Democratic Ties To Big Sugar Make Sticky Business ... by gimleteye

Pepe Fanjul and the Clintons: friends through thick and thin

As the Democratic Primary debate rolls into Miami, this evening, moderators ought to ask the question of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: do you support the sugar subsidy in the Farm Bill? It is like the question recently asked of the Democratic candidates about fracking: yes or no?

Floridians are sick and tired of paying the heavy costs of the industry's pollution, now coating both Florida coasts. There are no secrets about Big Sugar's influence-peddling in both political parties.

In 2014, the Tampa Bay Times reported on secret trips offered to only GOP elected officials including Gov. Rick Scott and Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam by US Sugar Corporation to the King Ranch in Texas. The King Ranch, that state's largest land owners, are strategic land owners in the Everglades Agricultural Area.

US Sugar Corporation thought nothing of ferrying legislators by private jet to secret meetings with Republicans because the Fanjuls -- their co-cartel "competitors" -- have been doing the same for many, many years at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. The relationship between the Clintons and the Fanjuls is not exactly news.

The ultimate solution to stopping the endemic pollution of both Florida coasts, affecting millions of property owners and businesses dependent on tourism, is to take lands out of sugar production in the Everglades Agricultural Area and convert those money pits into massive pollution cleansing marshes.

A more pointed question to ask of the Democratic candidates in tonight's televised debate: "Big Sugar is the symbol of corporate welfare in the U.S. The industry controls Tallahassee and Washington, DC through massive campaign contributions. Have you ever accepted free travel or trips to the Dominican Republic from sugar billionaires? Yes or no."

In 2015, Al Jazeera published an excellent series on the super-sized influence of the Fanjul empire in both the U.S. and the Dominican Republic. "A Sweet Deal: The Royal Family of Cane" quotes writer Junot Diaz who describes Casa de Campo: "the resort that Shame forgot". 

Al Jazeera documents for the first time the Fanjul's manipulation of US Farm policy and how the sugar subsidy accrues to the advantage of its plantation in the Dominican Republic where working conditions are half-step above slave labor.

The report closely tracks the human suffering disclosed in the important documentary film, "Sugar Babies", pulled under mysterious circumstances in 2008 from the Miami International Film Festival, without explanation or any protest by the festival's supporter; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation grew out of the Knight brothers ownership of the Miami Herald. It purportedly supports journalistic freedom and independence, but not in the 2008 case where the Fanjuls were put in the spotlight.

Big Sugar's pollution of national politics runs deep and strong through both political parties. One side of the Fanjul family, Pepe and son Pepito, takes the Republicans. The other, Alfie, takes the Democrats. It's all about making billions and the maximum profit possible by spreading campaign cash like fertilizer across America's political landscape. Owning a hide-away resort in the Dominican Republic doesn't hurt, either.

Let's see if CNN and Univision can bring that point closer to home, tonite.

For the GOP establishmentarians: an unexpected return on investment: Donald Trump takes on Karl Rove, while Michael Bloomberg takes the temperature of American voters ... by gimleteye

The Republican establishment is recoiling in fear of Donald Trump. No Democrat could have pressured GOP standard bearers so thoroughly to cause them to unite in opposition to the poll leader. Listen to this video of Donald Trump taking on the GOP strategist most closely linked with the Republican orthodoxy: Karl Rove.

The likely Republican, primary voter insurgency supporting Trump looks a lot like the Tea Party before the Tea Party was co-opted by the Koch Brothers' oligarchy. This is a revolution from the inside of the Republican Party, and it could never have been started by anyone other than Donald Trump.

Trump appeals to a GOP electorate furious that promises to fix the economy by the party's own candidates, to establish national security abroad and job security at home, have not materialized. They view Jeb Bush as a fake like his brother. Republican voters who support Trump want a president who can deliver a simple message and keep its promise. It doesn't occur to Republican voters that the promise keepers are failing not because of who they are but because of what they believe.

Instead of looking for Republicans with a fundamentally re-tooled message (ie. banish Karl Rove to political Siberia), they are seeking a candidate who delivers even more simplistic messages but brings with him the kind of independence only great wealth can provide.

Donald Trump "can't be bought" -- not like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz -- , and for Republican voters yearning for their own version of hope and change; that seems to be a prerequisite. Trump has even performed his political ju jitsu on the Koch Brothers' oligarchy; none of its plans are working out.

But if American voters -- not just Republican ones -- want an independent billionaire with proven experience in getting things done without bankruptcy, one is waiting in the wings.

A year ago, Michael Bloomberg concluded that he could not win the presidency. What changed: a revolt against the status quo in both parties.

If Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are elected to represent their respective parties, Bloomberg might enter the race as an independent. Meanwhile, the American people have already won: Republican Party leaders have done the near-impossible -- they created the political climate for the rise of Donald Trump: the one candidate who distills their messages into Twitter-sized, digestible bites.

Hard as it is to believe, the values of misdirection that Jeb Bush embraced created Donald Trump. That is why Jeb! is so lost in this GOP presidential primary: he and Bush loyalists plowed and sowed the Republican electorate for the rise of Donald Trump. That is an unexpected return on their investment.
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