On May 8, 2013, KVIA reporter, Matt Dougherty shed more light on El Paso Police Officer Alberto Machorro’s road-rage incident with Dee Margo back in September of 2012. Some have speculated that this incident led to Margo’s reelection loss to Joe Moody. Was this incident a conspiracy? As with all conspiracies the evidence is circumstantial, […]
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Cold Hard Facts for Steve Ortega
Let’s get this out of the way from the onset; the only way Steve Ortega is elected mayor in June is when pigs fly. The mathematics of last Saturday’s election clearly spells this out, contrary to UTEP political pundits that clearly have no basic understanding of basic mathematics. For clarity, so that the El Paso […]
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Bain Construction and Steve Ortega Campaign Contributions
When I first stumbled across a campaign contribution from Bain Construction to Steve Ortega while reviewing Ortega’s financial disclosure it stood out to me for three reasons. First, it was because instead of an individual’s name it was a company’s name. Second because it did not have the standard “LLC” of a company that is […]
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Did Steve Ortega Accept an Illegal Contribution?
You won’t be reading about this in the El Paso Times because it involves Bob Moore’s favorite golden boy; Steve Ortega. Had this been any other mayoral candidate you can expect it would have made front-page, above the fold “breaking news”, a few days before the election. But alas it involves Steve Ortega and there […]
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Cinco de Mayo and El Paso Downtown Redevelopment
Last Sunday, as I prepared to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, far from my beloved Mexico, I took some time to contemplate the Cinco de Mayo holiday. I have always argued that the fascination with Cinco de Mayo in the United States derives from a clever beer marketing gimmick that was used to market beer sales […]
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The Foster and Hunt economics of Triple-A
Although the media-spin machine has created the perception that El Paso is solidly behind the Tucson Padres making El Paso home there are indications that not all is what the spin meisters would have us believe. Although the baseball stadium is well on its way, after City Hall was recently demolished, there are still several […]
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HOT to pay for baseball stadium but what about occupancy rates?
The El Paso voters recently increased the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) from 15.5% to 17.5%. According to the city’s documents the new tax rate, the two percent increase, will be used to fund the new baseball arena. The same documentation adds that the revenues collected, including the increase, will be a little under $112 million annually. […]
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Blue Flame Building, The Albatross that is Downtown Redevelopment
The Blue Flame building is the perfect example of the idiocy of downtown redevelopment through government funded flights of fancy. As soon as the government took over the building it went from a well-known piece of downtown history to a building that changed hands from the government to a criminal to the latest downtown poster […]
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Downtown Redevelopment Visionaries
The executive looked out the window of his office into San Jacinto Plaza. “How could this be”, he asked himself as he looked at the boarded-up and dilapidated hotels. The Cortez and the Paso Del Norte, once the jewels of downtown El Paso, were slowly crumbling away, as was downtown El Paso. If only he […]
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El Paso Stupidity: Chamber Treks to Seattle
In the continuing saga of El Paso stupidity the El Paso Chamber of Commerce is trekking to Seattle. That’s right the Chamber that so thoughtfully doled out an Entrepreneur of the Year Award to convicted Bob Jones is now planning a trip to learn from Seattle’s downtown redevelopment efforts, as if they could be duplicated […]