The Devil's Excrement

On Sunday,
President Hugo Chavez said in his variety show Alo Presidente that poverty
under his Government had dropped by 30%, leaving speechless both opposition as
well as Government analysts. Where did the President get that number? Is it
possible? Who told him that?

In order
to explore the President illusory number we decided to look at poverty numbers
as accounted for by both the Government, via the National Institute for Statistics
(INE), as well as the Institute for Social Studies of the Catholic University
(UCAB):

As you can
see, no matter which numbers you take it is impossible for a 30% difference to
have occurred at anytime during the
almost eight years Chavez has been in power, since the level of poverty never
went above 60.2% in the Government statistics and 55.6% in the UCAB numbers. Moreover,
changes in the poverty numbers of both INE and UCAB were quite similar until
2005

Even if
you use today’s
numbers of 33.9% by INE, the 30% figure used by Chavez never materializes. This
is much like the myth created by Chavez in his 1998 Presidential campaign that
80% of Venezuelans lived in poverty, a number never measured by any internal,
external, official or private institution, but which Chavez popularized to such
an extent that it is regularly quoted, as shown in an
earlier post. A lie told a thousand times does indeed become the truth.

But what
makes it intriguing is how the INE and UCAB numbers have begun to deviate from
each other, showing today the biggest difference in the last eight years. The
differences have always been methodological and it is difficult to prove or
show that one methodology is better than the other, the only questions is then
whether they are both honest or not. In 1999, the National Institute for Statistics
(INE) began using its own CPI measure, while UCAB has continued to use the numbers
given by the Venezuelan Central Bank. INE on the other hand, calculates its CPI
by multiplying by a factor of two the increase in the price of foodstuffs according to their poll, thus
imposing a very different measure from the Central Bank CPI which includes all goods. Given
that the Central Bank numbers are not exactly “independent” then the same
trends should be seen in both sets of data even if the absolute numbers differ.

But none
of this explains the “miracle in 2005”, when poverty went miraculously down by
14.6%, according to INE, while remaining essentially the same in the UCAB
numbers.

But we can
look back at the origins of this magical improvement. The current head of INE,
Elias Eljuri, was named to his position by Hugo Chavez when his predecessor was
fired for giving out “bad” numbers for poverty. Chavez, in his usual
know-it-all style, said something like what follows, during one of his Alo
Presidentes in early 2005:

“I have no doubts that the methods
used by INE to measure poverty are not right. They measure our reality using
neo-liberal ideas, as if no revolution was taking place” (or something very similar)

The order
was quite clear: Reduce poverty using revolutionary methodology or else!

Now, given
that the INE number is based on only the increase of the price of foodstuffs, it is
essentially impossible for that number to have dropped so fast, while the UCAB
number has stayed flat. You see, the overall inflation measured by the Central
Bank in the last twelve months, which is what UCAB uses, or any other time period in the last year and a
half, has
been lower and even much lower than that of foodstuffs for essentially any
period you may choose. For example, so far this year, inflation for foodstuffs is
up 17.4% and for the last twelve months it is up a whooping 26.7%, while the CPI
is up only 10.4% and 14.9% for the same two periods. Thus, if anything, the INE
numbers should be running higher than those of UCAB’s which is very far from
what is being reported. In fact, in the last four months, inflation for foodstuffs
has been up a scary 4.7%, 5.5%, 5.1% and 4.3%, which is twice what has been
seen in the overall CPI of 1.6%, 1.9%, 2.4% and 2.2%. So, guess who should be
showing worse numbers according to their methodology? You guessed it, INE
should be, but who knows how their numbers are being manipulated.

In fact,
you should have it clear that even if the absolute numbers in the last eight years
have been different, the trends have always been the same up to 2005. This
makes sense, because both the INE numbers and the UCAB numbers measure poverty
on the basis of comparing income to inflation and the ability to purchase a
basic basket of stuff and services with that income. Thus, the current INE
numbers do not make any sense. But in any case, there is no 30% difference to
any previous number reported by either group.

