There are some, who want Ms. Muñoz to set the record straight about the statistics she has been citing about the people who have been deported, and there are some folks in the community who feel that calls on Muñoz to clarify those remarks are unjust. Last night apparently, famed labor activist Dolores Huerta weighed in on this at the LATISM conference saying that the attacks on Muñoz are unjust.

How do you solve a problem like Cecilia?

Activists say Obama aide Cecilia Munoz has ‘turned her back’ on fellow Hispanics

Calling the Question: Why Cecilia Muñoz is not the issue (An interesting rebuttal to the first piece listed “How do you solve…” attacking a writer for being critical of Muñoz.)

Plainly, there is a credibility problem with the immigration issue in the administration.

What are your thoughts? Are the criticisms of Cecilia Muñoz and the administration valid, or should people ignore the messenger and just focus on the bigger picture and problems with the current immigration situation? Does Dolores Huerta’s message to “defend Cecilia Muñoz” resonate with you? Do you think Huerta would be asking people to defend the messenger of the administration’s policies if that person was not Latina or did not have a background in immigration advocacy?

As reported by The Sacramento Bee:

“Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez pushed the caucus for disclosure last week in response to a story by The Bee, which noted that voters had no way of knowing who was donating big bucks to the foundation controlled by Latino lawmakers.

Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, an Artesia Democrat who has chaired the Latino Legislative Caucus since December, released a list of 53 donors who contributed $243,600 in 2009 and $195,500 in 2010.

Mendoza previously had released a list of seven contributions received since he took control of the caucus late last year. Only three of them, totaling $20,000, were donated in 2011.

“We look forward to increasing transparency and accountability within the foundation today and in the future,” he said.

The list of contributors released Monday includes powerful Capitol interest groups that push lawmakers to vote their way on dozens of bills each year.

By far the largest donor in 2010 was Eli Lilly & Co., which gave $50,000. Other major contributors were AT&T, $25,000; California State Association of Electrical Workers, $20,000; and Verizon, $18,000.”

The Caucus did the right thing in releasing the donor list. Not releasing it would have raised more eyebrows and suspicion. No surprise in the large donations from the pharmaceutical industry (Eli Lilly & Co.) and telecommunications industry (AT&T and Verizon).

According to wise Latino elder Cisneros:

“Today’s mobile technology allows teachers to teach their children about the Seven Wonders of the World in a way never before experienced by kids who came before. Learning comes to life with the Internet; it allows kids to experience almost firsthand what the teacher is teaching. This added dimension in the classroom backed up by access at home or on a teenager’s smartphone will add to the sentiment that nothing is out of reach for this child.

The importance of high-speed Internet service can be seen everywhere these days. Not just in classrooms as mentioned, but also in the entrepreneurial world as small businesses continue to fuel the engine of growth and job creation. Any new business today needs instant access to customers and suppliers. President Obama has been a leader on this, calling for all Americans to have high-speed Internet access and setting a goal of covering 98 percent of Americans by 2016. The proposed ATT/T-Mobile transaction is purported to cover 97.3 percent of Americans, giving them the ability to access 4G LTE mobile technology. This is the fastest wireless Internet access available, and it’s the kind you need to take full advantage of new online opportunities in areas such as business and education. In pure numbers, the merger has the potential to bring high-speed service to an additional 55 million Americans.”

That is why I urge federal officials to approve the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. The company has committed to spend an additional $8 billion to expand next-generation wireless Internet service if the deal is approved. Wireless service offers the best, fastest hope to reach President Obama’s dream of universal Internet access. This is quite literally an investment in our future competitiveness. It means more students will graduate prepared for college. It means more businessmen and women will open more businesses in their communities which will in turn create jobs. And so forth.”

Plainly, this opinion piece by Cisneros was written to push the momentum that many Latino organizations have helped propel in support of this planned merger. Improving educational outcomes has more to do with promoting literacy, persistence, creating better learning environments at home and in our communities. While I love the internet and online learning, it is only one piece of the pie or rather one tool to help a student achieve success. Some may even argue that the internet creates distractions for students (time spent on social media, online games, and other time sink activities that are now online or available via cell phone).

