|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
|
|
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
|
|
Ask, Receive
The League of United Latin American Citizens is asking a state agency to investigate Tarrant County judges who have been holding court without taking the constitutionally required oath of office. In a letter to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, LULAC Council 601 president Joe Guerrero cited a March 27 Fort Worth Weekly report about a Northside businessman convicted of drug possession before a judge who had not taken the oath — one of some three dozen judges whose work has been questioned on those grounds. Guerrero says the problem affects not only criminal cases, but everything from divorce to redistricting. A commission spokeswoman has previously said the agency would look into the issue if someone complained. Now that LULAC has, Static is waiting to see whether the agency charged with policing state judges will act.
Come to Clyde
Last week, good-citizen Static dutifully dragged its shiny new blue plastic recycling barrel out to the curb early on Tuesday morn, filled with the remnants of an American life well-lived: plastic, newspapers, aluminum cans, and about a million pieces of junk mail.
Then Static waited. And waited. Four days later, after multiple and increasingly impolite calls to the city’s recycling number — whose last four digits spell EASY (ha!) — a pick-up truck little bigger than the barrel itself pulled up and emptied the contents into its bed. Sorry, the nice driver said, you’re just one of many who were missed. Seems that the city garbage contractor, Waste Management, subcontracted with Resource Waste Services to pick up the recyclables. RWS didn’t just miss a few houses, it missed whole routes because it hadn’t bought enough trucks or hired enough workers to cope, the driver said. Apparently, the contractor never thought that so many citizens would do what they’d been told, ad nauseum, to do. A city environmental official said there was “no excuse” for the screwups and that the city would take another look at the contract. Static has a better suggestion: Let anti-barrel Clyde Picht take RWS to the woodshed for a little come-to-Jesus talk.
Then there’s the Patriot Act aspect of it all. When Static called for a brushy waste pickup, the worker insisted on getting Static’s social security number. Why was that needed? To keep people from calling in for false brush removal, of course. City officials said that info shouldn’t have been requested. But how many unwitting citizens gave theirs out in the meantime?
Email this Article...
