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Mary Almendarez RE: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter...

I have prepared a winded response simply because it is a response that I will share on the Voice of the Mainland. The title of the email exchanges is very telling: Subject: RE: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter... I changed the title. To get a feel for the breath of the platica, scroll down to the bottom of this post and read up from the first email from Chairman Lewis, read the response, then read the query to the Editor, me, the respondent, here, Bernardo Eureste, a fromer City Councilman from San Antonio and the Chairman of the Texas Democrats for Edward Kennedy for President in 1980, a Bexar County co-chairman of the Jimmy Carter campaign for President, a Bexar County co-chairman with the Jesse Jackson Campaign for President and a supporter of hundreds of Democratic Party candidates and initiatives in Texas. Lane Lewis is the chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party. My response is how the Republican Party can hook-wink a Democrat, and a powerful one at that. He purpose of my response is to educate the reader and Democrats on the issue of island Puerto Ricos push for statehood, which came to me from Mary Almendarez, a proud leader in LULAC and in political matters in Houston, Harris County and in Texas. I will start out with an article that appeared in the Hill: Puerto Rico statehood bill tops GOP's 'citizen cosponsor' listl Source: The Hill

This is a story that gets close to what you are dealing with. Read the piece. The brief story on PR is good. The chances of passage do not look good. That is good for me. The article says that the odds do not look good for passage. The 2012 Election for Governor, Senate, House and Municipalities Puerto Rico is now under the control of the Pepes, the Partido Popular Democratico de Puerto Rico. In 2012, they won the governorship of PR, the Senate, the House and over 70 municipalities. The PPD is against statehood, they favour status quo, the way it is today. From Wikipedia On the elections held on November 6, 2012, the party regained the top offices: Alejandro Garca Padilla was elected governor and Carmen "Yuln" Cruz was elected as Mayor of San Juan. The party also took back control of the House Of Representatives and Senate of Puerto Rico. The Plebiscite A plebiscite was on the matter of state status was placed on the ballot at the same time of the state elections, November 6, 2012. It was placed for a vote by the then PNP, Governor Luis Fortuno, in a 2 step vote. The first question for the voter to vote on was whether the voter favoured the status quo or did they want change. The vote was a simple majority for change. The next question on the ballot was to select the choices, statehood, a form of statehood, not what PR has now, and independence. Because the question of status quo was not place on the ballot in proper language, the PPD instructed its voters to not vote in the second step. 440,000 did not vote in step 2. The vote in step 1 was 1,775,893, The vote in step 2 was 1,348,876. Wiki has a brief critique of what the PPD was saying about the 2nd step.

Criticism[edit] (Wikipedia) Critics said that voters who favor a developed version of the current status of Puerto Rico (a commonwealth which is part of the United States with internal self-government) had no alternatives on the ballot. As a result, leaders of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) instructed such voters to leave the second portion of the ballot blank, or to invalidate the ballot.[26] The history professor Luis Agrait said to CNN that "a large number of ballots -- one-third of all votes cast -- were left blank on the question of preferred alternative status. If you assume those blank votes are antistatehood votes, the true result for the statehood option would be less than 50%[27] The truco in how the plebiscite was done is a serious weakness in the outcome of the plebiscite. Puerto Rico has had 3 plebiscites on the issue of the islands status, in 1967, 1993, and 1998, [e]Each time, the results favored retaining the current status over the possible independence of Puerto Rico and statehood alternatives. Wiki Although Garca Padilla has questioned the validity of the results, he has stated that he plans to go forward with what President Barack Obama had suggested, and convene a constituent assembly to resolve the status issue.[7] Wiki If Governor Garcia Padilla does what President Obama proposes, the Governor, with the PPD, who control the government of Puerto Rico, will hold a constituent assembly on the issue of island status. The outcome is obvious. The PPDs won, and Obama understands that. He also knows that the PPDs do not favor a change in status. I feel very confident that President Obama and Garcia Padilla knows how to handle the issue. Remember, strong democrats in Congress, Luis

Gutierrez from Chi-Town and Nydia Velasquez, from NYC, do not support statehood for PR. It is obvious that the Harris County Democratic Party does not understand that he is being made a fool by the Republican Party. According to the article in the Hill, cited above, the Republicans have a website inviting weak Democrats to co-venture, i.e., co-author, legislation with the Republicans. Making island Puerto Rico the 51 state is one of those ventures. If its coming from Chairman Lewis, dont pay attention to him. He has not studied the issue. Between 2/3s to of the 4 million Puerto Ricans who live on the mainland, i.e., the 50 states of the United States of American do not support statehood. That is why representatives from very strong Puerto Rican congressional districts, Gutierrez and Velasquez can vote against statehood and not bother about the consequences back in their districts. They are reflecting the will of the Puerto Ricans who reside in their districts. Chairman Lewis no sabe en lo que se esta metiendo. A majority of Chicanos, Mexican Americans, do not favor statehood. Chicanos and boriquas, mainland Puerto Ricans, are generally found on the same page. How Latinos have gotten into the issue of island Puerto Rico status is through LULAC, when the PNP, the Nuevo Partido Progresista de Puerto Rico, the Republican Party of island Puerto Rico, started to take over control of national LULAC by paying for 325 delegates from island Puerto Rico to vote in a block at the National LULAC Convention in El Paso. That block of votes, mixed with a little over 90 mainland LULAC votes produced a winner for the conservative mainland faction in LULAC to edge out a 4 point victory to take over control of National LULAC. They did it again in 1998 and edged out another win with a margin of 16 votes, that time bringing in 345 delegates. These National LULAC Conventions drew just over 800 delegates. The liberal faction in