According to Jim Sanders of The Sacramento Bee:

“The Latino Legislative Caucus two years ago stopped revealing which Capitol interest groups give hundreds of thousands of dollars to a nonprofit agency it controls.

As California’s fastest-growing minority group, Latinos have rising political clout. Twenty-three Latino Democratic lawmakers are in the legislative caucus, whose work extends to sponsoring community events through its foundation.

More than $856,000 was donated to the Latino nonprofit over a two-year period ending in 2008, including more than $706,000 that was solicited by then-caucus leader Assemblyman Joe Coto, D-San Jose.

Many of the biggest checks came from powerful Capitol players, ranging from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Since then, solicitations have continued — but disclosure has stopped.

Donors were not identified in 2009, 2010 or thus far this year. Contributions totaled nearly $250,000 in 2009, the most recent year for which tax records are publicly available. Fundraising continues, however.”

And some of the biggest donors who were last identified for 2008 included AT&T, Oracle, Verizon and ConocoPhillips. All of these companies had bills before the state legislature that year.

Already, editorials are calling for the Latino Legislative Caucus to come clean and start disclosing who is donating to its foundation, even though it isn’t required to do so by law. If the group had disclosed donors in previous years and was able to function, why not continue in the spirit of transparency for the public?

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo is defending the group’s nondisclosure, but this isn’t a good way to build up goodwill with the public. Recent polls show that the public’s view of the legislature is poor; people are already distrustful of the environment in Sacramento. To regain some of the lost trust, California legislators need to embrace more transparency and openness with the people they purport to represent.

And finally, the fact that AT&T has been a donor to the California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation in the past is no big surprise. The telecommunications corporation has been busy buying influence in the black and gay community as well.

“The number of women sworn in to Congress this year fell for the first time in 30 years, leaving women with just 16% of congressional seats.

And the number of female lawmakers in state capitals decreased by 81 this year, the largest percentage drop in decades.”

By Milly Doolan

The United States has a poor track record of electing women to public office. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s world average of women in politics, the U.S. ranks 67th in the number of women in elected office and is tied with Turkmenistan. In fact the number of women in Congress as well as state legislatures is at its lowest point in several decades.

The problem is not that women aren’t winning elections, it’s that they aren’t running. Research has shown that women need to be asked and recruited to run for office. Moreover, women are more likely to come up with reasons why not to run – family constraints, concerns about privacy – than reasons to do so.

The 2012 Project, a national non-partisan campaign in partnership with Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics, aims to inspire record numbers of women to break barriers and run for public office in 2012. The election of 2012 presents a once-a-decade opportunity. Following the 2010 census, every congressional and state legislative district in the country is being redrawn, and new and open seats will be created. Previous elections have shown that women have more success winning open seats.

One such example is Representative Nydia Velazquez who was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress. She was also the first to represent the newly redrawn 12th District of the state of New York.  This was in 1992 when 24 additional women were elected to Congress.

But 1992 was no accident. The so-called “Year of the Woman” was the product of a national coordinated effort by women’s groups aimed at reaching out to women to run for office. There was no similar effort in 2002 … and no gain for women.

The election of 2012 represents another year of opportunity for women, especially Hispanic women. As reapportionment maps show, states with a significant rise in the Hispanic population, such as Texas and Florida, are gaining 4 and 2 seats respectively.

The 2012 Project has assembled a faculty of former elected women legislators to share the facts about women’s under representation and the many benefits of public service. Women interested in taking the next step toward candidacy are connected to leadership institutes, think tanks, campaign training programs and fundraising networks designed to help them succeed in their own states. So far, 90 bipartisan allies, including MANA and the National Hispana Leadership Institute, and more than 50 former elected officials and consultants are helping The 2012 Project reach out to potential candidates.

Women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population yet only 16 percent of the U.S. Congress. The 2012 Project understands the urgency and the opportunity of the post-redistricting election cycle. Consider yourself invited to help find great women, or step forward yourself. It’s time. Ya es tiempo.

