El Paso Politics

There are several ballot initiatives going that I really support in their concept. But the language makes it almost impossible for me to support several of them. The advocates of these initiatives are going to lose their mind when they read this and say I'm not progressive because I don't support their poorly worded ballot language, but its not my fault they took a good idea and didn't execute it well.  Thats entirely their fault.  And they are mostly pushed by El Paso's "white saviors".  The concepts are great, but when you actually take time to analyze the impact of the language, its clear that what you are voting for has some bad implications. The first one I want to go over is the Fair Elections initiative.  I think most liberals like myself agree that the 5 white guys that control El Paso have entirely too much political influence. We've got to have a way to create more equity between business and people. And now more than ever, their money matters to...

Okay, we have to stop pretending that what is going on in the El Paso District Attorney's Office is anything other than an unhinged spiral of what in my opinion can only be described as political lunacy.  I know it seems like my blog is pretty centered on only a couple of themes lately but the truth is, my blog reflects what is going down in our political sphere.  Our District Attorney appears to not be able to handle criticism very well and appears to have used her office to launch attacks on what she seems to think are her adversaries. In fact, I fully expect to be on her list in the very near future.  The latest developments from her office look like an attack not just on a local media outlet - but on the first amendment and I'm sick and tired of no one saying it. When your District Attorney appears to be using the blogosphere and court filings to attack outlets that have been critical of her time in office - that is an assault on this community.  There are no two...

Eddie Holguin's hand-picked candidate for Mayor of San Elizario has been involved in a situation in which she has allegedly not paid workers for the work they did for her restaurant / bar. The workers are undocumented immigrants and Holguin's wife is the County Commissioner representing the area, a former chair of the El Paso County Democratic Party and she is also an immigration attorney.  If she's not taking action on this issue, its a problem. She's supposed to be the advocate for the area, she's an immigration attorney and shouldn't have to be told what the right thing to do here is. And don't get me started on the fact that she was the former chair of the Party.  So if you figured there was anyone that would not stand for a business owner to allegedly screw-over the undocumented immigrants from Mexico, you'd think it would be the Holguins.  Also, and probably from a policy stand point, the County should be looking at the fact that it is apparently t...

An El Paso judge has been publicly reprimanded for what appears to be continuing to be the attorney of record on a case for at least 6 months after he was sworn in as a judge.  Correction - it wasn't one case.  It wasn't two.  It wasn't three.  It was actually six cases according to the reprimand.  Associate Court Judge James Lucas, who was hired by Judge Marlene Gonzalez, was given this public reprimand: Associate Judges are hired by the presiding judge, who has sole discretion over the hiring decision. Lucas was an outspoken supporter of Gonzalez during her campaign.  He is also a close political ally and was a frequent co-counsel to Theresa Caballero. The two most recently served as counsel for the woman who got off with time served after she pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement to one count each of tampering or fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair and abuse of corpse without legal authority.

Good Lord this is becoming completely unbelievable at this point. The DA's office now appears to have yet another problem on their hands.  And I'm not talking about a minor problem - I'm talking about a potentially really bad situation.  The DA has been having  Doug Tiemann serve as the Chief of the Intake and Screening Unit. Basically its his job to unfuck the case backlog mess.  He may have been the guy in charge of the donuts for the Saturday Screen Party in the DA's Office a few weeks back.  Anywho, the DA has this guy in charge of that unit and he has to deal with all the cases that have been dismissed lately because of issues in the DA's Office.  Well, it looks like he had an  administrative  suspension on his  license  to practice law recently. And by recently, I mean as late as last Saturday.  Don't believe me?  Well here's the screenshot. (There's always a screenshot, que no?) Why is that bad? Well  because he was...

I have had a lot of people ask if the workers in San Elizario got paid following a post I wrote earlier this week explaining that workers allege that San Elizario Mayor Isela Reyes didn't pay them.  Today was supposed to be another pay day.  Well, according to the workers, they still haven't gotten paid. Nor have they had any contract with Isela Reyes.  I know what you're thinking, after the information coming out that she hadn't paid her workers, you'd think she'd make it a priority if for no other reason, than to save face. I'm not even talking about how its very obviously the right thing to do.  Also, you'd think she'd do it because there is allegedly an active investigation into the alleged wage theft happening. You'd think that, but apparently you'd be wrong.  Why isn't there an urgency to pay the workers? Who does that? I'm honestly surprised that there hasn't been some sort of protest at her business yet demanding that the ...

If you recall recently some abortion rights advocates staged a sit-in in the lobby of the District Attorney's Office to get a meeting with Rosales to ask her if she was going to prosecute women who seek abortions under the new Texas law.  Apparently there was a chance meeting on the 3rd floor that continued in an elevator that is the reason the meeting even happened in the first place. The group, Texas Rising, first reached out to Rosales as early as June to urge her to follow the lead of another Texas DA that was going to exercise his prosecutorial discretion to not prosecute the new crime.  A group of community members meeting with an elected official is a pretty pedestrian thing. Its typically not very noteworthy.  But as pretty much anything goes with the District Attorney's Office, what should have been routine ended up being anything but.  So strap in y'all because we are about to take a ride on the crazy train.  Rosales eventually met with the local leade...

Nothing sickens me more than to have to write this piece on Labor Day weekend of all times, but as anyone who has ever spent any amount of time reading my blog knows, I’m an outspoken labor advocate and I know a lot of people in the Valley. So naturally I was approached by a group of workers recently that allege San Eli Mayor Isela Reyes has not paid them for wages they earned at her restaurant/bar in San Elizario, Los Pistoleros.  The workers indicate that they have reported the matter to law enforcement. Other sources have indicated that there are multiple investigations underway involving the Mayor of San Elizario.  Reyes was recently elected in May of this year and her administration has come under scrutiny because former El Paso City Representative and one of her political consultants, Eddie Holguin was attending most of the meetings when she was first elected. In fact, sources at the city -as I have previously written- told me he was slated to come in at one point and si...