Category: Politics

Dallas has a web site where you can submit nonemergency requests such as animal control requests, potholes, zoning violations, etc.

About a year ago I used this site to submit a few requests. If I remember correctly, they were about graffiti, a pothole or two, and a missing street sign. I never got a response, and the missing street sign still has not been addressed.

Fast forward to early September, 2004. I reported two potholes and some signage problems (nonworking traffic signal head and badly faded signs). Amazingly, the potholes got fixed right away. And more amazingly, I got emails and calls back on almost all of my requests!

Wow, Dallas seems to be doing its job and pro-actively responding to customers! Maybe this city isn’t so bad after all.

Please don’t misread this as saying that everything is hunky dory. Dallas has some severe challenges, including a crime problem that’s out of control and an tight fiscal situation with little easy revenue enhancement opportunities. But, hey, this one thing is a silver lining. Even an imperfect but responsive city government sure beats no response.

The rest of the world has hated us for most of the 20th century. Even the countries that we bail out end up hating us. French disdain for the US, for example, is nothing new.

I think that hate of the US is largely due to jealousy. So far the US has managed to do nearly everything better than any other country in the world, ever. Wouldn’t you get resentful of a coworker who through ingenuity, strength, or natural assets always beats you?

Many compare today’s foreign relations to the relations right after 9-11-2001. That international sympathetic outpouring was an aberration, not normalcy. Since then the world has returned to its normal state of affairs with one exception: others are being more open about their true anti-Americanism.

The only thing that the Bush Administration did was to force other countries to be more open with their decades-long, hateful views.

It’s no surprise that this “let’s beat up on the Americans” mentality has carried through several Olympics, including the 2004 Summer Olympics: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2004-08-27-lopresti_x.htm

When cussing and discussing America, we often forget that–despite mistakes that many seem to exclusively focus on–the USA is an awesome force of good.

An excellent editorial on this, written by a former Indian, is at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/06/29/IN290713.DTL.

I really like National Public Radio. It’s the only way to get commercial-free, substantial news on the entire FM band. I am a member of my local affiliate, KERA 90.1 FM.

But sometimes I get sick of NPR. I appreciate the value of understanding opposing arguments. I really like the Tavis Smiley Show. However, sometimes I get fed up with left-leaning fringe groups that get a disproportionate amount of air time on this network. I am often displeased with how Diane Rehm blatantly panders to her liberal guests. I tire of the fringe environmentalists who only talk about the most extreme environmental predictions. It often seems that NPR’s version of balanced coverage are occasional conservative footnotes to a litany of left-oriented news.

Blech.

Despite this, I believe that NPR’s core news product is generally balanced. I really like Car Talk. And I need to understand the opposing sides to my views. So I guess I’ll keep listening.

I really like this Ben Stein article: “How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?”

He thoughtfully argues a painfully obvious point: society’s stars may be nice people, but they aren’t the true stars. The true stars are the teachers, paramedics, soldiers, cops, etc.