Free Republic

If you watched the debates or look at the candidate’s websites, you will never see the dreaded “D” word spoken nor spelled out. You know why, and so do these wily candidates. The “D” word conjures up images of Pelosi, Reid and billions of dollars flying out of your collective pockets and into the hands of millionaire bankers and insurance executives. Some will tell you that no one mentions the “D” word because the Houston Mayoral Race is a non-partisan race. Really? You sure you want to go with that one? According to the letter of the law, the race...

Houston Mayor Bill White used a Web video to announce his plan to run for U.S. Senate today.... He cites turbulent economic times, a rising federal deficit and high unemployment rates in the video, saying "this may be an opportunity for our nation to do things it has only dreamed of before..." White previously worked as deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Energy under President Clinton and as chief executive of the Wedge Group, a Houston-based holding company with interests in oil-field services, engineering and real estate. In comments today, he also highlighted signature domestic issues such as health...

Houston is at a turning point. With a boost from noted urbanist Joel Kotkin, our city has begun recasting its national reputation from "that ugly, sprawling, weird city without zoning" to the exemplar city for "Opportunity Urbanism," a compelling new paradigm for cities in the 21st century. This paradigm asserts that the fundamental (but recently forgotten) core mission of cities is to accelerate the upward social and economic mobility of its inhabitants. This may sound obvious to the average person, but in the wonkish world of urban policy and planning, the themes of the past decade have been environmentalism (smart...

Over the next 30 years, most of Harris County's remaining open space will succumb to subdivisions, office buildings and shopping centers where millions of new residents will live and work, projections by local planners show. The spread of development, particularly west and northwest of Houston, is among the more striking trends shown in preliminary population and job growth projections developed by the Houston-Gal- veston Area Council for the eight-county Houston region. The potential loss of open space alarms conservationists and others concerned about suburban sprawl. It is among the factors driving an effort by business and civic leaders to find...

Speed bumps With opponents turning up the heat, Trans-Texas Corridor planners need to fill in many blanks as the colossal project nears liftoff. Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle WHEN first announced, Gov. Rick Perry's $175 billion, 4,000-mile transitway proposal seemed more visionary than practicable. Now that the project is on the verge of transforming itself from political rhetoric to concrete reality, opposition from a nonpartisan range of interests has taken on a sudden urgency. The opponents are discovering just how much they don't know about the biggest transit project to hit Texas since the creation of the interstate highway system. The...

The following memo was accidentally posted on the Houston Chronicle website last Thursday morning for a couple of hours. It is an internal memo between the editorial page writers instructing a massive year long propaganda campaign to push a light rail referendum through next november. The memo was removed upon discovery but not before many people read it. The Houston Chronicle also printed a correction stating it had been accidentally posted, but not what it was about. This document is genuine and was copied from the Chronicle website in the hour or two it was online by somebody and has...

Some of Houston's best political precognitives are hard at work this summer trying to prevent what they foresee as an electoral disaster. Operating out of the Department of Pre-Elections, these agents have detected a frightening scenario in the making: Houstonians wake up after the first round of the city elections in 2003 and find their only remaining choices for mayor are named Orlando and Sylvester. More and more, the future is looking like a reflection of the past, with a likely confrontation between previous runoff losers. In 1991, state Representative Sylvester Turner squeezed ten-year incumbent Kathy Whitmire out of contention....