The Devil's Excrement

And in a carefully written article, Simon Romero looks at the Chavez Royal family, with all its power and newly found riches. this will not play well in Miraflores:

““They started out with nothing and now call themselves revolutionaries, though they are revolutionaries with all the best trappings of power.”

“The family ranch near Sabaneta, called La Chavera, has been a frequent source of scrutiny for the political opposition, which contends that the family’s landholdings there and elsewhere in Barinas have grown from a small area to more than 7,000 acres in the past eight years, according to “Hugo Chávez Without His Uniform,” a biography of the president by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka.”

and of course, he tells us about Chavez’ father not so humble or revolutionary background, despite Chavez tales to the contrary:

“The governor, who is in his 70s, has long been a fixture in state politics in Barinas, where for decades he was a loyal organizer for Copei, a conservative political party. From his schoolteacher origins, he rose to become director of education programs for Barinas during the early 1980s.’

(Note added: Funny how the NYT absolutely screwed up the location of Chavez’ hometown Sabaneta, placing it Northeast, rather than southwest)

Today the Cabinet approved what is simply another step in Hugo Chavez Dictatorial takeover of the country. A decree was approved today which in its article 4 simply states:

“All of the assets neccessary to develop the activities of production, fabrication, import, storage, transport, distribution and commercialization of foodstuffs and products subject to price controls are declared of public utility and social interest”

What this means is that the Government can now take over, occupy, nationalize and expropriate any facility in the chain of production, distribution and delivery of any product subject to price controls at will. The products can also be confiscated at will by Government officials. Since the Government can add products to this list at will, this means just about any sector can be threatened with this decree and it gives the Government another weapon to subjugate and create fear in people. This decree is a clear violation of a Constitutrion that guarantees economic freedom in Venezuela, but clearly absence the rule of Law and the lack of independence of the Supreme Court guarantee that it will stand.

Another sad step in giving Hugo Chavez dictatorial control over the country. Another step in making food production unattractive for investment, insuring that shortages and inflation will intensify in the future. Another failed policy by an ignorant Government.

While Alek has said most of what was needed and Jorge noted the quote below, I can’t let it go without saying something about the remarkbale statements by Admiral Cabrera. It is a measure of the loony leaders of our country, that one has to hear such a high ranking member of the Venezuelan military suggesting we have something akin to Al Qaeda in a supposedly common fight against the US. Moreover for him to suggest that Sept. 11th. was self-inflicted by the US Government is simply stupid even if he thinks it may be true.

I wonder why Admiral Cabrera is so quick to react to this news from a wire sevice, joining the fray with Al Qaeda and stupidly blaming the US for our problems. What does the Admiral think of the way his fellow military officers are getting rich or are already rich under Chavez’ watch? Or about the wild spending spree in weapons that take food out of the mouths of poor Venezuelans? Or the gift of oil to Cuba? Or the many unauthorized gifts by the Autocrat/Dictator to other countries? Has he ever complained about any of them? I certainly haven’t heard him. Each and everyone of those acts represents a bigger theat to Venezuela and Venezuelans than anything the US does, it is just simpler to blame his incompetence and that of his fellow officers and politicians on someone else.

It is only when high ranking military officers like Cabrera begin denouncing the real problems of our country that we will be able to fix them. If he really believed in what he was saying, he should then call on Venezuela to stop selling oil to the US immediately. But if he did, he may lose all of his perks, including bodyguards, homes, cars and a salary 40 times the minimum salary. And he definitely does not want that!

“It should be seen how truthful that information is….it sounds illogical that Al Qaeda,
that is against the north American imperialism would go against a State that is precisely
fighting that hegemony, although differently“

Rear Admiral Luis Cabrera, member of President Chavez General Staff. referring to Al Qaeda’s threat against Venezuela’s oil facilities.

Corollary:

When asked what he meant by “differently” he said “we fight with the Constitution,
with legality, with morality and with the truth, not with terrorism”

source here.

Reported by Jorge Arena,
Ghost blogger emeritus.

Thi weekend is a long weekend in Venezuela with Monday and Tuesdays being holidays. Thus, I will go away and enjoy seven days of the beach, resting and catching up with my reading. I have no clue about the Internet capabilities where I am going, but I will leave the blog in capable ghost blogger hands and if possible and nedded, I will make a post or two while I am away.

Have a great one wherever you are and watch out for Tuesday of Carnival, the politician’s favorite day for devaluations in Venezuelan history.

