Every year in California, we get to vote on about a dozen initiatives, most of which we voters are completely clueless about. I'm not talking about the much publicized gay marriage one -- everybody is entitled to an opinion on that. It's all the bond issues. Shall we issue $10 billion in bonds for a supertrain from LA to SF? How about $7 billion to removes asbestos from LA schools? (I think they both passed. I'm too depressed to look them up.)
Sure, why not? They're bonds, right, not taxes? So we won't have to pay them. I guess, theoretically, we're supposed to pay them sometime, but no doubt we'll just flip the state to a greater fool before that happens.
Obviously, the initiative system is broken. The state is completely broke, with a predicted illegal shortfall of $25 billion next year in the state budget. Yet voters are continuing to take on debt with no idea how it will be paid. This is the state that sank the world economy. We're too childish to have that kind of spending power.
We hear a lot of criticism lately of irresponsible financial institutions. But what about irresponsible voters? California's voters just went on another spending spree.
Voters in California narrowly approved a $9.95 billion bond issue for high-speed rail, okayed $980 million for projects at children's hospitals, and gave the nod to $900 million for a veterans mortgage program. In Los Angeles, voters approved a $7 billion facilities bond issue for the Los Angeles Unified School District with nearly 70% of the vote, easily eclipsing a 55% requirement, as well as a $3.5 billion measure for the Los Angeles Community College District.
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California voters approved three separate state general obligation bond authorizations, including the largest, a $9.95 billion authorization to finance a high-speed passenger trains system. They rejected a $5 billion bond measure that would have financed rebates for buyers of a variety of alternative-fuel vehicles.
In Los Angeles County, 67% of voters approved a half-cent sales tax that will raise $30 billion to $40 billion to fund light rail, subway and other transit projects over the next 30 years. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority hasn't yet said how much it will spend on a pay-as-you-go basis versus bond financing.
Voters approved $2.1 billion of GOs for the San Diego Unified School District with 69% of the vote. In Long Beach, voters approved a $1.2 billion GO bond measure for the Long Beach Unified School District.
San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved an $887 million GO bond measure to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital, giving the measure 79% of the vote. Santa Clara County voters gave their public hospital, the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, 78% support in an $840 million GO bond referendum.
The East Bay Regional Park District passed a $500 million open space bond with 71% of the vote.
Schools and trains bring out the profligacy in California voters.
Steve wants to put limits on how much money an initiative can spend. But the problem here goes deeper than the initiative system. Democracy is broken. While democracy is becoming more broken the idea that democracy will break in this way goes all the way back to Aristotle in his "The Politics volume 1": The many poor can abuse power and use democracy to plunder just as much as the tyrant can in a dictatorship.
Yet another question: Who ought to have the supreme authority in the state? The many,—the wealthy,—the tyrant,—the good,—the one best man? Any of these alternatives may lead to bad results. If the poor rule, they may divide the property of the rich. Is not this unjust? ‘Nay,’ will be the reply, ‘the people did it.’ But if they go on and on, the poor majority dividing by force the wealth of the rich minority, the state will be ruined. And on the same principle the rich or the tyrant may rob the poor. Yet surely justice is the preservation and not the destruction of states. The people, if they plunder the rich, are no better than the tyrant; both make might prevail over right. ‘But ought not the good to rule?’ Then a slight will be put upon everybody else. ‘Or the one best man?’—that will make the number excluded still larger. Or, shall the law, and not the will of man, have the supreme power? And what if the law be defective?
Here is another variation on Aristotle's look at the unjust poor fleecing the rich. You can find more great passages in classical Western books in the Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty.
CNN has a running poll of "persuadable" voters which shows up as a sort of red, green and blue ekg on the bottom of the screen--though only, I'm told, for those who are viewing in HD. It's completely mesmerizing. So far I've learned: McCain talking about Iraq is not popular (though mostly that's "persuadable" Democrats dragging down the average). But McCain bashing Iran is like one of those third world dictators who win with 99.4% of the vote.
Conclusion: "persuadable" voters are crazy people who don't like the war we have, but want to start another one just in case that one's more fun.
Do these people only learn the hard way? Or do they think we'll just bomb Iran and they like bombing wars?
Remember, once the United States commits to some country the leaders who made the original decision have a hard time reversing it because admission of failure is something most leaders are either very averse or extremely averse to. Reagan could pull out of Lebanon. But Bush Jr. can't pull out of Iraq and McCain feels just as bound to this mistake as a Senator.
If only Reagan was still President maybe he'd attack Iran to give himself political cover for pulling out of Iraq. Whether Reagan attacked Grenada to give himself political cover to pull out of Lebanon is debated by historians. But if a decision could be made to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in exchange for pulling out of Iraq would that deliver a net benefit?
One month ago Kenya had an election. In some circles elections are held to be a sort of universal balm or cure for what ails a society. Terrorism? Elections will cure it. Poverty? Just need elections. Corruption? Elections will throw the bums out. Well, in reality elections sometimes tear a society apart into warring tribes.
NAKURU, Kenya — Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, may seem calm, but anarchy reigns just two hours away.
In Nakuru, furious mobs rule the streets, burning homes, brutalizing people and expelling anyone not in their ethnic group, all with complete impunity.
On Saturday, hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with six-foot iron bars, poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with sharpened sticks.
The police were nowhere to be found.
The "international community" ought to consider a partition of Kenya. But partition is anathema. It is an acknowledgment that we can't all just get along. If ethnic groups aren't compatible in Iraq or Kenya, heck, they might not be compatible in Brixton or in the suburbs of Paris. So deny that one with venomous vehemence.
In large area of Kenya - including Nairobi - ethnic cleansing is turning ethnically mixed neighborhoods into ethnically pure neighborhoods. This is happening at a faster pace than what we've seen in Baghdad. Without American troops dying to prevent it the ethnic cleansing plays out much more rapidly..
