a high of 39% to today’s 15%. Now I’m sure everyone like me thinks, wow, I can make some money in the market with that low rate. But the cold hard facts are that few of us middle class folks trade enough in the market for it to matter, and if you are like me you lost your ass in the 1999 and 2008 collapse of stocks that I still haven’t rebounded from.  What this tax does is give the rich a huge tax break. So much so that the top 400 richest ebb and flow with the stock market.  And lets look at the real statement here, should a millionare trading stocks pay less income tax than I do working my tail off all day? I personally don’t think that makes any sense.

So, I have to ask my friends again, why do you vote Republican? I only know a few millionaires, and yet I live in state controlled by the Republicans. The thing I so clearly see going on is the rich are influencing the politicians with money and the promise of a great future after politics. So the bills are slowly but surely eroding the middle class lifestyle. Unions are being dismantled under our noses, we are brainwashed into thinking that government is bad, yet all you have to do is learn and read up on US history to know what happened in the 1800′s and early 1900′s when rich men and corporations controlled everything. The Jungle covers it in nice detail. And unless this current onslaught against us is reversed, we will be there again and we will have no one to blame but ourselves, and our children will be too ignorant from the lack of funding at schools to know better.

In January of this past year my son started to have more severe emotional issues that resulted in a series of traumatic events which culminated with the school having my son arrested and sent to Timberlawn. I was frantic and didn’t know where to turn so I called an old friend who recommended a child advocate. Not knowing what they did, I spent some time speaking to her on the phone and discovered a whole world of rights and services that had been denied to my son.
I was told that I needed to immediately call for an emergency ARD at Lake Highland JH and that she would come with me to ensure that proper procedures were followed and that we would ask for several changes to his IEP. So in early February we had his ARD and what happened in this meeting was nothing short of shocking. I have been going to ARD meetings with my son since he was 3 in Houston. So I know what to expect in these. When we set down and my advocate introduced herself the Vice Principal appeared to get noticeably more uncomfortable. My advocate immediately requested that minutes be taken and insisted that the meeting be recorded ( which is standard protocol apparently). As the meeting progressed my advocate made several request for services from the school for my son.? Repeatedly the Vice Principal would proceed to talk over her and insist that my advocate was not the parent and did not have a right to talk to her. I repeated, as did my advocate that she was representing me and had every right to make request on my behalf. This did not matter to the VP, she kept interrupting and talking ( or shouting) over my advocate.? This kept going on for an hour and a half until the VP got so upset that she quiped ” this meeting is over” and proceeded to get up and leave. During this meeting my advocate asked to see my son’s folder that the school keeps, which is my right by Federal Law. We were repeatedly refused, which culminated when my advocate attempted to take the folder at the end of the meeting and had a tug of war with the VP over the folder which my advocate lost. Essentially this meeting turned into a ” cover our ass” meeting for the school as they stonewalled us and refused to accomplish anything else other than assigning a shadow to my son, who it turned out seemed to have a grudge against my son and would trump teacher’s decisions and tell my son that he was not permitted to do things that other kids were doing. My advocate and I were so disgusted with the the school’s completely unprofessional approach to my son’s issues that we decided to go to the state for Arbitration.

So a month later we spent the day at RISD’s administration building in Richardson. RISD doesn’t mess around, they brought their in-house lawyer and a very expensive hired gun. We started in earnest trying to get them to do what was right with my son and accommodate his disabilities. Something seemingly as trivial as emailing me his homework assignments and putting in place a comprehensive behavior improvement plan ended up being deal breakers. We were told that we would continue working with this hired gun to come to an agreement. Well, it is now July, and this ” hired gun” played dumb waiting until the very end of May to ask us what the hold up was. We had sent her the changes no less than 3 times between March and June and she seemed to never have them and always said she would get back to us in a week.

