Well, my Democratic primary is upon me. Members of the PRD (Partido Revolucionario Democratico) get together tomorrow to start to pick a new party leader. Panama is a democratic republic which to simplify things has a system which is somewhat of a mix of the American and British ones. The legislature is unicameral. Party members choose their delegates and leader. There are ministerial posts, representatives, local municpal governments with mayors and city councils which also have federal roles to play. The general election vote for the president and the individual legislators is separate. The last thing I want to do, however, is write more about this. Most people are bored already and those who aren't bored are mad.
But I like to make people both bored and angry. So, here we go.
Here are the short strokes. Balbina Herrera, former mayor of San Miguelito, current Mininster of Housing in the Martin Torrijos administration is favored slightly but significantly over "Toro" Perez-Balladares, a former party leader and current Assembly front-bencher. I've called her sort of like a blend of Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey and him sort of like a blend of John Conyers and Carl Levin, but everything's so diferent here, those are merely charicatures.
Without a large military and with a demiltarized police force, no toys, and a private banking system, Panama has most of the features of Western Europe like single-payer National Health with special privileges for the elderly, no silliness about sex or abortion or contraception or gay marriage or capital punishment or incarceration of juveniles with adults. There's public education K-college. It's all good. Yet, taxes are extremely low. 10% maximum on corporations and local-sourced earned income, 1% on capital gains. No tax on foreign sourced income and most of the pre-Reagan-Bradley write-offs plus various tax holidays on investment. Social Security is private but that has more to do with issues of foreign exchange than ideology. For various reasons, the government cannot invest pensions in "Balboas." Low taxes, civil liberties and a Western European-style social safety net. What a concept.
Now, it gets kind of funny. There is a tremendous degree of political awareness and party loyalty in the country but the debate is very, very polite. Nobody's in a super-big hurry to fuck with 10% annual growth, a balanced budget, low taxes, extremely free-markets, constitutional contract and property rights, and a humane view of the role of government. What makes it possible is the lack of any military budget and the private banking system. The banks are handling so much money that there's no argument about the 10% corporate tax. They pay. Gladly.
What's so funny, you ask? The country is "latino"... nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. Boy, if there's something every knuckle-head in the USA seems to agree on these days, right, left, black, white, Democrat, Republican, it's how much they hate latinos. And how there is an immigration "problem." There was this moron, I forget whom, on a New Yorker political panel who when asked to comment on why "hispanics" tend to prefer Clinton over Obama or McCain answered "well, they've heard the name Clinton and they don't really know that much about America otherwise.'" yes, I wrote NEW YORKER. Not Weekly Standard. Not National Review. Not The Daily Call. Not even the New Republic. Nor Insight. Nor First Things. How fucking funny is that? You can't make this shit up. It's PRICELESS. It really is.
I'm absolutely done with trashing Obama or advocating for Clinton. McCain, however, makes such an inviting target, though, I won't be able to help it. The most hilarious thing about the Democratic campaign, though, is that these two mushy centrists are getting close to making this election like the Manley-Seaga elections of the 1970s. But for better and much worse, those elections had huge significance that spread from Kington, Jamaica to Jamaica, Queens, from Washington D.C. to Moscow. Every element of the Cold War and the drug trade was encapsulated in those elections. I don't know which part of them was the worst: the 1000s of Jamaicans hacking each other into pieces in Jamaica, the circular firing squad in Jamaica, Queens, of Caribbean Blacks, American Blacks and the traditional Sicilian/Neapolitan-American mafia, or the propaganda value for both the USA and USSR which led to more interference and mass slaughter and mayhem on both sides in 50 other countries.
It would be kind of funny, though, to hand out all sorts of weapons to Obama's yuppies and press-whores and Clinton's feminists and Big Pharma execs and see what happens. Well, Nerf (tm) weaponry, anyway. No, screw that. Real weapons.
How about an UFT knock-out tournament pitting Clinton's old folks in the Rust Belt and coal hollars versus Obama's senior members of The New Yorker and The Nation? Carl Bernstein would qualify for both, so if he isn't killed fighting with the press-whores for Obama with real weapons against the feminists and executives, he can do some ultimate fighting as a ringer with the New Yorker and Nation senior squad.
I think these ideas are not only hilarious myself but I think they would serve some social good because what MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS is a serious conflict among groups who really can take care of themselves, Obama's Blacks and union leadership and Clinton's Latinos and union rank-and-file. That, in all seriousness, is a recipe for mayhem. Better to keep the whole thing super-middle class and ridiculous, no?
