Posted on 03/22/2002 2:25:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON - An unusually diverse and bipartisan group of 34 legislators on Thursday announced that they had formed a congressional bloc to seek step-by-step loosening of the trade embargo of Cuba and permit U.S. citizens to travel to the island.
''We all agree that the current policy has failed,'' said Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and ardent free-trade proponent who is a leader of the bloc.
The group's members asserted that the four-decade-old embargo is a relic of the Cold War. They said the Bush administration should abandon attempts to isolate the Fidel Castro regime in favor of the openness it shows toward communist regimes in China and Vietnam.
Creation of the bloc foreshadows a showdown between Congress and the Bush administration this spring over policy toward Cuba. The White House, eager to please Cuban-American voters in Florida who play an outsized role in national politics, plans soon to announce moves to tighten the embargo. An increasingly significant number of legislators, in contrast, say heartland farm interests are hurt by the embargo, and that many U.S. citizens oppose current policy.
'FEW' IN FLORIDA
''Most people in America think we should change our policy. It's a few people in Florida who do not,'' said Rep. Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat.
Leaders of the group, comprised of 17 Democrats and 17 Republicans, said they would seek freedom for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba, and to allow U.S. companies to sell agricultural goods to the island on credit. The bloc may also seek greater counter-drug cooperation with Cuba, which straddles sea lanes from South America.
Castro, one of the world's last stalwart communists, has ruled through eight U.S. presidents since taking power in 1959. At 75, he still firmly controls the island.
Flake, a member of the House International Relations Committee, said the U.S. government should stop levying fines against U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba.
''This is an issue of freedom,'' Flake said. ``Every citizen ought to have the right to see firsthand what a mess that man has made of that island.''
GAINING STEAM
Moves in Congress to relax the travel ban have gained steam. Last year, legislators voted 240-186 to stop enforcing the ban, but action was later derailed by the Republican House leadership working with the White House.
'It's rather ironic that Americans today can travel to Iran, can travel to North Korea. By my calculations, that's two-thirds of the `axis of evil,' '' said Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who is a leader of the bloc, referring to President Bush's remarks in January about nations that sponsor terrorism. Bush also fingered Iraq.
A conservative Republican from Washington state, Rep. George Nethercutt, said the legislators are not blind to the kind of regime Castro leads.
But Nethercutt said U.S. farmers are losing out on a $1 billion agricultural market with the boycott.
An advisor to the legislative bloc, Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va., said Congress and the White House are on ''a collision course'' over the direction of Cuban policy.
Btw, using your logic, (China has changed since Mao), we should trade with Cuba as well. Castro has allowed a measure of private enterprise and religious freedom in the last few years. The hypocrisy still smells.
No one WANTS to trade with him (therefore it should be illegal, forget about having a choice. If no one wants to trade with him, then fine.).
Cuba supports terrorists (but China steals our nukes and points them at us, then threatens the west coast, that's not "terrorism" though)
China has a growing economy (so, it is only about money)
Castro is a slaveowner (but the PLA is not, no Chinese company ever uses slave labor)
China is big (yes, there is big money to be made trading with them)
China is nationalistic (how is this relevant? And, Cubans are nationalistic as well)
The only difference between Cuba and China is that China is bigger, they have more political prisoners, they force women to have abortions, they kill people because of their religious faith and stole nukes from us then pointed them at the west coast. Heck, China is WORSE than Cuba.
Your arguments are all about money. It's ok in your eyes to be tyrranical, if you can make money while you're at it.
A sociopath who has murdered 100,000 in four decades of brutal repression.
Maritza Lugo Fernandez [National Review, March 11, 2002, pp. 26-28] makes it clear Castro is still the Stalinist bastard he's always been, Jesse Jackson and Charles Rangel to the contrary notwithstanding.
To trade with Cuba is to pay U.S. taxpayers' dollars to Castro to finance further repression.
I decline.
One such human rights activist is Maritza Lugo Fernandez who was forced to leave Cuba with her daughter January 11, while her husband, Rafael Ibarra Roque, president of one of the country's main opposition groups, remains in the eighth year of a 20-year sentence in one of Castro's prisons.
Odd how the Eurotrash weeps for the rats in X-ray who aided the attacks on the WTC that took 3,000 innocents, yet are silent over the conditions in Castro's prisons: isolation, beatings, rats, druggings, spoiled food, strip searches, filth, disease, the whithholding of medical care.
