Refuse the Juice

Red Light Cameras, Deadlines and My Anger

June 26, 2007

El Paso Police Department
c/o El Paso Photo Enforcement
Customer Service Center

Reference: Pick up a calendar and get real - Nazis

Dear whoever screws the community by collecting red light camera ticket money:

Because our beloved police are too busy frog marching various office holders off to jail and helping the FBI do research into something we Texans like to call the "Patron System," you decided to let a camera do your work for you.

Your camera caught my lovely wife apparently not completely stopping at red light when she was trying to turn right. I should spend the rest of this letter explaining why ticketing people turning right on red is bullshit, but I don't have the time nor the patience to type that much. I'll just make it a part of my radio show tomorrow and see if we can't jam up the phone lines of your little photo enforcement office for the next year and a half.

Your ticket says that my wife made an, "unsafe intersection" at 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I feel real bad. After all, there were probably a whole nine (9, nueve) cars on El Paso roads at that time of the morning on a Sunday and my wife put each and every on of them on death's doorstep with failure to stop and inch earlier behind the white line.

Of course there were only nine (9, nueve) people on the road at that time because the other nearly 600,000 people in El Paso WERE CLEANING UP THE GRAFFITY LEFT ON THEIR HOUSES OR WONDERING WHO THREW THE BRICK THROUGH THEIR CAR WINDOW AND SLASHED THEIR TIRES LAST NIGHT!

I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, Rudy Giuliani, McGruff the Crime Dog or anything, but wouldn't those cameras be better used to video tape the little pricks who GRAFFITIED EL PASOAN'S HOUSES AND THREW BRICKS THROUGH THEIR CAR WINDOWS AND SLASHED THEIR TIRES?

Wait, I forgot – raping me for an easy $75.00 is a lot easier than cracking down on real crime. Yeah, that's right I used the "real crime" argument. Your elected bosses felt left out when they heard that the EPISD was collecting 60% of my weekly pay check to build more canvas area for our talented little graffiti artists you can't seem to catch. Your bosses decided that whacking me for $75.00 every time I do something you (a police officer) wouldn't pull over for in person would be a great equalizer.

I don't see those guys (those who voted for the red light cameras) don't come over to my house once a week to kick my dog and eat my leftovers since they already have carnal knowledge of my wallet.

Enough on the merits of your Hugo Chavez-like police state – let's get down to what really pissed me off about this whole thing.

I'd like to thank you for giving me plenty of time to respond to the citation, jerks. The notice didn't show up to my house until the 15 th of June. My wife committed this infraction on May 30th. If you'll check your calendar, I go the notice the Friday before the Monday on which my response was due. So I would have had to have mailed my response on that Friday in order for it to reliably show up that Monday.

For that to have happened my mail man would have had to have waited while I:

- searched through my wife's 80 or so fashion magazines (bulimic weeklys) to find the notice

- opened the notice

- called my wife

- yelled at her

- called back and apologized (she's way better looking than me – out of my league, really)

- filled out a check

- found a stamp (you bastards should have postage paid! I am sending you money after all!)

- sealed envelope

- opened envelope again

- inserted check

- taped now torn envelope

- handed it to mail man

Where you went wrong here was not realizing that our local postal service is screwed! They've only written about 50 stories about the postal problem in El Paso over the last few months, it's not like you were out catching vandals and missed the articles.

Now I owe you $25 dollars more because you gave me less than two (2, dos) working days to respond to your assertion that I violated traffic laws. That's clever. I applaud your ability to charge me penalties on monies you assume I owed you and were counting on to keep the government running. It's as if me not paying you that $75.00 within the allotted two (2, dos) days has cost you $25 worth of cash flow problems – jerks.

The least you could do is give people 30 days to respond. God forbid someone hide enough tax money from the EPISD to go on a two week vacation and miss your two (2, dos) day deadline to pay a fine.

Bottom line – if you are going to screw us, give us more than a few minutes to get a drink in us and our going out underwear on.

love,

David Karlsruher

Progress or Die

You know what I’m tired of?  I’m tired of hearing that El Pasoans want educated people to come and work in El Paso.   

