|
|
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. •
|
|
|