Why indeed. One would think the socialists are in cahoots with souless, contribution hungry congresscritters trying to push
this through before Bush and Reich unmask this communist cancer for all the brain-dead Americans to see. And they'd be right!
So you say embrace Castro? How can communism in one country be worse than communism in another country? Money? you think I care about money. You've been selectively reading my posts. That's very telling, almost like, well.........exactly like propaganda.
China pays its international debts, Castro does not. He has defaulted on all his international financial obligations, even though, Castro is among the richest chief of state in the world and is building a 700 hundred rooms luxurious hotel in Shanghai and another 400 rooms in the Canaries Isles, Spain, in partnership with the powerful and unscrupulous Spanish Melia conglomerate.
REASONS FOR NOT TRADING WITH CASTRO
1st. Cuba is, and has been a terrorist state for 42 years, and counts with advanced chemical, biological and cyber warfare capabilities aimed against our country. The cooperation between the Cuban regime with Iraq and Iran in the chemical and biological research is well known. A few months before the September 11 attack Castro affirmed at the University of Tehran that their cooperation would put the U.S. down to its knees.
Castro once tried to nuke our cities and he has the means and the will to fulfill his dream of destroying our country. If we are involved in a worldwide war against terrorism, Cuba at 90 miles from our coasts should be a prime target in that war; so, those involved in appeasement policies towards Castro and in the promotion of the lifting of the commercial embargo against Cuba are in fact aiding and abetting our worst enemy.
Castro declared war against the U.S. in 1959 and pledged to make the Andes Mountain range another Sierra Maestra. The Cuban tyrant has pledged repeatedly to destroy us. Did American tourists go on pleasure trips to Germany during War World II? Why this sudden urge to go visit a totalitarian murderous regime as the one in Cuba?
2nd. Cuba has defaulted in all his international financial deals and Castro encourages other Third World nations to follow his example. Why are we going to sell to someone without the expectation to ever be pay. The American taxpayers should be aware that they are the targets of the scam by which the multinationals sell to Castro whatever he needs and we, the taxpayers, end footing the bill.
Castro for 42 years has been with commercial ties with over 150 nations. Now when he has exhausted the patience of nations fool enough to have given him credit, Castro’s puppets in the media, the congress in cahoots with some greedy commercial circles are trying that the American taxpayers shoulder the heavy burden of subsidizing his regime to the tune of 9 billions dollars.
3rd. The American companies can not made legally business with Cuba without violating several American laws.
A.- Trading with the Enemy Act.
B.- U.S. Commercial Embargo Against Cuba.
C.- Helms- Burton Law.
D.- Involvement in bribes in commercial dealings with another nation.
E.- Involvement in slave labor of foreign workers in connivance with the local authorities. We have to wonder why there are so many American politicians promoting the violations of our trading laws and in the process; they are endangering the security of the U.S. Why is the Treasure Department authorizing all those business trips and all kind of conventions in Cuban soil by which American citizens circumvent and break the U.S. laws?
You might not be friend or Castro, but, but it seems to me that your are neither a friend of the Cuban people.
Yesterday on Firing Line, with his cynical smile, he showed how very uncaring about human suffering and unprincipled he is. He is unashamedly betraying President Bush’s policy against one of the worst terrorist states in the world.
Representative Flake, in proposing a project of law forcing the Executive power to ignore and violate the laws already in force that were promulgated by the Congress and signed by the President, denotes his faithful loyalty to his last name (a person marked by eccentric behavior or thinking). He wants to institute in our country a cafeteria rule of law in which each one picks whatever laws they want to obey or to ignore.
“Flake believes that by traveling more freely to Cuba, Americans will bring with them ideas and values that will help end the communist regime.” In other words, the contact with hundreds of thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists, have not been able to infest the Cubans with the virus of democracy. According to Rep. Flake, only by the contact with the American tourists, the virus of democracy and freedom can be transmitted.
This a case of extreme human insensitivity, the Washington politicians, women - bankers, business owners, and others - said they also support freer American travel to Cuba. Bread and circus, rum and sex, the American women representing the best our leftist zealots can offer; in the meantime, they continue ignoring the blood and tears of hundreds of thousands of Cuban heroes and martyrs while they feast and party with the tyrant.
Rep. Flake and his coterie of Castro’s sympathizers are disregarding Castro’s menace to our country and undermining President Bush’s war against terrorism.
