Is This the Moment to Normalize US Relations With Cuba? [View all]

[Mika]

Is This the Moment to Normalize US Relations With Cuba?
With Senator Foreign Relations chairman and
Cuba hawk Robert Menendez mired in scandal,
the embargo could finally be lifted.

Until last week, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was relatively untouchable among Democrats, while holding virtual veto power over US Cuba policy and being a military hawk on US policies towards Syria, Iran and Venezuela.
Not any more.

Now Menendez’s grip is weakened by revelations that his very close friend, Miami opthalmologist Saloman Melgen, topped the country in Medicare fraud, and funneled $700,000 in campaign contributions through a Democratic super-PAC, nearly all of which were channeled right back to the Menendez re-election campaign in 2012. Melgen ripped off $21 million in Medicare reimbursements that year alone by over-prescribing a medication for vision loss among seniors.

A key question is whether Senate leader Harry Reid, whose close former aides run the Majority PAC for Senate Democrats, will aggressively investigate ethics violations, diminish Menendez’s Senate standing, or risk his party‘s association with the scandal by circling the wagons.

Federal investigations, including two raids on Dr. Melgen’s clinics, already have revealed that Menendez interceded with Medicare officials on his friend's behalf in 2009 and 2011. Menendez is still under scrutiny by the Obama Justice Department. Menendez acknowledges traveling several times on Melgen’s private jet and staying at the eye doctor’s posh estate in the Dominican Republic. Menendez was forced to reimburse $58,500 for the costs of those trips when the information was disclosed in 2010.
The important back story in the Menendez-Melger case is that US Cuba policy is at stake.

More --> http://www.thenation.com/article/179384/moment-normalize-us-relations-cuba#