Unca Darrell

NOVEMBER 6 / Major Nidal Malik Hasan is . . .

Unca Darrell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:08:19 -0600

. . . a barbarian. The thing he attacked is . . .

. . . civilization itself.

Calling his crime a "tragedy," expressing puzzlement about his motives, fumbling (as our president did and does) to find words to describe his actions and explain their meaning, and straining not to mention or contemplate his medieval religious, cultural, and political beliefs -- these are the responses of a culture that has lost confidence in itself and the values of its own civilizational order.

The Clever People who would govern us are frankly weary of their own heritage. They respond to Mr. Hasan, not with the fury he deserves, but with mental and moral confusion about, among other things, the nature and existence of evil. And with something not far removed from inchoate shame.

UPDATES: Like comments by Mark Steyn and David Horowitz.

NOVEMBER 6 / Baker deconstructs the Wall

Unca Darrell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:12:10 -0600

[THE FALL of the Berlin Wall] could not have happened without Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who disregarded their hawkish advisers . . .

. . . and didn't use Soviet troops to keep the empire together. They could not have happened without German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who advocated for German unity. They could not have happened without British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand, who overcame fears that a new Germany might repeat its old aggressions. And they certainly could not have happened without George H.W. Bush, whose measured and effective leadership of the endgame ensured that it transpired peacefully.

(James A. Baker, III, "Why the Wall Fell," Newsweek, November 5, 2009)

The key name on that list is the last one, President Bush. He deserves enormous credit for the the peacefulness of the end of the Cold War. It could have been otherwise.

That our current president elected not to participate fully in the celebration of that event speaks volumes. And Mr. Baker's generosity in naming all the great men and the great woman of that era is also in marked contrast to our current president's narcissism and ungraciousness toward all who had the misfortune of preceding, and not being, him.

NOVEMBER 6 / Garrison in the News

Unca Darrell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

MORE from my hometown and yours, if you'll let it be, week of October 15, 2009:

Terry Steed, Sports Editor, "Bulldogs lose to No. 1 State Ranked Arp," Page 1

Garrison started strong, taking a 15-8 lead into the 2nd quarter before the Tigers exploded for 30 points in the period and never looked back, routing the Dogs 68-28.

Cutline, Photo of Girl with Rabbit, Page 1

Shelby Gresham won the Grand Champion Market Rabbit pen at the Piney Woods Fair Tuesday.

Obituary, Donald Keith Phillips, Page 2

Donnie graduated from Garrison High School in 1954, where he excelled in football, basketball and all other sports offered by the school. After graduation he enrolled in Rice University in Houston with a four-year football scholarship. Donnie played football for Rice in the Cotton Bowl, the only year they were able to compete. / After graduating from Rice, Donnie played professional football in the Canadian Football League until he suffered a knee injury. [He was also Unca D's high school football coach.]

Betty Swearingen, "Reflecting Out Loud," Page 3

We have to be adamant about putting education ahead of sports and buildings. We can do it!

Pat Crawford, "Stockman and Thereabouts," Page 3

The rain stopped long enough for us to enjoy a wonderful Stockman Homecoming on Sunday. . . . The Stockman homecoming originally started out as the Ross Ramsey Memorial singing. Ross passed away at an early age, but he was an excellent singer who was well known throughout the area.

Cutline, Photo Essay, "A Touch of Class," Page 7

Revenge of the Nerds. The Middle School Cheer and Chant Girls will do whatever is necessary to put some pep in the Bulldogs, even dressing like NERDS at their pep rally.

Jo Ann Barton, "Footprints: The Loss of another friend," Page 9

Bob had told me that Donnie was actually very intelligent but never knew it. . . . / We attended his funeral Monday, and his casket was covered with his Cotton Bowl blanket.

Patricia Hancock Pratt, AD, "Garrison Nursing Home," Page 10

Almost every day at 3:00 p.m. we have some folks waiting to play dominoes. This has become a favorite challenge. We would surely welcome some of you to come and join us for this activity. You'll do our home a great service, and I promise you'll go away feeling blessed!

