Back Talk Oak Cliff

DISD news roundup: No election, new CFO and another investigation

Lots of DISD action this week ... here's a brief summary of some of what went down, along with (of course) a little commentary:

• After its embarrassing financial crisis, DISD is spending $258,000 annually to hire a new chief financial officer. Larry Throm comes via Austin and Lubbock, where he is credited with being a tough watchdog on district finances there. "Dallas is absolutely fixable," Throm told the DMN. "I would not have taken the job if I didn't think I could be successful. They need to install some internal controls, generally accepted accounting principals and some safeguards."

Council subcommittee considers a smoking ban in bars, billiard halls

A city council subcommittee is considering expanding the city's current smoking ban from restaurants and workplaces to bars, billiard halls and within 15 feet of entrances to publicly accessible villages, according to the DMN. A majority of the six councilmen on the subcommittee seem to be leaning in favor of the proposal, according to the News story and more comments on its blog.

I have to admit that when the city council first decided to restrict smoking in restaurants and other public places a few years ago, I had my doubts: It seemed like a draconian measure, and it seemed likely to drive business out of Dallas. Today, though, I haven't seen a single study indicating that significant business was lost to the more smoking-friendly suburbs, and the air in most places I go these days is cleaner and clearer.

Around the web: Home foreclosures, sex pastor, cell phone boarding passes, interview suits

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn't necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting.

• Dallas-Fort Worth home foreclosures set a record in 2008 -- some 50,000, 17 percent more than in 2007. This should give us an idea of how bad the foreclosure problem is in the rest of the country, since everyone keeps telling us that we've been sheltered from the housing crisis. Or, as foreclosure expert George Roddy noted, the market these days is twice as big as it was in the late 1980s, when the old record was set.

• How do you get on national TV? Advocate sex for married couples. That's the publicity path that Grapevine pastor Ed Young chose this week. " "I think our culture, sadly, has taken sex out of context, and we want to put it back in context," says Young. There's some great stuff on the church's web site, too.

• American Airlines is testing cell phone-based boarding passes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. If you have a cell phone that can download something called a 2-D bar code, you don't have to print a paper pass. The airline's equipment will can the bar code displayed on the phone's screen.

• And, just in time for the recession, an article about the return of the interview suit. Said one expert: "We are back to a time when every company expected both women and men to wear suits and we didn’t have a Casual Friday. They are looking for a sharper style. I recommend a strong suit that says you are collected and ready to work."

Technorati Tags: Dallas home foreclosures,Ed Young,sex,cell phones,boarding passes,interview suit

Around the web: Whole Foods, high school cheerleaders, Harold's bankruptcy, whiskey bottles

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn't necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• The economy seems to gigging local favorite Whole Foods, so the natural grocery store chain has sold 17 percent of itself to private investors. The company’s stock is down by 70 percent this year, which analysts blame on competition from other grocers. Great quote from Whole Foods boss John Mackey in the story, too: “We believe our core customers remain committed to Whole Foods. However, the unrelenting negative economic news appears to be shifting buying behavior to making fewer trips and to making more value-conscious decisions.” Or, for those of us who speak English: “People don’t want to pay our prices.”

• Those wacky Canadians, who just can’t seem to keep their clothes on. A group of high school cheerleaders performed at football game wearing only bootie shorts and strategically placed tape and paint. As has been noted here, I’m too old to know what bootie shorts are, but there is a tastefully grainy photo from Canada’s National Post if anyone wants to explain it to me –- as well as this great quote from a school official: “We talked to the girls and the principal and it's fair to say it's not going to happen again. We're working with the Grade 11 and Grade 12 girls in an educational way to ensure they portray a better, more wholesome image.”

• Say goodbye to Harold’s, the upscale men’s clothing store that has been an institution in Dallas for some 30 years. It filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday, and that’s never a good sign when it happens just before the Christmas shopping season. The company, which has been struggling for much of this decade, will reportedly close most of its stores to pay its debt. No news yet on when the closeout sale will be held.

• And because we haven’t had an item from the Onion, the world’s most respected fake news site: “New Texas Legislation Would Require Whiskey Bottles To Be Shot Out Of Air Immediately After Being Emptied.” Doesn’t even need a comment, does it?

Technorati Tags: Harold's. the Onion,Whole Foods,high school cheerleaders

Around the web: Chicago city-subsidized hotel, plastic shopping bags, Craigslist sex ads, Windows 7 boot time

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn't necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• A city-subsidized hotel is causing a stink in Chicago, where Mayor Richard M. Daley wants to give the project another $12 million -- on top of more than $40 million the city has already guaranteed. A city spokesman said that without the money, Loews Corp., which will operate the hotel, will probably back out of the deal. And who says we get to have all the fun?

• New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to charge shoppers six cents for every plastic bag they use, in another attempt to reduce plastic bag use. If the proposal passes, reports the New York Times, the city would  become one of the first places in the United States to assess a plastic bag tax. It's already popular in Europe, where several countries have the tax. In Ireland, the fee is 33 cents a bag. The Dallas city council decided against a plastic bag ban in October, though the Times says we're considering the tax idea.

• If you want to put a sex ad on the usually-free Craigslist, you're going to have to pay for it. That's the settlement reached by the Internet classified ad service and 40 states, which said the sex ads were soliciting illegal services. But what struck me as even more interesting is that Craigslist has fewer than 30 employees.

