I am so engrossed in the ongoing political shenanigans that often times I do not realize how little important information trickles down to everyday people. It seems that voters are too focused on providing for their families and being part of their families that they have little time to follow the complex world of politics.… Read More Political Quickbytes
Over the last few weeks, I have received several phone calls and emails asking me to find out if Eddie Holguin is going to run for the Texas seat being vacated by César Blanco. Blanco left open his seat because he is running for the seat vacated by José Rodriguez. (Note the seat changing shenanigans)… Read More Abeytia Holguin and The Texas House of Representatives
In 2012, 16-year Democratic veteran Silvestre Reyes lost his Congressional District 16 seat to newcomer Beto O’Rourke during that election’s primary. Then president Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton, both Democrats, endorsed Reyes’ reelection. O’Rourke went on to defeat Republican Barbara Carrasco for the congressional seat. Accusations of corruption were levied by O’Rourke against… Read More Did Claudia Ordaz Steal A Laptop To Help Beto?
Today I am going to share with you the story of how the “guru extraordinaire” of El Paso politics was handed his ass in the last election. The truth is so outrageous you might be tempted to believe it is exaggerated, but I promise you, the story you are about to read is exactly as… Read More How the El Paso Political Guru Was Handed His Ass
In the political circles of El Paso the likely topic of discussion yesterday and today is the Veronica Escobar win, more specifically the void in professional campaign consultants in the city. I’m no different, so I’m going to weigh in about the lack of strategy within the Dori Fenenbock campaign and Norma Chavez’ inability to… Read More My Two Cents About the Veronica Escobar Win
During city council’s discussion (item 33.1) last week about Cortney Niland asking that the city rescind its prohibition of electronic devices at the city dais during city council meetings, there was another elected official whose government transparency notions need to be scrutinized. As you know, Niland has told you that she will not follow the… Read More Jim Tolbert and the Art of Hypocrisy About Transparency
Last Tuesday, at the city council meeting, Cortney Niland told voters that she will not follow the rules set for city council meetings. Her outburst came during the discussion for agenda item number 33.1, which Niland added to the agenda, asking for council to resend its rule prohibiting the use of telephones and other devices… Read More Cortney Niland Tells Voters She Will Not Follow Rules
I recently filed several open records requests in order to conduct a test on how public officials are using technology and how it affects open records requests. The comments made by El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen, about the Black Lives Matter group gave me an opportunity to experiment. I will share with you more… Read More A Chill Between Veronica Escobar and Claudia Ordaz?
Since Jim Tolbert took office on May 17, 2016, I have noticed a few constituency requests being made of him through Facebook. These requests got me thinking about government transparency and social media channels. Do not get me wrong, at this point, Facebook requests and most other social media channel requests seem to me to… Read More Jim Tolbert Open Records Requests and Social Media Channels
As you all know, I like to connect the political and corrupt dots for you. In today’s edition I am going to show you how engrained the political system is in El Paso. It involves a family that is well-connected politically and how the local political system enables the many problems the community faces. There… Read More Connecting the Cortinas Dots
Editor’s note: The following is a guest editorial by Barbara Carrasco. Anyone interested in writing an editorial about topical topics that I cover on my blog is encouraged to submit them to me. I will contact you once I have made the decision on whether to publish your editorial. If you would rather self-publish, I… Read More Ordaz Dilemma – El Paso's Shallow and Narrow Talent Pool
As I promised you, I filed numerous open records requests with the City asking for video, audio, logs, video and any information that they have about the Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Whataburger Incident. Yesterday I received a response for my eight requests. I asked for the log files from the three police officers involved,… Read More The Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Incident Police Dispatch Logs and Audio
In leadership class I was taught that effective leadership is driven by example. If you want underlings to follow you, you lead by example. That was driven into our heads from the very first day. Culturally I had been raised in a family and a social edict that is best described as paternalistic. Mexico, like… Read More The El Paso Paternalism Example
