Refuse the Juice

How Reyes Lost - The High Points

Reyes is out and O'Rourke is in.  We're going to dwell on this for about another 15 minutes and then we're going to move on.  The formula for beating the old guard has been in place since 2004.  To see another one fall to a Shapleigh Camper is no surprise at all.  It's actually par for the course.

The Republican crossover votes added with about a thousand or so new voters is what put O'Rourke over the top (we're going to call him "Beto" from now on because it's easier to type).  If you do the math using the El Paso Times' article over the weekend it pretty much works out that way.  I'm sure someone out there will crunch the voter lists next week and find that there were roughly 2,500 crossover voters and around 800 to 1000 new voters - or people who only vote every four years. 

There are several reasons to crossover and we can get into those later, but in the end it was the difference no matter what their aim was. 

The major problem Reyes had was that he was facing what the Clinton's faced in 2008 - party fatigue.  People were tired of his machine.  More pointedly - they were tired of his unofficial enforcers running over everyone in the party.  Most of you know exactly who I'm talking about and exactly what kinds of behavior I'm talking about.  These enforcers worked without the direct knowledge of the congressman even though they used their connection to him to get what they wanted.  I think if Reyes knew everything that was going on using his status as the whip, he'd be disgusted. 

Did Congressman Reyes know anything about the Aliviane contract? NOPE.  Did his staff, friends and family know?  YEP.  Was his status used to get this thing done without his knowledge or consent? YEP.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  How many people were told not to run for office or not to support the candidate of their choice in a democratic primary?  How many people were told to "sit down and shut up" by his enforcers over the years?  From what I hear - enough people to deliver the primary election to another democrat. 

Those Republican crossovers and new voters don't mean a thing if you have the support of you local party's core.  Obviously Reyes lost a lot of that support and people who supported him the past decided to go another direction.  Maybe they just wanted to see what life would be like under someone else's thumb.  After all, who ever holds the congressional seat, runs the party. 

Reyes didn't help himself by not publicly decrying Gandara's indictment for drug trafficking.  Lots of voters noticed he didn't want to run to the podium to call the guy a scumbag, which is what he should have done.  Reyes lost votes among those who had hoped the Gandara's charm had finally completely disappeared and that he would be the person to confirm it. 

Also not helping was Norma Chavez's involvement on his behalf.  Everything she touches turns to shit.  Many people in the party were unsure of which way to go when Beto first go in the race.  When Norma chose a side and decided to treat it with her special brand of nastiness, she sent all the party undecideds to Beto's camp.  I can't tell you how many people I received emails from saying they made their decision to volunteer or vote for Beto based on Norma's decision to get involved.  The name calling and generally offensive angry outbursts by Norma directed to anyone not on her team solidified their decision.  Getting rid of Reyes all of sudden became a way to finally get rid of Norma.

Norma wasn't the only nasty party insider whose ultimate demise was tied to the ousting of Reyes, but she was one of the big ones.   Reyes became a package deal that was too good not to vote against and it's his fault for not separating himself from those people. 

The final problem was simply time.  He'd been there a long time and it's bound to make voters antsy.  For years Reyes had no real contest and he got a little used to it and little soft.  Had Morris Pittle not been hired, Reyes would have just puttered along and lost by 25 points.  Even with Morris the "fire in the belly" didn't come through in many aspects of the campaign.  It's hard to get excited when for so many years it took literally nothing to keep you on top and I think that voters saw that.

Beto did a good job with the young folks.  They are a group first rallied by Jay Kleberg, then reinvigorated by Jody Casey with the "No Recall" effort and finally successful with Beto.  If I were Beto, I'd be calling both Casey and Kleberg to thank them for priming the pump with this group.  I'm sure he will. I predict this group isn't done deciding elections just yet.  Do watch them, they have finally proven that they will bite you.

The negative campaigning really didn't help or hurt anyone.  In El Paso negative campaigning is a sign of strength and it works very well.  Show me one good example of a race where negative campaigning took the clear winner out of contention. You can't.  In El Paso you people look up to the bully, not the scholar.  Your elections are a testament to that.  Reyes probably wouldn't have been within ten points if he didn't go negative.  He would have been seen as weak if he didn't. 

And those are the high points.  Gotta run.

Beto Wins...

Early voting pretty much sums it up.   Having been there before with my name on the ballot, it only gets worse when they count the "day of" votes.

