Jeff Melcher, still a nutter, confirmed, fellating Jim Schutze

I recently called out Schutze on his Substack for the latest, hand-waving this time, installment of his fellating Houston ISD super Mike Miles. (As I wrote here last fall, Schutze long had a boner for Miles when at the Dallas Observer. As he did for Amber Guyger, which I mentioned on his Substack, too.)

And, who jumps in my mentions but nutter Jeff Melcher from Lancaster ISD 15-20 years ago?

First, and minorly, Melcher's been wrong about charter schools before. He reminds me of some leftists, like the People's CDC, trying to "own Biden" on issues that are at best chump change and at worst, on COVID, where they're wrong themselves.

Second, in Melcher's own trying to "own Larry Lewis," the former Lancaster ISD superintendent, the two of them were Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby or vice versa. (Speaking of, does Lewis still read me as he did then?)

As part of this? Melcher was a conspiracy theorist, a Lancaster version of Joey Dauben (minus any convictions of which I am aware), a moral equivalent of a libelist or slanderer (think it would be libel, think his comments were written), and a mix of that and conspiracy theorist.

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Back to Schutze briefly. He's pretty good at carrying water, even when his bucket's leaking, just like he was good at carrying grudges when they didn't pan out, like he did with Craig Watkins. Don't forget about him hating on newspaper unions, too, part of his big stinking shitpile of stupidity at the time the Observer let him go. Any of today's Observer staff that was there when he was still there may have fond good riddance thoughts.

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Now, back to Melcher.

As far as fellating Schutze, Melcher did that in 2020, just after the Observer let him go, when Jim talked about the re-issuance of "The Accommodation." Melcher jumped into MAGAts type territory with talk about "vote harvesting" and other nuttery, and of course quoted every MAGAts most beloved ex-Democrap, Tulsi Gabbard, the Hindutva-fascist. Selections from two Disqus comments.

In 2000 or then-abouts, you wrote a series about a seeming bargain or alignment or "accomodation" between wealthy North Dallas interests and the poorest voters in South (Black) Dallas, voting narrow victories on a range of deals such as a new basketball arena, or a road down the middle of the Trinity River, or an unnecessary, if beautiful, "signature" bridge. It's possible some people dimly remembering your (excellent, ground-breaking) journalism on how that accommodation was accomplished want to see the weekly articles all compiled into a single work. It's possible the current worry about Presidential claims ("without any evidence" as they say) about how elections are subject to corrupt influences worries some into looking for evidence. It's possible recent legislation introduced by Tulsi Gabbard about "vote harvesting" is making your work interesting, all over again....

Aside from vote harvesting, Jim, did your work (background or published) on "shenanigans" in local elections get into the practice of "rolling polling"? During early voting a bunch of ballot boxes were set up, one day each, in a series if particular neighborhood schools who "just happened" to be celebrating parents' day or whatever...

Oy.

Now, Melcher may not be MAGA in the narrow sense of "ever Trumper" and nobody else. But, I know he's not a never Trumper or close, also going by who he follows on Substack.

Patterico, not so formerly of Patterico's Pontifications or whatever? A wingnut who thinks Radley Balko is a lefty, on Substack. And a Zionist, natch, on the blogsite.

Speaking of, yes, Melcher follows original cancel culture queen Bari Weiss' allegedly "Free Press." Nope no link to that. Not even with a "do not follow." He also follows "The Liberal Patriot," by Democratic Leadership Council alum Ruy Teixeira and other neocentrist, neoliberal squishes. That said, Ruy himself is far enough right to be at the American Enterprise Institute now. If not for that, Melcher wouldn't follow him.

Not heard before of William M. Briggs of "Science is Not the Answer." But, he's a fellow at the Acton Institute, which makes him a highbrow intellectual Religious Right wingnut. Calls Wikipedia "Wokepedia" on his Twitter, while also thinking National Review is "pissing on the right. Again." Not linking.

Karl Gallagher? Sci-fi author, not so bad, right? Wrong. Been profiled on the Libertarian Futurist Society. His Twitter, via Goodreads? Zionist, hates Palestinian protestors and more. Not linking.

So, far more proof than I needed to show just how Neanderthal er Homo erectus Melcher is. Most these people are to some degree, like Weiss, part of the original cancel culture, whether in general, or specifically on Zionists trying to silence contradiction.

Bye, Jeff!

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And, that’s how this fits the no-twosiderism theme here, as I said on Substack, where that's been, at least on paper, a reason I created it.