Some key excerpts:

“L.A. Weekly examined the budget for the mayor’s own office in an effort to understand just a small snapshot from Villaraigosa’s 389-page citywide budget proposal, which the City Council has just two weeks in May to understand, adjust and approve as its blueprint for fixing a badly ailing city.

The paper found that Villaraigosa’s official budget for his own office — in many ways a microcosm of the $6.9 billion city budget — understates by millions of dollars what Villaraigosa will spend on his staff, understates by nearly 100 percent the number of employees working for him, and falls far short of an “11 percent cut” to the Mayor’s Office. The paper also found that key officials who should know specific, basic fiscal details about the operations of the Mayor’s Office are in the dark.

Villaraigosa recently announced to an audience of cheering, impressed students at Jefferson High School that he is cutting his own office by 11 percent — and the L.A. media repeated his claim. The Weekly has determined his true office budget cut is about 2 percent and his operation alone will cost taxpayers about $42 million.”

I wonder if Villaraigosa could operate with a smaller and more efficient staff. If you read the complete piece, he also has paid interns (some of whom are paid by federal grants), which is nice for the intern but usually isn’t the the norm. He also borrows staff from other city departments, which his predecessors didn’t do as extensively.

This was also interesting given the Mayor’s focus on education reform:

“Critics are calling for a higher level of fiscal competence from Los Angeles City Hall, saying such discrepancies should not be a mystery to city officials. But when Villaraigosa’s spokeswoman, Sarah Hamilton, was asked to shed light on the clashing facts and figures cited by city officials who were trying to explain the Mayor’s Office budget, she forced the Weekly to file a formal California Public Records Act request.

Those new documents, handed to the Weekly in May, show Villaragosa’s staff at 196, including seven interns, 16 borrowed city employees and 173 core staff. The list reveals a surprising fact that the Controller’s Office did not have in hand: Nearly one-fifth of the mayor’s core staff — 31 people — is a homeland security team, 25 of whom are funded by federal agencies. Just four of Villaraigosa’s staff are assigned to “education” or “education/policy,” the mayor’s signature reform issue. Eleven of his employees are funded by foundations or grants to work in such areas as “strategic partnerships” and “energy and environment.”"

According to this, it seems that the signature issue based on staffing priorities is homeland security. Even with the funding from federal agencies, six staff are devoted to homeland security, while only four are working on education.

What are your thoughts? Should the City of LA devote so much to homeland security? Or should education be a bigger priority? And why does the LA City budget process appear to be murky instead of more transparent?

Check this out:

‘Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has accepted gifts from executives seeking his agency’s business, individuals who later received special treatment from him, and even a pair of felons implicated in a massive money-laundering and fraud scheme, according to a Times review of disclosure records.

Donors have lavished on Baca free rounds of golf, meals, fine wines and liquor, and tickets to sporting events.

Since becoming sheriff in 1998, he has accepted more than $120,000 worth of gifts and free travel. In a recent three-year span, he accepted significantly more freebies than California’s 57 other sheriffs combined.

State law allows local officials to accept gifts, with some restrictions. But government watchdogs said Baca’s willingness to accept so many gifts creates potential conflicts of interest.

“Doesn’t he realize the appearance is terrible?” said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies. “When you’re taking gifts from strangers, there’s only one reason. They only give gifts because they want something.”

Baca rejected the notion that donors were looking for special favors or treatment.

“The implication of all these gifts is ‘Well, they’re influence-buying.’ Nothing could be more opposite than that,” he said. “What they’re expressing is appreciation for the respectful way we do business.”‘

Now continue reading the article to see the great lengths the Orange County Sheriff to the south takes to avoid the issues that Baca has. And see what happens when a civil dispute is elevated and one of the parties involved is a gift-giving friend of Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca.

For the past year, I have been entrenched in thesis research on US-Cuba Policy, analyzing the embargo’s evolution from the perspective of the US presidency. (Before the haters slam that because of the US presidency angle, please note I was bound by fellowship guidelines to study the policy as it relates to the American presidency). As personally relevant as my work has been, it has also revealed incredibly unique insight into how American presidents could have handled the embargo, why certain events happened the way they did, and ultimately why a hard-line stance towards Cuba will not change any time soon. My hope was to author policy recommendations on how to end the embargo, which actually was easy enough. Instead, the difficulty came in writing something that rises above the Cuba fatigue on the Hill where we see no incentive to change, and a quagmire of hopelessness and despair for pro-normalization advocates like myself.

