Anti-Castro money shifts to Democrats: report

[AlphaCentauri]

Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans are donating more money to Democratic lawmakers in hopes of blunting momentum in Congress to lift the U.S. trade embargo of the Communist-ruled Caribbean nation, a report said on Monday.

The shift began with the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and picked up speed after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, according to the report by Public Campaign, a non-partisan organization that aims to reduce the role of interest groups in U.S. politics.

The U.S.-Cuba Democracy Public Action Committee (PAC), an anti-Castro group, donated overwhelmingly to Republicans when it was launched in 2004, but in the past year 76 percent of its donations went to Democrats, the report said.

Cuban-American opponents of the Cuban government have donated over $10 million to U.S. political campaigns since 2004, according to the report. It is unclear how much of an overall impact their largess is having on Democrats.

Obama says he wants to "recast" ties with Cuba and has announced a slight relaxation of the five-decades old embargo as well as an effort to reopen dialogue with Havana.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5AF0S220091116

[Braulio]

1. Maybe they need an anti-anti-castro group of Cubans in Miami

Seems to me the majority of Miami Cubans want to end the embargo. So all they need to get organize into the "Anti-Anti-Castro-Cubans" or AACC. Then they can go buy US Congressmen, they're all for sale. End the embargo, and the Castro regime will collapse, it's rotten from the inside, most Cubans in Cuba want to get rid of it anyway.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "...most Cubans in Cuba want to get rid of it anyway." What makes you think that?

The Cuban government has lasted for fifty years, on that tiny island, against the withering hostility of the gigantic enemy to the north, the U.S., and the non-stop plots of the Miami mafia to bring it down. They've had good times and hard times, but the bottom line is nobody starves; everybody gets a home, a free education (top notch in the medical field), free medical care, food on the table. They have astonishingly good stats on the health of the population, literacy, higher education. And nobody can get super-rich and lord it over and oppress everybody else. Seems to me Cuba's system has some really good points. And I've never heard of any attempted rebellion there (other than the one instigated by the CIA back when), and you can be sure the U.S. has "eyes and ears" for any kind of uprising, and would trumpet it to the hilt.

Why do you say "most Cubans in Cuba want to get rid of" the revolution? What are you basing that on?

Looking at our predatory capitalist system, which hijacked the US military for an oil war, and slaughtered one million innocent people in that pursuit, and tortured thousands, and has now looted us blind and left the poor and the working class in this country staggering under trillions of dollars in debt for generations to come, and which promotes the filthiest and most non-transparent election system in the western world, maybe we ought not to be so dismissive of Cuba's accomplishments, and socialism's accomplishments in other countries, and try to put together an economic and political system that works in everyone's interests. Not saying Cuba's perfect. Or Norway or Sweden. Or Venezuela. Or any other economic/political model we might study for lessons in reforming our own wreck of a country. Just saying I think it's time we threw off the bullshit propaganda our failed system crams into our heads, and take a fresh look at everything. Who are we to throw stones? Really. Who. are. we. to. throw. stones?

[Braulio]

3. Why do Cubans want to get rid of their regime?

I'm basing it on conversations with Cubans who are leaving the island. Exchanged emails with one who ran away a few months ago, and he's very intelligent and perceptive. Also, as Human Rights Watch has pointed out, the regime is extremely intolerant of Cubans who speak or blog openly criticizing the regime, or advocating change.

Thus, my conclusion is they have managed to keep the lid on the pressure cooker for a long time using repressive means. History tells us it's possible for a well-entrenched minority to use repressive means and control of the media to enslave people, examples range from the Kims in North Korea, to the Hussein regime in Iraq, to the Zionists in Palestine, and even the Honduran oligarchs (I'll admit they're an unsavory lot even though I continue to believe Zelaya's a big dummy).

I can't remember where I read it, but one thing we can be sure of is that eventually, no tyrant can survive, therefore Castro's regime will go down. At that time, there's a chance history will be written to suit the winners in such a way that we'll never know for sure what was really going on. But overall, I think the Castro regime is just another example of an entrenched corrupt oligarchy desperately clinging to failed ideas and seeking rents for their clans.

Maybe some day you'll lose your innocence, and understand that governments, by their very nature, will always be the enemies of the people. All we can do is try to work to weaken central power, so it can not be abused. And this is a difficult balancing act.

[AlphaCentauri]

4. "Cubans who are leaving the island"

Can't expect an impartial account from somebody who is living the island. Nobody in their right mind would talk good about their regime when their future depends on how bad they talk about Castro.

Can someone from Cuba get a US citizenship idealizing Castro?

[Peace Patriot]

5. "All we can do is try to work to weaken central power...". Spoken like Grover Norquist.

That rancid philosophy is in the last act of destroying what once was the most progressive and prosperous country on earth. And you know why the United States was the most progressive and prosperous country ever to exist?

CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT!

Centralized regulation of the banksters.

Centralized regulation of product safety, labor conditions, the environment.

Centralized socialized pensions for the elderly.

Centralized socialized medical care for the elderly.

Centrally funded, built and controlled interstate highway systems.

Centralized law enforcement to control large scale racketeering and criminal gangs.

Centralized control of the rules for savings & loan institutions.

Centralized progressive tax system.

Centralized civil rights laws.

And on and on and on.

Centralized action for the common good of all is essential for FAIRNESS, as well as for prosperity and the promotion of other progressive values.

Leave it to the banksters, and look what they do!

Leave it to the white elites in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and other southern states, and the black citizens would still not have the vote.

Leave it to the rich corporate buggers in some states, and they would still be hiring private armies to shoot labor organizers and strikers.

Leave it to the insurance giants and the "medical-industrial complex," and most of the elderly in this country would have no medical care. Only the rich elderly would have it.

Leave it to the fuckers who loot pension funds and their buds in the insurance industry, and there would not be even a minimal pension for poor workers. Social Security would never have happened!

Powerful corporations require powerful government to protect the poor and the common good. That our government has not done so--that it is now run by the very corporate predators that it should regulating and curtailing--does not mean that it shouldn't do so.

We are one nation, Brulio. We have common responsibilities that can only be implemented by the federal government. To weaken, gut, loot, destroy and "drown" that government "in the bathtub" has been a central plank of the corpo-fascist rightwing in this country for more than forty years.

We are a very big country, and that is a problem. It IS difficult to govern the US for the common good without centralized tyranny. And I am all for de-centralization on SOME things. But we cannot solve the problems of centralized government in such a big country by burying our heads in the sand and abdicating responsibility for each other as Americans. We must instead seek to insure that good and honest people are elected to public office, and we must fight for government transparency and accountability. We have great work to do as a people and a nation to RESTORE democracy here and to improve it. Our people have faced many hopeless-looking conditions in the past--conditions of vast corruption and malfeasance; conditions of entrenched bigotry and oppression; conditions of extreme injustice--and our forebears fought back, and they reformed government and made it more responsive, and we will do so again, believe me, no matter how bad it looks. It's in our blood. We are a revolutionary people. We were once the spark that inspired democratic revolutions all over the world. And we will do it again. We will throw off the global corporate predators and war profiteers who running things, and reclaim our government and our country.

But not if we let them dismantle it! And that is where you are tending. I don't agree with that. The US government is ours, by rights. WE are the sovereign people of this land. We need to reassert that sacred principle all over again. And we will!