Thursday, March 16, 2006
Buddy can you spare a dime (or Bolivar)?
To those who know what they are looking at this image is just stupifying:
This is a couple people from "Gente del Petroleo" (Oil People) collecting donations for their organization at a recent opposition rally. For those who don't know, Gente del Petroleo was the organization that was set up by the old PDVSA management to defend their interests within the oil company and resist Chavez's efforts to control oil policy. It is precisely this organization that led the oil strike of December 2002 which cost the country $13 billion in lost revenues.
I have actually run across these people before collecting money in the wealthy Altamira section of Caracas. When they asked me for a donation (I declined) they said it was to help the striking oil workers who had lost their jobs and now had no other source of income.
This is practically surreal. First off, many of these people were extremely well paid. Juan Fernandez, the leader of this organization, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as an executive in PDVSA. On average, most of the people that belong to this organiztion probably earned around $30,000 or $40,000 per year which is quite high by Venezuelan standards. What did they do with all their money that they now have to be begging in the street? Maybe they did the escualido thing and blew it all shopping in Miami.
Worse is the straight out gall of this. These people intentionaly cost the country billions of dollars of damages and now they want others to give THEM money?!?!? They cheered as others suffered for lack of gasoline or cooking gas yet now they expect pity?!?!?!? And then they gleefully predicted the demise of Venezuela's economy while insisting on getting their jobs back!! The word "sinverguenza" (shameless) was invented for people such as these.
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This is a couple people from "Gente del Petroleo" (Oil People) collecting donations for their organization at a recent opposition rally. For those who don't know, Gente del Petroleo was the organization that was set up by the old PDVSA management to defend their interests within the oil company and resist Chavez's efforts to control oil policy. It is precisely this organization that led the oil strike of December 2002 which cost the country $13 billion in lost revenues.
I have actually run across these people before collecting money in the wealthy Altamira section of Caracas. When they asked me for a donation (I declined) they said it was to help the striking oil workers who had lost their jobs and now had no other source of income.
This is practically surreal. First off, many of these people were extremely well paid. Juan Fernandez, the leader of this organization, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as an executive in PDVSA. On average, most of the people that belong to this organiztion probably earned around $30,000 or $40,000 per year which is quite high by Venezuelan standards. What did they do with all their money that they now have to be begging in the street? Maybe they did the escualido thing and blew it all shopping in Miami.
Worse is the straight out gall of this. These people intentionaly cost the country billions of dollars of damages and now they want others to give THEM money?!?!? They cheered as others suffered for lack of gasoline or cooking gas yet now they expect pity?!?!?!? And then they gleefully predicted the demise of Venezuela's economy while insisting on getting their jobs back!! The word "sinverguenza" (shameless) was invented for people such as these.
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