Refuse the Juice

Gandara to Plead Guilty - El Paso to still claim no spillover

I guess El Paso is still going to claim that the cartel problem is still a problem "over there" and not "here" even though one of the highest elected officials in the county just pleaded guilty to being a part of the whole mess.

I'm sitting in DC with a steady stream of people coming by my desk asking me how people in El Paso could elect a drug dealer.  I told them that El Paso had a boxing match and that proved there were no problems in El Paso.  They tried to have me treated for a stroke after I said that.  They said that's dumbest thing they've ever heard and reminded me that not only is El Paso next to the most dangerous city in this hemisphere, the cartels had placed their guy in the local government!

It's kind of hard to explain to them that the cartel problem is a Juarez problem when they bring up facts like that.... I really didn't have a comeback for that.  I don't think I ever will.

So no matter what you think that boxing match did for you city, remember that in DC I was asked about your elected officials with cartel ties and not the stupid boxing match you paid $500,000 to have.  Any good news about El Paso was forgotten today when the Gandara story hit the wires.

Way to go El Paso!  Good thing I was actually born in Dallas.

Moving on and Norma's Big No Show

The baseball deal is done.  At least from the side of the city cutting the deal so that the buyers can be qualified bidders.  Debate it all you want now, it's done. 

I can only tell you that it will be much better than you expect because of the people involved.  The quality of life bond issue projects are going to be the opposite - costly mistakes for taxpayers.

The big news (not really) is that Norma Chavez chickened out when it was her turn to take the podium.  What a leader she is. 

Now she's taken to attacking Representative Niland.  My advice for Norma is simple - when you see someone who is bigger, faster, stronger, smarter and able to graduate from UT in less than 40 years - do not challenge them in games of wit and politics - they will smash the very little bit of you that is left to smash. 

Ask the Electric Company how it is to Tango with Niland.  And Norma - you're no Electric Company.  If you think the Shapleigh Campers are tough - you ain't seen nothing yet with Niland.  

Either Norma is losing it, or she has a stupid ghost writer...

A very bitter and angry Norma has emerged from yet another political ass-whoop'n (I learned after only one - smart people don't make the same mistake over and over again).  Her blog is all psychiatrists needs to make their diagnosis!

She's got some new rap about "colonial rule," which is her way of calling white people "racists."  She forgets history - especially the history of El Paso when she makes that statement.  It's okay - nobody ever accused her of being very intelligent. 

Apparently she's never been to a city council meeting because she doesn't know that you have to sign up to speak before meetings.  She thinks this is a new rule put in place just for the baseball debate.  As all of you know (and none of you have been elected to office like Norma) you've had to sign up to speak at City Council meetings for decades.  It's nothing new.  In fact, her ignorance to the long standing rule makes me wonder if she should be under supervised daily care by professionals.  A former State Representative should know the long-standing rules of local government meetings.  This is a serious lapse in memory that could be a signifier of a bigger physiological or psychological problem.  It's impossible to fathom that she doesn't know this rule... Unless someone is writing for her and they don't know about the long-standing rule...

Even worse she claims that the public is free to speak at any meeting of the state legislature.  I have not found this to be true at all.   You can't just walk onto the house floor during debate and start voicing your opinion as a private citizen.  You will be removed with force.  Same goes for committee meetings - you have to go through a process to be on the list to testify or present.  You can't just cruise into a hearing of the  Transportation Committee and take the mic.  Again, you'll be removed with force.   It's unclear how she doesn't know this... Seriously - if you're her friend, please get her checked out.  Her incorrect or missing memory of mundane facts is causing many people concern. 

Bottom line - you've always had to sign up to speak at city meetings.  You've never been able to speak without invitation at meetings of the state legislature. 

Why is Norma claiming untrue things to be true?  I'm worried for her.

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

Second note - you might be a little confused about Norma's sudden hatred for Woody Hunt and Paul Foster.  She used to be their biggest fans - dropping their names every place she went.  And to be honest, Foster and Hunt did support her in the past.  However, when she got so out of control that she was a detriment to El Paso's legislative agenda, they had to move on.  She is angry the picked another candidate to support after she embarrassed the city and herself ten too many times.   She is the epitome of a candidate whose allegiance goes to whoever is paying the bills.