“Flake believes that by traveling more freely to Cuba, Americans will bring with them ideas and values that will help end the communist regime.” In other words, the contact with hundreds of thousands of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists, have not been able to infest the Cubans with the virus of democracy. According to Rep. Flake, only by the contact with the American tourists, the virus of democracy and freedom can be transmitted.
Is Rep. Flake joking or is he delirious? Unless the Americans he has in mind are the Marines, I don’t believe he would be fit to represent any State in the U.S. Congress.
I fully agree with you in that China’s policy of forced abortion is actually the most despicable crime in the world today. But do not forget that Castro’s record is not far from the Chinese’s. Cuba has one the highest index of abortions and suicide in the world, twice the U.S’ index.
Also, keep in mind that China is enforcing the same compulsory abortion policies promoted by Family Parenthood and the Democratic Party for Third World Nations through the United Nations with our taxpayers’ money. Cuba also has the highest index of political prisoners in the world in relation to its population and among the most inhumanly treated.
I'm against embargoes, period. But if you're for an embargo against Cuba but not for one against China, you're a hypocrite.
Don’t try to fool the American people. What economic sense makes to sell to a bankrupt person with a long history of defaulting in his debts? That can only happen when the creditor deals with money that is not his own, as in the case of politicians dealing with taxpayers' money.
Those foreign investors caught in Castro’s scam want that the U.S. and the American taxpayers assume the Soviet Union’s role of maintaining Castro’s regime to the tune of 6 billion dollars annually, hoping that they would be able to recoup some of their ill advised investments. The Cuban people repudiate all those investors and tourists that have exploited them in partnership with the Cuban tyrant.
To lift the embargo means to prop up Castro’s rule of terror. Do not contribute to prolonging the suffering of the Cuban people. Castro is the only one responsible for Cuba’s tragedy, and the embargo, although incomplete and imperfect, is the only ray of hope for the Cuban people to see freedom restored in Cuba.
Two wrongs do not make one right. It is completely hypocritical on your part to affirm that both cases should be treated equally and since there is not an embargo against China we should reward Castro with 6 billion dollars of American taxpayers' money every year.
I'm against any taxpayer-backed loans to Castro. If a co wants to sell to them, let them make the decision (and bear the risk) whether they want to extend credit. Lifting the embargo does NOT equal extending Castro credit. I'm AGAINST extending him (or any company) taxpayer backed credit.
While Jews and Christians were incinerated on Hitler’s gas chambers and ovens, there were some despicable American businessmen who unashamedly kept doing business with Hitler. The fact that they were paid with blood money and slave labor didn’t affect their conscience. Likewise, the same occurs with does that are involved in business with Castro’s slave labor exploitation of the Cuban people. Nevertheless, there is a difference since Castro keeps for him the blood money of his drug and terrorist cartel while defaults in those stupid enough to enter in business deals with the devil.
This is something that is written in stone?? This is something that is occurring right now? Is this an iron-clad rule that must remain in place? Lifting the embargo automatically means extending credit to Castro? Would it be possible to not back loans made by private companies? Listen, it IS possible to lift the embargo and NOT extend credit. The two are NOT mutually inclusive.
Am I assuming now that you are for an embargo against China? They use slave labor, they have nukes pointed at us, which they stole, tehy force abortion, they have political prisoners, etc. If you don't, you're a hypocrite.
Cuba, according to the U.S. State Department, is among the worst terrorists nations in the world, China is not; although I would neither not put my trust in them.
Senator Helms debunked all that B.S. about China and Cuba.
On Trade, Cuba is Not China"
Senator Jesse Helms The New York Times June 24, 2000
Some lawmakers, including a number of Republicans, have argued in recent weeks that if Congress believes trade will promote democratic change in China, then why not adopt the same policy for Cuba? Here is why: Cuba is not China. The argument that American investment will democratize China has itself been wildly oversold. Beijing is doing everything in its power to dampen the impact of private investment: placing stringent control on the Internet (all users must register with the Public Security Bureau), and most recently declaring that it will insert "party cells" into every private business that operates in China.
But regardless of how one feels about permanent normalized trade with China, there is simply no case to be made that investment would democratize Cuba.
Cuba has undertaken none of the market reforms that China has in recent years; there is no private property, and there are no entrepreneurs with whom to do business. The Fidel Castro regime maintains power by controlling every single aspect of Cuban life: access to food, access to education, access to health care, access to work. This permits Castro to stifle any and all dissent. Any Cuban daring to say the wrong thing, by Castro's standards, loses his or her job. Anyone refusing to spy on a neighbor is denied a university education. Anyone daring to organize an opposition group goes to jail.
