Where in the world has our elected District Attorney Jaime Esparza been for the last 16 years on the matter of widespread public corruption? The FBI is probing ever deeper and has now produced four guilty pleas on the part of City, County and school board officials and one architect doing busines with the school board. Again, where has Esparza been? Wayne State University Law School Professor Peter Henning hit the nail on the head when he said, ‘”This is the type of investigation you get when you have an entrenched government…By entrenchment, I mean the same people run for the different offices and their friends run for other offices. All these people grease each others’ hands.”‘ Does this sound familiar?
In El Paso we know Professor Henning’s observations to be particularly true. Election after election we see the same people running for office and usually winning. Even if we manage to get rid of an incumbent he invariably pops up somewhere else, usually appointed by his friends to some unexpired term that is vacant. One blatant example of this is the case of Larry Medina. In 2001, it was reported that Medina and three others survived a small airplane crash in the Chihuahuan desert. Medina, at that time a city representative, Carlos Aguilar a Comissioner on Commissioners’ Court and at least one school board member were on a small plane with a local architect who did business with all three public entities. They were on a fishing trip. It appeared that the architect had chartered the plane but when questions regarding the ethics behind the trip and who had paid for it came up, (questions NOT raised by the El Paso Times controlled by Dionicio Flores,) the public officials, including Medina, said that they had paid for their fare “in cash.” If that weren’t enough, it was also reported that on a prior occasion Medina had gone into a convenience store and tried to strong arm the clerk into selling him some booze after hours. The reports said Medina told the clerk words to the effect, “Do you now who I am?” In 2002, Medina also voted to raise our city taxes by a whopping 11.89%. He said it was for progess. Have you seen the “progress” from that tax increase yet? Also in 2002, Medina was involved in the TIF fiasco which involved his voting to seize private property around the Thomason Hospital area, using eminent domain if necessary, to turn the land over to private interests. The current “downtown plan” and the Paso Del Norte Group/Joyce Wilson scandal to do the same is nothing but a continuation of that earlier failed plan. What happened to Medina? Medina’s constituents, despite Dionicio Flores at the El Paso Times and then tax deadbeat Paul Strelzin at KROD disparaging these constituents fighting for their houses (just like we see now), rose up and booted Medina out of office.

Then what happened is enough to make even the most optimstic citizen burn his voting card. Commissioner’s Court had a vacancy and who did they appoint? You guessed it, the upstanding Larry Medina. Once again the voters had to trudge out and defeat Medina at the polls. Which they did now for a SECOND time. And just when you think you have seen the last of Medina, what happens next? Why he was recently appointed to serve at the Housing Authority a place with access to millions of dollars and is purported to be so corrupt it would take ten FBIs to sort through it all.

Now remember that Medina voted for Jaime Esparza’s UNconsitutional DIMS program (under the DIMS regime, citizens are hauled off to jail and charged without ever seeing a judge) a program Medina voted for time after time as both a City Rep and a County Commissioner despite its harm to us as a community. Medina’s vote on DIMS to the tune of over half a million dollars every year (not to mention what we have spent on lawsuits that DIMS has generated in wrongful arrest suits) was to give our money, taxpayer dollars, to Esparza and his loathed DIMS. Also keep in mind that Esparza has an actual written policy stating that public officials are EXEMPT from DIMS. They are not subjected to the system they vote to fund with our money and thrust on the rest of us. They do not have to go through the hated DIMS and they get to see a judge if arrested. Unlike the rest of us chumps who go straight to jail. Why the two El Pasos, one for us the People and one for those who control the tax dollar purse strings? Does this appear to be greasing the palms of one anothers’ hands? It is like the proverbial onion. Just keep peeling away.

Where has Esparza been when Coach Carlos Cordova from the school district (who pleaded guilty in Federal court just this last Thursday) was selling his votes year after year after year? And what were Cordova and others selling their votes for? We know that Hector Zavaleta, Jr., who is now cooperating with the FBI, worked for a bond company. These are the companies that arrange for school bonds and city bonds, etc. Were Cordova and others selling their votes to vote YES on these bond matters? And when bonds are passed, who benefits? Answer: Lots of people but most especially contractors and architects who will be on the receiving end of the bond money (taxpayer money) to build all those schools and roads for the benefit of the little children.– But don’t worry, when these same little children grow up and can’t afford their own homes because the taxes are so high to pay back the money owed on the bonds, the Housing Authority will gladly provide them with public housing as long as they don’t get arrested. Notice that when most bond issues come up, the billboards around town supporting the bond issues (which means if the bond passes your tax bill is going up) are put up by contractors. They even say who is paying for the billboard right there at the bottom.

