Refuse the Juice

The Constant Bitching - El Paso's Own Theme Music

I'm a huge fan of a new commenter on this blog.  He or she calls themself "voiceofdoom."  Recently voiceofdoom pointed out that he or she heard some bitching on the radio and it reminded me of when I had tuned into the local talk and heard some bitching as well.  It's a major problem here and the precise reason many people don't want to get involved in politics.  Let's review.

voiceofdoom was specifically talking about the zoo fees and how people were calling into a show to bitch that they were going up.  His or her point was that most of those people don't visit the zoo, so what's the point in bitching about it?  Exactly.  That old sayings ending in "the price of tea in China" applies here.

Nobody uses the zoo therefore they have to charge more per person to keep it funded.  It's a simple concept, but it brings out the bitchers and complainers.

Those same bitchers and complainers failed to wake up and realize that impact fees are going to drive up their taxes by increasing the values of all new homes in El Paso.  Of course, that in turn drives up the price of all existing homes.  Buy hey, they really showed those homebuilders and developers, right?  Nope - they increased their own taxes.

Speaking of home prices... I tuned into Strelzin the other day to see if he was going to continue to hang himself with his own words.  To my surprise he had the lady on from the CAD.  Guess what happened?  The 15 morons he counts has listeners each called in with their own little sad tale of how their house or their neighbor's house went from being valued at $1,000 to $3 million in just one year.  Half were making the shit up as they went along.

I exaggerated the numbers, but one guy in particular was a real estate appraiser and talking about houses in a neighborhood near where I live.  The increase in value of his neighbor's house that he was bitching about was exactly in line with ever single house I looked at in that neighborhood when my wife and I were searching for our home. 

These assholes whine and complain that their house isn't worth that much and it's highway robbery to increase the price of their home.  If they had to sell their house tomorrow they'd have it listed for higher than what the CAD listed - I guarantee that on my grandfather's chat covered grave. 

For literally 20 years nobody's appraisal moved an inch.  The local leaders at the time were not tax happy fools and owned significant acreage of their own they wanted to protect.  Sometime in the last six years that all changed and it was time to match the property values to today's reality.  I know for a fact that people paying $350,000+ for homes on Broadmoor (Coronado Country Club) had their houses on the tax rolls for $125,000 in 2004.   There are still folks they haven't gotten to.  

If you don't want your property values to go up, make sure your neighbors don't put their house on the market for more than your house is currently appraised at.  The more they ask, the more you pay.  You yourself should ask next to nothing for your home when selling it if you are really really really worried about appraised values. 

The problem with El Paso is that we bitch about high taxes, but then we want the government to provide everything.  The upcoming budget session is a perfect example of the bullshit that goes on in this city.  I'm going to call Emma Acosta and Susie Byrd to the carpet on this one.

Every single time they do a budget the city staff recommends they cut some senior center services.  Acosta and Byrd will hear nothing of it.  Basically the senior centers get used as free daycare for old folks when there is already federal dollars set aside for them to go to an actual adult daycare.  Instead, we pay for these people twice to have daycare services.  We pay through the nose for services at our senior centers that no senior center in the country would offer - they would tell you to put your grandma in a nursing home rather that provide the enormously expensive services we provide.  The old people have taken advantage of the system and your tax dollars have to cover it twice - once locally and once federally.  

As the budget process goes along you'll notice that Acosta is a total bitch about the process.  She worked for the city for 30 years and allegedly helped many a person defraud the city out of millions.  A little research on Hector Villa will show just how bad she was.  Acosta hates city staff and is jealous of them and decides to give them a bunch of shit during the budget process to throw her circus midget weight around.  

This costs you money.

If you want to complain about high taxes, then you need to stop voting for democrats.  I have some very good friends that are democrats, but they will solve all your problems by spending your money and it's wrong.

If you don't want appraisals, fees etc. to go up, start doing something different than you are doing or stop complaining.

All we do here is complain.

The bridges are too slow

The bridges are too expensive

The bridges are in my backyard

The traffic is terrible - do something about it

Don't do anything to the roads - it's too expensive

We need more police!

The police are out of control!

No fireworks!

You have to let the kids have fireworks!

We need better neighborhoods!

Don't tell me how to live in my neighborhood!

Ft. Bliss sucks!

We need more troops!

We need a top notch university

We can't pay that much for a top notch university!

We need parks

Why the hell are we spending so much on parks?

stop the flooding!

Stop charging me for stopping the flooding!

I think you get the point.  You can't have it both ways.  Anything you ask of the government costs you money.  If you don't want higher taxes, stop asking for more stuff. 