I have lots to say about this now.  I have stayed out of the race for a number of reasons - the biggest being that I wanted Beto to win and I didn't want my support to push voters away from him.  Having David K endorse you is nothing short of getting of the nod from the beelzebub himself. 

Second, I can't really piss off sitting members of congress doing what I do.  

Third, Morris Pittle didn't deserve to be treated the way he was treated.  I can't say enough how bad this whole thing is with O'Rourke not at least paying him to sit on the sidelines.  Reyes doesn't get 30 percent without Pittle.  

Big day for El Paso.  Big things are in your future.  Do not for a second think that O'Rourke will sit on the sidelines and be told what to do by either party.  He'll think for El Paso first and party third or fourth.  

Norma Chavez kills everything she touches...  Reyes should have shut her ass up from day one.  She caused him to lose more inner-party support than anyone else.  A wise man would have paid her to go pound sand far away from El Paso for a while. 

Of course, Reyes is surrounded by lots of people who use his name for nefarious purposes and that brought him down.  Silvestre Reyes is a good man.  The people around him - not so much.  This lesson is learned the hard way.  

Congrats Beto - you pulled it off.  

O'Rourke Wins

Saw the story this weekend about the increased turnout in early voting and that's always bad news for an incumbent.  The Republican crossover voters spell the end of Reyes' multi-decade run. 

Lot's of factors led to this race ending this way and I'll get into all of them late Tuesday night.  

I will say that without Morris Pittle the congressman would have been beaten by at least 30 points.  He reinvented the congressman in a way nobody could have.  His efforts have garnered the attention of national king makers.  Good for him. 

I thought this was an interesting flyer on the County Tax Assessor

Please click on the link for an interesting PDF.  Why the media hasn't even just asked a couple of these questions is a good question in-of-itself.   Asleep at the wheel?

Download Conflict_of_interest

El Paso Times quotes "experts" on primary battle - High School Students

Read the second installment of what I initially thought was a gimmicky report HERE.

The story here is that a high school civics class (at the best high school on the planet!) is doing a really neat project.  It's something the students will learn and be able to use in their future work lives.  Accurately forecasting the outcome of an event such as an election or IPO offering is a much sought after talent in the work world.  No doubt these young folks are getting  leg up on the competition with this project.

However...

No matter how scientific and well thought out their project is - it's not a bellwether for the country's 17th largest city's only newspaper to use for a hotly contested election.  A short conversation with any media professional not working at the El Paso Times will tell you that your credibility is second to no other factor in the news business and you don't want to leverage that on the backs of zit-faced teenagers.

Newspaper seeking to conduct exit polling contract with very serious and very experienced polling firms.  The time and effort needed for an accurate exit poll is tremendous.  The calculations behind the scenes are pretty extraordinary and account for a lot of factors the average Joe never thinks of.  It's not as simple as taking the first 490 who walk out of a polling place and splitting them up by age, sex, race and party affiliation.  It's a lot more like taking 2,000 of those people and whittling out the "outliers" and "anomalies" to get a solid 490. 

I'm not saying these kids won't be right on the money.  There's a statistical chance that could happen.  The race between O'Rourke and Reyes will be within 10 points or so.  You can make a claim that you were right if you're within five points here and professional polsters do it all the time when they're wrong. BUT... if you're a legitimate newspaper you don't stake your reputation on the work of high schoolers.  It's bad for so many reasons.

They could have had Reuel Group to do a more modern exit poll where they grab the lists of people who have already voted and call them.  Consultants who live and die by exit polls are finding this is the way to go with early voting for many reasons.  The first reason is that people are a tiny bit more honest when on the phone than in person.  Most people will lie to you either way when asked about a controversial political topic in order to sound like they're saying the right thing, but asking them over the phone seems to help them feel a little more comfortable telling the truth.

I don't want to bash the kids here because they are just doing what they are told.  The El Paso Times knows better.  Or... they don't and things are way worse over there than I could ever imagine. 

Like I said on my facebook comment to the  article - are they going to have a straw poll conducted in 5th grade class at Polk Elementary to decide who's going to win the Republican Senate primary?

Weirdest Things Happens...

My blog's back end functionality includes a pretty progressive traffic tracking system.  I know where people were before they arrived here.  This  is a great tool to have when trying to understand traffic patterns on your blog.  By paying close attention to this feature I have learned a lot of things - most of them I won't share with you since they are proprietary in nature.  However, one thing is not.

