THE CITIES OF MANKIND: With almost every day comes a new revelation of misleading tactics causing switches in endorsements for the Dallas City Council runoffs on June 4. In district 2, third-place finisher SeGwen Tyler first backed runner-up Monica Greene. Now she's found that she was misled about the background of Pauline Medrano, and has switched to support Pauline instead. In district 14, Candy Marcum first -- incomprehensibly -- backed the Republican Ingle. Now she's been hammered because Ingle didn't support GLBT rights on a city board, and withdrawn her support. She didn't endorse Hunt, but that is the effect of it. Medrano and Hunt should both win. Moral: don't play fast and loose with the facts.

All of this is really shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, until we change the city government to allow the people to have some real say in their government. The thankfully-defeated "strong Mayor" proposal was going the wrong direction. What do we really need? A very good example from South America, found at wood s lot, is described in "Cities For People". But don't mind me, I'm just a starry-eyed idealist.