American investment cannot and will not change any of this. It cannot empower individual Cubans, or give them independence from the regime, because foreign investors in Cuba cannot do business with private citizens. They can do business only with Fidel Castro.
It is illegal in Cuba for anyone except the regime to employ workers. That means that foreign investors cannot hire or pay workers directly. They must go to the Cuban government employment agency, which picks the workers. The investors then pay Castro in hard currency for the workers, and Castro pays the workers in worthless pesos.
Here is a real-life example: Sherritt International of Canada, the largest foreign investor in Cuba, operates a nickel mine in Moa Bay (a mine, incidentally, which Cuba stole from an American company). Roughly 1,500 Cubans work there as virtual slave laborers. Sherritt pays Castro approximately $10,000 a year for each of these Cuban workers. Castro gives the workers about $18 a month in pesos, then pockets the difference.
The net result is a subsidy of nearly $15 million in hard currency each year that Castro then uses to pay for the security apparatus that keeps the Cubans enslaved. Those who advocate lifting the embargo speak in broad terms about using investment to promote democracy in Cuba. But I challenge them to explain exactly how, under this system, investment can do anything to help the Cuban people. The anti-embargo crowd should drop its rhetoric about promoting democracy and be honest: the one reason for their push to lift sanctions on Cuba is to pander to well-intentioned American farmers, who have been misled by the agribusiness giants into believing that going into business with a bankrupt Communist island is a solution to the farm crisis in America.
Whoever has convinced farmers that their salvation lies in trade with Cuba has sold them a bill of goods. Cuba is desperately poor, barely able to feed its own people, much less save the American farmer.
Castro wants the American embargo lifted because he is desperate for hard currency. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow's subsidies ended, Castro turned to European and Canadian investors to keep his Communist system afloat. Now he wants American investors to do the same. We must not allow that to happen.
Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.
AGAINST ALL HOPE: THE STRUGGLE GOES ON
by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Armando Valladares – who spent 22 years in Castro’s gulag – authored the powerful 1984 book Against All Hope. Now there is a newly re-issued version. It was presented in a Book Forum on March 15, 2002, at The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium in Washington, DC.
This new version of his best selling memoirs features a new prologue by Mr. Valladares. In it, he recounts his life since his 1982 release from Castro’s prison, which was the result of an international campaign of protests including, at the very end, France’s President Mitterrand personal intervention with Castro to secure his freedom.
Dan Fisk, Deputy Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies hosted this event. Fisk is a veteran Washington foreign-policy expert who has served in two presidential administrations and on the House and Senate committees that oversee foreign affairs. He is a leading authority on Latin America and international relations.
In his presentation remarks, Fisk referred to Cuba as a "tropical gulag." He also pointed out the ironic juxtaposition of two images: Al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo compared to the hundreds of political prisoners in Cuban jails. He said, "the real victims" are the "11 million Cuban people."
In reports filed by Cuban independent journalists (who are illegal in Cuba), the pro-democracy groups in Cuba have taken note of the international press coverage and concern for the terrorists held at Guantanamo. But they also notice the lack of concern for the Cubans who are deprived of human rights and suffer frequent arrests, beatings and harassment by Castro’s forces.
Among those assisting at the event were Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs Otto Reich, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at HUD Shannon Sorzano, U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States Bruce Friedman, from the office of Senator Orrin Hatch, Manuel Miranda, the Staff Director of the House Subcommittee on Foreign Relations Yleem Poblete, the Chairman of the Settlement Division at the Justice Department Mauricio Tamargo and Mary O'Grady of The Wall Street Journal.
In this re-issue of Against All Hope, Valladares says in the new prologue, "the government of Cuba and defenders of the Cuban Revolution denied that incidents that I recount ever happened. Castro sympathizers, who were more subtle, said the incidents I described were exaggerations.
"There has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro. While I was on book tours in the mid 1980’s talking about Against All Hope, I encountered many individuals who argued fiercely on behalf of the Castro regime."
In 1986, President Reagan named Armando Valladares Ambassador of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. But at that time, he says, "the thousands of accusations of violations of human rights in Cuba conflicted with the double standard then current at the U.N. Sadly, this body considered crimes according to the ideology of the victims and the murderers. Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.
