5. In 1972, most people would be surprised to learn (except those around to
remember it) Republican Richard Nixon trounced Democrat George McGovern
getting 60%% of the vote to McGovern's 38%%. The main issue was the Vietnam
war (that drove Lyndon Johnson from office in 1968), and Nixon managed to
convince the public he had a plan to end it and peace was at hand. McGovern
was strongly anti-war, but had to replace his running mate Thomas Eagleton
after it was learned he hadn't revealed he'd undergone electroshock therapy
for depression.
It proved a decisive factor in McGovern's defeat, but oddly as things turned
out, Nixon was popular enough at that time to sweep to a landslide win only
to come a cropper in the Watergate scandal that began almost innocently in
June, 1972, months before the election, but spiralled out of control in its
aftermath along with growing anger about the war. It drove Richard Nixon
from office in disgrace in August, 1974 and gave the office lawfully under
the 25th amendment to Gerald Ford. It made him the nation's only unelected
president up to the time five Supreme Court justices gave the office to
George Bush violating the law of the land they showed contempt for.
6. In 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan won a decisive victory getting 58.8%% of
the vote to Democrat Walter Mondale's 40.6%%. The "Reagan revolution" was in
full swing, and the president was affable enough to convince a majority of
the electorate his administration's large increases in military spending,
big budget deficits run up to pay for it, tax cuts mainly for the rich,
slashed social spending and opposition to labor rights were good for the
country. Mondale was no match for him and was unfairly seen as a candidate
supporting the poor and disadvantaged at the expense of the middle class.
In 1980s America, Hugo Chavez might not have stood a chance against the
likes of Ronald Reagan even though Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution serves all
the people while Reagan's ignored and harmed those most in need including
the middle class, mostly helping instead those in the country needing no
help - the rich and powerful, at the beginning of the nation's second Gilded
Age, serving an empowered plutocracy that reached full fruition with the
dominance of the privileged class under George W. Bush.
One Other Landslide Win for Chavez Unreported
Time Magazine just voted this writer and all others communicating online
their "Person of the Year." In their cover story they asked who are we, what
are we doing, and who has the time and energy for this? Their answer: "you
do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing
the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at
their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you." Strange how
underwhelming it feels at least for two reasons, but it must be stressed we
beat the pros before they're even out of bed in the morning doing one thing
they almost never do - telling the truth communicating real news,
information and honest opinion on the most important world and national
issues affecting everyone and refusing to genuflect to the country's power
establishment.
While Time was honoring the free use of the internet, its importance, and
the millions of ordinary people using it, it's parent company Time-Warner
has for months been part of the corporate cabal trying to high-pressure the
Congress to end internet neutrality and destroy the freedom the magazine
praised so effusively in their disingenuous annual award just announced. If
the cable and telecom giants win their lobbying effort, the public Time
calls "YOU" loses. They want to be self-regulating, to be able to charge
whatever they wish, to choose wealthier customers and ignore lesser ones, to
have a monopoly on high-speed cable internet so they can take over our
private space and control it including, at their discretion, the content on
it excluding whatever portions of it they don't want in their privatized
space. They want to take what's now free and open and exploit it for profit,
effectively destroying the internet as we now know it.
Time also failed to report they held an online poll for "Person of the Year"
and then ignored the results when they turned out not to their editors'
liking. "Time's Person of the Year is the person or persons who most
affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was
important about the year." It turned out Hugo Chavez won their poll by a
landslide at 35%%. Second was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at 21%%.
Then came Nancy Pelosi at 12%%, The YouTube Guys 11%%, George Bush 8%%, Al Gore
8%%, Condoleezza Rice 5%% and Kim Jong Il 2%%. For some reason, the magazine's
December 25 cover story omitted these results so their readers never learned
who won their honor and rightfully should have been named Time's Person of
the Year. An oversight, likely, in the holiday rush, so it's only fitting
the winner be announced here - in the online space the magazine rates so
highly:
Venezuelan President Hugo is Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year.
Venezuela under Hugo Chavez v. the US Under Republican or DLC Democrats
Little Different From Republicans
The age of social enlightenment in the US, such as it was, lasted from the
election of Franklin Roosevelt through the years of Lyndon Johnson and began
heading south thereafter in the 1970s and ending with the election of Ronald
Reagan in 1980. For the past generation, the US has been run for the
interests of capital while the standard of living of ordinary working
people, including the middle class fast eroding, had an unprecedented
decline.
It shows in how wide the income disparity is between those at the economic
top and ordinary wage earners. When Reagan was elected in 1980, average
corporate CEO earnings were 42 times the average working person. The spread
widened to 85 times in 1990 and skyrocketed to 431 times in 2004 as average
top executive pay rose to about $14 million a year after the election of
George Bush plus enormous benefits adding to that total, including huge ones
at retirement, compared to working Americans who now earn less, adjusted for
inflation, than they did 30 years ago.
