Over the Weekend...

Here's round up of everything I noticed over the weekend.

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I received a picture of Congressman Reyes' billboard on the westside... very strong.  Very good start and I can't say enough about how good Morris Pittle is at that kind of advertising.  Pittle is a brand guy mixed with several other things, but always superior at branding people and products.  Pittle can make anyone or anything look cool.  As a candidate you want to stand out and I can tell you that nobody in any race in El Paso looks anything like what Pittle created.

I can't reiterate enough that O'Rourke should have paid Pittle to sit this one out... Actually he should have hired Pittle in the first place because he brought him to the dance before and he did it rather well.  

I know everybody wants to throw the "Forma" group out there like they're Karl Rove's second coming, but they're not.  They won two races last cycle - one was Nyland who beat a bunch of candidates with no money and no hope.  They stepped in for Lilly for the run-off, but then again she beat a woman who owes a quarter of a million dollars in taxes among other things.  It's not like they engineered victories over insurmountable odds. 

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Speaking of O'Rourke - did he really write a book on legalizing marijuana? 

At least he sticks with what he believes in and doesn't back away from an issue because it's unpopular.

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Sito Negron got some space in the El Paso Times this weekend.  You can read it HERE.

He talks about the lady written in the paper earlier in the week for having a sign saying that black children would be able to "trick or treat" at her place. 

I think Sito was particularly better at picking out the problems with the coverage than I was.  It's a good read and I have to congratulate the EP Times for running it even though it takes them task.  It was better than a small apology in the last section on a Monday morning.

I think that some stories draw in reporters and whole newsrooms and they don't stop to look at what they are doing from the outside.  Having worked in that environment, I can tell you it's very easy to get way too far down the tunnel and not realize it. 

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Joe Muench continues to be the guy that people love to hate with his column this week.  I tend to love him and his humor.  I do disagree sometimes, but it's nothing major.  This week I thought he was a little off on one subject.

You can read his piece HERE.

He starts out on the ASARCO stack, which is pertinent.  If anyone in the media really knew the background behind all of the whole ASARCO fight, it would be a bigger story and a funnier one too.  Well, funny if you're me.  Some of you might be flat out terrified if you knew the truth, though.

Muench does move on to the recall of the Mayor.  He suggests that the mayor and his fellow recalled council members should invoke "the real reason" why the overturned the "will of the people" and that's the retirees that would have lost their benefits due to the vote. 

He writes:

"But the wording on the ballot was judged -- by a judge -- to also knock off many, many more people who had already been receiving benefits. Retirees and such."

That's not exactly what happened.  The judge gave his opinion that city attorneys could have interpreted the wording of the ordinance to mean "retirees and such" if they wanted do - which they did.  They could have also interpreted the language to only mean lawfully married individuals who work for the city if they wanted to - they didn't want to. 

You see, the persons acting as the "deciders" of what the ballot language meant are the city attorney and his staff.  He decided to interpret the ordinance to include retirees and others.  He could have easily interpreted it to mean a million other things, including seeing the language as completely meaningless given vagueness of the language and lack of official definitions for terms like "family values."  It was within the city attorney's power to basically disregard the entire ordinance due to its lack of clarity!

AGAIN - The judge didn't put definitions to the language - he just ruled that the city attorney had the power to interpret the meaning of the ordinance.  There's a very big difference between what Muench claims happened and what actually happened. 

The bottom line is that the city could have fixed this problem, but decided to throw retirees under the bus to make a statement about gay rights.  Do you remember what they originally said about the ordinance?  That "thousands" of people would be thrown off of city benefits.  When it came down to it, it was all of sudden hundreds because the city attorney re-interpreted the meaning to exclude all of those retirees and only included current employees working in certain circumstances for different agencies.  You were never told the inside story - I was. 

The inside story was the the retirees could have sued the pants off of the city for their ridiculous interpretation of the ordinance.  A judge would have found that the city went out of their way to throw retirees into the mess when it was clear they didn't have to.  I know we all still say "but but the retirees," but they were off of the table and the affected group was pretty much only current employees in the end. That's the story you aren't hearing.

This is an emotionally charged issue, which means one thing - lots of lies get thrown around because people who are normally quite rational become irrational when their feelings get in the way. 

And let's be honest - Ortega and Byrd didn't vote the way they did to protect "retirees" they voted for gay benefits.  The Mayor was simply trying to trade his vote on the matter for consideration on a charter amendment to take away term limits for the mayor so he could be mayor for life.  There's no defending their move as something done "for" retirees.

Besides, city council members knew from day one they could amend the ordinance or ignore it, so the retirees were never in trouble.  They pushed the thing all the way to court when they could have ignored the ordinance (amend it - rewrite it, vote it down - use it for wall coverings) and moved on. 

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 Norma Chavez may be running for El Paso County Deomcrat chair.... oh my God I may have to move back to El Paso just to watch this!

Please vote her in!  Please, please, please, please!  There won't be one democrat left in the county after she's done!

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Poor Dee Margo is going to suffer the straight ticket vote machine again.  He did a pretty damn good job his freshman year and scored a coveted committee assignment.  Too bad he drew a democrat opponent. 

Joe Moody is already coming out swinging with a very aggressive announcement. You can read it HERE on Jaime's blog.

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That's all

Comments

[Texaswoman]

Sorry but you cannot amend an ordinance brought by initiative petition. In such a case you have only 2 options here. One is to let it stand and the other is to delete it. The City has no authority to change the language of a ballot initiative.

[WAYtooSMARTforTHIScrowd]

Look out everybody, the elderly child known as moody Joe is back on the warpath. You'd think (and pray) that moody Joe would learn a much long overdue lesson in humility but NOOO. It is required reading to read his email, which includes such gems as: "Margo voted to hammer EP's public schools and economy!"

I like the fact that he put an exclamation point to emphasize the severity of the situation! Truth is episd is spending $7200 per child which doesn't exactly sound like the kiddies are being 'hammered.' Moody Joe then gripes about Margo failing to try to bring a 3rd med school and then mentions that he (moody Joe) 'worked' to bring funding to the med school.

Uhm, what's the difference between 'trying' and 'working' at something? Moody Joe then states that, "We're going to get EP back on track!" Two exclamation points in one email? Heavy. When in the hell has this town ever been on track? But don't get me wrong, I'm glad that moody Joe is running because free comedy is always a good thing.

[ElPasoan]

You don't live here in El Paso anymore, so when will you stop talking about the people here?