"I have become convinced that hatred toward the U.S. has been a chief reason for Castro’s longevity in power. The old dictator’s proximity to the U.S. and his confrontational attitude have given him undeserved support from the press, governments, politicians and intellectuals of this hemisphere."
What shocked Valladares the most during his tenure at the U.N. was the blatant "double standard of many governments." He cites the examples of Spain under the socialist President Felipe Gonzalez and Mexico.
But it wasn’t until 1988 that a group of U.N. ambassadors were able to visit Cuba for eleven days and was able "to document 137 cases of torture, 7 disappearances, political assassinations and thousands of violations" of human rights. This trip was summarized "in a 400-page report, which was the longest report ever to appear on the agenda of the U.N."
This report provided irrefutable proof of what Valladares was recounting in Against All Hope. But academia and the media successfully passed over both the book and the report.
This 1988 report included "locking political prisoners in refrigerated rooms; blindfolded immersions in pools; intimidation by dogs; firing squad simulations; beatings, forced labor; confinement for years in dungeons called gavetas; the use of loudspeakers with deafening sounds during hunger strikes; degradation of prisoners by forced nudity in punishment cells; withholding water during hunger strikes; forcing prisoners to present themselves in the nude before their families (to force them to accept plans for political rehabilitation); denial of medical assistance for the sick; and forcing those condemned to die to carry their own coffins and dig their own graves prior to being shot."
Armando Valladares experienced and witnessed all that during his 1960-1982 internment in Castro’s gulag.
In his well-received speech at today’s event, Valladares remarked that although for him his memoirs in the horrid Castro’s gulags were behind him, "hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners in Cuba even today languish in the same torture cells where my friends and I were tortured."
He cannot forget the case of the Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, president of a pro-human rights organization "considered illegal by the Cuban government."
Dr. Biscet, who is black, has been arrested many times but on February 25, 2000, he was sentenced to three years. Dr. Biscet has been enduring all kinds of tortures, depravations and denial of medical assistance. He has lost a lot of weight, his health has deteriorated and many fear that he might die in prison. Dr. Biscet is not the only black in Cuban prisons. The black inmate population is a disproportionate 80%.
Valladares talked about Marta Beatriz Roque, a Cuban independent economist who has already served time in jail for her participation in a 1997 in a socio-economic analysis critical of the Castro regime. Last January 26, 2002, she was arrested for "her refusal to allow government officials to enter her house to spray insecticide."
Martiza Lugo, 40, "has been arrested more than 30 times" for disagreeing with the regime. Lugo was allowed to emigrate to the U.S. on January 11, 2002, with her two children. But her husband, Rafael Ibarra Roque, is serving in jail "the eighth year of a 20 year sentence," for his pro-democracy stand.
He said that the valiant Cuban pro-democracy advocates on the island are taking great risks and in spite of reprisals maintain "their peaceful resistance against the dictatorship by facing Castro’s forces. Amnesty International has documented all of these cases and hundreds of cases of political prisoners. The abandonment of these dissidents, not remembering their names, is to abandon the Cuban people."
Valladares manifested his disagreement with the idea of a "dialogue with Castro." He believes that it’s an illusion that any formula that includes Castro moving toward freedom for the people of Cuba could be anything more than an illusion. "It would be like putting a respectful and humanitarian solution for the Jewish people in the hands of Hitler, or to put the fate of black Americans in the hands of racist extremists.
"Unfortunately, as long as Castro continues in power, the situation won’t change. Castro declared again about three weeks ago for those who want a change, ‘They should sit and wait for the changes, because in Cuba there is nothing to change.’" There you have it, clearer than water.
He criticized Mexico for the February 28, 2002 incident in their embassy in Havana where 21 people sought refuge. (This went unreported by the three major U.S. networks.) He said, "It isn’t new the policy of collaboration of the Mexican governments with the Cuban dictatorship. The embassy of Mexico in Cuba has a long history of returning the politically persecuted to Castro’s police. I remember my fellow inmate Reinaldo Aquit, who escape from the prison and Gilberto Bosque, then ambassador of Mexico, informed against him."
Valladares expressed that he wasn’t surprised by the Mexicans asking Castro’s secret police to evict the asylum seekers. "Since the day President Fox declared that in Cuba there was no dictatorship and denied that Castro was a dictator, I knew that anything could happen.
