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How Dumb is Senator Jeff Flake?
Che looks on proudly, his victory complete at last
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and the Gang of Eight is one of two Republican senators accompanying President Obama to the socialist gulag of Cuba. (The other is Nevada’s Dean Heller.) Here’s Senator Flake’s explanation:
“We’re not embracing Cuba,” he said. “We’re actually, finally, imposing a get tough policy, because we’re going to expose them to American values and commerce.”
Flake said he hopes the Cuban trip will inspire the country’s leaders to adopt policies that help it move closer to a more capitalist society and help Arizonans realize what a Communist country is truly like.
“(They can see) what happens when the government controls not just the commanding heights of the economy, but the entire economy,” he said. “It’s a pretty sobering thought. For those who value socialism, or want to move closer to socialism, that’s a pretty good deterrent.”
Does he really think his visit is going to reveal the evils of socialism instead of being portrayed as a propaganda victory for the Castro regime?
And these “get tough” policies on Cuba, are they anything like the “Get tough” border security policies in the Gang of Eight bill that amounted to nothing more than politely requesting that Obama Administration prepare a border security plan and promising to spend a lot of money?
Update: The Marriott Corporation is one of Jeff Flake’s largest corporate donors. Also on the guest list for Obama’s Cuba trip … the CEO of the Marriott Corporation.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
He has been advocating similar policies since the 1980’s. The implication that Marriott convinced him to support opening Cuba would mean that they would have had to have been conspiring since the 1980’s to make it look as though Flake is genuine when he is not, just so the Marriott guy could get on a plane. The point is that it is a silly attempt to say Jeff Flake has been bought into his position, when he clearly actually believes what he is saying.
I find it interesting how people get so worked up about the “establishment”, but then get upset when anybody in the party take a non-doctrinaire stance. If one is really so Anti-Establishment, you shouldn’t be so angry about out-of-line republicans.
We could and should have ended sanctions years ago because the rest of the world is trading with Cuba, but let’s be clear. Sanctions were not meant to bring Cuba down. They were meant to demonstrate that being our enemy had costs. Most of the folks here aren’t old enough to remember what was going on in Latin America at the time. Sanctions on Cuba helped. On the other hand removing them was symbolically important to the Cubans as are the tourist dollars that will flow, so that we should have gotten something in exchange– freedom for some political prisoners, freedom of movement for our diplomats, and we should have restricted US partnerships with the Cuban government. Since all partners are government, it would have restricted investment on the one hand and led to arms length fronts that would have created some complex incentives. It was done mindlessly, to please the far left and to give us reasons to close Guantanamo sooner. Given what is going on in the world, with Russian, China, the Middle East, it is pathetic and says again, just how small, petty and feckless our President.
I didn’t say it would become a Mini-USA. I said it would become a better place than it is now. You mention China, which is now a wealthy despotic regime. This is true, but would you rather be a Chinese citizen before Richard Nixon’s visit to China, or today?
You could make the case for maintaining sanctions out of concern that this nation will threaten other nations, but who do you believe Cuba is a threat to?
In the nations you mentioned, open relations with that nation has led to better conditions for the people of that country, if that country did not then go to war. And again, Cuba poses no real threat of war.
I don’t believe Cuba is a threat, I don’t believe despotic regimes should be rewarded with wealth and trade. I don’t know whether that makes me a bleeding heart or a Neocon.
It is not worth punishing the whole Cuban nation just to make sure a senile old man in Havana knows we still don’t like him.
These sound mostly like token concessions meant to humiliate Castro. The time spent securing such concessions would have been more valuable to the Cuban people as an earlier start date for normalized relations.
We don’t have to pound our chest and declare to the world we won; they probably won’t care much anyways.
Cuba has been trading with most every country in the world for decades. The Cuban people are no better off, and the “senile old man in Havana” has become one of the wealthiest men on the planet.
You say the Chinese are better off because now they can afford iPhones. But having the wrong opinion about the Chinese Government will still get you sent to a slave labor camp. Rather than try and change this, American companies like Yahoo and Google have actively collaborated with the Chinese Government to root out dissidents.
I suppose the Saudis are also “better off” since Riyadh has some of the world’s most opulent shopping malls. Never mind that criticizing the Government can get you sentenced to a thousand lashes and a prison term.
The senile old man is still not going to give more money to the people.
Seriously, I haven’t seen such a poor understanding of how Marxist economies work since the last Bernie Sanders speech.
And the Cuban people have benefited from trade with Europe and Russia. I would rather live in Cuba now than in the 70s. However, even with the US sanctions Cuba’s largest trading partner was the United States; so the benefits to Cuba of opening relations will be much more significant than previous engagements.
And Again, I am not saying they will become a Mini-USA. But if your standard is that a nation ought to become a western democracy or be damned to Communist Isolationism: Embargo California.
I respect people who choose their words carefully, so when I saw “similar” policies, I was gratified. But not fooled. Flake, in his 20s, may well have questioned South African sanctions on whatever job he held, but, if you have any evidence that he acted similarly with Cuba, I’d be most interested in reading it. Flake was elected to Congress in 2000, and, after a “never mind” on his pledge to serve a set number of terms, reached the Senate in 2012. We’ll leave it to others to determine if there’s any connection between his ties to Marriott and lending Obama a bipartisan hue to his trip. It’s entirely possible that Marriott identified Flake as someone worthy of supporting because he was predisposed to be anti-sanctions. That doesn’t change the fact that both have benefitted, and that Flake’s rationalizations for a deal that keeps a police state in place are weak, to say the least.
