The Name Castro Sends Shivers Of Warning Down Spine

Castro -- The family name alone should be a warning. Fidel Castro has oppressed Cuba under his socialist tyranny for decades. He made a "deal with the devil" to base nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union on his island empire 90 miles from the coast of Florida, and aim them at our great republic. Since the 1960s, he has not gotten any nicer, though his methods have become less overt and blatantly extreme.

In 1994, I deployed to Panama to quell the riots in the Cuban Refugee camps. Castro had opened his prisons and let hundreds of political prisoners, drug dealers, and organized criminals (and their families) hop on boats headed towards the Florida shores to seek asylum. There was no agreement between our government and the tyrant. Until the refugees could be screened and a plan to assimilate them into the US could be created, the refugees were sent to the Canal Zone in Panama, which was still, at that time, US Territory. The refugees grew impatient and rioted.

After quelling the riot, I manned one of the camps, the one that contained the more violent former prisoners. I had the chance to speak candidly with many of them about life in Cuba. While many in that camp were drug dealers and career criminals, a handful were political prisoners who happened to become impassioned during the riot, thus placed in the more secure camp. These people could not wait to get to the US. They wanted to open restaurants, carpet stores, or work as car salesmen. They wanted what they could not have in Cuba -- a right to work as they saw fit and keep what they earned and built. They wanted opportunity.

These people did not want handouts. They did not want the free clothing and food we, the tax payers, were providing. They did not want the cable TV with all the soccer games playing for their entertainment. They wanted to build their own lives and earn their own cable TV, paying for it themselves. They grew tired of the waiting and another bureaucracy taking their sweet time to decide their fates. That is what they had in Cuba.

Now we have Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio, TX, speaking at the DNC convention. He's an American, after all. The last name is a common Cuban last name. One would think that last name is where all similarities between the tyrant and the SATX mayor end. However, it isn't. Mayor Castro is also a die-hard socialist.

Among Castro's more recent projects is a plan to increase city sales taxes in order to pay an average of $70k a year to government daycare workers under the "headstart"/"Pre-k" program in government schools. Of course, the wonderful collectivist rhetoric Castro employs pulls on emotional strings with the tired and usually false phrase "it's for the kids". The problem is that it is not for the overwhelming majority of children. It is for the unions.

Castro is also under scrutiny for directing unethical mismanagement of federal HUD and Section 8 housing subsidy funds. These programs and their funding is already coming under fire as wasteful and unconstitutional spending of taxpayer money. However, the investigation by the US Dept. of HUD indicates that Castro's administration might be under suspicion of being even more wasteful. The audit found about $1.1 Million was granted to persons who did not fit eligibility requirements. The audit is looking further into an additional $2.5 Million in HUD funding (that came from taxpayer wallets) was spent on renovation programs that lack proper receipts and accountability. In other words, there is a huge question:  "Where did our money go?". These funds, $3.92 Billion in total, were part the "Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008". Now four years later, the federal government is scampering to account for every dime. Castro's administration received a total of $8.6 Million in 2009 as part of the program. the fact that $3.6 Million of that (about 40%) was mismanaged or is unaccounted for demonstrates a glaring indicator of corruption or ineptitude.

Castro has also put taxpayer money into San Antonio's mass transit system. That system should be self-sustaining or it should be shut down. The system collects fares. If the fares do not make the payroll, maintenance, overhead, and operating costs, perhaps they should raise the fares. It is poor business and its failing is being dumped onto the backs of those who earn, work, succeed. It is being dumped onto the backs of those who, most likely, have little to no use for the system. 

It is obvious that Julian Castro wants people dependent upon and enslaved to government programs. It is also obvious that he wants those programs funded on the backs of those who do work, and work hard. It is also obvious that he cares less where that money actually goes and cares more that he is taking it, by force, from those who earned it. He cares about that part because he wants those who work, achieve, and succeed to be brought to their knees for daring to do so.