Mario Diaz-Balart: Axelrod doesn't speak on behalf of Hispanics

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, has weighed in on a statement made this weekend by President Barack Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod. In the interview with Univision TV's Jorge Ramos, Axelrod said of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that it would be "insulting" to Hispanics if the former Massachussetts governor picked Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as a running mate if the pick was intended merely to win more Latino support.

"It is profoundly offensive that Mr. Axelrod believes he can speak on behalf of the Hispanic community," Diaz-Balart said Monday, in a statement issued by his campaign.

"His statement is not just patronizing and insulting it reflects the election-time rhetoric of the Obama Campaign when it comes to the Hispanic community," Diaz-Balart said. "The true insult is how President Obama, time and time again, has broken his promise to the Hispanic community while at the same time his economic policies disproportionally hurt Hispanics. I commend Senator Rubio for the work he has done on behalf of his constituents, our country and the Hispanic community."

Here's what Axelrod said: "I think it would be an insult to the Hispanic community to choose Senator Rubio if the thinks that that is somehow — if Governor Romney thinks that's sort of a get-out-of-jail-free card for all of the things and the positions that he's taken," Axelrod said.

Yup, "VoteForEddie.com" qualifies for FL ballot to challenge Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart

Unknown independent Eddie Gonzalez probably knew he'd get little money, no attention and have almost no shot against popular Republican incumbent Rep. Mario Diaz Balart.

So Gonzalez did the logical thing. He legally changed his name to “VoteForEddie.com.”

Apparently, "Don'tVoteforMarioDiazBalart.com" was already taken. Gonzalez.....er... VoteForEddie.com  petitioned a Miami-Dade judge to have his new name on the ballot and, viola, it happened and the Associated Press noticed. See AP story here.

The stunt aside, there's some precedent for people running on the ballot under different names. Just ask Cornelius McGillicuddy and John Ellis Bush.

Still, he's the first candidate in Florida to be named for a website. He has a Twitter handle as well, @VoteForEddie.com. Below is his campaign video in which he promises  to steer gas tax money into an effort to end our "economically crippling oil addiction."

Paging Solyndra. Oh, and the road-builder lobby as well.

The disclaimer is priceless: "I am VoteForEddie.com and I approved this message."

Verily.

 

 

Florida's congressional Democrats hold their own Medicare meeting, no Republicans allowed

Democratic Reps. Alcee L. Hastings, Corrine Brown, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch, and Frederica Wilson are scheduled to meet this week to talk about Medicare -- but they're not inviting the Republicans in the Florida delegation. 

Hastings, the Democratic chairman of the delegation, says he'll host the meeting Thursday morning "to highlight the importance of Medicare to Florida, and the impact of Medicare changes on Florida's beneficiaries."

We've reached out to Democrats and Republicans in the Florida congressional delegation, but no word yet on why GOP Reps. Sandy Adams, Gus Bilarakis, Vern Buchanan, Ander Crenshaw, Mario Diaz-Balart, Connie Mack, John Mica, Jeff Miller, Rich Nugent, Bill Posey, David Rivera, Tom Rooney, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Dennis Ross, Steve Southerland, Cliff Stearns, Daniel Webster, Alan West or Bill Young weren't invited.

GOP bashes Obama on Cuba visas, but David Rivera's a no-show on the call

Two Florida members of Congress have been the subject of intense investigations for their fundraising: Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, and Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota.

Buchanan never stopped raising money for the National Republican Congressional Committee -- House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, appeared at a fundraiser with him in Sarasota and NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, declared his support for him.

And while top GOP leadership initially stayed arms length from Rivera, he appears to be back in their embrace. Rivera won't face criminal charges following an 18-month investigation of his personal and campaign finances by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement

This morning, the Republican National Committee was set to feature him, along with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, in a press call bashing the Obama administration's decision to issue a visa to Cuban first daughter Mariela Castro and others to attend events in this country. Castro is set to chair a panel on sexual diversity at the Latin American Studies Association conference in San Francisco. She's a noted gay rights activist who heads a sex education center in Cuba.

