Marco Rubio Rattles Some Big Beltway Cages

Posted by Humberto Fontova Feb 22nd 2011 at 5:53 am

Marco Rubio enjoyed major Tea party support. A major goal of Tea parties is to take-on and shake-up The Beltway establishment.
Well, in his very first filed amendment, Senator Marco Rubio takes-on the Castro-lobby (witting and unwitting). Which is to say, he threw down the gauntlet on an issue that unites the Beltway Establishment like few others: the so-called Cuba embargo.
Cashtro? What is the real who/what/why behind the move to end the Cuba Embargo?
Senator Rubio calls for beefing it up, while The Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, the Congressional Black Caucus, Archer-Daniels-Midland, The Brookings Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the entire Farm Lobby, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street journal, The United Nations, The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, The World Council of Churches, The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, among many, many other major Beltway players call for its abolition.
I’d say Senator Rubio is off to a rollicking start and seems to take his mandate seriously.
The U.S. taxpayer remains among the few in the industrialized world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro. But fear not! With the help of the above-named parties, most “analysts” see Obama moving quickly to rectify this shameful state of affairs, by scrapping his country’s obnoxious (to liberals, elitists and foreigners) penchant for “unilateralism” in foreign policy.
“Latin America leaders demand (italics mine) U.S. end Cuba embargo,” reported the AP last year.
“UN General Assembly demands (italics mine again) U.S. lift embargo on Cuba,” reported the Russian News Agency, Novosti, last year.
Needless to say, MSM commentary overwhelmingly supports these “demands.” U.S. policymakers must immediately take heed of these “demands,” from those more internationally sophisticated parties, who have all been doing business with Cuba for decades.
For those actually aware of Castro’s commercial record and the nature of the “Cuban embargo” a much better explanation for these “demands,” is that: “misery loves company. We were suckers—please join our support-group!” To wit:
“Cuba stopped payment on all its foreign commercial and bilateral debt with non-socialist countries in 1986.” disclosed U.S. International Trade Commission Report in 2001.
“Debt talks between Cuba and the Paris Club of creditor nations are on hold. On the table was $3.8 billion of official debt to Paris Club members, part of a much larger debt Cuba ran up through the 1980s, until it began to DEFAULT on payments and then stopped talking with creditors.” Reuters, from back in June 2001.
In late 2006 France’s version of the U.S. Government’s (i.e., us taxpayers) Export-Import Bank, named COFACE, cut off Cuba’s credit line. Mexico’s Bancomex did likewise. This came about because the Castro regime stuck it to French taxpayers for $175 million and to Mexican taxpayers for $365 million, when these state-run banks had financed sales by some those nations’ politically-connected companies’ to Stalinist Cuba. A few years ago, Bancomex was forced to impound Cuban assets in three different countries in an attempt to recoup its losses.
Standard & Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by the regime as utterly bogus. And last year Castro froze over $1 billion in foreign bank accounts in Cuba. So again—“Please join our support group, U.S.! We’ll all clap and tear-up and hug each other if you’d only join us!””
Yet despite all the scribbling and gabble about the “U.S. embargo of Cuba,” or “Blockade” as termed by The Congressional Black Caucus and Castro lobbyists (but I repeat myself), the U.S did $2 billion dollars worth of business with Cuba the last few years–all for cash.
And that’s the rub with the politically-connected companies who sell Castro and oppose Rubio. These U.S. Agri-giants crave the same deal from U.S. officials (via the U.S. Export-Import Bank) that France and Mexico’s government elites (among many other nations’) gave their business cronies and cocktail guests.
Castro does much of his U.S. business with Archer Daniels Midland. For decades ADM executives and Castro lobbyists (but I repeat myself) pined for an end to the “embargo.” That long gone, they now whine that restrictions on doing business with Cuba are “too onerous.” Again, these “restrictions” stipulate one thing primarily: that Cuba’s Stalinist regime pay cash for U.S. imports. That’s basically all the “embargo” amounts to nowadays, along with a “travel ban” with more loopholes than actual “bans.” Last year, for instance, amidst a “vindictive” U.S. “embargo” of Cuba, 400,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S. In 1957 when Cuba was touted as “a U.S. tourist playground!” 278,000 Americans visited Cuba.
The big push to end the so-called Cuba embargo came in 1998, after the Pope’s visit to Cuba when an outfit called Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, popped up. On the Board of this AHTC sat David Rockefeller of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland and Frank Carlucci, at the time chairman of The Carlyle Group, the world’s biggest private investment corporation, which is headquartered on Washington DC’s Pennsylvania avenue itself. Carlyle Group is widely regarded as the most politically-connected corporation in the world. George Soros was among its founders and major investors.
Somebody sees dollar signs in commercially coddling Castro, and it’s not Joe Sixpack.