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every other week predicting that investors will shun them--just like the clockwork prediction of fascist politicians and media saying Chavez is "increasingly authoritarian" and will surely be a "dictator" some day (--did Chavez just win another election fair and square? he will surely be a "dictator" now!).
The Chavez government just keeps making deals with French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Norwegian, British, Iranian, Libyan, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Argentinian, and many other corporate investors and governments, to the benefit of the Venezuelan people and to benefit of foreign investors who respect Venezuela's sovereignty and abide by its rules, and who understand that profiting from resources that belong to the Venezuelan people is a privilege not a right. They can't have all the profits but they can have SOME. A fair deal!
This kind of balance--a socialist government acting on behalf of the country and its people--vs investors, entrepreneurs, the corporate class ("organized money," as FDR called it)--is what is needed here, in the U.S., the capitol of global corporate predation, where "organized money" tramples over our interests and plots against other peoples. A government like Venezuela's--which is running a mixed socialist/capitalist economy with a strong emphasis on social justice--insures that, in the "boom times" of capitalism--that amoral force that gets all heady and greedy when profits flow in--is constrained by the strong hand of democratic government, and its regulatory, tax, licensing and contractual powers, to attend to the future: putting away reserves for 'rainy day' events and cycles; paying for a better educated workforce, and fostering of future business creators and professionals; building local infrastructure; and forging local/regional alliances to "raise all boats."
Capitalism-run-wild will NEVER do any of this. It will NEVER create a decent society on its own. It instead creates some "boom times" for the rich and the lucky, with a temporary "trickle down" effect on the workforce, followed by Great Depressions--massive layoffs, homelessness and even starvation. The US had solved this problem during the FDR/New Deal period. The Reaganites, Clintonites and Bushites deliberately dismantled that balance--starting with the Reagan era looting of savings and loan institutions, killing of the graduated income tax, busting of unions, and other corpo/fascist destruction, right on through the Bushwhacks and the final blows to our decent society--rampant, massive looting of the federal treasury itself, hijacking of the US military for corporate resource wars, near total destruction of our manufacturing base, bleeding of jobs out of the country and ripping up the rule of law.
That's what capitalism does when let off its leash. The "blue-eyed wonders" of "Wall Street" don't want us to know this, so they lose no opportunity to demonize and lie about Chavez and Venezuela, and about the leftist democracy movement throughout Latin America. It is a BALANCING movement--desperately needed, here, there and around the world.
I had to laugh the other day, when EFerrari brought to our attention the REAL story of the Hilton Hotel in Venezuela. The corpo/fascist press had run their typical lying story on this matter--that the Chavez government was "confiscating" the Hilton. Turns out the original contract that Hilton Inc signed gave the Venezuelan government majority shares in this enterprise. The government basically owned it to begin with. Hilton Inc had agreed to this for the privilege of making profits in Venezuela. The contract recently expired, and the majority shareholder, Venezuela, chose to exercise its right to buy out the Hilton minority shares.
Confiscation! Nationalization! Stalin! Communism! Mugabe! Nice businessmen build a beautiful thing (if you consider a Hilton Hotel beautiful) and the commie government takes it! All the hysterical buttons were pushed by the outright lying in these so-called 'news' reports.
And what was entirely lost was the forethought and good planning of the Venezuelan government! Enterprises in which large amounts of public and taxpayers' money is used for a development should end up belonging to the public! The government may not want to run a hotel, and may re-sell it to private interests, but the people have meanwhile benefited from their investment and they can be sure that any additional contractual arrangement will also benefit the people and the country, as well as the private entrepreneurs who land the deal.
If Barack Obama was doing this with the banks, we wouldn't be in a Great Depression! Wall Street is giddy right now with the looting and profiteering off public money--trillions of future dollars (future indebtedness for the poor)--that the Obama administration has minted for the very rich. Where are the majority public shares in these enterprises? Where is the BUSINESS--goods, services, jobs--in these enterprises? They spit on Chavez for acting in the public interest. Obama does. Clinton does. Pelosi does. Not just the Wall Street wonders. Where is their protection of the public interest? I certainly wouldn't say that they are the same as Bush, Cheney & cabal. God knows they are not. But what right do they have--in chorus with the corpo/fascist press--to slander and demonize Chavez--when they will not--or cannot--serve the public interest here in the US?
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