Weekend Economists Salute El Commandante, Esteban de Jesús, El Mico Mandante March 8-10, 2013

[Demeter]

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was the President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in Tuesday. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until his death.

Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "socialism of the 21st century", he focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils, the nationalization of several key industries, increased government funding of health care and education, and significant reductions in poverty, according to government figures. Under Chavez, Venezuelans’ quality of life improved according to a UN Index and the poverty rate fell from 48.6 percent in 2002 to 29.5 percent in 2011, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America.

Born into a working-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Released from prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998.

He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalized groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalizing various key industries. He was re-elected in 2006 with over 60% of the vote. On 7 October 2012, Chávez won his country's presidential election for a fourth time, defeating Henrique Capriles, and was elected for another six-year term.

Allying himself strongly with the Communist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba and the Socialist governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, his presidency was seen as a part of the socialist "pink tide" sweeping Latin America. Along with these governments, Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States' foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of U.S.-supported neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism.

He supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSur. However, Chavez had extensive disputes with Colombia, and supported rebels in Colombia and Ecuador, causing ambassadors to be recalled and troops to be mobilized. Chávez was a highly controversial and divisive figure both at home and abroad, having insulted other world leaders and compared U.S. president George W. Bush to a donkey, and called him the devil.

On 30 June 2011, Chávez stated that he was recovering from an operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells. He required a second operation in December 2012. He was to have been sworn in on 10 January 2013, but the National Assembly of Venezuela agreed to postpone the inauguration to allow him time to recuperate and return from a third medical treatment trip to Cuba. He died in Caracas on 5 March 2013 at the age of 58.

AND NOW VENEZUELA MOURNS THE LOSS OF THE BEST THING THAT EVER CAME ALONG...WE CAN ONLY HOPE THAT CHAVEZ' BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION SURVIVES HIS UNTIMELY DEATH.

EVERY NATION NEEDS A CHAVEZ.

[Demeter]

1. While the header is up, I need a nap after the busy day

See you all later. ...Post them!

[Ghost Dog]

2. Ok. So, with your permission Demeter, I'll repeat this,

also posted in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101657317

Thus:

- hope you understand Castillian Spanish (or Portuguese subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8-5bWdOD89s

next thing youtube offers is this (in very clear JFK English):

(Tanks for your tolerance, guys - with an Irish accent, you understand...).

... And, yes, this has to do with the people of Venezuela, and evreywhere.

[Hotler]

32. After reading and listening to these all I can say is...

I have no............. you folks know the lines.

[Ghost Dog]

34. Understood.

Watch your backs, friends.

[Hotler]

35. Good to see you.

Peace.

[bread_and_roses]

3. "Venezuelan Economic and Social Performance Under Hugo Chávez, in Graphs"

With thanks to OP: Cross post from Cal Carpenter over in GD under the title "Some FACTS about Venezuela (GRAPHS)"

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuelan-economic-and-social-performance-under-hugo-chavez-in-graphs

You will have to go to link to see the charts, because I don't have time to go through all the steps to post them.

Graphs on inflation, unemployment, poverty and extreme poverty, Social Spending as a Percent of GDP, child malnutrition, and pensions. before and after Chavez. Also some more "economically" oriented, GDP and such.

Revealing.

[bread_and_roses]

4. Hugo Chávez Funeral coverage at Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/8/hugo_chavez_funeral_derided_by_us

Hugo Chávez Funeral: Derided by US Media, Venezuelan Leader Uplifted Poor from Caracas to the Bronx

Millions are gathering in Caracas to mourn the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on the day of his funeral. More than 30 world leaders are expected to attend today’s ceremony as Venezuelans brave long lines to see Chávez lying in state. We go to Caracas to speak with Carol Delgado, Venezuelan consul general in New York, who has returned home for the funeral. Delgado responds to the torrent of U.S. corporate media criticism that has followed Chávez to the grave, arguing that Chávez has been attacked in spite of — and perhaps because of — his social programs benefiting Venezuela’s poor majority, and a global reach that extended to impoverished neighborhoods of the United States. [includes rush transcript]

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Venezuela, where millions are gathering to mourn the late President Hugo Chávez on the day of the funeral... More than two million people have already come to pay their respects, standing in lines miles long for hours to see him lying in state.

[bread_and_roses]

5. "Chávez on How to Tackle Climate Change: "We Must Go from Capitalism to Socialism""

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/21/venezuelan_president_hugo_chavez_on_how

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on How to Tackle Climate Change: "We Must Go from Capitalism to Socialism"

We speak with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez about climate change, the Copenhagen summit and President Obama. Chávez calls the COP15 summit undemocratic and accuses world leaders of only seeking a face-saving agreement. "We must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet," Chávez says. "That requires a change in the economic model: We must go from capitalism to socialism." [includes rush transcript]

ranscript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez spared no criticism of the climate conference in Copenhagen. At a joint news conference he held with the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, on Friday afternoon—this was before President Obama announced the accord—Chávez called the proceedings undemocratic and accused world leaders of only seeking a face-saving agreement. He described President Obama as having won the "Nobel War Prize" and said the world still smelled of sulfur, referring to his comments about President Bush at the United Nations last year.

[Demeter]

6. One Bank Down, In Georgia

Frontier Bank, LaGrange, Georgia, was closed today by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with HeritageBank of the South, Albany, Georgia, to assume all of the deposits of Frontier Bank.

The nine branches of Frontier Bank will reopen during their normal business hours beginning Saturday as branches of HeritageBank of the South...As of December 31, 2012, Frontier Bank had approximately $258.8 million in total assets and $224.1 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, HeritageBank of the South agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $51.6 million. Compared to other alternatives, HeritageBank of the South's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Frontier Bank is the fourth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Georgia. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Hometown Community Bank, Braselton, on November 16, 2012.

[Demeter]

7. 10 things Medicare won’t tell you: Costly glitches in entitlement program

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-medicare-wont-tell-you-2013-03-08?siteid=YAHOOB

1. “We’re in the cross hairs like never before.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, the federal agency that administers Medicare and other health programs, got smacked with cuts early this month as lawmakers failed to avert the sequester, $1.2 trillion in spending cuts designed to help trim the country’s budget deficit. Hospitals and doctors face 2% cuts in the amounts that Medicare reimburses them for services rendered to recipients—cuts of $10.7 billion this year and $118.8 billion over nine years, according to a report by consulting firm Tripp Umbach. While patients themselves won’t see any direct reduction in their benefits, experts say the ripple effects of the sequester could indeed hit older Americans. Doctors and hospitals had warned that their industries would have to slash more than 200,000 jobs this year alone if the sequester went through...Even if lawmakers were to restore the cuts, Medicare would remain in their sights, experts say. “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, the fact of the matter is that something’s got to give,” says Ross Blair, CEO of PlanPrescriber.com, a Medicare division of eHealth, an online health insurance marketplace. Current and future projected rates of spending, Blair says, are “unsustainable.” The federal insurance program—which covers 49 million Americans, those ages 65-plus and those of any age with disabilities—accounts for 16% of federal spending, or $551 billion in 2012...

2. “Think Social Security is broke? Just look at Medicare.”

With the debate raging over the astronomical cost of entitlement programs, experts say, it’s easy to forget that Medicare and Social Security are two different programs under very different financial strains. In the short term, at least some parts of Medicare are worse off than Social Security, according to a 2012 report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. The Medicare hospital trust fund—which funds Medicare Part A—“faces depletion earlier than the combined Social Security Trust Funds,” according to a summary of the report. Hospital trust funds are expected to run out completely in 2024, versus in 2033 for Social Security. Medicare Part B, which funds doctors’ visits and other outpatient expenses, and Part D, which covers prescription drug benefits, are funded differently and “will remain adequately financed into the indefinite future,” according to the report...It’s easy to see why parts of Medicare are in such bad shape, experts say. A couple earning average annual wages of $44,600 each who turn 65 in 2020 will receive a total of $427,000 in lifetime Medicare benefits, but will have paid only $153,000 in lifetime Medicare taxes, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute, a research organization that studies social and economic issues. (All figures are in 2012 dollars.) By contrast, the couple will receive $632,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits after paying a total of $700,000 in Social Security taxes. The picture doesn’t look much better going forward. Medicare trustees project that Medicare costs will grow from approximately 3.7% of gross domestic product in 2011 to 5.7% of GDP by 2035, and will increase gradually thereafter to about 6.7% of GDP by 2086. And baby boomers account for a big part of this projected growth. Roughly 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 every day over the next couple of decades, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. The vast majority of people 65 and over rely on Medicare and not employer-based coverage, experts say...

3. “Marketing isn’t our strong suit.”

In 2011, Medicare launched a free, new benefit: annual “wellness” visits for recipients. Only 9% of beneficiaries took advantage of this benefit in 2012. And in a poll released last spring by the John A. Hartford Foundation, a philanthropy focused on training and research on geriatric health care, more than half of respondents said they had never heard of the wellness visit...Experts say it can take time for a new benefit to gain traction with both patients and doctors, but there’s another issue at play: When Medicare communicates with the public, the program’s written materials tend to be on the hefty side. “Medicare & You,” the official handbook for 2013, runs 140 pages. Some elder advocates praise the booklet as clearly written and relatively jargon-free—making it helpful for those who bother to crack the cover. Still, Medicare’s mailings are “intimidating by size,” says Mary Dale Walters, senior vice president of Allsup Medicare Advisor, a Belleville, Ill.-based provider of Medicare consultation services. “People look at the envelope and panic.” What’s more, those with private Medicare Advantage plans usually get a thick packet from their own plan each year, adding to the overload, Walters says. Those who took the time to look would discover that the wellness visit is mentioned on pages 50 and 51 of “Medicare & You.” (The booklet has an index.) But there are ways to cut through the paperwork, some experts point out. Retirees and caregivers can visit Medicare.gov to find details like whether a particular service is covered, how much premiums cost, and other information. People can call 800-Medicare, or 800-633-4227, for help with a variety of issues; those who are placed on hold will hear a recording mentioning the new wellness visit.

4. “Don’t expect a five-star plan.”

