Law? What Law?
City Council proposed; City Hall didn't dispose
A KSEV message board was subsequently filled with posts, almost all of which expressed shock, dismay and prayers for the family of the young girl involved. But not all:
From Nanci B: "Jon was and IS still a friend of mine. I believe after talking to Jon and [his wife] several times AFTER this incident, that Jon did nothing more inappropriate than opening a door to a neighbor's child after dark in his underwear."
From Anon: "I am one to be a little suspicious of the claims of life-changing harm that this little girl has experienced. Certainly she is a victim to some extent but life-long harm because someone dropped his drawers? I think not…Now [Matthews's] entire life and his family's entire life is ruined for relatively minor but still perverted behavior that 30 years ago people just shrugged off or laughed at."
From Russell: "Again, guilty until proven innocent…I saw my aunt naked once on a trip from the bathroom to the bedroom, because she'd forgot to take her clothes with her and [the rooms] weren't joined. She wasn't used to other people being in the house, and I know she was COMPLETELY embarrassed by the episode. Should she be a sex offender for an accident? I think not."
From Anonymous: "It is no more offensive than Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' but she is getting off while Mr. Matthews is ruined."
Man, that Kool-Aid must taste great.
We're All Rich!
The mayor's joke of a property-tax cut provided some of the most depressing debate City Council has seen in a while at the June 23 meeting.
Mayor White wanted to cut the property-tax rate by one-half of a percent -- an absolute boon to the owner of a $140,000 home (Houston's average home value), who would see a stunning $6 in savings. With that windfall -- and some moderation -- homeowners could stretch the one six-pack they could now afford to buy so that it would provide almost a week's worth of tax-cut partying.
What was so depressing about the debate? It wasn't the criticism from some members, who pointed out, as Councilmember Ada Edwards did, that saving six or so bucks was silly when "I still have people who won't come out of their houses because they're worried about drugs and prostitutes, and we're taking cops off the streets!"
Instead it was the talk -- which took up far more time than the criticism -- about increasing the cut to a full 1 percent. Make it a 12-pack, boys!
Councilmember Addie Wiseman, who's trying to stake out the far-right flank of council (which ain't easy), undertook a mind-numbing series of procedural tricks to increase the nominal cut. The desultory discussion went on and on.
"I feel that this is due to the taxpayers of the city," Wiseman said. We assume she meant the bigger cut, and not the pointless grandstanding, but you never know.
The half-percent tax cut passed, by the way. Let the party begin.
No Sweat
Houston may perennially be one of the front-runners for America's Fattest City, according to Men's Fitness magazine, but hey -- for fat people, we don't sweat much.
That's according to Procter & Gamble, which released its highly scientific survey of America's sweatiest cities recently. Houston has dropped from second to sixth place, P&G found.
Mayoral spokesman Frank Michel actually credited Hizzoner's "quality of life" initiatives, such as coordinating the downtown traffic lights.
Okay, maybe. And maybe it's just that, as P&G found, other cities had hotter summers last year. But we prefer to think that Houstonians simply buckled down and faced the Sweat Challenge as only residents of one of America's fattest cities could: by staying indoors with the a/c blasting, anchored to the couch with a cold beer.
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