There are two standards of law in El Paso. That is the unmistakable fact that the Whataburger Incident has proven. I have previously written about this, but until the release of the report about the encounter between El Paso Police officers and Claudia Ordaz and her fiancé, Vince Perez, I had been unable to prove… Read More Impunity in El Paso
Open records laws are supposed to be about unhindered access to government records. They are supposed to empower the citizenry to hold their elected officials accountable to them. Accessing government records should not require anyone to look for a needle in a haystack without a magnet. My experience with the City of El Paso has… Read More I Believe That the City of El Paso Criminally Violated the Texas Public Information Act
On May 4, 2016, I published a blog detailing an encounter with the police that Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez had on September 6, 2015. In my blog post; “Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Questioned by Police Officers And Mysteriously Released,” I shared with you details about the incident that I have now dubbed the… Read More The Police Report that Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Did Not Want You to Read
In the last three days I have shared with you new information about the ongoing feud between Cortney Niland and Claudia Ordaz. In addition to that, yesterday, I also shared with you information about Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez arguing with police officers about the law. The police officers had responded to a public altercation… Read More The Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Whataburger Incident
It was sometime after midnight on September 6, 2015 when two cars pulled into the Whataburger at 12140 Montwood. The fast-food joint is notorious for the ruckus created by the after-hours nightclub partiers who congregate there after the bars have closed. Because of the weekly weekend drunken disturbances, the hamburger joint is usually staffed with… Read More Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Questioned by Police Officers And Mysteriously Released
This is “old news” has been some of the comments that a few readers have told me about yesterday’s blog about Taylor Cortinas. Likewise, I expect the same individuals to argue that today’s blog about Jeremy Jordan is also “old news”. In the case of Cortinas, one thing is news based on documentation and first-hand… Read More The Firing of Jeremy Jordan
As you may know, there have been various rumors about Cortney Niland firing Jeremy Jordan and Claudia Ordaz firing Taylor Cortinas. Cortinas worked for Ordaz and Jordan worked for Niland. Both were fired last year within months of each other. During this time, David Karlsruher posted various blogs insinuating that there was a Watergate-type investigation… Read More The Taylor Cortinas Saga
It comes up every election cycle and like always the politicos find a way to pretend there is nothing wrong with being paid with tax dollars and campaigning at the same time. It is always the same argument based on the fallacy of an “exempt” employee. As a business owner, I understand that there are… Read More Political Campaigning on Your Tax Dollars
Something politically important happened yesterday at city hall but if you read the El Paso Times you won’t know about it. That is because Bob Moore selectively targets certain politicos, like Larry Romero and certain officials like Tommy Gonzalez, but protects others like Claudia Ordaz. It doesn’t matter what you believe about the Jose Landeros… Read More The Story the El Paso Times Refuses to Report
On Tuesday, Claudia Ordaz is set to reappoint Jose Landeros to the City Plan Commission. Like I first pointed out to you on August 19, 2014, when Landeros was first appointed to the commission by Ordaz, this latest reappointment is also the continued building up of a political faction being pushed forth the Ray Caballero… Read More The Jose Landeros Tuesday Appointment
Yesterday, the City’s Ethics Review Commission met to discuss the Tommy Gonzalez and Larry Romero pending ethics complaints and other complaints that were dismissed by the city attorney. As you likely know by now, the commission and Larry Romero agreed to a finding that Romero violated various ethics rules by having an alleyway on Polk… Read More Barbara Carrasco Files Claudia Ordaz Appeal
As you likely know, Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez are engaged to be married. Their marriage engagement is a private affair that for the most part is none of the electorates’ business, except for one important detail. As the El Paso Times reported, there are no laws that prevent the two politicians from marrying each… Read More Claudia Ordaz and Vince Perez Marriage Announcement
Late last week, the city attorney notified Barbara Carrasco that the City was rejecting her ethics complaint against Claudia Ordaz. As I reported on January 28, 2016, Barbara Carrasco filed an ethics complaint against Claudia Ordaz on January 26, 2016. In her complaint, Carrasco accused Claudia Ordaz of unlawfully disclosing executive session information to Veronica… Read More Claudia Ordaz Ethics Complaint Rejected by City Attorney