About once a month for the last two years I get a string of people visiting the blog from Google after doing a search for "Fernando Parra."  It's not one person doing it either, it's dozens. 

I wonder why his name comes up and why a group of different people decide to google him every 30 days or so. 

El Paso Times - Did they fire all the editors?

A headline caught my eye this morning:

Downtown El Paso's convention, arts centers face upgrades

I didn't know upgrades were such a bad thing.  Usually someone is facing a life sentence for a crime.  Or, they had to face adversity in order to achieve greatness. 

I guess what I'm saying here is that "face" usually proceeds something negative.  Upgrades to these buildings are a good thing.  It would be an okay use of "face" if it was followed by "defunding" or "rigirous inspections." 

And you really don't need the "downtown" part - there's only one convention and arts center in El Paso.  Pinpointing the location is something you do in the body of the article in this case. 

Should read:

El Paso's convention, arts centers to get upgrades

or

El Paso's convention, arts centers slated for upgrades

or

El Paso's convention, arts centers to receive upgrades

Anybody with any newspaper experience knows that the original headline doesn't work.  It's a mystery as to how it could slip by an editor.  Or, it's not a mystery and the editors aren't looking at anything these days before it goes to print. 

Brilliant but dirty knockout punch by Reyes

This whole bridge thing is 100 percent bullshit.  YISD's Superintendent just signed is his pink slip by bowing to political pressure from Reyes' sister-in-law to dredge up the long dismissed plan.  I guess it doesn't matter as long as Reyes wins, right?

I can tell you that the bridge process takes tenyears in the presidential permitting process (that's what has to happen to make a bridge happen - no way around it) and that's after it's been through all the local community steps, designed and then taken through the community process many more times.  Ask anybody in Sundland Park, New Mexico who isn't incarcerated at the moment about their failed bid for a bridge.  It takes a minimum of ten years and there is zero ambiguity as to what it is and where it's going. 

If there was a plan for a bridge in the near future there, there'd be all kinds of design documents to refer to.  Since the idea was abandoned with fervor years ago, there's nothing but a silly green line drawn on a map to show for the project now. 

I think it is awful that a politician would invent a problem in order to ram his opponent's head into it and then get back up from other officials down the line.  All of these people are implicit in a lie to the public.  It's bad news for freedom and honesty. 

Unfortunately for O'Rourke it's not something he can recover from now.  This is a word of mouth whisper campaign, not something that's going to be fought in the local newspaper.  The El Paso Times can whine all it wants, but the people in the Lower Valley aren't reading. 

You got to know the Democrats play dirty and you have to be ready if you want to beat them.

Norma's DWI story is back! Some changes - still not plausible

When Norma and friends aren't inventing plans for an international bridge (more on that in another post), they're trying to spread rumors about major police cover-ups involving all kinds of "high-level" people and elected folks.  Like the international bridge story - I think it's bullshit.  But I could be wrong.

First of all, we need to ask the general question - Could an elected official have been arrested for DWI and somehow escaped prosecution do to his or her connections?  It's completely possible.  However, it would not have happened at all the way Norma described it happening - IF it did in fact happen.  It's likely none of this is true and that Norma is just trying to get a whisper campaign started, but I'll tear apart her story just for the fun of it.  

From the first story to the second there are two major changes. 

1. The "city manager" was specifically mentioned in the first story and is not mentioned in the second.  The city manager has been replaced with "high ranking official at City Hall"  in the second story.

2. The scope of the conspiracy involved the city manager and a "high ranking police official" in the first telling of the story.  Now the story includes many more people and many more "high ranking police officials."

These two items by themselves cast serious doubt on the truth behind Norma's story. 

She indicates her sources are ranking police officials from two different command centers.  These cops would know the difference between City Manager Joyce Wilson and her Deputy City Manager of Health and Safety, David Almonte.  They don't just have different job titles and responsibilities, they're not even the same gender.  How does a person who supposedly witnessed this ordeal get that fact wrong? 

There are three other Deputy City Managers, but they would never be called on to tend to a jailed VIP.  I could see maybe where one would think Bill Studer would be rousted out of bed to tend to something like this because he at one time oversaw the Police Department, but it is not likely that would happen. There are clear divisions of responsibility at that level.  Even if one of the other deputies were to be called - you still have a situation where a misidentification took place because the three deputies look nothing like each other or Joyce Wilson. 

