Dallas, TX - February 20, 2007 -

Friends, colleagues, and family. I am taking this opportunity to announce my campaign for Dallas City Council, Place 12 (Far North Dallas).

Going into the May 12th election, we will be steering Dallas in the right direction!

Why am I running?

I am going to field this question for the next 2 months and probably well after the election is over. I am running to give Dallas a direction. To steer it where it needs to go. The wasteful spending, the ignorance to our crime problems, and the idea that the City Council is above the law, have all got to go! We have a unique opportunity to elect a fresh City Council. 2007 will usher in a new Mayor. It also will also usher in 1/2, if not more, new faces to the City Council. The time for change is here.

I also want to take the opportunity to dedicate my campaign to my brother, Sgt James Hodgkiss. James passed away one year ago today in a tragic accident, after having dutifully serving 2 tours in Iraq. My thoughts and prayers are with his family in California on this day.

What can you do to help?

There are a couple things you can do to help. Some of you are in the area, or live in my district. Some of you are half way across the country. Those that can give of their time, can help volunteer for the campaign. Those that can help give of their money, can donate it to the campaign.

A campaign needs manpower, so volunteers are very welcome. A campaign also needs a lot of money if we expect to win. So please donate whatever you can. The price of change in Dallas is worth every penny (Individual max contributions $1000/PAC $2500)

Please visit the campaign website http://www.johnfordallascitycouncil.com and you can donate using a convenient PayPal link, using your credit card. Or you can mail a check payable to John McClelland for Dallas City Council, 18777 Midway Rd #506, Dallas TX 75287

Stay Tuned

There are a couple ways to keep up with the campaign. The main website will be www.johnfordallascitycouncil.com There is also a MySpace page at www.myspace.com/johnfordallascitycouncil so add me as your friend.

I hope everyone will stay with me in this exciting time. Forward this to your friends and neighbors. And every bit of support is appreciated.

On to victory in 2007!

Author and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will speak at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX on March 14 as part of the university's Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture will be held at 8 p.m. in the University Union, Silver Eagle Suite.

Kennedy's speech is free for UNT students, faculty and staff. Tickets for the general public are $10 and may be purchased in advance starting Feb. 19 at the University Union Information Center on the third floor or at the door the evening of the speech. For more ticket information, call 940-565-3805.

I am hoping to be able to attend, and I hope you will join me.

I feel obliged to apologize to my regular readers for the dearth of material recently. It’s been busy on the home-front, with Democratic Party business, and at work lately, and when that happens, something’s gotta give.

In the past week, I had four separate party-related functions to attend, one of which I intend to write about: "Turning Texas Blue", a Democratic strategy meeting of a couple hundred Democrats in Fort Worth.

We also held our Denton County Democrats Candidate Recruitment Committee meeting this past week, and I must say that I’m excited about our prospects for the 2008, both nationally and locally. We announced the first meeting of Project Farm Team to be held on March 17th here in Lewisville at the City Hall Annex Community Room.

Here in Lewisville, we had our new Lewisville Library’s Grand Opening party. I’ve got some pictures. It was a fun event, and the new library is FABULOUS. I’m very grateful to our Mayor, Gene Carey and to the Council, Ken Judkins, and the members of the Library Board. Several years back, they pushed through and the voters approved overwhelmingly a quarter cent sales tax increase to cover parks and a library expansion. Our former mayor and current County Commissioner Bobbie Mitchell was in attendance as well. It was a pleasure to meet both Ms. Mitchell and Mayor Carey. Mayor Carey gave me a City of Lewisville lapel pin, which I love. I have some pictures to upload, but well – I can’t do that right now.

Earlier this week, my laptop started to show some hard drive problems, and since my computer is my livelihood, I lost several hours of work, having to go out and get a new 160GB drive, and copy my old hard drive to it.