Like much
of what Chavez says or does, it is simply an illusion, in this case a 30%
illusion, with no basis or reality other than the wishful thinking of Chavez
and his administration.

Last Sunday, Hugo Chavez blasted the Mayors of the country for allowing people to drink openly on the streets, even going as far as praising Muslim countries for banning drinking. But somehow he failed to say anything at all during the rally welcoming him back last Friday, where drinks were not only widely distributed by the Chavista organizers to those in attendance, but we also saw the spectacle of this drunk cavorting around the fountains of Plaza O’Leary where the rally was held and entertaining the crowd. Maybe he is the leader of Mision “Borrachos con Chavez” (Drunks with Chavez) and the autocrat did not want to upset or annoy him! What a BS artist Chavez is!

Thanks M. and Yahoo for the pics!

So, the Chavistas say, we have the safest electronic voting system in the world, sure, ask the experts, they don’t believe such an animal exists:

Pull the Plug by Avriel Rubin in Forbes

I am a computer scientist. I own seven
Macintosh computers, one Windows machine and a Palm Treo 700p with a
GPS unit, and I chose my car (Infiniti M35x) because it had the most
gadgets of any vehicle in its class. My 7-year-old daughter uses
e-mail. So why am I advocating the use of 17th-century technology for
voting in the 21st century–as one of my critics puts it?

The 2000 debacle in Florida spurred a rush to
computerize voting. In 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act,
which handed out $2.6 billion to spend on voting machines. Most of that
cash was used to acquire Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Yet while computers are very proficient at
counting, displaying choices and producing records, we should not rely
on computers alone to count votes in public elections. The people who
program them make mistakes, and, safeguards aside, they are more
vulnerable to manipulation than most people realize. Even an event as
common as a power glitch could cause a hard disk to fail or a magnetic
card that holds votes to permanently lose its data. The only remedy
then: Ask voters to come back to the polls. In a 2003 election in Boone
County, Ind., DREs recorded 144,000 votes in one precinct populated
with fewer than 6,000 registered voters. Though election officials
caught the error, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where such mistakes
would go undetected until after a victor has been declared.

Consider one simple mode of attack that has already proved effective on a widely used DRE, the Accuvote made by Diebold.
It’s called overwriting the boot loader, the software that runs first
when the machine is booted up. The boot loader controls which operating
system loads, so it is the most security-critical piece of the machine.
In overwriting it an attacker can, for example, make the machine count
every fifth Republican vote as a Democratic vote, swap the vote outcome
at the end of the election or produce a completely fabricated result.
To stage this attack, a night janitor at the polling place would need
only a few seconds’ worth of access to the computer’s memory card slot.

Further, an attacker can modify what’s known
as the ballot definition file on the memory card. The outcome: Votes
for two candidates for a particular office are swapped. This attack
works by programming the software to recognize the precinct number
where the machine is situated. If the attack code limits its execution
to precincts that are statistically close but still favor a particular
party, it goes unnoticed.

One might argue that one way to prevent this
attack is to randomize the precinct numbers inside the software. But
that’s an argument made in hindsight. If the defense against the attack
is not built into the voting system, the attack will work, and there
are virtually limitless ways to attack a system. And let’s not count on
hiring 24-hour security guards to protect voting machines.

DREs have a transparency problem: You can’t
easily discover if they’ve been tinkered with. It’s one thing to
suspect that officials have miscounted hanging chads but something else
entirely for people to wonder whether a corrupt programmer working
behind the scenes has rigged a computer to help his side.

My ideal system isn’t entirely Luddite. It
physically separates the candidate selection process from vote casting.
Voters make their selections on a touchscreen machine, but the machine
does not tabulate votes. It simply prints out paper ballots with the
voters’ choices marked. The voters review the paper ballots to make
sure the votes have been properly recorded. Then the votes are counted;
one way is by running them through an optical scanner. After the polls
close, some number of precincts are chosen at random, and the ballots
are hand counted and compared with the optical scan totals to make sure
they are accurate. The beauty of this system is that it leaves a
tangible audit trail. Even the designer of the system cannot cheat if
the voters check the printed ballots and if the optical scanners are
audited.

