Gail Spurlock "Restores" History

The Texas primary election is coming up May 29. The big races are for US Congress and the Texas legislature, but don't forget about those down-ballot races like the State Board of Education (SBOE). These are the people who decide that Texas schoolchildren should be taught to doubt Darwin, to deny there is a Constitutional separation of church and state, and to believe that 1950s McCarthyism had it right after all.

Richardson's own Gail Spurlock seeks to carry the torch for the Republicans. After the jump, Spurlock in her own words.

More Spring in the Steger Garden (2012)

From Flowers

Build First, Plan Later

I started the week on an optimistic note, pointing out how the Richardson City Council held a couple of secret executive sessions to discuss economic development in the Main Street/US 75 area. My hopes for a renaissance in the old downtown were raised.

Later in the week, my optimism waned as I daydreamed about a missed opportunity to exploit the Floyd Branch of Cottonwood Creek as it runs through old downtown Richardson. You didn't know about old downtown's natural creek? Neither did I. Apparently, no one at city hall gives it any value at all. They want to bury it. That's the missed opportunity.

Now, I end the week in a black mood, as I (finally) get around to reading the city staff presentation to the city council on the planned study for redevelopment of the Main Street/Central Expressway Corridor.

After the jump, build first, plan later.

Floyd's Fishing Hole

Bullhead in downtown Richardson. Yep. And I'm not referring to me. Bear with me. I'll get to it. I'm back to pester you about my latest quixotic vision for Richardson.

My frequent paeans to transit-oriented development around Richardson's DART stations are too numerous not to have registered somewhere in your memory, right? DART is real, not a dream.

What is (probably) a dream (for now, anyway) is my vision of ripping up Central Expressway and replacing it with a grand central boulevard for Richardson.

Also just an idle daydream was me tweeting about running a streetcar line up Greenville Ave from Brick Row to the PGBT DART station.

Recently, my lamenting of Dallas's undead plan to pave the Trinity River floodplain inside downtown's levees with a new tollway inspired a new quixotic dream for me about Richardson.

After the jump, what Richardson can learn from Seoul, Korea (even if Dallas refuses to).

Texans for Education Funding Equity

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

Source: Harry S Truman.

Harry Truman said that long before Americans learned about Watergate. It's not like Americans couldn't have known what they were getting when they elected Richard Nixon as President (twice!).

OK, moving on... Do you remember the days when writing a letter to your legislator was an effective way to have your voice heard in government? Neither do I. Always more myth than reality, the notion that legislators listen to anything but money is today considered laughably naive.

That's why this headline in The Dallas Morning News is not surprising: "Richardson dads form PAC to gather cash, clout for Texas school finance reform." Josh Cedor founded the Texans for Education Funding Equity PAC (TEFE). He told the News's Jeffrey Weiss: "Politics is the game of money, whether anybody likes it or wants to admit it."

After the jump, what he's up against. Spoiler alert: his state legislator is Stefani Carter.