Having it both ways with the Supreme Court

I always like to watch at people cheer the court for one decision one week and deride them as a bunch of political hacks the next week when they don't agree with their call. 

I think putting the Arizona ruling up against the Obamacare ruling will make a lot of folks talk out of both sides their mouth.  Watch the pundits - read the pundits  - listen to the pundits and keep score.  Hell, watch the locals and see how they flip flop on the integrity of the court's decision.

 

Settle Down People - Nothing is set in stone yet with baseball deal

You guys also need to get your facts straight and that means waiting until there are actually facts out there to get straight.  Understanding that this is a plan based on contingencies will help keep you from stepping on the rake over and over again with your wild-ass conspiracy theories.  You know - the ones you've been throwing out in the comment section of this blog. 

First of all, do take the time to realize that the baseball stadium and it's backers are completely different than the PDNG and their plan.  Maybe six years ago Hunt and Foster were hot and heavy into the PDNG, but that's not the case as of right now.  If anything, this move by Hunt and Foster really screws of the PDNG and their goal of having a monopoly on taxpayer owned downtown entertainment sites.  That is a GOOD thing. 

This out of town guy hired by PDNG t0 separate you fools from your money is probably so pissed right now, he can't see straight.  With $50 million going into a guarantee for a baseball stadium without voter approval, you can bet voters aren't going to give the thumbs up to a downtown arena in the quality of life bond issue.  I think it's a better bet to spend $50 million on the baseball deal because El Paso knows a lot more about what's happening there.  Spending $150 million plus on an arena where no backup material exist - not even an artist's rendering - is not something El Pasoans want to do. 

For all of you who don't pay attention and think all the rich people are best friends, take a look at the recent past.  Paul Foster out-maneuvered the PDNG when he went willy-nilly on the Mills building and bought the Plaza Hotel and it seems like he's done it again with the baseball deal.  Nobody will go on record as saying they're mad at Foster for going it alone on downtown revitalization, but plenty of them will when it's off the record.  Foster's foray into downtown redevelopment was not a part of the original plan - a plan that has not yet been executed to my knowledge.  The PDNG sought to strictly control downtown redevelopment by owning every aspect of it.  When Foster started buying up the best properties and polishing them up - the folks at PDNG lost their minds.  You can't have total control when some Billionaire Baylor grad starts calling the plays from the huddle - if you know what I mean. 

Again - nobody at PDNG or in the Hunt/Foster crowd will confirm what I'm saying here, but behind closed doors it's pretty evident what's going on.  If you think they're all in cahoots - you're wrong.  Rich people don't automatically like each other no matter what the conspiracy theories you believe purport.

That brings us to relocating city hall.

Fact is - we don't know exactly what will happen at this point.  It is likely that the final plans won't be known until the trigger is actually pulled on this project.  Prospective downtown properties may all be rented by the time the ballpark deal goes through - then what?  Well, there's going to be several different plans I'm sure.  If you attend the meeting, you'll probably get to hear most of them.  I say "most" because knowing city staff there's always something they keep from the public because it will cause a shit storm. 

The good part is that you have input.  You can attend the meeting and put your two cents in.  If I were there I'd say the building of a new stadium on the land where City Hall sits allows the City Manager to send every single city employee home one day and not invite them back.  We'd save $100,000,000 a year easy without the bloated mass of bureaucracy that currently resides in that God-awful building that smells like the inside of a porta-potty 90 percent of the time.  We could hire private companies to execute the limited day to day services provided by the city and not only would the taxpayer save money, they'd be better served! 

I'm sure none of that's going to happen...

The city needs to let people put in bids for the new space.  Lowest square foot cost wins and it doesn't matter if it's on Joe Battle or Redd Road - whatever is cheapest and the taxpayers don't have to maintain, wins.  There is zero advantage to having city operations downtown.  In fact, with all the coming and going it would be better to have it in a more accessible spot on the East Side.  The County of El Paso has had great success with their regional annexes, the city should follow.

Wait - I just thought of this - the city should close city hall and then relinquish their duties to the County!  Dissolve the City in a glass of County - GENIUS!  Less policitians!  Less government workers!  Less lying, cheating and stealing! 

