The John Wiley Price indictment is a big story, and I’m sure many journalists in town scurried to the courthouse, drooling over the drama that would unfold in the months to come. I did. But I also thought about Jim Schutze, because Schutze knows this story better than anyone in this town, and I was excited to see what he would do with it. In short, Schutze is delivering. Here’s his latest piece, a comprehensive overview of the real scandal, not the bribery, but the way Dallas leaders sold out Dallas and lost the opportunity to develop an Inland Port in South Dallas that would have completely transformed the city’s economic base while bringing tens of thousands of jobs to South Dallas. Here’s the money quote:
I’ve known Price for a long time. I look at him sometimes, and I don’t see a black guy anyway. I see a Dallas guy. He’s a typical Dallas guy who worships money. He loves the thrill of the deal. He thinks of hardworking pluggers as just shy of losers and worse. In 2008, when I asked him how he could oppose something that promised so many jobs in southern Dallas, he told me sneeringly he associated labor with slavery.
In fact he put that thought in a letter to Allen. “During slavery,” he wrote, “everybody had a job.”
Put it in writing. That proud of it. That may be a cynicism so profound that it transcends race, or descends it. I wonder sometimes. If all anybody really believes in is the big money and the fast deal, is there no one left out there to believe in the city?
