Carrasco is El Paso's answer to Sarah Palin. She's a shrill extremist that tries her hardest to string together Republican talking points into a coherent sentence but more often than not fails miserably.
She's been trying to interject herself in to the local political scene for a long time in an effort to try to appear reverent going back to the days of Congressman Reyes' town hall meetings. Since Ordaz used to work for Reyes then maybe that is when Carrasco started to sharpen that axe she has to grind. Since then she's been on television for her extremist views on immigration with regularity.
Before I go on you have to understand who she is and who she is connected to. She's a close associate of Martin Paredes, thats right, El Paso's own Flying Monkey. They have collaborated, which is ironic considering how much Paredes purports to despise bad immigration policy from the right, on a range of issues.
Most often what they collaborate on are personal hit jobs on people.
That is important to understand because when you take a look at the ethics complaint filed you'll see that the Carrasco/Paredes movida is fairly transparent.
And stick around and I'll tell you how Martin Paredes' ego is actually the tip off.
Carrasco has sensationalized what she is accusing Ordaz of doing and thats why she made sure that she got it out to the media right away. I mean whats the point of doing something like this without getting a little attention right?
So here is the complaint that was filed by Carrasco against Ordaz:
In short she's accusing Ordaz of violating a state statute, 551.146 DISCLOSURE OF CERTIFIED AGENDA OR TAPE RECORDING OF CLOSED MEETING.
There's a lot of legalese behind all of this but here's the short of it:
Its illegal for someone, whether they are part of an elected body or not, to distribute a recording of executive session or a certified agenda. Remember that wording of laws are carefully crafted and the turn of a word can make something legal or illegal.
I'm telling you all this because Martin Paredes is working on a hit piece and he doesn't actually care, nor probably understand, that very important point.
What Carrasco is alleging is that Ordaz and County Judge Veronica Escobar exchanged text messages during an executive session meeting and that in the exchange Ordaz divulged the nuclear launch codes to the city's arsenal of atomic weapons.
Or something like that.
The problem is that Carrasco apparently didn't read the statute she's accusing Ordaz of violating. Or maybe she did and my comparison to Sarah Palin is that much more accurate, although I doubt anyone is wanting to do an adult film spoof of Carrasco.
Any who, I included what Carrasco sent to the city because I wanted you all to see that she highlighted certain parts in red, so as to draw attention to them. Maybe she should have given them a little attention herself.
The statute relates to someone turning over recordings and certified minutes of closed meetings. Carrasco doesn't even make that allegation in her complaint. In her complaint she very clearly points to text messages between Ordaz and Escobar that she obtained through an open records request.
Here's the part that is hilarious.
******A text message is neither a recording of a meeting nor certified minutes of a meeting. ******
So not to get in the nuances of very boring statutes that I've been reading for the last couple of hours, Carrasco filed a complaint that she knew wasn't consistent with the circumstances she alleged, told the media and the Flying Monkey about it, and it turns out it wasn't a violation to begin with.
Also, lets talk about where she even got this idea in the first place. She got it from a text message open records request. So before Paredes turns this in to another conspiracy circus keep in mind that Ordaz turned over her messages. She wasn't hiding anything. There's no shadowy conspiracy if Ordaz turned over what was requested of her.
Now by the time Martin Paredes posts his piece on this later on this evening he would have somehow tied this to a conspiracy involving a grassy knoll, the papal visit, UMC, the drug war in Juarez, the temperature in Orlando, Florida and I'm sure he'll throw me in for good measure.
Although to be honest with you guys, I kind of get a kick out of his obsession of me in my underwear.
C'mon Martin, I'm straight.
You'll never actually get to see me in my underwear, sorry to disappoint you. By the way, I know guys your age probably do wear the tighty-whitey tan-ta-duns, but I'm a boxer-briefs kinda guy. So next time you're in town crashing on Bobby Bowling's couch and masturbating to your cartoons of me you'll have to keep that in mind.
What is interesting is that I wasn't alerted to this until Paredes, for the first time ever, tried to pick a fight with me in social media as you can see in the first screen shot below.
Normally he avoids me like the plague. On more than one occasion I've confronted him on social media and he usually goes into hiding somewhere in his van down by the river. Its completely out of character for Paredes to engage me, much less start some shit with me early in the morning.
And that was because he and Carrasco were so over-confident about the complaint.
One of the things Paredes does is he likes to allege corruption and conspiracies in a very broad sense.
Rarely does it ever come with anything concrete, much like this instance. He very subtly puts the word "corruption" in the background.
Corruption is a crime. He's very obviously trying to imply corruption by including images of Judge Escobar and Rep Ordaz.
If Paredes has evidence of corruption he is obligated to report it to law enforcement. But he doesn't because he doesn't.
Never the one to shy away from a fight when someone picks one with me, I responded right away. Incredibly Paredes actually turned around another little photoshop project.
Newsflash Martin, Carrasco feeding you documents isn't "doing all of the work" for me.
Work is actually going through the statute to see what the text of the statute indicates and then cross referencing legal definitions so that you actually know what you're talking about.
Which is what makes this situation all the more hilarious. I'm not sure if there is a screening process for the Ethics Commission in which lawyers review complaints for validity/frivolity before they go to the Commission or if the Commission just takes and reviews everything.
Either way, these two coordinated in an effort that was sloppy.
But hell just for good measure, I'll include my response to Paredes little photoshop project:
No one requests text messages from other city reps.
And if they have, would anyone turn anything over?
And would Paredes even write about them?
Not likely, because it doesn't fit his narrative. But it would speak volumes about transparency.
Both theirs and Martin Paredes.