Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for June 2011

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Venezuela’s sponsoring terrorism, and Brazil gets hacked

In today’s news:

Mack: “Obama Administration Has All the Proof They Need to Make Venezuela a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’”

Chairman Mack Renews Call for Freedom Loving Americans to Boycott CITGO
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — At today’s hearing of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, Chairman Connie Mack (FL-14) again called on the Obama Administration to cease their delaying of placing Venezuela on the “State Sponsor of Terrorism List.” The hearing, “Venezuela’s Sanction able Activity,” was held to provide oversight of sanctions available for the State Department and Treasury Department to dissuade illicit activity in our Hemisphere. To date, the Obama Administration has underutilized these tools allowing ruthless dictator Hugo Chavez to profit from the drug trade, sell fuel to the Iranians, and transport terrorists around the world.
Mack stated, “The State Department said they would name Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism as well as enforce consequential sanctions on their state run oil company if they received proof that Venezuela is demonstrably sanctionable. That proof was again presented to officials of the State and Treasury Department and further delay by the Obama Administration is unacceptable and will only continue to coddle Hugo Chavez.”
Chairman Mack reiterated Venezuela’s repeated support for acts of international terrorism; including the sale of refined fuel to Iran and the actions of Ghazi Nasr al Din, a Venezuelan Diplomat, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for facilitating the transfer of funds to Hezbollah and escorted Hezbollah officials to and from Venezuela. Additionally, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) drew sanctions on several Venezuelan senior government officials, Hugo Carvajal Barrios, the Director of Military Intelligence, and Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, General-in-Chief of the Venezuelan Armed Services, for materially assisting and supporting drug trafficking and terrorism activities by the revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Chavez, still in Cuba, twittered yesterday. Daniel ponders Chavez’s condition.

—————————————

In other, unrelated, news,
Cyberattacks Hit Brazil Government

Key Brazilian government websites have suffered a series of cyberattacks, with the worst occurring early Friday, but there is no evidence of any data loss, the government said.

Presidential spokesman Murilo Gabrielli said the denial-of-service attacks—in which access to a website is disrupted—are being investigated by the government’s Federal Data Processing Service, or Serpro. A Serpro spokesman said the service has established an internal task force to stop the attacks, guarantee security of the sites and restore website access.

The worst attack occurred early Friday, taking down the website of Brazil’s main government statistical institution, the IBGE. The site includes a vast archive of demographic and economic data.

Hackers were able to briefly post their own message on the IBGE’s site early Friday: “This month, the Brazilian government will suffer the highest number of virtual attacks in its history. These attacks are a protest by a nationalist group that desires to transform Brazil into a better country.” The group called itself Fail Shell.

A government cybersecurity expert said the hackers apparently took down the government sites through use of robotic computers. Under this technique, the computers bombard a site with billions of access requests until the site shuts down.

More blogging later.

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NJ Democrats cut government union benefits

New Jersey Lawmakers Approve Benefits Rollback for Work Force

New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees, the deepest cut in state and local costs in memory, in a major victory for Gov. Chris Christie and a once-unthinkable setback for the state’s powerful public employee unions.

The Assembly passed the bill 46 to 32, as Republicans and a few Democrats defied raucous protests by thousands of people whose chants, vowing electoral revenge, shook the State House. Leaders in the State Senate said their chamber, which had already passed a slightly different version of the bill, would approve the Assembly version on Monday. Mr. Christie, a Republican, was expected to sign the measure into law quickly.

It wasn’t simply “a few” Democrats. As Tom Blumer points out,

Given that the Assembly has 47 Democrats and 33 Republicans, it took more than “a few Democrats” to get the law passed in the Assembly by the 46-32 margin indicated. If all Republicans voted “yes,” 13 Democrats, or over a quarter of the total, also had to support the bill.

Indeed, both the Senate and the Assembly are controlled by Democrats, by 60% and 59%.

The legislation will sharply increase what state and local workers must contribute for their health insurance and pensions, suspend cost-of-living increases to retirees’ pension checks, raise retirement ages and curb the unions’ contract bargaining rights. It will save local and state governments $132 billion over the next 30 years, by the administration’s estimate, and give the troubled benefit systems a sounder financial footing, mostly by shifting costs onto workers.

Workers in the private sector have been doing that forever, and paying for the government workers’, too.

Senate president Steven Sweeney, Democrat, supported the bill.

