Refuse the Juice

What's Happening Today?

Well I'll tell you

Newspaper Tree did what it does - print emails between politicos!  I love it.  Catch their blog link HERE.

I like the fact they got snarky with Chavez's defense of her very bizarre amendment to the ethics bill.  The whole game Chavez is playing obvious and she keeps getting caught and then has to make excuses for her behavior.  The best part - we get to read the words as they were written by the UT grad! 

Actually, comparing that email to anything she has written before shows that Chavez did not write that email.  Not even close.  Chavez thinks the word "germane" is a misspelling of "German."  Nice try, though.

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Carl Robinson had a family emergency and didn't make it to a completely worthless forum where every single person there already knew who they were going to vote for.  And then there was the media...

Robinson looks bad no matter what.  Family does come first.  If your family requires you to go run them down every few weeks it's obvious that your duties to your district will play second fiddle.  Voters will respond.

Here's the plain fact of the matter here - the voters who voted for anybody but Robinson or Castro aren't going to show.  They've done their duty.  Robinson and Castro are locked in a battle of whose base is the least lazy. I would not be surprised if Castro wins or comes in just a couple votes shy.  No landslide this time around.

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Barbara Perez is an idiot.  She proves it every day.  For a woman who has future political aspirations, she sure risks not having one supporter left by squawking on the radio every day.  She must not realize how stupid she sounds.

On the issue of guns on college campuses she felt that if a guy did walk into a classroom of 200 kids and start shooting that it would be "dangerous for two students to shoot back at him."  She figured that two students shooting back wouldn't be helping matters.  Laying on the floor and getting shot execution style was remedy to the situation, I guess. 

Barbara Perez is a very morally and ethically corrupt individual.  I think she's proved that with her words repeatedly.  She also so stupid the cause of women around the world has been set back centuries.  Barbara Perez is to women as Michael Vick is to dog owners.

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There's a lot of buzz about the upper valley traffic study that was present to council on tuesday.  No, not just the "Save the Valley" aka "we don't want Mexicans in hour neighborhood" group.  Property owners all through the valley are looking at the plans and want to know what's going to happen to their property. 

I expect to see some fighting over just how much folks are going to get paid.  Remember, these aren't poor people who can't afford top notch lawyers.  A big fight is brewing - I can just feel it.

ED is back and the little blue pill won't fix it!

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I'm taking a break from the blog for a few days so be patient.  I will be back sooner than you think, but I need to work on some other projects for the next few days and can't be tempted to come here and spend time.

I'm talking with some folks about a new El Paso media outlet.  No guarantees yet, but the minds involved could bring something very interesting to the table. 

Those of you with political tips can still send them my way!

I'm not Alone... and I Shouldn't Be

I have to admit that the El Paso Times finally got something right.  Read it HERE.

The EP Times played up Rep. Norma Chavez's taxpayer funded completion of her degree earlier in the week.  The article was mostly bullshit and insulting to one's intelligence, but in the end they did stick their in finger in her eye by pointing out that other reps DID NOT use their per diem when pursuing an education in Austin.  I gave them a B minus for that effort.

Today I give them a B plus for an op ed that was long overdue.  

Chavez has been... well I'll just say it - a bitch for quite some time now and nobody has called her out on it.  She wrecks any legislation she can't put her name on or is proposed by those she has personal vendettas against.   

Her position oncalendars was supposed to be a plus for El Paso.  It should have enabled her to hustle our bills through before  late session fighting claimed them.  Instead she used her power to screw with the people in her delegation she doesn't like along with other elected officials at the county level that she despises.  

It reminds me of a town giving a guy the power to be sheriff and a nice pair of matching six shooters to help him perform his duties.  The man then turns around and uses his badge and those guns to rob the people who gave them to him.

Chavez has fooled herself into thinking she's above reproach because she's basically insane.  Her ridiculous excuses for her behavior remind me of that girl in high school who was a pathological liar. The girl who swore nobody knew she was lying even though everyone knew she was lying.  She is pathological.  I would like to see her examined by a mental health professional.  I think we'd find out some very interesting things about this woman.

Chavez got her hand slapped by Commissioners Perez and Escobar early in the ethics bill process when they found out the truth about who was screwing with their bill.  A one-sided cat fight ensued with Chavez retreating and adding a caveat to her loss - she'd just amend the bill on the floor when it was time.  This only made her look more petty and pathetic.

Because Chavez is more worried about her ego than El Paso, she put a hold on every bill waiting to get through calendars.  One of the lobbyists representing El Paso's interests explained to her that her little game was going to result in everything dying and all the evidence would be pointing right at her.  Norma was once again unaware that she could be caught being an asshole even though normal, sane people would have easily understood the situation.