Medicare’s five-star quality-rating system, outlined in the Affordable Care Act, ranks Medicare policies sold by private insurers, known as Medicare Advantage plans. These plans are referred to collectively as Part C, and beneficiaries can choose a Medicare Advantage policy in lieu of traditional Parts A and B, which are often referred to as “original Medicare.”) These scores are based on multiple performance measures—in 2011, for example, CMS used 53 different measures derived from plan and beneficiary surveys and administrative data, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that analyzes major health care issues. For 2013, there are about 11 five-star plans nationwide, according to CMS data. Consumers can switch to a five-star plan at any time during the year—they don’t have to wait for the annual open enrollment period. But “it’s a challenge” for beneficiaries to research all the offerings to see whether a five-star plan is available in their area, Walters says. There are an average of 22 Medicare Advantage plans in each market nationwide, she notes. A spokesperson for CMS says “a five-star rating is Medicare’s highest mark of excellence, and can only be obtained by those plans that are truly providing the highest quality care to beneficiaries.” More than 37% of Medicare Advantage enrollees are now in a four- or five-star plan, Blum said in his Senate testimony. In 2012, Medicare Advantage plans that receive four or five stars began to receive bonus payments aimed at encouraging more plans to meet the standards. Baby boomers, who have become accustomed to rankings in other aspects of their consumer lives, will likely embrace this system as they age into Medicare, experts say. “You see how consumers flock to cars that Consumer Reports rates highly,” says Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy group. “The expectation is that it will happen in the Medicare Advantage market as well...”

5. “We’re not popular with many doctors.”

Roughly 20% of physicians across all disciplines limit the number of Medicare patients they will take on at any given time, according to a 2010 study by the American Medical Association, the organization’s most recent look at the issue. For primary care physicians, this number jumps to 31%. The reason? Among doctors who limit Medicare patients, 85% say they think Medicare payment rates are often too low, according to the study. And 78% say they think “the ongoing threat of future payment cuts makes Medicare an unreliable payer.” The threat of future payment cuts stems largely from Congress’s inability to permanently fix the formula that Medicare uses to reimburse doctors to allow for increased payments, according to some critics, including the AMA. Although some doctors limit the number of Medicare patients, very few don’t accept the insurance at all, experts say..

6. “We get ripped off a lot.”

Thousands of doctors and other medical professionals have sharply increased the rates at which they bill Medicare for treating older patients, according to an investigation released last fall by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization. Medicare allows doctors to pick from among five different codes to bill their services, from a low number for a simple visit to a higher number for a complex visit; the system largely relies on the honor system of doctors choosing the billing code that accurately reflects their level of service. From 2001 to 2010, this practice padded practitioners’ fees by $11 billion or more, signaling possible medical billing abuse, the study found. According to the Center for Public Integrity investigation, doctors have increasingly abandoned the lower-level codes for the better paying ones, a practice known as “upcoding.” The study—which analyzed a representative 5% sample of Medicare patients and their claims, submitted by more than 400,000 medical practitioners and 7,000 hospitals and clinics starting in 2001—found no evidence that Medicare patients are sicker and older than in the past, which if true might have justified doctors billing at the higher rates. “Medicare is susceptible to fraud not only because of its size and complexity, but because the system itself makes it easy to defraud the government,” says Ken Nolan, a partner at Nolan & Auerbach, a health-care fraud law firm. “Most of the scrutiny, if any, is made after the payment is made—not before, as in traditional business transactions.” Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement that more analysis was needed on the issue: “Attributing the trend solely to fraudulent and abusive behavior remains an unproven assumption.” That said, fraud recoveries have increased to a record $4.2 billion collected in 2012, and $14.9 billion over the past four years, Blum told the Senate Committee on Finance. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently launched a fraud prevention system, which aims to identify aberrant and suspicious billing patterns before payment, he said.

7. “We don’t cover a lot of the care seniors need most.”

If your aging mother needs care in a nursing home or even in her own home, she will have to meet some strict criteria to get Medicare to cover it. For the most part, Medicare pays for nursing home care only for those who were hospitalized for at least three days for an illness or injury and who require “skilled” care that only a medical professional like a registered nurse can provide. Even then, it only covers or partially covers up to 100 days per benefit period. (A benefit period begins the day you’re admitted as an inpatient to a hospital or skilled nursing facility and ends after you haven’t had any inpatient hospital care, or skilled nursing care, for 60 days in a row.) Qualifying to get reimbursement for home health care is also difficult, as you must meet all of the following criteria: be homebound; require skilled nursing care, physical therapy, speech-language pathology services or continued occupation therapy; and be getting regular services from your doctor under a plan of care he or she has ordered. Medicare does not cover meals delivered to a home, cleaning and laundry services or, in most cases, help with personal care like bathing, dressing or using the bathroom...What’s more, original Medicare doesn’t cover hearing aids, dentures or most dental services. (Medicare Advantage plans vary and may cover some of the services not covered by traditional Medicare.)

8. “And you’ll pay for the coverage we do provide.”

Many people reach age 65 thinking Medicare is free, according to Baker, of the Medicare Rights Center. In reality, it’s anything but. Premiums for Part B (medical insurance for doctors’ visits and other outpatient expenses) are $104.90 monthly if a recipient’s annual income is $85,000 or less; beneficiaries pay on a sliding scale after that, with the highest monthly premium $335.70 for those with gross incomes above $214,000. Beneficiaries don’t pay a monthly premium for Part A (hospital insurance) if they paid Medicare taxes and earned 40 Social Security credits while working (people can earn a maximum of four credits a year; for 2013, $1,160 earns one credit). The average premium for Part D, or optional drug coverage, is around $30 per month. On top of the premiums, seniors in original Medicare pay 20% of the cost of all doctors’ visits aside from some preventative services that are free. (That percentage climbs higher if a doctor doesn’t accept Medicare’s reimbursement rate for a given procedure, and also for certain treatments, like mental health coverage.) Hospital coverage, or Part A, requires a deductible of $1,184 for each benefit period in 2013 and then various coinsurance payments depending on the length of stay. The annual Part B deductible is $147. Many beneficiaries buy a supplemental, or Medigap, policy to help cover these out-of-pocket costs. But these don’t come cheap either: a comprehensive supplemental policy that eliminates almost all out-of-pocket expenses can cost as much as $350 a month, Blair of PlanPrescriber.com says...

MORE BAD NEWS AT LINK

[Demeter]

8. The Politics of Show Versus the Politics of Go By Allan Goldstein

http://www.nationofchange.org/politics-show-versus-politics-go-1362583468

The deepest divide in politics isn’t between the right and the left. The greatest gap is between the politics of show and the politics of go. The politics of show is not about getting things done; it’s about making a statement. It is the art of taking a stand without making a stand. When your politics consists of making statements, you are satisfied with noise...The politics of show works like fashion, fads that come and go. In the nineties a bunch of cities declared themselves nuclear-free zones. It was a politics-of-show way to display one’s objection to being nuked. I guess it worked; none of those cities has been incinerated yet. But as a movement it led nowhere. It was a political fad, as passé now as Beanie Babies...

But the politics that changes the world is slow, steady pressure in the right direction. That is the politics of go. The politics of slow, steady pressure isn’t sexy. As a way to brand yourself it comes up short. If you asked the politics of go what tree it most resembles it would say moss. The politics of slow steady pressure works like the magic of compound interest. Tiny increments of progress add up, each year brings a little more movement, the rate of change builds on itself, and, in a couple of generations, you go from prison terms for sodomy to gay marriage...Sometimes, the politics of go can seem to move very fast. Slow, steady pressure can cause a sudden, shocking break, when revolutionary change comes in an instant. The politics of go ended slavery. But there would have been no Civil War, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Thirteenth Amendment without the slow, steady pressure of the abolitionists. Ever so slowly they convinced people that slavery was a moral wrong. Ever so slowly the pressure built up on the South, until, in their fear and shame, they broke. The Civil War ended the enslavement of black people in America, but it did not free them. That took another century of slow, steady political pressure from the civil rights movement.

We won’t beat global warming with the politics of show. The politics of show makes wild, end-of-the-world predictions that make you look stupid when they don’t come true. One day global warming caused Superstorm Sandy. A month later global warming caused a nationwide drought. Our snowless winter equals global warming. Or the monster snowstorm might have something to do with global warming...The politics of go concentrates on what we know is true and applies slow, steady political pressure to change it. There is too much carbon in the air. This is not speculation it is measurement. And only slow, steady political pressure can bring those numbers down.

Right now, our nation is staggering under an endless onslaught of gun violence. After each fresh tragedy, the opponents of gun control sing the same, sad song. Gun laws won’t work. There are too many guns out there already and the criminals will get guns anyway. They’re criminals, they will break the law because that’s what criminals do. That argument is bogus on its face. It is an argument against the very idea of law. Why have laws against bank robbery? Honest civilians don’t rob banks and bank robbers don’t obey laws. But we pass laws precisely because they won’t be universally obeyed. We pass them to apply slow, steady, pressure in the right direction. That is how behavior is modified and how progress is made. But it works so gradually, sometimes we don’t notice. The advocates of gun control may never be able to point to a single circumstance where their laws saved a specific life. But if we limit magazines to ten rounds, maybe next school shooter kills ten kids, not twenty. Maybe the statistics will show one fewer American reduced to a statistic.

Slow, steady political pressure is emptying our jails of pot smokers. It is making baby steps towards universal health care; it is raising the minimum starvation wage. If we keep the same pressure, we’ll get closer to those goals. If we get cynical and apathetic and ease off the pressure, we’ll lose all we’ve gained. There are armies of lobbyists working tirelessly to make us feel outnumbered, powerless and defeated. They don’t mind if we make statements. They can deal with the politics of show, that’s their game. But even they can feel the hard undertow of slow, steady political pressure. And it terrifies them.



I THINK I CAN STATE, WITHOUT FEAR OF CONTRADICTION, THAT HUGO CHAVEZ EMBODIED BOTH "SHOW" AND "GO" PHASES OF POLITICS. HE WAS A REAL SOURCE AND FORCE OF HOPE AND CHANGE FOR HIS PEOPLE.

OBAMA ISN'T MUCH OF EITHER, UNLESS YOU CONCLUDE THAT HIS "PEOPLE" ARE ROBERT RUBIN'S PEOPLE...

[Demeter]

9. Why There’s a Bull Market for Stocks and Bear Market for Workers By Robert Reich

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-there-s-bull-market-stocks-and-bear-market-workers-1362582668

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 14,270—completely erasing its 54 percent loss between 2007 and 2009. The stock market is basically back to where it was in 2000, while corporate earnings have doubled since then. Yet the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was in 2000, and unemployment remains sky-high. Why is the stock market doing so well, while most Americans are doing so poorly? Four reasons:

First, productivity gains. Corporations have been investing in technology rather than their workers. They get tax credits and deductions for such investments; they get no such tax benefits for improving the skills of their employees. As a result, corporations can now do more with fewer people on their payrolls. That means higher profits.

Second, high unemployment itself. Joblessness all but eliminates the bargaining power of most workers—allowing corporations to keep wages low. Public policies that might otherwise reduce unemployment—a new WPA or CCC to hire the long-term unemployed, major investments in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure—have been rejected in favor of austerity economics. This also means higher profits, at least in the short run.