"The embassy of Mexico in Havana continues as a subsidiary of Castro’s police and his most loyal accomplice. About two weeks ago an international terrorist conference was held in Mexico called by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), with the approval of President Fox. Why is this country that should be an ally of the U.S. and an ally of the Cuban people, instead allied with the Cuban dictator?"
He also mentioned in his speech William Raspberry’s recent visit to Cuba and resulting column in The Washington Post. Raspberry wrote, "I felt free walking the Cuba streets." Valladares asked, "How is it possible that a person of his intellect could go to Cuba and not learn about Cuba, could go to Cuba and drink a pina colada without thinking for a moment, without visiting a prison, without talking to dissidents?"
The dramatic story of Valladares willpower, resistance and survival against all the humiliations, tortures and inhumanities of Castro’s gulag is not the exception but the rule. All who defy Castro’s regime have to go through the same nightmare. Updating and bringing attention to this book in 2002 is applicable for today’s world where a hand full of tyrants have been causing so much harm to millions of innocent people.
Against All Hope, though it opened many eyes to the hidden realities of Castro’s gulag, did not receive enough acceptance in the academic circles in the U.S., among the members of the U.S. media and in Hollywood. When I first read the book, I thought that now Hollywood has a powerful story of epic proportions to bring to the screen. Like the multiple stories they have done about the Holocaust.
But as it usually happens with the cultural and information mass media in the U.S., it is very much controlled by the zeal of the left. They walk the extra mile to cover-up any unflattering portrayal of Castro and all other communist tyrannies
Sixteen years after the release of the 1986 English version of Against All Hope, the continuing struggle for democracy and human rights in Cuba goes on. Hopefully this new release will bring some overdue attention to the ongoing tragedy of Cuba. Hopefully the Castro regime will eventually end up in the garbage can of history. Cubans belong to the human race. They deserve the same freedoms American enjoy and take for granted.
End
Agustin Blazquez
Producer/Director of the documentaries COVERING CUBA, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & the upcoming COVERING CUBA 3: Elian Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING
George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Re: The Spider’s Web of Archer Daniels Midland: Sugar, MTBE, Life Savers and Soft Money
Mr. President: The high price of bulk sugar also plays into the profit picture of Agribusiness: Archer Daniels Midland’s (ADM) lucrative High Fructose Corn Syrup empire benefits when equivalent sweeteners are artificially priced out of competition. A good return on investment for their soft money political contributions.
This week Gov. Davis of California extended the use of the gasoline additive MTBE for one year, before phasing in the federally mandated, and heavily subsidized additive for gasoline – ethanol. Since ADM controls 55% of the ethanol market, and ADM is a large contributor to Gov. Davis, at first blush it would appear the Governor is biting the hand that’s feeding him. In actuality he’s dumping the problem in your lap, and placing himself in a win/win situation. As I hope you are aware Mr. President, the cost of energy has been a prime concern to Californians. Gasoline prices have started to creep up in our state – the latest reports state Californians pay twenty cents more per gallon than the national average. This being an election year Mr. Davis would not have survived the huge per gallon spike expected in gasoline prices caused by the failure of the ethanol suppliers to keep up with the expected demand. By postponing the deadline for MTBE until the end of 2003, Gov. Davis has greatly improved if not assured the probability of his reelection. The next year will be spent petitioning your administration for an additive waiver. If you refuse to grant the waiver, and the price of gas skyrockets in 2004, well you can kiss California and its fifty some electoral votes goodbye.
Furthermore, I find myself in agreement with Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein - Mr. President you have no idea how difficult it is to admit this to anyone – as they attempt to introduce legislation to exempt California from the federal additive requirement. Not surprisingly, Senator Grassley from Iowa is trying to block the exemption. The irony in this sordid morality play, is the three Senators, Boxer, Feinstein, and Grassley are beneficiaries of ADM campaign contributions. Who is protecting the interests of the taxpayers?
As is their custom, ADM has all the bases covered, and will receive a good return on investment for their soft money political contributions.
The Life Saver plant in Holland, Michigan is closing its door at the end of this month. Six hundred workers loosing their jobs to subsidized domestic bulk sugar prices. The plant is moving to Canada, where it can buy sugar at 6 cents a pound vs. 21 cents a pound for domestic sugar. A representative for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union states: "We could have gone to the table and agreed to work for nothing and they still would have saved money by moving to Canada."