Like a true Autocrat/Dictator, President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize corner stores, supermarkets and butcher shops if they do not comply with regulations or supplying products even if at a loss. Of course, we no longer see the little blue book being waved in his hand as that book, curiously called the Constitution, which guarantees economic freedom. Of course, it is all the fault of Chavez’ policies which will eventually lead to more shortages and not fewer. Thus, the economic lessons of IVth. Century A.D. (Year 301) have not been learned by XXIst Century Socialism. In fact, Diocletian prices controls did not threaten with expropriation, but with the death penalty. And they failed anyway, so imagine what may happen with a third rate Autocrat/Dictator who when confronted seems to be afraid of his own shadow.

All that this shows is the lack of respect Chavze ahs for his own people. How he does not want to yield in teh face of his own mistakes, always blaming others for his misguided policies and refusing to face the reality of the failure of his policies, set by his Minister of Planning Jorge Giordani, a mediocre planner with little economic experience.

With threats like this, all Chavez faces is more shortages. If he keeps importing at subsidized prices, with no custom duties and in a not-for profit organization like Mercal, local producers will not only refuse to even attempt to compete, ut will withdraw from production in the face of his threats. And that in the end, will lead to even more shortages, the worst form of inflation a country can face.

In the face of threats that Al-Qaeda could attack Venezuelan oil facilities in an effort to disrupt supplies to the West, Venezuelan Minister Pedro Carreño said that “The Venezuelan State has its intelligence organizations ready to move forward investigations to guarantee the supply of strategic supplies”

Now I am really worried…

Exhausting day, but all sorts of humorous things in the news:

Deputy Amoroso: “The country is in its best economic and financial moment”

Enjoy it, while it lasts!

Minister Lara: “Chavez will hold Alo Presidente five times a week. An hour and a half each night”

Yeah sure, Chavez will stop after 90 minutes! That will be hard to enjoy day after day. But who will run the country anyway?

Minister Iglesias” The prices of meat, chicken, eggs and milk have been lowered and this time we will enforce it”

Where have I heard that joke before? Do they want to have even more shortages? She also said this Government had revived industry, an even better joke. She did not specify, which, where and how. We laughed anyway.

Tal Cual censored and fined: And the only thing that I did not find funny started with a humor piece by Laureano Marquez in which a judge sucking up to the autocrat found the writer and newspaper guilty (twice!) of violating the privacy of Chavez daughter and fined them. Justice moves fast against the Government enemies and the article is still banned (read censored) from the Internet. This certainly does not intimidate Petkoff, but is part of the campaign to intimidate and quiet down the media. According to the law, Chavez committed the same crime first and does it every time he brings kids on TV for political purposes.

It was indeed a remarkable sight. Another day in fantasy land. The Minister of Communications of a Government that can’t even keep simple imports flowing in an orderly manner, talking about running Government companies efficiently. Suggesting that the “new”, “old”, CANTV, under Government management will work even better than the current one, while in two years CVG Telecom, the Government’s “competing” (what an euphemism!) telecom company, with US$ 250 million plus in investments, has gone through five Presidents and as far as anyone knows, few phone calls have been completed via its network. Unless you believe in fairy tales and this Government is definitely full of fantasies.

But hold it, isn’t that Minister Jesse Chacon? Wasn’t he the head of the telecom regulator CONATEL, when his boss Diosdado Cabello told us in 2001 the wonderful benefits of opening the telecom sector? Whatever happened to those concepts? Or are we to believe that the telecom opening failed because of the participants? Why wasn’t it the fault of the regulators? Could it be they regulated too much? Or that the road to permits and access to bandwidth and services and the like was too cumbersome and filled with obstacles, if not tollbooths (full of euphemisms tonight, no?)? Or were they simply living a different fantasy or was it a different dimension?

As if this were not enough, then, the new Vice-President told us about how all of the privatizations of the 90’s did not make the people less poor. But he failed to mention that the telecom sector has topped the list as the sector with the largest investments in the country, year, after year, after year, since CANTV was privatized. And that if CANTV had remained in the hands of the Government, these investments would have never taken place or its two wireless competitors, Digitel and Movistar, would have beaten CANTV to the game and most likely they would be announcing their nationalization today instead.