I can find an old superintendent incompetent without libeling others, or doing the moral equivalent thereof, if they’re not as vociferous on the attack. For example, I can criticize U.S. imperialism and warmongering without claiming that a Jeff Melcher type working at AAFES is getting a cut. See how that works, Jeff? 

I can talk about someone “fellating” someone, Schutze with Mike Miles, without thinking Schutze’s past support was 100 percent wrong, but at the same time, noting this is a pattern of his.

Larry Lewis, meet Jeff Melcher, and vice versa; enjoy each other

You will have fun being each other’s Tar Baby with me gone.

Jeff gets to be even more obnoxious, and with one less target for his obnoxiousness, it should be even more focused.

Jeff, I would actually give money to TIGER for May electoral purposes, but not with you around on it. I’d shake hands with Hitler, Hussein or Tommy Tompkins first. I hope a CREDIBLE opponent for the next bond issue arises; if not, I’ve written enough about the school district that sensible people won’t vote for a bond anyway.

And, most the people I’ve said goodbyes to, or talked to about the school district, are also looking for that same sort of credible opposition. And, it isn’t just me; they don’t include you there either.

(Oh, good luck with getting an opponent for Carolyn; neither city nor school board seats in North Lanc have been opposed since I’ve been here, and I think since the start of single-member districts.)

Or, if you really get tired of tangling with Larry, or miss semi-slanderous and idiotic, uninformed sniping at me, you can go ahead and demonstrate just how clear-thinking you are by following through on the idea of enlisting and going over to Iraq.

(Beloved Leader is still pimping his idea of a “surge,” so warm bodies are wanted.)

Larry, meanwhile, gets to continue to try salesmanship with the mask of faith-based leadership being more exposed.

Of course, even with it being on record now that the school board knows about Richard Gonzales, and should ask questions about Lewis’ hiring decisions elsewhere, it probably won’t.

Sorry, Larry, and Nannette and the rest of the school board. Faith-based talk can’t change facts through miracles, and Fortune 500 salesmanship can’t gloss over them.

Nor does blaming problems on the small, small portion of the district that includes the city of Dallas solve anything.

Fortunately, Tommy didn’t get The Preserve passed, or Lancaster really would be in trouble.

OK, I confess — the Corgan check is in the mail; I’m on the payroll to pass the Lancaster School District bond election

I know that sooner or later, I’d be found out as being on the Corgan Schools architectural firm payroll anyway, having taken its cash to support the Lancaster School District bond election as I infer that some people are insinuating. (That editorial I wrote in my newspaper this week against the bond? A clever smoke screen, to throw people off the trail. Obviously, though, some people, with better investigative skills than mine, sharp enough to see that an architectural firm that does not headquarter in Lancaster, Texas, is a threat to the free world and the future of Jeffersonian democracy in Lancaster, have smoked me out, even though they apparently haven’t gotten their political action committee registered with the state of Texas yet.)

So, I’ll just ’fess up now and say that that autographed check for $10,000 from Don Burleson is on its way. Especially since it’s the first of five installments, I should have known better than to try to hide it.

I had to do it, because Today Newspapers couldn’t pay me the money to learn how to use the Internets, or understand what “scare quotes” are, or don’t understand the dangerous power of my own rhetoric.

Obviously I called The Allen Group “the savior of Lancaster” somewhere in an issue of my paper, too, rather than simply factually reporting about their land development plans, and forgot about it, so I need the Corgan money to stock up on ginko, or get an fMRI or whatever.

(Somebody else, though, forgot HTML links to that “thorough” Dallas Morning News investigating, even if no Canadian financing was turned up. This must be an example of in-depth news reporting digging much more thoroughly than I ever did. A quote from John Wiley Price, who would be upset primarily if his favored minority vendors weren’t getting more, is the only thing I might not have had. Herb Booth does dig in such depth as to quote Jeff Melcher’s favorite Lancaster resident, Ellen Clark, though, so he must be far superior to me.)

No, I don’t that ginko.

I need to go gallivanting out to the Pacific Northwest again so I can write haiku.

Of course, that was part of the conspiracy, Jeff; that’s where I signed the contract to get on the Corgan payroll.

That’s why I was in such a gallivanting mood when I got back. Until I discovered that the whole plan was falling to the crack surveillance of people at whose powers I can only stand back in awe. That includes their snark powers, with which I obviously cannot keep up.

These people, despite me not directly talking to them, obviously can’t stop impressing on me that they’ve lifted the lid off of the conspiracy (yes, that’s what a hidden plot is) for Canadian dollars to dominate Lancaster (NOBODY was supposed to know that Corgan staff met with the Canadian Finance Minister up in Ottawa last month), abetted by the Corgan sell-out to nefarious foreign nationals.