Oh yeah - and just get rid of EPISD because they're don't care what you want, they just spend like drunken fools.

Planned Parenthood Went Bye Bye In El Paso

It seems not even Obama's huge nonprofit give away in the stimulus could save El Paso's Planned Parenthood offices.  It looks like some private money could have helped.

Here's the problem - liberals love Planned Parenthood.  Liberals don't give money to charity in any sizable amounts.  Don't believe me?  Take a look HERE.

Democrats tend to rely on the government to fund their nonprofits making them victims of political wrangling.  Republicans give generously out of their own income to their favorite charities and they survive.  Look behind some of the most successful charities in El Paso and you'll find they are all funded by those Republican assholes in town we love to hate.  

If you're a love of Planned Parenthood you need to be asking why your representatives didn't step in an kick-start a fundraising effort for the program.  That's going to be the premise of my next big article I think.

A Quick Word on "Smart Growth"

The EP Times did a fluffy story on EPISD's effort to practice "smart growth" when building their future un-needed schools funded by your tax dollars.

The article cheerily describes how EPISD officials are finally talking with city officials on how best to marry future growth with future un-needed schools.  What a concept - 20 years it took them to figure out that the city has all the information on approved future growth that they could have accessed and planned their un-needed schools around.  Oops.

It's all bullshit and nothing is going to change in the end, but it does make for some good press.

Now to "smart growth."

As some of you may know, I was a part of the government affairs team at the National Association of Realtors for a few years during my career in Washington, DC.  The Realtors have the highest grossing PAC for any non-union professional association in the country.  They bring in more than $4 million in PAC donations each year and usually have in the neighborhood of $15 million in political dollars on hand at any one time.  To say that they have influence is to understate their pull in Washington. 

Part of their government affairs duties for their members (Realtors) is to help them implement real estate policy from the national level down.  This function of their duties is where the idea of smart growth was born.

Let's pause of one second and realize that many groups of people claim to own the idea of smart growth and they all have different definitions of what they think it is.  Some think it's smarter urban sprawl, while others swear it's urban infill.  Still others claim it's no growth at all.

Smart growth is a term that was gobbled up by modern snake oil salesmen who prey on city governments looking for some kind of "consultant" to solve all their problems.  I equate their work to the spanking Dick Florida gave us with his "creative cities" bullshit.

Back to the Realtors...

Realtors in the mid-south and in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore and several cities in north New Jersey were having a peculiar problem.  A lot of these east coast cities had stop growing.  There simply wasn't any room to build new houses.  That's bad news for Realtors who need people to be buying and selling their homes.  New development always affords them new clients because as new neighborhoods are built, the people in the old neighborhoods move to them, which leads to people moving into the house vacated by those moving out to the new neighborhoods.  This worked well for years.

When everything was built out people stopped looking to move within their city.  With nothing new on the market they weren't interested in trading their used property for someone else's used property.  Realtors needed to find a way to get people to move around in the "land locked" communities.  Thank God for them that the Realtors had among their staff and members some very good smoke and mirrors sales people and idea people.

Lots of the "land locked" cities in the region were very old.  They featured old brownstone homes that were three stories tall and the first single family home that was responsible with its overall footprint.  Built over a 100 years ago, their design still holds today as a very good way to give people a quality living space in a small area. 

These areas were generally worn out and worn down.  The Realtors devised a plan that helped their real estate brokers all the way down to their individual agents.  They figured they could come up with a scheme to get cities to either give them that property flat out, or at least put up some money to make the spaces livable and marketable.  They did it under the guise of bringing communities closer together and revive the spirit of downtown USA.  Sound familiar?

They created a whole department at NAR and my buddy was the second in command.  They presented all over the nation telling town councils and aldermen that if they would submit to a smart growth plan, they'd revitalize their community as a whole.  At the time they were flashing pictures of the more vibrant parts of northern Virginia where necessity, not planning, stacked people and business on top of each other for what seemed like the perfect community that you'd never have to leave to get what you needed in life. New York City was shown as the ultimate smart growth success, which was brilliant because nobody would argue against having their own little New York City in their hometown. 

It was all a sham.  The big brokers weren't just running a bunch of real estate agents, they were buying real property at this time like gang busters.  These communities that were tricked into adopting smart growth plans gave them extremely low interest loans to buy up the inner city and either subdivide the apartments or knock them down and build mixed use mid-rises.  The taxpayers were put on the hook for all of this development and eminent domain was used extensively - the worst kind of eminent domain, by the way.  The type of eminent domain where they take your land and give it to another private entity so they can turn a profit on it. 

