I think our local candidate for the United States senate could do with some better advisers.
When he was recently asked about his nickname he told the audience that in our community if you are named Robert or Albert or Gilbert or Umberto the community calls you Beto.
His statement is not true.
If he had told us that he uses the nickname because his mother, father, other relative, childhood buddies or someone else called him that I don’t think that most of us would give it a second thought.
Instead he misrepresented our community.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
His Mom’s MAID called him Beto.
When I was very young . . .OUR MAID called me: “Jim” or “Jeeem”
. . . and that’s NOT my name AT ALL.
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My name is John Smith and my childhood nickname was Beto because our community, so…
Not that his politician father was pandering or anything
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I fail to see how Beto’s explanation for how he got his nickname “misrepresents” our community. Why don’t you just declare yourself to be a supporter of his opponent and be done with it? Your post strikes this regular reader as just a bit petty.
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When I met him in 2001 he was called Beto. I don’t see the big deal about it. Cruz is going to win anyway and Beto definitely has a role in Dem politics going forward. It’s the politics that are important not this name thing.
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Brutus,
Now you need to create a post about his opponent’s given name and where his nickname was derived.
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Let us talk of names. One may have a name, a nickname and/or an alias. Our “local candidate” has, as do others, a nickname. The Canadian-Cuban opponent has an alias. Spanish nicknames were very much en vogue when Beto was born in El Paso and before. A person born “Charles” or “Carlos” over his life might be known in different circles as Charles, Carlos, Carlitos, Chuck and Charley. Beto’s wife has an uncle Robert Feuille who is known in legal circles as Beto with various spellings. Attorney Paul Sargent is widely, and has been for multiple decades, as Pablo. It goes both ways. Miguel and Michael are and have been known as Miguelito, Mickey, Mike, etc. The use of Spanish nicknames was perhaps more popular among wealthier families, but up and down the social strata there was a time when even some girls had Spanish nicknames.
El Canuck Cubano has an alias. A nickname is a term of familiarity and/or endearment. If Cruz had a nickname, it would be Ralfa, but since Cruz ain’t endeared of anybody, he goes by “Ted.” We use nicknames to communicate affection and it is generally a gift from those who love us. An alias is “taken” or “assumed” very often for purposes of disguise or deception. Given, the way even Trump and McConnell feel about him, perhaps assuming an alias is not a bad idea for “Ted.”
Some posters seem to feel that the existence of a maid in the O’Rourke home is a negative. In those days and even more recently, some maids in El Paso had maids in their homes in Juarez. I was amazed when I moved to El Paso and women in very low level jobs had maids in their homes, but that was El Paso as it was then.
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My favorite is his commercial that says we should remake immigration laws in our image. What image is that? Rich Irish white guys using Spanish nicknames their mom’s maid gave them? Can you imagine the outrage if Trump or any other Republican used that phrase? But Beto gets a pass because he is liberal and trying to pass himself off as Hispanic to voters who don’t know better. It’s okay for Hispanics to use phrases like that.
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Donaldo better f{edited} get his ass in gear with that migrant column header our way or he can expect a million more, like in Europe. Murder, rape, bombings, stabbings…at least these aren’t people who actually want to kill us. They just want on the US welfare wagon.
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I disagree with your analysis but share some of your concerns about spending. Though I think we, collectively, have the wrong end of the stick.
The problem is the welfare state, not who is allowed to suckle from it. Eliminate the “entitlements” and we eliminate the perverse incentive (if any). Allow folks to keep their money and pick who they want to help. As long as it is a personal choice I don’t care who gets supported. Hondurans? Sure. Straight white Christians? Yep. One-legged trans performance artists? Go right ahead; it’s be your money.
There are at least a couple of reasons why this won’t be done. Off the top of my head:
1. red-baiters talk a big game about “socialism” but happily consume social bennies. Keep your government hands off my Medicare!
2. 1st-gen immigrants actually consume *fewer* benefits/dollars than native-born folks at the same income levels. This reveals the immigration welfare argument as red meat to nativists rather any kind of insight into the issue. People don’t like being revealed as dupes, hypocrites, or “useful idiots”.
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Except in El Paso where the wealthiest Republicans fund Democrat politicians who, in turn, repay the favor with mega handouts, subsidies, tax breaks that only they receive and which we pay for. It’s a kind of socialism for the donor class. Even public housing is a racket for its tax-credit developments and Section 8 subsidies that provide guaranteed cash flow to these properties.
The real entitlements are at the top, not the bottom.
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Thank you for the thoughtful response.
