Ileana is Wasting Your Time in Washington

According to Congress.org, Ileana is the 288th most powerful member of the House and as part of the hugely ineffectual Florida Republican delegation in Washington, helps make Florida one of the least powerful states in Congress. Thanks for the great work!

Ileana Doesn't Hate Gay People

For once Ros-Lehtinen is on the right side of an issue. She's a member of the new congressional gay equality caucus.

Don't get used to it.

Ros-Lehtinen in the news: PO maintenance and not a rubber stamp

Somehow these two items in the Miami Herald have an internal affinity. On Wednesday we read (way back in the Metro pages) that she’s wounded by declarations that she’s a rubber stamp, and on Thursday up pops a story saying she’s being called on to fix problems with the Post Office in Coconut Grove. Well, what is more associated with rubber stamps than Post Offices? I see appropriate written all over this connection. Yes, stamp the word appropriate on these stories.

I indulged my PO complaint mode and posted a comment on Thursday’s story suggesting that we retire Ros-Lehtinen and put her to work maintaining U.S. Post Offices. The one I attend in Miami Beach (71^st Street) needs the weeds cut.

Debating chickens

Annette Taddeo and the empty chair

The photo shows the bravery – lack of it, I mean – in our Republican congressional incumbents. They assert willingness to talk, set a date, ask to change the date, agree to a new date, and finally cancel. It’s a little dirty trick, taken, no doubt, from the Richard Nixon political playbook.

Some choice words of reaction from Annette Taddeo, whose date with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the AFL-CIO arena last week was a bust: “Her not being here is inexcusable. … I really believe you have been ignored. … On Saturday she’s to be at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, but she didn’t have time for you.”

It was a fine display of temper from the Democratic challenger in District 18, which spans the beaches to Key West. Her event on Thursday marked three days in a row that the Republican incumbents blew off the Democratic candidates: Joe Garcia vs. Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) on Tuesday and Raul Martinez vs. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) on Wednesday.

Here's how Joe Garcia describes it on his website:

For two hours, our community heard me discuss my plans to bring a safe and responsible end to the War in Iraq, revitalize our economy and pass a health care plan that covers everyone and lowers premiums. All they got from Mario Diaz-Balart was an empty podium.

Where was Diaz-Balart during this important debate? On an AM talk radio show to talk about his strategy of "dividing Cuban, and Jewish, voters."

That's not the kind of politics we need when our community is facing so many problems.

And over at Raul Martinez' website, they're accusing Lincoln Diaz-Balart of "elitist tendencies" for refusing to appear with Martinez at the labor forum. Dee-licious!

Fred Frost, who heads the union grouping, introduced Taddeo to a crowd of about 50 by noting that there are 14,000 union members in District 18. “I truly believe she (Ros-Lehtinen) has disrespected the South Florida AFL-CIO for the last time,” Frost said.

We will see. And this is not only a race for us in South Florida. The Sunday NY Times had us under the lens again. “Democrats see Cuba travel limits as a campaign issue in Florida,” was the headline.

That may be a little out of date already. Listen to Joe Garcia talking with people at last week’s naturalization ceremonies, and health care and gas prices are the first topics he pounds. But anyway, it’s at least interesting to see the national media paying attention to Cuba policy and the nuances of SoFla democraphics.

The Times article devotes a lot of space to the view that Cuba travel restrictions are on the way out. But at the end it quotes a contrary view from pollster Sergio Bendixen, who ventures that the Democratic challengers may be mistaken if they focus on Cuba policy.

“What do you gain by focusing your campaign on travel restrictions and remittance restrictions?” Mr. Bendixen said. “I don’t get it. It’s turning off more than half the electorate that’s not Cuban, and the people who would benefit from a change are a very small slice of the Cuban electorate. It’s a mistaken strategy.”

Having listened to all the challengers (repeatedly), I have to say that they are not focusing on Cuba the way Bendixen seems to think. Yes, two of them (Garcia and Martinez) are Cuban Americans, and Cuba policy is part of their stump speeches. But they know their districts and just how much is Cuban. Taddeo told her union audience last week that District 18 is “under 30 percent Cuban” and it’s far from the makeup that sent Ros-Lehtinen to Congress 18 years ago. Voters, including Cuban Americans, now have health care at the top of their priorities, she said.