This disparity is highlighted in tax data released by the IRS showing
overall income in the country rose 27%% adjusted for inflation from 1979 to
2004, but it all went to the top. The bottom 60%% of Americans (earning less
than $38,761 in 2004) made less than 95%% of what they did in 1979. The 20%%
above them earned 2%% more in 2004 than in 1979, inflation adjusted, and only
the top 5%% had significant gains earning 53%% more in 2004 than in 1979. The
largest gains of all went to the top 1%% as expected - one-third of the
entire increase in national income that translates to about 350%% more in
inflation adjusted dollars in 2004 than in 1979.
It all means since Ronald Reagan entered office, his administration and
those that followed him, including Democrat Bill Clinton's, engineered a
massive transfer of wealth from ordinary working people to the top income
earners in the country while, at the same time, slashing social benefits
making it much harder for most people to pay for essential services at much
higher prices with the lower inflation-adjusted levels of income they now
receive.
Especially hard hit are the 20%% of workers on the bottom earning
poverty-level wages - below $11,166 a year. The IRS definition of a taxpayer
is either an individual or married couple meaning the 26 million poorest
taxpayers are the equivalent of about 48 million adults plus 12 million
dependent children totaling around 60 million Americans in the richest
country in the world with incomes of about $7 a day (per capita) in a state
of extreme destitution with the official poverty line in 2004 being $27 a
day for a single adult below retirement age and $42 a day for a household
with one child. The data excludes all public assistance like food stamps,
medicaid benefits and earned-income tax credits, but since the Clinton
administration's "welfare reform" Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) ended welfare payments after
five years, that loss is much greater for the needy than the benefits
remaining also being reduced.
It's hardly a testimony to the notion of "free market" capitalism under the
Reagan revolution, the first Bush presidency following it, and eight years
under Bill Clinton governing by Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)
"centrist" principles eschewing the enlightened progressive party tradition,
selling out instead, like Republicans, to the interests of wealth and power
at the expense of ordinary people left far behind.
It all seemed like a warm-up leading to the election of George W. Bush in
2000 characterized by outrageous levels of handouts to the rich in the form
of huge tax cuts for top earners and giant corporations; larger than ever
corporate subsidies (aka socialism for big corporations) at taxpayer
expense; and endless wars and all the bounty from them to well-connected
corporate allies, some literally getting a license to steal, that never had
it so good but getting it at the public's expense this president shows
contempt for and is forced to follow the rules of law-of-the-jungle "free
market" capitalism.
Today, under Republican or Democrat rule, the country is run by and for a
rich aristocracy, in a rigidly structured class society promoting inequality
and destroying the founding principles of the nation's Framers. In the last
generation, the great majority of ordinary working people have been
abandoned and are sinking lower in their losing efforts to make ends meet
and survive in a heartless society caring only about the interests of
capital. This writer will explore this issue more fully in a year-end review
and outlook article due out shortly.
A Different Enlightened Way in Venezuela Under Hugo Chavez
Things are much different in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez that showed up in
the overwhelming electoral endorsement he got from his people on December 3.
Until he was first elected in December, 1998 taking office in February,
1999, the country was run by and for rich oligarchs, in league with their
counterpart dominant interests in Washington and corporate America. They
ignored the needs of ordinary people that left most of them in a state of
desperate poverty. Hugo Chavez pledged to his people he'd ameliorate their
condition and did it successfully for the past eight years, to the great
consternation of the country's aristocracy who want the nation's wealth for
themselves and their US allies.
Following the crippling US and Venezuelan ruling class-instigated 2002 - 03
oil strike and destabilizing effects of their short-lived coup deposing him
for two days in April, 2002, Hugo Chavez's enlightened Bolivarian economic
and social programs cut the level of poverty nearly in half from around 62%%
to where it is today at about one-third of the population, a dramatic
improvement unmatched anywhere in Latin America or likely anywhere in the
world. Along with that improvement are the essential social benefits now
made available to everyone in the country by law, discussed below.
The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was created
democratically by popular referendum and adopted in December, 1999. It
established a model humanistic social democracy providing checks and
balances in the nation's five branches of government instead of the usual
three in countries like the US where currently all branches operate
unchecked in lockstep under the Bush administration and will change little
when the DLC Democrat-controlled 110th Congress convenes in January.
In Venezuela, in addition to the executive, legislative and judicial
branches, the country also has independent electoral and prosecutorial ones.
Chavez controls the executive branch, and his supporters control the four
others because they democratically won a ruling majority in the legislature.
They in the National Assembly have the authority to make appointments to the
other three branches independent of the executive while Hugo Chavez has no
authority to appoint to or remove members from the other four branches or
have any power to dictate what they do. Today in the US, George Bush has a
virtual stranglehold over all three government branches that mostly rubber
stamp his agenda without opposition including the most outrageous and
controversial domestic and foreign policy parts of it.
