This just in:
WASHINGTON – Legislation that could move as much as $80 million to foster democracy in Cuba stalled late Thursday amid Democratic opposition, but Minority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois pledged to revisit the issue when the Senate returns in September from its summer break.
The bipartisan measure — sponsored by Florida Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. — would have authorized money to be spent to foster democracy in Cuba, support ”independent society-building efforts” and create ”The Fund for a Free Cuba,” which Senate Majority Bill Frist said would have provided help to a transition government in Cuba and assistance to political dissidents.
Durbin said there were Democrats who expressed ”some reservation or objection at this point,” but that he hoped the matter could be revisited.
The left leaning media criticizes us ad nauseum simply because we vote Republican. Leftist liberasl hate us because we dont fall into the entitlement attitude of other “latino’ groups and vote Republican. Democrats come and make us promises and, from experience, they always screw us.
Now the Democrats prevent this measure from passing because hard earned American tax dollars are being used to unseat the left’s poster boy government. it’s so much money, they say, let’s just lift the embargo! So then hard earned American tax dollars can go to subsidizing the ONLY totalitarian state in the western hemisphere, ten fold, that has a history of never repaying its debts.
Message to Democrats: if you need the Cuban vote in Florida and elsewhere, you just totally SCREWED yourself. Are you listening, Bob Menendez?
Democratic Party = Communist Party Lite
Think about it.
Not that Republicans are any better, but I rather be with them than the party of Gore, Kerry, Clinton…
well folks, one thing is for sure. If the GOP maintains its majority in the house, Charlie Rangel said he would retire from the House. If the dems win the house, the Charlie becomes the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means which controls the purse strings. The good thing about Charlie, is that with him, you know what you’re gonna get: the US Congress’ Number 1 Lobbyist for Fidel Castro and Cuba’s Communist Party (followed by Jose Serano and Maxine Waters and John Conyers).
Then Pelosi, the san fran liberal mam would become speaker of the house. Should be motivation enough to get out the vote for the GOP.
Bush keeps the travel restrictions in place. Fine.
Bush does not flex on the wet foot/dry foot. Fine.
A Republican-controlled Congress refuses to raise the minimum wage that so many Cuban-Americans earn. Fine.
Democrats temporarily block passage of an $80 million ambiguous aid package that will only further bloat a federal deficit that is so very inconsistent with the traditional conservative mantra of “less government.” Ay, carumba! Those damn lefties. We’re not voting for you! Not that we would have anyway, but that’s not the point!
If this really was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, Val, then what chance do Dems really stand with the Cuban-American community anyway? C’mon, let’s be real here.
.
I think the Dems have a chance with each day that passes to keep chipping away at the cuban vote here in miami, especially those of us born here in Florida. Once out of mommy and daddy’s house and off to college, they tend to keep an open mind.
Take a look at this…only if you haven’t just eaten. Courtesy of the Corner at NRO.
A co-worker lamented to me that it’s not just the liberal media elite who’s giving dictator Fidel Castro the fig leaf of “presidential” legitimacy – it’s the Voice of America, the people who were supposed to inspire freedom-loving people behind barbed wire that the U.S. was on their side? Instead, imagine Cubans hearing news of their ailing oppressor as a “president.”
President Castro transfered power to his younger brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, on Monday after he underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding. But both Fidel and Raul have not been seen in public since the announcement….
State-run media has carried headlines wishing President Castro a speedy recovery. But the mood is much different in Miami’s large exile community….
President Castro, who turns 80 August 13, has said in a statement that his health is stable, but he needs time to recover.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-08-04-voa5.cfm
i for one, being a registered democrat would welcome the democrats to stand with us. but they don’t. they attack and ridicule us. (rangel, serrano, jackson leigh, etc). bob menendez, my former high school and college classmate, was almost passed up by the democratic powers that be for the empty senate only because he was Cuban. meanwhile, the republicans appointed a hispanic AG, and many Cubans to important administration positions and made sure that another cuban was elected senator. i stand with and support lieberman. bottom line is that the democratic party has no use for me because i don’t have my hand out looking for a government handout. my votescan’t be bought, it needs to be earned. I am not a big fan of W , but give me a choice i can live with!, try to earn my vote, but, no, instead dems call me an extreme hard liner (intransigent). my exercise of the first ammendment rights is an “embarrassment”. what ever happened to the party of Truman and JFK?
I am in the process of getting my citizenship and will register Democrat.
I could list a long list of reasons why I don’t like Republicans, particularly the Bushes, and Santorums and Coburns of this life. And I really believe this country sorely needs a change.