Any friends I had at the city are no longer "friends" after that little outburst...

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

Here's the bottom line - you'll have a chance to you voice your opinion on this entire deal.  Come armed with facts because council members are going to have theirs at the ready.  Drop one little piece of misinformation on that stage and they'll disregard everything you say along with the thoughts of anyone they associate with you.   I can't tell you how many times a group of well meaning citizens are sunk by one idiot who takes the podium and starts spouting lies.  Re-zoning the North West part of town and the Transmountain expansion come to mind immediately. 

Again - get your facts straight before going into battle. 

Don't try to smear the Hunts and the Fosters - it won't work. They're not bad people and they don't do bad things.  Your attempts to tie them to things they're not involved with will only embarrass you and detract from your point.  Playing a game of "they're rich, so I don't think they should get this" won't work either.  If you put together a group of investors who had a viable shot at owning a baseball team you 'd get the same consideration.  Jealousy is El Paso's most prevalent natural resources - you can change that starting now. 

Good luck to you.  And remember - if you have ever touted a politician in the past that has been indicted in the now - do not think your opinion holds weight here - it doesn't.   If you couldn't see Larry Medina for exactly who he is - you don't deserve to have your thoughts reviewed by the blog reading public.

Support the Baseball Stadium and Understand What's Happening

I think it's great news that the Fosters and Hunts have brought this dream to the brink of becoming a reality.  I was hoping against hope that they'd be able to separate themselves from the shady PDNG backed quality of life bond issue, and it looks like they have.  It's a good thing too since there are some particulars related to buying a team that have to be taken care of for the deal to go through (we'll get to that).

The main thing here is that we know exactly what's happening with this baseball stadium.  It's a baseball stadium - they're going to play baseball in it.  It's not a "multi-purpose" arena without a single definite use.  It's a building with six months of use already pre-booked each year. 

The owners are Paul Foster, his wife Alejandra, Woody and Josh Hunt.  Their names are no secret.  There's zero mystery as to who is making the decisions here.  They are not cloaked in mystery like the PDNG.

I know a lot of you want to make Foster and Hunt out to be bad guys - they're not.  You're just mad because they didn't give money to your corrupt candidate.  They are above board - across the board.  Between them they're responsible for upwards of $100,000,000 in charitable donations to the community.   They  "give back" much more than they were ever "given," and much of what they've earned. 

Yes, my family does business with Hunt, but hat's how I know that both Woody and Josh are highly ethical, honest businessmen as are their employees.  The way they conduct business, treat vendors and responsibly engage the community in all of their endeavors is the proof one needs when vouching for them as I am doing now.   I have no qualms about staking my reputation to an endorsement of anything they partake in.  Please don't let people who vouched for people like Larry Medina and Anthony Cobos try to shape your opinions of the Hunts.

I don't have a business relationship with Foster, but have seen him in social settings many times.  He's as humble and honest as a man can get - even a man of his wealth.  I do know a few people who work for Foster and they of the finest cloth a person can be cut from - not likely to stick around in any underhanded operation.  Again, don't let people who tried to sell you Larry Medina shape your opinion of a guy like Paul Foster. 

Bottom line - you know what you are getting with this baseball deal and you know who you are getting it from.  Travel down to the Mills Building or over to one of Hunt's wonderful developments to see how they do things - you'll find yourself using the phrase "above and beyond" frequently.  El Paso needs more of that in every aspect of its existence. 

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

Here's what I think the deal with the city is going to be...

I like to call this type of agreement a "when and if" deal.  When and if they buy a team, the city is set to execute this deal.  It is not a "build it and they will come" situation. 

I did a lot of research on arenas and baseball teams when all of this first came up.  I learned that when buying a professional sports team, they're some requirements set forth by the sanctioning body.  One of the biggest ones is that in order to purchase a team, you have to have a place for them to play.  Makes sense, right?

What you need to know here is that after the deal is signed next week, they're not going to hand Foster and Hunt a $50,000,000 check and unleash a bulldozer on City Hall.  That is not at all how this works. 