National LULAC represents about 75% of the delegate votes. But when you are confronted with a million dollar campaign by the PNP from island Puerto Rico, its hard to counter that kind of money. This strategy stopped in 2002 and 2006, mostly because members of the PNP were investigated by the FBI and put some of the PNP leaders in prison and chilled them out for a while. In 2010, the PNP was back into National LLAC when the PNP financed about 300 island delegates to block vote for Margaret Moran for National president of LULAC. The PNP was their again in 2011, 2012 and 2013. This time, together with the island block and massive cheating by the conservative national LULAC operatives, Moran was re-elected to office. The PNPs interest in national LULAC is statehood. LULLAC gives the PNP the lobbying arm in Washington to push for statehood. For a $1,000,000 the PNP gets millions of dollars in lobbying power in the halls of Congress. They have found favor with the Republican Party. Luis Fortuno was a Mitt Romney supporter. Romey used Fortuno to get island Puerto Rico votes in the mainland. My advise to Chairman Lewis is to un-Tweeker yourself from the island Puerto Rico campaign for statehood (estado51prusa) or you will find a whole bunch of Chicanos un-tweekering you out from office and from a future in the Democratic Party. From: Mary Almendarez [mailto:maryalmendarez@aol.com] Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2013 12:32 AM To: editor@voiceofthemainland.com Subject: Fwd: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter... Hi Bernardo, I have been receiving emails from "estado51prusa" or other such idiotic groups that have included "Lane Lewis (Chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party) and his picture." The emails exchanged below are self explained. I

wonder if other Harris County Democratic (LULAC) residents are receiving these same emails. I thought you might be interested in knowing about in this weird situation and maybe might want to use your investigative skills to figure out what the "hell" is going on. (Frankly, I tend to think there are too many conspiracy's around us. :) Thanks, Mary Mary Almendarez; 713 699-9716 Phone/Fax; 832 687-9981 Cell; The future depends on what we do in the present. - Mahatma Gandhi -----Original Message----From: Mary Almendarez <maryalmendarez@aol.com> To: countychair <countychair@harrisdemocrats.com> Cc: marylramos <marylramos@hotmail.com> Sent: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 1:23 pm Subject: Re: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter... THANK YOU FOR YOUR PROMPT RESPONSE IN CLARIFYING SOME ASPECT OF THESE EMAILS. I SURE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF IT IS THE DEVIANTS THAT HAVE INVADED LULAC NATIONAL. GUESS I WILL START WITH TWITTER. I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU HEAR ANY FURTHER ABOUT THIS FROM ANYONE ELSE. THANKS AGAIN. Mary Almendarez; 713 699-9716 Phone; 832 687-9981 Cell; The future depends on what we do in the present. - Mahatma Gandhi -----Original Message----From: Chairman Lewis <countychair@harrisdemocrats.com> To: Mary Almendarez <maryalmendarez@aol.com>

Cc: marylramos <marylramos@hotmail.com> Sent: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 12:41 pm Subject: Re: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter... I have no idea why you are getting it. It's not coming from me. ~Lane Lewis, Chairman Harris County Democratic Party On Jul 9, 2013, at 11:42 AM, Mary Almendarez <maryalmendarez@aol.com> wrote: To Chairman Lewis: With all due respect, why am I receiving these emails regarding Puerto Rico? First of all, yes I have deleted prior emails. Secondly, I am not on twitter and do not intend to use it. Thirdly, and most importantly: Did the party vote to support making Puerto Rico a state? Please tell me the answer is NO! If the answer is yes, then I am very disappointed as a Democrat and as a member of LULAC. Personally I and others are opposed to statehood for a variety of reasons. Number one is the Puerto Ricans themselves cannot decide for themselves. Second, we have seen what a disaster can be created by an alliance with a contingency of certain Puerto Ricans. We would be glad to share our experiences. Sincerely, Mary Almendarez; 713 699-9716 Phone; 832 6879981 Cell; The future depends on what we do in the present. Mahatma Gandhi

-----Original Message----From: Twitter <n-znelnyzraqnerm=nby.pbz90186@postmaster.twitter.com> To: maryalmendarez <maryalmendarez@aol.com> Sent: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 6:02 am Subject: Lane Lewis and estado51prusa are still waiting for you to join Twitter...
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