Nothing the El Paso elite do any more surprises me but the stench of corruption just gets stronger each day. City Council’s latest ploy to get the community to fund the playgrounds for the rich is the latest round of stadium talk. City Council, in their limited ability to understand that they are just puppets for their masters, thinks that a stadium will bring much needed pride to El Paso.
Of course that’s assuming the community can forget the ongoing fiasco that is the El Paso Independent School District masquerading as an institution of learning. City Council pontificates about taking over EPISD to seem like they care about the community knowing full well that they have neither the legal ability to do so and much less the wherewithal to actually do any better than the school district’s current administration.
The same city council contemplating giving the city’s elite your money to play with is the same city council who oversees a police department so ripe in corruption that the city has used your money to settle millions in settlements for police malfeasance and a department at the center of the largest drug corridor into the United States who can’t even keep their drug lab certified. As if that isn’t enough, the police department hires such intellects as officers willing to steal from a wedding party while presumably guarding against other thieves and officers who see nothing wrong with getting a blow job, in uniform and at work. Oh, and my favorite, a department caught red-handed fixing tickets and when caught pretending, us? we knew nothing about that.
But the city council wannabe intellectuals feel that a stadium that coincidently, the people tasked with funding it will be priced out of enjoying it, would be the solution to all the travails of the city. I know this won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things as the stadium is well on its way to being a done deal. The puppeteers have dictated so already. But, nonetheless, let’s look at why this deal is wrong for El Paso.
1. Since when does the government feel it is better to shutout a private, taxpaying entity in order to support a further drain on the taxpayers of the community? In this case, El Paso has a baseball team, the Diablos. They may not be the glamorous baseball the team the city desperately wants but neither is the proposed stadium destined to host a premier professional team either. Basically the puppets at city council want to kill the Diablos and move in a taxpayer funded team.
2. The city owns its own city council building but in its great intellect they would rather build a new palace to host their shenanigans, or worse yet, rent from the very same people they are giving taxpayer funds to.
3. El Paso is in the precipice of an economic tsunami. El Paso weathered the current economic downturn well because of the influx of Mexican money escaping Juárez, federal government investment in the military base and the lack of sub-prime mortgage credit that insulated El Paso from the housing bubble. These things have ended and El Paso has no viable economic model with which to continue with. A stadium will not alleviate this but rather it will further burden the taxpayers of the community. El Paso does not have a good track record on filling up venues, how will the stadium change that when more money is coming out of their pockets?
But, of course this is not about giving the community something for their benefit; it is about the PDNG group further lining their pockets at the expense of the community.
Just look at who is going to demolish the old buildings, who is going to get the contracts to build the new facilities and who is going to sell, or rent city hall their new palace. Those are the puppeteers pulling city council’s strings. Follow the money. The corruption in El Paso does not diminish it just continues to grow with each new “investment” in the community. What a shame.
Jun 25
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Stadium for El Paso; Hand out the gas masks to mask the stench of corruption
El Paso News
by Martín Paredes
June 25, 2012
Nothing the El Paso elite do any more surprises me but the stench of corruption just gets stronger each day. City Council’s latest ploy to get the community to fund the playgrounds for the rich is the latest round of stadium talk. City Council, in their limited ability to understand that they are just puppets for their masters, thinks that a stadium will bring much needed pride to El Paso.
Of course that’s assuming the community can forget the ongoing fiasco that is the El Paso Independent School District masquerading as an institution of learning. City Council pontificates about taking over EPISD to seem like they care about the community knowing full well that they have neither the legal ability to do so and much less the wherewithal to actually do any better than the school district’s current administration.
The same city council contemplating giving the city’s elite your money to play with is the same city council who oversees a police department so ripe in corruption that the city has used your money to settle millions in settlements for police malfeasance and a department at the center of the largest drug corridor into the United States who can’t even keep their drug lab certified. As if that isn’t enough, the police department hires such intellects as officers willing to steal from a wedding party while presumably guarding against other thieves and officers who see nothing wrong with getting a blow job, in uniform and at work. Oh, and my favorite, a department caught red-handed fixing tickets and when caught pretending, us? we knew nothing about that.
But the city council wannabe intellectuals feel that a stadium that coincidently, the people tasked with funding it will be priced out of enjoying it, would be the solution to all the travails of the city. I know this won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things as the stadium is well on its way to being a done deal. The puppeteers have dictated so already. But, nonetheless, let’s look at why this deal is wrong for El Paso.
1. Since when does the government feel it is better to shutout a private, taxpaying entity in order to support a further drain on the taxpayers of the community? In this case, El Paso has a baseball team, the Diablos. They may not be the glamorous baseball the team the city desperately wants but neither is the proposed stadium destined to host a premier professional team either. Basically the puppets at city council want to kill the Diablos and move in a taxpayer funded team.
2. The city owns its own city council building but in its great intellect they would rather build a new palace to host their shenanigans, or worse yet, rent from the very same people they are giving taxpayer funds to.
3. El Paso is in the precipice of an economic tsunami. El Paso weathered the current economic downturn well because of the influx of Mexican money escaping Juárez, federal government investment in the military base and the lack of sub-prime mortgage credit that insulated El Paso from the housing bubble. These things have ended and El Paso has no viable economic model with which to continue with. A stadium will not alleviate this but rather it will further burden the taxpayers of the community. El Paso does not have a good track record on filling up venues, how will the stadium change that when more money is coming out of their pockets?
But, of course this is not about giving the community something for their benefit; it is about the PDNG group further lining their pockets at the expense of the community.
Just look at who is going to demolish the old buildings, who is going to get the contracts to build the new facilities and who is going to sell, or rent city hall their new palace. Those are the puppeteers pulling city council’s strings. Follow the money. The corruption in El Paso does not diminish it just continues to grow with each new “investment” in the community. What a shame.
Tags: commentary, corruption, El Paso, politics, scams, sustainable communities