Friday, February 20, 2015

Did anybody tell Rep. Pelosi about the hotel that she stayed in Cuba?

We understand that Nancy Pelosi is married to a very successful businessman in California. We are very happy that the Pelosi family has enjoyed the fruits of capitalism. Of course, they've enjoyed those fruits because they live in a country that respects property rights and does not confiscate businesses.

 This week, Rep Pelosi went to Cuba and stayed at the Hotel Saratoga. Let me share this from our good friends at Capitol Hill Cubans:
"The Hotel Saratoga is a beautiful neoclassical structure in Old Havana. It was purchased in 1939 by Blanco Lopez and Co., headed by Jose Blanco and Jose Lopez Blanco, who were also leaders of the Association of Cuban Hotels.
In 1959, The Hotel Saratoga was confiscated by the Castro regime. 
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro saw European and Canadian tourism as a means to salvage his dictatorship. Thus, he began seducing foreign investors to invest -- in minority partnerships with the Castro regime -- in order to reconstruct the island's hotels.
In 1999, a British company, Coral Capital Group Ltd., entered into a minority partnership with the Castro regime to transform (a then-dilapidated) Hotel Saratoga into a chic, modern, 5-star property.
Coral Capital invested over $75 million in its partnership with Castro.
In 2005, the Hotel Saratoga reopened as the swankiest hotel in Havana.
But, as always, Castro got greedy and wanted it all for himself.
Thus, in 2011, Castro confiscated Coral Capital's minority stake in the Hotel Saratoga.
And for giggles, he had Coral Capital's two senior executives in Cuba, Amado Fahkre and Stephen Purvis, imprisoned in the notorious torture facility known as Villa Marista (akin to Moscow's infamous Lubyanka).
Fahkre and Purvis spent nearly two years arbitrarily imprisoned, had all their assets confiscated and were finally expelled to Britain.
Purvis told The Telegraph about his experience as Castro's prisoner (after having been one of his biggest foreign investors):
“They decide absolutely everything about your life, even personal grooming. The idea is to separate you from your personal identity, so you lose a sense of who you are. Several inmates who passed through my cell during my time went cuckoo, and there was an attempted suicide about once a month. You’d be trying to sleep at night and suddenly there’d be this terrible wail from some other cell.”
As Pelosi and her delegation enjoy their comfortable nights at the twice-confiscated Hotel Saratoga -- embracing and promoting business with totalitarian thieves -- they should reflect on the wails from nearby Villa Marista."
Hope that she enjoyed the coffee and the view of the ocean. In reality, Nancy Pelosi is rather lucky that Mr Pelosi did not own a business in Cuba. Otherwise, she and her husband would have been among the thousands who had their property confiscated without compensation.

 Of course, who cares about that?  I'm sure that Mrs Pelosi enjoyed the coffee and will tell us that the Cuban health care provides for free abortions.   

 P.S. You can hear my show: (CantoTalk) or follow me on Twitter .
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Dear Jorge: Do you really want 'Hispanos' to get angry at a judge?

Jorge Ramos of Univision came out swinging at the federal judge that stopped President Obama's executive order, or was it a memo, regarding deportations.

 Jorge Ramos wants Latinos to remember this in 2016, according to news reports:
"He suggested on Tuesday that Latino voters in particular would take their anger out at Republicans in 2016.
“The Texas decision clearly defines who is against immigrants in the U.S.,” 
Ramos said. “Latino voters will remember; 2016 is not that far away.” 
He also declared that Judge Andrew Hanen, who issued the injunction, “won’t have the final word” on the matter."
Here is a word for Jorge:  

 1) Judge Hanen did not rule on the matter of deportations.  He did not say that these people should be deported.  All he said was that President Obama violated "the rule of law" by doing it this way, as Professor McConnell wrote yesterday:   

 "The 123-page memorandum opinion carefully lays out the legal case against the program, concluding that the Obama administration lacks statutory authority to change the law without congressional action, and that the administration did not comply with the minimal procedural requirements of public notice and comment under the Administrative Procedure Act."  

 This is about "the rule of law" not "Hispanos". Why is that so hard to understand?  

 2) Jorge is right that Latinos should remember all of this in 2016. Yes, they should remember that it was President Obama and Democrat majorities that didn't do a thing about immigration reform. Maybe the Democrats will take Hispanos seriously if they stop blindly supporting the party that makes promises and does not keep them.

Last but not least, Jorge is originally from Mexico. 

 I'm sure that he remembers how "presidencialismo" (presidential-ism) corrupted Mexico. I'm sure that he remembers how Mexican presidents went around the legislature and issued executive decrees without respect for the rule of law. 

 Doesn't he remember how President Lopez-Portillo expropriated private banks in 1982 without regard for property law? It pushed the country into a deep recession and it took years for investors to believe in Mexico again.   

 I happened to be living in Mexico in 1982 when all of this was going on. Many Mexicans told me that this would have never have happened in the U.S. 

 Why not? Because we have a Judge Hanen with the courage to stop an out of control executive.

 Jorge Ramos needs to calm down or some of us will think that he is in the tank for Obama.

 P.S. You can hear my show:  (CantoTalk) or follow me on Twitter.    We discussed this topic with George Rodriguez on Friday's show:
Check Out Politics Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Silvio Canto Jr on BlogTalkRadio
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ISIS and other national security issues of the week with Barry Jacobsen


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