Do you want to know why?  Because when the educated people get here we think they’ll be content with Chico’s Tacos and dollar store shopping.

Again today I heard from someone interested in promoting El Paso as a business destination and the report from the new employers he deals with wasn’t good.  Their complaint you ask?  El Paso offers no alternative to old time El Paso other than a few chain restaurants.   The whole” Mexican food” thing wore off after about a week and they now want something that people who make a decent living can do.  They want upscale if not medium scale at least.

These people that we are looking to attract may drive to a Starbucks, but they want to walk to five other shops while they are enjoying that latte.  Instead, we are spread out. We put up huge stripmalls and stuff them with dollar stores and other crap stores.  PEOPLE DON’T FLY TO PHOENIX, SANTA FE, SAN DIEGO OR ANY OTHER DESTINATION CITY BECAUSE THEY HAVE PLENTY OF DOLLAR STORES!!!   In fact it’s just the opposite.   The nicer things in life attract the money spenders. 

We need to stop erecting buildings and surrounding them with 1,000 parking spaces.  We need to build outdoor malls that feature shopping, restaurants and other entertainment. We have the climate for God’s sake! If we rely on our rundown favorite restaurants and discount stores, we’re going to lose out. 

We don’t have to change who we are, but we do have to offer something to those who don’t exactly want to be us, but want to live here.  The trick is putting our flair on popular attractions.   And I don’t mean serving burritos at Starbucks.

Note:  most people that visit El Paso are disgusted that our Starbucks have drive-throughs– it’s the ultimate in laziness for a chain that does not feature parking for 90% of its stores.   Once again, we take a great concept and somehow screw it up.

We have nice things here, but they are spread out all over the city.  Downtown, Kern Place or even Five Points are all good areas to center something for the educated and employed.  If someone builds it, they will come.  They will spend money.

Too often in this town you have to get into your car to get to your next entertainment destination. Many times people decide that they don’t want to deal with getting in and out of the car again and steer that Mercedes home instead of spending shit-loads of money in our economy.

Somebody needs to anchor Kern with a Barnes and Noble and café style restaurant.  We already have some nice places over there and this would just add another dimension.   Pretty soon other shops and food would join what we already have there and the next thing you know, you have something that a person raised in Seattle might miss if they thought about moving away.  We need to stop spreading the things that attract our money earning guests all over the city.   

We also need to understand that while we like eating at Roscoe’s, they don’t.  They don’t get it and never will.  Maybe their kids will understand because they will raise them here, but the folks just getting here won’t.  Let’s stop thinking that our extended stay guests really think that much of our hole in the wall restaurants and our thrift stores.  Let’s get real, or risk never progressing.

Explaining the Recent ASARCO Situation/Mess

Last week ASARCO released information obtained from the City of El Paso detailing their expenditure of $800,000.00 to study what they could do with the ASARCO land if the City obtained it.   ASARCO turned that information over to the media on Thursday and it’s been a slowly developing nightmare for a few groups and individuals since.  (Original article in the EP Times http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6135370)

I’m just going to lay it out there as simply as I can and insert the lines to connect the dots as I go.

The initial complaint from the general public is that the City spent all this money without their permission, or knowing, to study the use of land they/we don’t own.  The mayor has taken the brunt of the criticism.  I applaud the mayor for meeting this head on and fulfilling his role as the leader of the City Council.   The sad part is that public is missing the point.  Hell, the paper and every other media outlet are missing the point as well.

The point is not about the money spent on land not owned.  Plenty of money is spent studying the idea of land someone or some entity may acquire in the future. It’s a good business practice. The point is the impact of the city government’s argument against ASARCO opening.  Well, that’s the point in its simplest form. 

When ASARCO faces the final hearing on the permit issue they will be judged by comments submitted during the comment period which ends June 18^th.   When the TCEQ looks at the comments they’ll pay particular attention those made by the elected officials in El Paso.  Those comments will say that the Mayor and everyone else are against the reopening of ASARCO for environmental reasons.  ASARCO will now be able to discredit that environmental claim with evidence that the City was looking to develop the land and, or at the least, seize it and sell it.   If you think the TCEQ won’t take into account the odd expenditure of nearly a million dollars to study the development of land that the City has claimed is contaminated beyond use, you’re crazy.   You can throw out any validity that might be given to City Council’s claim that they are worried about the environmental impact of ASARCO whether they truly mean it or not.