I have a very good understanding of how Marxist economies work. The State requires a very large amount of resources to operate, and it takes first priority; in instances of scarcity, the state will continue to plunder what it needs from the people. So when you isolate a Marxist state, the government reacts by continuing to take what it needs, if not more; so the burden of scarcity is felt by the people who are subordinate to the state, and who are plundered to feed the state. This is why isolation of North Korea has been a disaster for the people, and at the same time a hallmark of the state’s policy (their isolation is self-inflicted).
Thawing relations will make the government wealthier in absolute terms. The Chinese Government is wealthier today than it was before Nixon visited China. However it is not as wealthy relative to China as a whole; the people are much better off today than they used to be. Meanwhile, North Korea’s government is destitute, but it has the most totalitarian control over the people than any government in the world. This is because it’s people are even more destitute than the government, because they are the ones who have been plundered to compensate the government’s isolation policies.
This comment pinpoints the major flaw in your theory. There is no reason to believe that the Castro regime will allow increased commerce to impinge upon the authority it wields over the Cuban people.
Please explain how your “less dependent on the State” theory works given that international commerce is conducted through the state.
Am I correct that the Cuban government is an intermediary when wages are paid to Cuban workers and takes a substantial “cut”?
Jeff Flake proposed legislation in 2003 to end the travel ban to Cuba.
Furthermore, Jeff Flake, being in Arizona, has a safe seat, he won two of his elections with no democratic challenger; and so he isn’t as beholden to political donations as you would make it out to be.
Beyond that, he was one of the main pushers to end Earmarks; and faced trouble in his home district because he did not bring in enough “pork spending”
That was 30 years ago?
I never said he was beholden to political donations. I strongly suggested that he and the Marriott Corporation have found a common area of interest that has benefitted both to the detriment of the Cuban people. The facts support that.
I know Flake is a budget hawk and I respect that.
My understanding is that employees of foreign companies (eg. hotels) are actually employed by the state, from which state-determined wages (hint: extremely low) are distributed.
Like in China and Vietnam. The state has significant controls, but that investment is still dependent on American investors and businessmen. This means Cubans get more opportunities and higher pay, which leads to higher standards of living. These high standards make a difference. Not the difference between the US and North Korea, but the difference between North Korea and China; which is a vast improvement for everybody.,
That is not entirely true. However the benefits for Cuba as a whole is that trade will lower prices and mean that everyone’s wages will have more purchasing power.
Thanks. That’s essentially my understanding as well. So I suppose the benign way to look at this is that if we increase the state’s payments exponentially, some will actually “trickle down” to the workers. Of course, if they don’t like what they’re awarded, they can always protest :)
That’s a bit abbreviated.
Well, when you’re living under a dictatorship that’s taking a substantial cut of your wages, it’s nice to know that your meager wages will buy more rice.
No, but you asked me for evidence that Jeff Flake has supported the same Cuban Policy for a long time, and I cited his congressional record to prove this. 30 years ago he supported a similar platform regarding South Africa.
And open relations with Cuba supports the Cuban people in the same way the open relations with China has helped the Chinese people.
It will give Cubans more opportunities, higher purchasing power due to lower prices, and encourages further market reforms; this all is correlated with glacial political reform, which is better than none or regressive political reform.
China and Vietnam have never had the degree of control in their sprawling countries that the Castros have in Cuba. You are simply theorizing from a faulty premise.
The key question is: why would an enriched Castro regime be compelled to loosen its grip over Cubans? Why would they risk losing control by creating economic opportunities? The regime fundamentally has no concern for the welfare of its people beyond staving off a revolt.
The United State government takes a substantial portion of my wages, but I don’t think I would be happy if people determined the best way to shrink government’s expenditures was to cut my living standards.
Again, trade means that the cost of goods decrease, and so do the prices, which means that Cubans can buy more quantity and quality with their wages.
I met a good number of Cubans during Operation Sea Signal/Safe Haven in 1994-95. Of course the only Cubans I met were trying to leave. . . When the guy who carved walking sticks for tourists told me makes more than the neurosurgeon and the 20-somethings translating for me told me they think it’s funny that the computers the “education tourists” bring for the schools end up in the hotels (for the tourists) well, I don’t think I want to go live there. And I don’t think improved relations is going to change that. The Castros are worth millions and ye the maximum wage is something like $20/month. The Castros will just become “worth” more.
Oh really? Why would price levels fall? And even if they did, why would the regime share the benefits of lower prices with the citizenry that it continues to repress? Why wouldn’t they utilize their windfall to increase their support of regional allies in order to build political stability for their regime?
Mao’s China was as bad, if not much worse, than Cuba is today.
Why would the Castro regime do this?
You’ve been shouting the answer the whole time: because the Castros are better off as well.
As a result of the nation as whole receiving more goods and lower prices, the government of Cuba will be able to have higher standards of being as well. The same as what happened in China, where the government is now much cleaner than it was in Mao’s reign.
The Cuban Regime will be in charge of a wealthier nation; the same as the Chinese regime was in charge of a wealthier nation after it opened relations with the West.
This doesn’t mean the government was more authoritarian, it means the government was the government of a larger/wealthier nation; and was itself wealthier as a result
For instance, the US government is much larger (absolute) than Cuba, because it is in a much wealthier nation. But the government is not nearly as totalitarian.
I’m all in favor of opening up trade with Cuba and have been ever since the Soviet empire fell. I’m adamantly opposed to what President Obama is doing, and what Flake is abetting.
Well, this is a bit of a quibble, but let’s keep the record straight. You tried to suggest by artful wording that Flake has felt this way about Cuba for 30 years. I questi0ned that and asked for evidence. The evidence that I got was from 13 years ago.
Yes, and his regime collapsed. Ultimately, he was unable to control a large population spread over a vast geographic territory. Hence, economic reform became necessary (note: benevolence was not a factor).
These are problems the Castro regime doesn’t face.