Third, globalization. Big American-based corporations have been expanding and hiring around the globe where markets are growing fastest—even while the U.S. market is lackluster. Tax policies and trade policies have encouraged them.

Finally, the Fed’s easy-money policies. They’ve pushed investors into the stock market because bond yields are so low. On Tuesday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was just 1.9 percent. All of this spells widening inequality in America, because the people who invest the most in the stock market have high incomes. Those who rely most on wages have lower incomes. Corporate profits are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time in 60 years, while the portion of total income going to employees is near its lowest since 1966. As my colleague Immanuel Saez recently found, all the economic gains between 2009 and 2011 (the last year for which data were available) went to the richest 1 percent of Americans. The bottom 99 percent has continued to lose ground. And yet the tax code continues to give preference to capital gains over ordinary income—a huge boon to investors.

The sequestration is likely to make all this worse, since it will slow the U.S. economy and keep unemployment higher than otherwise. It will also hurt the most vulnerable.

Some $1.9 billion in low-income rental subsidies are being eliminated, affecting 125,000 people.

Cuts to the Department of Agriculture will eliminate rental assistance for another 10,000 low-income rural people.

100,000 formerly homeless Americans are likely to be removed from their current emergency shelters.

More than 3.8 million Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits will have their monthly payments reduced by as much as 9.4 percent, and lose an average of $400 in benefits over their period of joblessness.

The Department of Education’s Title I program, which helps schools serving more than a million disadvantaged students, will be cut $715 million

$400 million will be cut from Head Start, the preschool program for poor children.

major cuts will be made in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which provides nutrition assistance and education.

The health of an economy is not measured by the profits of corporations headquartered within it or the value of its stock market. It depends, rather, on how many of people have jobs and whether those jobs pay decent wages. By this measure, we are a long way from economic health. Rarely before in American history have public policies so blatantly helped the most fortunate among us, so cruelly harmed the least fortunate, and exposed so many average working Americans to such widespread insecurity.

[bread_and_roses]

10. Thank you for the theme, Demeter

I rarely feel much when public figures die, but have been truly saddened by this death - untimely, as you note.

[Demeter]

12. We seem to be doing this a lot; all the forces for good are dying off

while we are betrayed by everyday politicians right and left.

[Demeter]

11. Holder's Letter Does Not Rule Out Targeting US Citizens Outside of Country (Non-Citizens Can Be Kill

WELL, THE DOJ AND OBAMA WAS FORCED TO BLINK. IT ONLY TOOK MORE TIME, ENERGY AND UGLINESS THAN SHOULD EVER BE NEEDED TO MAINTAIN THE RULE OF LAW... ESPECIALLY IN A NOMINAL DEMOCRACY!

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15017-holders-letter-does-not-rule-out-targeting-us-citizens-outside-of-country-non-citizens-can-be-killed-anywhere

Holder's Letter Does Not Rule Out Targeting US Citizens Outside of Country (Non-Citizens Can Be Killed Anywhere)

Michael Ratner: Rand Paul's filibuster forces Attorney General to acknowledge US president can not order the killing of US citizens on American soil but does not rule out the global campaign of targeted assassinations...Rand Paul did something that I would have liked to see some liberal Democrats do, which is to filibuster and say, give us more information about what you're doing, give us some guarantees. Now, what Rand Paul asked for was really very narrow, and I think way too narrow. He wanted to guarantee that U.S. citizens residing in the United States, doing everything in the United States, would not be killed by drones while they're in the United States, but would be subjected essentially to the criminal law and arrested, etc.

...Rand Paul went on the floor on Tuesday and Wednesday—I guess Wednesday, almost all day, 13 hours, basically filibustered about this issue, what are the circumstances they can kill an American living in America if that person is an alleged terrorist. And finally, today, probably a few hours ago, this letter, which your viewers can get online, is a terse letter from the attorney general that says, dear Senator Paul, it has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question it was hardly an additional question), but, quote, does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil. Eric Holder answers: the answer to that question is no.

And that's interesting. So Paul actually did achieve something, because up until that letter, it would have been the case that an American president felt that he had the authority and Obama felt that he had the authority, and he may—Obama would have felt he had the authority, and he would have never know when he would have exercised it. This Rand Paul filibuster did get the president to say, if there's an alleged—really what he's saying, if there's an alleged terrorist on U.S. soil who's a U.S. citizen, we're not going to kill him with a drone. It doesn't necessarily say what else they're going to do, but it certainly does seem that they're not going to kill him with a drone. So that is an important admission. It is what got the votes for Brennan to get through in the end. But it's also much too narrow for me, as both a human rights lawyer, as someone who believes in the morality of our foreign policy and use of force, because it leaves open what the U.S. is actually doing today, which is with targeted assassinations, one means of which being drones. The U.S. is killing alleged terrorists or people they suspect might be terrorists with drones all over the world as if—as if Bush's global war on terror is continuing, and not just in Afghanistan, not in the edges around Pakistan, but in Somalia, in Yemen, could be in the United Kingdom, could be anywhere in the world. And that's really important, because what this administration, Obama administration has said: we can kill both U.S. citizens and foreigners outside the United States—foreigners they probably think they can murder inside the United States—but outside the United States we can kill American citizens, even if we don't think they're imminently about to attack the United States.

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

15. What Rand Paul and Ted Cruz Exposed About the Drone Strikes

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15007-what-rand-paul-and-ted-cruz-exposed-about-the-drone-strikes

Only because Rand Paul, Ted Cruz - and now others - have been willing to stand up to the administration and demand transparency on drone strike policy are Americans learning the chilling truth about the executive's elastic definition of "imminence" in "imminent threat." If you're concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability of the policy of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, you have to concede that Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have done us a great service: Cruz, R-Texas, with his questioning of Attorney General Eric Holder in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Paul, R-Kentucky, with his widely reported filibuster on the Senate floor.

Unfortunately, some Democrats don't want to acknowledge this contribution. That's a shame.

It's a fact of life in Washington that people who are good on some issues that you care about are bad on other ones. You can see this all the time without leaving your own party. Just this past week, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, key champion on transparency and accountability of the drone strike policy, badly hurt opponents of war with Iran by becoming an original co-sponsor of the AIPAC/Lindsey Graham "backdoor to war" resolution that tries to "pre-approve" participation in an Israeli attack on Iran, saying that if Israel attacks Iran, the United States should support Israel militarily and diplomatically.

When a political figure is in the opposing party, that almost certainly means that they're bad on a lot of issues you care about. But if you dismiss them when they're good on something else, then you're dismissing all the people who care about that issue, including the people in your own party who care about that issue. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz showed how challenging the administration's lack of transparency on targeting Americans with drone strikes inexorably leads to challenging the administration's lack of transparency on targeting non-Americans with drone strikes...In the Judiciary Committee's hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder, Cruz pressed Holder on the question of whether the administration would consider it Constitutional to target Americans with drone strikes on US soil. Holder responded by saying, yes, it would be Constitutional, in an extreme circumstance like Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attack...Cruz pressed on: Nobody disputes that we would respond to a military attack on US soil, or any physical attack, regardless of whether Americans were involved. The question is: Suppose someone you consider to be a terrorist were sitting in a café in the US, not an imminent threat. Could you drop a bomb on them, like you do in other countries? And that was the question to which Holder finally gave a clear no.

In other words, Holder said: If you are a citizen of the United States, so long as you keep your feet planted on US soil, even if the US government suspects that you are part of Al-Qaeda or an "associated force," the US government cannot drop a bomb on you so long as you are not currently engaged in combat, or are not on your way to combat. So long as you are in the United States, the word "imminent" in the phrase "imminent threat" means what everyone thinks it means, what law enforcement thinks it means, what international law thinks it means: right now, or in the immediate future, you are threatening violence, so we can take you out...But, according to the administration, the moment you step outside the United States, then if the US government thinks that you are part of Al-Qaeda or an "associated force," the US government can drop a bomb on you, even if you're sitting in a coffee shop, reading a book, with no apparent plans to do anything else. And the reason for that is that the moment you step outside of the United States, the administration's definition of "imminent" changes from the normal definition: Now you are an "imminent" threat because, as a suspected member of Al-Qaeda or an "associated force," it's presumed that you will try to do something to the US at some point in the future, not necessarily the immediate future.

And this is a pretty striking revelation, because ordinarily, as Americans, we think that our rights relative to the US government are attached to us, not forfeit when we travel.

MORE

I'M GOING TO PREDICT THAT OBAMA, HOLDER, ALL THE PTB NEOCONS AND NEOLIBERALS ARE REALLY GONNA REGRET NOT GIVING "TROUBLE-MAKERS" THE OPTION OF LEAVING THE COUNTRY...

[Demeter]

13. If Hugo Chávez Was a Dictator, Why Was He Loved By Millions of People? JACQUELINE MARCUS

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17848-if-hugo-chavez-was-a-dictator-why-was-he-loved-by-millions-of-people

When millions of Venezuelans and South Americans sadly pay homage to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, it’s a little hard for the U.S. authorities and corporate media to peddle the lie that he was a “communist dictator”.

Quite the contrary…

Chávez demonstrated what a real Democratic leader does for the people of his country. Democracy was no myth to Hugo Chávez. That’s why it’s absurd to hear the U.S. corporate media (an extension of the oil and weapon industries) demonize Chávez in the attempt to paint him as a “dictator” and that he didn’t improve the conditions of poverty, which, ironically, was mostly created from U.S. corporate policies and intervention: reaping the profits-revenues from South American resources, everything from fruits to oil to coal, and leaving nothing for the people prior to Chávez’s leadership.

As author Eva Golinger expressed it on DemocracyNow.org:

“Chávez built a sustainable model; a viable alternative…Chávez opened that pathway and took that road to transforming Latin America forever. Venezuela has been transformed forever.”

Regarding the U.S. media’s absurd accusation-lies that Chávez was a “communist dictator”, Eva Golinger observed:

“Talking about the level of participation, today in Venezuela more Venezuelans participate than ever before in history. Everyone has a voice. Everyone wants to be active and involved. Before Chávez came into power—and I lived there during that time—it was a country full of apathy, full of apathy, full of exclusion, people who didn’t even care about participating because their participation meant nothing. That’s changed 100 percent and will never reverse its course.”

The U.S. government, represented by the oil and weapon industries, never liked President Hugo Chávez essentially because he

1) nationalized the oil and used the revenue for rebuilding Venezuela’s economy with the attempt to lift all boats, especially the poor, and

2) he was against wars.

He was dedicated to creating a real social democracy, unlike U.S. officials who are dedicated to enriching themselves and their masters: the 1 percent corporate oligarchs.

