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Amazingly bad decision-making
One fringe benefit of economic downturns is that local public officials generally defer their financial decisions, which tend to be uniformly bad even during good economic times. Except apparently in Houston. Over the past few days, Houstonians have been...
The real message of the Gates affair
Despite America's dubious legacy of exercising state power to oppress minorities, that legacy really was not the most important dynamic in play in regard to the improper arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Rather, the real issue here...
Fiddling while Rome burns
My wife and I attended the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Barbeque Cook-off at Reliant Park over the weekend, so we again were reminded of the wasteful land use represented by the Astrodome. With the rodeo and related...
A couple of questions regarding the proposed soccer stadium
The always-entertaining Houston real estate blog, Swamplot, provided this post last week with typically pretty pictures from a KHOU-TV video of the long-proposed soccer stadium for the Houston Dynamo MLS soccer team. Have we really been talking about this...
Can Mayor White pull off another "win-win" deal?
Although the developers of the proposed Ashby high-rise condominium project didn't know it at the time, Houston Mayor Bill White did the developers a huge favor by putting up roadblocks to that project. Can you imagine trying to peddle...
Assessing priorities at TSU
This Jeannie Kever/Chronicle article follows up on new Texas Southern University President John Rudley's efforts to find a place for the institution within Houston's changing marketplace for university education (prior posts on TSU are here). Beyond academic programs that remain...
Continuing to suspend reality on financing the soccer stadium
This earlier post addressed the economic absurdity of having financially-strapped Texas Southern University make an investment in the long-proposed Houston Dynamo downtown soccer stadium. However, why is it that common sense seems to evaporate into thin air whenever either TSU...
The price of soccer keeps going up
Based on what's going on in Washington, D.C., my prediction on the eventual public subsidy of the proposed Dynamo soccer stadium in Houston may be a tad low. With D.C.'s proposed $150 million public subsidy for about 25,000 seats,...
The Chron's continuing soccer stadium drumbeat
In this post from last week on the proposed downtown soccer stadium, I observed that the Chronicle should simply declare that it supports the public financing of the stadium and quit attempting to rationalize that such financing makes economic...
Suspending reality on financing the soccer stadium
Look, I realize that the reasoning in support of public financing for the proposed Houston Dynamo soccer stadium has not been particularly rational. But this Chronicle article takes the cake in terms of suspending reality. Chron reporters Bernando Fallas...
Examining stadium subsidies
As if on cue for the soccer stadium financing issues currently being discussed on the local scene, Dennis Coates provides this excellent op-ed in The American on the dubious nature of municipal stadium subsidies: Clearly, stadiums built with public...
Mayor White's management
Help me out here. I'm really trying to understand the basis of the perception among a large number of Houstonians that Mayor Bill White is an effective manager. For example, this earlier post summarized Mayor White's dubious decision-making in...
The "leadership" of Bill White
Let me see if I've got this straight. On one hand, private businessmen invest millions in buying a run-down property and following the city's existing laws and regulations in preparing to build the Ashby high-rise, a large-scale residential redevelopment...
What was so super about that?
While most Americans who watched Sunday's Super Bowl XLII were thrilled with a close game that wasn't decided until the final seconds, Financial Times ($) Simon Kuper examines why American football does not translate well to other cultures: . ....
Re-evaluating boondoggles
Let me get this straight. Mayor White started out with a proposal several months ago to allow the local MLS soccer team to build a stadium at their own expense on downtown land that the City of Houston owned but...
Arena wasteland
Anne Linehan over at blogHouston.net has been having fun (as has Tory Gattis) watching Houston city officials try to rationalize how the city is not really going to have to cough up any money to subsidize a portion of the...
2007 Weekly local football review
(AP Photo/Dave Einsel; previous weekly reviews here) Texans 23 Saints 10 The Texans (5-5) enjoyed the return from their bye week with a convincing win over the Saints (4-6), who appear to be a shadow of the team that played...
Longhorn trepidation on the eve of Texas-OU Weekend
It's the annual Texas-OU Weekend in Dallas and with two straight Red River rivalry victories under their belt, one would think that the Texas Longhorns would be feeling reasonably confident coming into this year's game. Don't count on it. As...
And you think the Stros are bad?
As the Stros wander off to their second losing season in the past 15 seasons (21-26 record, lost 6 of their last 7), this earlier post reminded that it could be much worse. Along those same lines, it's comforting to...
More on that little boondoggle
Charles Kuffner has an interesting post about the John Lopez column noted earlier here that suggested that the $80 million or so in public financing for the proposed downtown soccer stadium is a political payback to the minority groups that...
Rationalizing the latest boondoggle
Houstonians are currently enduring the rationalizations of a couple of boondoggles, a big one and a relatively small one. The Chronicle is always a good source for these rationalizations, such as this romantic interlude from Chron soccer writer Glenn Davis...
This boondoggle is getting personal
Well, at least the city's proposed financing for this boondoggle is less than this one ($80 million versus $150 million plus who knows how much?). But really. How many new and well-furnished high school football stadiums are located in the...
An investment market for Charlie Pallilo
My favorite sports talk radio show in Houston is Charlie Pallilo's afternoon show over at 790-AM, but I've always wondered why the quite bright Pallilo isn't off making millions trading bonds or running a hedge fund. Moneyball's Michael Lewis reports...
Hoop Nazis
I recognize that the University Park area of Dallas is a nice place to live and all, and I also concede that the residents there are rightly attentive to maintaining property values and the decorum of the area. But this...
Meet Steven Gerrard
I don't follow soccer closely (previous posts here), but I've come to appreciate the sport during this World Cup season and I particularly enjoyed Chronicle sports columnist John Lopez's World Cup reports from Germany. Now, Bill Simmons passes along this...
The English and Germans are getting warmed up
As predicted in this earlier post, it didn't take long for English and German soccer fans to begin bashing each other amidst the World Cup matches. And this was before England's 1-0 victory over Paraguay today. By the way, the...
And you thought the Longhorn-Aggie rivalry was heated?
Texans enjoy their intense sports rivalries as much as anyone, but this clever Sarah Lyall/NY Times article notes that preparations for the upcoming World Cup soccer match between England and Germany indicate a rivalry on an entirely higher level: They...
Score of the Year
I don't appreciate the finer points of soccer generally, but I must concede that this is the score of the year in any sport. Hat tip to the ever observant Eric McErlain for the link....
2005 Weekly local football review
Rice 42 Tulane 34The Owls (1-8) get the top spot on the local football review this week as they finally broke their 14 game losing streak (the longest in major college football) in beating Tulane at Rice Stadium. The win...
Are you ready to rumble?
Check out this highly entertaining Washington Post article today on the Olympic Water Polo Tournament: Water polo is a combination of swimming, soccer and basketball, plus wrestling, boxing and mugging. The players are phenomenal athletes who perform amazing feats of...
Bill James is making the rounds
On top of this prior interview and article, the American Enterprise Institute interviews the baseball sabermetrician Bill James. A few excerpts: TAE: Is Barry Bonds the best player of our era? JAMES: By far. TAE: Was Babe Ruth the finest...
The Latest Coup
The New York Times has its faults, but it continues to be one of the best sources of international news reporting. Today, Times foreign correspondence Michael Wines writes this incredible story about the latest coup attempt in Equitorial Guinea, the...
It never got this complicated with Seabiscuit
This NY Times article describes a fascinating situation that has developed regarding a fight for control of the Manchestor United soccer club -- the New York Yankees of England professional sports -- that also involves a racehorse named Rock of...
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