Good ol' Hugo is at it again!!

[Gawain 0]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703569004575009420323919964.html?mod=fox_australian

In case you can't read it all, basically, what happened is this:

Chavez revalued the currency about a week ago. Cutting the value roughly in half. He then mandated that no one could raise their prices, even though he effectively just doubled their expenses. Now, he's accusing the first big player of doing so, and has ordered a government take over.

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The Venezuelan leader said that new law may need to be approved to carry out the nationalization. "I'm waiting for the new law to begin the expropriation process," he said. "There's no going back," he added.

Meanwhile...

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Separately, Mr. Chavez also ordered the nationalization of a large shopping-mall recently built in a downtown district in Caracas. The stores controlled by Exito and the shopping mall will be used to build up Comerso, a new government-run retail chain which seeks to sell its products at "socialist" prices, according to the president.

So, since the government there has taken things over, there are fewer stores open, prices are up...but not...power is no longer steady 24 hours per day, and oil production is down.

Now, let's compare for a moment...Chavez took over the oil companies, the banks, retail outlets, and shut down elements of the media. President Obama wants to cap-tax energy (oil, coal, et al), and Congressional Democrats have openly stated a wanton take-over, wants to tax the banks he doesn't have control over, the government already owns 80% of the mortgages, has come out by name practically wanting to see Fox News silenced...

Maybe a slightly different play book, but it looks like the same map to me.

I have an acquaintance down there, we chat via BBM every now and again. He was telling me sh*t is beginning to hit the fan down there (part of a conversation we had last week and this morning):

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Max's *US* : have the prices already changed because of the currency revaluation?
Gos ð߀t : That's another story... According to Chavez the merchants CAN'T change the prices, if they do, he'll take control over the companies... So it's kind of crazy what he's saying
Gos ð߀t : Even more than 70 companies were closed because of that
Gos ð߀t : Including one of the biggest supermarket all over the country
Max's *US* : I thought the biggest markets (Marcal?) were already owned by the Govt?
Gos ð߀t : No, not at all, those are little ones and cheap markets were the low class of the society go to buy things that the goverment sell with less price than the ones offered by the average ones... But if you see those, is like Cuba ones, cuz the queueing line is horrible... :s
Gos ð߀t : I mean i feel like chavez is gonna get killed, cuz there are happening a lot of things here, and the people is like getting angrier
Gos ð߀t : My country, that could be one of the greatest ones in Latinamerica, it's been destroyed by this president... And i know things will get worse
Max's *US* : Gos I'm on a plane and getting ready to take off. I gotta Run for now. I'll buzz you later. Hang tight.;)
Gos Help ð߀t : Ok, let's keep in touch!!! Have a nice trip! ;)
Max's *US* : Good morning! hey, I thought we'd go shopping at Almacenes Exito ....heard there will be a blow out sale before government take-over. :| ...there seems to be one juicy bit of news on Venezuela every couple of days in the Wall Street Journal. Hope you're doing well.
Gos ð߀t : Hahahahahahahahaha that was really funny!!! =D
Max's *US* : ;)
Gos ð߀t : Have a nice day buddy!!!

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[jakee 1,648]

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Now, let's compare for a moment...Chavez took over the oil companies, the banks, retail outlets, and shut down elements of the media. President Obama...

... Has done none of that.

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has come out by name practically wanting to see Fox News silenced...

Practically wanting to see it silenced? Really? Ooh, scary!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Andrewwhyte 1]

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has come out by name practically wanting to see Fox News silenced...

Practically wanting to see it silenced? Really? Ooh, scary!

Actually it is scary. Anytime the government seeks to use coercion to control the message. Now people can always come back with, "Well it's not on the scale of China so it's not really a problem." but it is a problem and the dems need to be slapped down for it. The idea that freedom is protected only by vigilance cuts in civil society much deeper than militarily.

[Amazon 7]

Ok Ok.. so you want to go play liberator in the South American Jungles.... COOOOOOOOOL.

We get it.

Others may not be quite as willing to go down that road.

[billvon 3,176]

>Actually it is scary. Anytime the government seeks to use coercion
>to control the message.

If "criticism" now equals "coercion" to news agencies then there are a lot of reporters out there who need to grow a pair.

[rhaig 0]

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Practically wanting to see it silenced? Really? Ooh, scary!

so it doesn't bother you that the administration wanted to exclude a major news network from interviewing it's appointees?

http://www.google.com/search?q=white+house+fox+news+exclude

As transparent as we want this government to be, I'd think that all questions, even the hard ones, should be asked.

