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:sarcasm:
They had an unusual drought which affected hydroelectric power. They immediately addressed the problem with power rationing and purchase of thermoelectric plants. Mother Nature helped. End of story.
Can we say the same of our government for any problem you could name? Hurricane Katrina. The BP disaster. Collapse of local government budgets. Ruination of what was once the best educational system in the world. Great Depression II. Massive looting by the rich. Massive, heinous crime and malfeasance at the highest levels of government and corporate rulerdom, with the perps walking free and maneuvering for their chance to come back and do it all again, compliments of ES&S (Diebold) and the corpo-fascist press. Massive non-transparency and privatization of our vote counting system. Massive monopolization and malfeasance by the corpo-fascist press.
Our previous government deliberately ravaged government agencies and sold them off to the highest bidder. That alone was a high crime and misdemeanor which directly led to the Katrina and BP deaths and to their ecological armageddons. And, of course, that's the least of what the Bushwhacks did. "Too powerful to prosecute"--to coin a phrase--or even to investigate.
Chavez TOOK CHARGE, as he has done in every crisis that Venezuela has faced, including those 'made in the USA,' such as the 2003 oil bosses' lockout--he fired the lot of them and got the oil production industry back up and running within a year, and, within a year, Venezuela began a period of sizzling economic growth, that went on for five straight years, until the Bushwhack-induced worldwide depression in late 2008. By then, Venezuela had $50 billion in international cash reserves, good credit, and low unemployment, with the most growth in the private sector (not including oil), as well as having reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by 70% and having dramatically increased high school and college enrollment--prime conditions, all in all, for cushioning Venezuela against the worldwide economic downturn. (Can you imagine what Venezuela's condition would have been like, in late 2008, if rightwing leaders had been in power?!)
Obama seems capable of such good leadership but also seems hamstrung, possibly by deals he had to make to be permitted into the White House. His rightful power seems to be severely curtailed. And given the ES&S/Diebold situation, it's possible that he's been set up for failure. Venezuela doesn't have that problem. They have an honest, aboveboard, transparent vote counting system--far, far, FAR better than our own--as well as an improved public information system.
Chavez is Venezuela's FDR. Where is ours? He seems to be in a meeting trying to please the fascist tools of multinational corporations and war profiteers. 'How far will you let me go, in getting health care for the half of the population that doesn't have it?' Obama seemed to be saying. (To whom?) 'Privately run by multinational corporations, with ample opportunity for profiteering from illness and death,' was their answer. The Chavez government, on the other hand, was out there creating FREE medical clinics in every poor community in Venezuela. They didn't ask permission of the private health care industry. Even after the U.S.-supported rightwing coup attempt, even after the oil bosses' strike, even after the assassination plots and other threats, and the non-stop CIA psyops/disinformation campaign to vilify Chavez and his government, they have courageously proceeded to do the "will of the people" who elected them and to govern in the interests of ordinary people.
They are not always effective. Neither was FDR. Venezuela has problems. A high crime rate (Venezuelans are gun-lovers). Urban air pollution. Inflation. (For the poor, that's better than deflation, believe me--but Venezuela's is too high.) Even a good government cannot solve every problem. Even a good government has weak spots, blind spots, failures, occasional corruption, inefficiency, malfeasance. FDR was slow to address civil rights for black Americans. His government unjustly interned Japanese-Americans during WW II. But, all in all, what would the U.S. have been like, during the Great Depression, if the rightwing had remained in charge? That is the question that must be asked. Not, is a government perfect? But, what is its impact on most people? What are its accomplishments overall? It's not possible to answer those questions about Obama, as yet, only a year and a half into his administration. But, on nearly every issue you could name, the trend is not a good one. Perhaps he may one day be judged a great hero, given the condition of the country and the government after eight years of high crimes and misdemeanors in every sphere and the very clear putsch in the U.S. by corporate/war profiteer powers. But we certainly don't see boldness and vision in the interests of ordinary people. We see attempts to eke out little scraps from the table of the super-rich and a regime rife with corporate/war profiteer toadies. We certainly do not see any kind of "New Deal" nor the slightest effort toward the kind of political revolution that is truly needed, whereby moneyed interests are lashed into their proper place with a great whip. We do not see the inspiration with which Obama sold himself to the country. We mostly see a retread of Clinton "neo-liberalism" with no attempt at justice for the Bushites' great crimes. These are trends. They are not written in stone, as yet. With Chavez, we have more of a record to judge him by. As a teacher, I'd give his government a B+, with some points for the adversity they have faced. The suspension of energy rationing is just one more evidence of good management--and I'm glad to see the CIA and Venezuela's rightwing deprived of that phony issue in the upcoming National Assembly elections.
The BP spill is obviously going to be used that way against Obama and the Democrats in the Congressional elections and on into 2012. That falsely framed corpo/fascist 'news' narrative is already being written. And Mother Nature is not likely to help out in that case. Obama can hardly have gotten control of the EPA and Minerals/Management in a year and a half, after nearly a decade of corporate wreckage, following a prior decade (Clinton) of prep for that wreckage in ever-increasing toadying to corporate interests. He has had enough trouble just getting control of the Pentagon and the embedded Bushwhacks there and everywhere else--and it's not at all clear that he has succeeded, or can even get such control. They've planted minefields for him throughout the government, I'm sure. The Democrats OF COURSE bear some responsibility, but the not PRIMARY responsibility, for deregulating the oil industry. It's an egregiously false narrative to say that Obama/the Democrats are responsible for this. But it should be instructive to watch how this plays out in the corpo-fascist media, as a parallel to how the corpo-fascist media has treated Chavez--on the drought/energy crisis and everything else.
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