Aviel Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and author of Brave New Ballot: The Battle To Safeguard Democracy In The Age Of Electronic Voting.

Chavez’ triumphal (??) return to Zulia state has been moved from the open air and smallish Maracaibo bullfighting arena, to the closed in, roofed and even smaller Palace of Events which barely holds 2,500 people.

Things that make you go umpf!

I find it
somewhat funny and ironic how both Chavistas and opposition politicians seem to
avoid and skirt any discussion of what has happened in Mexico ever since the
Presidential election two moths ago, which culminated today with the ruling by
the Electoral Court that Felipe Calderon had won.

This blog
is about Venezuela
and I avoid talking about issues that do not focus on my country, but I think
it is a little bit silly for our politicians to avoid the topic.

Chavistas
avoid it, because they do not want the same principles applied to them. When Lopez
Obrador demands a recount of all the ballots, this goes to the crux of the oppositions
arguments for counting all of the ballots in Venezuela, which Chavistas have refused
to do over and over, despite the fact that it would have cleared up many
uncertainties, as well as making people more confident on the voting system.

The
opposition has also avoided the subject, apparently because they do not sympathize
with Lopez Obrador, who is asking for the recounting of all the votes. Thus their
silence.

I found
both positions incredibly superficial and stupid There are very few
coincidences in the two cases and few similarities, to wit:

1)     
The
Electoral Court
in Mexico was appointed when
PRI was dominant in Mexico
ten years ago and it can hardly be called partisan for the party that
essentially forced PRI out of the electoral picture in Mexico.

2)     
All
decisions by the Court were unanimous, in contrast with the fact that all difficult
CNE decisions during the recall petition, recall referendum and subsequent
elections were decided by either a 3-2 vote, prior to the current CNE and
4-1 since the new one with four clearly pro-Chavez members was appointed.

3)     
Perhaps
the most important point, all votes were actually counted in the Mexican
election at least once, something that has never been done in Venezuela since
the new voting machines were acquired. Lopez Obrador is asking that all votes
be recounted, whether they are under question or not. (Under a Supreme Court
ruling in Mexico,
a complete recount implies the election is invalid and a new one needs to be
held)

4)     
The
Electoral Court
recounted all tallies with both parties having copies of them, something that
has not happened in Venezuela
since the 2000 Presidential election, so that it has been impossible to even check
that the sum of the tallies is correct

5)     
The
Electoral Court
in Mexico
recounted 9% of the ballots, which were all of the cases that were submitted to
it in which there were charges of errors, evidence of fraud or specific
evidence that there may be a problem. Close to a quarter million votes were
disqualified in this recount.

Thus, the
suggestion that there is any similarity between what happens in Venezuela and what has happened in Mexico is
purely coincidental, just a full counting of the votes would have made a huge
difference socially and politically in the Venezuelan recall vote and recent
elections. Thus, our politicians on both sides should be more honest and be capable of  studying, discussing and understanding these issues. We need it to survive as a Nation.

And speaking of fascism and intolerance we begin where we left off last night as Rosales’ rally in Vargas state was blocked today by pro-Chavez groups, who stormed the rally throwing empty bottles and stones at the participants. The anti-riot police allowed the agression to continue without intervention.

Fascism, intolerance and disrespect for the rights of others are the daily hallmarks of Chavismo.

