El Paso Politics

So Mayor Leeser announced that he's not going to run for reelection and you can expect a big crop of candidates to come out of the woodwork. I'll go into some of the names that have been popping up but that is a post for another day. When there is a municipal election El Paso produces several "types" of candidates. The community candidate, the business candidate(s), the religious conservative, and the crazies. I'm expecting a lot of the crazies and community type candidates to run this time. I hate to be the dream crusher, but most community candidates, and all the crazies should stay home and not bother. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a community Chicano/a type candidate run and win. But the problem is money and field. You can win an election with a ton of money and no field, like how Niland beat Dagda. But most community candidates don't have money to run. And it takes a lot to run a campaign because you need materials. As much as a lot of peopl...

The El Paso Sheriff's Officers Association won a big fight with Sheriff Richard Wiles in arbitration over an effort by Wiles to change a few uniform positions to civilian jobs. Last Monday commissioners court partially funded the purchase of tasers and body cameras, with the SO paying a portion of the purchase through savings on the civilianized positions. There's no indication how that money will be replaced so far but it certainly will have an impact on that purchase.  Essentially arbitration said that the Sheriff was in violation of the labor agreement between the County and the EPSOA. The Sheriff will not be able to change those position to civilian jobs as a result of the decision. Getting an independent third party to side with them was recognition that the SO was breaking their contract with the EPSOA Adherence to a labor agreement is not only a legal issue but contracts between labor and management are good for accountability and efficiency.  This is a big win for the ...

So file this under stuff you didn't know about me or really care about but I really dig the Carpool Karaoke segments that are part of the Late Show with James Corden. I've never actually seen the show, but I have never missed one of these segments because he posts them on YouTube. The latest is with First Lady Michelle Obama and note to the rest of the world, our First Lady is cooler than yours. I found one particular part unintentionally funny. Missy Elliot joins for one part of the video and they do her song, Get Ur Freak On. Hip hop fans will recognize the classic hip hop number and will likely remember the video, although Missy herself has probably dropped 100lbs. There are plenty of parts to the song, but I thought it was hilarious that FLOTUS is rapping the part that says in part, "copywritten, so don't, copy me..." If only Melania Trump had seen this video BEFORE her speech. Since she admires FLOTUS so much, she might have avoided some embarrassment. Any wh...

Every good circus has elephants as a main attraction and this year folks in Cleveland can not only celebrate their NBA Finals win, but they can gleefully cheer, "The circus is in town!" Here's a not so ironic pic of Jr celebrating killing the symbol of his Party while his dad will likely actually kill his party in this election cycle. I almost don't know where to start but I guess the obvious choice is Natasha, er Melania Trump's speech on the first night of the convention. Up until her speech the most notable thing about the convention was the fact that it was the least-diverse convention the GOP has ever had. That is backed up by stats by the way. The GOP has fewer minorities as delegates than they have had in the most recent conventions. Not that there were ever a lot. I mean Klan meetings are more diverse than the GOP pool of congressional interns. So until Melania Trump spoke I was tweeting a bunch of one liners about how many angry white folks I saw in the a...

The problem with communication in any form is that it at least partially relies on another party's ability to comprehend. Apparently David K at Refuse the Truth has a bad problem with comprehension. Just kidding, he doesn't. He's a smart guy, he's just deliberately lying to you about me (because about 90% of what he writes these days is about me) and what my point is about the El Paso Police Department and Twitter. So let me break this issue down to Barney-level in case I wasn't clear (I was) in my last post. My issue with the El Paso Police Department is the fact that the people who are managing the account have apparently been pretty arbitrary in how they manage who does and does not get blocked from their account. Once I saw that there has been a rash of people who have been getting blocked from the Twitter account, for basically no reason I might add, I wanted to know why. Frankly, we should all want to know why. Especially considering the City of El Paso has a ...

Frankly, I'm tired of talking about Chief Allen. You either think what he did was right or you think what he said was wrong. But what I'm writing about is now separate from the Chief Allen controversy and is something someone in a leadership should absolutely do something about.  Its the level of censorship being applied by a publicly funded entity - namely the El Paso Police Department.  If you recall the other day I wrote about how PD's twitter page and social media was quick to put down dissent. I was blocked merely for raising opposition to comments made by the Chief and you can go check out the screen shots that show a sample of what I was tweeting on the previous post.  I wasn't obnoxious, disrespectful, or belligerent. I even posted screen shots of other people that were blocked from the department's twitter page as well for seemingly no reason other than being critical of the Chief. I obviously had questions about the department blocking members of the publi...