The fact that the details about the "the high ranking police official" get a little sharper with "almost retired Assistant Commander" in the second story doesn't help much.  Add that there are now two Sergeants from two different command centers involved and things get really fishy.  Add in a claim that an entire command center was shutdown... well that's just bullshit and we'll talk more about that in a minute.

Once you get past the cast of characters and the holes they put in the story, you have the general premise of the cover-up.  Norma says this "high profile" and later "high ranking" elected official was brought to jail and then given food and water by some form of a city manager and high ranking police official in order to help them pass a breathalyzer.  Oh - and to be sure that nobody would know what was happening - they sent all the cops home and closed the entire command center to pull this off (which causes more problems with her story that we'll get to in a minute).  That's how Norma tells the story...

We all know that Norma is pretty dumb and believes old wives' tails long proven to be garbage. We know this because she recites them as if they are scientific fact.  In this instance she claims a veteran police officer and high ranking city official thought that feeding a drunk politico would affect his blood alcohol level when monitored by a breathalyzer test. 

Any rookie cop and just about everyone else in the world knows that eating a cheeseburger and having ten cups of coffee isn't going to change your blood alcohol level after you're already drunk.  The time to eat is before your start drinking and that only helps you by slowing the rate in which your body absorbs the alcohol.  Read HERE to see the proof.  You can also google the question and get a million sites telling you the same thing - TIME, and time alone is the only thing that will lower your blood alcohol level.

To suggest a police officer, who knows the ins and outs of breathalyzers and the common myths about beating them, would engage in something silly as trying to feed someone sober, is ludicrous.  Norma's second story does include a new facet where the cop and the city official let the politico wait two hours along with feeding him.  I'm assuming her cop friends told her how stupid her first story sounded so she sweetened the deal with a two hour wait.  Even that is stupid because if the guy was drunk enough to be hauled in, it's likely he was well above .08 and if you read HERE, the math says it's going to take longer than that to pass the breathalyzer. 

However... All of that talk is just plain stupid.  The cops I know - after hearing this story and laughing hysterically - asked me why they would administer a breath test at all if they were trying to save this guy's ass?  "Favors" are done all the time for people and the machine just happens to break right when it's their turn to blow - that's if the cop doesn't just claim the guy refused to blow and moves on with his report.  

The blood draw option isn't always an option, by the way.  It's only used in certain cases for certain operations.  You can still refuse to blow in El Paso and you have a better than 50 percent chance they're not going to draw  your blood.  Your chances get worse around holidays and during specific DWI initiatives that are usually announced publicly.  You shouldn't be drinking and driving in the first place, so this shouldn't matter to you.

Bottom line - there would be no reason for this guy to blow if the cop in charge was trying to help him out.  At a minimum he would have been advised not to blow. And that's assuming if this did take place and the cop and the city official didn't have this guy phone his lawyer real quick to help him out. 

The bottom bottom line - if everyone was sent home except for the city official and the high ranking police official; who witnessed the breathalyzer test?  If you've ever had to submit to one after you've been taken to jail, you know that there's always a witness and he's almost always the guy who arrested you.  And if the politico did "blow" in front of the only two people in the station, who wrote up the report on his successful "blow" and subsequent release? Where is that report?  Why would anyone leave a paper trail if they wanted this incident to disappear?

Those are all questions my cop friends had.  They don't find any part of the sobering up and blowing story to be something a fellow officer at any level would participate in if their goal was to ensure no prosecution and no record of the incident.  They all told me the same thing "they would have got a hold of this guy's wife and sent him home without filing any paper work."

And that brings up another point.  If this guy was arrested (and we know it's a man because Norma uses the pronoun "he" repeatedly), there has to be a record somewhere showing that.  Even when he was pulled over his plate would have been "run" and that would be a matter of public record.  No doubt the check for warrants after seeing his driver's license would turn up another record of the stop.  Wouldn't Norma's sources have easy access to this information so she could back up her story? 

And what about the closing of the command center to shield the politico from bad publicity?  Norma includes a picture of the West Side Regional Command in her post that originates from the city's website HERE.  I'm going to assume she chose that picture on that page for a reason.  She does say "two SGTs know something," and then says one works downtown and the other at the West Side Regional Command.  If you clicked on the link above, you can see who runs the show at the West Side Regional Command - I guess one of those guys is a source and one of them is the high ranking police official who participated in the cover-up.  Why doesn't anyone call them and ask them about the story?