I also discovered that this website had developed some strange problems earlier this week. It wasn’t showing blog entries at all for awhile, but some tweaks of the SQL queries in the PHP source got it going again. Unfortunately, photo uploads and the RSS feed are both broken. I’m not sure what happened, really. Could be just a glitch in some library or database record, or I could have someone messing with my site. If it’s the latter, then I’ll consider myself flattered. Otherwise, I hope I can get them fixed this week, but it looks like there is some really tough coding ahead for me at my day job. I’ll be in Long Island, New York all week for my client. Eventually WhosPlayin will change to a hosting provider service instead of being hosted from the server in my office.

I have a lot of blogs that are partially written:

• Part II of the Nuclear Energy series has been in an almost-finished state for months.
• Corrupt Denton County Judges. We’ll have some information on Judge Don Windle, and others.
• The City of Lewisville has commissioned a survey to determine how to best "brand" the city for tourism.
• Opinions on various Lewisville City Council items.

I’ll also be doing some coverage of the 2007 Texas Municipal Elections, including some candidate interviews:

1. Marvin Sutton, running for Arlington City Council
2. John McClelland, candidate for Dallas City Council
3. Possibly others

I’ll also be posting the voting locations for the city council elections in as many of the local North Texas cities as I can.

Got this email from work the other day:

Dear [Company Name] Employee:

It is with deep sadness we regret to inform you [Employee Name] suddenly died yesterday in a car accident while leaving work. We mourn his loss and our deepest sympathies go out to his family.

For the [CompanyName] family we will be having grief counselors available at the 538 Bldg on Tuesday, February 20th. There will be 4 sessions beginning at 9:30 am, and again at 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30. Each session can accommodate up to 15 employees. To be held in the HR Conference Room, 3rd Floor.

Grief is a normal process that proceeds from feelings of sadness and pain to healing and wholeness. You are invited to participate in one of the sessions.

Should there be any questions, please feel free to contact me.

[HR Person]

Though I didn't know "EmployeeName", it's still a sad email to receive. I've had worse though. Ever get an email from someone after they've died?

It was a cold and wet day, but the south entrance to the capital building in Austin was crowded. Overhead, a plane circled with a banner that read, “Face it. Coal is Filthy.” The irony was not lost on me.

There are certain requirements for a large gathering of progressives, particularly rallies and parades. These include t-shirts with a slogan; a bad folksinger on guitar; at least one person in a bizarre costume and if food is served, a vegetarian entrée. The Stop the Coal Rush Rally had all of the above.

There was one talented folksinger named Bill Oliver, who had the crowd singing along with him and cheering. The chorus he had us singing:

Clean Coal
It’s a Dirty Joke
Don’t make me laugh
Don’t make me choke

Each verse to this song started, "On a bad hair day in Texas…"

This was obviously a reference to our governor, who attempted to fast track 17 new dirty coal plants. Governor Perry was nicknamed "Good Hair" by the late great Molly Ivins for his Ken doll coif.

There were many moving speeches from politicians, students and citizens of the small towns closest to the proposed plant sights. One of the first speeches came from Representative Charles “Doc” Anderson of Waco, who submitted a bill to place a moratorium on all permits for six months. This delay would give those researching the environmental impact enough time to complete their studies.

Jacob Bentliff, a student at the University of Texas, spoke with extraordinary passion. Not only did he explain in a way that all could understand why the coal plants were a bad choice for Texas, he told the crowd what steps they were taking at U.T. to conserve energy and provide clean sources of power. He and the students in his group were leading a effort to get solar panels installed on the roof of every campus building. Jacob’s final warning was "…coal is not the only option, it is the deadliest."

There was one celebrity among the speakers. Annie Nelson, wife of singer Willie Nelson, spoke about their efforts to move the country to biofuel. According to Annie, Texas now has more biodiesel than any other state.

Some of the speakers speculated as to the reasons TXU might have for fast tracking these plants. Theories posed included the possibility that TXU wants to get these plants approved and grandfathered into to any new caps on global warming emissions, reduce the costs by building multiple identical plants, lock out competition by controlling market share and sell of excess capacity a la Enron. It was also pointed out that while coal is the cheapest method for producing energy and natural gas one of the most expensive; TXU having both natural gas plants and coal plants would be able to sell the coal-produced energy at natural gas prices.

