Will The Smearing Of Judge Sonia Sotomayor Impact Florida's Congressional Midterms?
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Relics from another time
Earlier today we mentioned that the DCCC had called out 8 endangered right-wing incumbents in California on their refusal to disassociate themselves from the vicious smear attacks against the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, a super achiever born into a poor working family in the Bronx and living out the American dream that tells us all that we can go all the way-- regardless of race, religion, gender, creed-- as long as we work hard and follow the rules.
I did a little checking around and I found that media outlets in almost as many Florida congressional districts have gotten similar press releases from the DCCC. There may be more but so far I have found campaigns underway to alert voters to the shameless and cowardly responses from Vern Buchanan (FL-13 ), Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21), Adam Putnam (FL-12), Tom Rooney (FL-16), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), and C.W. Bill Young (FL-10).
These districts have several things in common-- besides congressmembers who are refusing to denounce the racist and sexist smear campaign by prominent Republican Party surrogates like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Each has a large and growing Hispanic population that feels a great deal of pride in the Sotomayor nomination. And each has a growing voter registration advantage for Democrats. The Hispanic population in Young's Tampa district is only about 5% but last year McCain only managed to take 47% (down from Bush's 51%) and the district is trending Democratic. FL-13, Vern Buchanan's district is about 8% Hispanic and Rooney's (FL-16) is just over 10%. Beyond that, any Florida congressman who is perceived as unsympathetic to Hispanic aspirations is treading on dangerous ground.
Adam Putnam, one of the most doctrinaire and reactionary members of Congress is giving up his congressional seat next year to further his political ambitions. Doug Tudor, a career Navy officer who has served with Hispanic men and women and is a big supporter of the Sotomayor nomination will be facing off against a right-wing hack in a district with a growing Hispanic population (over 12%), not just Hispanic, but largely Puerto Rican.
And then we get to the districts with majority Hispanic populations in Miami-Dade, each represented by a right-wing Cuban-American:
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25- 62.4%)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18- 62.7%)
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21- 69.7%)
Younger Cuban-Americans no longer support the knee-jerk Cold War hysteria these three are still spouting about Cuba. And these districts are not nearly as "Cuban" as they are Hispanic, with rapidly-growing non-Cuban Hispanic populations from Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico and other countries that tend to be more moderate and more Democratic than the old line Cuban gangsters who were the first to flee the Revolution and who wired South Florida politics for themselves and their families. The extremely corrupt Diaz-Balarts, for example, come from a fascist background and are the political heirs of a terrorist father who was an Interior Minister under the Batista dictatorship tasked with running the brutal torture regime.
This morning the Florida Democratic Party released new registration figures that show that since the 2008 registration deadline, Democrats have registered over 30,000 more voters than the GOP. Democrats are out registering Republicans in all age groups and have a 3 to 1 advantage in Hispanic registration.
Since October 7, 2008 Democrats have registered 86,220 voters, some new, some fleeing from a Republican Party trending further and further away from the mainstream and towards hateful and bizarre extremism. The second largest group of newly registered voters (76,134) are Independents, again, many fleeing from the GOP. About a quarter of the newly registered (55,720) are Republicans. Among Hispanics, 15,662 registered as Democrats and only 5,134 registered as Republicans.
Labels: 2010 congressional races, Florida, Hispanic voters, Sonia Sotomayor
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 7:00 PM
3 comments
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3 Comments:
If the Democrats start doing this, it's about time. The Republicans use this tactic all the time because they know the Dems. are above this. It's time to fight fire with fire.
Hi
Am just reading this but like what's hapening with the AIPAC crowd and their supporters, more and more open dialog is coming forth. People also have forgotten all the terrorist acts comitted by Cuban-Americans mostly against their fellow exiles for simply suggesting that America have some dialog with Castro like we have had with Russia and China during the Cold War days when Nukes were pointed every-which-way. Guy's like Luis Posada Carriles and several others from Miami did a lot of harm to a lot of people and were supported by Reagan/Bush Uno because they helped with lot's of dirty stuff in Central America. They got somewhat exposed for who they really were during the Raft-Survivor-Boy fiasco and are now keeping their heads down in expectation of Fidel Castro's end which could be very soon - then the dirty money/power politics will start because Cuba is basically virgin compared to other awesome beach resorts - not a McDonalds anywhere - also Cuba has one of the most highly educated 3rd world populations in the world - doctors and engineers driving cabs and serving drinks in the dollar hotel's. Silicon valley and other high end manufacturing co's and resort industry people are drooling over this gem.
Fernando Alvarez Jr
(Cuba is under a tyranny and the people are starving. the education and free medical care a myth, while the Castro family lives like a new royal dynasty...in a so called communist society, only for the few..no free elections in fifty years, only one party is allowed, the COMUNIST PARTY, wow that's what I call a Paradise Stalin style)
The condition of Cuba’s environment and its effects on the society have been treated as state secrets. Air Pollution
Very few environmental reports available
to the public are based on analytical information systematically
collected in the field and processed in laboratories. The
Ministry of Public Health, better endowed for this purpose than
other branches of government, has produced or published few
precise documents dealing with health conditions and
environmental degradation. Until very recently these documents
were kept secret. Fortunately this has begun to change however
slowly in the 1990s. An example is a report by Hernandez and
Bonito (1998) documenting severe air pollution in Havana. Their
research, dating back to 1994, focused on the sulfating index
(the amount of sulfur oxides emanating primarily from industrial
chimney stacks) in the core of Havana, where roughly one million
people, or roughly 47 percent of the city’s total population
reside, and where the density in some municipalities surpasses
750 dwellers per city block.
Sulfur oxides—undesirable residues of combustion that are
produced mostly in power plants when sulfur-rich fuels are
burned—create respiratory problems and cause acid rain. Cuba
replaced part of the vanished Soviet fuel imports of the late
1980s with domestic crude containing roughly six percent sulfur.
It is used mostly in power plants and to run cement factories;
in 1999 industry used approximately 2.2 million tons or 13.9
million barrels per year of domestic crude oil.
According to the Cuban scientists, the two main sources of
sulfuric gases within the city limits are the old thermal power
plants of Tallapiedra in the Old Havana neighborhood and the
Antonio Maceo plant in Regla, across the Bay of Havana. In both
of these neighborhoods they recorded the highest level of
environmental pollution, measuring up to 7.7 milligrams of
sulfides per square decimeter per day at the Tallapiedra Power
Plant (one square decimeter equals 16 square inches).
Concentrations above 4 milligrams per day were found
forming a plume that embraced most of the municipalities of Old
Havana, Central Havana, Regla, Diez de Octubre and Cerro (with a
combined population of roughly 800,000).
Three secondary sources in the metallurgic, chemical and
construction industries were also associated with air pollution,
all of them located in the environs of Havana Bay.
Water Pollution
It is estimated that throughout Cuba
about 430 million cubic meters (113.5 billion gallons) of water
contaminated with agricultural, industrial and urban wastes are
dumped into the sea annually (Nuevo Atlas Nacional de Cuba,
1989). More than 3,270 million cubic meters (863.4 billion
gallons) find their way into rivers. While the use of chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides has been severely
reduced since the early 1990s, for almost a quarter of a century
more than one million tons of fertilizers and 30,000 tons of
pesticides and herbicides were used annually (Herrera and Seco,
(1986). Much of it accumulated in ground water and lakes
(CubaNews, January 1994).
During the past decade, direct dumping of untreated
industrial liquid waste into rivers, aquifers or the sea around
Cuba has been the norm.
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