Foster and Hunt need this deal in place so they can be a qualified purchaser when a team comes up for sale.  They can't come to the table with their baseball stadium promise resting in the hands of voters.  Especially if the stadium is tied to a very unpopular bond issue.  The sanctioning bodies need something more iron clad than that.  The "when and if" contract with the city provides that.

If they never buy a team - a stadium is never built.  Knocking down city hall and putting up a stadium is contingent on Foster and Hunt being a successful bidder on a team.  Right now it's just a promise that if they do buy a team, they city will build a stadium.  It is likely they team will stay where they are located after the sale while their new home is constructed. 

I could be wrong - it wouldn't be the first time, but I have read a lot about this and it seems to jive with what others have done in other cities. 

I think it's great to have real baseball in the city again.  El Paso has tremendous baseball talent and this will only help foster that talent for  years to come.  I've always said that UTEP should ditch football and field a team of local baseball players and consistently be one of the top ten teams in the nation.  Way too many of El Paso's high school talents can't move away to play and just end up fading away.  If they could play D1 ball in their hometown, they would and they'd be great.  Having a Triple A team here will only inspire young players to be even better - maybe even one day coming back to play in their hometown on the way to the majors.

 Give it a chance - it's going to work well and you'll want to claim you knew it all along.  Don't be left eating crow.

EPISD + City of El Paso = Don't Freak Out Just Yet

I know how you feel - I freaked a little bit when I heard the news about City Council wanting to absorb the school district too. However, it's not all bad and there's actually a lot of good to come from the conversation. 

I have said for years (I'm getting old if I'm starting to claim I've done things "for years") that EPISD isn't structured correctly.  I have also talked about consolidating the many overlapping governments in El Paso.  But... I never said anything about one of those entities adopting the other.  I was hoping to see how the whole County absorbing the City thing went first... (some people reading this just had their head spin around like a top). 

Hand it to City Council - they see a problem and they want to fix it.  Do I think certain members of City Council could do it?  You bet.   Do I think other members of council would end up in prison along with all of their friends if they took over EPISD?  100 percent sure that would happen. 

The City unfortunately is in no place to get into the management of another bureaucracy.  Forget the legalities and all that mess for a second and just look at the big picture... the picture is too big. 

I do commend council for recognizing the problem and trying to attack it, but they've got the wrong idea here.

First of all - let's look at what it really is to run a school district.  In all honesty, running a school district isn't much about education.  It's about managing a gigantic real estate portfolio and the purchasing power that comes with budgets that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.   It's much more Wall Street than Sesame Street.   Whoever is running the thing, whether individually or by board, must know more about state procurement laws and property management than they do about teaching six-year-olds to read.  And that's an unfortunate thing.

The best way to get the focus back on education is to break up that real estate giant (EPISD) into smaller districts that are much more manageable for those who have a background in education instead of business management.  I'd say you could even do it by council district to make it easy.  And if council wanted a hand in the local education of students the member from that district would have seat on that school board as a voting member. 

It's that easy.  Well, it's not easy to make it happen because state law makes it nearly impossible.  That's what happens when your government gets too big - you can't function within it. 

Having smaller districts will allow for precise management of the schools.  What works "across the board" in the EPISD now probably doesn't really work all that well for every school.  Problems and successes have tended to break along geographic lines - why not separate by those lines?  That allows management a narrow focus when taking on problems - the focus missing at EPISD now and probably one of the reasons they decided to cheat.

Think about it for now and I'll write up a more detailed piece later that ties in parents, smaller districts and competition. 

After the Fight - Nothing Changed

To hear the newspaper and the local politicos tell it there'd be some kind of life altering change in El Paso after the boxing match Saturday night.  I talked to my mom and Dad on Sunday and they didn't seem to notice anything different.  I made sure I emailed others in town just to see what they noticed - at least one person wrote back "what fight?" 

I saw the highlights on ESPN over the weekend - they didn't mention El Paso.  I went online and other than the required mention of El Paso in the lead - there was nothing.  It could have taken place in Timbuktu or Rugby, North Dakota (the geographic center of North America).  I missed the advertising El Paso was promised... Maybe it was there, but I couldn't find it in the pictures I saw.