I agree that the real entitlements are at the top. I oppose handouts to any class, including the business class. I’d say “capitalist class” except rent-seeking, graft, and paying for political influence is not capitalism (or at least shouldn’t be).. I’m pro-market, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as pro-business when business subverts the market.
It’s surprising to me that immigrants are the focus of the attention and emotional response (in general, not talking about you here) when the underlying problem is elsewhere. As they say in baseball, “the play is on first”.
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Two points. First, folks pay for Medicare and social security via a payroll tax. Employers pay the other half of that tax and those who are self-employed pay both sides. Medicare tax applies to all wages, social security used to max around $60k and now is collected up to $128,700. The total tax on wages is 15.3% per year. In short most of us are paying for that entitlement and a lot of folks don’t live long enough to get it back. My husband who died at 66 sure didn’t. And the data that says first generation immigrants don’t cost as much as folks who were born here likely doesn’t calculate the cost of services like special language education or remedial learning services in schools or a lot of support services that don’t track specifically to individual immigrants but are necessary to support immigrant populations. Go to California and see how many languages they print government documents in. They have street signage printed in multiple languages in some neighborhoods. And finally, what’s wrong with being a nativist? The Indians weren’t and looked how that ended up. The bottom line is if you open your country up to anyone who shows up and don’t expect folks to assimilate, pretty soon you don’t have a country—instead you have clusters of whatever ethnic group is dominant in that particular location.
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While I agree with much of what you say, I would question the level of the impact you think that providing “special language instruction” or “remedial learning services.” First of all, my wife is a retired bilingual educator. The whole point of bilingual teaching is that kids whose primary language is not English are taught the same things the other kids are taught, but also brought along to learn English more quickly than they might otherwise. That is not remedial, nor is it particularly “special.” How do you think the generations of immigrants from Europe acclimated themselves to the American way of life? Why do you think we used to consider ourselves to be a melting pot? Why do you now want to deny that heritage, and deny that right to new immigrants?
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When I say remedial classes, I’m not talking about language classes. I’m talking about subjects kids were struggling in that are compounded when language differences are involved. Convicted felon Garcia (whoops former EPSID superintendent Garcia) was trying to make recent immigrant kids (I guess that is what we call the kids who come over from Juarez) disappear on test day. That suggests these kids were perceived as holding the district back as far as test scores. I think the biggest difference between early to mid century immigrants from Europe and today’s immigrants is that folks coming in that period of 20th were thrown into a sink or swim environment. There was no social welfare outside of what their immigrant communities provided. There was no bilingual education. My husband’s grandparents immigrated from Poland that way. The Polish community in Chicago financed home purchases, facilitated English classes and helped with employment with zero tax dollar support.
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The Native American indians were nativists, but they were slaughtered into submission and continue to be treated badly. Treaties were broken, lands were stolen, and Native Americans were murdered as recently as the 1920’s so that their natural resources could be stolen. North Dakota’s state legislature recently passed a voter registration law with a minor new technicality that was specifically designed to keep Native Americans from voting. So, let’s not act as though we’re being treated like Native Americans.
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The Indians originally welcomed a bunch of financial immigrants who had no intent of assimilating or respecting their culture. These immigrants felt any agreements reached to maintain peace were just words when it worked to their advantage. Globalism essentially does the same thing by encouraging mass immigration of folks who don’t have any intention of assimilating into the countries they move into. We are called xenophobic, nativists and racists for using terms like melting pot, illegal alien or expecting our immigration laws to be enforced. We are expected to welcome a caravan of folks who hijacked two semi trucks to break down the barriers Mexican police had erected at their Southern border to block the caravan while people were processed in an orderly fashion because they didn’t want to wait for that to happen. Why on earth should we expect mobs like that to do anything but pick and choose the laws they obey when they arrive here? And what happens when more mobs show up because this mob’s strategy succeeds? The Indian analogy becomes increasingly likely if we continue to ignore the issue that folks who swarm the border and refuse to wait in line have no respect for our laws or sovereignty. It’s not about race or ethnicity, it is about attitude and values.
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Are you suggesting that socialized benefits one pays into are not socialized? Or that one pays into their own SS benefits? The SS administration says otherwise.
You may have a point about language instruction, although that is not the stated objection here or elsewhere. No one says “they are coming here for ESL instruction!” They say “they are coming here for the welfare.”
I have no problem with docs being printed in different languages. We have no official language, but the first time one was suggested it was for German. If German were the official language would you eschew ESL to help your kids learn that language?
The problem with nativism is this: it’s repugnant to the stated goals of the founding fathers and the republic they designed. IMO the republic (“if we can keep it”) is more threatened by native authoritarians than immigrants, legal or otherwise.