Nakuru, the biggest town in the beautiful Rift Valley, is the scene of a mass migration now moving in two directions. Luos are headed west, Kikuyus are headed east, and packed buses with mattresses strapped on top pass one another in the road, with the bewildered children of the two ethnic groups staring out the windows at one another.
Some UN-organized mission could go into Kenya and move the ethnic groups away from each other with trucks.
In only 80 years, Kenya's population has jumped from 2.9 million to 37 million. Had America grown at the same rate since 1928, when it had 120 million people, it would now have 1.56 billion citizens.
Kenya belongs to a group of some 40 countries that have extremely high population growth - rates of increase that I call "demographic armament." In a typical nation of this group, every 1,000 males aged 40 to 44 are succeeded by at least 2,500 boys aged 0 to 4. In Kenya there are 4,190 such boys.
Most of the world's population growth is occurring in countries that generate little or no new technology or science. They are firmly in the column "Part Of The Problem" and in no way in the column "Part Of The Solution". So the Problem is becoming bigger. Oh, and you might want to go see any endangered species you've ever wanted to see now because all those hungry human mouths are doing to devastate the remaining wild habitats. Good bye other species.
A Christian Science Monitor reporter says if a Democrat wins the US presidency then US policy might shift toward more support for population growth control.
If a Democratic president enters the White House about a year from now, some experts in family planning anticipate a boon for mankind: a greater effort by the United States government to restrain world population growth.
As it is, when a baby born today enters kindergarten, the number of people in the world will have grown by more than 300 million. That's on top of the 6.7 billion individuals alive today. That four-year population-growth projection is comparable to the 303 million people now living in the US – the third most populous nation in the world after China and India.
I think Barack Hussein Obama would have a hard time convincing himself that Kenya's most pressing issue is birth control. He's got a big need to feel ethnically authentic and politically correct on race. So how's he going to admit that more Kenyans is a bad thing? That's like saying that more Kenyans are not a blessing and not valuable resources. Why would that be? He won't like some of the obvious answers to that question.
So could Hillary bring herself to make a serious effort at birth control in Africa? On the one hand, she can win points with her feminist supporters by supporting a woman's right to an abortion. On the other hand, if she tries really hard she opens herself up to charges of racism since birth control for the poor people of the world ends up focusing on non-white peoples. What, we need fewer non-white people? Heresy! "The inquisition, lets begin. The inquisition, look out sin."
John Burns of the New York Times paints a portrait of Benazir Bhutto as someone not very morally principled.
A deeply polarizing figure, the self-styled “daughter of Pakistan” was twice elected prime minister and twice expelled from office amid a swirl of corruption charges that ultimately propelled her into self-imposed exile in London and Dubai for much of the past decade.
She claims to have been framed on corruption charges by political enemies. But given what is known about her lifestyle, attitudes, and the assortment of people making the accusations her claims of innocence seem hard to credit.
Burns said her admirers compared the Bhuttos to the Borgias. The Borgia Popes were huge scandals.
Violence ran like a thread through her family life, to an extent that caused her admirers to compare the Bhuttos, in the contribution they made to Pakistan’s political life, and in the price they paid for it, to the Kennedys — and her enemies, pointing to the Bhuttos’ bitter family feuds, to compare them to the Borgias. The younger of Ms. Bhutto’s two brothers, Shahnawaz, died mysteriously of poisoning in 1995, in an apartment owned by the Bhuttos in Cannes, France. French investigators said they suspected that a family feud over a multimillion-dollar inheritance from Zulfikar Bhutto was involved, but no charges were filed.
Ms. Bhutto’s other brother, Murtaza, who along with Shahnawaz founded a terrorist group that sought to topple General Zia, spent years in exile in Syria beginning in the 1980s. When Murtaza finally returned to Pakistan, in 1994, he quickly fell into a bitter dispute with Ms. Bhutto over the family’s political legacy — and, he told a reporter at the time, over the money he said had been placed in a Swiss bank by their father when he was prime minister. In 1996, Murtaza was gunned down outside his home in Karachi, and his widow, Ghinva, blamed Asif Ali Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s husband.
Okay, one or both of her brothers might have been killed in family feuds. Also, they both operated a terrorist group against the Zia government (and Zia was the one who said "Charlie did it!" about former Congressman Charlie Wilson's glorious war against the Soviets in Afghanistan).
She and her husband Asif Ali Zardari were accused of embezzling $1.5 billion dollars.
After her second dismissal from office in 1996, a friend said Ms. Bhutto’s sense of herself as inseparable from the fate of Pakistan contributed to actions that led Pakistani investigators to accuse her and Mr. Zardari of embezzling as much $1.5 billion from government accounts.
Pakistan is a pretty corrupt place. Benazir claimed her government was less corrupt than the military governments. Maybe that's true. But then is Pakistan incapable of a low level of corruption? Do the people have personalities and moral codes that make large scale corruption inevitable? After all, they do not possess the extreme genetic shyness that helps make Finland so uncorrupt. They might be innately corrupt people.
Anyone see a parallel with Ahmed Chalabi's tireless efforts to ingratiate himself with Washington DC power brokers?
The American bid to restore her to power in Islamabad reflected her tireless efforts to maintain a network of the powerful among the political media elite in Washington and in London.
So I want to know: Which foreign individuals are currently living in exile in Washington and London plotting and lobbying to be returned to power with American and British help? Which ones have a decent chance of pulling off their ambitions? Who are future Chalabis and Bhuttos? Do any of the people we put into power end up turning out well for us? We need to know.
Oh the irony. The New York Times editors simultaneously point to Bhutto's indifference to human rights and her supposed "electoral legitimacy". Um, aren't liberals supposed to view those indifferent to human rights as illegitimate?
