Refuse the Juice

Going it Alone on Behalf of Us!

You may have seen the headline on the El Paso Times' website, "Cobos says he was in Washington, DC, on county business and nothing else."  You can get the story HERE.

He claimed to be meeting with administration officials on behalf of the County of El Paso.  The respective departments confirmed his visit.  

So why wouldn't he let us know that he was going on our behalf?  That's news!  If he's going to DC to talk about the proposed Tornillo port of entry the county's renewable energy program he ought to be championing his visit.  He could at least have conferred with the many highly paid lobbyist working these issues - which he did not. 

Veronica Escobar and Susie Byrd were in DC at the same time and everyone knew they were there talking about border issues.  You'd think Cobos would have made his selfless efforts to help us out public!

Wait a second!  I just read the piece David Crowder did on Newspaper Tree.  You can find it HERE.  The spokesperson from Ciro Rodriguez's office indicated that Cobos was there to talk about rural bus service. Wow!  How come Cobos didn't let the Times' know that he was doing such a thing?

Why aren't everyone's stories adding up? In one instance Cobos was just making a courtesy call and then we find out that the courtesy call wasn't a courtesy call, but a meeting about "rural bus service." 

Looks like somebody needs to start coordinating everyone's stories or risk being exposed for the what they are.  This is a family show, so I'll refrain from giving my opinion on exactly what they are.

So let's cut that crap here. Cobos is full of shit and we wouldn't know it if we didn't have two news sources digging in the yard.  Cobos and Reyes are conspiring to get Cobos to DC and to get Reyes' pick for County Judge in the seat for the next two years to keep Veronica Escobar out.  Reyes can not afford to have Shapleigh and friends in all the good spots.

New Presidents afford people under federal investigation a good shot at making their problems go away.  Cobos needs that to happen for him and who knows, maybe Reyes does to.  Reyes is a good democrat and can be linked to every single person who has plead so far other than Ketner.  If they get one of their cronies in as U.S. Attorney for our district then the investigation goes bye bye.

Cobos is using our tax dollars to pull a scam in DC and we can't just sit here and take it.  Reyes is playing a game with his position in order to screw us as well - that guy needs to go.  I plan on hitting all the major Beltway rags with the information I have.  We'll see how the boy genius does when the big boys come a knocking on this door.  He'll wish to God he was still sitting in a Border Patrol truck on the river reading the paper.

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And if you missed the County Commissioner's meeting on Monday you missed a lot.  Cobos and Jaime O. didn't get to pull off their latest scam.  Cobos put an item on the agenda to fast track the hiring of a planning director at the county. Guess who he just happened to have in mind?  Jaime O.  They took special care to make sure that Jaime O. would get to keep his old title as Chief of Staff and add the new planning directory title to his business card along with the $50,000 increase in pay, of course. 

Jaime O. made the argument to let this item slip for a little bit longer.  I think they knew everyone was on to their little game, but it just goes to show how incredibly bold they are getting.

This is coming to a head very soon.  Only you can prevent this forest fire.

We need to get Reyes out of office ASAP.

When Cobos resigns we need to make sure that the replacement isn't another bad guy. 

We have to keep our eyes open.  It's all going down right in front of us.  What are you going to do about it?

Here it Goes

I gave the legitimate news outlets all the time in the world to "break" this story, but they've left me no choice but to do it myself.

Judge Cobos is planning on stepping down before the new County Commissioners take their seats.  He's and the other goons have lined up their candidate to take his place.  Sarinana, Teran and Cobos have their bought and paid for replacement waiting in the wings.  Who knows if Haggerty is going to vote with them or not at this moment.

This move keeps the new Commissioners from nominating and voting in Escobar if something happens to Cobos after they take their new seats.  This way the Luther Jones klan keeps their puppet in the seat of power until the election in 2010. 

Don't you think that you should have been told of this by someone other than me?  All the big reporters in town know exactly what I just told you.

