Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans?

[Judi Lynn]

Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans?
By Peter Hart
Dec 13 2012

The New York Times updates readers today (12/13/12) on the health status of left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and the political implications for his country. But the paper starts out by suggesting that the people who keep electing him must have some kind of problem.

According to the Times' William Neuman, life in Venezuela is pretty dismal. Christmas tree shipments were fouled up, a government ice cream factory closed down, and "all of this happened while the economy was growing — before the slowdown many predict next year."

He writes:

Such frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor alike, and yet President Hugo Chávez has managed to stay in office for nearly 14 years, winning over a significant majority of the public with his outsize personality, his free-spending of state resources and his ability to convince Venezuelans that the Socialist revolution he envisions will make their lives better.

So people believe that, somewhere in the future, life will get better thanks to Chávez? But it's already happened for the majority of Venezuelans. As Mark Weisbrot wrote (Guardian, 10/3/12):

Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.

More:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/12/13/does-hugo-chavez-keep-fooling-venezuelans/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-hugo-chavez-keep-fooling-venezuelans

[Peace Patriot]

1. I don't call them the New York Slimes for nothing.

They've been slimebags on Venezuela and the historic and amazing leftist democracy movement in South America that Venezuelans pioneered and inspired. They LIE about Chavez and other leaders of this extremely successful and democratic movement. They distort; they omit; they demonize; they lie.

They were slimebags on Bush's war on Iraq and share responsibility with the psychos of the Bush Junta for the horrible deaths of at least a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq (in the first weeks of bombing alone). They LIED for the Bushwhacks!

That's enough right there. I don't need to know what else they're lying about, what other peoples and honestly elected leaders they are smearing, what other democracies they are trying to destroy with transglobal corporate-bankster-war profiteer propaganda, what other wars they are trying to start, what other broken legal systems they are supporting (international law, our Constitution) (oh, here's one: they WITHHELD damning information on Bush Junta illegal domestic spying until AFTER the 2004 (s)election because, they said, it "might influence the election"!), what they DIDN'T tell people about 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines in New York and across the USA, or anything else about this lousy, goddamned, snooty, arrogant, lying so-called newspaper.

They are NOT the news organization that published the Pentagon Papers. That's all over. They are indeed WORSE than Faux News, for their pretensions and SLIMEBAG disguise as 'journalists.'

I've had it with them. I don't believe ANYTHING they print any more. I even wonder about Paul Krugman--brilliant as he is--because his column appears in their slimy pages. Do they print him as cover for the crapola on their news pages and elsewhere on their editorial pages? Do they print him to give their kitty box liner progressive and intellectual creds, while sliming leaders who actually govern intelligently and on progressive principles? It's SO IRONICAL--the Latin American leftist democracy revolution has implemented many of the economic principles that Krugman avows and has created prosperity, fairness and inclusiveness in their economies and in their politics, yet they get lied about, smeared and slimed by his slimebag publishers!

[naaman fletcher]

2. Krugman

I even wonder about Paul Krugman--brilliant as he is--because his column appears in their slimy pages.

Perhaps he is not as brilliant as you think.

What's the answer to a large imperial country that dominates the world?

A: Why, let's not make any fundamental changes, let's bail out the banks and make the whole thing bigger!