I'm still wondering if anyone thought $500,000 of your hard earned tax dollars were worth it?  They got a whopping 15,000 people instead of the 40,000 number that was thrown around in the beginning.  A lot less than half of what they said.  The city got $25,000 in tickets for their investment - even at $25 a pop that's 1,000 fight spectators who had to be subsidized to be at the fight.  At $10 a ticket you're talking about more than 10 percent of the crowd who went for free -or more honestly, on your dime - it wasn't free.   

Look at it this way - had the city not paid the promoter to have the fight in El Paso, the crowd wouldn't have paid for the event.  I did a little math - to get $500,000 out of the 15,000 people that showed the average ticket price would have had to be $33 and change.   We know that the average ticket prices was way south of that. 

Did El Paso win in the end because the UT System Chancellor ended up letting them have the fight?  Considering El Paso had to pay to keep the fight that had originally come to them for free and the ban on alcohol stayed firmly in place - NO.  It's apparent to anyone outside the local political scene that El Paso had to pay its prom date and she went home with another guy. 

Did El Paso prove there's no cartel problems in El Paso?  No.  In fact, the paper was full of stories of cartel involvement in the regional horse racing industry in the week running up to the fight.  The very same paper that emphatically claimed that the cartels weren't operating on this side of the border, spent the entire week detailing how the cartels are operating on this side of the border.  They have to feel stupid.  They have to know that they are ridiculously out of touch, right?  I guess not.  They're not laughing at themselves as they should be.

On top of it, the fight that would save El Paso took a back seat in web traffic to the El Paso Times' Editorial Board calling for the resignation of the majority of the EPISD School Board.  The same paper that said the fight would clear El Paso's reputation spent Sunday reminding the world why El Paso has a bad reputation.  Ironic?  Maybe.  They won't see it, though. 

You sure showed them El Paso... they just don't know it yet. 

City of El Paso has priorities way out of whack

I was chagrined to see elected officials and other big wigs tying El Paso's greater reputation to the success of a boxing match that almost no one cares about.   You can read the idiotic failures in logic HERE.

Apparently a pre-fight press conference only drew 150 people (that number is debatable I hear) and it's likely most of them were Bill Blaziek's employees from the convention center and city employees ushered over to the Plaza Theatre to try and fill space.  In fact - one person from the media who was there emailed me to say that it was the most pathetic thing they had ever seen outside of candidate forums where every single person in attendance was blood related to one of the candidates (ask Jaime Abeytia about this, he has good insight on that BS). 

Unfortunately City Council Representative Steve Ortega was out front giving ridiculous quotes to reporters about the city's reputation resting on this fight.  I guess he and everyone else (including the El Paso Times) really have no idea why El Paso has the reputation it does and are clueless on how to fix it.

A sold out boxing match isn't going to move the city away from Juarez where dozens of people are murdered every week.  El Paso could have 50 sold out boxing matches and that wouldn't change the fact that bullets from the war in Mexico still land in El Paso frequently.  El Paso is that close to one of the top five most dangerous places on earth - it's bound to have an effect on your reputation.

So out of touch are your public officials in El Paso, they think a boxing match is going to cover the following list of crap currently taking place in El Paso.

1. EPISD is a big bloated crime filled bureaucracy that had to cheat in order to achieve merely a "satisfactory" standing for its students.  Not only is the lying, cheating and stealing embarrassing for the city, but the students are so stupid the school district had to cheat to get them a C! 

2. YISD, SISD and all the other ISDs in the region are all smaller versions of EPISD and it becomes more apparent every day (look for a blind item tomorrow about a fishy YISD contract).

3. I was horrified to read THIS today.  We all have had suicide affect our lives - none of us can ever fully explain or understand it, but we hurt from it and try to learn from it.  A gay kid was bullied to the point of suicide and the only thing your elected officials are worried about is a stupid boxing match!  A mother lost her child to senseless ignorance and El Paso's public officials are focused on two brain dead morons pummelling each other senseless because they're filled with machismo over what they perceive as a slight by the UT System Chancellor. Talk about promoting the kind of macho behavior that leads to bullying and you're talking about El Paso community leaders at this point. 

4. Boxing match won't fix poverty.  El Paso is poorer than 99 percent of the nation and not moving up, but down instead.  The only way a boxing match fixes that problem is if one guy hits the other so hard an economic growth plans shoots out his ass.  Lord knows none of your elected officials have any idea of what to do.  They piss away your money on out-of-town consultants who deliver nothing of value in the end.