Cobos was in Washington, DC last Monday instead of in court.  Many many many people saw him in transit.  I'm surprised how many of you who read this blog were in DC last week. 

What the corn on the cob  was he doing in DC?  Probably trying to push himself into the Obama administration - a low level appointment.  Something to make the El Paso heat go away.  After all, new appointees get favors from newly appointed federal attorneys. 

Don't go asking Norma Chavez about this either - I have on good authority that the campaign tolerated her and worked to keep her happy, but have no use for her anymore.  They were aware of her lovely reputation.

Were Cobos and friends bundling money in order to get some pull with a new administration?  I think so.  Buying influence with an administration is the expertise of a least one family involved in the FBI investigation.  Maybe the rest of them have learned how the game works.

Where does Congressman Reyes fit in here?  Well, he may have missed out on any chance of job in the administration because of the ongoing FBI investigation in his district.  He needs it to go away.  He also needs the Shapleigh campers to stop competing with his klan for power.  Veronica Escobar is in his sights.  Reyes' brother, Chuy is a name being tossed around for County Judge once Cobos bows out.  Don't freak out if Carlos Aguilar is the second choice - we should have done more to get his thrown out of town after he Cobos tried to game the lobbying contract recently.

Bank on this - Reyes, Cobos and friends are cooking up something that's only good for them.  We're getting stabbed in the back again and most of you voted for these morons.

Thank you straight ticket voters! 

Just in case you are keeping score...

Reyes Klan hates the Shapleigh Campers.

The Luther Jones Klan hates the Shapleigh Campers.

Norma Chavez hates everyone.

The Republican party... was last seen driving a U-Haul truck east on I-10.

Whatever You do on Monday - READ THIS BLOG!

What's up with Cobos?  We'll explore that Monday morning. 

How is the corruption investigation rubbing our Congressman?  Why might he want it to go away.

Could we have a new county judge for Christmas?  Who would it be?

Does somebody need to run against Dan Haggerty?

I Tried to Tell You - I Really Did

The headline read: "Obama may delay tax-cut rollback for wealthy"

You can read the article  HERE.

I'm sorry that you were all so gullible as to believe that Barrack Obama would raise taxes on his rich friends.  You got too caught up in the moment and were drunk on your own hate and now you've elected exactly what you hate.

Not to say that what Obama is thinking is doing isn't smart.  The rich people's capital investments are going to be what saves us in an economic crisis.  You don't really think welfare folks are going to pony up all their cash for economic growth, do you?

You are learning a hard lesson about life right now - now go to your room and think about your ignorance. Write me a five page paper on why Bush's economic policies were perfect until Nancy Pelosi and the other communists took control of Congress. 

Oregon Street Rapid Transit Meeting Today at Noon!

I've decided that I'm interested in seeing how this whole mess is going to work out.  I've been fighting my own battle down there and have found the city staff to be less than receptive to change.

The easy solution to this problem is to give the downtown guys some room to load and unload.  You don't have to change the entire street to accommodate the few.  It's an easy solution.

David Crowder at Newspaper Tree wrote a great piece on the whole situation HERE. 

His findings were interesting.  Especially the number of Mexican students at UTEP.  Preliminary reports had the number of Mexican students at UTEP at around 7,000.  UTEP says that number is closer to 1,600.  Where did that massively inflated number come from?  I know!

That number comes from a certain politician who has been trying for years to convince everyone locally that there are more Mexicans doing certain things here in town than there are actually doing them.  One of them is attending UTEP.  This politician has been throwing bullshit numbers at reporters and the public alike for years and they've bought them all along. 

I was the only person in El Paso to take this person on head to head on their false numbers.  Thank God someone is unraveling the mystery of the magic numbers now.

I digress.

The meeting is at noon at City Hall.  I'm not sure if the full council will be attending or just Beto O'Rourke (his district).  Let's hope they can accomplish their mass transit goals while accommodating business owners.