Ms. Bhutto and her father and political mentor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were democratic, but imperfect political leaders — imperious, indifferent to human rights and, in her case, tainted by serious charges of corruption. The father was deposed by a military coup and then hanged. The daughter was twice elected and twice deposed. But both had one undeniable asset: electoral legitimacy — legitimacy that the generals and the Islamic extremists could only seek to destroy or, in Mr. Musharraf’s case, hope to borrow.
Democracy is not an end in itself. The will of the majority is not (or at least should not be) the definition of the moral and ethical. The will of democratically elected dictators (which describes what electoral politics produces in many countries) should not be accorded legitimacy.
That confidence led her to declare herself "chairperson for life" of the opposition Pakistan People's Party and to an imperious style that rewarded loyalists but alienated many others.
Mansoor Ijaz, described as a New York financier of Pakistani ancestry, describes Benazir in unflattering terms.
During her two terms in office as prime minister, Ms. Bhutto earned a reputation among many as an imperious, venal, and corrupt politician, bringing Pakistan to the brink of financial ruin on more than one occasion.
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I knew Benazir well. I am often blamed by her supporters for having helped bring her government down in 1996 by exposing her hypocrisy and corruption in two Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pieces. We remained in touch over the years after she went into exile, even developing a begrudging respect for each other over time. She struck me as a terribly conflicted person who deep in her heart wanted to save Pakistan from its evils, but was unable to put her personal lifestyle choices aside in doing so.
Lots of people refer to the woman as imperious. They also call her corrupt. But did she have any redeeming qualities? Well, yes, one big one I can think of: She tried to hold power as a woman in a country where fundamentalist Muslims hate women in high places. But aside from that what can be said in her favor? The answer is not clear to me.
Update: Fatima Bhutto, Benazir's niece, wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times arguing that Benazir's brother was assassinated by the Pakistani government while Aunt Benazir was prime minister.
And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.
Benazir's husband prospered from his marriage to her.
Zardari's reputation as a dodgy businessman was cemented by his remarkable transformation from a bankrupt into a fabulously wealthy man shortly after marrying Benazir, earning him the tag "Mr Ten Percent". Nevertheless, Benazir Bhutto stood by him, appointing him to her cabinet in 1996. After her second government fell, a stream of real and dubious corruption and criminal charges was brought against him, keeping him in jail without trial for eight years.
Benazir tried to control the press just as she criticized Musharraf for doing.
The strongest backlash was provoked by her attempts to control the press and manipulate the judiciary. The appointment of judges on the basis of loyalty to her party caused great damage to the judiciary's already dwindling credibility, not to say her own.
Connections got her into elite schools and she lived the high life.
In 1969, aged 17, she was admitted to study comparative government at Harvard, aided by a recommendation from the economist J.K. Galbraith, a friend of her father's. "I was amongst a sea of women," she later wrote, "who felt as unimpeded by their gender as I did." From there she went to Oxford, where she was remembered as a cosmopolitan Asian girl about town, known to her friends as Bibi or Pinky. She drove to lectures in a yellow MG, and spent her winters in Gstaad and summers on the Cannes lido. She had a penchant for royal biographies, slushy romances and 1970s easy listening, and she liked to browse in Harrods. Yet her ambitious side was to surface later.
Three years before he was killed by the police Benazir's brother Murtaza Bhutto was accused of trying to stir rebellion against his sister's government.
Charges of rebellion were filed today against Murtaza Bhutto, the younger brother of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and a trial was scheduled for Jan. 2.
Saying "the prosecution has enough evidence to establish the involvement of the accused in the case," a special court accused Mr. Bhutto of mounting an insurgency, undertaking activities to destabilize the Government by force, spreading hatred and rebellion against the state and anti-state activities.
Benazir had lots of enemies. But the Muslim fundamentalists were her biggest enemies and probably killed her.
Bhutto had returned from eight years of self-imposed exile with a pledge to reform Pakistan in ways that would upset entrenched political interests, powerful fundamentalist religious organizations, and Al Qaeda and the Taliban. She was aligned with the U.S., and vowed to crack down on the increasingly popular radicalism spreading through the country. And she had publicly accused the government's military and intelligence establishments of coddling terrorists.
With lots of ties between elements of the Pakistani government and the fundamentalists it is hard to tell whether elements of the Pakistani government are close to whoever did a hit on Benazir.
Complicating the situation is the fact that many of the extremist groups have ties to Pakistan's political establishment, including elements of the government loyal to President Pervez Musharraf, as well as close ties to the military and its intelligence agencies. Bhutto had long criticized such links, and in the wake of her killing Thursday, some of her supporters accused the government of playing a role. One senior U.S. counter-terrorism official also said Washington suspected that rogue officials within the military or intelligence agencies could have been involved, noting that though there is no evidence, they have detested Bhutto for more than a decade.
If the US government really wanted her to go in there and purge the Pakistani government of Muslim fundamentalist radicals then the US government should have done far more to ensure her security before she returned to Pakistan. Bush should have worked out her security with Musharraf in advance in detail.
Before you start feeling sympathy for Shahnawaz and Murtaza you might want to know that Benazir's brothers ran a group that carried out bombings in Pakistan.
*Ms Bhutto wrested control of the PPP from her mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, while her two younger brothers, Shahnawaz and Murtaza, set up a militant group called al-Zulfikar, which orchestrated a string of bombings in Pakistan. They were both killed in 1985 and 1996 respectively.
*Shahnawaz, 28, was found dead in his apartment while in exile on the French Riviera. His family insisted he had been poisoned.
Steven R. Weisman of the New York Times says Benazir represented Pakistan's feudal aristocracy.