Let's not forget that the cities were promised that the taxable value of these buildings was going to be huge.  Town councils were licking their chops at the thought of their own little Greenwich Village coupled with millions in increased tax receipts.

The Realtors now had the new development they needed to get people moving again.  Brownstones that were subdivided to make them into quadplexes now afforded Realtors four closings instead of one.  The brokers who bought up the land with taxpayer dollars and developed mixed use buildings sold their interests to real estate trusts eager to tap back into new urban markets. 

The buzz term "smart growth" took off and overnight there were hundreds, if not thousands, of "experts" on the subject.  Most of the initial movement centered around stacking as many people and businesses into a small space as possible.  We had made fun of the Japanese for living in closet sized apartments in high rises where they worked, shopped and never had to leave the building.  Somehow this whole movement ended up making us the butt of the joke.

Needless to say, by 2004 the fecal matter had hit the oscillating cooling device.  The annual real estate conference in Orlando was packed with smart growth consultants trying to sell their services to the very group that invented the concept.  Most of these "consultants" were not educated, licensed or trained in any formal way. They knew a little bit about zoning and a lot about stacking people.  There needed to be a come to Jesus meeting on smart growth.

The Realtors had to have a meeting to decide what smart growth would actually be.  Nobody could agree and the industry is now unregulated and undefined.  Any Tom, Dick or Harry with a laptop and a projector can be a smart growth consultant - no credentials needed.

Even worse is the fact that nobody realized that there were statistics about population densities and the correlation between crime, health issues and infrastructure issues.   Seems like sociologists, land planners, engineers, law enforcement and a myriad of other groups knew that stacking people like sardines wasn't a good idea for many different reasons.  "Smart growth" became a buzz term no one on the eastern seaboard ever wanted to hear again.

You see, when the real estate market died it hit the east and west coast first and it hit them extremely hard.  Those lovely buildings with  the condos on top and the starbucks on bottom stand half empty and are now catering to section 8 qualifiers.  The cities are on the hook for the unpaid loans and are using taxpayer monies to battle the lawsuits brought by the landowners who had their land taken from them using eminent domain. 

The real estate agents went by the wayside as the housing market and economy dipped.  The poor folk are now moving back downtown where they used to live, only with better digs that they had before. 

It should be noted that places like Washington, DC and Arlington, VA are still doing well.  They are flush with very highly educated and paid people who insulate them from the realities other cities face.  However, the poor in those cities are being forced to move further and further out of the city.  Further away from jobs, schools and opportunity. 

Some leaders in our city are screaming for smart growth and I wonder if they know exactly what they are getting into.  El Paso's current "walkable" communities are very poor and crime ridden.  Why would we be trying to copy that pattern to other parts of town?

I think we need to lose the term "smart growth" and talk about the responsible development of land and property rights. 

Some People Never Learn

So I hear that when Strelzin heard that I may run for office that he proudly announced that he had "pictures" of me he'd share if I ran.  Can anyone say "blackmail?" 

What is this guy thinking when he's threatening someone with pictures over the airwaves in attempt to keep that person from seeking office?  Seriously, does this guy not know a lawyer who could advise him when he's breaking the law?  I'm sure he could have run it by the station's attorney's and they would have told him two things:

1. What he's doing sets him up for a criminal complaint

2. It puts a civil lawsuit burden on him and THE STATION

I know he doesn't want to get arrested and I'm very sure that KHRO's management is very worried about lawsuits.   Is he trying to get himself thrown off the air and straight into jail?

Do you see how people like Strelzin try to keep this town from having political discourse?  They try to threaten people in order to keep control because they have corrupt deals going that they can't afford to have canceled.  Strelzin and his type are the exact reason we have an FBI investigation going on.

I encourage him to publish the pictures of me that he has .  I'm sure they aren't as bad as the attempted transvestite scandal somebody tried to cook up against me or the gay.com profiles people tried to open in my name.  I would surely welcome him to publish what he has so we can expose him for what he is - a crooked piece of shit.

I know he reads this blog daily and I hope does the right thing before the DA is forced to grab the taped show from the station and take the proper action.  And yes, they have every single show on tape no matter what they say or what they claim.

As for Norma not calling me out by name and saying I wouldn't confront her face to face - anytime she wants to sit down and get a lesson on how government works, I'm willing to teach. 

I just can't believe that we run this town through fear and intimidation... how sad.

Reactionary Politics and the Bridge

My buddy Jaime Abeytia penned his latest "Lion's Den" article on www.Newspapertree.com and tackled the recent fight over the study on a new port of entry in the Lower Valley.