CNE Board member Vicente Diaz accused the telecom regulator of being and acting partially in favor of the Government and Chavez’ MVR. Diaz said that on July 25th. he requested, as part of his responsabilities within the CNE, from the CONATEL office a video transmitted by Government’s TV station VTV and he has yet to receive it. In contrast, the Head of Chavez’ campaign committee Francisco Ameliach asked for a video trasmitted on August 24th. and not only did he get it, but CONATEL viisted a number of TV stations today checking for another one in which the actions of an opposition candidate are questioned. Diaz also criticized that the Head of CONATEL was at Friday’s pro-Chavez rally, during working hours, wearing a red t-shirt and gave statements to the Government’s TV station during the rally. He called this improper, unethical and a violation of the regulations.

Of course, the equally partial President of the CNE said in defense of COANTEL, that while electoral matters where the domain of the CNE, subliminal ads were that of CONATEL, in order to justify the actions by CONATEL, in particular those today against Globovision. She did not explain what would happen if it is a “subliminal electoral” ad.

This is all of the same type of fascist and Goebbelian behavior by this outlaw Government. When Barreto insulted the middle class and the Mayors of the municipalities run by Primero Justicia, the People’s Ombudsman sided with Barreto, in clear proof of the partiality of the officials of this Government. He is being denouced to international authorities for his inaction.

Chavez and his party control all branches of Government, control all of the funds, abuse their power daily and they show up daily on TV saying they are the victims. Meanwhile the Minister of Information, who happens to be also the official spokesman for Chavez’ MVR party, says that the coverage by state media is completely balanced.

Daniel asks in his latest post: Is Fascism the New Left? My feeling is that it is the other way around, the new left is simply fascist, intolerant, could care less for human rights or the enviroment and wants to impose their views. If you don’t agree with them, you are not only their enemy, but they will attempt to wipe you out legally or otherwise. To them the end justifies the means. They do not obey their own rules and they believe that if they tell a lie a thousand times, it will become the truth.

The Chavez Government and its Goebbelian spokesmen are the best example of that. The new Bolivian and Mexican left are simply trying to follow.

One gets tired of blasting President Hugo Chavez, but his performance
yesterday during his now irregular Variety/Reality show “Alo Presidente” was nothing but simply pathetic. After avoiding
the issue of crime for almost eight years, Chavez only addressed the issue of
security in his last Sunday program a few weeks ago when he expressed his
concern for the pro-Chavez urban leaders that have been killed and he threatened
Minister of the Interior and Justice Chacon with firing him if things did not
improve.

Yesterday, he mentioned the problem of security again for only the
second time in almost eight years. This time, he asked the people to help protect the Cuban Doctors,
because one Cuban medical doctor, in Venezuela
for the Barrio Adentro program, was killed with a knife in the Caracas neighborhood of Petare. 90,000
Venezuelans have been killed under Chavez’ watch, practically tripling the
yearly number of 1998 when he first assumed power, Venezuela has become worse
than Colombia in terms of violent deaths, 40 Venezuelans die daily in violent
crimes and the number of people killed in police confrontations has gone up by
a factor of five, and all the autocrat seems to really care for are his
political buddies and Cuban doctors.

Whatever happened to the “pueblo” that he claims to live for and love
and gets murdered by Chavez’ own police? Whatever happened to the adolescents
that are terrorized, abused and murdered by Chavez own police? To the soldiers
tortured and abused by his own military officers? Why hasn’t Chavez ever called
for anyone to protect them? Why didn’t Chavez raise his cry of alarm when those
terrible cases occurred? Why doesn’t he care about the rest of us? Wasn’t it Hugo Chavez who seven years ago justified robbery by the poor in order to feed yourself?

And to top it all off, he reacts like an irresponsible adolescent,
blaming everything except his inaction, incompetence and inefficiency for the
problem. He blamed it on the media that supposedly stimulates alcohol and dug
consumption, as if alcohol and drugs could be advertised, or as if he did not
send his goons to the media every time his Government disagreed with something
they said, whether explicit or not.