What did she represent? There have traditionally been three major power bases in Pakistan: the army, the clergy and the feudal aristocracy. They make shifting alliances with each other. Benazir “is feudal to the core,” a friend of hers once told me. She was a brilliant debater as president of the Oxford Union, and wore blue jeans, drove a sports car and enjoyed parties, and she was devoted to her father without that much of an ideological set of beliefs. She knew her father was a man who trusted no one, especially the army. They often talked about it.
Well, that explains why George W. Bush liked her. She's just like the feudal aristocracy in Mexico that the Bush family see as kindred spirits. Pakistan has other parallels with Mexico such as the Benazir's assassination compared with the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994.
Pressure from George W. Bush forced an election that brought Islamic fundamentalists to power in the Palestinian territories. Now that Hamas is wiping out (i.e. killing in street executions) Fatah members in the Gaza Strip Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post points out that Bush's push for democracy created the conditions that allowed Hamas to take over.
Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared.
Some people might see Bush's statement as in pursuit of a noble cause. But no. If one has a realistic view of human nature then seeing the probable result is not hard to do. Therefore Bush is either irresponsible or he is deluded. If he is deluded then the costs of delusions about human nature are once again demonstrated just as the costs have been demonstrated in Iraq and elsewhere.
The first step toward peace was really a first step toward civil war and Islamic theocracy.
The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward peace and then pressed both Israelis and Palestinians to schedule legislative elections, which Hamas unexpectedly won. Now Hamas is the unchallenged power in Gaza.
Democracy brings Islamic fundamentalists to power in the Middle East. Western style freedoms and individual rights are not the unversal aspirations of all humanity.
In the Middle East people have different values and loyalties. Democracy does not bring peace between Sunnis and Shias. Democracy does not liberate women. Democracy does not increase Muslim tolerance of Christians, Baha'i, Zoroastrians, Druze, or Yezidi.
Pseudo-conservatives who embrace liberal delusions about human nature pursue policies that cause the same sorts of damage that liberal policies cause. The same idiotic assumptions about human nature that brought us the debacle in Iraq and the empowering of Hamas in Gaza are bringing us yet another illegal alien amnesty. We need to oppose the idiocy and call it for what it is.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize supermarkets that sell meat above the government-set price as his administration struggles to stem a surge in the cost of basic foodstuffs.
Chavez told a gathering of pensioners Wednesday in Caracas, Venezuela, he's waiting for the "first excuse" to take over butcher shops and supermarket chains that manipulate stockpiles of beef and other foods to artificially boost prices. The government blamed manipulators for a 4 percent surge in the cost of food in January that pushed inflation to the fastest in two years.
"If they continue to violate the interests of the people, I'm going to take the meat markets and supermarkets," Chavez said. "I'll nationalize them." Chavez, who won re-election for a third term in December, is raising the prospect of seizures to push companies to support his social programs and transform the oil-rich nation into a socialist state. Chavez is completing state control of companies in the energy and telecommunications industries, which he deems a strategic part of his socialist plan.
You might be thinking: Wait, everyone knows that price controls produce shortages. Everyone knows that below market prices end up below production costs and then the producers stop producing and shortages get worse. You might be thinking that the old USSR was characterized by long lines and empty shops. Surely, the Venezuelans have learned the glaringly obvious lessons of economic history?
Venezuela (and Russia and Iraq and quite a few other places) illustrates why progress is not inevitable and why democracy does not always work. Stupidity and ignorance hold back most of the world. If people are too unwise and intellectually incapable then they'll do damage with their power to vote and as bureaucrats and elected officials.
The government is combining price controls with subsidies to produce food.
The Venezuelan Farmers' Federation (Fedeagro) welcomed Monday the government decision to remove the value added tax (VAT) from meat and implement subsidies to agricultural products, said Fedeagro head Gustavo Moreno.
However, the senior representative added, this action must go along with additional policies, including a review once in a while of price controls.
The National Association of Supermarkets and Services (Ansa) backed also the government offer to remove 8 percent of VAT from beef. "This will be translated into a direct benefit for consumers," said the agency in a communiqué.
Venezuela makes enough money from oil sales to subsidize lower prices for food. This might work for a while. But eventually declining oil field production will make all the costs of price control unavoidable.
To illustrate just how democratic the country is, the 167 members of the National Assembly — all of whom support the president because the opposition boycotted the last parliamentary election — convened outdoors in Caracas last month, to be better seen by the throngs of red-shirted Chavistas gathered in the square, and unanimously voted themselves into irrelevance.
The vote gave Chavez the power to make laws by decree for 18 months, with no need to even use his Assembly's rubber stamp. Seeing as how Chavez already had total control over the judicial branch, how he is taking steps to quell opposition media and how he could have rammed any law he chose through the Assembly with barely a semblance of debate or a whisper of protest, his new powers seem gratuitous. But even symbolic oversight can be messy, bureaucratic and slow. Kind of like democracy.
The Assembly effectively voted to say that they are not competent to create legislation.
Dictatorial powers over government actions, firm control of the judiciary, and nationalization of major industries aren't the only ways that Chavez has extended his powers in Venezuela. Chavez is also undercutting the independence of so-called Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Chavez is also working to cut back on TV broadcast stations that are critical of his government.
As Chavez accelerates his country's shift toward "21st-century socialism," a decision not to renew RCTV's broadcast license is among the government's more dramatic steps, and one that has caused serious concern among free-press advocates. While Venezuelan officials have accused the 54-year-old station of having collaborated with organizers of a 2002 coup against Chavez, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, the Organization of American States and the Catholic Church have warned that press freedoms in Venezuela are in danger.
The case has attracted widespread attention from officials in Washington and Latin America, for whom the non-renewal of a license has echoes of right-wing dictatorships of the past, when newspapers and broadcasters were closed if they veered from the party line. Though self-censorship and slayings of journalists remain common, particularly in Colombia and Mexico, the closing of a media outlet for political reasons has not occurred in years.
