El Paso Politics

Come Labor Day, people will start announcing for various offices. One I’m watching closely is the race for County Commissioner for the seat held by Commissioner Willie Gandara. He has made no indication as to whether or not he’s running, but there is already one candidate and several rumored candidates including Irma Contreras who’s run before, Dora Oaxaca (only if her boss doesn’t run), and Ruben Lujan. Who is that? That’s what I said, and I thought I knew all the politicos in town. He’s a Justice of the Peace who’s allegedly been having conversations about running for the seat. But here’s the thing with all of those candidates. None of them are known to be policy wonks. The valley deserves strong leadership with an understanding of the people, the area, and the intellectual tool box to make the decisions that are best for the area. There has to be a serious and rigorous debate in the valley about policy. We have to get past the debates about personality, money, and affiliation and ge...

Joe Olvera is the master of great commentary in this town. I can't top it, so why try. Read the words of the Grand Master in a great open letter to Tom Brown. By the way, if you are a business that wants to put an ad in front of a lot of people, you might want to consider sponsoring Joe Olvera's column. Go here to read it:  http://www.riograndedigital.com/2011/08/05/an-open-letter-to-pastor-tom-brown/

By Ernesto Villanueva So here we are, once again waging another political battle in Washington. Once more into the breach fellow voters as we prepare to fight Republicans on the debt ceiling and going to and fro on the same ideological fronts that seem to have no end in site. To what ends can we expect this conflict to continue and more importantly we must ask ourselves, “what is the measure of Republican resolve and just how far are they willing to go to garner political points?” Like in Early 2011, President Obama is finding himself fighting the same battles yet again. As negotiations with Republicans seem to be going nowhere fast, we seem to be racing the deadline with no apparent solution. What disturbs me though, this is not a new fight...in fact, up until this month, the debt ceiling is an issue that has been resolved 72 times before so as to avoid American default on our loans and our responsibilities. Michelle Bachman has said that she will not vote no to raise the debt ceiling...

Beware people, there are wolves in the midst of alligators! I've discovered something pretty interesting and I think people need to know about it. There is at least one former somebody who seems determined to get back in to politics and I think she's trying to hijack a good movement to meet her political goal. Let me be clear. I'd want the alligators to stay where they are at. I had Miguel Juarez on my show this weekend and we discussed keeping the alligators there. Its a connection to our past, that is sometimes not so pretty, but certainly interesting and heart-felt. Like family history. As you all know, I am also against the recall. But someone is trying to get some political payback against some people she doesn't like and is going to try to rally people recall Susie Byrd, Steve Ortega, and Mayor Cook, by trying to blend the plazita gators and the recall movement. Don't by the bullshit people. Anyone who has the nerve to look themselves in the mirror and call th...

David K has a public apology on his blog. For some reason, some people have characterized it as a loss for David K. These people are about as detached from reality as a Palin family reunion! David K's apology doesn't represent a loss. It actually represents a win. Anyone who knows their ass from a hole in the ground knows that it was probably because of a settlement. It could've been much worse. David K could've been forced to pay big bucks. I talked to lawyers - you know the people who actually know the law - and they said that if the people suing David K really felt like they had a case, they would've gone in for the kill. Instead, they settled for an apology. Anyone who knows David K, knows this: he probably only apologized to put this behind him. You see, you can make someone apologize, but you can't make them mean it. So what did the plaintiff really win out of the situation? The answer is nothing. Its not like David K can't blog any more. It's not ...

In light of the recent arrest of Dr. Garcia with the EPISD, I was reminded of a bill passed by Rep Marquez in this recent session. It’s a bill that requires school board candidates to divulge their contributions. One member of the El Paso Independent School District Board of Trustees actually testified before the House Committee on Public Education, against the bill. That was Patricia Hughes. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why and so I decided to watch the video of the proceeding to find out why. She essentially says that redacting personal information is a lot of work. Last time I checked, being on a school board was a lot of work. Or at least it should be… Given the fact that so many of the individuals involved in the on-going public corruption scandal have been school board members, or people who have dealt with school board members, I think this bill was long overdue. Surely she has a better reason to be against the bill than it will make her work harder. But in hindsight...

Yet again we are let down by our leadership in this town...allegedly of course. But aside from talking about the specific allegations against Dr. Garcia, which I will get to in due time, lets talk about the culture we have created. I say we because we are also at fault. Again, for the billionth time I am talking about the fact that we don't pay enough attention to the people we elect. Relax Republicans, don't get a hard on and blame Democrats. These aren't bad Democrats or bad Republicans, they are bad people. And many of them are in non-partisan races, like school board elections. Something has to be done about the culture of corruption we have allowed to happen. There are levels of corruption. There is the illegal shit you can go to jail for and there is the shit that we all know is wrong or unfair, but we look the other way for because we think its no big deal. Let me be blunt about this. If there are only a few people that are in charge of money or making purchasing dec...