of Venezuela's election. The LA and NY Times coverage is so slanted
as to be propaganda. At the same time, coverage of our own election
is rapidly mainstreaming the GOP/tea party lines. I thought it useful
to pair these two articles. As yet, neither gray lady has fired colunmists.
Ed
Venezuela: This was about the taking part
The Venezuela election was not a major blow to Hugo Chávez. It shows
politics is working properly again
By Mark Weisbrot
Guardian.co.UK, 27 September 2010
Today's election for 165 representatives in Venezuela's national assembly is
significant but unlikely to bring about major change, despite the opposition
having done better than expected. On the latest count the pro-government
United Socialist party has 95 seats, with 60 for the opposition Democratic
Unity, five for other parties and the rest undecided. The opposition claims
it won a majority of the popular vote, but apparently it was very close
between the two main parties.
As expected, most of the international press and its sources hailed the
results as a "major blow" to Hugo Chávez, paving the way for his possible
removal in the presidential election in 2012. But this is exaggerated.
The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Chávez, and it would be an
anomaly in electoral politics if the government did not lose support after a
recession last year that continued into the first quarter of this year.
Chávez's popularity has always reflected the economy, reaching a low during
the recession of 2002-03 - regardless of the fact that it was caused by an
opposition oil strike. His approval rating has fallen from 60% in early 2009
to 46% last month.
For comparison President Obama's approval rating has fallen from 68% last
April to 45% this month, and his party is expected to take big losses in the
congressional elections. This is despite him having clearly inherited
economic problems from his predecessor.
It is not clear why anyone would expect Venezuela to be exempt from the
workings of electoral politics. The opposition has most of the wealth of the
country - and most of its media. They have no problem getting their message
out. Obama also faces a strong rightwing media, with Fox News now one of the
most popular sources for coverage of the autumn elections, but there is much
less of an opposition media in the US.
Much has been made of the opposition getting more than a third of the
national assembly, thus being able to block legislation that would "deepen
the revolution". Again, the importance of this is greatly exaggerated.
In reality it is unlikely to make much difference. The pace at which it
adopts reforms has been limited more by administrative capacity than by
politics. The Financial Times recently added up the value of industries
nationalised by the Chávez government. Outside oil, it came to less than 8%
of GDP over the last five years. Venezuela still has a long way to go before
the state has as much a role in the economy as it does in, for instance,
France.
On the positive side, the most interesting result of this election is that
the opposition participated, has accepted the results, and now has a bloc of
representatives that can participate in a parliamentary democracy.
This could be an advance for Venezuelan democracy, which has been undermined
by an anti-democratic opposition for more than a decade. As opposition
leader Teodoro Petkoff has noted, the opposition pursued a strategy of
"military takeover" for the first four years, which included a military coup
and a devastating oil strike that crippled the economy. In 2004 the
opposition tried to remove Chávez through a referendum; they failed, and
then promptly refused to recognise the result - despite its certification by
international observers such as the Carter Center and the Organisation of
American States.
They then boycotted the last election in 2005, hoping to portray the
government as a "dictatorship" and leaving them without representation. This
newly elected bloc could potentially draw the opposition into real political
participation. If that happens, it would be a significant advance for a
country that has been too polarised for too long.
***
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0922-rutten-20100922,0,6665105.column
The GOP/'tea' party radicalism
An extremist agenda is indeed in play in American politics. But it emanates
from the very GOP/'tea party' candidates who accuse the Obama White House of
advancing such a plan.
Tim Rutten
LA Times Op-Ed: September 22, 2010
In an afterword appended to the White House diaries he published this week,
former President Carter muses, "It may be difficult for some younger readers
to realize how much the Washington political scene has changed in the last
30 years."
Carter points out that the congressional bipartisanship on which he relied
for his considerable number of legislative achievements no longer exists and
that the "pernicious effects of partisanship have not been limited to
Washington; American citizens have also become more polarized in their
beliefs.... Almost all segments of American society - the poor, the middle
class and the wealthy - have become more alienated from our government.
Observing the behavior of the Washington political establishment, people too
often feel only frustration and mistrust; inevitably, we now see frequent
exhibitions of anger and vituperation."
It's impossible to quarrel with Carter's characterization, and equally
impossible not to notice that in an era when people speak only to those who
share their particular angry haze, the politics of delusion and
self-deception flourish. Take the current midterm election campaign, in
which it has become commonplace for Republican/"tea" party candidates - the
two names now are interchangeable - to assail President Obama's alleged
radicalism and his purported plan to transform the United States into a
European-style social democracy.
Putting aside the nonsensical nature of these claims, what's startling is
the unchallenged way in which they rhetorically invert the factual geography
of the electoral landscape. In fact, it's been more than a century since a
viable party has nominated as many candidates with such radical views for
federal office as the Republican/tea party has this year.
Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour,
chairman of the Republican Governors Assn., said that electorally speaking,
you now can "replace 'Tea Party' with 'Republican' ... and each description
would remain totally accurate." The voters who support the GOP/tea party, he
wrote, "fear that their children and grandchildren won't inherit the same
country they inherited from their parents and grandparents."
The irony here is that electing the candidates Barbour hails will guarantee
that the children will inherit a country their great-grandparents
overwhelmingly rejected - one that existed in Herbert Hoover's era or, in
some cases, before the Civil War. In fact, none of the five Republican
presidents who've held office since the Depression have advanced anything
like the current GOP/tea party's radical agenda.
It's hard to tell exactly what Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee
for a Senate seat in Delaware, believes, though we do know that she's
dabbled in witchcraft, doesn't pay her bills and thinks scientists are
breeding mice with human brains. In Kentucky, senatorial candidate Rand Paul
wants to eliminate the departments of Education and Energy, as does Alaskan
nominee Joe Miller, who also says that unemployment insurance is
unconstitutional. In Utah, GOP Senate hopeful Mike Lee wants to repeal or
amend the 14th and 17th Amendments, thereby doing away with our current
citizenship laws and the popular election of U.S. senators. Sharron Angle in
Nevada has ruminated about abolishing both Social Security and Medicare.
There's actually less difference than one might think between the views of
these tea party "insurgents" and those of establishment Republicans. If, as
now seems possible, the Republicans recapture the House, two incumbent
congressmen with an outsized say on budgetary policies will be Wisconsin's
Paul D. Ryan and Virginia's Eric Cantor. Both already have signed off on a
plan to privatize Social Security and to replace Medicare with a vague
voucher system. Meanwhile, former Republican House Majority Leader Dick
Armey denounces Social Security as a fraud and a Ponzi scheme.
Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who would replace Barbara Boxer as
chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works if the GOP
recaptures the Senate, believes that global warming is "the greatest hoax
ever perpetrated on the American people." Then there's presidential hopeful
Newt Gingrich, who fulminated darkly about anti-Christian liberal plots and
wants to pass laws banning the imposition of Sharia law. (We're all losing
sleep over that prospect.)
Picture for a second an America without Social Security, Medicare or
unemployment insurance. Imagine this country without the 14th or 17th
Amendments or effective federal oversight of education or energy.
The rude beast of radicalism may be slouching toward the polls in November,
but it didn't start out from the White House.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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