Vladimir Putin's government has done the same thing with opposition press in Russia and to an even greater extent. Putin's been in office longer and so he's had more time to reduce the size and influence of a free press.
The underlying political conflict driving events in Venezuela, and in much of the rest of Latin America, is between a lower IQ Amerind lower class and a smaller higher IQ ethnically Spanish upper class. The Amerinds have less. The want governments that'll take from the more affluent Spanish and give to them. Hugo Chavez rules a country which is perfectly suited to satisfy their desires because Venezuela is a big oil exporter. The oil revenue finances the wealth redistribution.
In the past week, he has purged his cabinet of ministers deemed insufficiently radical, bringing in a new group of loyalists that includes his brother, Adan. He has begun to merge the more than 20 parties in his governing coalition into a single force under his control. And, under a controversial new law, he is set to take control of nongovernmental organizations that could oppose his government.
"I don't think there is a lot of ambiguity about what Chávez is doing," says Michael Shifter, an analyst at Interamerican Dialogue in Washington, DC. "He wants to hold on to power for as long as possible, and even though he just won a resounding reelection, he doesn't want to take any chances of dissent building."
Independent groups are going to get regulated out of existence. I've been getting emails warning me that Nancy Pelosi is trying to implement a weaker version of this approach with more grass roots organizations required to register with the federal government and to abide by more federal restrictions.
Chávez is also moving to take control of civic groups, some of which have been critical of his government. Under a proposed law now in Congress, NGOs will have to reregister with the government, even if they have been operating legally for years. Foreign funding will have to pass through the government, and NGOs would have to open their files to anyone that requests it. Human rights campaigners say it would effectively end their work.
"If approved, it will [effectively] outlaw all nongovernmental organizations" working in Venezuela, says Liliana Ortega of the Venezuelan human rights group, Cofavic. "There will only be groups approved by the government."
Amnesty International has called on Chávez to revoke the bill, with a spokesperson saying it would "restrict the legitimate work of human rights defenders in Venezuela." But Chávez shows no signs of retreating.
Phone, utilities, and oil are all going under state ownership.
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez's plans to nationalise the nation's largest phone company and utilities, gain greater control over the oil industry and seek authority to make laws by executive order are sending investors racing for the exits.
Chavez wants to rule until 2021 and wants to rule by decree.
Mr Chavez's move to assert state control over the economy mirrors his efforts to cement his political control; with Cuba's President Fidel Castro ailing, the speech amounted to a claim of leadership of the Latin American left. In his speech, he said he would ask the Venezuelan Congress to allow him to rule by decree, a power he enjoyed for a year in 2000-2001. Last month, the 52-year-old President said he would seek to change the constitution to end presidential term limits.
This man was democratically elected and reelected.
If democracy is such a total cure-all for what ails the world then why did Hugo Chavez win a landslide reelection victory in December 2006?
Chávez, who won a second six-year term in a landslide election victory in December, also hinted at moves to increase state control over privately run oil refineries, change the laws governing private business and revoke the constitutional autonomy of the Central Bank of Venezuela.
To all the Panglossian democracy campaigners around the world (and especially in neoconservative and liberal think tanks in Washington DC): Democracy only works if a populace is smart enough, truly believes in political freedom, and is willing to restrain their own desires to take everything from the most productive. Not every populace has the needed qualities to make democracy work. Democracy is failing abysmally in Venezuela, Nigeria, South Africa, and other countries.
Nigeria contains one sixth of the population of Africa and the New York Times reports signs that democracy is failing in Nigeria.
ADO EKITI, Nigeria — Early one Sunday morning in June, a mysterious text message flashed across Kayode Fayemi’s cellphone.
“Since you continue to oppose Governor Fayose, we shall kill you,” the message read, referring to the bare-knuckled incumbent at the time, Ayo Fayose. It was signed, “THE FAYOSE M SQUAD.”
Mr. Fayemi, a candidate for governor in this tiny state in southwest Nigeria, tried to brush off the threat. But if there was any doubt what the M in the message stood for, it evaporated six weeks later, when another candidate for governor, a World Bank consultant, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in his bed.
So lucrative is public office here that even in a backwater like Ekiti, a state of only 2 million people in a nation of 130 million, the state house and the spoils that come with it are apparently worth killing for. Of Nigeria’s 36 governors, 31 are under federal investigation, mostly on suspicion of corruption, and 5 have already been impeached, including Mr. Fayose in October. He is now in hiding.
“This is democracy at work in Nigeria,” Mr. Fayemi muttered as he drove between campaign stops in Ekiti in early November. “Murder and money, violence and fraud.”
Since the military dictatorship ended in Nigeria 7 years ago public trust in democracy has plummeted to to less than a quarter of the population.
Nigerian oil money goes to whichever politicians are brutal enough to kill, stuff ballot boxes, intimidate, and bribe to get and keep power.
Here in the state of Ekiti, that check is typically $14 million, but lately it has been more than double that because of soaring oil prices. In a tiny state like this, that money could go far toward meeting the basic needs of the population — schools, roads, health clinics, running water.
In reality, many governors steal with impunity, buying the loyalty of the legislature and using state money to erect systems of patronage that help keep incumbents in office, analysts and political leaders say.
Democracy is supposed to be a panacea according to neoconservatives and liberals. Use of the popular will to choose leaders is supposed to result in wiser government and much preferred to any other form of government. Democracy and liberal government are supposed to be the universal aspiration of all mankind (and womynkind). But reality is far from these pretty myths. The belief in myths about human nature does not make the world a better place. The mythical beliefs that lie at the foundation of the Iraq debacle have cost thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands (perhaps more) permanently damaged, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, and even larger human costs incurred by the Iraqis.
