Wow! What a week. Since last we spoke, the earth has wobbled on its axis. First, there’s Hurricane Ike. Here at KTBB we prepared for the worst right here in Tyler but in fact, we suffered very little. Not so in Houston, Galveston and along the Texas Gulf Coast. Those areas got hammered. Galveston was the wealthiest city in the United States in 1900 when a devastating hurricane killed as many as 8,000. The city...
Yesterday (Thu., Sep 11, 2008) marked the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in which three important U.S. buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged and nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives. It’s actually to our credit as a nation that we were able to mark yesterday with as little note as we did. The fact is, the memory of the attacks of 9/11 has faded dramatically in the past seven...
Did you call the president like I told you? I know some of you did because you called the station and asked again for the number. Get a pen and paper because I’m going to give the number out again. If you missed last week, I urged everyone to call the White House and urge the president to exercise his constitutional authority to call the Congress back to Washington from the August recess and put...
It’s August and if you think it’s hot and miserable here, you should go to Washington, D.C. If you’ve ever been in our nation’s capital in August you know. If you haven’t, take it from me it’s about the most miserable place in the country this time of year. Geographers can give you all of the reasons for Washington’s summer discomfort. I don’t really care about the particulars. Suffice to say that the heat and...
At midnight Wednesday, base labor in America became worth 70 cents per hour more than it had been just one minute before. Just like that, an employee making $5.85 an hour began making $6.55 an hour, the new federal minimum wage. That’s an increase of twelve percent. Wow! Isn’t that great? If you have employees earning the minimum wage, they’re worth more today than they were when you went to work on Wednesday. A twelve...
All the recent opinion polls say the same thing. The majority of Americans want action on high energy prices and they want action today. Right now. Citing just one poll, the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken June 17 and 18, 76% of respondents favor more drilling for oil in the United States, 77 percent favor increased offshore drilling, 51 percent favor building more nuclear power plants and for the first time a majority – 53...
I won’t often quote scripture in this space. But I’m going to this time because the scripture I’m about to quote is illuminating in today’s situation. I’m quoting Deuteronomy, the eighth chapter beginning with the seventh verse. Moses is speaking to the Israelites: For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of...
Something I said on June 11 has been working on me since I first wrote it. In the story I did on the 1,400 mile Big Inch pipeline that was built from Longview, Texas to Linden, N.J. during World War II in only 54 weeks I said, “We Baby Boomers are the children of people who got things done. And we have been living off of those accomplishments ever since (without really having to put...
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 20, 2008. I have some Democrat friends. I know, it doesn’t seem possible. But I do. They’re not extreme left wing-hate America-George Soros-Hollywood whack job Democrats. My Democrat friends are sane Democrats. They’re reasonable, thinking people. But sane as I give them credit for being, a Democrat is still a Democrat and this friend of mine and I...
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 13, 2008. I want to propose an ambitious capital project and I want your thoughts on the feasibility. In order to meet a strategic national need, we need to construct a pipeline nearly 1,500 miles from Texas to New York. We’re going to cross 95 counties and traverse all or part of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,...
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 6, 2008. Please forgive me for again going on about oil prices and the need to change U.S. policy with respect to domestic exploration and production. I know I’ve been on that topic pretty relentlessly of late but I can’t help it. There are two factors dragging heavily on the economy right now. One is credit market turmoil...
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, May 23, 2008. I got an e-mail the other day from my friend Mike Tomlinson containing an imaginary resignation letter from a fed up President Bush. I like the premise but the letter needed a rewrite and I have given it one. Here it is. My fellow Americans, All available data shows that between seven and eight out of...