In Venezuela, the Constitution also stipulates that all the people are
assured political, economic and social justice under a system of
participatory democracy guaranteeing everyone a legal right to essential
social services and the right to participate in how the country is run. The
services include free high quality health and dental care as a "fundamental
social right and....responsibility....of the state," housing assistance,
improved pensions, food assistance for the needy, job training to provide
skills for future employment, free education to the highest level that
eliminated illiteracy and much more including the full rights of citizenship
for everyone including the right to vote in free, fair and open democratic
elections, now a model for the world and make a sham of the fraud-laden ones
in the US.
While the ruling authority in Washington systematically destroyed democracy
and deprived people most in need of essential social services, Hugo Chavez
built a model democracy growing stronger by enhancing already established
socially enlightened policies further using the nation's oil revenue to do
it. Much in the country is happening from below, and it's planned that way
by the government in Caracas. Community organizing in councils has been
promoted that includes all sorts of committees around the country involved
in urban land development and improvement, health, the creation of over
100,000 cooperatives outside of state or private control, and the
revitalization of hundreds of bankrupt businesses and factories put under
worker control.
In addition, Hugo Chavez aggressively pursued a policy of putting
underutilized land to use by redistributing more than two million hectares
of it to over 130,000 families in a country with the richest 5%% of
landowners controlling 75%% of the land, the great majority of rural
Venezuelans having little or none of it, and Chavez wanting to change that
imbalance and do it fairly. He also established over 5,000 Urban Land
Committees representing almost 20%% of the population (CTUs). The law
governing them stipulates Venezuelans who live in homes they built on
occupied land may petition the government for title to it to be able legally
to own the land they live on. This is in addition to the government's goal
to build thousands of new and free public housing units for the poor without
homes.
These are the kinds of things going on in Venezuela in that country's first
ever age of enlightenment, but it's only a beginning. Chavez wants to expand
existing programs and advance his Bolivarian Project to the next level
implementing his vision of a social democracy in the 21st century. His
landslide electoral victory now gives him a mandate to do it, and during the
pre-election campaign in September announced he wanted to move ahead in 2007
with the formation of a single united political party of the Bolivarian
Revolution to further "consolidate and strengthen" the Bolivarian spirit.
Post-election in mid-December, Chavez addressed his followers and party
members at a celebratory gathering at the Teresa Carrena theater repeating
his September announcement calling for the establishment of a "unique (or
unity) party" to replace his Movement for the Fifth Republic Party (MVR)
that brought him to power in 1998, has been his party until now and will end
in January. Chavez surprisingly announced the MVR is history and will be
replaced by a United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) hoping to include
the MVR and all its coalition partners that wish to join. He wants it to be
a peoples' party rooted in the country's communities created to win the
Battle of Ideas that will move Venezuela ahead to become a fully developed
social or socialist democracy for all the people.
Chavez has enormous grassroots support for his vision but faces daunting
obstacles as well, not the least of which is a hostile administration in
Washington committed to derailing his efforts and removing him from office
by whatever means it chooses to use next in another attempt sure to come at
some point.
He'll also likely get little help from the Democrat 110th Congress arriving
in January with the likes of newly empowered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a
member of the US aristocracy, shamelessly calling Chavez an "everyday thug"
and the US corporate-controlled media spewing the party line by relentlessly
attacking him with tirades of venomous agitprop at times strong enough to
make some old-line Soviet era aparachiks blush calling him an autocrat, a
dictator, another Hitler and the greatest threat to US interests in the
region in decades. It's the same kind of demonizing Chavez undergoes at home
by the dominant corporate media that includes the country's two largest
dailies, El Universal and El National, and the three main TV networks -
Venevision (owned by arch-Chavez enemy and 2002 coup plotter billionaire
Gustavo Cisneros), Radio Caracas Television and Globovision.
The only charge against Chavez that's credible, for quite another reason, is
that he's indeed the greatest of all threats the US and Venezuelan oligarchs
face - a good example spreading slowly through the region inspiring people
throughout Latin America to want the same kinds of social benefits and
democratic rights Venezuelans now enjoy. The powerful interests of capital
in Washington, Venezuela and throughout the region are determined to stop
him, but the momentum in Latin America is with Chavez if it can advance it.
He has the power of the people behind him and a growing alliance of populist
or moderate leaders emerging in Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay,
Ecuador, Nicaragua, Chile and for almost half a century in Cuba either
wanting an end to savage capitalism, Washington-style, or a significant
softening of it, along with the old-style military-backed entrenched elitism
that denied long-oppressed people all the rights they now enjoy or are
beginning to demand.
The people in the region yearning for freedom and demanding governments
address their rights and needs are in solidarity with him, a modern-day
Bolivar, a hero and symbol of hope that they, too, may one day get the
equity and justice they deserve like the people of Venezuela have, if they
can keep it, and help Hugo Chavez fulfill his vision to take it to the next
level.
_______
About author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@
sbcglobal.net [1]. Also visit his blog site at
sjlendman.blogspot.com [2].
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