Joyce Dorris, "Out in Arlam," Page 11

There is nothing like having a baby nuzzling your cheek or neck.

Gary Corley, "Supporting our Troops," Page 12

Chamberlain gave Hitler everything he had demanded at Berchtesgaden and Hitler, like a common blackmailer, said: ". . . I am terribly sorry, but after the events of the past few days, this plan is no longer of any use."

Public Service Announcement, "Lest We Forget!" Page 1B

Tracy Mosby, with the help of his dad, the late Buster Mosby built a patriotic flag memorial that has stood beautifully near BancorpSouth. . . . The time has come to contribute to the flag donation again. . . . Let this be a way of showing our appreciation to our men and women who are protecting our country!

Cutlines, Two-Page Photo Essay, "Fall Fashions," Pages 2B and 3B

Virginia Lee knows how to pose and we know how to enjoy looking at her and her beautiful outfits.

Frances Payne spends all her time seeing that everyone is comfortable and having a good time. That is her job and she does it very well!

Cutline, Photo Essay, "The Kindergarten Class at GISD visited the Pumpkin Patch! Page 4B

Lexie Nichols had a fun time with her class at the Pumpkin Patch. The results of her last visit to Houston were excellent. It has now been six months since she had any chemo in her body.

NOVEMBER 5 / Turn down the lights, the party's . . .

Unca Darrell — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

. . . almost over.

The spread between President Obama's approvals and disapprovals at Real Clear Politics is now 6.8, a new low. And it's going to get worse, because . . .

. . . the New Jersey and Virginia elections have given more fence-sitters permission to follow their sound instincts and express their misgivings about the president and his destructive policies.

Mr. Obama's RCP approval (51 percent) is near an all-time low, but that's not the real story. His approvals have flatlined since late August in the 51-52 range.

The real story is that disapprovals have climbed sharply since mid-October to the 44s. Mid-October is when the political fights in New Jersey and Virginia started to come into clear focus.

The party's almost over for the left, and the left knows it. That's why the rush to get the federalized health bill out of the House this weekend.

Once the blue-dog guys and gals go home and get a whiff of the public opposition, they'll scatter to the winds.

INSTANT UPDATE: The numbers I cite were true when I wrote this post. They may change before you check them.

NOVEMBER 5 / Unca reads CJR so you don't have to

Unca Darrell — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

THE SEPTEMBER/October issue of Columbia Journalism Review ("Strong Press, Strong Democracy") includes a twelve-page supplement, "How Will Comprehensive Reform Improve Health Care for Americans?"

Not will it? How it will.

The supplement -- which has the look and feel of editorial content -- was written by the Commonwealth Fund, a leftwing think tank that feeds likeminded journalists at National Public Radio and elsewhere.

With the nation's economy in recession, the need for comprehensive health reform is more urgent than ever.

Nowhere, however, is this supplement described as an advertisement, a journalistic felony that would surely earn a dart if some clueless newspaper were to distribute a similar bit of propaganda from, say, the Heritage Foundation.

As for the "facts" in the supplement, check this from page 2 -- an assertion known by all regular readers of Unca D to be false:

46 million Americans . . . were uninsured at the start of the current economic recession . . . .

'Nuff said.

Now for the funniest thing in the issue:

In "Take a Stand," Brent Cunningham, CJR's managing editor, argues -- alert! postmodern generalities ahead! -- that journalism needs "to begin to change the narrative about itself."

It is a narrative that has been created by the press's own failures, its arrogance and shortsightedness, but also by a forty-year campaign by segments of the political right to vilify the press as a "liberal" cabal.

Ignoring the lack of parallel structure in the sentence and speaking for my own segment of the political right, I ask: Why might we think such a thing? Consider this credit at the bottom of the article:

This piece was made possible in part by a grant from The Fund for Constitutional Government, for which we are grateful.

The Fund for Constitutional Government is a think tank created by Stewart R. Mott, the liberal's liberal. That's what a player in a liberal cabal looks like.

