l10congresistas

USA: 180 congress members vying for power

 Money talks.
 — Lope de Vega


Gabriel Molina

• THE U.S. Representative for Harlem, Democrat Charles Rangel, was the latest to go down in the witch hunt of Cuba’s friends in Congress, launched by right-wing Florida extremists.

Rangel, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who has been continuously reelected since November 3, 1970, has been obliged to temporarily resign as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, accused of failing to pay taxes on a residence he owns in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, along with other allegations.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner demanded Rangel’s removal as chairman of the Committee, but the Democrats defeated his motion. On March 2, however, Boehner demanded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keep him off the Committee until the Ethics Commission completes its investigation. The next day, Rangel stepped down.

Other supporters of the view that normal relations between Cuba and the United States would be mutually advantageous, such as Senators Christopher Dodd, Max Baucus, Byron Dorgan and Maxine Waters; California Representative Laura Richardson, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, and Republican congress members Ray LaHood of Illinois, and Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, have suffered similar persecution for the same reason.

Once again, those who fear the possibility of a positive change in Cuba policy were moved to action. They intensified their moves in late 2009, when it once again became highly possible that all U.S. citizens would have their right restored to travel freely to Cuba, and the European Union made known its intention to normalize relations with the island by eliminating the restrictive “common position” established by Mr. Aznar, which was based on his commitments to Miami’s right-wing extremists.

Since May, Rangel had predicted that all restrictions on travel to Cuba, decreed by President Kennedy in 1962, would be lifted before the end of the year. But congress members Debbie Wasserman, Kendrick Meek, Robert Andrews and Frank Pallone, allies of Cuban-American congress members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln and Mario Díaz Balart, Robert Menendez and Albio Sires, intensified their campaigns in Congress and other branches of national and international leadership, notably so in the European Union, and even in Cuba, using their influence in various agencies that answer to the CIA.

Their strategy to prevent any change in Washington’s policy on Havana, hijacked by a right-wing extremist group, is further evidence of how it has turned into a U.S. domestic policy issue. The tactic recalls the sinister practices used by Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation, as instructed by President Ronald Reagan, in the most orthodox political/military style learned from his mentor, the former dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar: you either pay off or finish off your enemy. That saying comes from the carrot-and-stick doctrine, attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt.  

Rangel was in Havana in January of 1998, coinciding with the Pope’s visit. I met him during his visit to the Granma newspaper, and at the first opportunity, asked him why Mas Canosa had recruited the son of the famous African-American congressman Adam Clayton Powell Sr. to run against him in 1994. With evident satisfaction, Rangel told us how Mas threw a fit and threatened reprisals when his offer to finance him was refused.

Despite the $500,000 provided by the CANF chairman to Clayton Jr. from the funds of the USA political action committee (USA-PAC), Rangel easily defeated him for Harlem’s 15th district, the Upper West Side.

A congressman for 30 years, Rangel is a graduate of New York University and St. John's University School of Law. He served in the U.S. Army in the Korean War (1948-1952), and was decorated with the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. A resident of deep Harlem, he is unable to forget how the Foundation – for racist and political reasons – prevented Cuban-American Mario Baeza from taking office as undersecretary of state for Latin America in 1992, an office for which he had been nominated by President Clinton. Nor could he forget the support given by Cuban-American individuals in Angola to Jonas Savimbi, the instrument of then-racist South Africa. Or the environment created by those elements in Miami, the only city in the United States to oppose a visit by Nelson Mandela after he had announced his intention of visiting Cuba. The racists were unable to achieve either objective, and won strong opposition from Mandela, who admitted that his real friends were unquestionably on the island.

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, godson of Fulgencio Batista and heir to the PAC funds managed by Mas Canosa, took revenge over Rangel’s courageous stance after the latter demanded that Attorney General Janet Reno conduct a federal investigation into Luis Posada Carriles – previously a protégé of the CIA and Mas Canosa’s CANF, and now of the Diaz-Balarts – after the mastermind of the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban airliner over Barbados confessed to The New York Times his involvement in planning the acts of terrorism against tourist facilities in Cuba, with which the fugitive from Venezuela was sending a coercive message to Washington.

That Miami mafia has tortuously utilized the carrots represented by PAC funds. One eloquent example of that is the case of U.S. Rep. Sam Graves who, according to journalists David Goldstein and Lesley Clark of the Washington bureau of the powerful McClatchy newspaper chain – owner of the Miami Herald – left “the side of those who support the embargo after taking money from the PAC.”

Graves, a Republican congressman from a rural district in northwest Missouri, was up until then a consistent champion of ending the restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, according to an article by the abovementioned reporters published on November 16, 2009.  A member of the House Agriculture Committee, he had voted seven times in favor of amendments to restore those rights to U.S. businesspeople and other citizens until 2004. That was how he defended the interests of Missouri farmers who would benefit from exporting their products to Cuba.

Jason Klindt, a spokesman for Graves, stated that, persuaded by Mario Díaz-Balart and Iliana Ros-Lehtinen – who have never been accused of such bribery in the Ethics Committee – Graves had received $8,000 from the PAC. The Public Campaign organization revealed that that was the reason which prompted the former farmer to change his vote. The Missouri Farm Bureau solidly supports an easing of the so-called embargo. “We are opposed to any restriction on exports to Cuba,” they said in a press release on the issue, announced by Garret Hawkins, one of the Bureau’s representatives.