The United States is not a democracy: it is a corporate police state. Thanks to the Bush and Obama administrations, we don’t even have the fundamental right that defines a civil society: habeas corpus; and our constitutional rights have been replaced with the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), which eliminated any shred of due process and individual privacy.

Economically, under U.S. policy, the pie chart looks something like this: a thousand or so wealthy families have rigged the system and now possess most of the global wealth pie with the exception of about 10 percent (one slice of pie) remaining for billions of people to fight over. It is a state that crushes earned benefits for the working people, labor rights, environmental protection, and opportunities to improve economic standing. The corporate state globally reduces wages to 50 cents a day in sweat shops; it is a rigged system that produces enormous profits for the few oligarchs and Wall Street profiteers while the U.S. middle class economy collapses from their policies commonly defined as “vulture capitalism” or “totalitarian capitalism.” It is a vulgar system that allows Big Oil, Chemical, Coal and Big Pharma polluters to eviscerate our environment—all for profits for the few.

In his New Yorker assessment, Jon Lee Anderson summarized George W. Bush’s disdain towards Chavez, but he is wrong to say that Chavez blamed Americans. He was angry specifically and only at G.W. Bush. If Chávez had blamed Americans, would he have supplied free propane-gas for poor elderly people in the United States who would have otherwise frozen to death? U.S. oil companies refused to help. Anderson writes that when an attempted “coup d’etat by a cabal of right-wing politicians, businessman, and military men tried to overthrow Chávez, he was…detained, before he was freed and allowed to resume office. The coup against Chávez had failed, but not before the plotters had apparently received a wink and a nod from the Bush Administration. Chávez never forgave the Americans. Thereafter, his anti-American rhetoric became more heated, and whenever possible he sought to discomfit Washington. Chávez closed U.S. military liaison offices in Venezuela, and ended coöperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

Correction: Chávez’s anti-Bush rhetoric, not anti-American rhetoric.

Hugo Chávez “was a champion for the poor, for social justice, against imperialism, against aggression, against war,” in the words of Eva Golinger. That is why U.S. corporatists hated him. And the American people were and are never given a chance to know the real Hugo Chávez due to the U.S. government-corporate propaganda networks.

Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, one can imagine Chávez announcing to the oligarchs that control U.S. policy, a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many, that he “welcomes their hatred.” When the 1 percent hates a President, you know that that President is doing something right, something just, something good for the people.

WWChD? SEE ARTICLE FOR SPECULATION OF WHAT CHAVEZ WOULD HAVE DONE AS PRESIDENT OF THE US


Millions of Venezuelans came out to grieve over the death of President Hugo Chávez. He was no dictator. Dictators are not loved by millions of people. He was a true Democratic President – unlike our government officials and Presidents that are bought and owned by the very oligarchs that have obliterated our democracy and replaced it with a corporate police state that benefits a few thousand corporatists while millions of people scramble to get by on the crumbs that are left. Selfishly and stupidly, they’re pushing this radical agenda of inequality of wealth to such extremes that it is bound to burst into catastrophic consequences: anarchy and chaos.

So the next time our politicians want to demonize Hugo Chávez or call him a dictator, a commie, I suggest that they should at least be honest and wear their sponsors’ logos on their suits at all times, and especially during campaigns when they give speeches, they should wear their corporate logo-ads on their lapels (instead of the U.S. flag), on their sleeves, on their pants, their ties, just like at the NASCAR races: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Shell Oil, Exxon-Mobil, Monsanto, Johnson-Johnson, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Koch, Dow … that way, they can’t even fool each other when they give their empty speeches.

[xchrom]

14. Germany's New Anti-Euro Party

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-party-in-germany-goes-after-euro-skeptic-voters-a-887744.html

Anti-euro political parties in Europe in recent years have so far tended to be either well to the right of center or, as evidenced by the recent vote in Italy, anything but staid. But in Germany, change may be afoot. A new party is forming this spring, intent on abandoning European efforts to prop up the common currency. And its founders are a collection of some of the country's top economists and academics.

Named Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), the group has a clear goal: "the dissolution of the euro in favor of national currencies or smaller currency unions." The party also demands an end to aid payments and the dismantling of the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund.
"Democracy is eroding," reads a statement on its website (German only). "The will of the people regarding (decisions relating to the euro) is never queried and is not represented in parliament. The government is depriving voters of a voice through disinformation, is pressuring constitutional organs, like parliament and the Constitutional Court, and is making far-reaching decisions in committees that have no democratic legitimacy."

The sentiment, of course, is hardly new. Euro-skeptics are everywhere these days, particularly in those southern European countries that have been hit hardest by the crisis that continues to plague the common currency. And even in mainstream parties, concerns about the path on which the EU currently finds itself are common. But in Germany, as elsewhere in northern Europe, the most vocal critique of the euro has tended to come from right-wing populist parties.

[bread_and_roses]

16. In contrast: "A President Who’ll Cut Social Security..."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/08-2

Published on Friday, March 8, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future Blog
A President Who’ll Cut Social Security – And Liberals Who Love Him Too Much
by Richard Eskow

The spectacle of a supposedly liberal President repeatedly and needlessly trying to cut Social Security is enough to bring a reasonable, economically literate person to the point of existential despair. To see leading liberal lights like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein chuckle indulgently at those foolish Republicans in Congress over the subject – Don’t they know he’s already giving them what they want? – is to risk plunging into the depths of that despair.

...The Maddow/Klein exchange (which we’ll bring to you as soon as a transcript is available) is the crest of a building wave in pro-Democratic Party commentary which says, as Klein puts it, that “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” Klein says that at least “some of the gridlock (in Washington) is due to poor information.” Jonathan Chait bemoans the fact that Republicans ”won’t acknowledge (Obama’s)actual offer, which includes large cuts to retirement programs.“

... Here are the facts:

Research suggests that Social Security cost-of-living increases are already inadequate. (See studies on “CPI-E” for more details on the best ways to increase them.)
Obama’s proposed chained-CPI cut would typically reduce benefits for 3 percent, and by as much as 6 percent for some recipients.
The White House’s decision to label this cut the “superlative CPI” is grotesque. It suggests that elderly women who receive an average of $950 or so per month are receiving “superlative” benefit increases each year. (my emphasis added)
The Administration’s insistence on speaking of “entitlement reform,” mixing Medicare (which has a real cost problem because of our for-profit health system) with Social Security, is a cheap trick first devised by Republican consultants.

Here's Klein - I won't quote him, it's simply too sickening for words:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/01/what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate/

Here's Chait - I will quote one paragraph for its blunt statement - routinely denied around this site, if my memory serves ...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/would-teaching-republicans-about-obama-help.html

The most striking and disconcerting thing about the latest round in the budget war is that the debate within the Republican Party is proceeding on the basis of completely false premises. I don’t mean false in the sense of wrongheaded policy beliefs. I mean Republicans are debating their strategy as if President Obama’s offer consists solely of making rich people pay more taxes. They won’t acknowledge his actual offer, which includes large cuts to retirement programs. I keep writing about this. It’s crazy.

Hey Klein, hey Chait - I'll tell you what's crazy:
1. your utterly despicable pretense that there's some "failure to communicate" or R "understanding" of the Obama proposals.
2. your morally bankrupt approach that what matters here is a "compromise" - not the welfare of the citizens OR their clearly stated preference for protecting these programs

Goddess, I hate "Liberals" more every day

Viva Chavez!

[xchrom]

17. World’s Richest Add $29 Billion as Dow Hits All-Time High

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-08/world-s-richest-add-29-billion-as-dow-hits-all-time-high.html

The 100 wealthiest people on the planet added $28.7 billion to their collective net worth this week after the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to a record, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“Even today, despite the snowstorm, the market is trending higher,” John Carey, a fund manager with Boston-based Pioneer Investment Management Inc., said in a telephone interview. His firm oversees $200 billion. “Keep in mind, the market isn’t all that strong relative to where it was at the beginning of the century in terms of multiples, earnings momentum and popularity of stocks.”

The week’s biggest gainer was Japanese retail tycoon Tadashi Yanai. The billionaire added $2.8 billion to his fortune as shares of his Fast Retailing Co., the largest clothing retailer in Asia, jumped 24 percent and hit an all-time high yesterday as domestic sales rose 9.6 percent last month. The 64- year-old ranks 48th in the world with a net worth of $16.3 billion.

The Dow closed yesterday at 14397.07, its highest level since May 1896, as U.S. employment rose 236,000 last month, according to Department of Labor figures. The jobless rate dropped to 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008, from 7.9 percent. About $10 trillion has been restored to U.S. equities in the past four years as retailers, banks and manufacturers led the recovery from the worst bear market since the 1930s.

[Demeter]

18. Paper Profits

which they will never realize...if there's any balance in this world...

[Demeter]

19. I have to go have it out with the Real World for a Bit

be back soon. Thanks everyone for picking up the slack...I'll stay home for most of the weekend, posting...

[xchrom]

20. have a good day!

[bread_and_roses]

21. The fire this time

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/08-0

Published on Friday, March 8, 2013 by Common Dreams
Earth Hurtling Towards Temperatures Not Seen in 11,000 Years
New study shows global temperatures skyrocketed in last century
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

"Under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios," the world is on track to surpass temperatures not seen since the dawn of civilization, according to new research.

... "The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existence," NPR quotes Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as saying. "And that is quite a sobering thought."

[bread_and_roses]

22. "Latin American Leaders Mourn Hugo Chavez as U.S. Expresses Contempt"

http://www.alternet.org/world/america-isolated-latin-american-leaders-mourn-hugo-chavez-us-expresses-contempt

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

Home > America the Isolated: Latin American Leaders Mourn Hugo Chavez as U.S. Expresses Contempt
Center for Economic and Policy Research [1] / By Sara Kozameh [2]
comments_image
America the Isolated: Latin American Leaders Mourn Hugo Chavez as U.S. Expresses Contempt
March 8, 2013 |

On Tuesday afternoon, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez passed away, after a long battle with cancer. The announcement by Vice President Nicolás Maduro came just minutes after Chávez’s death and elicited an immediate wave of obituary pieces by pundits who described Chávez as “divisive”, “authoritarian”, “antagonistic” and “anti-American”, many of them eager to rush the “transition” in the hopes that Chávez’s political project would soon fall apart.

In stark contrast with these predictable characterizations and demonization of Chávez in the major media is the response that Chávez’s death has elicited from his peers, fellow presidents from throughout the Americas. Tributes, messages of solidarity and heartfelt condolences came in from Central and South America, reaffirming support for the ideals of regional unity and independence promoted by Hugo Chávez during his 14 years as president of Venezuela. Very few media outlets noted [3] the outpouring of sympathy from Latin American leaders.