5. City officials spend millions to fight battles for family members locked in a pissing contest with a local bar.  The tab is $3 million right now and only growing.  The rest of the world wants to know why El Paso is spending millions killing jobs instead of creating them. 

6. Corruption.  It's not over.  The boxing match may gloss over it for a single night, but it's still rampant at all levels of government in El Paso.

7. County Commissioners charged with drug trafficking.  You can say all day long that the "cartel violence hasn't spilled over," but when an elected official is caught participating in the same business the cartels are in - nobody will believe you.  No boxing match undoes the Gandara arrest. 

I'm sure I could go on and many of you will add your own thoughts below. 

It's flat out disgusting that your city officials threw your tax dollars at this stupid fight because they've got egos that are out of control.  Now the whole thing is looking to be a complete failure and the only thing that has been achieved is the complete disregard for El Paso's real problems while your "leaders" were locked into a battle of saving face that they can not possibly win.  Has nobody told the city that they look like morons for paying a promoter to come to El Paso when he was willing to go anywhere that would have him for free?  El Paso bribed the promoter - nobody believes this is a good thing.

Build your big, stupid  arena - maybe it will be big enough to block the view of all your real problems for a while.  Just know that they'll always be waiting for you on the other side.

Where are the editors at the El Paso Times?

Read HERE.

The headline reads "Juarez supermarket shooting leaves 2 killed, 2 wounded"...

HUH?

The shooting leaves people dead, not killed.  Juarez supermarket shooting leaves 2 dead, 2 wounded.  Never is the headline appearing on their site correct in either English or news reporting.  It's terrible!!!! You are not left "killed" in any circumstance.   You were killed, and now you are dead. 

If they wanted to use the word "killed," they could have written "2 killed, 2 wounded in Juarez supermarket shooting."  Even that wouldn't really work because you don't generally start headlines with numbers unless it's literally the entire story - 3,000 DEAD!  and then a picture of what killed them (9.11 reference here). 

This is just bad bad bad editing at the Times.  Terrible mistake.  "Embarrassing" doesn't cover this mistake...

Don't be fooled - Airport money is your money

I read THIS today in the El Paso Time and about passed out.

If the folks at city hall can vote to spend it or save it - IT'S YOUR MONEY!  It does not matter if the revenue is generated from runway landing fees or selling lizard tails - any money that is in the city coffers or in the coffers by an entity ultimately controlled by the city is taxpayer money.  Nobody seems to be arguing that PSB's revenues are taxpayer dollars - even those dollars made from land sales to the private sector. 

If the El Paso International Airport needed renovations and they couldn't afford them with the money brought in from runway fees - YOU WOULD PAY FOR THOSE RENOVATIONS WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS!  And you have done so in the past!

I think the city is now trying very hard to backpedal because they did something very stupid as a knee-jerk reaction to something so very easily fixed.   Flat out lying to the public isn't going to help their case at all. 

If you think the airport dollars aren't you dollars, just wait  until the city council approves the next construction contract for that facility and check to see where the money comes from. 

I think you should be more upset that there are budget cuts at the city in the midst of an ask of almost a billion dollars in tax increases for toys (arenas, arenas and more arenas), but yet the Airport has millions sitting around to overpay for property they already own!

I'm guessing that cool half a million they dumped on the Chavez fight that's on the road to not being sold out wasn't taxpayer dollars either? 

Three Legged Monkey See - Three Legged Monkey Do

Turnabout is fair play.  Read all about it HERE. 

Looks like Mike Armstrong (who has a striking resemblance to Representative Steve Ortega) finally figured out a way to help himself out.  He declared bankruptcy like the Patriot Place people did so that he could get some legal protection to keep running his business.  I'd like to say it was "brilliant move,"  but the guys over at Patriot Place Ltd. already pulled the stunt and got paid $3 million for being so damn smart.  I imagine Armstrong is set for a million dollar payout or a very long lease renegotiation. 

I'd like to get into the finer points of filing for bankruptcy and how it's an awesome tool for people and businesses to use even when you're not out of money, but I don't have the time.  Ask a friend who knows about this stuff and it will blow your mind just how awesome bankruptcy can be. 