You don’t have to live here for long to suspect that there is widespread graft and stealing going on at the City, County, Water Utility (PSB-the Public Service Board which controls our water and about 28,000 acres of public land) and school districts and the Housing Authority. Now ask yourself also, why hasn’t Dionicio Flores and his team of crack investigative reporters and journalists at the Times exposed this before now since they purport to cover all those public entity meetings? Where has Dionicio Flores been? The lowliest janitor at the court house and the shool districts can tell you what is going on with the contractors there. The independently owned newspaper, the El Paso Diario, reported in 2004 that: Dionicio Flores’ tax appraisal miraculously hardly moved up since he bought his house in the Willows in 1994: The Diario also reported that while Flores’ property appraisal had gone up a mere $2,000 in ten years, Dionicio Flores’ neighbors’ appraisals had gone up 70% to the tune of thousands of dollars during that same period. Perhaps that fact answers some questions as to the Times’ silence on the shennigans involving the bonds and tax increases. You’ll never read that one in the Times. What is going to happen when it comes out that some of these for sale votes may have been for all of these taxpayer crushing bonds that have been passed? Dionicio Flores at the Times has supported many of these bonds in his paper bonds that account for millions and millions of dollars of the current expenditures in our local economy. If there has been fraud passing bonds and tax increases involving votes for sale on the part of elected officials, the ramifications to our local financial structure are staggering.

Perhaps it is just easier for a District Attorney to look the other way because if he had done his job properly and investigated and indicted a few people he might not have gotten their vote on his prescious DIMS money. An investigation might reveal to the public how bad he and his cronies are and that they, the public, have been duped for years. The public might find out that when they lost their houses (the Diario reported that 400 families a month lose their houses and are living in them up to the day of eviction) and they and their families ended up on the STREET because they couldn’t pay their skyrocketing property taxes it was all because palms were so greased one can supply enough oil to refine from them.

I can tell you where Esparza has been on some occasions. When his DIMS approving buddy former Mayor Joe Wardy got caught with a loaded gun at the airport, Esparza said not to arrest him. And voila, Wardy wasn’t arrested. Who followed those orders? Why Mr. law enforcement himself, Chief Richard Wiles abdicated his duty to protect the peace and dignity of the State of Texas and followed Esparza’s don’t arrest Wardy order. Also remember that this was an easy call for Wiles since Wardy was the very mayor who had elevated him to police Chief in the first place. And round and round we go. When Dick Poe, Jr. got arrested for DWI, Esparza dismissed the case even though it was a strong one, citing “evidence insufficient.” When Dionicio Flores’ golden boy reporter David Crowder also got arrested by EPPD for DWI, Esparza dumped the case On-The-Spot. Crowder never even saw the jail, Esparza was so quick. When Nancy Hollebeke accused Esparza’s employee’s son Albert Machorro, Jr. of rape, Esparza went a step further and threw NANCY in jail thereby saving his faithful employee’s son. When Esparza’s personal secretary Amy Lujan Ocegueda’s brother, Alberto Ocegueda, who is a public school coach, was accused of child molestation by a six year old girl, Esparza got rid of the case. No charges for Alberto. Remember, Amy Lujan Ocegueda is the same personal secretary whom Esparza gives a $45,000 taxpayer paid “supplement” to every year, year after year on top of her county salary. In fact, the more the supplement is reported in the press the higher it goes. It is almost as though Esparza is taunting us with it. It has gone up almost $20,000 since I first brought it to light years ago. Esparza also takes Amy Lujan Ocegueda to Mexico City on the taxpayer dime for business reasons, he says. When questioned on this, Esparza gets very hot under the collar and says that, “Amy Lujan is a hardworkin’ woman.” This is also the same Mexico City located 1000 miles away from the 34th Judicial District in a foreign country called the United States of Mexico where Esparza writes off $350 meals at the Maria Isabela Sheraton as a “legitimate campaign expense.”

This is what happens when you have a local district attorney unchallenged and entrenched for at least 16 years.

Do we wonder why the powers that be including Dionicio Flores, Paul Foster at Western Refinery, and the car dealers are shoveling money and support and free press Esparza’s way, way away from me? Who do Esparza and his DIMS benefit? Certainly not us. Where has Jaime Esparza been? Where has he been indeed. He’s been entrenched in…

If you haven’t yet drunk from Dionicio Flores’ well, and are scared of your next tax appraisal and tax bill, which you should be (which come due in January, next month) and don’t think the above is good government, then vote for me, Theresa Caballero on March 4, 2008. Make up your own minds and don’t be duped by the information machines like Dionicio Flores at the Times (the same newspaper that depends on millions in advertising revenue from the City of El Paso and its elected officials who vote to give them the advertising. That’s right the same elected officials who…) and the other local hacks who are on who knows whose payrolls. They know I will come down on this kind of corruption with the wrath of years of a fleeced and disenfranchised community. And when, not IF, WHEN, they try and nail me to the public opinion cross which Dionicio Flores said he was going to do when he recently printed that I would be “grist for future editorials,” know I am not backing down and neither should you.

Notice when Dionicio Flores promotes and denigrates different candidates. See as an example all the ink he has spent on Chief Wiles and none on the other contenders for Sheriff. How many stories do we need to read on how Wiles is retiring. We get it. Who do you think Dionicio Flores wants to be the next sheriff? Who do you think Dionicio Flores doesn’t want to be the next DA? Flores is shameless.

Send this e-mail to your friends. Print it out for your friends and family who don’t have a computer. Defeat the machine that is strangling us. Defeat it at the grass roots level. Now is the time for you to stand up and support me just as I have always stood up and supported you and will continue to do. End Corruption on March 4, 2008 in the Democratic Primary!