So why is Mr. Cunningham, the very conscience of journalism -- his own nest feathered by a leftwing foundation -- lecturing anybody about how conservatives have defamed journalism's precious narrative?

CJR also dedicated six pages to a rant about how reporters should say "predatory lender," not "subprime lender." The point is that journalists should label a recent economic or financial phenomenon in a way that moralizes it by naming certain actors as literal predators, bad guys. The villain for reporters' failure to adopt this usage is a familiar one:

It's . . . important to remember the degree to which "subprime" -- both the word and the industry -- received powerful rhetorical support from right-wing political and intellectual elites . . . .

Somehow the article neglects to mention Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or how subprime predatory lending was (and still is, thanks to HUD) public policy of the United States of America. Or how President Bush and Republicans in Congress, Senator John McCain among them, were thwarted by liberal Democrats when they tried to rein in the runaway federal agencies.

The pressure on national banks under the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unsuitable borrowers was intense, so bankers complied, sometimes with the help of friendly loan brokers at ACORN.

The bankers then quickly bundled the toxic loans and sold them to the next sucker. What sank a lot of banks was foolishly buying back some of the bundled loans, apparently on the theory that the risk had been mitigated by aggregation and by insurance.

There were some real predators out there, but the idea that mainstream bankers systematically tried to steal from uncreditworthy borrowers is laughable. What the borrowers lost in these deals was houses they never could afford anyway. What the supposed predatory lenders lost was their solvency.

Some predators.

The article also featured a lot of rhetorical slight of hand, conflating actual predatory loans -- those involving outright fraud by the lenders -- with loans that turned out to be bad business deals for all involved.

A smarmy flavor of the piece comes from its description of the Office of Comptroller of the Currency -- an ancient federal agency -- as "the industry-funded OCC."

Scary, right? Except that "industry-funded" really means funded by federal assessments on national banks, functionally indistinguishable from taxes.

The quality of leadership at the OCC is obviously a legitimate issue for serious journalists, but using "industry-funded" as a part of her argument marks the author of this piece as supremely unserious.

The purpose of this article is to lend pseudo-intellectual weight to the proposition that news journalists should editorialize in their news coverage by using a loaded term. Six pages of why that should be so!

(Elinore Longobardi, "How 'Subprime' Killed 'Predatory,'" Page 45)

Ms. Longobardi, by the way, is described as "a staff writer for The Audit, the online business desk of the Columbia Journalism Review." If this article is evidence of the work of The Audit, I suggest it be renamed the anti-business desk.

If, after all this, you still hunger for guidance from CJR, read Jeff Madrick, "Raising Keynes," for a sympathetic review of a sympathetic book (Peter Clarke, Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist) about that old mischief-maker, John Maynard -- lately revived to breathe spirit into Obamanomics. He "got the economy more right than anyone else," you will be told.

Actually he didn't, but what does it matter? The Clever People use his policies to justify ever-bigger government programs, and that's good enough, no?

To sum up:

A federalized health insurance system would be good for us.

Describing the press as part of a liberal cabal is a slander.

And business reporters should go editorialize in their news stories by going short on "subprime" and long on "predatory."

Got it?

And from "The Lower Case," this unintentionally truthful headline: "Federal judges like sentencing freedom."

NOVEMBER 4 / No time to flesh this out, but . . .

Unca Darrell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0600

. . . yesterday's electoral repudiation of our president's policies -- healthcare and cap-and-tax, both financed with our kids' money -- was also a repudiation . . .

. . . of the core policies, the central identity, the essential character of Houston Chronicle editorial board.

If even New Jersey -- New Jersey! -- rejects Democratic nostrums, locally and nationally, why would anyone think sensible Houston, Texas, might be fertile ground for the same unpopular and destructive ideas?

Editorial boards should be appointed, not elected, but as a thought experiment: What if our locals had to stand for reelection? They could be beaten by a slate of any three newspaper street vendors.