You might be a little startled that I used the words "awesome" and "bankruptcy" right next to each other.  That's because you're a victim of the credit card industry's decades long PR campaign to convince Americans that they shouldn't exercise their constitutional rights when it comes to debt.  A very specific and well funded campaign has been aimed at Americans for a long time and it has had the effect of making you think bankruptcy is on par with molesting children.  Tell me you don't think of it that way and I'll call you a liar. 

Can you imagine if the district attorneys of the nation all got together and started a billion dollar media campaign trying to convince Americans to never use their Sixth Amendment right to counsel? There would be blood in the streets.  For some reason nobody cares that the credit card industry is doing this with your right to declare bankruptcy under the uniform laws guaranteed by Article 1 Section 8 Clause 4 of the United States Constitution. 

And don't forget - bankruptcy, as you are told, is the worst thing you could have personally do.  Meanwhile - corporate America uses it a financial tool to increase profits!!!!!  The same people who tell you to never declare bankruptcy are the same people who do it every few years just to make sure they clear the books!

Anywho - sorry this became a rant about bankruptcy, but the saga at Hawkins Plaza goes on.

Lots to say - let's hit everything

I've been paying attention to other things and neglected to keep up with all the El Paso goings on!  Sorry about that.  I'll try to hit everything here and we can talk more about some items later this week.

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

Reyes voters to vote against Beto in general election!

That's what they are saying now.  That's what the losers always say when they lose a tough primary fight.  Never does it really happen.

I'm sure those in Reyes' extreme inner-circle are going to vote for the republican nominee, but it won't go much further than that.  As time passes wounds will heal and people will move on.  The bigger picture of being a democrat and having a democrat congressman will be what those people will see come November.  If anything they will be "under votes" having not picked anyone in the race.  Reyes always had a tremendous amount of under votes, so the tradition will just continue with O'Rourke. 

Eventually many of Reyes' supporters will go to O'Rourke's team and make peace.  This is mainly because it does them no good to be at odds with O'Rourke in the long run.  It's not like they are all going to go become major players in the republican party because their guy lost. 

Give it a week - everyone will feel better.

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

Newspaper Tree - one step forward, two steps back

Read HERE to see how David Crowder investigated the investigative journalism site that may never launch. 

After the online nonprofit (not officially) news site only produced a smattering of press releases and a couple of sparsely attended parties, two thirds of the staff was fired.  They did keep the only experienced person of the group - Debbie Nathan. 

I can't take much in the way of "facts" from the article because Crowder was roadblocked by an embattled and embarrassed group of rich people who can't seem to execute one of the simplest tasks in modern America - registering a nonprofit.  Even incarcerated Hip-Hop artists manage to register nonprofits from behind bars and this group of silver spooners can't manage it quite get it done.  Makes me wonder how bad their end product is going to be.  Makes me wonder how these people became rich...

In my uneducated opinion, I think you have a situation where you have a board that is acting like each one of them is the chief editor and you have donors, like Jimmy Janacek, who want complete control over the content.  It's a terrible way to run any kind of news outlet.  You need one editor and everything that goes to print must be absolutely disconnected from your income streams.  If those two things aren't rock solid in place - it won't work. 

I should note that Woody Hunt's and Jack Cardwell's donations came with zero strings attached.  They gave money way back in time before they knew what this thing would look like and what it would do. Their investment was in news diversification overall - not to promote themselves.  Either individual is rich enough to purchase the El Paso Times or start their own newspaper if they wanted that kind of access.  Both choose not to go down that road and are not exploring that option with their investment in Newspaper Tree.

Janacek, on the other hand, wants NPT to spend every word it spits out bashing the PSB and Ed Archuleta.  Nobody has told this asshole that it's not ethical for journalists to take money in exchange for writing in someone else's voice and it's actually the best evidence for "actual malice" that is needed to win a defamation case. 

Poor Debbie Nathan is surrounded by people who don't know what they're doing and it must be giving her a very bad impression of her hometown.   I can't imagine what a sophisticated New York media mogul like her must be thinking of the hicks in El Paso at this point.