I may not know how to use the Internets; my snark factor may stand second to someone else’s brilliance.

But, Jeff, I know conspiracy thinking when I see it. And, no, not just me thinks that way among people who have already seen or heard about that letter. Want me to mail you a mirror? Or, do you want more from other people after they read that letter?

Further facts about school construction and Gallagher Construction Management, and more thoughts on the Lancaster School District bond election

Gallagher Construction Management Services has been used, and is being used now, for both school district and civic project construction in many places around the Metroplex.

There are both good and bad sides to both the agency method and the construction manager at risk method of construction management.

An obvious rule of thumb is, the bigger the construction project, the more there is that can go wrong, and especially the more higher-dollar things there are that can go wrong. Beyond “going wrong,” the bigger, and longer, a project, the more susceptible it is to inflationary spikes, material shortages, etc.

With construction manager at risk system, then, that means smaller and smaller margins. Now, I don’t have any figures, but I’m guessing that a majority of construction managers here in Texas use the agency system for that reason. For companies the size of Gallagher or larger, companies big enough to comfortably handle projects the size of Lancaster’s 2004 bond construction, I’m guessing two out of three are agency type.

If Jeff Melcher understands agency-contract construction managers, he would know that they don’t eat inflationary costs. That does make them more of a gamble if you hit inflationary spikes; on the other hand, it normally means a lower baseline for a contract. If he understands geopolitics as he presents himself as doing, he would know that the explosion of the Chinese economy, even without the oil price boom, would have spiked steel and concrete costs, and increased their scarcity. Having a brother and nephew who work in the Oil Patch, I know that firsthand. I explained that in an editorial this summer

Either Jeff doesn’t know these points, whether from not being so attentive to world affairs, failure to read my editorial on the subject, or whatever, or it doesn’t matter to him, and he’s going to fire away at Gallagher no matter what.

That said, any district that uses the agency method is rolling the dice, to be true. The Waxahachie City Council had an extensive discussion on the different methods before hiring Gallagher.

But, and not to make light of how inflation hit Lancaster — other entities gambled the same way, not just with Gallagher, but other agency-based construction management companies. International companies got caught buying short on both steel and concrete, far beyond local school districts and construction projects. There was NO CONSPIRACY with Lancaster school construction.

Also, as far as cost overruns, there’s plenty of them in private sector construction, too. Just like the private insurance industry has even more of the dreaded “waste and fraud” than Medicare, Jeff. Sorry, but governments just aren’t always the corrupt, or inept, monsters that many conservatives make them out to be.

As far as Gallagher’s specific bona fides, they were used just south of here several years ago to oversee the construction of the Waxahachie Civic Center. Several organizations from the communities of the Best Southwest have rented that place since it opened, with no complaints about its construction. As far as its construction management, I’m not familiar with details, but to the best of my knowledge, the city of Waxahachie had no major complaints about that.

Other work of the company includes the city of Farmer’s Branch recreation center, work at both Garland and South Garland high schools, as separate projects, separate times and different architects. (No, in case Jeff or anybody else is wondering, Gallagher is not a Siamese twin of Corgan.)

A list of Gallagher projects completed by the end of 2003 is here; as one can see, Corgan partnered with Gallagher on less than 20 percent of these.

And, no, the Lancaster 2004 bond issue is not the biggest project Gallagher has managed, either, lest Jeff or someone else think the company got over its head in Lancaster. (That, at least, would be a rational, non-conspiratorial argument.) Forney ISD had a total of $142 million in various projects that Gallagher oversaw.

Before getting into construction management in the mid-1900s, Gallagher was a general contractor for about 30 years.

There; there’s some research, Jeff. It includes links. Yes, the majority of them are from Gallagher’s website, but, where better to get information on actual projects they’ve done.

Given all of these different school districts and cities for whom Gallagher has worked, for a decade or better, Jeff, if it had a history of financial irregularities, The Dallas Morning News, with its depth of staff and greater ability to investigate such things (not that I haven’t done investigative journalism at smaller newspapers, Jeff) would have reported something. And, you know what, Jeff? The News hasn’t. That ought to tell you something right there — if you’re willing to listen.

Unfortunately, whether during early voting or on Election Day, for Lancaster voters, there will be just two sides on this issue; there is no “neutral, but let’s reason out something better” on the ballot. In the editorial, I deplore both the apocalyptic comments of Superintendent Larry Lewis, on the one hand, threatening to put children into residents’ living rooms, and the conspiracy thinking of people like Jeff Melcher on the other, insinuating that a Canadian bank stood posed to take over the Lancaster School District should this bond be voted in.