Norma doesn't seem to like the fact that her trail of lies and disruption can be so easily followed.  She must be fuming mad at this point given that she's an extreme megalomaniac and can not stand criticism.  Instead of simply just doing what she's supposed to do she keeps trying to pull stupid stunts to get her way.  Too bad she's only getting bad press... at least from one outlet, that is.

The good news for her is that her district shares her values or are scared to death of her (neighbors with loud dogs?).  She's even roped a buddy of mine back even though she killed his radio career on purpose.  She'll build back her support and we'll forget it was her fault that the Tiguas once again got screwed, but that's just life in the big city as they say.

Wat to go Norma - you have to live with you and that's punishment enough.

Oh yes - I do get word of the threats you send.  Organized crime isn't anyone you want to use to intimidate bloggers.  They will go RICO all over your ass.  Don't think I haven't gone to the authorities about what I've heard.

What Are You Going to do When the Money Leaves?

This is a very long version of what I'm going to say below, but worth the read.  Catch the link HERE.

The article has a bottom line premise - Tax the rich and they'll find somewhere else to live where they aren't taxed as much.

Some of you commie liberal losers out there think that the rest of us go to work everyday and figure out how to make money just so we can pass it on to your lazy ass.  You're right, but only to an extent.

Those of us who are wage earners put up with you lazy losers because you usually have some attachment to someone actually doing something with their life other than waiting for a handout.  Once you lose that attachment I don't care if you accidentally set yourself on fire while smoking crack.  In fact, that's the best outcome for the rest of us.

The Democrats in this town and all across America don't like to earn money, but they do like to spend it.  They like to spend it on people who have no money themselves.  This buys their loyalty.  The only problem is that Democrats don't have money.  That's why they tend to find out who has money and then capture it somehow. 

The problem is that the rich people know the Democrats are looking to steal their money and give it to the lazy losers.  Because they are rich they can up and move away from the place where their wealth is being attacked and go somewhere else.  The article states quite frankly that there are several states where the wealthy like to run and hide in.  Texas is one of those states.  But for how long?

What the Democrats and other types of liberals don't understand is that if you kill wealth, you kill yourself.  Eating the rich may sound like fun, but it leaves a hole where all your funding came from.  Rich people pay the majority of all the taxes paid in the united states.  They paid 65 percent of the entire tax bill during the Bush years and could pay as much as 80 percent under an Obama administration. 

Just so you know what I mean, and we are clear, I'll use some numbesr for you.  If the entire amount of taxes collected in 2006 was $100, the top five percent of income earners paid $65 of it.  Is that fair?

Who cares about fair.  Life is not fair.  Rich people know that the world depends on them and that they pay more than anyone else for the same use of public facilities - i.e. he paid for the potty you use in the park and it's the exact same one he has to use.  We don't go around carving out special districts where rich people have special rights because they pay the bulk of the taxes, which pay for all improvements for everyone.

What would happen if we tax  people by improvement in their geographical location?  For example, instead of going to a city wide tax base to build a park in Segundo, they simply assessed the residents in that neighborhood for the park.  I wonder how one of the poorest zip codes in the entire nation would react to that?  Meanwhile the rich people on the west side would simply pay for the improvements in their zip code.  I wonder how quickly this town would fall apart if they didn't have access to the rich people's money.  How long would it take?

Attacking the rich only pushes them away.  You need them.  You need them to be rich.  They'll pay the bulk of the taxes up to a point. Once you cross the line, they'll leave.  They don't have to live here - you do.  If you want nice things, be nice to your rich people - they are the ones providing those nice things.  Welfare recipients are not paying for your shiny new courthouse and plush new parks. 

So go ahead, eat the rich.  I hope you can afford the toilet paper once they're gone. 

Why I Like This Fat Guy

Click HERE to read a blog entry about a self-admitted fat guy who can't buy two adjoining seats on Delta. 

While the story about Delta's stupid ticketing system and terribly customer service is interesting enough, the real story is the individual involved.

The guy is admittedly fat.  Airplanes are the antithesis of American's cultural expectation of personal space.  Most of us live in environments where our personally space is preserved in nearly all facets of our life.  Planes are obviously an exception to that rule. 

Our culture is one of space.  We like our space.  In fact, we like our space so much that we fence that space in to keep people out of our space.  An invasion of our personal space is no different than trespassing on our real estate space. 