In fact, only today, the telecom regulator CONATEL visited the offices of
a number of TV channels to investigate some “subliminal” ads by opposition
candidate Rosales, as if they had nothing better to do, or as if it was not
Chavez and his Miranda Command that
were abusing the campaign rules, daily, really, subliminally and in any
other possible manner. In fact, it was shown that last Friday, 94%-plus of the
time in the Government TV station VTV, was devoted to you know who, Hugo
Chavez, in flgranta and grotesque violation fo the cmapign laws.

Chavez even scolded the mayors for allowing people to drink on the
streets, as if he had not been present in his own rally last Friday, where
hundreds were openly drinking beer and rhum on the streets as they cheered. Of
course, get rid of the booze and
attendance would drop dramatically, more than it already has, as it is one of
the main enticements used by the Chavistas leaders to get people to attend.

But he can’t blame the media, the alcohol and the catholic nature of
our country (He praised Muslim countries for banning drinking) for the terror Venezuelans and in a lesser scale the Cuban Doctors
are living. He is responsible for the whole problem. It was Hugo Chavez and his
cohorts that dismantled professional police forces, one after another, to put
their own mediocre former and retired military in charge of a problem they had
no clue or inkling about. Yes, the same military that are responsible for the sharp
increase in the imports of Scotch in Venezuela, at the official exchange
rate and which is sold at special prices at all military commissaries. But we
do not hear Chavez saying anything about it, they might get mad at him and who
knows what they might do!! That is the cynicism of Chavez and his revolution at
its worst!!

But the truth is that Venezuela
has become utter chaos under the stupidity and egocentricity of Hugo Chavez. He
goes all the way to China
to promote the country’s candidacy for the UN Security Council, which does not
even carry a vote. And maybe by now there was nobody at the foreign office,
since most careers diplomats have been fired, that could tell the autocrat that
Venezuela’s competition in
the vote, Guatemala, does
not even have diplomatic relations with China,
as that country recognizes Taiwan.
But he went, and in his absence, more than 480 Venezuelans died while he
traveled, he signed in one day almost as many agreements as there were dead
Venezuelans that day. But recall the agreements signed by him during his last
trip to China?
Shelved, filed and forgotten in who knows whose office or boxes, since there
has been such a high rotation in the Foreign Ministry, that nobody there went
to China the last time Chavez did..

And you have to wonder about Chavez’ mental stability. He can’t stand
being in the country, where he is no longer the type of leader that can walk merrily
among the crowds of his supporters, which are still strong. He cares little for
trying to solve or solving their problems, he is surrounded my men and woman
that do nothing but suck up to him, painting a reality that is far from the
truth. He trusts nobody, so he simply rotates the same incompetent and
inefficient men and women around him, mostly former military or simply adorers
that would never tell him what the is really happening. Yesterday he said poverty is down 30% sibce he took over, as of the poor don’t know how they are doing and aksed for more ideology, when people are simply asking for a better standard of living, inclduing their personal security.

And if Chavez can’t tell what is going on, then he does not deserve to
be in the position he occupies. It has been seven plus long years of waste,
corruption, inefficiency and lies.
Inflation is jumping up due to the mismanagement of the economy. People
are unhappy as the numerous protests show. In one week, the workers of the 100%
Chavista National Assembly voted in the
opposition union by a three to one vote and the members of the savings plan of
the Electoral Board (CNE) voted with 99% of the votes against the
administration of their money under Francisco Carrasquero and Jorge Rodriguez. You
have to wonder is Chavez has been told.

But in the end, the most pathetic aspect of his rant yesterday was how
he ducked his responsibility and asked the people to defend the Cuban Doctors.
That is what Government’s are responsible for, that is what Government’s do and
are supposed to do. Any Government is responsible for the well being of all its
citizens, pro or against. Chavez is not in the opposition, he has been in
charge of running the country for almost seven years, but he appears not to
have assumed his responsibility fully. Simply, because he does not care, Hugo
Chavez only cares about Hugo Chavez, the power, the adoration, the perks, the
travel.