My sources say they would not close a command center for the reason given by Norma. They indicated that the closing of a command center would bring a lot of attention to the building because it would have to be announced through dispatch. Everybody would know that the place was closed and that they couldn't go back - which causes a lot of problems for cops who need to drop off cars, pick up their stuff and go home. They also say that if cops were sent home early - there would be plenty of evidence showing that people punched out early and all the "official things" you have to do before you leave would show the time they left.  It was also noted that guys getting shorted on hours wouldn't be thrilled about it and would likely let anybody who would listen know about it.

What I'm getting at here - there should be lots of evidence to back up Norma's claim that the command center was shutdown.  All she needs to do is produce one shred of it. 

Hell, I think I've shown that there should be mountains of all kinds of evidence to prove Norma's story, but there doesn't seem to be any.  I could be wrong and she's going to wait another two weeks and post the rest of the story, but I doubt it. 

I'm just kind of taken back that Norma thinks everyone is so stupid they'd believe the story.  That woman has some ego. 

And just a thought here... don't you think that if any of this was true Theresa Caballero would have already said something about it!?!?!?!?!?

Boxing Match - Insult added to Injury

Or is it the other way around?  El Paso was insulted and now injured?  Doesn't really matter, I guess.

In attempt to apologize for someone else's mistake the City Council voted to hand over $500,000 in taxpayer dollars to a boxing promoter.  El Paso is paying a guy to put on a fight. A fight he was already trying to pay for the privilege of putting on at the facility where the city wants him to have it.  I know that's confusing, but that's how my brain sees it. 

The Top Rank Boxing execs must be nearly exhausted with joy by now.  First they get more international free press for the fight than they could have bought with Carlos Slim's check book.  Then someone offers to pay them to hold the fight in the very place they were going to have to shell out a lot of cash to have the fight in the first place.  It's been nothing but wheelbarrows of free money since they set foot in El Paso!  Good for them. I'm glad someone is doing well in El Paso.

The City is giving this money in exchange for what amounts to advertising.  One advertising executive in El Paso emailed me her thoughts on the what the actual value of the advertising is and it's south of $200,000 not counting the tickets.  I was told the $25,000 in tickets deal could be structured several different ways and mean several different things. 

1. It could mean that the City of El Paso has $25,000 worth of tickets to give away.  That means they are worried about attendance already and need freebies to fill the place.  However, without anyone making money on alcohol, a large crowd of people with free tickets doesn't offer any other chance at a profit and actually increases security costs.

2. The city has $25,000 worth of tickets to sell in order to recoup costs.  The ticket agency would handle the marketing, and the negotiation of pricing these tickets to maximize possible profit.  This is an unlikely scenario says my source, but not unheard of.

3. The $25,000 tickets will be sold in blocks to local businesses and nonprofits in what amounts to a "donation" toward relieving the city of some of the $500,000 they are out.  This could be a situation where Western Refining buys 5,000 tickets from the city in a good will gesture that helps retire the debt and they get to send some people to the fight as a gift.  Not the least likely scenario, but unlikely.

All of this money is flowing out in what is being slated as "spending $500,000 to generate $4.5 million."  The $4.5 million dollar figure wasn't proven beyond being uttered by a guy who seems to be in the position to know these types of things.  These economic impact numbers never ever come with a bit by bit breakdown of how they came up with the exact figure.  That's mainly because it's bullshit run through a calculator and then spit out of the mouth of a PR consultant.  You'll notice these "economic impact" figures only pop up when you're being asked to pony up tax dollars to support something you might not approve of supporting.  You never see the "economic impact" numbers of a concert held at The Don when the local government isn't propping it up with tax dollars.  It's just a concert when the city or county isn't involved.

The real problem is that El Paso's city government has showed the outside world how to work them over for half a million bucks.  Want El Paso to pay you to have an event in El Paso?  Announce you're holding an event in an El Paso venue that you have no signed contract with.  Have a third party publicly announce they're blocking you from holding your event at the venue even though you've not even entered into contract negotiations.  Watch city leaders lose their minds over the incident and wait for them to offer you the keys to the vault in exchange for doing what you were going to do in the first place.  It's that easy. 

