Author: opinionstogo

The alarming increase in illegal immigrant smuggling from Cuba to the U.S. has resulted in hundreds of Cubans drowning en route to a better life. The ill-fated Elian flotilla was merely one of many. Just last month 30 fleeing Cubans perished when their boat capsized in the Florida Straits.

Encouragingly, both Cuban and American officials talk regularly and genuinely want to crack down on the despicable practice of trafficking in human smuggling. The devil, of course, is in the details.

Obviously, America’s “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy is a critical factor. In effect, this allows most Cubans who reach American soil by illegal means to avoid repatriation and eventually apply for U.S. residency.

Havana’s spin, reiterated recently by Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, is that this Solomonic solution is to blame for the spike in human smuggling and subsequent tragic deaths.

Wrong. Disingenuously wrong.

Despite America’s 40-year legacy of a counter-productive, Cold War-era, embargo-driven policy toward Cuba, this charge won’t — or at least shouldn’t — stick. Granted, America has made it too easy to be scapegoated by Havana, but “wet-foot, dry-foot” isn’t, ultimately, responsible for all these tragic deaths at sea.

Ultimately, it is the life these people are fleeing from — even more than the promise of a better one — that is the driving force behind their perilous escapes.

No one has forced Fidel Castro to suffocate meaningful democracy and barely experiment with the demand-economy principles the rest of the world lives by. Those with ambition to better themselves are out of luck. The legal-tendering of the dollar has carved out whole new classes of relative “haves” and “have nots.” Global-village communication is a graphic reminder to many Cubans of all that they don’t have.

After two generations, the Cuban people know they can’t take revolutionary rhetoric to the bank and can’t take ration cards anywhere other than sparsely stocked, peso-only shops.

America’s policy toward Cuba has been nothing to be proud of for forty years. Havana’s policies toward its own people, however, have been shameful. And tragic.

It’s not hard to come across as the voice of reason when your opposite number is Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud “Lite” Selig. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura personified that contrast the other day in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. He made some cutting comments about MLB’s absurdly inequitable anti-trust exemption, but cut to the chase when he noted MLB team’s outlandish penchant for “paying players more than they can afford.”

Selig’s show-and-tell appearance included the release of financial information showing that 25 of baseball’s 30 teams lost money this past year. Overall, pointed out the beleaguered Selig, the teams posted a combined operating loss of $232 million.

Interestingly enough, that’s roughly the size of the contract Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers last year.

“No one,” said former President Calvin Coolidge, “has the right to strike against the public welfare.” That sage dictum was applied to the air traffic controllers by former President Ronald Reagan. And it applies no less to the 240 striking New Jersey teachers– outraged over a sizable hike in their health care premiums — who were arrested for violating a back-to-work order.

The Middletown Township, NJ, teachers, who are no longer in jail, seemed to hail each other heroically upon their release. Maybe others felt similarly, but hopefully not.

Striking is, of course, a legitimate, albeit last-resort, measure in labor-management disputes. It represents leverage. Against a manufacturing plant or a newspaper or a clothing store.

But not against, for example, hospitals; police, fire and sanitation departments; or schools. Because the strike, in effect, is against those in need — patients, vulnerable homeowners, students.

The public, especially our children, shouldn’t be hostage to a collective bargaining process gone awry in bad faith and ill tempers. There is nothing “principled” — let alone heroic — in “standing up” for your rights at the expense of responsibilities to others. No number of impassioned, self-serving speeches changes that.

The real harm, however, is not in the two weeks of school that students missed. It’s the two weeks’ worth of cynicism and selfishness they witnessed and absorbed.Ultimately, a two-week hiatus from academics can be overcome. The same can’t be said for a two-week lesson in perverted principles and hypocrisy.

It’s not hard to come across as the voice of reason when your opposite number is Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud “Lite” Selig. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura personified that contrast the other day in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. He made some cutting comments about MLB’s absurdly inequitable anti-trust exemption, but cut to the chase when he noted MLB team’s outlandish penchant for “paying players more than they can afford.”

Selig’s show-and-tell appearance included the release of financial information showing that 25 of baseball’s 30 teams lost money this past year. Overall, pointed out the beleaguered Selig, the teams posted a combined operating loss of $232 million.

Interestingly enough, that’s less than the contract Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers last year.