Our local newspaper represents President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, university faculty lounges nationwide, grant-seekers, rent-seekers, and subsidy seekers of every stripe, public-employee unions, trial lawyers, the racial and gender grievance industries, self-anointed Clever People, and the doctrine of Californianizing Texas.

Our editorial board does not represent, or much care for, the flesh-and-blood people of Houston, Texas, who get up and go to work every day, worship on Sunday, and unashamedly love America. Or for the children whose shoulders will bear the full weight of the deficits depicted below.

NOVEMBER 4 / Civilisation

Unca Darrell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

IN "CIVILISATION," [Kenneth Clark] warned that Western culture rested on a thin crust of ice: . . .

"Advanced thinkers, who even in Roman times thought it was fine to gang up with the barbarians, have begun to question whether civilization is indeed worth preserving. . . . It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs."

From Terry Teachout, "Forty Years of 'Civilisation,'" Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2009 -- a fond retrospective on Mr. Clark's thirteen-part series that ran on U.S. television screens in 1969. Saddest lines:

The thought of devoting a 13-hour TV series to the glories of Western art would now be thought comical -- or contemptible -- by those well-placed eggheads who regard the West as the source of all evil in the post-modern world. Among such enlightened folk, "Civilisation" is regarded as an embarrassing relic, painfully slow-moving and political retrogressive.

By coincidence, Peggy Noonan wrote this in the same edition:

It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. . . .

When I see those in government . . . spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax -- health care, cap and trade, etc. -- I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

. . . . They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa's lap.

. . . .

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists -- they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.

(Peggy Noonan, "We're Governed by Callous Children," Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2009)

Below, their callous, unimaginative, and stupid handiwork.

NOVEMBER 4 / Garrison in the News

Unca Darrell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

MORE FROM my hometown and, by proxy, yours, issue of September 3:

Terry Reed, Sports Editor, "Runners dominate opener, 47-14," Page 1

The Bulldogs scored on their first two playts from scrimmage and never looked back, running away from the Hemphill Hornets 47-14 in the season opener for both teams. Desmond McKibbins rushed for 221 yards on 7 carries . . . .

Tommie Stanaland, "News from Mayo and Cedar Bluff Area," Page 2

I have put up some fig preserves. We didn't get many this year. I don't know what went wrong.

Jo Ann Barton, "Footprints: Never too hold for a new experience," Page 3

Tiffany's parting words when she left Sunday afternoon were, "I'll be in the hospital Wednesday, so come see me that day." She added, "I will have the babies early and will be rested by the time you get there."

Cutline, "Kicking Off the Season," Page 4

Football Coaching Staff 2009: Tabor Westbrook, Adam Farek, Matt Pike, Craten Phillips, David Greer, Tanner Kudrna, John Jackson and Reid Spivey.

Photo Array, "Meet our hometown heroes, GHS Bulldogs -- 2009," Page 5

[Portraits of 28 players]

Full-Page Ad, "Tom's Grocery & Pizza Pro," Page 6

The Official Pizza of the Garrison Bulldogs!

Laci Stokes, "A Touch of Class: School Days Are Back!" Page 7

Monday was our first day back in school; some of us were excited and others were not. . . . / . . . . Finally, we have a new high school principal, who just happens to be my uncle. / . . . . / Saturday morning I had to get up and go to Nac and weigh my steer.

Full-Page Photo Essay, "Bulldogs vs Hornets," Page 8

Desmond McKibbins runs with the ball!

Cutline: Portrait of Husband, Wife, Page 9

You are cordially invited to attend the 74th Wedding Anniversary Reception honoring Vernon and Bessie Edwards, parents of Verna Faye Hodge and Sandra Waits of Orange, TX and Dr. Gerald Edwards of Garrison, TX on Saturday, September 19, 2009 . . . in the Fellowship Center on the campus of East Texas Baptist Family Ministry in Timpson (Stockman), TX.

Gary Corley, Supporting our Troops, Page 10

Today, I never dreamed such things could ever come to pass in the America we all grew up in.

