Archive for the ‘dart’ Category

​If you start reading the lead editorial today in The Dallas Morning News, you're going to think at first that the editorial writers have done a good job explaining what has gone wrong with minority subcontracting in Dallas -- a central theme in the ongoing FBI Dallas political corruption probe. But you will be wrong. The editorial writers have not done a good job. They start out right. Then they fall off the cliff. In the end they do a bad job and a disservice. The editorial deals with a company owned by a close personal and political associate of southern Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It explains how the company, Wai-Wize, run by radio personality Willis Johnson, gets lucrative make-work subcontracts allowing general contractors to tick off the minority participation box on their bid proposals. At the conclusion of the editorial, the newspaper takes its usual noblesse oblige posture by suggesting that the real failure here is of the power structure. The wise men and women of the city's northern hemisphere should have done a better job, the editorial suggests, preventing predictable mischief in the city's rascally southern latitudes:"But we should not see the mess with Wai-Wize, which also holds contracts with Dallas County, DART, Parkland Memorial Hospital and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, as proof that promoting minority businesses is misguided. If it proves anything, it is that elected officials and regulators have done a poor job of holding all parties accountable and making certain the system operates on merit, not politics. That is where the work should begin."No. No. Folks. That's not what happened. C'mon. It's not that the white power structure looked the other way and allowed Wai-Wize to get a lock on minority subcontracting at public entities in Dallas. The white power structure created Wai-Wize. It made it happen.