City of Dallas

The Trinity Groves project is still in its infancy. Babb Bros. BBQ and Four Corners Brewing arrived last year, followed by Hoffman Hots. The restaurant incubator hasn't just started incubating. The stores and apartments are still just a glimmer in Phil Romano's eye.

But backers aren't letting the preliminary nature of project stop them from making grand, eye-popping predictions about its future. And to give those forecasts a more authoritative gloss, they commissioned Weinstein, Clower & Associates, the local economic consulting firm that recently predicted an $11.8-billion boost from legalized gambling in Texas, to do a study.

Their conclusion, predictably, is that Trinity Groves will be huge for Dallas. How huge? $3.3 billion huge.

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It's almost tradition by now. Every year at Exxon's annual shareholder's meeting, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees state employees' retirement dollars, introduces a resolution calling for the company to ban discrimination against gay and transgendered employees. And every year, it gets voted down.

And there's nothing to suggest the outcome will be any different at this year's conclave, which is set for next week in Dallas.

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Carona

John Carona, our Republican state senator from Dallas, learned some hard lessons this session about how his fellow lawmakers' business interests tend to dominate the doings in the legislature. Last month, Carona's bill to try to reform the incredibly predatory payday loan industry was picked down to its skeletal bones by other state senators, several of whom were on the phone with loan industry lobbyists as Carona spoke on the Senate floor.

But as Texas Tribune's Jay Root reports today, in a particularly excellent installment of their "Bidness as Usual" series, Carona has also benefited spectacularly from the uncomfortably close relationship between business and politics that flourishes in the Legislature.

See also:
- John Carona's Payday Lending Reform Crashed into a Wall of Lobbyists Today
- State Senator John Carona is Walking Back His Support for Craft Brewers

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Via.

That can't be comfortable.

As inventive as human beings can be, we've never come up with a solid way to keep dogs from mournfully licking their unhealed junk after being neutered. The ubiquitous Elizabethan collar or Cone of Shame, if you will, does the trick but inevitably destroys a pet's self-esteem in the process. Alternatives (See: the BooBooLoon) have their own issues.

Enter a Dallas-area cockatoo named Hagar. Several years ago, the bird began obsessively plucking its feathers. A veterinarian decided it best to put Hagar in one of the ridiculous cones to keep the bird from injuring itself.

Hagar was not impressed.

"They had to put him under to get it on. It lasted about 15 seconds," the bird's owner, Els Bowen told UT Dallas' news service. "As soon as he woke up, he got hold of the corner of it with his beak and it was gone."

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Mark Graham

Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs: Drilling opponent Hunt is leaving the council, but that might not help Trinity East's plans to frack on parkland.

Even with two seats in limbo, the complexion of the new Dallas City Council looks decidedly unfavorable for Trinity East, the would-be fracker from Fort Worth that paid the city millions for the rights to its natural gas. Because the Plan Commission voted against the company's drilling permits, four "no" votes on the council is enough to deny Trinity East's appeal of the commission vote. It looks like the opposition gets to four easily.

See also:
Trinity East's Vapor Chase

Counting noses, there's Scott Griggs, a stalwart opponent of drilling, who defeated Delia Jasso for a redrawn District 1. You've got Adam Medrano, newly elected to District 2, who has said without equivocation that he doesn't believe in drilling urban areas. Carolyn Davis, just handily re-elected, has also opposed drilling in the city. Sandy Greyson is considered a likely "no" vote, as is Monica Alonzo in District 6. Philip Kingston, Angela Hunt's handpicked successor in District 14, is looking strong against Bobby Abtahi in a run-off. My, how the balance has shifted.

"I think the past year's public debate has had a profound influence ... so that the Council has shifted from hardcore, unquestioning support to something less than that," says Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk.

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Governor Rick Perry at the ribbon-cutting in Plano, Huawei's U.S. base of operations.

Last fall, Huawei, the Chinese telecommunication giant whose U.S. base just happens to be in Plano, was the subject of intense scrutiny over fears that it might serve as a Trojan horse for cyber-spies in Beijing. Huawei, for its part, did little to allay fears by dummying up during a congressional inquest of its own urging. It refused to elaborate on the amount of daylight between itself and the Chinese government; its in-house Communist Party; the backgrounds of its powerful board members; and allegations that it provides network service to the People's Liberation Army cyber-warfare unit.

The U.S. House Select Committee concluded that the telecom -- the main service provider in Kansas, by the way -- posed too great a risk to "critical infrastructure" and "national-security interests." Later, a White House review reportedly found no smoking gun to indicate Huawei had engaged in cyber-sleuthing for the Chinese. Yet fears persisted that certain security vulnerabilities in its software may have been inserted intentionally -- a cracked door for spies to sneak through.

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Peter Ryan

Dallas-based utility Oncor has collected half a billion dollars from ratepayers to cover federal income taxes it has never paid. Last year alone, customers paid $230 million to reimburse the utility for a "phantom" tax bill, according to a new report from the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power.

The fact that Oncor doesn't pay federal income taxes isn't illegal, or even all that remarkable. Most regulated utilities don't. And one like Oncor that's a subsidiary of a holding company wouldn't pay Uncle Sam directly anyways. Its parent, Energy Future, would. The problem is, the report indicates EFH hasn't since at least 2008.

That might be because in its quarterly filings the power generation and utility company has logged huge net losses due to low electricity rates pretty much since it was taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout in history.

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Since news of Walmart's plan to build a scaled-down supercenter at the corner of Arapaho and Coit Road in Far North Dallas, neighborhood opposition has been building. The outcry was covered this weekend by the Morning News and NBC 5, and the Change.org petition promising a boycott is at 2,300 and counting. Opponents now have a full-blown website and, coming soon, yard signs!

Momentum aside, stopping the store remains a long shot, particularly given that the 90,000-square-foot model the retailer has is within current zoning and therefore doesn't need City Council approval. But there remains at least a glimmer of hope.

Council member Sandy Greyson met with Walmart representatives on Thursday and posted her notes from the meeting online.

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With the mammoth six-year, $108 million deal he signed last week, Tony Romo became the most richly rewarded player in Cowboys history. That put him fifth on the list of current NFL players, ahead of Eli Manning and Tom Brady but well behind Ravens QB Joe Flacco's $20.1 million per year.

Those numbers are a little misleading, at least according to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. The group has seized upon Romo's deal to bolster its anti-tax message, arguing that, after taxes, Romo's salary actually tops that of Flacco, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and every other player in the league.

The main reason? Texas has no state income tax. AFP makes its case:

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There remains a pressing need for meaningful, statewide regulation of payday lending in Texas, since the industry has shown a willingness and ability to skirt restrictions passed by Dallas, Austin, and other cities.

Those reforms look like they are still at least a couple of years off. Despite high hopes for a slew of bills aimed at reining in the industry's more blatantly usurious practices, the one that has gotten the most traction, Dallas Senator John Carona's SB 1247, has had its teeth yanked.

Carona's bill was never perfect. It was particularly criticized for stripping municipalities of the authority to pass stronger regulations, and it didn't place a hard cap on interest rates. But, as the Texas Tribune reported this morning and the Texas Observer noted last week, the bill's most meaningful provisions have been seriously watered down.

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