Senator Shapleigh took offense to Ben Wright's recent column in Newspaper Tree telling the story of the recent session of the Texas legislature as it pertains to the El Paso delegation. He doesn't read my stuff anymore, so he doesn't respond to it.
Newspaper Tree graciously posted Shapleigh response. They are pretty good about doing that. I think it's a good measure to let any, or all, of the delegation respond to the reports printed on them in Newspaper Tree.
If you have a couple of hours to spend staring at your computer screen, I invite you to read Senator Shapleigh's response HERE.
He calls it a "Roadmap for Change." It looks like "change" is still the popular message out there. However, the response is hardly a road map for anything other than the land of excuses and credit taking.
If you read through it, you'll find that Shapleigh pretty much takes credit for having the ideas that other people used to pass legislation that may, or may not, have anything to do with El Paso. He very well may have. Ben Wright does point this out in his piece when he opens his section on Shapleigh with this:
Many of Shapleigh’s press releases follow the same pattern. They announce that a certain lawmaker has passed a certain bill on a subject that the El Paso senator feels strongly about. They go on to say something like Shapleigh filed "nearly identical legislation” to the bill that passed, or that the other member’s bill used a “concept (that) was originally introduced”through legislation filed by Shapleigh.
It's a great strategy for a guy who does not get a lot of things done. Remember, he's a Democrat in a Republican run state. He's also a bomb thrower and generally annoys his colleagues to the point that they don't care to help him out much. When he doesn't get help, we don't get help.
The good news for Senator Shapleigh is that when he does write the long missives explaining his side of the issue, nobody follows up. The media isn't going to go see if all the bills he claimed "passed" were actually signed by the governor. Many times when a politician claims that he or she "passed a bill," they are only talking about a vote in their respective chamber and not situation where the bill becomes a law. Basically they can take credit for having a bill pass in the Senate even though it's not even taken up in the house and nowhere near being a law.
It is not uncommon for one house to help a follow colleague out by passing a bill that has zero chance of becoming a law. That politician who "passed" that bill can tell his constituents that did in fact "pass the dog catchers relief act bill of 2009" like he promised. It's a play on words and the naivete of the the sleeping public.
Senator Shapleigh response, if read carefully, is full of "they did it, but I thought of it," references. It's also full examples of bills that did get signed that resemble some of the legislative initiatives we need for El Paso, but aren't for El Paso. Just go check out his list of successes and try to put anything in the category of "this is for El Paso." Basically he's saying that you sent him to the store for ice cream and he's returned saying that he went to the store and helped someone else get ice cream. Somebody got ice cream... it wasn't you, but he'd hope you're happy with the result that part of your wish was granted.
It's all a ploy to keep his inability work with others and his extreme megalomania out of the spotlight. The ploy is simple and it's one of the first lessons of effective lying. Make sure that your lie is so long and so complicated that a person would rather just leave it alone rather than dig through it. Shapleigh's submission is 2,864 words long. Considering Ben Wright put 5,448 to paper when talking about each person in the delegation, that's a lot of words about just one guy. Your confusion is needed in reading Shapleigh's piece. The truth would be simple and very short. Remember, cops are trained to spot people hiding things and one thing they are taught is that the longer more complicated a story gets, the more likely that person is hiding something.
The fix is in. We're not going to disect Shapleigh's claims. You don't have the time and the rest of El Paso simply doesn't give a shit. His CHIPs platform is a political ploy. Sick kids tug on heart strings. Shapleigh's going to save your kid's life with CHIPs!
In reality? It's a crappy program that has shuffled truly sick kids around the system and they end up dead of an infected tooth (for some reason he uses that case for the CHIPs argument when it was clear that the government health program let the kid die). What parent wouldn't vote for him? Your kid will never die if you elect him!!!! He's outlawing sickness and death by expanding a CHIP program that is technically over-funded. Yes that's right, they have room for 500,000 more kids! They are begging people to sign up for the program on radio, TV and in print.
I digress.
The fact is that Ben did a decent job explaining their failures. He did it in a very SitoNegronesque way. Sito never comes right out and says "that person didn't do shit and here's why." If he says a bad thing, he has to put some defense for his subject as well. It's called journalism and it's a really bad way to inform the public on just what is going on politically in America and in our state.
The bottom line is that Shapleigh threw a response full of so much crap that you'll just take it as the truth, call him a hero and move on. The truth? We got nothing... again. We've been losers in the game of legislation for so long, we don't remember what it's like to win.
Other parts of Texas are literally counting the millions of dollars of improvements their delegation brought back home this session. Anything less would result in an opponent in the next election. That will not happen here. Our population is asleep in the back of the truck as our delegation speeds directly toward a brick wall - we'll be dead and never have felt a thing. How nice.
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