I myself can't wait to get all of you crappy drivers off the street and on the bus.  Once you're gone I'm going to buy a tractor trailer truck to drive around town.  Hell, I might pay an illegal alien to drive me around while lay in the sleeper cab drinking beer and smoking filter-less cigarettes watching daytime TV.  I'm kidding! kinda.

Go to the meeting.

El Paso has Zero Sense of Humor

I haven't been promoting anything I write on Newspaper Tree here on this blog in a while.  I hate shameless self promotion.  I think it creates a false sense of interest in a person's efforts.  I measure my success by the clicks. By the people who took the time to find my writings on their own.

I wrote that first paragraph so I could talk about my latest effort on NPT and you wouldn't think I was just mentioning it so you'd go read it.  I'm really mentioning it because the readers of NPT are letting me down.  They don't get it.

If you look at the comments to my funny stories you'll be amazed by the amount of people who just do not understand that I'm being funny.  That I'm not writing to change the world, but to make a few of you sick people like me laugh.  Why is it so hard for some folks to understand that?

Why so serious?  We have got our collective panties in a wad.  We should be having a blast here!  We're at the bottom and up is the only direction we can go.  Let's lighten up a little bit.

And I'm not taking a shot at Rich Wright's piece here. It was awesome and timely.  It also had the, "we're screwed, might as well enjoy ourselves tonight" theme I'm preaching here.

It didn't help that my latest letter dropped right when the crazy lady from ACHE was announcing temper tantrum and former Mayor Tilney wrote a nice piece about a dead friend.  Maybe people just weren't in the mood to do the one thing that feels better than any drug  - laugh.

I don't think we have a brain drain here, I think people leave because we're so damn serious all the time.  Lighten up!

Very Exciting Things Going at City Council

They are really going to give people tickets for being rude on the bus.  I love it, but I hate it.  There's no reason things should have gotten this far, but they have.  I guess it's an El Paso thing.  Maybe somewhere else there is a law like that.  Maybe not.

I rode the bus and the metro (subway - not the fast food joint) for years in DC.  I saw everything you could ever see.  Crazy people, rude people and crazy rude people.  I saw people having sex, fights and blatant drug use.  I even saw an abandoned box of kittens once.  Never did I see a problem with handicap people getting the space they needed to sit.

If we're lucky the major news outlets won't pick this up and run with it.  If we're unlucky our mayor is going to have to explain how we got to this point.  Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the mayor explaining it, it's the fact that he'd have to.  We're supposed to be a city of nice people, right?

I heard Smachel Ventana made some crack about whether or not people can stand up on the bus.  I guess she doesn't talk shop much with her friends over at Sun Metro.  Maybe they lay down on the bus a lot? I don't know.

Just another day in the place just down the road from paradise.

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

I just happened to catch my friend, Lisa D's show on the way home.  Shehad some environut on there claiming that WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE  in seven years unless we follow his instructions.  He sounded like a bad salesman for some miracle product on late-night cable television - "Call me now and order my product or you'll never get those pet stains removed!"

The worst part was that my friend Lisa was eating it up.  I couldn't believe she'd fall for his total bullshit.  He was making stuff up as he went like a four year-old does when flipping through a picture book.

The sad thing here is that this environut movement is all based on patterns of behavior we've seen before!  The lying and the begging for money is something so basic in our community it's hilarious that we don't see it when a bunch of white guys with glasses start doing it.

I'm going to write about some of the odd things I've found with the environut movement and I'm hoping Newspaper Tree will have the pelotas to publish it.

Obama President May Lead to and End of the Corruption Investigation

I had a very interesting conversation with a person today who laid out the realities related to the federal prosecutors handling the ongoing federal corruption case here in El Paso.

