Honduran Hilarity: Why Obama's $1 Billion For Central America Is Risky. And Urgent.

[Judi Lynn]

Honduran Hilarity: Why Obama's $1 Billion For Central America Is Risky. And Urgent.

9:00 pm
Wed June 10, 2015

By Tim Padgett

Honduras gives us so many reasons to cry. The world’s worst murder rate. Grinding poverty. All those desperate, unaccompanied child migrants who poured into the U.S. last summer – and who just might come knocking on our border again this summer. These days Honduras is giving us some good laughs, too. As in: I’m laughing so hard I’m crying, because the Honduran hilarity makes me nervous about the fate of the $1 billion the Obama Administration wants to send Honduras and Central America this year.

Consider Honduras' Supreme Court, which recently annulled the rule – Article 239 – that limited the country's presidents to one, four-year term. Fine. A lot of Latin American countries are relaxing presidential re-election bans these days. But Article 239 was considered, at least until now, the sacrosanct core of Honduras’ 1982 Constitution – a shield against the kind of dictators who litter the country’s banana-republic past.

It was so revered that if you wanted to witch-hunt people in Honduras you’d call them re-electionists instead of communists. In fact, Article 239 said that if presidents so much as mentioned to their spouses over breakfast that the constitution should be changed to allow a second term, they automatically forfeited the office.

And that’s why Honduras’ National Congress evoked the rule six years ago this month, during the shameless coup that ousted then President Manuel Zelaya. Under pressure from Honduras’ conservative oligarchy, the legislature decided Zelaya was too liberal and had to go. So it slapped him with a 239. Just one problem: The charge was bogus. Zelaya could certainly be accused of dopey demagoguery, but he hadn’t proposed presidential re-election.

More:
http://wlrn.org/post/honduran-hilarity-why-obamas-1-billion-central-america-risky-and-urgent

Good reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016124688

[Peace Patriot]

1. Ah, me! The endless laughs in a Billion U.S. tax dollars!

It looks nuts to drop that kind of American taxpayer wad into a region ruled by scoundrels. If the Honduran elite can slurp up $200 million of the country’s social security cache, it can’t wait to start gorging on $1 billion of yanqui largesse.

But this time, most of the aid that’s being dropped into the northern triangle may be harder for that sleazy elite to shovel in.

It’s steered not at traditional anti-crime and anti-poverty items – military helicopters, for example, or patronage projects – but at more effective aims like building professional judiciaries and improving education opportunities.

That's the kind of investment the burgeoning ranks of Honduran street protesters are demanding – along with Hernández’s resignation. If the U.S. spends the billion right, it could help alter not just Central America’s crisis but its character. Somebody there besides the scoundrels might finally have the last laugh.

And we can stop crying. --from the OP (my emphasis)

When did private U.S. government contractors EVER spend a billion taxpayer dollars right? Cuz that's who it's going to, ya know. Like those guys who were supposed to be helping farmers in Afghanistan, and spent half the money on posh offices in Kabul, and the other half on posh offices in Washington DC to lobby for more posh giveaways. I mean, it just happens OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. U.S. aid is a BOTTOMLESS pot of gold for extremely corrupt PRIVATE entities, in addition to CIA "non-profit" fronts that "train" future fascist leaders.

Sometimes things are so bad you can only laugh. Agreed.