Some Help for RIP Dallas

The economy is tough, I know, and getting together a "grass roots" effort to make sure the powers that be build a hotel is tiring. There just is no "fun" in fundraising. And paying for music? An expense you just don't need. But you keep getting called out on it, which is probably embarrassing for an organization that has, up until now, done so well at avoiding such things. So I am here to help. I'm a giver. This is a list of songs that are part of the public domain. This means you - yes you - can use them for the low, low price of free. Now, it's just words and sheet music, no recordings, but I know with all the 200 or so people you have at the ready (with what, 400 more on call?), you can probably muster up a fine group of people to hum these tunes. Maybe there's even someone there with a guitar, or a glockenspiel or a triangle? Maybe a squeezebox or a couple of spoons? Don't say I never did anything to help the pro-hotel groups.

Just To Be Completely, Totally Clear

Although the Vote No guys keep telling us all voting no on Props 1 and 2 means you're for the hotel, let's be completely, totally clear: You can vote no on Prop 2 and still vote yes on Prop 1. Aside from the sentiment behind them, the two are different propositions altogether. Really - knock it off, Vote No. It's plain old misrepresentation to tell people a no vote on both means you're for a hotel. You do realize that, by doing this, it could conceivably backfire as well. People could extrapolate that voting yes for both means you don't want the hotel. So what if there are more people than you think that really, really hate the hotel? This could mean that while the hotel is defeated, the city is also saddled with Prop. 2 - a pretty asinine waste of ballot space, as I've explained before. So do the right thing, guys. Voting no on Prop 1 means you want the hotel. Voting no on Prop 2 means you want the city to run efficiently, without having to hold referendums for small expenditures. See? That wasn't so hard to explain.

Is It Just Me, or Is This Misleading?

So I took a real good gander at the Vote No! Web site today - and noticed immediately Angela Hunt's photo on it. Now, let's begin this by saying the Vote No! site is for both Prop 1 and Prop 2, and urges a no vote for both. But that being said, it doesn't do much on the front page to distinguish between the two. So just on first glance, it looks like Angela Hunt is urging people to vote no on both. And we know that's not true. While yes, she does urge people to vote no on the harebrained Prop 2, she's decidedly on the Vote Yes! side of Prop 1. But she's also popular. She's known as being one of the smartest city council members and - to me - it looks as if they're trying to capitalize on that popularity by hinting she's for everything the Vote No! camp stands for. Couldn't they have used a picture of someone else? Update: Angela Hunt responded in the comments, and reports the photo has been removed. And another update: Wilonsky has more at Unfair Park.

Oh, Really?

Today, Trey Garrison looks at the people behind R.I.P. Dallas. If you're unfamiliar with their work, they've done this overwrought Web site here, and then they've also put signs up all over Dallas - illegally, I might add.

Just Plain Wrong Headed

Give all the explanations you want, either side, for why the convention center hotel should or should not be built. But there's one that's been floating around that opens up a slippery slope - and one that could very well defeat the exact reason the Vote Noers say we need to build the hotel - to drive business and development to downtown. Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is the most recent proponent to use this bite-you-in-the-butt reasoning, per DO scribe Sam Merten's paraphrasing:

Price, who Haynes referred to as "our warrior," said the person who has the most to benefit from killing the hotel doesn't even have a vote because he's not a citizen of Dallas (italics mine).

OK. So are we saying now that people and businesses owners who are not Dallas citizens (and therefore cannot vote) do not have any say in what happens in the city they do business in? Are we going to take their tax money for our coffers, but deny them any say? I think that this is what the original, Colonial-era tea partiers had in mind when they threw their protest. So are we now going to travel down this slippery slope where we tell businesses the only time we really want to hear from them is when they write that check to pay taxes? Nobody denies that Harlan Crow has a dog in this hunt. But you know, there are plenty of people on either side with ulterior motives. It's what drives politics, and you'd have to do a complete blood draining followed by a transfusion of pure O neg to get that to change. So let's just drop this particular argument, and go to the meat and potatoes. I mean, is it really all that necessary if the Vote No group's quiver is as full of fully delineated arrows as it claims?

Commenters ...

Commenters over on TDMN's Metro blog are kind of eating Steve Blow's known-to-be-extensive, two-hour lunch.

Dear City of Dallas:

If money's looking kinda tight, I know someplace where you can find a bunch. About $525 million, actually. Love, Me

Um....

OK, we all had a good laugh when the city's paper of record endorsed Mike Huckabee. Clearly, someone was pulling our collective leg, right? And then the inevitable McCain endorsement came. OK, sure. McCain. And although Jim Schutze would also throw the wholesale love of the Trinity project in that list, too, I'm sure, I would say that may be the only semi-legitimate endorsement the DMN has done in the past two years. I mean, at least there were some people other than city officials that were for it. It was a pretty even pitting of fors and aginners. But now, now you've got this convention center hotel thing. For those of you not from around here, the Dallas City Council, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fund a convention center hotel in the downtown area. I mean, sure, it undoubtedly is a sound investment, given that so many hotel chains are clamoring to build in the dow...oh wait. You mean, nobody in the hotel business thinks building a hotel in this economy would be a worthwhile investment? Crazy. We're gonna do it anyway, though, Mayor Tom "Big Hands" Leppert says. Even though there were enough signatures on an effort to defeat the idea that we pretty much have to put it to a vote now. We're going to forge ahead. Now, when for once the editorial board could maybe, I don't know, represent the thoughts and ideas of people that do not office within a two mile radius of them, and perhaps the thoughts and ideas of people who do not own property that will go up in value after a hotel is built, they turn around and do this. This. With the headline of, "Yes, build a city-owned convention hotel." Let me have just one more second of incredulity, and check that headline again. No, it still says, "Yes, build a city-owned convention hotel." And, upon a triple check, I also note that there is no mention of the fact that the parent company of the Dallas Morning News stands to fare very well if the hotel is built, since it owns a goodly chunk of the property near the proposed building site. So today, dear readers, I have a question: Do you actually read the editorial section of the Dallas Morning News, and if so, why?