But people are getting the message. They are beginning to understand that
Venezuela
needs a President for all. Someone that respects and cares for them. Someone that
will work for them and not that pathetic figure we saw yesterday that cares
more for Fidel and his people and asks others to assume the responsibilities he
was elected for.

Nobody has spent as much time and effor in understaing poverty and its causes in Venezuela as Luis Pedro España form the Catholic University. But the Government does not use his knowledge, the result of careful studies and lots of work over the years. This article says it all, it is the well off in the country that have benefitted most from the current oil windfall. But beware, being in the top 30% of income in Venezuelas does not mean that you are really doing that great.That is part of the tragedy.

The consequences
of prosperity by
Luis Pedro España in El Nacional

How do you explain that with so much oil income in the last
three years, the levels of poverty are similar to those of 1999? This is the question
that is made by all external observers that come to explore the social
conditions in Venezuela.
If the above is hard to understand, imagine what it would be explaining that in
these years of revolutionary Government, inequality has actually  increased.

The spokesmen for official figures only show the numbers that are
convenient to them. When in 2004 the numbers showed the collapse that family
income suffered between 2002 and 2003, the Government was looking for different
figures to show the “recovery” of the situation. Today, when the boom of income
makes it such that poverty statistics smile for the Government, that
methodology stopped being neo-liberal and the enemy of the regime, to begin to
be shown in the face of any criticism. The structural variables of IBS have
been left aside, because today, using those, we are in the same place we were in terms of overcoming poverty

As we said before, we are facing growth in income, but not in
production. Families can have a little more real income compared to 2003, but
the collapse of the national economy is such that that private investment, both
local and foreign, has just disappeared.

Without investment, there is no employment and without employment what
you have is poverty. The structural causes of poverty remain intact. There are
no opportunities of good employment, well paid and with other labor benefits
and they are not there because of the lack of investment. But there are no conditions either for
Venezuelans of low income to have access to the few good jobs that there exist
in the country. The whole system for providing social services is as scant and
bad as it was in the past and it is not true that the missions are going to make a
difference.

Since in Venezuela
national income has two components, oil and non-oil, what has improved the
real income of families can be attributed to oil and its distribution mechanisms.
The latter takes us to the topic of the distribution of income and inequality.
The new inequality that has actually appeared in Venezuela.

The last accounting that the Institute for Economic Research of UCAB
has, shows that the distribution of income has worsened in the last three years.
Not much, because the structure for distribution does not change overnight, but
it certainly draws your attention that the strata for which it has improved is
for the 30% of the population with the higher income on the country. No matter
how much of a populist discourse you may have, the economic and social policy
of the Government has not managed to favor in a larger measure the status of
the poorest. The income of all strata have improved, but in particular that of
those that belong to the formal economy, to the 30% that has the highest
income, to the 30% that structurally is not poor.

It is not true that the missions are boosting popular sectors. On the
average only 9% of the income of families comes from these transfers and at
most, we estimate, that it may reach 12% in the poor sectors. The boom in
income that the country is experimenting is lived in the barrios not because of
the Government, but because of markets. There is more work, but the barrio is
not very productive. The economy demands more goods and services and the
workers of low of medium qualification are inserted through the informal
workforce or on their own. Thus, the improvement. But it has been the formal
economy the one that has been favored the most. Without programs that that
allow for an increase in the level of productivity of the poor, the demand will
continue to be provided by those that are already productive, that is, those
who are not poor.

It is not only market mechanisms that have increased the inequality as
a result of the absence of progressive social policies, but instead it has been
the social policies themselves that have contributed to the increase in
inequality. The policy of a sustained and compulsive minimum salary is a policy
that favors the bourgeois of the barrio, not the poor. The missions and their
populist mechanisms of selection are such, that it is the better informed and
capable in the barrio that can participate in hustling for the missions and its
grants. Using this mechanism, the waste of the prosperity will at least be the same
as the waste of those in the past. But may God free us from a recession in oil prices; no democracy
will be able to handle the end of the prosperity.