This is not an isolated incident. In 2004, 18 congress members changed their vote after receiving PAC funds of $3,000 to $22,050, according to the same sources.

On December 7, 2005, the Miami Herald revealed who and how the 2004 bribery program took place. The task was given to the Jewish Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, who was new to the House, because it made it easy for her to work among congress members from that party to counteract the successes of the blockade’s enemies, who at the time had a majority. That was the principal objective. Mauricio Claver Carone, a director of the US-Cuba PAC, helped her to contact 120-plus congress members. They represented the lobby created by Mas Canosa with advisement from the Jewish lobby, the Diaz-Balarts and other Cuban-American congress members who abandoned the CANF and who, after the chairman’s death, controlled the lobby via the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC), together with other right-wing extremists, supporters of the former dictator Batista. Within Congress, in 2003 they created the Cuban Democracy Caucus, made up of legislators from both parties who defend the blockade against Cuba.

The Center for Responsive Politics believes that 125 U.S. representatives and senators received money, and that 33 solid supporters of easing restrictions changed their votes as a result of the efforts of Wasserman, who received $75,700 from the committee.

The PAC donated splendidly to the Republicans when it was launched in 2004, but last year 76% of its donations went to Democrats, according to the report. The contributions include more than $850,000 to 53 Democratic representatives who recently sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing any changes to Cuba policy. Every legislator who signed the letter received an average of $16,344. The five biggest beneficiaries of the money are Lincoln Díaz-Balart, with approximately $367,000; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; John McCain, Republican presidential candidate in 2008; and Senator Robert Menéndez, New York Democrat.

However, critics of the so-called embargo – read, blockade – are not daunted. On February 25, a bill was introduced in the House titled “Reform of restrictions on travel and enhanced exports,” by U.S. Representatives Peterson, Moran, Delauro and Emerson.  These legislators say that they have enough votes to “remove the hurdles” on sales of U.S. agricultural products to Cuba and to end restrictions on travel to Cuba for all Americans.

The contention over Cuba policy is increasing and becoming strained in face of contradictory signals from the White House in a very polemic atmosphere resulting from the Obama administration’s legislative initiatives, particularly health care reform, which has sparked an endless debate.

The considerable funds devoted by the Bush government to overthrowing the Cuban government have not been cut off; nevertheless, they have been “practically frozen” since March 2009, according to a January 25 article in the El Nuevo Herald newspaper. It would appear that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has not solicited new proposals for funds, and groups that normally benefit from this money are now complaining that they are running out of funds. In 2008, Congress approved $40 million for the two-year period that ends this coming September.

However, the delays could be due to criticism of how these funds have been managed, because those who are supposed to receive money for “promoting democracy” are complaining that it has been “used in other countries for initiatives and purposes that have nothing to do with the principal objective.” In a letter to President Obama circulated from Havana by the Associated Press, they ask for “assurances that the budgeted funds go directly to those active in the opposition on the island.” The AP noted that several Cuban exile organizations in Florida benefit from those federal funds.

A House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on travel to Cuba, which took place last November 18, unleashed the desperate reaction of Cuban-American congress members and elements who live off this taxpayer money handed out by Washington, which deployed its beneficiaries particularly in the United States, Latin America, Europe and in Cuba itself, in order to prevent restrictions on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens being lifted. After the hearing, the Progreso Weekly newspaper of Miami published a list of U.S. representatives who received PAC money to induce them to oppose ending those restrictions in the 2008 and 2010 periods.

However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pressured in the House by U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake regarding an easing of the “embargo,” as he proposed in a bill that had 180 cosponsors, responded: “Every time we try to encourage more of a free flow of people and information, the Castro regime closes down. That is the last thing they want.”

That day, February 25, Clinton lamented the death in prison of Cuban Orlando Zapata, in response to remarks by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen during the abovementioned House hearing. Ros-Lehtinen questioned Clinton about the scope of the budget proposal of $52.8 billion for the State Department and USAID during the fiscal year 2011.

Asked by Flake about the direction of Cuba policy, Clinton said that one first step was President Barack Obama’s April 2009 announcement on the easing of travel restrictions and remittances from Cuban Americans with family on the island.

“The goal is to create changes that improve the lives of people in Cuba, that promotes democracy and freedom.”

“A U.S. government audit last year showed that from 1996 to 2008, USAID alone – one of many agencies that channel the resources, as the AP noted in its report – granted some $83 million for activities such as academic studies on Cuba, humanitarian aid, and books.

“It is scandalous and fraudulent that the greater part of those resources…has been spent or wasted capriciously,” stated the letter from the individuals who were supposedly to receive those funds. The letter demanded that these funds be withdrawn and allocated to other objectives if it cannot be guaranteed that these reach them.

Apparently Hillary has not read this, because the millions granted by the U.S. government from taxpayer money are, according to the law, “allocated for democratizing Cuba,” like the funds given out by the USA-Cuba PAC. That is a fantastic definition of democracy.

A democracy of money, of the carrot and the stick. •