Letting them twist in the wind

As the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2007 and 2008 the government was flailing about trying to figure out what to do. Treasury officials then decided that something had to be done to save the large investment banks after Bear Stearns was left to die on the side of the road. Next up were the major banks and then the giant insurer AIG.

Somewhere down the road Chrysler and GM came to Washington hat-in-hand begging for money to make up for their years of mismanagement.Washington was only too happy to hand it out.

These were the same auto companies that had abandoned Detroit for the suburbs and over the borders.The Motor City which boasted a population of nearly 2 million folks 40 years ago was down to around 750,000 by the time the government bailed out the auto industry.

Detroit saw its industrial base leave the city - and with it thousands of good paying jobs in the plants. The tax base shrank. The money available to maintain the city's infrastructure was no longer there. Over the course of four decades the city entered a death spiral.

Today Detroit is a sea of poverty. Sure, there are groups talking about revitalizing the city - but that revitalization is designed to draw young white professionals into the city and pander to their tastes. The revitalization has nothing to do with those our economic system has chosen to ignore. The city is writing a check to build a new hockey arena when it can't even afford to maintain its own police department or to pick up trash throughout the city.

Earlier this month Detroit became the largest city in the United States to file for bankruptcy protection. The goal of the emergency manager is to wipe out the city's obligations to its pensioners. If the bankruptcy master invalidates the city's pension obligations, thousands upon thousands of former city workers will see their pensions and health care cut to the bone. And they did nothing to contribute to the financial meltdown of the city.

So, while local and state governments were more than willing to hand out subsidies to the auto makers whenever the titans of industry asked for some dough, there is no one willing to provide financial assistance to Detroit.

While the federal government was only too happy to bail out Chrysler and GM no one is proposing any type of financial assistance to Detroit. The auto makers are enjoying near record profits and the big banks are pulling in money hand-over-fist but no one in Washington seems to give a damn about the poor and working poor in Detroit.

President Obama continues to ignore the poor while he trumpets what the so-called middle class needs. His recent proclamation that the minimum wage should be raised to $10.10 an hour is only about five years too late. And even then it isn't adequate to keep a family of four above the poverty line.

We can somehow finds billions of dollars to spend on killing people and blowing stuff up in Afghanistan and across the Middle East. We can find plenty of money for the NSA to conduct covert surveillance on the citizens of this country without the slimmest iota of reasonable suspicion that anyone has done anything wrong. We can find plenty of pocket change to provide subsidies for businesses, both large and small, throughout the economy. But we can't provide one dime to the folks in Detroit who have watched their city die a slow, painful death.

What a strange set of priorities we have these days.

Dem bones

I've lived in and around Houston all my life. Now Houston will never be a tourist destination like Austin and San Antonio are. Folks come to Houston for business and to see family. And that's fine for me.

Houston's lack of zoning has created a plethora of eclectic neighborhoods inside, and outside, the Loop. My office is smack dab in the middle of one of the most famous - The Heights.

But one thing about Houston disturbs me. We have very little sense of history here. It it's old, it's in danger of being knocked down by a developer. The rush to build cookie-cutter loft apartments, McMansions and trendy shopping areas spells doom for historic properties in and around this city.

Currently the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing construction of a river of concrete that will connect the Katy Freeway and the Northwest Freeway out in the far west reaches of Harris County. You see, it's not enough that we built a loop around the city. And it's not enough that we built a toll road surrounding that loop. Now we seem to have the need to build yet another ring road even further out. All in the name of making it easier for developers to convince folks to leave the city for the suburbs.

Of course the solution to the traffic mess in Houston has never been to find a better way of moving people around; it's always been about pouring more concrete and creating ever larger flood dangers where the bayous converge near the Ship Channel.

Well, in the course of pouring all this concrete, workers found some old bones. It turns out that they had dug up a 2,000 year old burial ground. Then they dug up another burial ground estimated to be 9,000 years old. Just think about those numbers for a second.

The Harris County Historical Society (talk about a fish out of water) thought it might be a good idea to do a bit more research on these burial grounds before filling them with concrete. You know, they just might be of some sort of historical import. Not that that mattered to the developers or TxDOT. They just wanted to know how long it would take to move the bones so they could get back to pouring concrete.

And so, back in July, they filed a lawsuit asking the court to let them dig up the bones and move them so they could get back to the very serious work of pouring more concrete. The case landed in Judge Reece Rondon's court. Before being appointed to the bench, Judge Rondon worked for Andrews Kurth (a big white shoe corporate firm) and for Reliant Energy (a bunch of rotten scoundrels Houston's primary electricity provider). In other words, he came from the same world as the developers.

I guess I don't need to tell you how Judge Rondon ruled in this case, do I? If you know anything about Houston, you know the HCHS never stood a chance. And, sure enough, Judge Rondon ruled for the developers and told the world that pouring more concrete is far more important than studying the history of this little part of the earth we call home.

There is far more to the world than building roads and developing cookie-cutter subdivisions with no trees and all of three floor plans. In the overall scheme of things, I would argue that building a road is a tad less important than studying prehistoric burial grounds. But if you think you're going to convince the powers that be in Houston of that, you might as well just beat your head against the roadbed.

A little island history

While waiting to talk to the head of the Warrant Division at the Galveston Police Department this morning I happened upon some display cases of police memorabilia that I found fascinating.

This is the old "mug book." I love the hat in the booking photo on the upper left.

These are an assortment of uniform patches. My favorite is the "All American City" in the middle.

This is a collection of detective badges.

Here is some assorted "office equipment." Check out the movie camera on the right.