The fight over benefits reflected both Mr. Christie’s ability to exploit the divisions among Democrats, through his alliances with more conservative Democratic party bosses and legislators, and his success at using the public-sector unions as a foil in his drive to shrink government spending. It has also allowed a nationally known but highly polarizing governor to claim the mantle of bipartisan conciliation, telling audiences that New Jersey is setting an example that other states and the federal government should follow.

The bill applies to all state government workers and

to a much larger number of county, town and school district workers, because most local governments participate in the state-run pension and health care systems.

Stacy and Jazz are amazed that the people of New Jersey may even be understanding the state’s dire fiscal situation.

Who knows, at this rate, maybe Americans will understand the nation’s dire fiscal situation.

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Does Hugo Chavez have prostate cancer?

The rumors are flying, and now even the news services are mentioning that Hugo Chavez’s extended absence from Venezuela is rumored to be due to prostate cancer, among other things:
The Wall Street Journal:

Speculation coming from Cuba and Venezuela has focused on the possibility that Mr. Chávez has prostrate cancer, and has had his prostrate removed. A senior Venezuelan official didn’t respond to emailed questions about the speculation.

While at the same time,

his brother said the president would remain in a Cuban hospital for up to 12 more days

Fox News Latino, Associated Press, and others,

Some people suspect Chávez has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness such as prostate or colon cancer while others claim doctors botched liposuction surgery and he suffered an infection.

The chronology is

  • Chavez had surgery in Venezuela
  • Following the surgery, he left Venezuela and made stops in Brazil and Ecuador
  • He then flew to Cuba, where he was operated for a pelvic abscess on June 10
  • Chavez was interviewed by phone for Telesur on June 12
  • On Friday June 17, Fidel and Raul Castro dropped by Chavez’s hospital room for a photo-op
  • On June 21, Adan Chavez, Hugo’s brother, said that the president would return to Venezuela by July 4

Compounding the speculation, Adan’s statement would match a schedule for a round of chemotherapy, for instance.

However, after 20 days without tweeting or holding his TV or radio broadcasts, today Venezuela’s Chavez Sends First Tweets Since Having Surgery

In four messages through the website, Chavez praised his supporters and celebrated Friday’s Battle of Carabobo holiday, a commemoration of a major victory in 1821 by Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar in the country’s war of independence from Spain.

The president made no mention of his health or recovery. A lack of information and public appearances has led to a whirlwind of rumors from locals suggesting that Chavez’s condition may be worse than initially reported.

Known for his use of Twitter–his account has more than 1.6 million followers–and for filling the airwaves with his frequent and hours-long speeches, the firebrand socialist president has been uncharacteristically absent from the spotlight for more than two weeks.

“Every day I’m with you from here! Until victory always! We are winning! We will win!” Chavez wrote on his Twitter account. “You all know that the Battle of Carabobo has not ended! It is every day,” he added.

Chavez’s diagnosis is being treated as a state secret in Cuba, where the Cubans are under very restrictive rules regarding internet use.

Regardless of the diagnosis, the real cancer is the destruction of the Venezuelan economy, the people’s rights and freedoms under Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution, which he wants to metastasize through our hemisphere.

UPDATE
Via Bettina,
Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez ends absence from public eye with ‘winning’ tweets amid rumors of ill health

UPDATE
Linked by The Lonely Conservative and Nice Deb. Thanks!

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Wine for Chipotle?

Chipotle Wine Pairings
What pairs best with your burrito – and more!
The wine list:

2009 Alamos Torrontes, $10: An unoaked, bright white wine.

2010 Kenwood Chardonnay, $10: A modestly oaked Chardonnay.

2010 Cupcake Riesling, $10: A gentle, sweet white wine.

2010 Pianissimo Rosé of Malbec,$12: A fuller style of rose.

2009 Kris Pinot Noir, $13: A light style Pinot Noir.

2008 Valley of the Moon Zinfandel, $13: A full-bodied red.

2010 Jam Jar Shiraz, $10: A sweet red wine.

Mm, mm, good!

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Mexican drug cartel kingpins: Dead or caught roster

Mexican drug cartels: Where things stand:

  • Jesus Mendez, El Mono (The Monkey), head of La Familia, caught.
  • Nazario Moreno, also known as “The Craziest one,” founder of La Familia, dead in a shootout.
  • Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, one of the three Sinaloa cartel leaders, dead.
  • Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known as “La Barbie”, caught.