The evidence that makes Nigeria easily understandable has been ruled taboo by America's Leftist commissars. So the New York Times article above sketches political behavior in Nigeria while providing no insight into why Nigeria is in such a wretched state and likely to remain that way for a long time to come. Mainstream political debate now stagnates in an ignorance about human nature that the elites have imposed upon themselves.
Writing for the libertarian Cato Institute Gustavo Coronel says Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela is very corrupt.
Gustavo Coronel was a member of the Board of Directors of Petróleos de Venezuela (1976–79) and, as president of Agrupación Pro Calidad de Vida, was the Venezuelan representative to Transparency International (1996–2000).
Executive Summary
Corruption has existed in Venezuela since at least 1821, when it gained independence. In the 19thand 20th centuries, the level of corruption fluctuated, depending on the government in power. During the government of President Hugo Chávez, however, corruption has exploded to unprecedented levels. Billions of dollars are being stolen or are otherwise unaccounted for, squandering Venezuelan resources and enriching high-level officials and their cronies.
The windfall of oil revenues has encouraged the rise in corruption. In the approximately eight years Chávez has been in power, his government has received between $175 billion and $225 billion from oil and new debt. Along with the increase in revenues has come a simultaneous reduction in transparency. For example, the state-owned oil company ceased publishing its consolidated annual financial statements in 2003, and Chávez has created new state-run financial institutions, whose operations are also opaque, that spend funds at the discretion of the executive.
Corruption now permeates all levels of Venezuelan society. Bureaucrats now rarely follow existing bidding regulations, and ordinary citizens must pay bribes to accomplish bureaucratic transactions and have to suffer rampant neglect of basic government services. All this has been encouraged by a general environment of impunity: officers implicated in major corruption scandals have sometimes been removed from their posts, but they have not otherwise been held legally accountable.
The dramatic rise in corruption under Chávez is ironic since he came to power largely on an anti-corruption campaign platform. To truly fight corruption, the government needs to increase the transparency of its institutions and reduce its extensive involvement in the economy, something that has placed Venezuela among the least economically free countries in the world.
Chávez was democratically elected by Amerinds voting against Spaniards. Neoconservatives and liberals who extol democracy as a cure for what ails societies around the world need to take a hard look at Venezuela. How can a democratically government be such a disaster? Could it be that some electorates are incapable of the minimum wisdom needed to make democracy work? Could desire to support those who share a common ethnic identity trump the need to vote for the most competent and most honest?
You can read the full report (PDF format).
A seminar at Stanford showed a clash between academia and those living in the real world.
Shahmahmood Miakhel was polite but adamant after listening to Hoover Senior Fellow Larry Diamond define democracy at the opening session on July 31 of a three-week seminar on democracy and development at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).
"You have separated the political dimension from the social dimension," said Miakhel, a former deputy minister of interior in Afghanistan and a fellow at the seminar organized by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at FSI. "In my view, if a democratic society doesn't serve the people, what is the use of it?"
Diamond, an expert in comparative democratic development, agreed that democratic societies should support social criteria but said his definition focused on the minimum political threshold—instituting free and fair elections. "Democracy doesn't ensure that every wrong will be righted," Diamond said. "But democracy gives us the best bet."
We held an election in Afghanistan. Why hasn't the invisible hand of democracy swept away the corruption and forces of reactionary Islam? Why hasn't the result been an Enlightenment featuring local democracy of the sort which characterised small New England towns in the 19th century?
During the program's opening session, Nigerian journalist Sani Aliyu remarked that the concept of peaceful opposition is not well understood by political elites in much of Africa. "Opposition equals enmity, and enmity has to be crushed," he said. "In the West it's different." Diamond replied that democracy requires tolerance and an ability to distinguish between political difficulty and illegitimate condemnation. "In Africa, the problem is not the society but the political leaders who murder and abuse the opposition out of a desire to maintain office," he said.
Larry Diamond belongs to the "blame democracy failure on the elites because otherwise we'll have to admit the masses are seriously lacking" school of Panglossian democracy advocacy. Why do political leaders murder the opposition in Nigeria and not in, say, Norway or Finland or Britain? Could the Brits, Norwegians, and Finns have qualities (whether genetic or taught or both) that make them more inclined to choose leaders who won't murder the opposition?
Diamond served as senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from January to April 2004. He went on to argue in Foreign Affairs that if only the US had sent more troops and trained them for a different mission then Iraq would have come out much better.
In truth, around 300,000 troops might have been enough to make Iraq largely secure after the war. But doing so would also have required different kinds of troops, with different rules of engagement. The coalition should have deployed vastly more military police and other troops trained for urban patrols, crowd control, civil reconstruction, and peace maintenance and enforcement. Tens of thousands of soldiers with sophisticated monitoring equipment should have been posted along the borders with Syria and Iran to intercept the flows of foreign terrorists, Iranian intelligence agents, money, and weapons.
But Washington failed to take such steps, for the same reasons it decided to occupy Iraq with a relatively light force: hubris and ideology. Contemptuous of the State Department's regional experts who were seen as too "soft" to remake Iraq, a small group of Pentagon officials ignored the elaborate postwar planning the State Department had overseen through its "Future of Iraq" project, which had anticipated many of the problems that emerged after the invasion. Instead of preparing for the worst, Pentagon planners assumed that Iraqis would joyously welcome U.S. and international troops as liberators. With Saddam's military and security apparatus destroyed, the thinking went, Washington could capitalize on the goodwill by handing the country over to Iraqi expatriates such as Ahmed Chalabi, who would quickly create a new democratic state. Not only would fewer U.S. troops be needed at first, but within a year, the troop levels could drop to a few tens of thousands.