Expect the bush prosecutors to be out ASAP.  They will be replaced with Obama's picks who are going to be soft on drug offenses (democrats always pick prosecutors that are soft on drugs because they don't like making their demographic angry).   They will also be people who can keep the electorate happy.

This means we're going to get a die hard democrat from the El Paso area more than likely. That democrat knows he or she must smash any investigation into the many crimes committed by people who call themselves "democrats" here in the El Paso area.   The Obama campaign needs to reaffirm these border votes for the 2012 election and you aren't going to do that by prosecuting life long democrats with standing in the community.

I'm not at liberty right now to float your the names of the persons to be stuck in positions of power over this case, but they aren't Rodriguez or Esparza.  Those guys are pretty good guys.  The names I heard were down-right scary.  They are most definitely involved with the folks linked to the corruption scandal.

There's nothing we can do now, but pray.

To The Angry Idiots Who Do Not Understand Public Utilities

As you can see, my post from yesterday got all the PSB haters all angry because I outed there little petition as a simple ploy to put the tax burden directly back onto the homeowners.

Morons like the guy named "hellraizer" have no idea what they are talking about (Homeowners already only pay $2.50 a month, smart guy).  The guy named Gerald posted several comments on the blog pretending to be someone else.  I got a call from one of their cronies this morning asking me to be quiet.  He admitted (like I already knew) that they were just trying to shift this back to the city where it was before and where the city taxed homeowners  (the bulk of the payers into the tax system locally) instead of business owners.  I got the whole song an dance  about how "I'm one of them" and it would be a good political move for me.

These guys claim that the PSB has no accountability when it comes to the rates they set. Yet they lowered the rates after public outcry. They readily admit that the PSB felt accountable for the fees and lowered them.  They've defeated their own argument there.  How stupid can you be?

They claim that the PSB answers to no one and should not have control over utilities, but they've never complained that they control your water and sewer bills.  They lack the ability to make their point by being inconsistent with their dislike for the PSB.  If the PSB isn't fit to control one utility then it is not fit to control any of them.

These business owners know that when the city's street department had control over the stormwater maintenance and inspection that the homeowners picked up the tab.  Those same folks picked up the tab when the city's drainage system failed to contain "Storm 2006" and ended up damaging private and public property - costing us millions more.  Business owners weren't tasked with paying back the certificates of obligation.

When the smart move was made to put this problem with the experts on dirty water, the business folks knew they were screwed.  Their properties were going to be assessed for the run-off because they didn't want to design them properly in the first place.  After all, in the state of Texas you don't have to pay the stormwater fee if you can prove you contain all the run-off on your property. If these business owners had done shit right the first time they wouldn't be fighting to push the burden back onto the homeowners.

That brings me to the question of why these guys haven't paid the money to improve their properties and get rid of any stormwater fees they have to pay in the future?  Oh that's right, they'd rather selfishly shift this utility back to the city and back to the homeowners. 

The vitriolic response to yesterday's post only reinforces the fact that I've outed them and their little scheme.  While they claim that they simply pass the tax increases onto the consumers, they've forgotten that over taxed consumers are less likely to spend their money with local businesses.  Nobody said they were geniuses. 

Their arguments simply don't hold up.  Homeowners scored a big victory when the PSB took over the stormwater utility.  Yes, we had to pay a little bit more per month, but it guaranteed that someone would be out there managing our drainage systems so we don't lose our homes in the next big rain storm.  Shifting this utility back to the city will only make us fearful of the rain once again.  They will not take care of our drainage system.  They are not equipped to do so.  The $6,000,000 a year they keep throwing around wouldn't even cover new projects much less maintenance and other projects that have been put on the back burner.

Homeowners need to make sure that they understand what your local business buddies are doing.

I really hate to expose these petition guys for who they are.  As a guy who works for a small business, I see how often we are saddled with state taxes and unfair federal taxes.  Here locally we've had a reprieve, but we're abusing that reprieve instead of tending our own flock to improve the quality of citizens we intend to be.