MWDBE

Minority Women Disadvantage Business Enterprise (MWDBE) is a program to get these businesses part of government contracts. It is supposed to help these businesses grow and expand. It is a good program.

Commentary is certified under the Houston Office of Business Opportunity. I have to go through a recertification process on a regular basis. It is what it is.  I don’t know how many folks staff the Office of Business Opportunity, but it seems like they aren’t doing their job making sure prime contractors honor their goals to hire minority subcontractors.

From the another one bites the dust department, see this from today’s Chron:

Marsha Murray, director of Houston’s Office of Business Opportunity, will soon step down, and Mayor John Whitmire is searching for a new department head to replace her.

The Office of Business Opportunity runs Houston’s program to help small businesses and historically marginalized groups — such as women, racial minorities and people with disabilities — secure more city contracts. The office monitors city projects to ensure a certain portion of the work is allocated to certified minority vendors. It also works to ensure project managers pay fair wages to their workers and comply with other labor regulations.

And this:

“Based on public discussions and feedback from city council members who were in office during the previous administration, there are concerns that the department can do better,” Benton said. “Mayor Whitmire will improve the department and meet the public’s expectations.”

The Office of Business Opportunity’s minority enterprise program has often sparked debates at City Council. Members have repeatedly raised concerns about the lack of a robust enforcement mechanism to hold prime contractors accountable when they do not follow through on their preset goal to hire minority subcontractors. 

Last month, several members sounded the alarm about a construction project where the contractor “failed to make good faith efforts” to meet its minority business and small business enterprise goals, according to the agenda of a February City Council meeting.

Here is the entire Chron read: Director of Houston’s Office of Business Opportunity to resign (houstonchronicle.com).

How difficult is it to come down hard on primes who aren’t fulfilling their goals?  The City of H-Town needs to get tough. Hopefully the next director will come in with a mandate to kick arse.

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Pamela Brown is a very good journalist at CNN.  She does great investigative work. See this from the Daily Beast:

It seems Aaron Rodgers’ conspiracies know no bounds. Just a day after independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the NFL quarterback was on Kennedy’s short list for vice-president, a CNN anchor alleged the New York Jets quarterback has shared widely debunked theories questioning whether the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings were faked. In January, CNN’s chief investigative correspondent Pamela Brown described an encounter with Rodgers, who “was spewing a very disturbing, debunked conspiracy theory to me” when she first met him in 2013. She did not name that theory until Wednesday, when Brown described her meeting with Rogers—who was then playing for the Green Bay Packers—at a post-Kentucky Derby party that same year. The report claims that Rodgers confronted Brown when he heard that she was a CNN journalist, claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting—which killed 20 children and 6 adults—was an inside job and that the media was deliberately ignoring the facts. When Brown questioned those facts, Rodgers is said to have spouted examples which have proven to be false, according to the report. “Brown found the encounter disturbing,” it said. Another unidentified source claimed that Rodgers said at another time: “Sandy Hook never happened…All those children never existed. They were all actors.” The Daily Beast has contacted Rodgers’ agent for comment.

It is beyond me why the NFL lets this hater idiot continue to suit up. A nut job for sure.

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Commentary doesn’t do TikTok, so I don’t know how it impacts folks.  I don’t know how it works and I don’t have a take or position on this. Good luck.

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The featured photo is to remind folks that Opening Day is two weeks from today and I have to figure out what gear to wear. It will depend on the weather and whether or not the roof will be open at The Yard. I hope the weather is nice and the roof is open for a 3 pm first pitch.