• Submitted by: admin
• United States
• Personalities
• Politics and Government
• 05 / 13 / 2010

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It's rare indeed when Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the sleaziest and most self-serving operators in the Senate, is pushing the envelope on anything worthwhile.

Baucus is generally considered a solidly reactionary Democrat way in the pocket of the vested interests that have financed his political career.

Funny as it sounds, one of the worst of those vested interests, AgriBusiness, is pushing-- or has Baucus pushing-- in a positive direction: normalization of relations with Cuba.

I guarantee you Baucus doesn't give a rat's ass about Justice for the Cuban people. But his patrons want to sell their products to Cuba and suddenly some of the most reactionary shitheads in the Senate, generally all especially corrupt ones like Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, are on the side of the good guys (for a change).

The extremely conservative AgriBusiness forces have given Baucus $1,231,565 and nearly as much to Lincoln. So he's sponsoring and she's co-sponsoring a bill "that would open the door to more agricultural imports to Cuba, taking advantage of President

Obama’s pledge to 'seek a new beginning' with the island nation."

It's funny watching dyed in the wool conservatives like Baucus and Lincoln fighting for their special interests-- Big Business-- while other senators, in this case Bob Menendez, Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson fighting for their own special interests-- in this case revanchist Cuban wingers who demand the inhuman and dysfunctional embargo be maintained.

The American people, if not the displaced Cuban gangster-aristocracy that fled the Revolution, is way ahead of Congress on this.

Businesses from Virginia to Utah and, of course, Florida are gearing up for the inevitable, regardless of what overly cautious elected officials may think.

One of the smallest brained of all the GOP freshmen-- and competition is very fierce-- is surely Aaron Schock, who represents a district centered on Peoria, home of Caterpillar, the district's #1 employer.

The district also grows a lot of farm products, farm products the farmers/voters would like to sell to, say, Cuba.

So it was a shock when Schock, who has been nicely paid off by the right-wing Cuban-American interest groups to oppose normalization, came out against what other farm belt congressmembers are pushing for.

Source: Yahoo