HT to Fausta - the essential blog on VZ, and most of Latin America
What is going on in Venezuela? In a country that earned $800 billion during the oil boom, people in the capital queue for hours in the street for essentials like toilet paper. Inflation is above 60%, but capital controls prevent citizens from taking out their money and leaving. Meanwhile the regime restricts independent televisions stations and newspapers, and people have been jailed posting anti-government statements on twitter. The Bloomberg Quick Take on the country begins "Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia and more poverty than Brazil", and as CapX writer Gerald Warner notes, "[under Chavez] oil-rich Venezuela became the only country in the world to boast a Minister for Electricity Shortages".
All this is well known in the West, to the point that even the openly left-leaning New Statesman admitted in March that "Venezuela has gone from the Left's great hope to a scene of despair. We must speak out, or be discredited." The tragedies facing the people of this corrupt, exploitative country are no longer news to us.
They especially weren't news last week, when every media outlet and newspaper reader in Britain was focussed 100% on the election. So when the Guardian published a short piece early on Friday morning about Venezuelan motorcyclists being killed, it was quickly submerged in a sea of election coverage.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/15/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Parallel rate for the bolivar hit 300 to the $ yesterday. Official rate remains 6.3 to $.
Office hours cut for gov workers to help with power shortage. They were already cutting out to stand in line for Harina pan.
[NationalReview] Before the bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage, Democrats were preaching the poor-mouth about Amtrak funding, often dishonestly. (Seriously, how is it that a Washington Post writer and his Washington Post editors don’t understand how federal spending works?)
Smoking ruins of train cars in Philadelphia, and the usual ghouls start up with the usual thing: “Oh, if those mean Republicans had only let us spend money on the trains, this wouldn’t have happened!”
As has already been pointed out, everything from the stimulus bill to regular appropriations has spent billions of dollars on Amtrak, and Amtrak still failed to install the speed-control system that was supposed to be completed this year — a system that the NTSB and others believe would have prevented this accident. Read it all about the non shocking business as usual at a GSE (government subsidized entity)
#1
There is an unwritten covenant in this and other countries that we maintain our present public infrastructure and build new infrastructure for ourselves and our descendants.
Unfortunately, during the last 40 years or so, we have not lived up to the terms of that covenant, have spent much of our national wealth on frivolous projects and tons of entitlements, and pitifully little on basic infrastructure.
Now we are trying to play catch-up, except now we are broke, in more ways than just money.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/15/2015 1:24 Comments ||
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#2
The money was spent on salaries, not infrastructure or components or equipment.
This is what happens at government agencies. Those employed by them always, always attempt to make sure that any additional money that comes their way goes towards their pay rather than accomplishing their mission. If everyone working at Amtrak had forgone a raise for the past two years they could have easily afforded the equipment and the contractors to install and test and maintain it. But it's easier to get between a steak and a starved wolf than between a public employee and their magic check.
In the final analysis we see once again that the purpose of the "stimulus" was not to jump start the private economy but to bribe the publicly employed to stay on as loyal Democrat voters and campaigners for as long as possible.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/15/2015 5:23 Comments ||
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#3
Infrastructure spending I saw around here following the 'shovel-ready stimulus' was most noted in stripping somewhat-worn asphalt off some highways and re=paving them (old pavement seemed like it had several years of life left in it, and other roads were/are lots worse), replacing or supplementing slow-to-arrive state money on a couple of ongoing major projects (including Katrina repairs) and possibly helping pay for streetcar line expansion (also already underway & undoubtedly funded out of some other pocket.) One has to wonder what the monies previously budgeted for these projects got diverted to once the magic stimulus money came.
#5
The Democratic law-makers and our fearless leader are all calling for more money to be thrown at this--but then again they always call for more money to be thrown at everything--even when lack of money is not the problem.
#7
Besides which, the Positive Train Control (PTC) everyone babbles about is a GPS-based computer controlled system to prevent union locomotive drivers from falling asleep or texting whilst running past red signals.
After PTC, we'll get Federally-mandated self-driving cars, so drunks can continue to drive drunk and teens can continue to text and drive.
PTC got a big push over the top with the crash in 2008, caused by a loco driver texting right through a red signal into a head-on collision with a freight train.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/15/2015 13:39 Comments ||
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#8
Amtrak doesn't own the track it rides on
Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor, where the accident happened.
Newsrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, boardrooms, locker rooms, school rooms, lunch rooms, etc, etc.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/15/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
The "blathering president" is all too aware of the First Amendment--he just doesn't like it. He has the MSM (propaganda arm of the Donk Party) in his pocket cheer leading for everything Democrat and he still isn't satified? Dr. Joseph Goebbels would be envious of him. WTF?
The Clinton campaign is doing its level best to scuttle any mention of Bill Clinton, and to keep his as far away from the campaign trail as possible.
But while Bill might be taking a backseat (do I take the ridiculous joke that's just hanging out there about "paradise by the dashboard light?") to his wife and to her advisors, it seems the campaign is looking to another member of the family to take up the reins of the stereotypical "campaign spouse." According to professional Clinton-watchers, Nice profession you got there. It's a living. A comfortable living, especially if you report it just right...
Chelsea Clinton, not Bill Clinton is actually the frontrunner among Clintonites to be the First Lady. Owing to tense, I'll bet she doesn't attend any tours of the Blue Room.
#3
You all laughed at my stillborn campaign several years ago to raise enough cash to convince young Chelsea to Tie Her Tubes For Me And You. I got jack nothing from youz.
#5
she's never done anything in her life to justify anything she's received other than being born to superior Grifters
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/15/2015 14:30 Comments ||
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#6
Frank G, the post of first lady doesn't require a resume other than marriage to the President. I think the Clinton's would need to change a few laws to make that happen.
[DAWN] IF the scandalous exclusion of women from the recent polling in Lower Dir does not lead to enforcement of their right to vote, nothing else will, as this case clinches the argument for long-delayed reform.
Women were barred from exercising their right to vote in the by-election in PK-95 by verbal agreement among candidates including the main contenders belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) and the Awami National Party
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/15/2015 00:00 ||
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As racial tensions have ratcheted up in recent months, triggered by incidents of actual or perceived mistreatment of black men by law enforcement, fresh consideration has been afforded to what it means to be black in America. As a black Republican activist and office-holder, I retain a unique perspective. My existence, and the existence of others like me, makes one side of the debate uncomfortable. After all, it's hard to maintain a stark whites-versus-blacks dichotomy in a world with black and biracial Republicans.
In my encounters with radical black activists, my skin color has commanded no respect. Blackness, it would seem, means how you think, not how you look. A new study seems to confirm this.
...The study concluded that "nothing the Republican Party does, even nominating African-American GOP candidates, works to win them over." You know, we have something similar with Arabs in Israel. Neh, any similarities are strictly superficial.
#2
I believe a few days ago someone posted a story about 'Liberation Theology' having it's origins in the Former Soviet Union....Marxist Victimology as it were. This might tend to confirm the 'way we think over the way we look' theory.
#4
YES, black is NOT what you look like, it's how you act.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/15/2015 9:05 Comments ||
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#5
Cause Trunk/conservative women, blacks, Hispanics, gays etc are not 'authentic', so says the socialists/progressives. Remember the Progressive motto - You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me
#6
I've been saying this for some time. Its not race its culture. And African-American culture (victim-hood and the belief that education is acting white) has held them back.
As a white guy I have more in common with Larry Elders than I do with Eminem. Eminem subscribes to a culture I just don't understand while I agree with most everything Larry Elders' writes.
It is fairly obvious with new immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean who are treated differently by just about everyone.
Blacks also have the problem that a super-majority of them subscribe to the hip-hop culture so they are all going down together. Whites have a number of cultures. Some fail, others succeed, but we only truly see the more successful ones unless we decide to watch the Jersey Shore or something.
#7
Democrats are trying to do the same thing with Latino's with less success (Cubans are less Latino for example). If not countered it might be a matter of time before they become a monolithic waste as well.
#8
I don't have a problem with the Afro-American culture. BTW, if they would drop the Afro and just be Americans, I'd like it much better. I have trouble with any part of the culture that chooses not to assimilate into the larger culture and hates the larger culture.
#11
...that includes sexual orientation. As a rule I don't disrespect anyone until they've earned it. And that's not just a week of new software training and whiskey talking.
#12
There was talk the other day that we shouldn't use the term 'Thug' to describe, well, Thugs, because it's somehow offensive to blacks. Basically that 'thug' is the new N-word.
I wonder what they would think of the term 'Feral'...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