“He is more alive than ever, and will keep being the inspiration for all people fighting for liberation,” were the words [4] of president of Bolivia, Evo Morales...

José Mujica, President of Uruguay, expressed the profound pain [6] that Chávez’s death caused him...

... A somber and saddened Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia, emphasized Chávez’s contributions [7] in the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)

... From Brazil, former president Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva and current president, Dilma Rousseff, both expressed great sadness, but also reaffirmed their solidarity with Venezuela:

... Rafeal Correa, President of Ecuador, called Chávez [9] “a great Latin American, a great human being” ...

Fidel Castro’s brother and president of Cuba, Raúl Castro, said [10] that Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” was “irreversible” ...

Salvadoran president, Mauricio Funes gave his deepest condolences...

... Even former U.S. president Jimmy Carter highlighted [12] the “gains made for the poor and vulnerable” under Chávez.

... But in stark contrast to the heartfelt condolences and tributes from Central and South America, responses from President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper came off as contemptful of Chávez, certainly consistent with past attitudes of both governments towards Venezuela and South America’s growing independence.

Unsurprisingly [13], Obama differed in tone from his peers to the south, offering no condolences ...

[xchrom]

23. A 'Politically Explosive' Secret: Italians Are More Than Twice As Wealthy As Germans

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-politically-explosive-secret-italians-are-over-twice-as-wealthy-as-germans-2013-3



In December 2006, the ECB established the HFSC network of survey specialists, statisticians, and economists from its own ranks, national central banks of the Eurozone, and statistical institutes. The acronym stood for Household Finance and Consumption Survey.

It would collect “micro-level structural information” on household wealth. A massive bureaucratic undertaking. Surveys went out in 2010. Results are now ready. No one in Europe had ever done a survey on that scale before.

And no one might ever do it again. Because, in the era of bailouts and wealth-transfers, the results are so explosive that the Bundesbank is keeping its report secret—and word has leaked out why.

The surveys were conducted on a national basis, with each central bank publishing its own report. They would then be combined and summarized by the ECB into a cohesive picture of how wealthy—or how poor—people in various parts of the Eurozone were. A number of countries already published their reports, including Italy and Austria.


Read more: http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/3/8/a-politically-explosive-secret-italians-are-over-twice-as-we.html#ixzz2N3DR7ytM

[DemReadingDU]

24. PonziWorld: Will Greed Destroy Capitalism?

3/8/13 PonziWorld: Will Greed Destroy Capitalism?

Why is it that when the market was at its low after Lehman in March 2009, no one wanted to own stocks. Yet, now four years later, no one can think of a reason not to own them, even though today's rumour was that North Korea is now preparing for war with the South...The Dow was up 67 points on the news - yet another all time high (yes, we also got news of fewer jobs outsourced this month than last month...).

Pure blinding greed, that's all. Nothing more, nothing less. So if people are not acting particularly rationally at this juncture, we have to take into account the fact that they are guzzling the Kool-Aid by the barrel full...

Apologists for the status quo, tell us that greed is a side effect of capitalism, indeed that greed is what fuels capitalism. I am not going to make a political statement about that assertion, only that periods driven by blind greed such as we saw in 2000, 2007, and this current one, always end badly. The indicators are now all eerily lined up the way they were leading up to the two prior collapses. More to the point, one could argue that the Central Bank programs which have pumped trillions into markets were intended to artificially fuel the "animal spirits" (aka. greed) in the face of the overwhelming fear that emanated from 2009. That's all well and good, however avarice is not an emotion that can be controlled by a bureaucrat, so once it gets underway it takes on a life of its own, as we are now seeing. It makes people take risks they otherwise would deem foolish and reckless.

So here we are with a phony and manipulated market, wedging to a very narrow top on low volume in the face of extreme event risk and overwhelming complacency. We know one thing for sure, the middle class can't take another bludgeoning at the hands of the markets, and yet that's exactly what they are buying tickets for now.

The bottom line is that I don't know if greed will kill capitalism, but it's going to take its best shot. What happens on the other side of this inevitable "unwinding" will determine the fate of capitalism in many corners of the world. I suspect it will survive in some form or another in some places or another. Globalization on the other hand will more than likely be the burnt offering to the gods of rage.

Three Strikes...




http://www.ponziworld.blogspot.com/2013/03/greed-is-blindness.html

[Demeter]

27. from his lips to God's Ears!

"Globalization on the other hand will more than likely be the burnt offering to the gods of rage..."

[Demeter]

25. Profiting From Genocide: The World Bank's Bloody History in Guatemala

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14823-profiting-from-genocide-the-world-banks-bloody-history-in-guatemala

The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) supported genocide in Guatemala and ought to pay reparations, according to a recent report by Jubilee International.

This well-documented accusation surfaces as the Central American nation becomes the first country in the Americas to try a former president for genocide and crimes against humanity in a domestic court. But the prosecution of war criminals and the accusations against International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have so far done little to protect vulnerable communities from the ongoing expansion of mining, oil and other economic interests invading their territories and violating their human rights.
"Generating Terror," the Jubilee Debt Campaign’s report issued in December, examines how international lending and debt by IFIs such as the World Bank and the IDB helped legitimize Guatemala's genocidal regimes of the late 1970s and early 1980s and essentially subsidized their terror campaigns.

"The lending of Western States and banks and the multilateral banks they control (importantly including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Inter-American Development Bank) was an important element in sustaining the long period of military rule which followed the coup against President (Jacobo) Arbenz in 1954," the report states. "Particularly worrying, however, is the very dramatic increase in lending that coincided with the highest waves of terror, which reached genocidal proportions in the late 1970s and early 1980s."

THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT WE MUST WATCH!

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

26. Sequester This! A Story of Sabotage and Theft

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15008-sequester-this-a-story-of-sabotage-and-theft

The “crisis” we are facing, what this week we’re calling “the sequester,” is an illusion sustained by a compliant media who dutifully parrot choreographed memes and metaphorical names while otherwise remaining asleep at the wheel. There is no phenomenon either in the natural world or in the history of our economic structures that goes by the name “the sequester.” There is no hurricane or typhoon blowing through our economy. There is no earthquake shaking the foundations of our monetary system. There is no landslide threatening to bury us and no wildfire about to incinerate us. Godzilla is not about to destroy Tokyo. Mothra is not real. There is no “sequester.”

Code Orange

“The sequester,” like “the fiscal cliff” and the recurring “debt ceiling,” is an intentionally crafted, make-believe crisis. Climate change and nuclear proliferation, in contrast, are bona fide crises—meaning they pose grave threats and defy easy solutions. By comparison, we can easily cancel make-believe sequesters, cliffs, and ceilings and get on with the business of governing the country. If the deficit really needs immediate attention, the simplest and quickest fix would be to roll back a few of the massive tax cuts we’ve gifted to the richest Americans, so that those who have benefitted the most from our economic system can pick up the tab for some of its operating expenses.

That’s if we really had a deficit emergency. But we don’t.

The sequester, like the cliffs and ceilings, is this decade’s terrorism threat level—Code Orange. Be scared. Be very scared. And stop thinking for yourself. The effects of the sequester, the cliffs and the ceiling, however, are real. Unlike terrorism, where the threat is external and unpredictable, the sequester is predictable and the culprits are our own leaders.

This thing we call the sequester is an automatic, $85 billion, mid-budget, across-the-board federal reimbursement cut created by a previous act of Congress to tick like a bomb and finally go off last Friday. Once unleashed, it started snaking its way through government agencies like a freshly released contagion, creating operating budget deficits and degrading public services in an almost random fashion. When it completes its work, the sequester will not only have cut services but perhaps a million jobs as well, further depressing the wage floor for those left working...

RIGHTEOUS RANT! MORE AT LINK

[bread_and_roses]

28. "This Week in Poverty: American Winter"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/09-0

Published on Saturday, March 9, 2013 by The Nation
This Week in Poverty: American Winter
by Greg Kaufmann

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, I’ve been waiting for a documentary to make the case that low-income people and the middle class are now in the same boat—that old distinctions people created to divide them are obsolete, with so many people living near poverty, or an illness, lost job, or disaster away from poverty.

A hundred and six million Americans, or more than one in three, now live below twice the poverty line—on less than $36,000 for a family of three, forced to make choices between basic necessities like food, housing, healthcare and education, and with little to no savings to help through tough times; wealth is increasingly concentrated, with the richest 1 percent now possessing 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Certainly the numbers suggest a convergence of interests among the poor and non-rich.

Now, finally, a movie has arrived that shows the precariousness of the US economy for the majority of Americans, refusing to distinguish between a deserving and non-deserving poor: American Winter.

Filmed over the winter of 2011–12 in Portland, Oregon, the documentary tells the stories of eight families, showing the human costs of a frayed safety net and a proliferation of low-wage work. Emmy Award–winning filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz, creators of HBO’s Taxicab Confessions, worked with the nonprofit organization 211info in Portland, monitoring calls from distressed families who were turning to the emergency hotline in search of help. They then followed the stories of some of these callers over many months.

Compare our arc - our trajectory - with that of the charts for Venezuela

[Demeter]

29. Austerity: Another "Policy Mistake" Again By Richard D Wolff

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14917-austerity-another-policy-mistake-again

Capitalism prescribes the same policy mistakes over and over again - austerity, punishment for debtors (unless they are financial institutions), labor cost cutting – that exacerbate its inevitable crises. When will we attack the structural roots of crisis?


...On January 1, payroll taxes rose (from 4.2 to 6.2 %) for 150 million Americans. Their checks shrank as that regressive tax became more so. Obama's hyped "tax increase for the rich" was comparatively trivial. It affected only the very few Americans earning over $450,000, raising their top tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. Our leaders hope we forgot the 1950s and 1960s, when the top tax rate was 91 percent. On March 1, the sequester hit, unleashing federal spending cuts.
Higher payroll taxes cut personal spending on goods and services; that worsens unemployment. That reduces income and sales taxes while requiring more unemployment compensation, thereby also worsening Washington's budget imbalance. By cutting federal spending on goods and services, the sequester also worsens unemployment, reduces tax revenues and increases unemployment compensation outlays. No wonder critics scream that austerity now is crazy and counterproductive. Europe's three-year austerity program pushed its unemployment rate in February 2013 to 11.9 percent.
Why do "our leaders" agree on austerity (and disagree only on its details)? Why ignore that austerity not only undercuts the economy, but risks the government's budget too? Why ignore alternatives to austerity? For example, tax the largest corporations and richest 3 percent to fund a bottom-up stimulus program. That could help balance the federal budget, directly aid most people and likely outperform the failed top-down (trickle down) policies of Bush and Obama. FDR's policies in the 1930s provide one example to start from...MORE

[Demeter]

30. Raise SoC. Sec. & Medicare (FICA) Taxes on Rich, Don't Feed Cat Food of Austerity to the Elderly

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17850-raise-social-security-and-medicare-fica-taxes-on-the-rich-don-t-feed-the-cat-food-of-austerity-to-the-elderly

Writing in the New York Times, Thomas Edsall pens a thorough debunking of arguments for austerity. In particular, he provides a detailed analysis that lacerates the arguments made for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. The only significant misstep in Edsall's March 6 commentary is the title: "The War On Entitlements." Medicare and Social Security are not entitlements; they are earned benefits that most Americans labor very hard to receive during the last stage of their lives.

