POTD: Diplomatic Break

From 2015 03 11 Jakarta

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Jakarta, Indonesia, the nation's capital and home to foreign embassies. In this photo we see evidence that processing visa applications is not all that goes on behind an embassy's walls.

The embassy row across the street from our hotel included embassies for Poland, Singapore, India, Netherlands and Switzerland. All had guards and stout walls, often topped with razor wire (the walls, not the guards). Pro-tip: don't stand outside the Singapore embassy too long taking photos of the traffic. The guards will tolerate that for a while, but then politely ask you to move along.

Lack of Legal Basis for a Special Election

David Chenoweth, on his blog, does what Amir Omar failed to do: make a legal argument for calling a special election to fill the vacancy in the mayor's seat. It's not a very good argument, but it's something.

Richardson Citizens Deserve Better

"Richardson Citizens Deserve Better." So says Amir Omar in a letter to the editor of The Dallas Morning News. "A full two-year term served by a non-democratically elected leader is a gigantic leap backward that undermines the will of Richardson voters."

It's hard to argue otherwise. In fact, I haven't heard anyone say that Richardson residents have been well served by the mayor's decision not to serve another term, including any of the six remaining council members or three candidates seeking their first term on the city council.

I understand Omar's frustration. I sympathize with his desire for another outcome. But I can't sign on to Omar's proposed remedy. That would be another affront to democracy and constitutional government. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Richardson Republican Women's Candidate Forum

Catching up... There was a Richardson City Council candidate forum on March 31, 2015, at the Canyon Creek Baptist Church hosted by the Richardson Republican Women and the North Texas Republicans. The video of that forum is now available on YouTube (h/t to the unidentified party who recorded it). I wasn't in attendance, but I did watch the video. Two questions caught my attention.

Actually three questions. The first is my own question, not one asked at the forum. Where was Claudia Tatum? She told the Highland/Terrace Neighborhood Association Forum, "I go where they tell me to go. I have a consultant." Why isn't she her own candidate? Why did that consultant not tell her to face the voters in this forum? OK, I know that's two more questions...for a total of four if I add them to the two asked at the forum that originally caught my attention... Moving on...

Birdman (2014)

IMDB

Birdman (2014): Pretentious. Over-acted. Movie and theater-industry navel-gazing. Oscar mistake. C+

Apportioning Blame for City's Mess

Yesterday, when I wrote about the difficulties of using the Richardson City Charter's recall provision to force a special election for mayor, I came down hard on the unknown author of the charter amendments specifying direct election of the mayor. After I wrote that, I was privately chided for not apportioning any blame to the city council itself.

Guilty as charged, although let me say two things in my defense.

Recall: Solution or a Can of Worms?

In 2012, Bill McCalpin published a lot of editorials arguing that the proposed Richardson city charter amendments, calling for direct election of the mayor, are "inconsistent, incomplete, and full of unintended errors." He was dismissed by some at the time for attempting to scare the public into voting "no." Now, in just the second election since the charter changes were adopted, the city is in an uproar caused by some of those inconsistencies and ambiguities in the new charter.