The third side would be the assembly of a citizens council including NO representatives from either the school district or the long-known Committee Against Virtually Everything, or C.A.V.E. people. Sorry, not my invention; I know my predecessor as Lancaster Today editor, Chuck Bloom, whose tenure as either staff writer or editor stretches back to before the 1994 tornado, used it repeatedly, though I don’t believe he’s the one who invented it, either. (Of course, C.A.V.E. could also stand for Conspiracies Are Virtually Everywhere.)

Now, I am not as harsh as Chuck; I do not totally believe in this label, and I know how labels can at times be beat-down tools. But, on an issue like this, it seems to gain more validity by the day, if not the hour.

Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen. Given the latest ramp-up on the conspiratorial side, including what I see as financial insinuations against yours truly in his last paragraph, I doubt Melcher will support ANY bond issue, at least as long as Lewis is here. Jeff, you’re welcome to tell me otherwise. You're certainly welcome, snark aside, to offer actual evidence of any financial wrongdoing of which you are aware

And, unfortunately, he and Larry Lewis are probably going to wind up being each other’s tar babies.

The Lancaster School District bond election — unfortunately, there’s no “third side” in the vote

In the editorial I wrote about the Nov. 7 bond election this week (link coming on Thursday), I quoted the Sufi philosopher Idries Shah, saying “There are never just two sides to anything.”

Unfortunately, whether during early voting or on Election Day, for Lancaster voters, there will be just two sides on this issue; there is no “neutral, but let’s reason out something better” on the ballot. In the editorial, I deplore both the apocalyptic comments of Superintendent Larry Lewis, on the one hand, threatening to put children into residents’ living rooms, and the conspiracy thinking of people like Jeff Melcher on the other, insinuating that a Canadian bank potentially stood posed to take over the Lancaster School District should this bond be voted in.

The third side would be the assembly of a citizens council including NO representatives from either the school district or the long-known Committee Against Virtually Everything, or C.A.V.E. people. Sorry, not my invention; I know my predecessor as Lancaster Today editor, Chuck Bloom, whose tenure as either staff writer or editor stretches back to before the 1994 tornado, used it repeatedly, though I don’t believe he’s the one who invented it, either.

Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen. Given the latest ramp-up on the conspiratorial side, including what I see as financial insinuations against yours truly in his last paragraph, I doubt Melcher will support ANY bond issue, at least as long as Lewis is here.

Conspiracy thinking, Lancaster style

In his latest letter to the editor at my newspaper, Jeff Melcher, leading opponent of the Lancaster School District’s $215 bond issue, shows he’s either had to much to drink from the Kool-Aid of people like Nancy Moffett (no, I didn’t mention her by name in my original warning to you, Jeff, but you apparently didn’t read between the lines well enough), or else I misread Melcher and he’s a more natural ally of people like that than I thought.

No matter.

I’m going to touch on two points Melcher makes.

First, he notes that RBC Dain Rauscher, the district’s bond financial counsel (and outside counsel on financial matters for several years) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Canada.

And?

I infer that Melcher thinks that means RBC, or the Ottawa government, is going to annex Lancaster ISD, or some similarly nefarious idea.

Are they also going to annex all the other school districts which they counsel (and which you noted they counsel)?

And, by that logic, President Bush ought to already have surrendered to Beijing, as Chinese buyers of U.S. bonds and T-bills have financed Bush’s illegal war with Iraq. I’m also going to take a stab that, from what I know of Melcher’s politics, he supports that war, meaning we have some inconsistency in thinking and reasoning here.

Finally, on this issue, Jeff, such nativism is unbecoming, if not downright distasteful.

Second, he says that Corgan, the district’s architect for 2004 bond projects, provides PR help for Lancaster, and other client school districts, and also lobbies agencies like the Texas Association of School Boards.

First, Jeff, and I know your conservative enough to support capitalist economic models, there’s nothing illegal, or even unethical, about lobbying an agency like TASB. In fact, if Corgan is a publicly-held firm, it would arguably be a faiulre of fiduciary duty to shareholders NOT to lobby TASB.

And, I have no doubt that Corgan isn’t the only such firm to either do PR for school districts trying to get a bond passed or to lobby TASB. If you think they are, I’ve got Arizona swampland at discount rates. Or Canadian Rivieras, if you want RBC Dain Rauscher financing.