The only good thing here is that the money is only going to the promoter if the fight takes place in the Sun Bowl.  If the fight goes somewhere else, Eddie Holguin can demand the money be spent putting sidewalks and gutters in his district so children don't have to walk in the street on their way to school. And I'm not being funny there - Eddie's district has a severe need for street and drainage projects.  I don't always agree with Eddie, but I have high regard for his willingness to go to the mat for his district. 

The oddest thing about this whole debacle is that contract negotiations for the Sun Bowl have never really taken place.  It makes a person wonder how serious the promoter is/was about having the event there if they hadn't iced the venue months ago.  Ask Brian Kennedy what's going on at the County Coliseum on June 3, 2012 or September 23, 2012 and he can tell you - that's how events work.  I find it really fishy that this "bout of the century" still has no home. 

(I picked those dates out of thin air - nothing to them, so don't ask.)

We will see if the deal gets done.  I know alcohol is the biggest factor holding up the contract at this point.  I also know that the fight is now on the radar screen for Houston and San Antonio and they are apparently in contact with the promoter throwing major deals at him every hour or so.  In the end money talks and BS walks.  It's likely the $500,000 was thrown out there to keep the promoter off of the phone with the competition, but who knows how long that will last. 

Who knows how eager Cigarroa is to deal now that he's been called every name in the book by El Paso.  It's likely that his stance on the alcohol will be the real deal killer in the end. 

Tickets are slated to go on sale on Saturday.  Want to be on that?

------------------------

Quick Note on El Paso Times' staff inability to write better than a third grader and the fact no editor looked at the article... I know I'm terrible, but I'm also not a journalist and my crap doesn't go to print... and I'm not paid.... and I went to public schools... and UTEP... and I'm left handed. 

Anywho...

This sentence appeared in the story:

"The city's -- and elected officials' -- involvement to host the event in El Paso began after the University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa on Tuesday barred the fight on the UTEP campus because of security reasons."

There are so many things wrong here, it's just sad.  Never in the English language can you put the three words "involvement to host" together like that. At least not in a way I can think of at the moment.  I'm sure "involvement IN hosting" works much better there.  My mind captures "involved" and puts it with  "in" automatically.  He was involved in a fight.  His involvement in organized crime led to his murder.  He is involving himself in something that's not his business. 

The middle is bad, but technically works. 

The end is atrocious.  If you just want to change one word to fix that part you replace "reasons" with "concerns."  If you want to use "reasons" you have to write "UTEP campus FOR security reasons."

What you have here is a non-native speaker trying their best to write in English while thinking in Spanish.  An editor needs to be there to catch these things. 

I forgive myself and Jaime because we're our own editors and we often don't catch our own mistakes because your own mind tends to jump over your own mistakes.  Pump out a 1,000 words in roughly 15 minutes and hand it to someone to read - I bet you're worse than us when it comes to simple stupid mistakes. 

Just so you know... the sentence should read: 

The City of El Paso, along with a large group of local elected officials, became involved in hosting the event early last week when the University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa anounced that he would not allow the fight to take place at Sun Bowl due to unspecified security concerns. 

And that sentence is way too long and tries to do way too much in the first place. 

Jerry Rubin is a standup guy

I know a bunch of you are angry that the building burned, but you can't blame the owner.  These things happen and as much hindsight as you want to put into it and point fingers, you won't fix what is broken.

Jerry Rubin and River Oaks Properties suffered a set back when the building burned.  It's not a good thing for their insurance premiums and it's complicates any deals where that property was part of a leveraged real estate portfolio.  I can guarantee nobody over there was high-fiving thinking about some huge insurance payout - it's likely it won't be the boon you think it is.  In these cases it almost never is. 

What Rubin did after the disaster was much more grownup than what the local politicos did.  He gave $100,000 to the EPFD equipment fund.  This benefits everyone.

Better equipment means better firefighters - better first responders.  Better first responders means YOU are in better hands in an emergency.  That's never a bad thing.

Firefighters like a pat on the back and good "thank you" like anyone else does.  However, giving them the money to make them safer and more effective at their job is probably the best "thank you"  of all. 

John Wesley Hardin has bigger problems to worry about than his office burning.  As my dad would say - because he's the king of these jokes - "we know what the last thing going through Hardin's mind was, and it wasn't his office."