De facto Speaker of the House, Tom Donahue, should be given the job formally. Lobbyist Donahue, who says 'Republican voters can go hang,' runs Boehner anyway so make it official-Lucas, AT

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1/2/15, "Tom Donohue for Speaker of the House," American Thinker, James W. Lucas

"Conservative Republicans’ deep-seated dissatisfaction with John Boehner’s lackluster performance as Speaker of the House has erupted in widespread calls for his replacement when the House of Representatives meets on January 6 to elect a new speaker. The problem is, whom to replace him with? No conservative GOP House member has stepped forward to challenge the powerful boss, despite calls from prominent conservative voices such as Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Erick Erickson.
 
This dilemma presents conservatives with a magnificent opportunity to tell the American people that it is the conservative movement that genuinely stands against Washington, D.C.’s corrupt business as usual. It is a rare opportunity to do so in a way that can penetrate the usual leftist media propaganda screen, which continues the false and hypocritical pretense that it is leftist Democrats who oppose the K Street lobbyist machine.

What is this amazing opportunity for genuine conservative members of the House?  It is to vote for U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue for speaker of the House of Representatives.

Yes, that Tom Donohue. The man who says that the GOP should not even bothering to field a presidential candidate in 2016 if he or she doesn’t fall in with the Democrats’ amnesty-based immigration plan.  The most powerful crony capitalist lobbyist in Washington. 

The man who claims full credit for the GOP victory in November, whose attitude, in the words of Breitbart.com, is that the Chamber wants “what it wants, and the voters who elected Republicans can go hang.”  The man who put up the money for the campaign against Tea Party and other authentic conservatives in the Republican primaries, and who pushed Boehner’s moves to squelch authentic conservative voices in the GOP conference.  The man who is still pushing for a huge increase in immigrants to compete with American workers, an increase that the congressional GOP leadership, including Boehner, will support by acquiescing to Obama’s unconstitutional fiat on immigration. The man who seems to be calling the tunes and pulling the strings for Boehner and the House GOP leadership. 
 
So as long as Tom Donohue is the real power behind the Washington GOP establishment, why not just make it official and elect him speaker of the House?  According to both the Constitution and the House rules, the speaker does not have to be a member of Congress. Therefore, votes for him would not be ruled out of order. And voting for him would send a powerful message to the American people. Politics is about communicating, and sometimes the dramatic gesture can communicate far more powerfully than the most detailed disquisition.

A vote for Tom Donohue would send a very public and powerful symbolic message to the American people that true conservatives know that K Street lobbyists, not the people, run the Congress. A vote for Tom Donohue would tell the American people that only true conservatives are willing to stand up and tell the truth about the cesspool that their capital has become. A vote for Tom Donohue would expose Boehner’s puppet-master and make it more awkward for him to continue to dance to Donohue’s crony capitalist music. And since immigration is the issue of the day, a vote for Tom Donohue would highlight the fact that it is the Democrats who are backing Donohue’s crony capitalist plan to flood the U.S. with low-skilled labor, even as the Democrats hypocritically bemoan low wages.

And just possibly, if 30 GOP Representatives vote for Tom Donohue (or anyone else), they could block Boehner’s election as speaker, and throw open the election to someone who represents the wishes of the American people as expressed in the last election, not the lobbyists’ wish list embodied in the Cromnibus bill. By voting for Tom Donohue on the first round and forcing a second round of votes for speaker, conservative members can both send the messages above and avoid creating an awkward situation (or looking foolish) by casting votes for a member who has not yet declared. Then, emboldened by the widespread symbolic protest vote for Tom Donohue, maybe a representative will step forward who can lead the House in the 114^th Congress in representing Main Street instead of K Street."

"James W. Lucas is an attorney and entrepreneur and the author of Are We The People? Using Amendment to Take Back Our Constitution from Big Government, Big Business and the Supreme Court (of which a new revised edition has just been released).  He blogs at www.timelyrenewed.com." via Levin twitter

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Donahue jets to Cuba in May 2014, chats with officials to make sure if "free enterprise" ever happens there, it will consist of back door deals with him:

5/27/14, "U.S. business leader praises growth of free enterprise in Cuba," Reuters, Daniel Trotta, Havana
 
"The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the growth of free enterprise in Cuba upon his arrival in Havana Tuesday at the start of a three-day visit that was criticized by a leading supporter of the U.S. embargo in Washington."...

Chamber President Thomas Donohue has long opposed the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba as an impediment to free enterprise for American companies that want to do business in the communist-ruled country.