That's sounds like the ideological pot calling the ideological kettle black. Nowhere in his long article did he mention that democracy always fails in low per capita income countries or that most US interventions in other countries have failed to create sustainable successful democracies (especially not in poor countries as one would expect from the previous link). Germany and Japan are huge unusual exceptions most notable in that they were so organized and technologically advanced they could cause US military forces to fight a huge war. Nor did Diamond mention that the high rate of consanguineous marriage in Iraq and Arab non-democracies creates conflicting loyalties that work against the development of a civil society and against the attitudes needed in the populace to sustain a healthy democracy. No, Diamond isn't up for even that moderate dose of realism let alone the really strong realism that comes from looking at IQ and wealth of nations.
Prestigious Stanford University flies people in from around the world to spend 3 weeks talking about democracy and yet, as near as I can tell at a distance, some of the biggest and most glaring factors for determining democracy success or failure are out of bounds for discussion. The social sciences in America are pretty intellectually bankrupt for the most part. Greater realism could help us avoid enormously costly debacles such as Iraq. But greater realism would require more honestly and courage about human nature and so far few American social scientists seem up for that.
Why do I want to keep Latin America out of the United States of America? A Der Spiegel article about organized crime in Latin America provides excellent evidence. Organized crime groups of all sizes are taking control increasing of parts of Latin American countries.
Gangs of kidnappers spread fear and terror in Caracas and Mexico City. Cocaine cartels control the area around Mexico's northern border. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are the territory of the "Maras," adolescent street gangs that live mainly off extortion. The paramilitaries and guerrillas of Columbia support themselves by raising money through kidnappings and drug trading.
They relay anecdotes of Brazilian neighborhoods which gangs have physically closed off with gates guarded by automatic rifle toting teens.
I do not want the United States government and US local and state governments to become more like Latin American governments. Do you?
An entire continent is slipping backwards in time. The spread of violence and crime show that large parts of Latin America are far from joining the leading industrial nations of the Western hemisphere. In constantly expanding their power, the gangs demonstrate the weakness of the region's governments; wherever there is a power vacuum, the gangs take over. "Organized crime can only survive as long as it escapes punishment," says Alba Zaluar, a Brazilian researcher who specializes in the study of violence, "so it creates its own territories in order to assure that it won't be punished there."
Latin America's often decrepit democracies are easy prey. The court system barely functions in most countries; the police are often corrupt and cooperate with drug dealers. Many politicians can be easily bribed, and parliamentary positions are perceived as opportunities for self-enrichment.
Last week's events demonstrate just how powerful the gangs of Sao Paulo have become -- gangster squads plunged Latin America's largest city into a state of terror for days. They carried out 293 attacks, murdering 41 policemen and security officers, burning 83 buses and firing gunshots at subway stations and fire departments. The terrified police reacted unusually violently, shooting 107 suspects in seven days. Many of the city's residents no longer dared to leave their homes. Schools and stores closed for fear of violence. The bustling metropolis turned into a ghost town.
You have to read the whole article to appreciate the extent of the decay. The Brazilian government negotiated a peace with the leader of a large Brazilian gang, granting his group all sorts of concessions in order to get a halt to the fighting. The Brazilian government conceded some sovereignty to a drug gang. Think about it. Officially Brazil is a democracy. In reality parts of it are not ruled by the elected government and in other parts the elected government does the bidding of the bribe-payers and extorters against the interests of the electorate.
Meanwhile, back in the United States the Imperial Senate has gone over to the Dark Side of the Force and beat back attempts to totally eliminate criminals from their massive amnesty program for illegals. Why does the Imperial Senate want the US to become like Latin America? I understand that El Presidente Bush is promoting his family dynasty by building up an electorate for George P. Bush. But what turned the Senate to the Dark Side? Our own corporate bribers?
A lot is at stake in the current fight in the US Congress over immigration. Lawrence Auster tells the US House of Representatives say NO to the Senate's monstrous Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611). I agree. Contact your US House Representative and tell your rep you expect his or her strenuous opposition to the Senate CIRA bill. Complained about immigration? Direct your complaints where they will matter. Yell at your elected representatives. Write your newspaper. Send emails to friends telling them how to contact their elected representatives and urge them to do so. A lot is at stake.
Thailand and the Philippines both face popular street protests against governments.
In Manila, President Gloria Arroyo declared emergency rule to defy an expected military coup on the anniversary of an iconic popular uprising in 1986. Security forces later dispersed 5,000 protestors who had gathered to vent their fury against Ms. Arroyo, whose administration has been dogged by charges of incompetence and vote-rigging.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ended weeks of speculation over the legitimacy of his rule by dissolving parliament to make way for an election on April 2 - three years earlier than expected. He called this the best way to end the "mob rule" - the mass protests that have been growing in recent weeks. An estimated 30,000 Thais rallied again Sunday in the capital Bangkok to urge Mr. Thaksin to resign over alleged corruption.
While the two leaders face differing political challenges, both are struggling to satisfy expectations among voters for sustainable reforms. Their plight, say analysts, suggests that unless young democracies develop the institutions that support the rule of law - going beyond the simple right to vote - their governments remain vulnerable to "people power" coups that will usurp the democratic processes.
Democracy is as much a result of factors that create good government as it is a cause of good government.
The Filipinos have discovered that popular overthrows of governments does not lead to less corrupt successors. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Arroyo has lost support, but many middle-class voters see little alternative among the squabbling political elite. And with many disillusioned with past protests that have ousted one leader only to get another corrupt leader, few are rushing to the streets to join the latest protests. "People power is currently exhausted. People don't see it as a viable way to improve governance," says Mr. Rood.
The Filipinos need one leader with enormous virtue. Maybe a popular referendum should be held to give Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore a post where he is given the power to appoint and dismiss the leader of the Philippines. I'm serious. I bet such a system would produce far less corrupt government. When Lee becomes too old to make such decisions maybe his son could take over the role.