I've never been more disappointed at a local government entity that I am today. The El Paso city council played to a few loud people that were in the room and completely missed a golden opportunity to hold the Chief of Police Greg Allen accountable for irresponsible comments. Before we go forward it is important to understand a fundamental truth. The criticism surrounding Chief Allen's remarks are not at all about free speech. That is a complete, pardon the pun, cop out. The Chief is absolutely allowed to exercise his free speech. No one is, or has said, he's not allowed to have an opinion. What people are critical of is what he said. No one said he didn't have the right to say what he said, they said it was irresponsible, divisive, and inflammatory. The same First Amendment that protects Chief Allen's right to say divisive rhetoric, is the same First Amendment right afforded to those who protest. If you honor the lives of the fallen police officers, honor the rig...

El Paso Police Department Chief Greg Allen made a remark that was inflammatory, divisive, and inaccurate on Friday and potentially made a bad situation worse. Before I go forward, I realize what I am going to write isn't popular and will likely make me more of a target than I already am. But frankly, I don't care. Someone has to speak truth to power. So before we go further, I'm not anti-cop. I'm anti- bad cop. In fact, we should all be anti bad cop. The loudest voices against bad cops should be the over whelming majority of good cops. On Friday civic leaders in El Paso held a press conference to discuss the events of the last week, both the unnecessary deaths of two black Americans that were killed at the hands of police and the deaths of police that were killed at the hands of a mad man. El Paso Police Department Chief Greg Allen made a remark that was  not only completely inconsistent with the facts, but it underscores the fact that Chief at least appears to have a c...

For those of you not in the know, State Rep Mary Gonzalez wanted a former staffer (a staffer at the time) to run for County Commissioner against Commissioner Vince Perez a couple of years ago, according to a source in her office. Eventually, according to the source, Gonzalez pulled the rug out from under the would-be candidate and so it never happened. So it raises a few eyebrows down here in the valley at the revelation that one of Rep Gonzalez's staffers is sending signals of his intent to run for office against another political rival of Gonzalez. Josh Carter is a Gonzalez staffer and in apparently the worst-kept secret since Commissioner Escobar wanted to be Judge Escobar, is sending signs that he is going to run for the El Paso Community College Board of Trustees. I've written it before but when someone is going to run for office, or is running for office, they will suddenly start going to meetings they didn't go to before and start posting staged photos that are meant...

Mayor Oscar Leeser is right, the budget can be done without raising taxes. City Manager Tommy Gonzalez is tasked with presenting a budget to council and what he presented called for a tax hike. Mayor Leeser said that he wouldn't raise taxes. The Mayor should stick to his guns. I think the mayor is hip to the little movida of why taxes were raised last year and didn't need to be and is going to ensure that it doesn't happen again. But in all of this budget talk, I want to the employees to take note. Remember last year when all of a sudden there was this extra money and instead of giving you raises, they tossed you a bonus. Remember how all the of the city reps and the mayor waxed poetic about recognizing your hard work and excellence? First thing on the chopping block? Your raise. Maybe if your slimy little enanito union rep with stank breath of yours hadn't burned so many bridges with members of council, at your expense I might add, you might have someone who could advo...

The Mexican government recently designated the Tornillo-Guadalupe Port of Entry as the location where they will accept import of used and junk cars for sale in Mexico. They have also reduced the number of vehicles they will accept daily at the POE. Tornillo-Guadalupe Port of Entry (TPOE) is also the largest POE in an unincorporated area along the US-Mexico Border.  All other POE’s are either in an incorporated town, or are much smaller than the TPOE. As a result of the policy change by the Mexican government, about 2,500 vehicles are parked along the road in the area waiting to enter Mexico. The line has extended to over 2 miles of vehicles on both sides of the road and has encroached on residential areas.  Think I'm exaggerating? Well, lets go to the video! I shot this yesterday morning and it literally took me almost 6 minutes to drive through all the  traffic .  And the County of El Paso is virtually powerless to help the residents. Just how powerless are they? We...