The school district is being investigated by the Fed’s OCR division that deals with these things, but I don’t expect much from them. It is coming down to our word against theirs and we have discovered that RISD administration has no problem with stonewalling, changing documents, misrepresenting the truth and throwing tax payers money at high priced lawyers who apparently don’t do anything. I have run up a $3500 bill to date just trying to get what is fair for my son.? If you stumbled across this because you are in a similar situation please feel free to contact me and I’ll help you prepare and tell you what to expect. In short expect no mercy, you might as well be going after an evil corporation. They will circle the wagons and cover their ass rather than help your child. You will be harassed and made to feel like you are at fault.

They went so far as to hold my son in his Special Ed class all day several times and count him absent, which resulted in a letter from the County attorney stating that my son had a court date for truancy. I had to make several request to get this fixed. Problem is I don’t know if it has been fixed. The district may have fixed it on their side but that does not mean the county has closed his case.

It comes down to one thing, professionalism. Can we as a people of these United States imagine a POTUS that looks down at his/her hand to come up with the answers or remember what to say? We all know what happens when someone like GW Bush starts ad libing and talking about Doctors practicing their love with women. Presidents have to look and act Presidential. Wondering what to say next while talking to Russia’s Premier Putin would look down right pathetic and definitely would not come from a point of strength. Of course, she is a real hit with the tea party fanatics whose movement is disintegrating faster than ice in the desert. Maybe she can run on their ticket in 2012 and offer to tea bag her opponents.

City’s budget for 2008-2009 $ 2.7B
City’s budget proposal for 2009-2010 $ 2.72B
Budget estimated Shortfall $190M
Jobs cut as a result 900+

If you want to see a pdf by the city here it is. The first thing you notice is that the city’s budget still went up by 20M this year. Which seems odd considering the 900+ layoffs. So the city manager and city council approved a budget increase last year, in what was obvious to everyone else, a major recession. I was aware that we were heading into a recession in 2007. So how is it that city hall did not even think to be conservative in its figures in 2008 when planning for 2009? More interestingly is to look at the city’s budget over time. Looking back at the previous few years:

Year	Budget	Increase over previous year
2002-2003	1.72B	na
2003-2004	1.92B	10%
2004-2005	2.05B	6%
2005-2006	2.22B	8%
2006-2007	2.34B	5%
2007-2008	2.65B	12%
2008-2009	2.7B	2%
Total Difference	$980M	64% Total Increase in 7 years

So the city has increased its’ budget $1B in 7 years, which is a 64% increase. Does that number seem really high to anyone else? But, lets take a look at the population estimates for Dallas. In 2002 the city had a population of 1.19M. The Census Bureau estimates the city had a population of 1.279M in 2008. Now that number really jumps out at you. The city’s population has only increased by roughly a 89K people in the same time frame, which is only a 7% increase. So our city budget went up 64% over the same time period that our population increased 7%. That in my book is out of control spending. That should indicate that the city’s taxes are too high to begin with. So using the Census Bureau’s data I thought I would look at a couple of cities of similar size to Dallas. San Antonio is slightly larger than Dallas at 1.3M and has a 2010 budget of 885M, that is a whopping $1.8B less than our budget.  San Diego, which has essentially the same population as Dallas, ( but a much higher cost of living) has a 2010 budget of $3.01B.  Houston with a population of 2.2M, quite a bit larger than Dallas, only has a budget of $2.3B, $400M less than Dallas.

So our city is laying off people and screaming about a drop in tax revenue, when the reality is it has been over taxing its citizens and spending like mad. Having lived in Houston for 4 years, I can’t say Dallas has any real advantage over that city’s level of service. So why is the discrepancy so large? What is our city wasting our money on? The really profound thing to me is I have noticed no changes with an extra billion in “services” the city is spending. There are still potholes everywhere, crime is out of control and response times suck. My car had both windows smashed out by thieves the other day and the police no longer even come out to take a look at the crime. All these extra cops on the streets and no service. It is a joke and so is the city council.