Traveling on an airplane really makes a lot of us uncomfortable. I think half the time my wife asks me to travel with her is because she doesn't want to sit next to two people she doesn't know.  I could care less about crashing, it's the smelly, talkative, crazy, annoying person who may take the seat next to you that really scares you. 

So here's a fat guy who knows he's an annoyance because he takes up too much room for one seat.  He's trying to remedy the situation by buying two seats.  He's being responsible for his actions.  In this case his action was eating too damn munch and thus exceeding the limits of space provided for on airplanes.

Kudos to this guy.  Instead of doing what many Americans do today, which is blame others for everything, he takes responsibility for himself and tries to keep his fellow American's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness intact.

He could have complained that the airline has an unrealistic expectation of the size of travelers forcing him to make others uncomfortable.  He could blame the FAA for not requiring airlines to provide some kind of handicapped or special seating for special passengers.  After all, many millions of Americans are considered "obese" to "morbidly obese" and there should be some expectation that since we make provisions on planes for people who don't speak English, we should be doing something for the fatties too.  But no - this guy owns his responsibility.

What a hero.  He shouldn't be a hero, but in today's society he's a hero for merely trying not to be the victim.  It's refreshing that this guy understands that he has every right to be fat and that you have every right to be insulated from the problems that come along with him being fat - even if that means he shells out twice the dough for a plane ride than the average guy.

In a time when many in our country are screaming for everyone to make exception for them, here's a guy making an exception for us.  Understanding he's a burden, he's doing something about it.  Now if we could only get the freeloading drug addicts on welfare to do the same thing, we'd have a good start.

Chavez Accomplishes One Thing This Session - For Herself

The nearly illiterate, toddler brained representative from the part of town where they just can't get a break graduated from the University of Texas.  The good news is that Norma Chavez got a break.  A break of more than $119,000 in tax payer money to go to college. 

Not four years of college.  No, just 36 credit hours worth (12 total classes).  Can you imagine how much she would have ripped us off for if had been a four year degree?  That was $9,916 she stole from taxpayers for each hour.  Say the average degree plan is around 125 hours... We're talking $1,239,500 to get her through college.   Has she secured any money for young persons in her district to attend school out of town?  NO!

There are serious questions as to where she lives and represents and how she got her degree from a school hundreds of miles away.  Could she not get into UTEP?  How can she say she supports UTEP, but when given the opportunity she wouldn't even attend the school.  On top of that, she could have saved taxpayers thousands of dollars while learning a little bit about the SCHOOL SHE'S SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT AT THE STATE LEVEL!  What do you think other legislators say when she asks for support of UTEP, but goes out of her way to avoid the institution?

Remember - she blocked nearly every single bill put up by other El Paso representatives.  She even declared her own bill supporting the Tigua's gambling dead before anyone else in the entire state legislature.  Opponents of the bill were shocked at her declaration, to say the least.  Did she try to kill it on purpose?  We know she took money from an Oklahoma tribe against Tigua and any other kind of Texas gambling.  Maybe carrying the bill any further would have made it too tough to attend classes.

You paid her to destroy our legislation and go to school.  She accomplished one thing this session and it only benefited her.

How many of you had to take student loans to finish school?  How many of you left your family a few nights a week to attend night classes in order to get your degree?  How many of you are still paying?

My wife finally pays off her college loan this July.  She graduated in 2000 from the University of Texas.  She worked retail, at the capital, for lawyers, at restaurants to get through college. I bet many of you did that as well.  I know UTEP is full of students with that story.  It's a slap in the face that Chavez took your tax dollars and waltzed off to Austin to get a degree... in government of all things.

No person in El Paso is getting more than $9,000 and hour from taxpayers to attend college.  She shouldn't either.  Especially when she can not complete the job she was actually sent to Austin to do.

At the least we should hold a public hearing on this.  She needs to be hit with an ethics violation - misuse of taxpayer dollars. 

Do not ever come to me with a complaint about "public corruption" or EPISD's gross fleecing of the local taxpayer if you think what Chavez did was okay.  You're a criminal in heart and mind if you think what Chavez did was okay.  You need to reassess your values and wire your head to your ass and get on the right side of the moral and ethical line if you think Chavez did anything but take our taxpayer money for her own enrichment.

It's bad enough we send them up there for a 100 plus day beer bust on our dime.  Now we're educating them too.

Chavez has designs on a run for congress.  I guess she's looking to get her graduate degree at either Georgetown, American University or George Washington.  If you think sending her to school in Austin was expensive, wait until you get the bill for her Washington education.  Let's hope taxpayers remember this little incident come election time.