Her speech opened with a telling anecdote from her background as a business leader who would travel to Washington to lobby Ros-Lehtinen on what the business community saw as top legislative priorities. Health care, for instance. “Our list of priorities was getting longer,” she said. “We are being represented by someone who does not vote in the best interest of our community.”

And, she pointed out, it was a business delegation asking for a yes vote on children’s health insurance, not a labor delegation.

Taddeo also thought it was noteworthy that Ros-Lehtinen now is changing some of her votes and talking to the Chamber of Commerce. “They all know me,” she said of the Chamber. “She doesn’t have the labor community. She doesn’t have the business community. Who does she have?”

Good question.

Ileana Hates Iraq, Loves War

How else could you explain her 1.59% lifetime progressive score on votes related to the Iraq war? In addition to her original vote to authorize the war, she voted:
*against making the president work through the United Nations for a solution
*to limit Congressional authority over war spending
*against establishing civil support teams through the National Guard to guard against WMDs
*in favor of castigating France for its Iraq stance
*against investigating the president for lies about the war
*against limiting money given to Halliburton in the wake of their price-gouging
*in favor of giving Bush more power over military reconstruction projects
*against forcing Bush to justify his Iraqi reconstruction plan with an actual plan
*against increased funding for human rights protections for women and girls in Afghanistan
*against requiring competitive bidding on oil contracts in Iraq
*to declare that the United States and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein was removed from power
*against requiring accountability for harsh treatment of Iraqi prison and congressional inquiry into prison abuse
*repeatedly to increase funding for the war in Iraq
*against investigating contracts and federal spending in Iraq and Afghanistan
*against a "sense-of-the-House" resolution calling for the president to develop a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq
*in favor of the troop surge
*repeatedly against setting a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq

Debate? Republicans run and hide.

Republican members of Congress in South Florida don’t look like debaters. The reference is to the Diaz-Balarts and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- track stars when it comes to running and hiding.

Joe Garcia, challenging Mario Diaz-Balart for District 25, said in a statement Wednesday that his opponent had backed out of a commitment to debate.

“This is an act of political cowardice. If Mario Diaz-Balart had time to vote to underfund our schools, three times against children’s healthcare and against medical benefits for veterans, then he better make time to explain himself to the people of South Florida,” the statement said.

Cowardice? Goodness, tough word. But that’s exactly what Raul Martinez said Tuesday evening at a meeting of the Democrats of South Dade Club. Martinez said his opponent in District 21, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, had accepted a labor union debate invitation but then changed the date and now seems unavailable. “Why is he hiding?” Martinez asked. Later he returned to the topic and said if there is no debate, “I’m going to call him a coward. Mr. Coward. Coward, coward.”

The crowd was delighted. Just think, there are still over five months of this before election day.

Annette Taddeo’s campaign was more polite, according to the Miami Herald, which quoted the candidate’s campaign manager, Anastasia Apa, saying she hopes for a change of heart.

Ileana's In Trouble

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is focused on the wrong things. As usual. Now she wants to indict Fidel Castro.

While there is no doubt that Castro has done a lot of horrible things over the years and should be brought to justice, but, really, is this the type of thing our representatives should be focused on? Is this a matter of doing what's best for Floridians or is it simply pointless political posturing? And why is Ros-Lehtinen posturing so much these days? Two words...

Annette Taddeo.

For once, Ros-Lehtinen has a significant challenger and this scares her.

“I think voters are hungry for new leadership and they have a chance to change the Bush-Lehtinen approach, which has obviously failed us," Taddeo recently told the Miami Herald. She's right.

Taddeo argues that while Cuba is an important issue to South Floridians, it isn't the only one, and pointless posturing on Castro won't fix the situation in Iraq, on which Ros-Lehtinen has blindly followed the president, it it won't get health care to the millions of Americans that don't have it, it won't create one new job and it won't bring down gas prices. Ros-Lehtinen can't talk about those issues, though, because she's part of the problem -- she sided with Bush and helped make all of those problems as bad as they are today. So instead of dealing with real issues, Ros-Lehtinen is pandering and posturing. That's a shame at such an important juncture in American history.

Let Ileana know that this is not what Floridians deserve, donate to the Taddeo campaign.