But on the issue of Cuba there is no doubt in my mind that the Democrats “have worked very hard” to earn the animosity of the Cuban community. To my despair, I have finally reached the conclusion that at the bottom of their apparent sheer stupidity lays pure prejudice towards the community, and that prejudice is sometimes blinding. The commies are really good at propaganda and the real truth is, they painted us Miami Cubans in a bad light, and that painting has stuck. Like the guy who wrote the New York Times’ Thursday editorial. I mean, don’t they have someone who knows a little bit about Cubans in Miami? And worse can be said about commenters in liberal bloggers. They just don’t get it.
Cuban Democrats don’t have it easy, and probably will be a minority until way after the tyranny is over.
for the leftys,
let me inform you that some of us Cuban-Americans have gotten disenchanted with the lack of positive movement of our party regarding Cuba. I for one was truly considering crossing party lines more as a protest vote than anything else.(not anymore) But the democratic party is not the lesser of two evils, but the evil. If you don’t see the connection then you won’t see it. The republicans didn’t can min. wage, the democrats did because they abhor the rich (which they forget they are one..intentional use of words). They would never accept lowering taxes for others. They use class envy as castro does. But since they think and I stress think that they will win back the house and senate they shelved a package to aid (albeit minimal to me) at a critical time in history. They once again put politics ahead of the people.By the time they get back whatever is truly happening in Cuba will be over and what little good that this bill would have had will have missed its opportunity. But lets review history a bit:
Kennedy ( a democrat)hung the Cubans out to dry
Clinton ( a democrat)put the wet/foot dry/foot in place to begin with.
Democrats have now as you put it delayed an aid package to a point that it will be useless.
Yes many republicans began to alienate Cuban American voters. But this last action pushed them back into the fold. And by the way it was at home and through our experience in Cuba that developed our open minds not a lefty university.
Bob may be a Democratic Party Boss here in Jersey, but in all fairness as far as I know he’s pro-Embargo.
Rick,
Everything youre saying may be true. However, you have to admit that this has been an unprecedented week in Cuba, everything is still uncertain, this measure was a chance to show some solidarity, however half hearted it may seem to some. The Democratic party could have sent a message to the Cuban people and government and to the Cuban-American community and it would have been a win-win for them.
But they didnt. Anyway you lokk at it, whether by aloofness or ideology, they screwed us again.
Youd be surprised at how many Cuban-American agree with the Dems on certain issues, but the Dems keep screwing up.
Val:
I agree with you. I remember growing up in the traditional cuban family outside of miami where the abuelos told me that democrats were communistas. I think there is a common ground somewhere in the middle.
Rick
You want to know the Democrats position on Cuba? From the tone of your post makes me think you supported John Kerry last election right? Kerry could care less about a free Cuba. He called the peacefull Varela Project “counterproductive” which makes me sick.:
http://jameshudnall.com/archives/002003.html
I bet if Kerry were president now, he would be sending flowers and a get well card to Fidel. Thank god W is president.
Just a note on the minimum wage that has been brought up here. I am an expert on it since it is what I practice (wage and hour/labor law). With the exception of illegal labor, market forces have controlled and the majority of most folks in the workplace earn in excess of the minimum wage which under current federal law is $ 5.15 per hour. What most folks don’t mention is that many states have enacted their own minimum wage laws which set the floor higher than the federal minimum wage. (Florida is an example. Although here in Florida, the raise in the minimum wage was done through popular election). There is nothing preventing the states from raising the minimum wage in their states. The voters could demand it. What went down in the Senate last week was nothing but pure politics on both sides.
Frankly the death tax as it stands is unfair. It taxes monies that have already been taxed anywhere from 2-3 times. You pay taxes on income. Corporations pay taxes on income. The dividends they pay are taxed. Remember our history. The death tax came out when the income tax had just been permitted by constitutional admendment and it was enacted in a time when you had the huge estates of the day: the Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. Also recall that the tax rates from the 1940’s through the Reagan era were as high as 40-50%. The tax reform act of 1986 reduced the rates incrementally to 28%. They’ve gone up and down since then, but nowhere near what they used to be. Frankly, what incentive is there to work and be prosperous if every 50 cents of every dollar you make has to go to the government. That’s the biggest problem with socialist/communist ideology. The biggest motivator is to allow tax breaks and incentives for investment in people and machinery which keeps the economy going. What is rarely reported is that right now our unemployment rate is at 4% which is almost full employment. Yet the Dems who cannot get rid of the malaise of Jimmy Carter would have you believe we’re in the great depression.
The old democratic party is dead. The one at least here in Florida that had Claude Pepper and Dante Fascell. The national party of Scoop Jackson, Moynehan, … those guys have been replaced by the McGovern wing of the party. Lieberman is the number 1 Dem out there today and they want to run him out on a rail.
THe problem with the GOP is that they get a little too cocky and they seem to forget why they were made a majority party. They need to get back to their roots.