Betty Swearingen, "Reflecting Out Loud," Page 11

It's the strangest thing -- when I am not in the News Office I can think of so many things I want to write about but when I sit down at this computer, my mind goes completely blank.

Joyce Dorris, "Out in Arlam," Page 11

I ironed all the shirts and shorts that were needed and I'm glad to have that monthly duty out of the way. I like to keep Eddie's shirts ironed. He needs to look like I'm taking care of him.

Patricia Hancock Pratt, AD, "Garrison Nursing Home," Page 12

One gentleman commented, "Back in the old days, they believed in discipline in the school. Without it, there was no learning. . . . Several shared stories about one-room country schools. Another told us how he helped his teacher build a fire in a wood-burning stove on cold mornings. Still another related walking five miles to school each day. Everybody agreed that recess time was fun.

Photo Essay, "Sadly missed, lovingly remembered. . . ," Page 14

Recently the Cold Springs Cemetery Committee had the stones cleaned, straightened and the holes filled to make it a place of peace for those left behind. Everyone is invited to drive out and see the beautiful renovations that have been completed.

NOVEMBER 3 / More California-bashing for the Chronicle to ignore

Unca Darrell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0600

WHY ARE Americans fleeing California and other high-tax states for Texas and other low-tax states?

Conservative researchers' technical explanation for this phenomenon is: . . .

. . . "Well, duh."

So writes William Voegli in "The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy Services Paradigm," City Journal, Autumn 2009.

What really jumps out, however, is not Mr. Voegli's stuff about taxes but his stuff about services. The evidence is pretty clear, says Mr. Voegli, that what Californians get for all that tax money, besides fat and happy public employee unions, is not much.

The biggest factor accounting for California's loss of population to the other 49 states, bond ratings that would embarrass Chrysler or GM, and state politics contentious and feckless enough to shame a banana republic, has to be its public sector's diminishing willingness and capacity to fulfill its promises to taxpayers.

"Twenty years go, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California," Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com and a presidential fellow at Chapman University . . . told the Los Angeles Times this past March.

"Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California's government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class."

I mention the Chronicle in the headline because California has long been the newspaper's model against which Texas always suffers by comparison. In the old days, the editors did this quite explicitly, setting the states side by side to shame readers.

That's not much fun these days, so the word California is less common in local editorials. The newspaper even did some modest (and snarky) backpedaling a while back. But California-like policies are still preferred at 801 Texas Avenue. And the editors still quite regularly show open embarrassment for things Texan, notably including our more-sensible policies on taxes and spending.

Plain English: The Houston Chronicle still admires California but is still ashamed of Texas.

INSTANT UPDATE: Mr. Voegli has written a follow-up op-ed with the same theme: "The Golden State Isn't Worth It," Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2009. This has triggered useful Texas-California comments by:

Roger Simon ("It's almost as if we are living in Friedrich von Hayek's posthumous joke. All our best intentions have gone to mush in a welter of competing, greedy interest groups.")

Powerline ("Texas, increasingly, is the economic and intellectual leader of the U.S. [read United States]. During the last 18 months before the current recession took hold, while the country as a whole was still creating jobs, more than half of those jobs were created in a single state: Texas.")

And here's a lookback to the Economist's fine Texas-California cover story.

NOVEMBER 3 / Constitutional propositions on today's ballot

Unca Darrell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:24:06 -0600

OUR CRIPPLED press offered no serious analysis of the eleven Texas constitutional propositions on today's ballot. The Chronicle urged us to vote for them all, but said nothing useful about the pros and cons of each one. The message seemed to be this: "Everybody's for them, so don't worry. Just trust your politicians and your newspaper and vote yes."

Not acceptable.

WARNING: The typography below is a mess. Typepad offers the worst font control I have ever seen on a serious program. Once you lose control, control is lost. The only way to fix things is to go into HTML and do geeky things that I don't know how to do and don't want to know how to do. Sorry.

If you want to do more serious reading, go here, the sixty-five page analysis by the Texas Legislative Council. That agency is not without its own pro-government biases, but it is staffed with professionals who can be trusted on to tell the truth about basic factual matters. They can't be trusted to tell you everything you need to know.