Headline aside, Edsall launches a full bore critique of the notion of austerity measures such as raising the age at which one receives Social Security and Medicare, means testing, etc. The reality is that Social Security and Medicare are already flat regressive taxes – and the less affluent assume the biggest burden in terms of the percentage of their income paid toward these earned benefits. Edsall explains, first of all, about the current inequities in how Social Security and Medicare are funded by taxpayers:

Earned income in excess of $113,700 is entirely exempt from the 6.2 percent payroll tax that funds Social Security benefits (employers pay a matching 6.2 percent). 5.2 percent of working Americans make more than $113,700 a year. Simply by eliminating the payroll tax earnings cap — and thus ending this regressive exemption for the top 5.2 percent of earners — would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, solve the financial crisis facing the Social Security system….

Medicare, in turn, is financed by a flat 1.45 percent tax on the first $200,000 of earnings for a single person and $250,000 for a married couple, matched by the employer, after which it rises by a modest 0.9 percent on all income above the $200,000 and $250,000 levels.

The Medicare and Social Security taxes are jointly known as FICA (for Federal Insurance Contributions Act) — or payroll — taxes. The combined FICA taxes are highly regressive. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center found that the poorest quintile pays a 7.3 percent FICA rate, while the top quintile pays 6.8 percent. The top 1 percent of the income distribution pays a 2 percent rate, and the top 0.1 percent pays just 0.9 percent. In other words, the rate paid by the poorest quintile is 8.1 times as high as the rate paid by the top 0.1 percent.

.................................

When Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders delivered his fiery filibuster on income inequality and jobs in America last year, he nailed down the essence of the bellowing cries of the moneyed elite for "austerity" (see video) :

The reality is, many of the nation's billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end, and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this country if it gets in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth and more and more power.

Sanders went on to make a provocative analogy:

The point that needs to be made is, when is enough enough? That is the essence of what we are talking about. Greed, in my view, is like a sickness. It is like an addiction. We know people who are on heroin. They can't stop….

How can anybody be proud to say they are a multimillionaire and are getting a huge tax break and one-quarter of the kids in this country are on food stamps? How can one be proud of that? I don't know. It is not only income, it is wealth. The top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion. How much is enough? Apparently, enough is never enough, for most millionaires and billionaires. When success and value in a society are reduced to the monetization of one's assets, the culture has been debased to worshipping mammon.

Someone has to stop the mainlining of greed, and let it begin with progressive FICA taxation – without caps – on Social Security and Medicare.

[bread_and_roses]

31. "A place at the table" (hunger in US)

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173255/week-poverty-place-table-and-american-winter#

This Week in Poverty: 'A Place at the Table' and 'American Winter'
Greg Kaufmann on March 8, 2013 - 10:55 AM ET

A Patriotic Fix for America’s Hunger Epidemic

Guest post by Michael Shank

One nation, underfed.

That’s the tagline for the new film out by Participant Productions, entitled A Place at the Table, which looks at America’s growing hunger epidemic. Participant Media, which produced Lincoln, The Help and Food Inc., does not disappoint with its latest take on what America must tackle. And in light of the March 1 sequester cuts to social programs, the film’s timing couldn’t be more appropriate.

Table’s statistics are overwhelming, but they are intended to overwhelm. Whether it’s the 50 million Americans who are living in food-insecure households (which means they are struggling with hunger), or the fact that 1-out-of-2 kids in America will, at some time in their childhood, have to rely on federal assistance for food. This is happening in the richest country in the world, and the problem is only getting worse. Under President Reagan there were 20 million Americans living with food insecurity. We’re well over double that figure now.

Table’s stories will overwhelm too. Whether it’s the fifth grader who is so hungry that she envisions her teacher as a banana and her fellow students as apples, or the single mother of two who finally gets a fulltime job only to realize that she is no longer food stamp eligible, a loss of $3-per-day that puts her family into serious food insecurity. That means her kids no longer have breakfast or lunch at daycare, and her youngest is already developmentally disabled due to improper nutrition.

I really can't stand it. That mother who gets a job and loses foodstamps? That's my daughter, every time she gets a job. If she didn't have me, she and my two grandchildren would go hungry. And both when working and not, without me their lights/heat would get shut off. They'd have no internet (with one child in grade school, and UI completely online, and job hunting almost completely on line. The grade-schooler would not have school supplies. There would be on extra-curricular activity. Nor can she go to school to hope for a better job down the road - Bill Clinton made that impossible, with Welfare Deform. Thank the goddess the baby is already on WIC, so won't get shut out due to Sequester cuts, though if this keeps off will have to go off earlier than otherwise - that's one way they'll make room for the pregnant women and infants coming along - as many as they can - locally, we have several hundred on waiting lists who'll never get it, probably. To the lifelong detriment of those children.

AhhhhYupppp...greatest country in the world, here.

[Hotler]

33. Let me add some music.

I get cut, I might bleed, but "I won't cry".

The harder the words,
The colder the night.
The closer the hand,
The shaper the knife.
The tighter I hold on
The further you seem to fly.

I get cut,
I might bleed,
but I won't cry.

[Fuddnik]

36. Imagine this.

[xchrom]

37. Merkel’s One Europe Attacked by Adenauer Grandson

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-06/merkel-s-one-europe-attacked-by-adenauer-grandson.html


Werhahn says he's challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel's bailout policies to safeguard the European vision shaped by his grandfather, Konrad Adenauer. Here, Werhahn stands by Brandenburg Gate, symbol of Berlin’s reunification into a single city in 1990.

Stephan Werhahn remembers playing at the feet of his grandfather as a child. The man was a towering figure in more ways than one. Lionized as Der Alte, or the Old One, Konrad Adenauer was West Germany’s first postwar chancellor, a founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party and an early proponent of European unification.

At 59, Werhahn is adding politics to a 30-year career in finance by running against Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election scheduled for Sept. 22, Bloomberg Markets will report in its April issue. Werhahn says he’s doing his bit to protect his grandfather’s greatest legacy, the European Union.

Although polls give Werhahn no chance of winning, his presence in the race is another indication of the extent to which Merkel’s stance on Europe has shaped Germany’s domestic politics.

[xchrom]

38. REPORT: EU TO PROPOSE CONTROLS ON BOSSES' PAY

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_MANAGERS_PAY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-10-07-22-08

BERLIN (AP) -- A top European Union official says he plans to propose that company shareholders across the continent be given the power to set managers' pay - an approach similar to an initiative recently approved by voters in non-EU Switzerland.

EU internal market commissioner Michel Barnier was quoted Sunday as telling Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper he plans to make his proposal by the end of this year.

He says it would mean that at all publicly listed companies in the 27-nation EU shareholders would decide on the level of salaries and so-called "golden handshakes" granted to arriving or departing managers.

Barnier says he also will seek greater transparency on top salaries, perhaps by way of an annual report that would allow investors and the public to compare pay at different firms.

[xchrom]

39. Mortgage rates inch higher but remain near historic lows

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/post/mortgage-rates-inch-higher-but-remain-near-historic-lows/2013/03/07/dc2e2060-86a5-11e2-999e-5f8e0410cb9d_blog.html


Mortgage rates inched higher this week but remain near historic lows, according to the latest data released by Freddie Mac.

The 30-year fixed-rate average edged up to 3.52 percent with an average 0.7 point. It was up from 3.51 percent a week ago, but down from 3.88 percent a year ago. Since rising above 3.5 percent in late January, the 30-year fixed rate has hovered just above that mark.

The 15-year fixed-rate average was unchanged at 2.76 percent with an average 0.7 point. A year ago, it was 3.13 percent. The 15-year fixed rate has not been above 3 percent since May 24.

Hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages were mixed. The five-year ARM increased to 2.63 percent with an average 0.5 point. It was up from 2.61 percent a week ago.

[Demeter]

40. If you haven't reset your clocks, it is an hour later than you think

...for those of us cursed with the created crisis of Daylight Shifting Time. Well, I survived the paper route on Daylight Saving Time, finishing by 9 AM. The press manager couldn't be bothered to start an hour earlier, you see.

Is there a petition anywhere to abolish DST? I'd sign it and nag everyone else to do so.

I'm sure that DST costs far more than it saves in lives, health, and annoyance.


Today feels like Spring, and I saw other people's snowdrops in bud, and some of the tiny, early yellow crocus. Now, if we can just avoid those fruit-blossom killer frosts....

[DemReadingDU]

45. I'll sign!

Who gets benefit from more DST?
Probably a ploy of the gasoline companies to get people in their cars and drive around more places having more fun with extra daylight, thus having to buy even more gasoline!

I re-set the clocks last evening before bed so I wouldn't lose the hour this morning.

[Demeter]

41. Hugo Chavez: the Early Years

Childhood

Hugo Chávez was born on 28 July 1954 in his paternal grandmother Rosa Inéz Chávez's home, a modest three-room house located in the rural village Sabaneta, Barinas State. The Chávez family were of Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent. His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez and Elena Frías de Chávez, were working-lower middle class schoolteachers who lived in the small village of Los Rastrojos.

Hugo was born the second of seven children, including their eldest, Adán Chávez. The couple lived in poverty, leading them to send Hugo and Adán to live with their grandmother Rosa, whom Hugo later described as being "a pure human being... pure love, pure kindness." She was a devout Roman Catholic, and Hugo was an altar boy at a local church. Hugo described his childhood as "poor...very happy", and experienced "humility, poverty, pain, sometimes not having anything to eat", and "the injustices of this world."

Attending the Julián Pino Elementary School, Chávez's hobbies included drawing, painting, baseball and history. He was particularly interested in the 19th-century federalist general Ezequiel Zamora, in whose army his own great-great-grandfather had served. In the mid-1960s, Hugo, his brother and their grandmother moved to the city of Barinas so that the boys could attend what was then the only high school in the rural state, the Daniel O'Leary High School.