I'd like to first say....

Jaime doesn't like Steve Ortega at all and stomps on him unfairly in the piece.  A guy like Jaime sees Ortega as an "uppity Mexican" who is trying to be white.  He thinks Ortega is a sell out.  I think Ortega is just trying to be Ortega and is popular in his district.  Ortega is great about meeting with constituents and at least shows up when asked to. 

That is in direct contrast with Jaime's hero, Norma Chavez who refuses to meet with constituents and refuses to show up to anything she doesn't control.  More on that in a minute.

I wrote the above because I think NPT is letting Jaime take out some anger on his enemies while running cover for his buddies like Norma Chavez.  Although he claims to have been hard on her, he's hardly been that at all.  He needs to see what the EP Times and I have written to get the definition of "hard on her."  She's an unintelligent toddler who is screwing her district and the rest of El Paso.  Jaime needs to realize that that's how you are hard on someone.  You do not follow up a light punch to the gut with a back rub and a foot massage i.e. his penchant for always giving her compliments after a little tiny bit of criticism.

Back to the bridge...

Here's the funny thing about the bridge - at least in my mind.  It wasn't long ago that all the local politicos were screaming for the border fence to be stopped.  They had their reasons for hating the fence and they varied from moronic to stupid.  Senator Shapleigh went as far as to claim that the border fence would hurt commerce between the two countries, which was odd because the only commerce conducted by illegally crossing the border is drug trafficking and human trafficking.  I guess Shapleigh felt those two activities were vital to the bi-national economy.

The crux of the issue for Chavez, Ortega, Byrd, Holguin and all the others was that we should have open borders with Mexico. We should have more travel between the two cities.  Faster access to Mexico and America via unregulated travel between the two cities.  Unfortunately for them the cartels started killing people like it was a sport and public opinion on the fence quickly changed.  No longer were the local politicos willing say a damn word about the only thing between us and a bunch of blood thirsty cartel henchmen.  Sometimes it's politically expedient to shut up.

When the idea of studying a new port of entry in the valley came up it was interesting to me to see which politicos were going to stick with their "open borders" mantra.  Remember, a port of entry is a sign of love for our southern neighbors.  So who stayed on the ball?

Well it seems that nobody is actually saying, "screw you citizens we're putting it in your back yard and you're just going to have deal with it because we want open borders with Mexico."  However, some people are taking the fact that a study is being done as a sign that city council doesn't care and is going to build the bridge.  The one thing they don't understand is that the feasibility study is the one thing most likely to prove their point about traffic in their neighborhood and stop any future plans for a border crossing there.

Politicos like Ortega and O'Rourke are trying to let the process work, while others are just playing the reactionary role handed to them by the crowd.  Norma Chavez, who has zero power over this, gets in front of her constituents and sees they want to bitch and complain and gets on board - she reacts to a mob mentality instead of being an idea person.  If the mob was screaming for the eating of children under ten, she's be all for it.  If the mob wanted to burn her house down with her in it, she'd be all for it.  She, like other politicos will sell their right moves for the wrong moves as long as the angry mob is behind them.  Popularity is very important!

Yes they booed Steve Ortega at that meeting.  Of course they did, the Lower Valley always has some bat shit crazy rumors going around and guys like Steve Ortega aren't going to pretend they don't know the truth just to fit in.  Norma and Holguin will.  They know that no school or any other place was going to be demolished.  Do you know why?  I do - there are no plans!  Not one document saying "here's exactly what is going to happen."  If they approved the idea tomorrow, it would be five years before there would even be a set of plans for construction created!  There is zero basis for anyone's fears.

The valley loves drama and they have plenty of rumor mongers down there that start bullshit stories in order to scare the hell out of people.  Those people turn themselves into a mob and some politicos feed off of it.  It's intellectually dishonest for the politicos to have fake outrage over something that doesn't exist in order to gain popularity. It's actually dishonest period.

I'm not saying I'm pro-bridge at all.  I don't think we should be building any bridges to Mexico until they pay for at least half. 

The bridge on the west side will happen at the ASARCO site.  It's a done deal and it's been in the works for years.  Once they get the land (by stealing it basically) it will go through the process and be a port of entry. 

This is not a Chicano vs. Whitey issue as Jaime would have you believe.  Not everything comes down to race.  This is a misinformation campaign started by folks like Norma Chavez who are looking to gain some sorely needed popularity.  Her buddies invented the rumors about the bridge and she conveniently came to the rescue of her people.  She's not actually doing anything at all, other than promoting herself after she failed miserably in the last session. 

I love politics.