nice write-up Ryan. I'll be looking forward to seeing you a double front loop when you're back windsurfing at Shoreline!

w00t!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_constitution

Although, I'm highly suspicious that he lost by only 2 points.

It's not necessarily a good thing that the reforms did not pass. Sure, there is a lot of corruption in VZ, but the reason the poor like him is because he is doing a decent job of redistrubiting wealth from the rich to the poor. Also, the economic growth has been outpacing not only it's South American peers but also most of the world by a long shot the last few years.

I'm going to go to China now and chill with my communist comrades.

political debate, w00t!

"economic growth" is a funny way to describe the money they've made from the high price of oil. venezuela's "break-even" oil price, ie where their oil exports and gov't spending break even, is well over $80, as opposed to $40-50 for most OPEC members. that's awful fiscal policy. hence all the venezuelans there who told us that he was living on borrowed time and instituting a bunch of feel-good programs that couldn't last. more than one person there literally described it as buying votes.

even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on the economy, he tried to get rid of term limits and legalize his continued censorship of the media! that's pretty despicable in my book. not to mention the violence his armed thugs, the circulo bolivariano, have been responsible for... :(

Not much reporting yet.  I think that so far a lot of people don't seem to be very concerned.  The only information I could tell that might explain the difference between the pre-election poll and the post-election results was the very low turn out.  Only something like 44% turned out.  In this election, a lot of the people in the polls who were against the referendum turned out to be in Chavez's political party.  Rather than bothering to get off their ends and go and vote, unmotivated, they just stayed at home.  If that is indeed an explanation, ironically them doing that might well have led to a legitimate victory.

Of course, I haven't seen any real data so pants to it all.  Without international observers it will be very hard.  The absence of these observers, if that's the case, is rather suspicious, of course, and certainly puts doubts on any result, particularly one that looked more beneficial to the government.

Anyway, the election was not close enough to steal.  Chavez knew that if he tried anything there would be violence.  As for him trying again, I doubt that he will get much traction there.  His failure to win the election was very high profile, very Internationally visible, and invigorating for his opponents.  Apparently, he did an end run of his own supporters on this one, and he thinks he will be able to do it again, this time working more closely with them, but I think they are now too spooked.  Of course, he has more than 4 years to go, so who knows.

Besides, Chavez is a boob and doesn't know how to steal an election.  He couldn't even pull off a coup d'etat, and even Charles Taylor couldn't bungle one of those.  Now, Valdamir Putin!  There's a guy who knows how to steal an election.  You want to see some old fashioned election stealing, you go with the pros.

http://krotty.livejournal.com/36604.html

THAT is how you steal an election in STYLE!

  As for Mr. Carter above, I assure you by your own standards, it's a very very fine thing that the reforms didn't pass.  Ask yourself by which measure are you intending to measure the rightness and wrongness of those reforms.

  If you really want to look at the situation from the left point of view, you can't just pick out some flashy charity stunts and decide that the person responsible is conducting good Socialist policy.  No economic policy will work without a broader view.  It's true that Ryans argument about this alleged bankrupting of the country doesn't hold a lot of weight, because since most of the economic redistribution seems to be populist in nature, they can (in theory only) be seen as one time government outlays intended to jumpstart the country down the road to workers paradise.  Fair enough.  But what is he doing in the long run that will sustain the upward mobility of the peasantry?  Agrarian reform?  The ideals of the left are to liberate the spirit of mankind from the limitations of material necessity.  How will the peasantry be liberated with the transfer of a limited commodity to enough hands which as individuals will barely by able to sustain themselves?  A commodity which will dwindle over the years as the land is divided through the generations only to inevitably be sold back to those who they originally took it from for a pittance.  Might as well just roll it in to another one-time wealth transfer.  No matter, he failed at land reform anyway.

  If the intent was to throw a national party for the poor, I would say he had succeeded in that, but this doesn't leave very much for them in the long run.  If indeed he is going to create a Socialist state, where are the Socialist reforms?  What has he done to democratize the Unions and give them an independent seat at the table?  Instead of figuring out how to make the courts more independent of business, he simply made them more tightly controlled by the government.  Instead of creating a broad coalition of diverse parties, he's consolidated them all in to his own.

Ultimately, the power that Chavez now assigns to himself, he assigns to his successor, who comes along when he dies or loses an election.  His popularity is dropping, his own supporters were not given what they were promised, and instead got asked to hand over more power.  What will happen when they finally turn on him?  If the left fragments over this, which is likely, odds are that someone else will seize power, and years of political progress against will have been lost.

  Of course, Chavez has been over demonized in the US.  They all act like he is the return of Atilla the Hun.  Most of the governments forget that he has won many-a-fair-election, which at least in the past had always been validated by independent observers as statistically correct.  His opposition are themselves a repugnant collection of the usual interests with as little regard for democracy as they have for Chavez. The US is constantly intervening to undermine the political process.  Some of his reforms are indeed good and wholesome.  A number of important indicators have more or less improved since the reforms began.

  Ultimately, though, most of what he did really sounds like "at least he made the trains run on time" - an expression widely used to point out the absurdity of populist gestures in the face of larger wrongs.

  However, the pattern is unmistakable.  He has for many years been creeping toward autocracy.  In the last couple of years, it has accelerated markedly, culminating in this referendum.  This will end bad, and as usual, it will be the poorest who will be the most vulnerable.