Via G. V. Wilkes’s Buzz.

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Meanwhile, over in Princeton…

While I’m waiting for my car to have some routine maintenance I came across neighbor TigerHawk’s post, who is agitated on many subjects. (TH is slumming it at the Adirondacks, after slumming it in Florence, but I digress)

In the end, why am I for small and limited government? Because history teaches that among the choices of (1) democracy, (2) heterogeneity, and (3) effective and efficient government, one must pick any two. It is no surprise that our only era of effective government on a large-scale came just after the only period in American history when we effectively banned immigration and before the political emancipation of blacks. Since I like democracy and am all in favor of a free, tolerant, and heterogeneous society, I believe that virtually any government program over which the voters have influence will descend in to a wasteful and counterproductive mess, ultimately captured by some narrow constituency. I believe that liberals instinctively agree, which is why they much prefer actions by federal judges and regulators, both of whom are effectively beyond the reach of voters, to detailed legislation from the United States Congress.

In the same post, TH also posts on a subject he knows a lot about: medical innovation,

one of the objectives of health care reform is to stifle innovation. That is why it includes a tax on the revenues of medical device companies, which will (obviously) substantially raise the return hurdles on investment in new products and thereby entrench old products. The reason for this is that the social engineers in the White House believe that most innovation in medical technology drives up costs — that manufacturers use the opportunity of a next generation product to raise prices. This cramped attitude stands in stark contrast to the chaotic-capitalist view that seems self-evident to me: that most innovation in health care as in all industries does not occur in revolutions but in tiny incremental steps that, over time, add up to a great deal. One cannot point to very many incremental changes in automobile design between the Ford Model-T and, say, a Lexus 450h that accomplished a provable difference in “outcomes,” but the accumulated innovation, each on top of the other, sure made our lives much better. So it is with medical technology, which is why even small innovation is important to our children.

Anyway, it is not only Obama care that is stifling innovation. So is the Obama FDA, which has massively increased the time it takes to get “substantially similar” new products approved.

The average time taken by U.S. Food and Drug Administration to clear a 510(k) application increased 37 percent between 2006 and 2011.

Many of you will live more painful, less comfortable, or even shorter lives because of Obama administration policy. Remember that.

And worse yet, even if the healtcare legislation were to be totally repealed, the FDA hurdles will still continue to impede innovation.

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Fed downgrades the economy

Slower growth, higher inflation even if you don’t count oil and food prices:
Fed on Hold Amid Slow Recovery

In updated forecasts released after the meeting, Fed officials lowered their growth forecasts and predicted core inflation would remain higher than previously thought. The economy is now expected to expand at a rate of around 2.7% to 2.9% this year and 3.3% to 3.7% in 2012. That is below estimates given after the last meeting in April for growth of 3.1% to 3.3% in 2011 and 3.5% to 4.2% next year.

The 2011 projection for underlying inflation—stripping out volatile food and energy costs—was raised to between 1.5% and 1.8% from April’s forecast of 1.3% to 1.6%, with core prices expected to ease to 1.4% to 2.0% next year instead of 1.3% to 1.8%. The unemployment rate is expected to decline to 8.6% to 8.9% in 2011 and 7.8% to 8.2% next year, versus previous expectations for a drop to 8.4% to 8.7% and then 7.6% to 7.9% in 2012.

The jobless rate increased to 9.1% in May, a level that would normally call for looser credit. But with underlying inflation also showing the biggest in almost three years, the Fed is in a challenging spot. Consumer prices net of volatile food and energy prices rose to a 1.5% annual rate last month, close to the Fed’s informal target of just under 2.0%.

About the only good news in this is that there won’t be a QE3.

Bloomberg, however, reports
Fed to Maintain Record Stimulus After Ending Treasury Purchases

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has said record-low interest rates are still needed to spur a recovery that remains “frustratingly slow” two years after the recession ended. Consumer spending has been held back by falling home values, accelerating inflation and an unemployment rate that rose to 9.1 percent last month. At the same time, Bernanke has said growth is likely to pick up as commodity costs recede and factories overcome disruptions of supplies from Japan.
…
The Fed left its benchmark interest rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent and repeated a pledge to keep it there “for an extended period.” The decision was unanimous. In his press conference, he said an “extended period” means the Fed is at least two or three meetings from an exit.

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