Rivera didn't end up on the call -- RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said they had difficulty coordinating schedules this morning.

Here's what the Democratic National Committee had to say on that: "The fact that the RNC found David Rivera to be a credible source on anything is laughable considering his status as an embattled member of congress, under investigation by Florida officials for living off his campaign contributions for nearly a decade. No wonder he 'couldn't make it' on the conference call."

So only Diaz-Balart spoke, beginning the press call by saying he was expressing "deep outrage" with the decision. He called the visits "pro-regime, public relations tours."

South Florida's Republicans veer from the GOP on the Violence Against Women Act

South Florida's congressional Republicans were among 23 of those in their party to vote Wednesday against the GOP version of the Violence Against Women Act. There's no word yet on why Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Rivera and Mario Diaz-Balart voted against the bill, but opponents charge it doesn't sufficiently protect gay, lesbian, transgender people, Native Americans and immigrants.

The House of Representatives passed the GOP-sponsored bill 222-205. The 18-year-old law written by then-Sen. Joe Biden dedicates federal resources to assist victims of domestic violence.

The vote puts the House at odds with the Democratic-controlled Senate, which approved its version of the bill last month on a bipartisan 68-31 vote. The Senate bill renews the act for five years, authorizes $659.3 million in annual spending and contains measures to help victims of sexual assault, improve emergency housing services for victims and consolidate some grant programs to make them more efficient.

Here's a statement from Rivera's office about his vote: "While there are many important provisions in the House version of VAWA, Congressman Rivera believed the bill jeopardized the safety of immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault by unnecessarily eliminating legal protections for these victims. Congressman Rivera represents a district with a large immigrant population and intends on working with congressional leaders to ensure these legal protections for immigrant women are preserved in the final version of VAWA."

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., voted for the Senate version; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., voted against it.

Cuban Americans in Congress call for meeting with IKEA

The six Cuban-Americans in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday demanded “an urgent meeting” with the head of IKEA in North America to discuss whether the company used Cuban prison labor to make some of its furniture in the 1980s.

“It is the responsibility of every company to ensure that its products and their respective components are derived from responsible labor practices,” the two Senators and four House members wrote in a letter to IKEA’s Mike Ward.

“They certainly should not derive from the dark prisons of authoritarian regimes that repress their own populations, including the denial of basic workers’ rights,” added the letter to Ward, head of IKEA North America.

It was signed by Sens. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, as well as South Florida Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera and New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires.

More from Juan Tamayo here.

Sen. Marco Rubio refutes Gov. Rick Scott on Cuba crackdown law

Sen. Marco Rubio joined the chorus of Republican lawmakers who disagree with Gov. Rick Scott for calling a Cuba-crackdown bill unenforceable and unconstitutional.

“I believe that it’s constitutional,” Rubio told The Miami Herald and WLRN-Miami Herald News, “but I don’t sit on the Supreme Court. So it’s not going to be my decision to make.”

Asked if Congress and the president are needed to act to authorize the controversial Florida law — as Scott believes — Rubio said, “I don’t think so.”

Rubio’s stance was the gentlest of rebukes of Scott, who incensed his fellow Republican lawmakers from Miami-Dade on Tuesday when he signed the crackdown law with great fanfare at a public event at the Freedom Tower — only to issue a signing statement moments later that essentially called the law meaningless.

The lawmakers, all members of Miami’s Cuban exile community, felt betrayed by the statement, in large part because Scott didn’t tell them he would issue it. They said the statement undermined the law, which prohibits state and local governments from contracting with companies that have business operations in Cuba or Syria.

One of Rubio’s close friends and allies, Congressman David Rivera, even threatened to sue the governor if the law didn’t go into effect on the scheduled July 1 date.

Scott retreated somewhat from his signing statement the following day, Wednesday, when he agreed with the lawmakers that the law is valid and would become effective in two months.