Just to put this out there - I could manage that whole site from iPhone in DC and have new content posted twice daily.   It is not that freaking  hard folks.  If you check your partisan ideology at the door and run what your contributors want to contribute, you'll have lots of diverse, good content.  It's that simple. 

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

Boxing tickets not selling - begging ensues

I could have told you THIS was going to happen... Oh wait, I DID!

The Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, who is having a hard time selling memberships over their own already, is trying to hawk tickets for the boxing match to their meager list of members.  Super duper cheap discounts are being used to try and spare the city from extreme embarrassment on national TV.  It's too little way too late. 

The alcohol sales thing is a killer.  They promised they'd get it fixed. They couldn't.  Nobody wants to go to a dry fight.  So... nobody is going to the dry fight.

I think the big wigs in El Paso claimed victory over the UT System Chancellor just a little too early.  The last laugh was had in Austin when he swiped your alcohol sales.

Even if you did have alcohol sales, you wouldn't sell the fight out.  It's El Paso - people don't go to events where buying a ticket is involved.  If it's free (music under the stars) they'll show up in droves.  Charge a single penny and it's  a ghost town.

But hey  -- you guys need a new 75,000 seat arena so rock bands can stop by once a decade to do a sound check in an empty room. 

Let's not spend any money on the outdoor activities like hiking, biking and picnicking that El Pasoans actually love and do - that would be stupid... and helpful. 

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

 City buys property it already owns for twice its value

I guess the only true winner in the Hawkins Plaza/Three Legged Monkey/David Cooper/CVNA/City of El Paso debacle was the property managers - Patriot Place Ltd.  The news of the ridiculous outcome trickled out on Saturday in the El Paso Times HERE.

The story of how Patriot Place got to the position where they made a couple million bucks for doing nothing is more complicated than you care to know, so I'll just hit the high points.

Basically what happened was that the City wanted to force Patriot Place to terminate valid contracts with business owners.  This would have led to the Patriot Place folks being successfully sued by those business owners.  The City was escalating the pushing to shoving and putting the Patriot Place folks in a bad position.  They could either do what the city said and pay the lawsuits brought by the business owners, or ignore the city and have the city terminate their contract to use the land. 

So they just declared bankruptcy and put everybody in separate corners until they could decide who was going to give them a million bucks to do basically nothing.  I guess you could say - they were waiting to see who would pay them to let the city and  Three Legged Monkey/David Cooper fight directly with each other.  

You didn't know you could use bankruptcy to do that, did you?  Well Patriot Place's lawyers knew that and played the toughest card of anyone involved in the fight.  It paid off - sources tell me that all told the Patriot Place guys likely just about tripled their total investment.  They also unloaded the financial burden of running the place back onto the city - the city now owns not just the land the building sits on, but the buildings itself.  Patriot Place Ltd. is still managing the leases from what I can discern from a poorly written El Paso Times article. 

So the city not only paid double what the building was worth - they paid double what the entire property was worth.  They only bought the building, which they would have received for free at the termination of the contract with Patriot Place in 14 or so years.  So the building itself isn't even worth  the $1.2 million that the Central Appraisal District valued it at - both the building and the land combined are worth that.  The city just bought the building.  That makes the number so much harder to swallow in the end. 

Real estate professionals around the city read the story and either laughed, or cried - just depends on whether they were feeling like a taxpayer at the time or real estate broker when they read the article. 

The El Paso taxpayer got screwed the most here and it stems from a group of people who decided they'd drive over to the local bar and call 911 every time they thought they saw something they didn't like.  The paper says the city spent $300,000 responding to emergency calls to the building.  What they didn't mention is that most of those calls were deemed malicious missuse of the 911 system.  The city could have saved $2.9 million plus $300,000 in taxpayer dollars had they arrested the neighborhood watchdogs for misusing the 911 emergency number.  Unfortunately, one of the people making the calls was related to a city staffer and it appears that they were given special treatment when they should have been thrown in front of a judge. 

I think the lessons here are quite clear:

1. If you don't like something make sure you're related to someone at City Hall and call 911 repeatedly until the city shows up to fight your battle for you.

2. If you have a contract with a city - explore your options carefuly!  They may pay you millions of dollars to literally do nothing.