I had to laugh reading the news that Florida insurance regulators are zapping a major insurance firm because of the travel preferences of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-20).
Schultz apparently applied for an 'increased amount' of life insurance because she planned to travel internationally. I guess one needs more money if one dies in Tel Aviv rather than Tallahassee.
In any case, a representative of American General Life Insurance, a subsidiary of AIG, called about her travel plans and was told by Wasserman Schultz's husband that she planned to visit Israel.
The mere question of where Wasserman Schultz planned to go allegedly violates Florida's "Freedom to Travel" statute.
Last Wednesday, Wasserman Schultz stated "Our legal travel choices should not adversely impact our ability to purchase life insurance."
Legal travel choices? Who in America says "legal travel choices"??
This sounds like what an apparatchik from the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union might have said. And the notion of a "freedom to travel" statute in Florida certainly sounds at oddes with the sound of "legal travel".
Well -- it is no surprise that Debbie Wasserman Schultz offered such a qualification of her comment and her own pretty silly claim that has tried to throw AIG out of the State of Florida.
She has worked with three of the most right-wing Republicans in the State of Florida -- Ilieana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL-18), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25), and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL-21) -- to maintain the US embargo against Cuba and to tighten the noose around not only Cuban-American families hoping to see loved ones in Cuba -- but on ALL Americans.
Wasserman Schultz, despite serving as a National Co-Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Red-to-Blue Program has refused to campaign against these three Republicans, who are moderates in no one's books and have successfully made Cuba the only place in the entire world where the Cold War actually got colder in the last decade.
The freedom of Americans to travel has long been considered a human right by nearly every member of Congress. When I worked in the Senate, Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and others spoke of the right of Americans to travel as a protected human right.
There are court cases that challenge the notion that free travel is a Constitutionally-protected right, but nonetheless -- it is a "fringe view" that believes that the federal government of the United States of America has the legal right to tell its citizens where they can and cannot go.
Wasserman Schultz has the audacity to challenge AIG because she feels that her "freedom to travel" has been inhibited by an insurance firm that made a phone call?!
She is complicit in one of the most significant cabals preempting the travel of Americans today and she has no moral authority or legitimacy complaining in her own case that her travel latitude has been restricted when she is directly responsible for inhibiting the freedoms of so many other American citizens.
I recommend to Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to go pay a call on Republican House Member Jeff Flake (R-AZ-06) who will remind her that it is communist governments that restrict the travel of their freedom-challenged citizens. The U.S. government should not be party to such practices, he will tell her -- as will more than a hundred of her Democratic colleagues, with whom she is politicaly out of line.
Regarding this AIG claim, Wasserman Schultz should feel pretty ashamed that she can twist the state to do her bidding while she is forcing Cuban-American families to choose whether they attend a mother's funeral, or a father's -- because the legal constraints on travel that Wasserman Schultz helped to construct and supports won't allow these families to go to both.
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note
Here is why I will not support Hilary: She has a brother married into an exile Cuban family and she fully supports the moronic policies of W in this regard. She is NOT progressive on the Cuba situation and she will do nothing to frighten the pro Mafia wing of the Cuban people.
This writer is a dog in the age-old pack.
American foreign policy should be in the best interest of Americans and should align with our principles of freedom of the individual. I feel sorry for Cubans and I want them to be free. But taking away fundamental rights of Americans doesn't help anyone.
Politicians don't seem to really have opinions. They have merely taken sides. In this case, Miss Wasserman-Schultz was personally effected by circumstances, and being aware of the law, has sought to do something about it. Good for her.
Except it exposes her as simple-minded, in denial, or hypocritical.
But isn't that just the way it is these days -- dumb, smart people. Intelligence is measured by success -- usually financial -- and principles, character, and logical consistency are secondary or irrelevant.
It is clear that it is time to take the gloves off. Any super-delegate who represents a district that voted for Hillary Clinton should be pressured to vote for Hillary or face challenges to their seat. This is exactly the way the Obama campaign thru Jesse Jackson Jr has strong-armed black Super-Delegates committed to Hillary and gotten to switch to Obama.
Two can play that game. It is time to take back this illegitimate attempt of Ted Kennedy and his cohorts from stealing the nomination from Hillary.
The whole Obama campaign is a Kennedy inspired phenomenon that was test-run in Massachusetts w Deval Patrick. Obama is a product of the Chicago Daley political machine w deep Kennedy influence. The Obama campaign team ran the Deval Patrick campaign where he came out of nowhere to win in Kennedy's Massachusetts back yard. Patrick has been a total dud as governor whose big revenue plan was to create 3 casinos in Mass. Fortunately the state legislature blocked this fiasco and now Patrick is waiting for Obama to be President so he can go to Washington.
