Eclectic commentary from a progressive voice in the red state

Thursday, September 10, 2015

More stupidity and propaganda: Guess where

Reading the Amarillo Globe-News these days would be entertaining were it not the “newspaper of
record” for Amarillo. And, in this case, I use the word “newspaper” very loosely. But it isn’t the Globe-News alone that provides the entertainment. It’s also some of those who come before the City Council to comment.

One of those becoming a regular is one Cindi Bulla, a Realtor, who regularly spouts the Wallace Bajjali-Downtown Amarillo Inc.-Amarillo Globe-News approach to downtown development. She has shown she will not be moved by facts. Let’s start with a Sept.8 story that Kevin Welch penned about the tax talks at the City Council Tuesday.


By the way, it’s instructive of the Globe-News’ approach to the news that the story refers to Bulla as a “resident.” That, of course, misdirects the reader away from Bulla’s portfolio or political reach as a Realtor active with the local realtor association. But that isn’t the worst of it. Bulla then goes on to tell the council, according to the article, “Work together and get the job done and get it done right.”

Like many others still enmeshed with the fraudsters Wallace Bajjali, Bulla overlooks the electorate’s mandate to shake things up at City Hall. Further, working together was the go-along-to-get-along approach was precisely that brought us eight years of wheel-spinning, word spinning. The indiscriminate acceptance of plans from Wallace Bajjali, DAI, the Local Government Corp. and Amarillo Economic Development Corp. have gotten us to a likely corrupt downtown development plan.

This isn’t the first time Bulla’s Babbittry has joined voices with the other smug, self-satisfied Babbitts of Amarillo. She indicated during a July 1 community meeting that the voters of Amarillo aren’t smart enough to assess public policy decisions, much less vote on them.

It gets better, of course. It’s not just the entertainment in the Globe-News. It’s the unmitigated gall and hubris from the paper whose publisher, Les Simpson, is so enmeshed in the downtown development debacle so completely as to destroy any credibility for his media outlet. Don’t forget, it was Simpson, as head of DAI’s board along with Melissa Dailey, brought Wallace Bajjali to Amarillo.

So when we’re greeted Thursday morning with an editorialthat purports to tell us that cutting the DAI budget is about taxes instead of a message to DAI and the community about what DAI is worth to us, I can only conclude two things. Either the Globe-News is once again engaging in a propaganda and disinformation campaign to attack those who would follow the electorate’s wishes; or, that whoever conceived of and wrote the editorial is — how can I say this nicely? (I can’t) — is flat out stupid and thinks we are too.

I will continue to wish better for Amarillo than this. And until then, I feel an obligation to help people understand how badly misled we have been by what was once a real newspaper. And how we’re being misled by a bunch of Babbitt-line insiders whose interest is their own, notthe good of the city. Thank goodness we had an election and that it turned out the way it did.


Final thought: Councilors Burkett, Demerson and Nair, gentlemen, stay the course.