Last year Brachs candy cited domestic sugar prices when it closed down its West Chicago plant and took 1,100 jobs overseas. That’s 1,700 American workers who have lost their jobs due to federal sugar beet and sugar cane subsidies. In the meantime, ADM continues to receive 43% of their profit from federally subsidized products. It costs the American taxpayers, including the 1,700 who lost their jobs, $30 for each dollar of profit earned by ADM (CATO Institute Report – The Agribusiness Examiner Issue #123). Where is the equity Mr. President?
The recently passed $171 billion farm bill with its 70% increase in subsidies will continue to benefit a few huge Agribusiness concerns like ADM at the expense of the American taxpayer. Per the NY Times, "lobbyists for agribusiness…are claiming victory."
The farm bill is described by the president of the Environmental Working Group as being "extremely generous to the very largest, most heavily subsidized farming operations in the country." The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition representing small farmers and rural communities generally excluded from the big programs declares "This isn’t farm policy, it’s a check-writing machine for the big commodity growers."
Further proof of ADM receiving a good return on investment for their soft money political contributions. It was very disappointing to read of your less than enthusiastic support for the just passed Campaign Finance Bill. You state you will sign the bill – how could you not with the Enron mess staring you in the face – but you undermine it’s spirit by adding the law presented "legitimate Constitutional questions" thus encouraging Senator Gramm and Senator McConnell both Republicans to fight the legislation in the courts. I am not surprised they would fight any attempt to limit soft money contributions. They have both benefited from the generosity of the master of soft money contributions, ADM. Thus the spider spins it’s sordid web of influence from one end of the country to the other, playing both sides of the fence, leaving nothing to chance.
Your campaign pledged to "restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office." Mr. President here is your golden opportunity to make good on your pledge. As the leader of the Republican Party, pledge your unequivocal support to the Campaign Finance Bill. Use your influence to discourage those from your party who would undermine the legislation. Whether source of the money is Enron who fleeced it’s investors and employees; or ADM who was found guilty of defrauding the American tax payer while reaping the benefits of Federal subsidies; soft money contributions have proven to be detrimental to the impartiality and integrity of the political system.
Respectfully,
Oscar B. Pichardo
National Journal's CongressDaily April 3, 2002
Cuba has signed contracts totaling $73 million to import foods from the United States since November 2001 — including $37 million since Feb. 20 — but further sales may be "endangered" because the Bush administration has revoked visas for several Cuban officials, the newsletter of the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council reported. Cuba purchased the food for cash under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000.
At least 15 U.S.-based exporters, most prominently Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Riceland Foods, Tyson Foods and Northwest Fruit Exporters in Washington state, have been involved in shipping the goods through the ports of New Orleans, Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., and Galveston, Texas. Producers from a total of 25 states have sold foods to Cuba, according to the newsletter. The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council is a privately financed group that serves as an information clearinghouse for companies interested in doing business in Cuba.
The newsletter Economic Eye on Cuba said Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, "directed that visas for travel to the United States, previously approved and delivered, be revoked" for Pedro Alvarez Borrego, the president of Alimport, the Cuban food import agency, and several other Cuban officials and technicians. Some of the technicians were to inspect turkey plants; Cuba has not yet imported turkey from the United States. The newsletter said the United States granted visas for Alvarez Borrego in 2000 and 2001. A State Department spokesman today said the department merely exercised its authority under U.S. law to deny visas to Cuban officials, but that future applications by individuals working for the Cuban government would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Senior executives of U.S. companies declined to speak on the record about the decision to revoke the visas, according to the newsletter, but one executive said: "Our company was one of the 15 that have already sold products to Alimport. The [U.S.] Department of State just created a privileged class, or monopoly, for us because the Cubans have visited our facilities, completed inspections."
Another executive said, "With reasoning like this from the State Department, why should anyone be surprised that the agricultural community in the U.S. seeks price supports. Our own government does not want us to find new markets, and this particular market, I might add, requires cash transactions." The Senate version of the pending farm bill contains a provision to allow U.S. financial institutions to finance exports to Cuba for the first time. — by Jerry Hagstrom
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GOOD FOR OTTO REICH! DO NOT GRANT CREDITS TO CROOKS!
"The Senate version of the pending farm bill contains a provision to allow U.S. financial institutions to finance exports to Cuba for the first time."
For those blinded by the propaganda and disinformation campaign propagated by Castro's lobbyists, some who also happen to be members of the U.S. Senate, the Congress and even governors, there should be no doubt left that they want American taxpayers' money to prop up Castro's regime. This is absolutely preposterous. As Senator Helms stated: “Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.”
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