Another interesting twist to the story lies in the claim in the TXU commercials that they will be reducing their emissions by 20%. They have yet to explain how these reductions would be achieved. However, it should be pointed out that any reductions made to the emissions from these new plants will be more than offset by the pollutions and emissions from the trains required to move the coal from the mines to the plants. Each plant will require an entire trainload of coal a day.

A group of physicians also spoke about the effect on the health of the citizens downwind of these plants. Risks to health listed included asthma and bronchitis. Deaths related to coal plant pollution for Dallas alone averages to 369 deaths a year. I have been told that if you want to do anything in The Colony, get the kids involved. Children are among the most vulnerable to the pollution produced by coal plants.

Our children are at risk from power plant pollution:

• Over 25 million children in the U. S. live in counties that violate national air quality standards for the common pollutants ozone, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide;
• Cases of asthma have rapidly increased, more than doubling in the past two decades. Six percent of U.S. children have asthma;
• Thirty-five million of our children live within 30 miles of a power plant —a distance within which local communities may reasonably be affected by a power plant’s smoke plume; an estimated 2 million of these children are asthmatic and are particularly susceptible to these pollutants;
• 72,000 of our schools are within 30 miles of a power plant;
• Average health risks to children due to exposure to power plant combustion wastes could be up to 10,000 times higher than EPA’s allowable risk levels for cancer and other illnesses.

* Source: Physicians for Social Responsibility http://www.psr.org/site/DocServer/ChildrenatRisk.pdf?docID=529

This is not an issue we can afford to ignore. Your health and the health of your children are at risk. Write your state senator and/or state representative. Send a message to the governor and the lieutenant governor that as Jacob Bentliff said, "Coal is not the only option. It is the deadliest."

Retired NBA player Tim Hardaway is the subject of some controversy today after his homophobic statements to commentator Dan Le Batard.

"Well, you know, I hate gay people," Hardaway said in response to Le Batard. "I let it be known I don't like gay people. I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. It shouldn't be in the world, in the United States, I don't like it."

I hope that in the coming days Tim Hardaway will learn some things about gays and lesbians. He was at least honest about his feelings, though he didn't have the good sense to be politically correct about it and dodge the question. Because of his ignorance, I hope that he's not demonized too much, because unfortunately there are still too many people in this country who are homophobic. Too much backlash and vitriol from this incident could make him into a "martyr" for the anti-homosexual crowd. As a young punk, I was once like Mr. Hardaway, until I matured and came to know some gay people, and somewhere along the way, something clicked.

Mr. Hardaway has actually, in my humble opinion, helped the situation by opening up a debate with his very frank words. Hopefully many Americans will take the time to examine why they feel the way they feel about gay people, regardless of whether they approve of homosexuality.

There will be three council seats up for election on May 12 now that gas station owner and long time councilman Mike Nowels resigned from his place 3 seat.

Though the office of Council Member is non-partisan, Nowels is a Republican, and the council leans strongly that way. It would be a good time to get a progressive on the council. If you would be interested in running, please contact me. ses(at)whosplayin(dot)com.

Veterans' needs are reportedly $16 billion greater than President Bush projects for 2012.

The proposals for the 2008 budget have proven one thing - the need of the Administration to balance the budget is being placed on the backs of our wounded veterans, including those who will be returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to a February 13th AP article, "Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter."

Although it's only 10 days into the month, we already have our first few nominees for the Texas Dim Bulb Awards.

First on my list of nominations is U.S. Congressman John Carter (R-TX31) for using taxpayer funds to perpetuate a false rumor on his official website regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's transportation arrangements. It's one thing to print a story when you don't have all of the facts. It's deception when that story is then debunked, and you don't remove it. In fact, it's probably a violation of house rules for John Carter to use his official site for this, though I am not sure.

Here's a snippet:

Contact: Lindsey Willis (202)225-3864
Carter Shames Pelosi for Using Troops' Much-Needed Resources

Washington, DC, Feb 8 - House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter today issued the following statement regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request for a military C-32 jet:

"It is shameful enough that the Speaker requested the use of a lavish jet to suit her prima donna lifestyle on the taxpayer dime to the tune of $420,000 for a round trip home to San Francisco," said Congressman Carter. "Now, she has even further crossed the line by teaming up with Congressman Murtha and all but threatening to cut the Pentagon’s funding if her demands are not met."

