El Paso Politics

I need to set the record straight about pay and staff at the city. David K wrote an interesting piece in his blog earlier this week where he mentioned that City Rep Eddie Holguin has two staffers that work for his office full time. As David K puts it: Of course, Holguin has a perfectly good explanation for the size of his staff - their pay comes out of his office budget. Okay, problem solved. Obviously, he is saying that it's okay for him to have more full-time staff because they are paid out of his "office budget." Wait a minute.... All staff for all of the representatives are paid out of their respective office budgets! We've been tricked! Or have we? Nice try Mr. Holguin. I guess you didn't think we'd realize that your inclusion of the obvious was just a way to cover up your big spending. It's easy to vote against the budget... it's harder to actually live by the budget cutting mantra. You remind me of Haggerty - always against spending money...

Take a look around in the political landscape in this country and you will see one universal truth. Latinos are quickly becoming a larger group by the day. The El Paso Picayune and the Texas Tribune have been running pieces about demographics relative to the Latino community and its emerging influence in America’s political arena. FOX News “dumbs down” the complexities of hot button issues to a few talking points or phrases so that they are suitable for mass consumption. Think of “shock and awe”, “cut and run”, “drill baby drill”, and most recently, “securing our borders”. The result of this effective means of communications is capitalization of the naïveté of people and creating a favorable public dialogue. Large sums of people actually believe that the solution to the complexities of migration is “securing” the borders. There is not a Border Patrol Sector Chief that believes their sector of the border is not secure. The idea of immigrating “the right way” is another expression of the...

I don't know this vato, but I have to say I am a fan of the fact that he took the time to go around downtown El Paso and shoot video of buildings and call people out BY NAME! That's speaking truth to power!

Jaime O. Perez will be on my show tomorrow starting at 10am MST. Tune in to hear the interview. Jaime O. Perez is a Republican candidate for El Paso County Judge and will be facing Democratic Party nominee, County Commissioner Veronica Escobar in the November general election. Perez is currently the Chief of Staff for County Judge Anthony Cobos.

And apparently there is one in every city! Read this article and tell me who it reminds you of. I especially like this quote from the piece: "It's reality show politics," Gaddie said. "It's unsavory. It's undignified, and it's real."

Just wanted to point out a couple of new features on The Lion Star Blog. First, members of the big time media and candidates in town, take special note. I have added a copyright section. What that means is that if you are going to jack my shit, at least get permission and give credit. It also means that if you are going to use something of mine in an ad, once again get permission and give credit. I don't get paid to do a lot of the stuff I do in terms of collecting content, so at least give me a little acknowledgement every now and then. And, if you missed anything in terms of multimedia, feel free to go check out my audio and video archives. I have posted a link to both archives and am working on one for photos too. Stay tuned for that!

So I was reading a piece on another blog about Mayor Pro Tem Emma Acosta and her apparent refusal to give up the position of Mayor Pro Tem. Let me explain a few things for those of you who might not know. As with everything in El Paso politics, there is more than meets the eye here. First of all, you aren’t elected for life to the position of Mayor Pro Tem, it’s a term of two years. Mention was made of a little “tradition” of giving the seat up after a year of service in the post. That’s really interesting because I went back and found that the last couple of Mayor Pro Tem’s actually served a year and a half. But the term of the Mayor Pro Tem is actually set forth in the City Charter. The Mayor and Council don’t actually have the power to make little “traditions” when it comes to things set forth in the City Charter. You see, the voters actually voted the Charter in, so they are the ultimate authority. That’s why I don’t understand the critique of Acosta or the characterization of lit...