Por La Raza, Nada

By Tom Tancredo
Friday, July 29, 2011

While virtually all President Obama will talk about is the debt ceiling, he took a short break to give an address before the National Council of La Raza on Monday. Calling the audience his “Hermanos y hermanas,” he trumpeted his support of the DREAM Act amnesty, stated his opposition to Arizona’s SB 1070 and all state level immigration laws, and touted his Hispanic appointments—citing Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Raul Yzaguirre, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Obama did not mention one other Hispanic appointment, former La Raza vice president Cecilia Munoz who serves as his Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and his public liaison to Hispanics. In appointing Munoz, Obama violated his own pledge not to allow former lobbyists positions where they control money they formerly controlled, and gave Munoz a special waiver.

While our nation is going broke, the National Council of La Raza is doing just fine. Since Obama and Munoz took up the white house, they have seen their funding skyrocket, nearly tripling from 4.5 to 11 million dollars in 2010. Judicial Watch also found out that the La Raza affiliate, Chicanos por la Causa received over 18 million dollars of tax dollars. That group was the primary plaintiff against Arizona’s law against illegal employers.

And it is not as if La Raza is lacking funds. Between their various sister organizations, they have over 200 million dollars in assets, much of it paid for by corporate America, and Chicanos por la Causa have nearly 100 million dollars.

Although some of La Raza’s government funding was earmarked by congress, virtually all of it was doled out by the Obama administration. Sixty percent of La Raza's take came from the Department of Labor—run by Hilda Solis. They lobbied hard for her appointment and honored her with an award. She paid them back—with millions of our tax dollars.

Even if we were running trillion dollar surpluses, there is no reason why La Raza should get a dime of taxpayer dollars. Here are just a few reasons why.

“La Raza” means “The Race,” specifically the Latino race. Could you imagine if the government were giving millions of dollars to a group called “The National Council of the White Race”?

La Raza counts the pro-reconquista Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) as an affiliate and helps fund the organization. MeCHA’s slogan is "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada," meaning “For the Race everything, outside the Race nothing.”

La Raza opposes free speech and has tried to get Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, and other opponents of illegal immigration kicked off the air. Their president Janet Murguia said “when free speech transforms into hate speech, we've got to draw that line.” La Raza has said calling illegal aliens “criminals” is “hate speech.”

La Raza has lobbied for every single amnesty, against immigration enforcement, for Obamacare, and against English as an official language

Barack Obama managed to address the issue of the debt briefly during his talk to La Raza. He stated, “Every day, NCLR and your affiliates hear from families figuring out how to stretch every dollar a little bit further, what sacrifices they’ve got to make, how they're going to budget only what’s truly important. So they should expect the same thing from Washington.”

While 11 million dollars is a tiny fraction of our trillion dollar a year deficit, funding this pro-amnesty propaganda outfit is not “truly important.”

Republicans in the House have passed legislation to defund left wing groups such as Planned Parenthood and ACORN. The National Council of La Raza should be be next. To slightly alter their MeCHA pals' slogan, when it comes to our tax dollars: “Por La Raza, Nada!”