Power play?

February 27, 2014

There must be more to the story of our county hospital awarding an anesthesia services contract to someone other than the incumbent, our new medical school.

People at Texas Tech are claiming that they will now close the anesthesiology department and will stop providing clinical services through their local clinics.

The hospital board has seven members.  The vote was 5-2 in favor of hiring the New York based firm.  The two votes against the change have significant ties to the local money powers.

More interesting is that chairman and vice-chairman were the two negative votes.  They seem to have lost control of the board.

Is a message being sent by the hospital board to Texas Tech?  There has been talk about a new hospital on the west side that would be affiliated with Texas Tech.  The hospital is building clinics around town that are competitive to Texas Tech’s.

Is this about money, quality of service, or power?

The article in the Times certainly did not tell us.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | County Government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Trying to shift the blame

February 25, 2014

The commotion over the mistakenly sent email that disclosed that EPISD is considering closing some schools is telling us a lot about our new superintendent of schools.

Alex Hinojosa wrote  in an El Paso Times article:

When the email was mistakenly sent to the news media, district officials asked news outlets to not move forward with the story, with the promise that Cabrera [the superintendent]  would speak with them.

Cabrera said he changed his mind about meeting with news outlets Wednesday. Instead, the district sent out a news release Thursday explaining that the details of the email were part of brainstorming sessions to explore cost-saving options.

“I changed my mind because as I thought about it more and more, I thought it wasn’t fair to print a story that was a brainstorming session,” Cabrera said. “I thought it was unprofessional to do a story based on brainstorming notes.”

Unprofessional

KFOX received the mistakenly sent email.  The district asked KFOX to sit on it until the superintendent spoke with them.  KFOX complied with the request to hold off.  The superintendent renigged.  Then the district tried to make KFOX look like the bad guys.

It is our superintendent that has been unprofessional here.  This adds to the stories I am hearing that he does not return phone calls and cancels in person meetings while the parties are sitting in his waiting room.

Speaking of professionalism, personally I’d like to see him wearing a coat and tie when he is conducting our school district business.

Public information officer

As for the district public information officer who accidentally sent the email, there are some mistakes that you just should not make.  This is one of them.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Unnecessary change

February 23, 2014

According to this article the officials at Fort Bliss are about to rename Robert E. Lee road.  The new name will be Buffalo Soldier Road.

The buffalo soldiers were a significant part of our local history and certainly deserve to have things named in their honor.

My problem here is that we could have named some significant new road or facility after the buffalo soldiers instead of changing the name of something already named.

Money is being wasted as addresses have to be changed.  History is being lost since past references to the old name will not be easy to follow in the future.

One fear is that this is revisionism at work.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Astute comment

February 21, 2014

Reality Checker wrote a comment the other day that no one else commented on.  The original post was about how the city appears to be using almost $3 million from Texas state funding sources to build two pedestrian crossings for our new ball park.

The comment deserves to be promoted to a post so that more readers see it.  It is reprinted below:

You just opened Pandora’s box. I believe the pedestrian crossing was included in the original ballpark budget, which makes the city council’s actions of greater concern.

Here’s what the El Paso Times’ Cindy Ramirez wrote in a Q&A on July 15, 2012:

“A preliminary study by Turner Construction shows design and construction costs of about $39 million; $2 million for a pedestrian crossing; and $2 million to demolish the City Hall and Insights buildings. The $50 million allows some wiggle room in construction, though any surplus would be deposited into the debt service fund to help pay off the construction, used to provide additional parking or deposited into a capital repairs reserve fund for future maintenance.”

They are now using state taxpayer funds which were not originally intended to be a source of funds for this project. This is really pretty simple: the ballpark is more over budget than we even know and that city management, council, and the car salesman are once again engaged in a manipulative shell game to obscure the truth. They are also once again robbing Peter to pay Paul Foster.

The only “wiggle room” in this situation is the wiggle room that is allowing city management, city council, the mayor and the Mountainstar principals to continue to do these things without any personal consequences.

Ms. Ramirez stated on July 15, 2012, that the answers in her Q&A were provided by city officials and the Mountainstar principals. If she were not so busy these days serving as the de facto public relations person for downtown redevelopment, perhaps she could have done some reporting on the disconnect between the July 2012 statement and the actions taken in the February 10 council meeting. Then again, maybe she and the Times chose to ignore the discrepancy and deception.

We deserve better

Brutus

Reply

1 Comment | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Prove the charges fairly

February 19, 2014

The El Paso Times published a good headline article, Killers benefited by testifying, the other day.

Let me say first that I am not personally soft on crime, I just think that the government ought to have to prove their charges fairly.  Certainly what is deemed illegal for the defense should be illegal for the prosecution.

The article points out that in federal criminal trials witnesses for the prosecution are often rewarded based upon their testimony at trial.  These rewards take the form of shorter prison sentences, money, legal resident status as well as other incentives.

Paid to testify

The testimony is purchased by the government and jurors are asked to believe it.  If someone from the defense side of the case offers an incentive to anyone to testify, a felony is committed that I believe can result in a five year jail term.

So much for fairness.

The truth

If a citizen lies in a federal investigation another crime has been committed.  The penalty for that federal felony?  Five years in prison.

Many if not most federal indictees plead guilty to lying about their case rather than committing the underlying crime.  Just ask Martha Stewart.

On the other hand law enforcement officials are allowed to lie to you during an investigation.  An FBI agent telling you “Your friend is in the other room and has blamed the crime on you”, even if it is not true,  is legal.

So much for fairness.

Misprison

You can get sentenced for up to three years if you fail to report a felony that you are aware of.

Prove the case

Once again, please know that I think that criminals should be punished.

I think that the process of proving guilt should be fair.  The government should not use these techniques to prove a weak case or to save money and time.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

Leave a Comment » | El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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