Subscribe, Please

This is why I subscribe and will continue. The crack Chron team led by Zach Despart, Dug Begley and John Tedesco, together put out a timeline on what went down at the deadly concert Friday night. It was on yesterday’s front page of the hard copy and was online on Saturday. Excellent work. 

Heads must roll. There must be accountability. The roles of the concert promoters, fire department, law enforcement, the bureaucrats who issued permits, the county, the city and NRG Park must all be reviewed and investigated.  

There is always the possibility that those who played a role will think about covering up, lie, not be forthcoming or place the blame on someone else.  That’s why we need top notch newspaper reporters who can find the truth and bring it to us. 

A long time ago when I was still in high school, a local radio station did a promotion at the Astrodome and a giveaway was involved. Me and some friends attended and were up front when the crowd started surging and we were squeezed up against fencing. It was scary as you know what. That was 50 years ago, and they still haven’t figured out how to deal with crowd surges. 

For now, I am going to rely on the Chron to bring me the unvarnished facts on this deadly debacle.   

I saw this on the Daily Beast this morning: 

The chief of the Houston police department said he visited rapper Travis Scott on the day of the disastrous Astroworld Festival, according to a person with knowledge of the chief’s account. The New York Times reported Sunday that the chief, Troy Finner, went to Scott’s trailer to relay concerns about crowd control that evening. Finner, who knows Scott personally, reportedly worried over the excitability of the fans attending the concert, given Scott’s reputation for inciting his fans to “rage.” The rapper has been arrested several times for urging audiences to rush security gates at past shows, including Lollapalooza in 2015. Despite the efforts of the police department and festival organizer Live Nation, which included hiring extra private security, Scott’s set turned into a nightmare when an uncontrollable crowd surge around 9 p.m. crushed and killed eight people and sent scores more to the hospital. 

According to a police timeline of the evening, the concert wasn’t ended until nearly 40 minutes after a “mass casualty event” had been declared by authorities. Fire Chief Samuel Peña told the Times on Sunday that Scott and the organizers had the “bully pulpit” and “the responsibility” to step in and stop the show. Instead, the rapper noted the presence of an ambulance in the crowd and asked his fans to make “the ground shake” before launching into his next song. 

In the dumb move department, the chair of the Harris County Democratic Party stuck his nose in the HISD Trustee District 1 race by endorsing one democrat over another.  I said the other day on the voting results reporting delays that the chair doesn’t know what is going on.  He proved me right. There are democrats involved on both sides in this race. 

The GOP is looking to make inroads into the Latino community.  They just flipped a Latino state representative district in San Antonio less than a week ago. The last thing we need is for the Harris County Democratic Party telling Latinos who to support among two Latina democratic candidates.  That’s not how to grow the Latino vote within the Democratic Party. Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

For my November “Wizard of Oz” wall calendar there is a photo of the Cowardly Lion with “Put’em up. Put’em uuuuup!” 

My Beatles calendar has a 1969 photo from the “Hey Jude” compilation album photo shoot. 

Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel are 2021 Gold Glove winners.