Invented by the Bush Dynasty But it Still Churns
This very expensive anti-Castro-propaganda airplane flies around Cuba every day!!
Fidel Castro knows all about it.
Perhaps U. S. taxpayers should too.
Jeffrey Kofman {above} is the top investigative reporter for ABC-TV. His Twitter @JeffreyKofman account describes him as: "ABC News Correspondent based in London and roaming the world." One of his roams took him to Miami where his award-winning report entitled "Newscast to Nowhere" on June 11, 2003, should have been read by every tax-paying American. If you missed it, you can google it at "ABC-TV's Newscast to Nowhere" and then read it as you weep about the Bush-designed bundles of dollars that have flowed since the 1980s to the Bush-aligned Cuban exile zealots. The opening words of Kofman's report are: "It's the newscast to nowhere, courtesy of the U. S. taxpayers. Fifty-five reporters, editors and producers -- all U. S. government employers -- work seven days a week in a television newsroom in Miami. Each day they earnestly assemble, record and broadcast 4 1/2 hours of news and information programming in Spanish. And no one sees it. The intended audience is the people of Cuba." Kofman described a microcosm of a flawed Cuban policy.
Jeffrey Kofman was merely informing the American people of the "hundreds of millions" of dollars flowing from the U. S. Treasury to the infamous anti-Castro propaganda operation in Miami known as Radio-TV Marti. Many tenacious journalists have repeatedly pointed out that the broadcasts are easily blocked by the Cuban government and, even if they got through to the island, they would be ignored or laughed at as poorly produced, utterly biased anti-Cuban propaganda...like profligacy yielding to self-ordained piety.
Radio Marti went on the air in 1983 when the Reagan-Bush administration anointed Jorge Mas Canosa as the leader of the most vehement anti-Castro exiles. TV Marti was added in 1990 during the Bush administration. Not surprisingly, the Miami Herald began writing about "self-made Cuban exiles on the way to becoming multi-millionaires!" Did "self-made" include money from Batista's Cuba and Bush's Washington?
With friends like CIA Director-then-Vice President-and-then-President George H. W. Bush, the wonder is that many more Cuban exiles didn't become "multi-millionaires" or billionaires. Self-made, of course!
When the Bush dynasty went on to include two-term President George W. Bush and two-term Florida governor Jeb Bush, the Washington-to-Miami pipeline of tax dollars continued and even expanded!
Marie Cocco is surely one of America's all-time best and most respected nationally syndicated columnists. One of her most famous columns was entitled "Take It Anyway." Perhaps you should google it and read it as you weep. Ms. Cocco explained that President George W. Bush called Cuban exiles in Miami to advise them of another pipeline of tax dollars headed their way. Perhaps because they were still dissecting the previous bundle, they told the President to hold off...that they didn't need or want the tax dollars right then. President Bush, according to Marie Cocco, replied, "Take it anyway." It gave Ms. Cocco her headline for the column but although it was nationally syndicated and otherwise garnered considerable exposure it didn't impact with the U. S. taxpayers. After all, Americans have been programmed since 1959 not to question any absurdity when it comes to Cuba. "Take it anyway." WHY NOT? It wasn't money from the Bush fortune; it was just money from the taxpayers that, possibly, could have been pipe-lined to more deserving and more worthy causes -- like, food stamps. {Marie Cocco's column is syndicated two times each week by the Washington Post Writers Group; her email is mariecocco@washpost.com. If you care where your tax dollars go, you might want to grasp her columns}
Now back to that airplane {above} flying uselessly around Cuba each day gobbling up YOUR tax dollars!
On July 28th, 2013, Foreign Policy Magazine and the major www.foreignpolicy.com Website used the above airplane-Castro photo to lead into a huge article by John Hudson pointing out the incredible waste of tax dollars on counter-productive programs merely to appease the most visceral Cuban-exile hardliners such as Havana-born U. S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and U. S. Senator Robert Menendez. Sunday's encapsulating John Hudson article begins with these words: "It's difficult to find a more wasteful government program. For the last six years, the U. S. government has spent more than $24 million to fly a plane around Cuba and beam American-sponsored TV programming to the island's inhabitants. But every day the plane flies, the government in Havana jams its broadcast signal. Few, if any, Cubans can see the programs. The {TV Marti} program is run by the U. S. Broadcasting Board of Governors and for the last two years it has asked Congress to scrap the program citing its exorbitant expense and dubious cost-effectiveness. 'The signal is heavily jammed by the Cuban government, significantly limiting this platform's reach and impact on the island,' reads the administration's fiscal year 2014 budget request. But each year hard-line anti-Castro members of Congress have rejected the recommendation and renewed funding the program."
Sunday's perceptive John Hudson article specifically mentioned Havana-born Representative Ros-Lehtinen {safely entrenched in the U. S. Congress from Miami since 1989 when Jeb Bush was her Campaign Manager} and Senator Menendez {safely entrenched in the U. S. Senate from Union City, NJ} -- both anti-Castro zealots -- as the "staunchest supporters" of the expensive-but-useless airplane-flying-around-Cuba debacle, with Senator Marco Rubio -- yet another U. S. Senator, Bush-anointed anti-Castro prodigy from Miami -- backing them up. In other words, instead of recusing themselves when it comes to Cuban decisions in which they may be biased or otherwise conflicted, since their many ordainments from the Bush dynasty only a handful of the most visceral anti-Castro Cuban exiles have been allowed to make the self-serving U. S. decisions/laws regarding Cuba. The non-conflicted majority is left out of the process.
Here are details of that very expensive Marti airplane.
It uselessly gobbles up your tax dollars daily!
Just to appease revenge and economic motives of Cuban exiles!!
John Hudson's Sunday article quoted Arizona's U. S. Senator Jeff Flake {above} as saying: "It's hard to believe we are still wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on beaming a jammed signal." But Senator Flake, a Republican, well knows that nothing is hard to believe when it comes to a U. S. Cuban policy controlled by a handful of only the most zealous anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Presumably, if Senator Flake and others like him had a serious conflict of interest on a given issue they would...uh...recuse themselves from voting or participating in decisions relating to such issues. But such sensible governmental rules have not applied to Cuban exiles still chafing over the ouster {Havana to Miami and then Washington} of the Batista/Mafia dictatorship in Cuba way, way back in 1959. It appears Senator Flake and all other non-benefactors agree with that assessment but since 1959 the majority in the U. S. democracy have been excluded when it comes to the plethora of lucrative, revengeful policies that epitomize America's Cuban quagmire.
And with a citizenry not too concerned with either its democracy or how its tax dollars are spent, the American policy regarding Cuba will continue to be dictated by a few revengeful anti-Castro Cuban-Americans born in or descended from...Havana! Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the U. S. democracy, when it comes to Cuba, has pretended that the world "recuse" does not exist. But it should!
recuse: verb -- to excuse oneself because of a conflict of interest or lack of impartiality.
That used to be a rule in the U. S. Congress...till it got over-ruled by Cuban-exile sycophants!
That used to be a rule in the U. S. Congress...till it got over-ruled by Cuban-exile sycophants!
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