Now that the hoopla over the Pope’s visit to another country is over, it is time to go back to the hidden truths that the politicians are hoping you missed. The politicians are still basking and back slapping each other over the “success” that is that nothing happened while the Pope was next door to… Read More Reality Checks Behind Nothing Happening
As I expected, as soon as Claudia Ordaz got over the shock of the ethics complaint, she went into immediate damage control mode. As an experienced politico who has lived off of taxpayer monies almost from the moment she became an adult, she fully understands that it’s not about the facts but rather the public… Read More Claudia Ordaz Activated Her Public Relations Machine
On Tuesday, January 26, 2016, El Paso resident, Barbara Carrasco filed an ethics complaint against Claudia Ordaz. The ethics complaint is based on the text messages between Jose Landeros and Ordaz, that I shared with you last year in “Claudia Ordaz Receives Instructions During City Council Meeting” and “The Claudia Ordaz Text Messages”. The complaint… Read More Ethics Complaint Filed Against Claudia Ordaz
As most of you know, there have been various controversies involving the city’s engineering department. This has led to the abrupt departure of the engineering department director and the restructuring of the engineering department. All I have to do is point to the San Jacinto debacle for you to get a clear understanding of how… Read More The Engineering Department Evaluation Report
As you know, city representatives discussed ethics yesterday at city council. The issue of Larry Romero’s streets was glossed over with Romero remaining quiet during the discussion. Claudia Ordaz, for her part, took the opportunity to take back control of the discussion. Ordaz used the opportunity to drive home the point that she set precedent… Read More Michiel Noe Innuendo
City council is scheduled to discuss agenda item number: 19.1 that was postponed last week. The item, “Clarification of ethics rules/ordinances, including clarification on Council’s ability to interact with employees without violating ethics rules” was posted by Michiel Noe. It was originally scheduled for last week’s meeting, immediately after Claudia Ordaz’ emails were made public… Read More City Council Has An Opportunity to Clear Up Issues Today
In 2004, an FBI agent started to investigate public corruption in El Paso. It started as an investigation into the activities of Bob Jones and it snowballed into the indictments and jailing of various public officials. Many have proclaimed that Poisoned Pawns curtailed public corruption in El Paso. But has it? In the last couple… Read More Corruption In El Paso
It does not matter what you believe the Claudia Ordaz texts reveal. Whether you believe they are nothing more than a political embarrassment or they reveal serious problems at the city, I believe we can all agree that they are news worthy. They are news worthy by the mere fact that an elected official released… Read More The Silence is Deafening
As you likely know already, the Claudia Ordaz text messages have proven that the MPO issue was a conspiracy to keep Vince Perez in charge of the MPO. The question is why. The answer is rather simple. Today, I have my avatar, Robo-Pepe explain the details to you in the second episode of The Proteus… Read More The MPO Conspiracy
By know you have either had an opportunity to review the text messages or have heard enough about them to get a general feel for their content. Besides the fact that an elected official, Claudia Ordaz, is being coached by a County employee on city public policy, there are many more issues that the community… Read More Here Is What You Need To Know About the Ordaz Texts
As you likely know by now, Ali Razavi aka MaxPowers released some text messages from Claudia Ordaz’ telephone. Yesterday I showed you how Claudia Ordaz used text messages to drive the MPO issue at the city council meeting on July 14, 2015. Today, I am sharing more of the text messages with you. In an… Read More The Claudia Ordaz Text Messages
Late last week, Ali Razavi, aka MaxPowers, published a set of text messages from Claudia Ordaz’ telephone. Razavi received them pursuant to an open records request he filed with the city. The over 100 pages of text messages gives us an unprecedented look into who is managing Claudia Ordaz for their own political gain. Unfortunately,… Read More Claudia Ordaz Receives Instructions During City Council Meeting
This is going to be one of those long posts that some of you hate. I can’t help it because there is so much to discuss about Tommy Gonzalez’ pay raise fiasco. Despair not, I’m breaking it up into two sections, I will devote the next seven short paragraphs to the fact that El Paso… Read More El Paso Proves Again How Ass Backwards It Really Is
The more controversial the public agenda item the more the useful idiots expose their agendas in their attempts to control the public perception. The Tommy Gonzalez pay raise issue is one of those controversies that has two useful idiots tripping all over themselves trying very hard to garner attention from the politicians in hopes of… Read More Blogging for Dollars