Thursday, February 02, 2006
Umpteen years of bullshit
Today is the seventh anniversary of Chavez taking office. For most Venezuelans the seven years of Chavez's government is something to celebrate. It is the best government of at least the past couple of decades and the only and the only government that has given a damn about the bottom two thirds of Venezuelan society.
But of course, there are the perenial malcontents out there for whom the past seven years has been nothing but a disaster. Given that they all seem to own their own newspapers or TV stations they don't have a problem making themselves heard. And one of the more prominent of them, Teodoro Petkoff, is probably going to run for President.
Not being one who can keep his mouth shut and avoid showing how dumb he is today he wrote an editorial called "Seven Years of Failure". In it he presumes to tell us how bad the past seven years have been for Venezuela. One would think such an article would be chock full of statistics showing us how the economy has nose dived, unemployment risen, poverty risen, etc. etc. But upon reading the article I discovered there weren't any statistics. I thought, "thats odd". But after reflecting upon it further its pretty apparent why. What statistics would he show. Not the ones that show Venezuelan GDP at its highest level ever and growing quickly. Not inflation coming down. Not the ones showing more jobs being created. Not the ones showing poverty being reduced or the income of the poor being dramatically increased. Of course, I guess he could have shown stats about crime going up under Chavez. But that wouldn't be a good idea because it would only make his not using any economic statistics all the more glaring.
So he just goes on and on with the usual lies - that povety is increasing, or that the gap between the rich and poor is somehow increasing, and on and on. He presents no statistics to back any of his assertions up because he doesn't have them. And he doesn't need them because the rabid opposition that reads his paper doesn't need them - they gladly take all those things as an article of faith. Petkoff has spent years now peddling this type of BS - from claiming that Bernal controlled the snipers on April 11th to the country being on the verge of collapse in the Spring of 2003. And all 5,000 readers of his paper gladly soak it all up.
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But of course, there are the perenial malcontents out there for whom the past seven years has been nothing but a disaster. Given that they all seem to own their own newspapers or TV stations they don't have a problem making themselves heard. And one of the more prominent of them, Teodoro Petkoff, is probably going to run for President.
Not being one who can keep his mouth shut and avoid showing how dumb he is today he wrote an editorial called "Seven Years of Failure". In it he presumes to tell us how bad the past seven years have been for Venezuela. One would think such an article would be chock full of statistics showing us how the economy has nose dived, unemployment risen, poverty risen, etc. etc. But upon reading the article I discovered there weren't any statistics. I thought, "thats odd". But after reflecting upon it further its pretty apparent why. What statistics would he show. Not the ones that show Venezuelan GDP at its highest level ever and growing quickly. Not inflation coming down. Not the ones showing more jobs being created. Not the ones showing poverty being reduced or the income of the poor being dramatically increased. Of course, I guess he could have shown stats about crime going up under Chavez. But that wouldn't be a good idea because it would only make his not using any economic statistics all the more glaring.
So he just goes on and on with the usual lies - that povety is increasing, or that the gap between the rich and poor is somehow increasing, and on and on. He presents no statistics to back any of his assertions up because he doesn't have them. And he doesn't need them because the rabid opposition that reads his paper doesn't need them - they gladly take all those things as an article of faith. Petkoff has spent years now peddling this type of BS - from claiming that Bernal controlled the snipers on April 11th to the country being on the verge of collapse in the Spring of 2003. And all 5,000 readers of his paper gladly soak it all up.
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