And thus, the Government in their usual confusing style announced an agreement to buy Verizon’s stake in CANTV for a price of US$ 17.85 per ADR. While Chacon and Rodriguez spoke for quite a while, the Verizon representative communicated more in four sentences than they did in half an hour, he actually used words like “tender”, implying the Government will buy everyone that wants to sell, which was never mentioned by the two Government representatives. But they talked, boy, how they talked, about efficiency, social goals, socialism, not for profit and other such fantasies.

And I understand that in the morning they will announce a dividend also to be paid by CANTV (over three bucks!), which will make the final price above that offered by Mexican Carlos Slim and his companies Telmex and America Moviles. Thus, in usual revolutionary fashion, the Government buys “cheap”, but pays a bundle. It sends a message of revolution to the masses and the gallery, while paying upfront to the capitalists, who leave the country and live happily ever after.

But that is not the real question. the real question is how the Government acts with its Daddy Warbucks attitude, with CANTV and EDC being their little orphan Annies, spending some US$ 3 billion in buying well run companies in the interest of sovereignty, while the country’s infrastructure is simply falling apart. If not collapsing.

And falling apart it is. Ask the people who have to drive to El Junquito everyday, or to Los Teques, or those that go to Oriente, a recently built highway with sections that have collapsed or are unfinished. (Will not mention the old viaduct, that is ancient history.) These are no fantasies for them, they are the hard reality of daily life. Somehow I would think that spending these US$ 3 billion locally on much needed infrastructure, would and should be better for the well being of the population that having the Government spend US$ 3 billion that goes abroad and assume the management of these two well run companies, which will become in short term order, the object of desire of politicians, a source of pork barrel politics and giveaways, that in less than five years will make these companies as inefficient as the old CANTV or the current Government national electric company CADAFE.

And if these two examples , CANTV, from the past, and CADAFE, from the present, were not enough, one only needs to see how the main focus of the Government for eight years, the self-proclaimed self sufficiency in agriculture, has been a total failure (if not disaster!). The Land Bill gave the Government the power to take over land, which it did, in order to distribute it to the peasants, which it has not done in a magnitude commensurate to the expropriations. With the end result being that according to the Government’s own statistics, agricultural production went down 9% in 2006. Meanwhile, food inflation was 4% in January and 30% in the last twelve months, as too much money chases the few goods that are produced locally. The Government meanwhile, has not even been able to import efficiently at any price, with billions being spent, while simultaneously aiding the destruction of the same agricultural production they defend with such passion. Or is it fantasy?

But having failed at their main project for the last eight years, is no reason for them to believe that they are on the wrong path. Now Chavez, who can’t find a handful of managers to run the current Government well, will have to spread the few he has even further. The conclusion is that, if the Government survives the next five years without a major financial crisis, in 2012, the same characters (or maybe those running agriculture today) will announce the nationalizations of telecom companies Movistar and Digitel, as the last step in acquiring total sovereignty in telecommunications as the “new”, “old”, CANTV, becomes so inefficient that they have to merge all in one. And that is no fantasy, it is a prediction.

And the usual suspects will be applauding that day in the future, as much as they did today, even if their Internet access becomes intermittent (or restricted!) or part of the “new”, “old”, CANTV, is sold at a bargain price to a friend of the regime or if corruption is so rampant, that the current profitable CANTV, has billion-dollar losses. After all, the revolution does not want profits and apparently cares little about losses. Losses make us all poorer and that is apparently good for preserving a revolution.

And these fanatics could care less, because results are not important for the revolution. Where is the Orinoco-Apure axis? What happened to the US$ 500 million spent in Chavez’ first year on it? Where is all the money spent on agricultural subsidies? Or where are the estates expropriated to benefit the people? How many are owned by active or retired military? By Chavez’ relatives or those that claim to be his relatives? Why is agricultural production down? Why are there food shortages? (Add your own list here…)

I know I ask too much. But in some sense all my questions were answered today by Minister Chacon at the press conference to announce the takeover of Cantv. He actually dared to say that the “new”, old, CANTV, will provide better service to the Orinoco-Apure axis. Thus, he in fact added one fantasy on top of the other one. The power of dreams!

And that is all the revolution seems to be. One fantasy on top of the other, on top of the previous one, until they all believe their stories.

And they actually keep a straight face telling us about it.

And that is all the revolution seems to be about.

On a proposal by then Minister of Finance Guicaipuro Lameda to eradicate poverty, Minister of Planning, then and now, Jorge Giordani replied:

“You have not understood Guicaipuro. The revolution can not survive without the poor”