There’s more.

Lairy Johnson and the ASARCO public relations team made a brilliant connection to the City of El Paso’s actions and the ongoing downtown redevelopment saga.   Johnson, speaking on behalf of ASARCO, simply insinuated… well here’s the direct quote from the El Paso Times, "First, it's the Downtown land. Now it seems ours was next in line. Whose land will be next?" (http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6135370).

That quote was not met with a welcome reception from the Land Grab Opponents or their lawyer Stuart Blaugrund (http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_6154764).   As you know, the Land Grab Opponents are against the use of eminent domain to make the downtown plan happen.  Their lawyer Stuart Blaugrand probably had a baby when he heard the news that ASARCO had connected their respective plights.   Do you know why?

Lairy Johnson is no moron and neither is his PR firm.  It was the El Paso Times’ own poll that pointed out that more than 60% of El Pasoans opposed the use of eminent domain to redevelop downtown.  Despite Mr. Blaugrund’s assertions to the contrary, the two issues are almost identical. 

Blaugrund’s group doesn’t want the City taking their legitimate businesses/land away and giving them to private developers just because people don’t like how those businesses look or what they do.  The Mayor and everyone else would like to take ASARCO’s land away and give it to developers because they don’t like how ASARCO looks and what it does.  Despite the EP Times’ and Blaugrund’s claim that the eminent domain connection is erroneous, it’s not.   It’s the same thing.  But why wouldn’t Blaugrund and the paper just let this roll off their collective backs?

Public opinion is in the Land Grab Opponent’s court right now.  The general public doesn’t want the City taking people’s land and giving it to private developers so they can make money (although I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen with this downtown plan).   Having the public’s opinion on your side is a good thing when you are up against the local government.  Having an unpopular refinery jump on your bandwagon and jeopardize your good public standing is a bad thing.

I’m willing to bet if you were going to poll the public on eminent domain and throw in the caveat that it could be used to shut down ASARCO, the downtown folks would be thrown under the bus faster than you can say, “PDNG.”  Blaugrund knows that the disinformation campaign spread about ASARCO has worked well enough to convince people that ASARCO is bad.  That campaign has made people rabidly anti-ASARCO and he can’t have ASARCO jumping onto his boat and sinking it even though they are experiencing the same problem his group is.

The City might use eminent domain to take ASARCO’s land?  You bet.  If the City and other coconspirators can get the permit stopped they’ll declare ASARCO a “blighted area” and take the land under eminent domain and sell it off to one of the developers they talked to when they were spent the $800,000 researching the issue.  Does that not sound exactly what the Land Grab Opponents fear?  Stuart Blaugrund and the Land Grab Opponents have to distance themselves from any ASARCO association because they know that public opinion will send them down the river quickly.

Finally, the problem with this is the developers who have been contacted by the City and may be named as interested in the property.   Remember, the general public doesn’t yet know what I have laid out above.  All the public knows is that our City government appears to be spending a million bucks behind their back studying the usage of land they/we don’t own.   Now there are developers who appear to have “preferred status” with the city and their names may come out.  Expect this to be a weapon of  the “retros” (http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_6158977) on City Council against the downtown plan and the “progressives” on council. 

The whole $800,000.00 study is much bigger than the El Paso Times would have you believe.   Stay tuned. 

I'm Blogging Again

I'm sorry I haven't been writing as much.  When my radio show went to 2 hours I started pouring a lot of time into it instead of this blog.  Well, I'm back. 

My show is now 1 hour from 6-7 am on  1650 am.  Give me your opinion on that time slot.  Let me know if you enjoyed my show at the other time as well.  I really hope things go well for the new time.  10-12 isn't exactly a great time either and I really made that work.  I made the change because the show was really cutting into my day job and that's what pays the bills. 

So look for more information here daily.