My path to finding the groundbreaking argument on normalization began with my research highlighting an incredible lack of attention paid to the Cuban perspective of the embargo. Please note, when I say Cuban perspective I mean academics and officials actually on the island, not Cuban-American politicians or the Calle Ocho scuttlebutt. Often in academia a balanced perspective on issues is difficult to find because of the inherent bias of any research we perform. When it comes to US-Cuba relations, this bias represents the limited and almost non-existent exchange of ideas that takes into account what Cubans on the island think. Such irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone, as an “exchange of ideas” is what the US government always harps on when slamming Cuba for their limited Internet access and state-run media. Although Harvard University does have a professorial exchange program with Cuba, finding actual Cuban research on the embargo is a road to nowhere. Instead, you’ll be left with newspaper and magazine articles from journalists who travel there, or field work from American PhD candidates.

The next idea was for me to find a way to mitigate the severe lack of forward thinking from my Cuban-American brothers and sisters on how we move forward. Historically, any discussion of constructive engagement of the Castro brothers is met with scorn, yet after over fifty years we see the same definition of insanity being read over and over again. I argue that if we want change to happen, we have got to stop demanding all the compromise in the world from everyone else and start respecting Cuba’s sovereignty. We rightfully slam Cuba for its lack of free elections, state controlled media, and deplorable human rights abuses. But any time Cuba has slammed the US for its race relations, inequitable education system, and flawed healthcare policy, we ignore them. This of course harks back to the Miami company line of zero tolerance when it comes to Castro, the extent of which most people probably aren’t aware of (the blacklisting of jobs and attacks on pro-normalization advocates are blogs for another day).

Indeed, it wasn’t easy as a progressive Cuban-American to dive into a subject I haven’t been able to escape since kindergarten and challenge the company line. But as always, a simple subscription to logic allowed me break the US-Cuba debate to its core, revealing one victim (Cubans on the island), a perennial policy failure (the embargo), and a competition between Washington and Havana to show who has the bigger ego. Bottom line, this isn’t working, and surprisingly the anti-Castro lobby isn’t the big hurdle in the argument. The hurdle is Congress, which holds the power to end the embargo through a law that states we either wait for a democratically elected government sans the Castro brothers. The alternative is for Congress to repeal its own law, not exactly a promising notion as long as the Cuban Three are in office.

Lastly, the final food for thought on this issue comes from the one interview I conducted, which was an unplanned, last minute dinner meeting with a former head of the US Interests Section in Havana (what can I say, the perks of guest speakers coming to Cornell). To sum up what was an outrageously informative and hilarious dinner conversation, Cuba hasn’t been a priority since the Reagan administration, when the US shot down Cuba’s attempts at dialogue, setting the Cuba debate back to the Kennedy era and pushing my interviewee to resign. During the Reagan years the anti-Castro lobby mobilized and became one of the most historically influential lobbies in Washington, and Miami’s political scene became Pre-Castro Cuba II. Since then, the most progressive policy changes we’ve seen towards Cuba have come from President Obama, extending a Cold War relic long beyond what should have been its expiration date. Unsurprisingly, the lack of incentive to change prevails.

The moral of the story is one I hope people understand: foreign policy change towards Cuba is not an American priority. Simply, there is no groundbreaking realization on how to create change. People know exactly what to do but refuse to step on the gas. So the Miami elite can kvetch all they want about how the Castro brothers refuse to die and about expanded US travel to the island, the reality is the Obama administration won’t take away their precious embargo. We need look no further than the baby steps the Obama administration has taken towards dialogue with Cuba, which unequivocally are on pace for “consideration of relations” after the 2012 election at best. And even then, if the embargo has taught us anything, it’s that hopeful promise with Cuba probably shouldn’t exist.