Military Academy: 1971–1975

Aged seventeen, Chávez studied at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas. At the Academy, he was a member of the first class that was following a restructured curriculum known as the Andrés Bello Plan. This plan had been instituted by a group of progressive, nationalistic military officers who believed that change was needed within the military. This new curriculum encouraged students to learn not only military routines and tactics but also a wide variety of other topics, and to do so civilian professors were brought in from other universities to give lectures to the military cadets. Living in Caracas, he saw more of the endemic poverty faced by working class Venezuelans, something that echoed the poverty he had experienced growing up, and he maintained that this experience only made him further committed to achieving social justice. He also began to get involved in local activities outside of the military school, playing both baseball and softball with the Criollitos de Venezuela team, progressing with them to the Venezuelan National Baseball Championships. Other hobbies that he undertook at the time included writing numerous poems, stories and theatrical pieces, painting and researching the life and political thought of 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar. He also became interested in the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–67) after reading his memoir The Diary of Che Guevara, although he also read books by a wide variety of other figures.

In 1974, he was selected to be a representative in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru, the conflict in which Simon Bolívar's lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, defeated royalist forces during the Peruvian War of Independence. In Peru Chávez heard the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1910–1977), speak, and inspired by Velasco's ideas that the military should act in the interests of the working classes when the ruling classes were perceived as corrupt, he "drank up the books Velasco had written, even memorising some speeches almost completely." Befriending the son of Panamanian President Omar Torrijos (1929–1981), another leftist military general, Chávez subsequently visited Panama, where he met with Torrijos, and was impressed with his land reform program that was designed to benefit the peasants. Being heavily influenced by both Torrijos and Velasco, he saw the potential for military generals to seize control of a government when the civilian authorities were perceived as serving the interests of only the wealthy elites. In contrast to military presidents like Torrijos and Velasco however, Chávez became highly critical of Augusto Pinochet, the right-wing general who had recently seized control in Chile with the aid of the American CIA. Chávez later related that "With Torrijos, I became a Torrijist. With Velasco I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an anti-Pinochetist." In 1975, Chávez graduated from the military academy, being rated one of the top graduates of the year (eight out of seventy five).

Early military career: 1976–1981

I think that from the time I left the academy I was oriented toward a revolutionary movement... The Hugo Chávez who entered there was a kid from the hills, a Ilanero with aspirations of playing professional baseball. Four years later, a second-lieutenant came out who had taken the revolutionary path. Someone who didn’t have obligations to anyone, who didn't belong to any movement, who was not enrolled in any party, but who knew very well where I was headed.
---Hugo Chávez

Following his graduation, Chávez was stationed as a communications officer at a counterinsurgency unit in Barinas, although the Marxist-Leninist insurgency which the army was sent to combat had already been eradicated from that state, leaving the unit with much spare time. Chávez himself played in a local baseball team, wrote a column for the local newspaper, organized bingo games and judged at beauty pageants. At one point he found in an abandoned car riddled with bullet holes a stash of Marxist literature that apparently had belonged to insurgents many years before. He went on to read these books, which included titles by such theoreticians as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, but his favourite was a work entitled The Times of Ezequiel Zamora, written about the 19th-century federalist general whom Chávez had admired as a child. These books further convinced Chávez of the need for a leftist government in Venezuela, later remarking that "By the time I was 21 or 22, I made myself a man of the left."

In 1977, Chávez's unit was transferred to Anzoátegui, where they were involved in battling the Red Flag Party, a Marxist-Hoxhaist insurgency group. After intervening to prevent the beating of an alleged insurgent by other soldiers, Chávez began to have his doubts about the army and their methods in using torture. At the same time, he was becoming increasingly critical of the corruption in both the army and in the civilian government, coming to believe that despite the wealth being produced by the country's oil reserves, Venezuela's poor masses were not receiving their share, something he felt to be inherently un-democratic. In doing so, he began to sympathise with the Red Flag Party and their cause, if not their violent methods.

In 1977, he founded a revolutionary movement within the armed forces, in the hope that he could one day introduce a leftist government to Venezuela: the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación del Pueblo de Venezuela, or ELPV), was a secretive cell within the military that consisted of him and a handful of his fellow soldiers. Although they knew that they wanted a middle way between the right wing policies of the government and the far left position of the Red Flag, they did not have any plans of action for the time being. Nevertheless, hoping to gain an alliance with civilian leftist groups in Venezuela, Chávez then set about clandestinely meeting various prominent Marxists, including Alfredo Maneiro (the founder of the Radical Cause) and Douglas Bravo, despite having numerous political differences with them. At this time, Chávez married a working-class woman named Nancy Colmenares, with whom he would go on to have three children: Rosa Virginia (born September 1978), Maria Gabriela (born March 1980) and Hugo Rafael (born October 1983).

[Demeter]

42. His Later military career and the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200: 1982–1991

Five years after his creation of the ELPV, Chávez went on to form a new secretive cell within the military, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200 (EBR-200), later redesignated the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200). Taking inspiration from three Venezuelans whom Chávez deeply admired, Ezequiel Zamora (1817–1860), Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), these historical figures became known as the "three roots of the tree" of the MBR-200. Later describing the group's foundation, Chávez would state that "the Bolivarian movement that was being born did not propose political objectives... Its goals were imminently internal. Its efforts were directed in the first place to studying the military history of Venezuela as a source of a military doctrine of our own, which up to then didn't exist." However, he always hoped that the Bolivarian Movement would become politically dominant, and on his political ideas at the time, remarked that "This tree of Bolívar, Zamora and Rodríguez has to be a circumference, it has to accept all kinds of ideas, from the right, from the left, from the ideological ruins of those old capitalist and communist systems." Indeed, Irish political analyst Barry Cannon noted that the early Bolivarian ideology was explicitly capitalist, but that it "was a doctrine in construction, a heterogeneous amalgam of thoughts and ideologies, from universal thought, capitalism, Marxism, but rejecting the neoliberal models currently being imposed in Latin America and the discredited socialist and communist models of the old Soviet Bloc."

In 1981, Chávez, by now a captain, was assigned to teach at the military academy where he had formerly trained. Here he indoctrinated new students in his so-called "Bolivarian" ideals, and recruited those whom he felt would make good members of the MBR-200, as well as organizing sporting and theatrical events for the students. In his recruiting attempts he was relatively successful, for by the time they had graduated, at least thirty out of 133 cadets had joined it. In 1984 he met a Venezuelan woman of German ancestry named Herma Marksman who was a recently divorced history teacher. Sharing many interests in common, she eventually got involved in Chávez's movement and the two fell in love, having an affair that would last several years. Another figure to get involved with the movement was Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a soldier particularly interested in liberation theology. Cárdenas rose to a significant position within the group, although he came into ideological conflict with Chávez, who believed that they should begin direct military action in order to overthrow the government, something Cárdenas thought was reckless.

However, some senior military officers became suspicious of Chávez after hearing rumours about the MBR-200. Unable to dismiss him legally without proof, they re-assigned him so that he would not be able to gain any more fresh new recruits from the academy. He was sent to take command of the remote barracks at Elorza in Apure State, where he got involved in the local community by organizing social events, and contacted the local indigenous tribal peoples, the Cuiva and Yaruro. Although they were distrustful due to their mistreatment at the hands of the Venezuelan army in previous decades, Chávez gained their trust by joining the expeditions of an anthropologist to meet with them. His experiences with them would later lead him to introduce laws protecting the rights of indigenous tribal peoples when he gained power many years later. While on holiday, he retraced on foot the route taken by his great-grandfather, the revolutionary Pedro Pérez Delgado (known as Maisanta), to understand his family history; on that trip, he met a woman who told Chávez how Maisanta had become a local hero by rescuing an abducted girl.[65] In 1988, after being promoted to the rank of major, the high-ranking General Rodríguez Ochoa took a liking to Chávez and employed him to be his assistant at his office in Caracas.

[Demeter]

43. Operation Zamora: 1992

In 1989, Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922–2010), the candidate of the centrist Democratic Action Party, was elected President after promising to oppose the United States government's Washington Consensus and financial policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, he did neither once he got into office, following instead the neoliberal economic policies supported by the United States and the IMF. He dramatically cut spending, put prominent men in governmental posts.

Pérez's policies angered some of the public. In an attempt to stop the widespread protests and looting that followed his social spending cuts, Pérez ordered the violent repression and massacre of protesters known as El Caracazo, which "according to official figures ... left a balance of 276 dead, numerous injured, several disappeared and heavy material losses. However, this list was invalidated by the subsequent appearance of mass graves", indicating that the official death count was inadequate. Pérez had used both the DISIP political police and the army to orchestrate El Caracazo. Chávez did not participate in the repression because he was then hospitalized with chicken pox, and later condemned the event as "genocide".

Disturbed by the Caracazo, rampant government corruption, the domination of politics by the Venezuelan oligarchy through the Punto Fijo Pact, and what he called "the dictatorship of the IMF", Chávez began preparing for a military coup d'état, known as Operation Zamora.

Initially planned for December, Chávez delayed the MBR-200 coup until the early twilight hours of 4 February 1992. On that date, five army units under Chávez's command moved into urban Caracas with the mission of overwhelming key military and communications installations, including the Miraflores presidential palace, the defense ministry, La Carlota military airport and the Military Museum. Chávez's immediate goal was to intercept and take custody of Pérez, who was returning to Miraflores from an overseas trip.

Despite years of planning, the coup quickly encountered trouble. At the time of the coup, Chávez had the loyalty of less than 10% of Venezuela's military forces, and, because of numerous betrayals, defections, errors, and other unforeseen circumstances, Chávez and a small group of rebels found themselves hiding in the Military Museum, without any means of conveying orders to their network of spies and collaborators spread throughout Venezuela. Furthermore, Chávez's allies were unable to broadcast their prerecorded tapes on the national airwaves, during which Chávez planned to issue a general call for a mass civilian uprising against the Pérez government. Finally, Chávez's forces were unable to capture Pérez, who managed to escape from them. Fourteen soldiers were killed, and fifty soldiers and some eighty civilians injured during the ensuing violence.

Realising that the coup had failed, Chávez gave himself up to the government. On the condition that he called upon the remaining active coup members to cease hostilities, he was allowed to appear on national television, something that he insisted on doing in his military uniform. During this address, he invoked the name of national hero Simón Bolívar and declared to the Venezuelan people that "Comrades: unfortunately, for now, the objectives we had set for ourselves were not achieved in the capital city. That is, those of us here in Caracas did not seize power. Where you are, you have performed very well, but now is the time for reflection. New opportunities will arise and the country has to head definitively toward a better future." Many viewers noted that Chávez had remarked that he had failed only "por ahora" (for now), and he was immediately catapulted into the national spotlight, with many Venezuelans, particularly those from the poorer sections of society, seeing him as a figure who had stood up against government corruption and kleptocracy.