Nah, fuck it. I don't live there anymore. We have a tragic situation on the boil here. Let the BIG BOYS GO FOR IT. AND GET THE CHILDREN, TOO. What a video game. And it would take everyone's minds down here off of the awful situation we have on the boil among Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia. I want to watch CNN with an ice-cold Cerveza Panama con salsa michelada and some chicken wings Colombian-Jewish style and play arm-chair civil-war general. I'm having trouble figuring out who's gonna be Grant and who's gonna Lee. You know something? I think if this actually comes to pass, it doesn't matter...just pass me my beer and wings and let me enjoy this thing, while I root for Balbina here and McKinney there.
Onward Democratic Christian Soldiers....(And corny New Yorker and Nation Jewish soldiers, too. You qualify as far as this Jew's concerned)
Kelso's Nuts love you
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4 comments:
you are too much
what is going on with the Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela thing -- let us know
the stuff we see up here so heavily tilted against Chavez from all the media (including my employer) that i really dont quite get what the problems are (we just hear -- hate chavez, he is a mean commie)
D-CAPny:
I don't have enough room to explain it exactly. I've put up the news in Spanish and the first silly AP news I saw in English. To explain it would require teaching the history of 5 countries to Americans who don't even know their own history. Or care to.
I'll try to keep the reality of Chavez simple. He's an economic populist who is president of a capitalist social democratic republic. The petroleum industry is national as are some of the banks. The rest of the economy is market-based with functioning trading in stocks, bonds, futures, options, f/x, etc.
He has won three straight elections but not by 95-5. I think they've fallen 60-40, 57-43, and 62-38. There is an opposition voice and to be fair Chavez was heavy handed in attempting to close down their main TV channel. This got the people upset because that channel also carried the nation's most popular "tele-novelas" (soap-operas). Chavez was smart enough not to cut off his nose to spite his face.
He recently put forward a referendum to amend the constitution to grant himself more power to rule by decree. The referendum was defeated narrowly but signifcantly, 55-45, I think. The defeat was accepted without hassle.
Chavez is something of a buffoon in the sense that he dresses in a military uniform and tri-color sometimes. And he's definitely an ego-maniac. He is neither a communist nor does he hate America. He hates George Bush. He got along fine with Bill Clinton.
I don't know how real or fake his friendship with the Castros are. I know he milks every drop of humor out of it in needling Bush. He will needle Bush at any time for any reason. He NEVER dared with Clinton because there was no reason. No matter what you think of Bill Clinton, his departments of Defense and State were never about deposing Chavez.
When he's sincere about doing some good, even though it's always in service of his own ego, he's sincere. What he has done the last 3 winters by having CITGO give free home-heating oil to the poor of America's Northeast has been sincere. It also has needled Bush no end and has demonstrated to the rest of the world that Chavez is a morally "better" person that Bush is. I believe Chavez's efforts to negotiate a resolution between the Uribe government and FARC were sincere. Chavez wanted the CREDIT of course so he could pin another medal to his uniform, but he actually did some good before the US to Uribe "no mas".
Venezuela is a member of OPEC, perhaps OPEC's MOST democratic member, and is a very wealthy country because of the price of oil.
Here's what happened. Colombia whose army had been skirmishing with Venezuela's along the border for a while now, except during the hostage negotiation phase, had invaded Ecuador and assassinated a noted member of FARC whom Correa had allowed in, rightly or wrongly. Venezuela considered this to be an "invasion" of Venezuela as well, rightly or wrongly.
It's a South American issue. The parties have to resolve amongst themselves.
I just don't have the time to explain Rafael Correa, though.
But that's the idea.
thanks
and thanks for the Chavez history.
as for the venezuelan telenovelas -- those show up on Univision here in the US (univision has a long term deal with venevision and televisa.) we own telemundo and get the colombian novelas -- which from what i understand, are pretty good. we also have a deal with globo in brazil -- and those novelas are killer here since they are so hot.
every hispanic in NY watches Miss Venezuela....
D-CAPny:
It was my pleasure but friend to friend, I don't think you should be repeating any of that in your office. At best, the other person will be bored. At worst, you could lose your job. At beyond-worse, you could meet O'Brien.
By the way, I find a lot of humor in the nastiness of the US race. It doesn't turn me off at all. Now, that I've reached the point at which I find all of them so bizarre and the system so maddening, I just want to make some money trading the thing and have a good laugh. And hope that McCain is not elected president because -- never mind Obama's experience or lack thereof -- McCain is really nuts.
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