Matthew Stieglitz received his BA in Communication from the University of Delaware. He is currently a 2011 Master of Public Administration candidate at Cornell University concentrating in Government, Politics, & Policy Studies. After receiving his MPA, Matthew will attend law school in order to merge his public affairs background with a legal education to most effectively advocate for Latinos.

A few weeks ago, I was driving through the city of Ontario, California and was stopped in a police dragnet that did not seem to be a “sobriety checkpoint”. Prior to reaching the dragnet, I did see people on the street with signs that spelled, “Reten” warning people about the police roadblock ahead. When I reached the police stop, I was asked for my driver’s license, which I provided to the officer, and then he let me go through. I also asked the officer if this stop was part of the Secure Communities program, and he said that he did not know if it was but that the City was getting money from the federal government to do it. To my immediate right, there was a group of about a dozen people and their cars pulled off to the side who were visibly upset. I’m going to assume that these people did not have licenses and/or any other documentation to produce and were likely headed to immigration detention.

In nearby Pomona, California, these sort of stops have been happening regularly, and community activists have been speaking out and organizing people who try to warn people with the “Reten” signs. Some people feel that these stops are excessive and unjust because the police departments get to impound cars and make money off of the impound fees. Additionally, tow yards earn money for holding the vehicles that are impounded. Here is a video explaining what is happening in this locality:

Pomona Habla-Speaking Out Against Oppression from Becca Russell-Einhorn on Vimeo.

In Chicago and Cook County, the Department of Homeland Security has been having difficulties enforcing this Secure Communities program. The program was intended to capture undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but that isn’t the case. The New York Times reports the following:

“Chicago and Cook County were among several localities nationwide that refused to enroll in the program, which involves sharing fingerprints of anyone arrested with the Department of Homeland Security. Chicago and Cook County cited so-called sanctuary ordinances that prohibit local officials from involvement in immigration enforcement.

The Secure Communities program is in effect in more than 1,000 jurisdictions in 40 states, including Illinois. The federal agency plans to take it nationwide by 2013 and says it does not need local approval to do so.

E-mails and other documents — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an immigrant-rights group — show that immigration officials saw Chicago and Cook County among the cities to be test cases for whether localities are allowed to opt out of the program.

Secure Communities is meant to find and deport illegal immigrants found guilty of serious crimes. But the immigration agency’s statistics through February 2011 show that 32 percent of immigrants put into deportation proceedings in Illinois had no criminal convictions. Nationwide, 28 percent had no criminal record.

“The original concept was to get the really bad people out of the country, but are those the only ones you’re getting?” Mr. Dart said. “I could never get a straight answer. If it’s getting murderers and rapists, we’re all for that, but if you’re talking about people pulled over because their license plate isn’t up to date — my staff kept coming back to me saying we never got clarification.””

The problem is that Secure Communities in many ways makes people feel less secure and fearful of the police or even inconvenienced for having to stop and produce a license for doing absolutely nothing but following the law. The program also contributes to the breaking up of families when undocumented people are stopped, detained and deported but leave behind citizen children and other dependents.

Actually, Congresswoman Sanchez has been in a position as a senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security to probe into the detention situation, the deportation of US citizens by ICE and much more. This past summer Representative Sanchez praised President Obama for mentioning immigration in a speech and said, “That is where he really can make this an important, grass-roots base issue in many members’ districts. Maybe not this year, next year or the following year. But he’s working on it and that’s a positive thing.” Saying that President Obama is working on immigration while his administration has now set a record for the number of deportations (sometimes removing citizen children in the process) sends conflicting messages to the pro-migrant community. Sanchez is definitely in a position to advocate more forcefully for humane immigration reform and policies and has an obligation to call out the current administration when it lets enforcement run amok and when its rhetoric doesn’t match its actions.

If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area on Monday and follow immigration issues, I would encourage you to attend this talk and ask Congresswoman Sanchez what she is doing now in the current congress to advance immigration issues, and it would be a good idea to ask her what took her so long to get behind the DREAM Act. I wonder if all of the publicity that the DREAM activists were getting had something to do with it.