• And this is for all of us who have to turn the computer on 10 minutes early every morning because the damn thing takes so long to boot up: Microsoft says it will quicken the boot time and try to speed up the way the next generation of Windows works. The company acknowledged that Windows Vista slowed down computers with features that most of us never used.

A.H. Belo update –- and it’s not pretty

The parent company of Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper lost $17.3 million in the third quarter, and had to borrow $10 million to pay for the costs associated with laying off 400 employees this fall. And that was probably the best news in Friday’s earnings announcement.

Because, frankly, things look like they’re going to get a lot worse before they get better. Some are even wondering about Belo’s ability to continue to operate its three large daily newspapers, the Denton paper, and its ancillary products like the weekly Quick and the almost daily Briefing.

Around the web: Cute pets, college tuition, trapped in a toilet, ghost busters

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• USA Today notes that some doctors won’t let pets visit their owners in the hospital. I wasn’t aware this was a problem. Nevertheless, says one doctor, "I receive phone calls virtually weekly" from veterinarians phoning on behalf of clients who are distressed because a physician has issued a no-pets advisory.

• College tuition costs are still going up, and it doesn’t look like the situation is going to get better any time soon. Though costs didn’t increase as much as inflation, financial aid is not keeping pace with the rise in tuition. Says one of the experts who worked on the study: “From a family's point of view, college doesn't become cheaper just because other prices went up.”

• At least he wasn’t on an airplane, right? A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet. The 26-year-old victim was trapped when he tried to get his cell phone, which had fallen into the toilet bowl.

•  And, just in time for Halloween, a ghost busters story from the New York Times. May favorite part? The Realtor who discussed whether she has an obligation to tell prospective buyers that the house may be haunted: “Just last week I got a call from a past client who was calling for a friend who’d leased a place and wasn’t happy because it was haunted,” she said. “He wanted his deposit back. I told him the best thing his friend could do was plead his case.”

Technorati Tags: pets and hospitals,college tuition,toilets,Halloween,ghost busters

DISD's Hinojosa could face a 'no confidence' vote by trustees Monday

DISD school board trustee Ron Price submitted a letter, co-signed by trustees Carla Ranger and Lew Blackburn, at last night's board meeting calling on the board to meet in emergency session Monday to consider a vote of "no confidence" in DISD Supt. Michael Hinojosa. The information was reported on WFAA-TV last night, along with video of people attending the school board meeting chanting "Jack Lowe must go" and yelling out all kinds of things after the board meeting ended.

A "no confidence" vote, as I understand it, doesn't have any legal status, but it would continue eroding the public's support of district leadership, as well as serve to keep the big budget scandal in the news, further eroding the public's support of district leadership. In fact, further evidence of the continuing drumbeat seeking to get rid of Hinojosa showed up on the DMN's education blog yesterday. The NEA-Dallas, a teacher's organization, attempted to survey its membership concerning Hinojosa and the school board; 428 teachers and DISD employees responded, according to the poll, which was sent to teachers and also linked on the DMN blog so other DISD employees could respond. (I'm just reading this in the introduction to the survey, which you can read by clicking here: Download neadallas_confidence_survey.pdf)

Around the web: Dead squirrels, yard sales, wild students, media comic strip

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Noticed a lot of dead squirrels, mostly on roads after they’ve been smashed by cars? Not to worry -– that’s more or less normal for this time of year, says Brett Johnson, an urban wildlife biologist at Cedar Hill State Park. The squirrels, says Johnson, are scurrying about, looking for food to supply calories to bulk themselves up for winter. As such, they aren’t paying a whole of of attention to things like cars. Adding to the carnage? That we may have more squirrels this year than in the past couple, thanks to last summer’s heavy rain.

• The push earlier this year to limit garage sales in Dallas is not unique. The New York Times reports that cities throughout the country, facing a deluge of sales thanks to the economy, have enacted or are considering limits. Academics have a name for it: The thrift economy. Says one: “This is the perfect storm for garage sales. We’re coming off a 20-year boom in which consumers filled ever-bigger houses. Now people need cash because of the bust.”

• And at least the DISD doesn’t have this problem: The entire graduating class at an exclusive Australian boys school has been suspended because they allegedly ran through the school wearing only their school ties as G-strings and set off fireworks at a nearby railway station, reports the BBC. One resident told a local paper: “Their behaviour was disgraceful. They were blind drunk and some of them could barely stand.”

• And the collapse of the mainstream media has made the funnies. An Illinois newspaper reporter has created a comic strip called Pressed, about a newspaper making cutbacks to survive in the Internet age. The strip features  a curmudgeon columnist who still uses a typewriter, a Web guru trying to bring the newspaper into the Internet age and an assortment of politicians, weasels and snitches.

Technorati Tags: squirrels,Australian schools,garage sales,Pressed,comic strips

DISD update: When is an apology no better than hari kiri?

There was a time in Japanese society where suicide was thought to be noble, something a samurai warrior considered heroic (hari kiri) and something a Japanese businessman did to take responsibility for failures at his company. Outwardly, Japanese society publicly celebrated the heroic nature of the personal sacrifice; behind the scenes, however, friends and family of the fallen man weren't so sure that death was the only way for society to gain its measure of revenge — I mean, how many business mistakes are really worth taking anyone's life over?

I thought about this while reading Jacquielynn Floyd's columns in last week's DMN; the columns (links here and here) suggested that DISD Supt. Michael Hinojosa should consider sitting down with the district's remaining teachers to directly apologize to them and to clear the air after budget problems resulted in firing and transferring several hundred teachers and other district employees.