80-20 is interrupting its "War Stories" series briefly. War Story 4 will still be published on Thursday or earlier..
A Warning !
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana
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20 years ago, from 1996 to 1998, the entire AsAm community was seriously hurt by selfish AsAm business people who didn't know U.S. laws and politics but tried to use money to influence U.S. politics in order to help their business in Asia, playing up their supposed friendship with the U.S. president, Pres. Clinton.
To remember the past, click on Chinagate -Wikipedia or 1996 United States Campaign finance Controlversy. Eventually, the guilty ones like Ted Sioeng, John Huang, James Riady, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, and Maria Hsia either were sentenced to jail or fled the U.S. Frankly, we couldn't care less about these individuals. 80-20 only wants to prevent the recurrence of collective damage to the AsAm community, which will help fan discrimination against us that created the glass ceiling in our workplace and higher barriers to enter elite universities against our children.
For more than 2 years, the entire AsAm community was under the joint attacks of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the national media. We, as a community, were portrayed as collectively selling America, and therefore untrustworthy, all for the fault of only a handful of bad AsAms. The Dem. Party, under Pres. Clinton whom the bad AsAms tried hard to please, kicked the AsAm community the hardest. Why? To distance itself from AsAms, since it took in at least $5 million of campaign money (later returned) from AsAms. The DNC even asked ALL AsAm big donors to prove their U.S. citizenship and to submit their respective tax returns of the year before, without asking for the same from all other big donors to DNC
It seems certain that the DNC request was unconstitutional. That was why, 20 years ago, individuals like Chancellor Chang-lin Tien, Anna Chennault, Henry Tang, Larry Ho and I established the 80-20 Initiative. Why? So that our community would have enough money & political infrastructure to go to the courts to stop such abuse, should it recur.
80-20 has no idea if the EB-5 effort mounted by people close to Pres. Trump is legit or otherwise. But it has the same smell of greed, money, presidential aura and preying upon Asians' and AsAms' ignorance of U.S. politics. Beware. Do not be so eager to participate. Check things out. Don't harm yourself and the collective interest of all AsAms.
A FINAL PRECAUTION: Some Asians unknowingly equate the U.S. president to an emperor. Since an emperor could do no wrong, many Asians will be eager to do business with anyone known to have strong White House connections. Friends, proximity to the U.S. president doesn't keep you out of jail. Our president doesn't have authority over everything under heaven. Take the instances, when some recent immigrants from China petitioned Pres. Obama on matters outside of his authority. They ignored all advice that such petitions would be ignored. They plunged ahead to get 100,000 signatures within one month and heard nothing back from the President. They made this mistake not once or twice, but 4 times! Friends, please check things out. (note: the above statement applies to past petitions only, not the present or future ones.)
S. B. Woo
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