Chávez was arrested and imprisoned at the San Carlos military stockade, where he remained wracked with guilt, feeling responsible for the coup's failure. Indeed, pro-Chávez demonstrations that took place outside of San Carlos led to his being transferred to Yare prison soon after. The government meanwhile began a temporary crackdown on media supportive of Chávez and the coup. A further attempted coup against the government occurred in November, which was once more defeated, led to Pérez himself being impeached a year later for malfeasance and misappropriation of funds for illegal activities.

[Demeter]

44. His Political rise: 1992–1998

Whilst Chávez and the other senior members of the MBR-200 were in prison, his relationship with Herma Marksman broke up in July 1993. She would subsequently become a critic of Chávez. In 1994, Rafael Caldera (1916–2009) of the centrist National Convergence Party was elected to the presidency, and soon after taking power, freed Chávez and the other imprisoned MBR-200 members as per his pre-election pledge. Caldera had however imposed upon them the condition that they would not return to the military, where they could potentially organise another coup. After being mobbed by adoring crowds following his release, Chávez went on a 100-day tour of the country, promoting his Bolivarian cause of social revolution. Now living off a small military pension as well as the donations of his supporters, he continued to financially support his three children and their mother despite divorcing Nancy Colmenares around this period. On his tours around the country, he would meet Marisabel Rodríguez, who would give birth to their daughter shortly before becoming his second wife in 1997.

Travelling around Latin America in search of foreign support for his Bolivarian movement, he visited Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and finally Cuba, where the Communist leader Fidel Castro (1926–) arranged to meet him. After spending several days in one another's company, Chávez and Castro became friends with the former describing the Cuban leader as being like a father to him. Returning to Venezuela, Chávez failed to gain mainstream media attention for his political cause. Instead, he gained publicity from small, local-based newspapers and media outlets. As a part of his condemnation of the ruling class, Chávez became critical of President Caldera, whose neoliberal economic policies had caused inflation and who had both suspended constitutional guarantees and arrested a number of Chávez's supporters. According to the United Nations, by 1997 the per capita income for Venezuelan citizens had fallen to US$ 2,858 from US$ 5,192 in 1990, whilst poverty levels had increased by 17.65% since 1980, and homicide and other crime rates had more than doubled since 1986, particularly in Caracas. Coupled with this drop in the standard of living, widespread dissatisfaction with the representative democratic system in Venezuela had "led to gaps emerging between rulers and ruled which favoured the emergence of a populist leader".

A debate soon developed in the Bolivarian movement as to whether it should try to take power in elections or whether it should instead continue to believe that military action was the only effective way of bringing about political change. Chávez was a keen proponent of the latter view, believing that the oligarchy would never allow him and his supporters to win an election, whilst Francisco Arias Cárdenas instead insisted that they take part in the representative democratic process. Cárdenas himself proved his point when, after joining the Radical Cause socialist party, he won the December 1995 election to become governor of the oil-rich Zulia State. Subsequently changing his opinion on the issue, Chávez and his supporters in the Bolivarian movement decided to found their own political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR – Movimiento Quinta República) in July 1997 in order to support Chávez's candidature in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998.

[Demeter]

48. VENEZUELA'S 1998 election

The election of a leftist president in Venezuela in 1998 foreshadowed what would, in the following seven years, become a wave of successes for left-leaning presidential candidates in Latin America... Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil in October 2002, then Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador in January 2003, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina in May 2003, Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay in October 2004, Evo Morales in Bolivia in December 2005, Rafael Correa in Ecuador in November 2006, and then Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, also in November 2006. While some of these moderated [towards the centre or centre-right] significantly shortly after taking office, such as Gutiérrez and da Silva, they represent a wave of left-of-center leaders whose election came as a bit of a surprise given the... disorientation within the left around the world.

Gregory Wilpert, German-American political analyst (2007).

At the start of the election run-up, most polls gave Irene Sáez, then-mayor of Caracas' richest district, Chacao, the lead. Although an independent candidate, she had the backing of one of Venezuela's two primary political parties, Copei.

In opposition to her right-wing and pro-establishment views, Chávez and his followers described their aim as "laying the foundations of a new republic" to replace the existing one, which they cast as "party-dominated"; the current constitution, they argued, was no more than the "legal-political embodiment of puntofijismo", the country's traditional two-party patronage system.

This revolutionary rhetoric gained Chávez and the MVR support from a number of other leftist parties, including the Patria Para Todos (Motherland for All), the Partido Comunist Venezolano (Venezeuelan Communist Party) and the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism), which together fashioned a political union supporting his candidacy called the Polo Patriotic (Patriotic Pole).

Chávez's promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of a primarily poor and working class following. By May 1998, Chávez's support had risen to 30% in polls, and by August he was registering 39%. Much of his support came from his 'strong man' populist image and charismatic appeal. This rise in popularity worried Chávez's opponents, with the oligarchy-owned mainstream media proceeding to attack him with a series of allegations, which included the claim – which he dismissed as ridiculous – that he was a cannibal who ate children. With his support increasing, and Sáez's decreasing, both the main two political parties, Copei and Democratic Action, put their support behind Henrique Salas Römer, a Yale University-educated economist who representated the Project Venezuela party.

Chávez won the election with 56.20% of the vote. Salas Römer came second, with 39.97%, whilst the other candidates, including Irene Sáez and Alfaro Ucero, gained only tiny proportions of the vote. Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez's support had come primarily from the country's poor and the "disenchanted middle class", whose standard of living had decreased rapidly in the previous decade, although at the same time much of the middle and upper class vote had instead gone to Salas Römer. Following the announcement of his victory, Chávez gave a speech in which he declared that "The resurrection of Venezuela has begun, and nothing and no one can stop it.

[Demeter]

46. The Premise of Digital Surveillance Precludes Scholarship

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14839-the-premise-of-digital-surveillance-precludes-scholarship

...In the past, access to university libraries was carefully guarded, and women and people of color were routinely barred from entering. As Virginia Woolf famously writes in A Room of One's Own:

... here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

A library represents knowledge. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Keeping women from entering was a way of denying them power. The same can be said about denying people of color. Since the civil rights movement, physical access to libraries and universities has been greatly improved. Higher education is largely available to all, providing, of course, the resources are available or large debt is taken on. For those without the money or who prefer to study the world on their own, there is the Internet. This vast and intricate resource allows the scholar-researcher, whether in or out of college, publishing or not, to seek a wide and diverse array of content and knowledge. However, a new "For Whites Only" or "For Men Only" sign has been erected in the last ten years, in the form of digital surveillance. This new prohibition of knowledge, however, is not prejudiced against women or people of color specifically, but against anyone outside of the surveillance apparatus and the halls of power.

How does it work? It operates on the principle of prior restraint. Prior restraint is a prohibition, usually governmental, "imposed on expression before the expression actually takes place." It is essentially like declaring: No one may speak or write about daffodils from now on. Period. The end. This is fundamentally unconstitutional. The First Amendment guarantees that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. This means you can say and write whatever you like, with only a few clearly enumerated (if frequently legally tested) limitations, such as those prohibiting libel or slander.

But the new prohibition of knowledge is even more insidious than traditional prior restraint. By collecting everyone's information and operating from the false premise that a web site visitor necessarily agrees with or would act in any way upon the content therein, the surveillance state has instituted thoughtcrime. This term from George Orwell's 1984 represents the codification of the false premise that a mental thought is the same as a physical action...by the faulty reasoning of thoughtcrime, you would be guilty of (or at least capable of) every murder you have watched at the movies or on television, including the news, and every violent act in every book you've ever read. The ludicrousness of operating according to thoughtcrime is extremely obvious, and yet when it comes to web searches, people have somehow forgotten it.

...to truly be a critical thinker, you must have a critical disposition. You must be willing to question what you see and hear, and you must be eager to seek out conflicting and controversial materials in order to process them cognitively yourself. This is precisely what the new prohibition of knowledge seeks to stop you from doing. By claiming falsely that reviewing materials, for example, about creationism, makes one necessarily a creationist, or reviewing materials about jihad makes one a jihadist, or that reviewing materials about anarchism makes one necessarily an anarchist, and, further, that reviewing anything or even claiming these titles is the same as actually committing any crime, the surveillance state is effectively abolishing your right to be a critical thinker...

MUCH MORE

[Demeter]

47. Vaya con Dios, Hugo Chàvez, mi Amigo By Greg Palast

http://www.gregpalast.com/vaya-con-dios-hugo-chavez-mi-amigo/#more-7874

As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. SEE LINK Based on my several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television. DVDs also available.

Media may contact Palast at interviews (at) gregpalast.com.

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: It's the oil. And it's the Koch Brothers – and it's the ketchup.

Reverend Pat Robertson said,

"Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular. But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil.

"This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil."

A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia. If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,

"We don't need another $200 billion war….It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton. So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times:

Just after Bush's inauguration in 2001, Chavez' congress voted in a new "Law of Hydrocarbons." Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.

But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula's prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70% was "no bueno." Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a royalty – just one percent – on "heavy" crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they'd now have to pay 16.6%.

Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.

On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation's Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela – giving a whole new meaning to the term, "corporate takeover." U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed "President" and the leaders of the coup d'état. Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters." I see.

With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.) Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It's what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela's One Percent to violence.

In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the "ranchos," the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement. "He {Chavez} gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course." She was disgusted by "them," the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)—and poor. Chavez, himself negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela's history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves "Spanish," to the dark-skinned masses.

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

"Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The ‘oil boom' we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn't see it."

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers." Chavez' Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further…too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite. Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions – and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez' congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela's politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his "Alliance for Progress." Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn't like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz' plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn't realize that he'd just squeezed the tomatoes of America's powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz' husband, Senator John Kerry, now U.S. Secretary of State. Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon "presidency," even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America's least forgiving billionaires: The Koch Brothers. How? Well, that's another story for another day....read about it in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Go to BallotBandits.org). Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile—or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP's fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental's drilling concession (2005).

"It's a chess game, Mr. Palast," Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. "And I am," Chavez said, "a very good chess player."

* * * * * * * *

Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn't bet against Hugo Chavez.

[Hotler]

49. Wow! That's a good read. n/t

[Demeter]

50. Makes me worry about Kerry

But I never liked him in the first place.

[tclambert]

52. You know, rich people don't much like Robin Hood.

He ROBBED from them. And gave to the moocher class.

I wonder how many times American agents tried to kill Chavez. Oil executives must have put contracts out on him. Bush and Cheney must have plotted against him.

[DemReadingDU]

53. One wonders how Chavez really died

Cancer? What kind, and how did he get it?

[Demeter]

51. I don't know what I've been doing to get so run down

but I need to nap, seriously. I'm calling this a wrap for myself. You all can keep on posting, and I'll see you all on SMW!