The argument about Indians reveals the position to be about tribalism and maintaining the current situation, rather than any larger concern with the nation. By that logic American citizens should vacate now and return the land to whomever was here first
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El Paso Speak has been invaded by Russians bots.
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Looks Like it!
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OK-sky 🙂
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Most people haven’t given this a second thought. The only people who want to make an issue of this are those who support Rafael “Ted” Cruz. Those same people have no issue with Cruz’s misrepresentations of border communities as unsafe places. Just come out say that you don’t like Beto, endorse Cruz, and move on. While I don’t agree with Beto on everything, he is a lot more honest about his positions than Cruz. Go Beto!
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AMEN!
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While I find Sen. Cruz personally and politically unpleasant, I think the name Rafael is pretty cool. I’d have gone with that.
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Names are important. A first grader was asked his name by his teacher and he responded: “Snotty None Brown” She got very angry and asked him again with a threat of being sent home if he didn’t tell her his real name. Snotty nose Brown” he repeated. Really frustrated, she told him to go home and bring back a parent. His little shoulders sank and on the way out of the class he stopped by his twin sister and said “Come on Shit Ass she ain’t gonna believe you either.
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I promised myself to stop commenting here (and on Facebook) but this is just too ridiculous. With all the issues at stake, Brutus, you consider Beto’s nickname to be worthy of this diatribe? Enough.
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I see no problem with his explanation and in fact I have relatives and friends with some of those names that that we’ve always called Beto. This is not only ridiculous but petty and instead of Brutus I am inclined to think of you as Bruto today.
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You have a choice between a really nice guy (I’ve know him for 15+ years), Beto, who is a deep blue liberal and a real asshole, Cruz, who is not.
Whatcha gonna do? I’ll probably hold my nose and vote for Cruz as I am GOP, but that doesn’t mean I like him. It just means there is no way I’m going to help the Dems gain the Senate and plunge us in to a civil war.
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Your comments are simply outrageous. How in the name of all that is holy could you say that finally getting a Democratic Senate would plunge us into civil war? What the hell do you think the GOP is doing to us right now, and has been doing for lo, these many years?! The only way to avoid a civil war is to put the Democrats back in power in order to undo at least some of the great harm that has been done to this once great nation.
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It’s not mobs of Republicans who are shutting down free speech on campuses, throwing fire bombs, blocking intersections in Portlandia, having mass v-screech for a SCOTUS hearing, harassing peaceful diners…
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You’re the one that always calls other people snowflakes, yet you’re sounding more like an overly emotional snowflake with every post.
You act like all bad acts are by people on the left. What about the three people killed and dozens injured after violent white-nationalist rally in Virginia? A white-nationalist mowing people down with a car. Keep pretending that Trump and the GOP are not helping to fuel the race wars and class wars.
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Your GOP teams up the Proud Boy mobsters to do the things you profess to hate. This Miami incident isn’t the only one.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/splinternews.com/miami-gop-chairman-and-proud-boys-led-mob-style-protest-1829886046/amp
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And, JerryK, it is not mobs of Democrats doing much of anything, anywhere. If there are lots of people protesting? That’s not a mob. Your little list of “outrages” pales in comparison to what the white supremacist, racist, nazis of trumplandia are doing and have done! Get over yourself, snowflake.
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Hofstadter’s _Paranoid Style in American Politics” will be instructive here.
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It’s disingenuous for you to express fear of a civil war, while pretending that some in the GOP like white nationalist Congressman Steve King aren’t fueling the same kind of hatreds that could lead to a civil war. Politicians in parties share blame for the massive unrest, but continuing to give any one party total control is the fastest path to destruction.
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Mr. Kurtyka, you have raise the specter of civil war because now it is your Republicans who want to spend tax dollars at the expense of the Nation and its sovereignty. Shame on you.
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If they’re spending it to build the Wall, that is protecting our sovereignty. The Dem platform seems to be no ICE, no borders, more abortions, add a few more letters to the alphabet soup (P?), nix the 2nd amendment and the Senate and the Electoral College are anachronisms.
So is liberty, so lets protect it. Jobs-GOP-Not Mobs
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So the first place they start spending money on “the wall” is here in El Paso, one of the safest cities in the nation. What’s wrong with this picture?
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F{edited} lyin ted cruz and agent orange. Republicans have really surprised me since when has it been considered patriotic to support neonazis and be okay with the fact that russians helped get trump elected??? Civil war 🤣🤣🤣 damn right i will take to the streets to oppose citizens rights being stripped have you seen how agent orange talks about the free press? I cant stand that asshole i cant believe the spineless republicans are letting him take a shit all over or beautiful democratic experiment
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