This has of course been debunked, but that didn't stop the congressman from posting his idiocy 3 days later.

Other nominees:
David G. Knape, 62, of Lubbock, TX set bike path traps. More...
Ex-DEA Agent Barry Cooper of Big Sandy, TX promotes video showing how to hide illegal drugs and avoid getting busted
El Paso County Commissioner Luis Sarinana got busted for disorderly conduct, drinking beer near a culvert. He shouted profanities and was rude to the responding Sheriff's deputy. Read the official police report

Post your own nominees by submitting a comment, or emailing ses (at) whosplayin (dot) com

School vouchers are a hot topic today, with many voucher proponents spending the day lobbying the Texas Legislature in favor of the programs.

What are vouchers? Well, the idea, also sometimes called "School Choice" is fairly simple, and the intention is to get children a better education. The typical proposal is something like this:

• A parent is dissatisfied with a public school's performance in educating their child. Sometimes, the school itself is rated poorly on performance on standardized tests.
• That parent applies for and receives a government grant of a set amount of money per student, to be used to pay for tuition at a private or parochial school. Typically this amount is somewhat close to the average amount spent per student in the public schools
• Since the government pretty much sucks at getting anything right, the private school education is much better. Plus, parents get the added benefit of knowing that their children are being brainwashed indoctrinated in whatever philosophy, politics, or religious teachings the parent approves of, but is too lazy to teach at home.

When I first started hearing about voucher programs years ago, I thought they were a good idea. That was in my conservative days. Now I realize that although the intentions are good, and we all want to have good educational achievement for ALL Texas students, the voucher idea is fundamentally flawed, and could lead to the eventual unintended destruction of our public school systems.

The idea of "school choice" as they like to call it, is based on the fallacy that the free-market will prove out the best ideas and provide the best education due to competitive market forces. This fallacy is a common thread among those that believe government is inherently inefficient and can't do anything right. The problem is that the free market is not a very good provider of what economists call "Public goods". I stongly believe that education has become a necessary public good in our society. Every citizen is entitled to a basic education, currently K-12. This is most efficiently provided though the commonwealth of each school district.

"So why," you might ask, "do you think the government can do this more efficiently and effectively?" Well, there are many reasons, and this is ground that has been covered by many others much better than I can, but let me just list a couple of reasons:

• Private non-parochial schools must make a profit. Public schools do not. This means money that could be educating is instead enriching shareholders. Pressures to keep earnings up will inevitably cause cost-cutting which will manifest itself in the classroom.
• Public schools by law must educate everyone, regardless of mental or physical disabilities. They've developed procedures and methods through their years of experience to deal with these students so that their needs are met educationally and socially. Private schools are typically not equipped. In larger "markets", private schools might emerge for special needs children, but suburban and rural communities would be left out. These children cost more to educate, so there is an economic disincentive for private schools to accept them.
• Free markets fluctuate. What's hot one year is not the next. Businesses fail and go bankrupt all the time. Public schools have a fairly predictable and steady load of students to educate, and thus are able to plan and build facilities efficiently over the long term. If public schools had to compete with private schools, administrators might find themselves with under-utilized facilities that they are still paying for. Or if a private school went under, or suddenly became unpopular, public schools may simply not have enough space.

I really wish I could do this topic more justice, because we'll be hearing more about it from well-intentioned, but wrong-thinking people in the coming months. Luckily, there are several other good resources I can point you to:

• McBlogger's OH YEAH, That's why Vouchers Suck
• Capitol Annex's "80th Legislature: Vouchers Are Not 'Civil Rights'"
• Musings' "Say NO to vouchers Today"
• Texas Federation of Teachers' Virtual Rally: Tell Legislators to Oppose Vouchers!
• Texas Kaos: Anti-Voucher Rally Day

Let everyone know what YOU think about Vouchers or "School Choice". Use the Comments!