I don't have time to do serious research myself, sadly, but here's how I will vote.

PROPOSITION ONE -- For, with misgivings

This authorizes cities to borrow money to buy land around military bases, which seems like a good idea. But the financing will be done with tax-increment districts, generally a bad idea, in my judgment, because they give promoters a share of tax revenues for projects that often have little oversight and that have great potential for corruption. This is aimed primarily at San Antonio, El Paso, and other cities with major military installations. If they want this, so be it. I just don't want to see "military installation" defined so broadly -- a recruiting station, say -- that this proposition opens the door to mischief elsewhere.

PROPOSITION TWO -- Against, with misgivings

This one requires taxing authorities to appraise a residential homestead on its value as a residence, not on market value for "highest and best use." This would happen where a residence was ripe for development and land values were jumping.

Give me the case of a grandma living out her years in the old family manse in the middle of a hot real estate play, and I'm sympathetic. Give me the case of investors finding a way to keep taxes down on predevelopment properties, and I get heartburn.

Both outcomes are likely. It will take good real estate lawyers about two minutes to figure out how to buy residences in hot neighborhoods with strawman buyers under mortgages designed to claw back the residential properties when it's time to tear'em down.

Dan Patrick and all the other redhot conservatives are for this, but I think the good will be outweighed with the bad. We have a similar consititional property tax break for rural land. It makes the farmers happy and it makes the developers happy. That's why you sometimes see a couple of cows grazing on vacant land next to a shopping center. The owner is not harvesting beef; he's harvesting a tax break.

What makes this residential tax break worse than the ag tax, however, is that there's no recoupment when the owner finally cashes in the house and retires to Bermuda. Owners of agricultural land at least have to pay back taxes on market value for the five preceding years, which makes sense.

Just remember that every tax break for someone else is, de facto, a tax hike for you. Why we should give tax breaks to folks who have the good fortune to own expensive homes escapes me.

PROPOSITION THREE - For

This sets statewide standards for property tax appraisals. Makes sense and should have been done long ago.

PROPOSITION FOUR - For

This establishes a research fund to cheer up administrators at the University of Houston and so-called second-tier institutions. This is basically an endowment that will be subject to legislative oversight. The whole financing scheme is way too complicated, but what they hey. Okay with me.

PROPOSITION FIVE - For

The legislature can authorize one board of property tax equalization to serve two or more adjoining appraisal entities. This weakens local control of this process at the county level, but the efficiency gains make it worth doing. It won't be done, probably, except where the local folks want to do it anyway.

PROPOSITION SIX - Against

The Veterans' Land Board now has to get legislative authority to borrow money. Let's keep it that way. Having another agency out running up debt on its own motion is a bad idea.

PROPOSITION SEVEN - For, with misgivings

This let's Texas national guardsmen serve in the legislature. It's probably okay, although it technically violates separation of powers to have officers or employees of the executive branch serve in the legislature.

PROPOSITION EIGHT - Against

The state wants to help build veterans hospitals. That's big-time mission creep for Texas state government. Taking care of veterans is a federal obligation. Let's keep it that way.

PROPOSITION NINE - For

This strengthens the public's right to access to Texas beaches. This is tough on landowners whose property is lost to erosion, but them's the breaks when you buy property that fronts the Gulf. Sometimes your tract grows through accretion; sometimes it shrinks through erosion. So be it. Just don't put up barriers for the rest of us.

PROPOSITION TEN - For

This lets officers of local EMS districts serve four rather than two years. Why not?

PROPOSITION ELEVEN - For

In principle, this is one we should vote for two or three times. It's an anti-Kelo amendment. If you don't know about Kelo, look it up. Texas is an anti-Kelo kinda place, and an amendment like this fits right in.

In theory.

I'm not real thrilled with the language of the proposition, but I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say that I think clever politicians and bureaucrats will find their ways to do what they want to do. But at least they'll have to run through another roadblock.