Update: Yet another attempted military coup happened in the Philippines this weekend.
MANILA, Philippines – A challenge to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's leadership by disgruntled marine officers ended without violence Sunday but signaled that efforts to oust the president probably will persist even without widespread popular support.
The five-hour standoff by marines began when their commander was relieved of his duties after what the government said was a foiled coup plot.
It left no doubt that the military has extremely restive elements that are fed up with neglect and corruption and are susceptible to being drawn into political adventurism.
Maybe the major branches of the Filipino military should set up a rotation where each branch gets its chance to try for a coup once a year. Or, hey, how about their best poker players play a poker game and the winner's branch of service gets to do the coup?
Or how about a game with their pay where whenever a branch launches a failed coup their salaries all go down and the salaries in the other branches goes up. But if a branch of the military succeeds in launching a successful coup then their salaries go up and the salaries of the other branches would go down. Such a reward system would reduce the number of abortive coups.
Writing for the Christian Science Monitor Christopher Walker of Freedom House argues that freedom is on the retreat in Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union.
NEW YORK – President Vladimir Putin is poised to give the Russian government the tools to exert even greater control over the country's already beleaguered nongovernmental sector. The restrictive NGO law that awaits his signature broadens the grounds for denying registration to or closing Russian NGOs, setting the stage for greater government interference in their work. The draft law on his desk, however, represents only the most recent blow in what is a larger, systematic effort by the authorities to curb independent voices in Russia.
Moreover, this Kremlin measure is just the latest in a string of repressive steps throughout the former Soviet Union. This tightening by autocratic regimes is in no small part a reaction to the recent democratic movements in neighboring countries. The ferocity with which post-Soviet strongmen have reacted, while not entirely surprising, confirms that these regimes are dropping even the pretense of democratic practice.
I haven't written as many posts as I should have on the decay of democracy in some parts of the world including the former Soviet Union. I read the reports of liberal aides forced out of the Kremlin in Moscow and TV stations brought under government control and it just seems so depressing. I'm not surprised really. But the reality is such at odds with the neocon and liberal faith in inevitable democracy (assumed to be liberal and free of course) as the cure for what ails the world. In reality breaks with historical patterns of cause and effect do not happen as often or as easily as the promoters of the latest Panglossian fad for how to fix the world would have you believe.
Russia's a great example of how historical patterns keep recurring. Paul Hollander has a review of Richard Pipes' latest book on Russia Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture. Pipes sees a recurring pattern of authoritarian rule under Tsarist and communist Russia and again in the current trend toward greater authoritarianism. Pipes believes local conditions and history provide explanations for why Russian political culture remains so different from that found in Europe and the United States.
Another question often raised by historians is why the evolution of Russia diverged so sharply from that of other European states, and especially those in the West. Part of the answer is that Russia has never been a fully European country, neither geographical ly nor culturally. Secular political theory in Russia did not emerge until the 18th century. Russia did not benefit from the Renaissance or the Reformation - phenomena that in Western Europe promoted individualism, political pluralism, a sense of property rights, and a work ethic.
But, as Mr. Pipes points out, there are further, more specific explanations of why a country such as Russia was more likely to become (and remain) autocratic. As a large country, it had insecure borders, and so was exposed to foreign invasion. Such insecurity created pressures for a centralized government, and the state's expansion by conquest created a diverse ethnic composition that added to the authorities' determination to bring and keep things under control. Nor were 2 1/2 centuries of subjection to Mongol rule conducive to nurturing self-government, political pluralism, and habits of tolerance.
Local conditions and the nature of the local people also keep the Middle East so different from the West.
Mr Yushchenko's main difficulty is that, under the deal that saw his predecessor Leonid Kuchma surrender office peacefully just over a year ago, power is being transferred from the presidency to parliament. In theory this should strengthen Ukrainian democracy by reducing the possibility of a future president establishing a Kuchma-style authoritarian regime. In practice, the reform is moving power from Mr Yushchenko - the one man who was able to rally Ukraine's democratic forces - to an assembly riddled by corruption and self-interest and easily exploited by the Kremlin. With parliamentary elections due in March, deputies are more concerned about saving their seats than saving the country.
Will Ukraine become more Western and liberal or will it follow Russia back into authoritarianism? The US and Europe have a far better chance of influencing Ukraine's development than the Middle East. Though whether a big push to Westernise Ukraine will be made remains to be seen. The EU seems more bent on bringing in a far less tractable Muslim Turkey than in trying to modernize Ukraine. Bush has his attention diverted by the mess he's gotten us into in Iraq. Putin might be able to pull Ukraine back in Russia's orbit.
Carrying such exclusionary logic further, this emerging "democratic-caucus" is now laying the groundwork for the disenfranchisement of all states who are not members of the club. The argument here is while the United Nations is based on the democratic principle of one-nation, one-vote, this is not actually democracy because not all the states represented at the United Nations actually democratically represent their respective peoples. Accordingly, if the government itself is not of a democratic state, how can it have a vote at the United Nations and still maintain that the United Nations is democratic?
Once again, while interesting selective reasoning, with perhaps some slight fallacy in composition, it flies in the face of the very essence of the United Nations in respecting all nations, large and small, based on the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty and inclusionary diplomacy.
What then is the emerging scenario from this logic? As of 2004, there were 88 countries rated by Freedom House as being free or democratic. The United Nations has 191 member states. Do states such as China, Russia, and even Iran then lose their right to vote at the United Nations? Shall the other 103 states be stripped of their sovereignty and be relegated, perhaps, to observer status, like the Palestinian Authority, while the club of 88, assuming they even all want to join the caucus, then vote on all issues before the United Nations such as the respect and creation of international law, to maintain international peace and security and promotion of human rights?
You might say that the democratic minority are not respecting the rights of the undemocratic majority. Oh the irony.