Kennedy has played a cynical race baiting campaign against the Clintons accentuated by his insinuation that his support for Obama was because of Hillary's MLK/LBJ/JFK comments after the NH primary. The big lie is that this had anything to do with Kennedy's support of Obama. Kennedy has been behind Obama since the beginning and is the only reason Obama is still afloat.
Hillary supporters can start contacting super-delegates in districts that voted for Hillary in the primaries. Don't know who the supers are? Can go here and make your lists:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/delegates/candidates/barack-obama/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/delegates/candidates/hillary-clinton/
Uncommitted delegates can be found under each state list.
Need more evidence of Kennedy involvement w Obama? Try this:
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/01/kennedy-obama-and-rezko-or-slimey-and.html
Wasserman Schulz has gotten herself into this pickle with her dissembling and lack of Democratic Party team spirit.
Ouch.
themselves from the Cuban Americans that want to wage continuous war against Castro and
Cuba. When, if ever, are you people going to grow up, and let go of things that happened more
than 45 years ago.
So I ask who is to blame? Those who advocate or those who allowed this to happen? Instead of asking those difficult (I believe easy) questions the media, for self-serving purposes, endlessly run the Rev. Wright footage which for this Caucasian is at least 90% true.
recommend that everyone read a book, by William Blum called "Killing Hope",
that is about every military and CIA adventure since WWII. It will not make you
proud to be an American, and I strongly object to that. As you read the book
you will become aware of how many right wing Cubans, have been involved
in some of the more sordid CIA operations.
If true she refuses to campaign against the Republican Floridian congressmen, then at a minimum she should lose her leadership role in the DCCC. She's demonstrated she's no friend to her constituents, or the Democratic Party.
She needs to increase her insurance because of international travel???? Give me a break.
Now, please inform me what clause or amendment allows a department of the US government to tell us where we are allowed to go and not allowed to go. I do realize, however, people in those government positions can exercise more power than an average individual, but "might" isn't a synonym for "right".
At the same time, I don't think any Congressperson should be allowed dual citizenship. If Wasserman is carrying an Israeli passport she needs to resign from office. When Americans join the Foreign Service they are required to give up dual citizenships. So it should be with our representatives. They need to be 100% American.
http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/Archive/Winter08/2008Election.html
If you something substantive Factcheck2 put it on huffpo.
Wasserman Schutz should be stripped of any party status if she won't support Democratic candidates ...
Many are still in the same mindset when they profess that "either" presidential candidate is acceptable in the fall. That's quite a cop-out when there is a clearly superior candidate available.
Frankly I am sick of the Debbie Wasserman-Schulz's of the Democratic party. This is no time for politics as usual.
Unfortunately, much like Clinton whom Schultz supports this does not represent enlightened leadership. After fifty years it's clear this strategy doesn't work. In contrast, China a communist regime which arguably has commited crimes on a far greater scale than Castro this country not only recognizes, trades with but every American also has the right to travel to. This is also true of many other Communist or aurthoritian countries including Russia. After all President Bush will travel to Communist China this summer to be front and center for the Olympics!
Time and time again we have seen the power of American culture change some of the world's most oppressive regimes for the better. However this can only be happen through more contact not less. Real leadership must risk offending many of the old line Cuban Miami based community not because their hatred of Castro's oppression against their families and interests is not justified but because the way they have chosen to fight it is ineffective. And more over causes even more suffering among many who want to visit their families in both America and Cuba.
McDonald's, Levi jeans and the power of the American economy to inspire Cubans still on the island to demand change is a much more powerful and progressive weapon against the Castro regime than the outdated fifty year old cold war strategy of isolation; which has not worked. Leadership is challenging the old guard of the Miami's Cuban Community and changing America's policy in this regard despite the fact they will kick and scream.
Americans want to punish their own people. They still have the same attitude towards their own that they had when the lived in Cuba. They were elitist, they represented the rich, and they ran their own country poorly. Castro tried to change things. But no one outside of Cuban was going to let that happen. That would of been a major embarrassment to the bourgeois who left Cuba with all the money and settled in Florida. The Cubans are an interesting group. They have pride, they fight and the are tough. The have even withstood the war between themselves and the Cuban Americans who have only suffered a lost of status. You have to respect any group of people who have suffered as much as the Cubans at the hands of their own brothers and still come out on top as a talented and wholesome people. The have won the respect of the world..