“I think the governor has, from what I’ve read briefly, restated his position in a way that I think is more appealing to people here who are concerned about it,” Rubio said.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/03/2781652/sen-marco-rubio-refutes-gov-rick.html#storylink=cpy

More here

Obama calls for tax-the-rich policy, tells FAU students Tweet your congressman.

President Obama came to South Florida to raise money from millionaires and ask them to pay more in taxes.

Obama interrupted his $2 million campaign-fundraising trip to advocate for his proposed tax-the-rich “Buffett Rule.” Republicans say the Democrat is waging class warfare while sticking taxpayers with his campaign travel expenses.

By highlighting the Buffett Rule in his public speech at Florida Atlantic University, Obama ratcheted up the pressure for a Monday vote -- on the even of tax day -- on the rule, which seeks to tax those who earn more than $1 million annually to pay a 30 percent tax rate.

"In this country prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few. Prosperity has always come from the bottom up,” Obama said. “And yet we keep on having the same argument with folks who don’t seem to understand how it is that America got built."

The chances of the Buffett Rule, -- nicknamed for billionaire investor Warren Buffett -- passing are virtually nil in the Senate, where Republicans can filibuster the vote.

Still, Obama urged the FAU college students to get active and contact their congressmen.

“Tweet them," he said, at one point eliciting a chant of "four more years" from the students.

Like his last speech in February in Miami– where he chastised his opponents for attacking him over high gas prices – Republicans noted that Obama’s speech had a negative and defensive quality to it when compared to some of his more positive 2008 campaign speeches.

“The candidate who ran for hope and change has now become the president of divide and deceive," Miami Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart said earlier in the day.

All Cuba politics are local...including in Ireland

The long arm of Cuban politics reached across the ocean this week to Galway, Ireland, where the city council is considering a monument to Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

Please reconsider, said Miami's Cuban-American lawmakers in Congress, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"The romanticizing image that this monument would portray would serve to diminish the brutality that was committed by Che and the painful suffering endured by many Cuban-American families and his other victims far and wide," she said. "Che Guevara was a ruthless killer who should not be idealized.  Instead of honoring a killer, the City Council of Galway should honor the victims of Che and the Castro dictatorship by rejecting this proposal."

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, called Guevara a "merciless executioner who reveled in the murder of men, women and children in cold blood."

"Galway is a city where people have the right to vote, the right to worship freely, the right to speak freely, and access a free press -- all of which "Che" Guevara and his murderous associate, dictator Fidel Castro, ruthlessly suppressed," Diaz-Balart said. "Having a memorial to this cruel assassin is a shameful affront to the thousands of Cubans he murdered and utterly ignores the truth of who "Che" Guevara actually was."

The Irish Times reported this week that the proposal has the full support of Galway's city council, and is currently before a public arts subcommittee. The Cuban and Argentinian embassies will pay for the project, the Times reported.

"It's not going to cost a red cent to the taxpayers of Galway city or the nation," Galway City Councillor Billy Cameron told another Irish newspaper.

Guevara's grandmother, Ana Lynch y Ortiz, was descended from one of the Lynch family of Galway who emigrated to Argentina in the mid-18th century, the Times reported. Guevara reported mentioned his grandmother's Irish roots during a stopover in Shannon in 1965.

Voting shifts weaken Republican strength of Miami Dade's congressional seats

To understand the demographic shifts of Florida’s growing Hispanic vote, you need only look to South Florida, where three congressional districts long dominated by registered Republican voters are being crowded out by more Democrats and independents.

Tallahassee has taken notice. This week, legislators approved a redistricting plan that would offer safer and stronger districts for Miami’s three Cuban-American Republican lawmakers, U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and David Rivera.

Since 2002, the last time legislators reconfigured the political districts to reflect the new census data, the number of registered voters has soared in their districts.

Growth has been particularly strong among non-Cuban Hispanic voters, the majority of which have registered as independent, no party affiliation or Democrat, political analysts say.

The results have Democrats salivating while Republicans, armed with new maps, remain confident they will retain their stronghold. Story here.