After
reading this
news today that the Government may exempt people who live in Vargas
state of both the VAT and the income tax, I looked into my crystal ball and saw
the news of the future:
Chavez: Phantom Vargas residents
should be sent to Cuba
for life
El not so Universal, November 27th.
2006
In
yesterday’s Alo Presidente, Hugo Chavez said that if it were not because the
Constitution prohibited it, he would send everyone that moved his legal
residence to Vargas state to Cuba
for the rest of their life as punishment. “These people are traitors” said
Chavez after learning that the population of Vargas state had quintupled since
the Government decreed the tax exemption last January.
The Superintendent
of Seniat, the tax office, said that there would be a shortfall of 300% in tax
collection after close to 1. 5 million people declared Vargas state as their
legal residence and thus paid not income tax. Moreover 83.6% of the country’s companies
moved their Headquarters to Vargas after the decree was passed. The tax office
banned the moves, accusing those moving of tax rebellion and claiming the whole
thing was a conspiracy to overthrow the Government. “This is another attempt
led by Pedro Carmona and the oligarchy to overthrow the legally elected
Government of Venezuela by reducing tax collection and thus limiting the
resources available for the Presidential campaign of Hugo Chavez” said Vielma.
Vielma has
asked the Supreme Court to ratify the rebellion charges against the 1.6 million
people accused of tax evasion and send them to jail for a sentence from 6 to 14
years according to the tax code. The Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court took
the case away from the Penal Hall, because one of the Justices in the Penal
Hall lives in Vargas and thus paid no taxes. But the Court has yet to give an
opinion, except for the comment by the Court’s President who said: “Clearly
anyone that does not pay taxes and thus limits the number of votes that Chavez
may get next week is simply conspiring against the Government and participating
in a very explicit form of rebellion, but I will not say more, it would be unethical as I am writing the majority opinion on the case”
The
President of the National Assembly Nicolas Maduro said the Assembly will begin
an investigation of the case immediately, beginning with a house to house
census of Vargas state. Said Maduro: “We have found one room houses with more
than 1,500 residents and the top four industrial companies in the country have
now moved to Vargas. We will pass a bill prohibiting this retroactively. While
the Constitution prohibits passing any law retroactively, this is a national
affront and an emergency and we can not tolerate this type of conspiracy. Opposition members, as defined by the Maisanta/Tascon database/algorithm version 17.3, will have an “O” tatooed on their forehead and will need Congressional approval to change residences. This is not a violation of their rights, but a necessary precaution”.
Maduro
also said that they had found CIA pamphlets explaining how to move to Vargas
state, without using the collapsed viaduct in the Caracas-La Guaira highway or the old road which takes now three days to drive after it also collapsed all over the place. “Once
again, all of our problems can be traced back to the CIA; I don’t understand
why it is that while the CIA botches up all of its operations in the world, all of those
carried out in Venezuela
are successful, except for the fact that we always discover them”. Maduro also showed a bazooka which was actually not used by the CIA in the operation.
Deputy Iris
Varela said yesterday that her committee on enviromental issues would look into why no
banks had moved to Vargas as that sounded very fishy to her. When told that
banks pay no taxes, the session of the committee was cancelled.
The
Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez announced with a stern face that he
will look into who within the company moved PDVSA’s legal residence to Vargas, exempting the oil
company from paying taxes to the Government: “We only noticed it last week,
because we were very busy preparing the 2004 financial statements which we had
promised to the SEC for
November of one of these years” said Ramirez at a press conference.
Deputy
Pedro Carreńo said that this was all planned at the White House by Jorge W. Bush
using a new weapon, a “Superconducting-levitated diamond knife linked to 12,000
DirecTV satellites controlled by all the Coca Cola truck drivers in the world, which were used to cut the viaduct into two pieces, causing the
crisis”. He claimed that US Ambassador Brownfield wrote the decree exempting Vargas
from the taxes and slipped it into the agenda of the Cabinet last January, while the Cabinet was watching the winter ball baseball finals, in which Leones beat Magallanes 23 to 21 in a 30 inning, 16 hour game. The game itself is also being investigated.
Attorney
General Isaias Rodriguez blamed the media and said this was related to the Danilo Anderson case, saying he had a witness who is a Chinese economist from Bolivia, who lives in Iraq who had been at the CIA meetings in Nepal where the operation was planned and Patricia Poleo was present.
Luis Tascon said he would not say
anything because he had said too many stupid things in 2006 and was afraid of saying another one. He would speak again in 2007.
Opposition
candidates were quiet on the topic. Julio Borges said he had better things to
worry about, with his most recent proposal of a primary the day before the presidential
election. Roberto Smith said he was walking one million miles around Venezuela so
that everyone in the country would shake his hand in the week prior to his
election. Teodoro Petkoff explained that this was simply a case of human nature
and revealed that half of the members of the 100% pro-Chavez National Assembly had filed
their tax statements with a Vargas residence to avoid taxes (The other half did not even file). So had the Comptroller and the People’s Defender.
Fidel
Castro said sending people to Cuba
was not a punishment, but a reward in his “sea of happiness: lobster, prostitutes, beaches and good music for all non-Cubans”.
Chavez’
daughter Rosines could not be quoted on the subject, as there were 67 court
orders banning people from quoting her both here and abroad and in all forms of
media, TV, printed, pamphlets, viedo, FM, AM, shortwave, podcasts, analog, digital or hybrid. Additionally, she was very busy rewriting Art. 350 of the Constitution for her
father, particularly erasing the part about “rights”.