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...