Now that free market reforms in recent years under Cuban President Raul Castro have created a class of small-business owners and private cooperatives and the government is courting foreign investment, Donohue has returned for the first time in 15 years.

"I'm here because of the evidence that we're seeing in Cuba of an extraordinary expansion of free enterprise, the reduction in government jobs, and more private hiring, all of which is moving in the right direction," said Donohue, whose chamber is an influential lobbying group that bills itself as the world’s largest business organization.

"As you know the chamber for years has been opposed to the sanctions as they are used," he told reporters shortly after his arrival and before he met with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

Earlier this month an unprecedented group of 44 policy reform advocates and former U.S. officials signed a letter urging the White House to expand licensed travel for all Americans to Cuba and seek to promote the island's fledgling private sector. In February a public opinion poll found a strong majority of Americans favor loosening Cuba sanctions.

But in Washington, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez expressed serious concern about the chamber's trip, fearing it would strengthen a government that "jails foreign business leaders without justification, violates international labor standards and denies its citizens their basic rights."

"Such conditions hardly seem an attractive opportunity for any responsible business leader," said Menendez, a leading Cuban-American voice for maintaining strict economic sanctions on the one-party state.

Donohue and a dozen others including a representative of U.S. commodities company Cargill [CARG.UL] planned to visit a private auto repair cooperative and the special development zone in the port of Mariel. Donohue was due to give a speech at Havana University on Thursday just before departing.

It was not known whether he would meet with Raul Castro, who ushered in the reforms after taking over for his ailing brother Fidel in 2008.

Donohue declined to say whether he expected any U.S. policy change toward Cuba, which Washington has sought to undermine and isolate since the island's 1959 revolution took it down the path of communism."

Image: "U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Donohue arrives at Cuba's foreign ministry in Havana May 27, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Enrique De La Osa"
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Deals if any that Tom Donahue gets will be the opposite of "free enterprise" he claims to value:

"Cuba almost always demands a controlling stake, which has discouraged some companies from elsewhere in the world from investing. Imports to Cuba are administered by state holding companies."...
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12/19/14, "Castro daughter: US 'dreaming' if they think Cuba will return to capitalism," UK Telegraph, by Telegraph Video, video source APTN

"The daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro said on Thursday the United States "must be dreaming" if it thinks Cuba will return to capitalism after both countries agreed to normalise diplomatic relations."
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"Speaking in Havana, Mariela Castro, said the island nation would not return "to being a servile country to hegemonic interests of the most powerful financial groups in the US". 

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the US is re-establishing long-broken diplomatic relations with Cuba - a historic shift that could revitalise the flow of money and people across the narrow waters that separate the two nations. 
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Cubans welcomed Wednesday's announcement with optimism and a measure of caution, especially among officials in the Castro Government.  .

The shift in US-Cuba policy was the culmination of 18 months of secret talks between both countries that included a series of meetings in Canada and the personal involvement of Pope Francis."

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12/19/14, "Cuba not returning to capitalism despite U.S. deal: Castro's daughter," Reuters, Havana, by Rosa Tania Valdés
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"Cuba will defend its socialist principles and will not return to capitalism just because it has agreed a detente with the United States, the daughter of President Raul Castro said, dispelling any notion that U.S. companies would be free to roll into Cuba.

"The people of Cuba don't want to return to capitalism," Mariela Castro, a member of parliament, told Reuters on Friday.

Cuba and the United States on Wednesday agreed to end more than five decades of animosity and re-establish full diplomatic relations. U.S. President Barack Obama also said he intends to remove some sanctions against Cuba and work with the U.S. Congress to end the economic embargo.

But even if all U.S. barriers to Cuba were lifted, any U.S. companies would still need permission from Cuba's communist government to do business on the Caribbean island.

"We've been at this 56 years and...we love saying that we are a country in revolution, trying to create socialism, and we form part of a single party called the Communist Party," Mariela Castro said.

Under Cuba's foreign investment law, overseas companies are welcome but need to negotiate agreements with Cuban state companies or the government to do business. 

Cuba almost always demands a controlling stake, which has discouraged some companies from elsewhere in the world from investing. 

Imports to Cuba are administered by state holding companies, meaning that U.S. companies would not be able to simply find a buyer and ship goods in.

"Sometimes people say Fidel is hard-headed, that the Cuban leaders are hard-headed, but experience has taught us something important, that we should never give in on our principles," Castro said outside parliament during a break in Friday's session."

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