--
Rob

[nerdgirl 0]

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has come out by name practically wanting to see Fox News silenced...

Practically wanting to see it silenced? Really? Ooh, scary!

Actually it is scary. Anytime the government seeks to use coercion to control the message. Now people can always come back with, "Well it's not on the scale of China so it's not really a problem." but it is a problem and the dems need to be slapped down for it. The idea that freedom is protected only by vigilance cuts in civil society much deeper than militarily.

Concur. The histrionics of/regarding Fox News are of less concern to me than the decline in investigative journalism and mainstream newspapers. New media, internet compilers, and bloggers are not replacing the decline in journalism that has occurred over the last 20 (more?) years.

Bob McChesney and Rob Nichols have put forth a proposal that I suspect many here will find anathema: “Subsidize a free press to preserve democracy.” The 20th Century business model of print journalism - advertising revenue – is collapsing. (Don’t think that’s too strong of a word.) They make a strong case, going back to the Founding Fathers, who thought the Fourth Estate should be subsidized, e.g., James Madison argued delivery of newspapers, which were at the time delivered through the relatively new postal service, should be completely free/completely subsidized. But McChesney and Nichols make a better argument, summarized in the the excerpts below.

“AMERICA is now entering the second or third year — depending upon how one counts — of the uniformly recognized crisis in journalism. The market has lost interest in producing sufficient journalism, and there is no evidence that its interest is going to return in digital form. It is a process that may well lead to the end of the popular news as we have known it in just a few more years. There is no known way a free and self-governing society can survive without credible independent journalism, and the levels of political corruption and public ignorance and cynicism sure to come are striking.

“As James Madison once noted, ‘A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both.’

“In short, we are at the point where we institute policies to see that a viable Fourth Estate — with paid journalists, editors, fact-checkers and independent competing newsrooms — exists, or we face a future Madison anticipated and dreaded.

“We are sympathetic to this concern, but our own press history says different: Massive printing and postal subsidies were the order of the day from the dawn of the republic through much of the 19th century. The subsidies were established with the explicit intent of expanding the quantity, quality and range of journalism.

“The champions and architects of press subsidies included Washington, Madison and Jefferson. If the U.S. devoted the same percentage of its gross domestic product to federal journalism subsidies in 2009 as it routinely did in the 1840s, the total would be more than $30 billion. In contrast, the federal subsidy in 2009 for all of public broadcasting was closer to $400 million.

“The U.S. experience demonstrates that subsidies need not threaten freedom of the press. Postal subsidies applied to all newspapers, regardless of content or viewpoint. Even the printing subsidies were spread around to all major parties and factions. Historians who have considered the matter are unanimous in recognizing that the extraordinary and diverse print culture that resulted from these subsidies was the foundation for the expansion and consolidation of American democracy, and the preservation and expansion of our individual freedoms. These subsidies made possible much of the abolitionist press that led the fight against slavery.

“More contemporary subsidies, administered by Gens. Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, helped build the democratic press and broadcast systems of postwar Germany and Japan. Neither general was willing to wait for the market to bestow a free press at that critical juncture.

“Massive journalism subsidies are widespread in the most democratic nations. Far from leading to less freedom and justice, these subsidies correlate with positive indicators of a good society. In [conservative, free market] The Economist's annual Democracy Index, which evaluates nations on the basis of the functioning of government, civic participation, civil liberties, political culture and pluralism, it is striking that the top-ranked nations all provide large press and public media subsidies. Sweden and Norway, which rank first and second, maintain subsidies which on a per-capita basis would amount to around $30 billion annually if the U.S., which ranks 18th, adopted similar measures.

“It is worth noting that all of the top-ranked countries with large public media/press subsidies also have substantial and profitable independent commercial media sectors, so the two realms may be mutually supportive as much as they are competitive. Freedom House, the pro-private media organization that annually ranks press freedom internationally, has the keenest antennae around for any government infringement on private press freedoms. Strikingly, Freedom House ranks the heavy press-subsidizing nations of Northern Europe in the top six spots on its 2008 list of nations with the freest news media. The United States ranks in a tie for 21st.

“Our point is not that enlightened press subsidies will automatically produce desired outcomes, but, rather, that they are, at the very least, compatible with such outcomes. America can and must have a free press — be it print or digital — and we will if we get serious about making interventions grounded in the traditions of our founders. We believe citizens, journalists and policymakers will come to recognize the democratic necessity of subsidies. We do not have time to lose.”

More in The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying