Even “El Pais” thinks that Branson was over the top!

We saw Alberto De La Cruz’s post earlier today about Richard Branson dressing up as Che to promote his new business ventures.

I found this from “El Pais” in Spain to be rather interesting:

“Si el Che Guevara levantara la cabeza, probablemente volvería a morirse al ver que uno de los hombres más ricos del mundo, defensor del capitalismo a ultranza que lo ha llevado a la cima de las listas de los más millonarios, ha utilizado su mítica boina, su uniforme y sus gestos más característicos para promocionar la marca que más dinero le ha hecho ganar: Virgin.”

It translates to something like this:  If Che raised his head, he’d be shocked to see a big time capitalist dressed up like him.

We can make fun of the picture but there is a serious side to all of this.

Thank God that Mr Branson was not the owner of an airliner in Cuba when the Castro brothers and Che came into power.

He would have been treated to a very bad case of repression and his business would have expropriated in the name of a corrupt revolution.

Branson is really stupid and lucky.

He is stupid for dressing like a communist to promote capitalism.

He is lucky that he never had to live under the leader that he is glorifying with this stupid rebel outfit.

What’s next?  Is he “going Mao or Stalin” to promote Virgin’s flights to Moscow or Peking?

P.S. listen to CANTO TALK here!

What jobs in the jobs report?

We got more news that “the stimulus” is  not stimulating, “hope is hopeless”, :”change is misery” & “si se puede’ is really “no se puede”.

This is the most recent tragic tale from the Obama recovery:

“The downside is that the gains have been largely in lower-paying industries such as waitresses, in-home health care, food preparation and housekeeping.

About 60 percent of the increase in employment for women from 2009 to 2012 was in jobs that pay less than $10.10 an hour, compared with 20 percent for men, according to a study by the National Women’s Law Center using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

And these are the people who say that conservatives have a ‘war on women”?

Wonder if  “Life of Julia” had a episode about “low paying jobs”?

A great recovery, specially if you are looking for low paying jobs!

 

Chile: Happy Independence Day to a real success story in Latin America

Our friends down in Chile will enjoy another anniversary of their independence in 1810:

“Today, September 18 is celebrated in Chile as their Independence Day. It is remembered with the fiestas patrias or “national parties.” The celebrations kick off in early September and can last for weeks. All over Chile, people celebrate with food, parades, reenactments, and dancing and music. The national rodeo finals are held in Rancagua, thousands of kites fill the air in Antofagasta, in Maule they play traditional games, and many other places have traditional celebrations. If you’re going to Chile, the middle of September is a great time to visit to catch the festivities!”

Yes, it’s a great day to eat some good food and dance a little ‘cueca”.  By the way, watching Chileans dance “cueca” is really a treat:

Chile has another reason to celebrate today. It’s economy is the jewel of Latin America, as reported by IBD recently:

“In 30 years, Chile has gone from being a Third World country to a developed one, raising per capita income to $17,000, achieving 6% to 7% GDP growth most years, and attracting billions in foreign investment.

It didn’t happen in a vacuum.

The country was the first nation to try free-market reforms as articulated by the great economist Milton Friedman, whose ideas were still new in 1974.

When Gen. Augusto Pinochet was asked by Chile’s legislature to take over in September 1973, he created a MacArthur-style caretakership and turned the job of cleaning up a ravaged economy over to a group of University of Chicago-trained economists.

Known as “Chicago Boys,” they found a nation that was a mess after the short Marxist dictatorship of Salvador Allende and four decades of bad policy, including state-owned industries, heavy protectionism and massive bureaucracy. Special interests — unions and corporate monopolies — controlled major parts of the economy. Property rights were battered.

The Chicago Boys rescued their country with three critical economic reforms: fiscal control, privatization of social security and free trade. It not only worked, it quietly freed the nation from even the military regime and created the vibrant democracy Chile is now.

First, Finance Minister Sergio De Castro made the central bank independent. He ended subsidies and cut government spending. He slashed bureaucrats from 700,000 to 550,000. It was a painful austerity in the absence of a big private sector.

In the first four years of the new government, Chile’s economy surged 32%.

Next, economist Jose Pinera, Chile’s Labor and Social Security Minister, privatized social security. The plan helped the government balance its books and let workers choose between personal retirement accounts or the bankrupt state-run pension system. Workers could keep their own money, invest it, decide when to retire, and, best of all, owned their pensions as property they could leave to heirs. Some 97% of Chileans switched.

Pinera’s privatized accounts not only outperformed the state system by a factor of 10, but the savings they created provided capital to rebuild the country.

The last step came as Chile slashed tariffs and opened itself to the world. It signed more free-trade pacts than any nation, 58 at last count, which gave it access to 2 billion customers, an outsize market to swim in for a relatively small nation.

That enabled the country to specialize in what it did best — seafood, fruit, wine and its traditional mining exports. Its citizens got rich.

All three pillars upon which Chile’s stunning transformation rests can be duplicated in any country, which is why so many imitate these reforms.”

It is also a stable democracy and that is very important too.

There is a country with prosperity and political stability in Latin America called Chile.  In fact, it also has a few things to teach us, specially its private retirement accounts and commitment to free market economics.

Thumbs up to our Chilean friends and do the “cueca”!  You’ve earned this day of celebration.

P.S. You can hear our look at Chile with Fausta Wertz & Michael Prada here.

Something about Syria that has nothing to do with bombs!

What a week for Syria.  We’ve gone from “ready to bomb” to a “congressional pause” to a “plan ruso” that no one understands.

It has also been a good two weeks to remember Barbarito Diez, the legendary Cuban singer who recorded so many of those “danzones” that our parents loved.

I bet that your parents fell in love dancing “danzon”.  I can say that mine did!

They spent a lot of Saturday nights dancing “danzon” at Parque Marti in Ciego de Avila.  (I mean “Ciego” when it was a town rather than a province)

In fact, it is very likely that my creation was inspired by one of those danzones in Ciego de Avila, Sagua la Grande or somewhere in between.  Very good chance of that!

Yes, I’ve been spending a little time listening to “La Mora”, the song about that “mora” in Syria who stole one guy’s heart.

Want to think of Syria without thinking about bombs, cruise missiles or President Obama?

Put Barbarito on the turntable or your CD player and enjoy “La mora”:

“Allá en la Siria hay una mora que tiene los ojos más lindos

que un lucero encantador¡

Ay Mora! Acábame de querer
no me martirices másque mi corazón está que se devora

por quererte tanto mora por quererte tanto mora

¿Cuándo volverá? la noche buena
¿cuándo volverá? el lechoncito
¿cuándo volverá? bien asadito
¿cuándo volverá? los rabanitos
¿cuándo volverá? las lechuguitas
¿cuándo volverá? ay los traguitos……”

 

http://youtu.be/ljG3JbMruBA

Syria? How about regime change in Venezuela?

 We are all focused on Syria and the Middle East. I just hope that someone in this White House is watching the events in Venezuela.

We just saw two stories from Venezuela that home the reality that the country is falling apart and freedoms are disappearing. The “Cubanization” of Venezuela is off and running. As they used to say in Cuba: “Para atras ni pa’ coger impulso”!

President Maduro has just announced that the government launched a news network to tell the public the truth about the situation in the country:

“Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced on Tuesday at a public event that the Government would launch a “Truth News Broadcast” via mandatory radio and television broadcasts to air his Administration performance. The newscast will be broadcasted at noon and in prime time.

Venezuelan opposition denounces that mandatory radio and television broadcasts constitute misuse of power by the Government, in addition to using state-run media for propaganda.

For its part, the Venezuelan Government argues that mandatory radio and television broadcasts are a necessary tool to broadcast its messages, in order to counteract the alleged “censorship” the private media apply against government events and achievements.”

A government news channel to tell the truth? is that like Granma in Cuba or Pravda in the old USSR?

Mandatory listening? Is that like everyone going down to hear “el comandante” at la Plaza de la Revolucion?

The second story is a statement by Mario Vargas-Llosa:

“Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa is “very concerned” over the direction Venezuela has taken over the last years, and remarked that the country “is a total disaster, a real chaos; where demagogy, corruption, and violence abound.”

“(Venezuela) is a country that, instead of moving forward, is going backwards; it features the highest inflation rate in Latin America,” Vargas Llosa remarked in an interview with news agency Efe apropos the publication of his new novel “El héroe discreto (The discreet hero)” in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. As usual, the writer seized the opportunity to give his opinion about current issues.

He asserted that, unlike his country, Peru, and other Latin American countries, whose economic situation have improved; Venezuela is “a negative exception” to that outlook.

“Venezuela’s case is rather tragic,” the writer asserted. He is also worried about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintaining “the messianic ideas” of his predecessor (late President Hugo Chávez) to turn Venezuela “into a headlight, an example” for other countries.

“However, I’m afraid that Venezuela is rather the exception to the rule. Nowadays, there are more countries in Latin America where democracy is developing, featuring modern economic policies which are leading to progress and development,” Vargas Llosa remarked.”

Venezuela is on unsustainable path and there are some very bad days ahead.

Regime change in Syria? How about Venezuela?

The US needs to consider sanctions against Venezuela, specially given the real evidence that the country is eliminating freedoms and its economy is falling apart.

P.S. Listen here to our with Comandante Cazorla in Venezuela, a member of the opposition.

Remember Chile’s 9-11

From My View:

As we remember the brave men and women who died in the terrorist attack 12 years ago, we also look south to something very consequential that happened in Chile 40 years ago:

“Chile’s armed forces stage a coup d’état against the government of President Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist leader in Latin America. Allende retreated with his supporters to La Moneda, the fortress-like presidential palace in Santiago, which was surrounded by tanks and infantry and bombed by air force jets. Allende survived the aerial attack but then apparently shot himself to death as troops stormed the burning palace, reportedly using an automatic rifle given to him as a gift by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.”

Allende was elected in a 3-way race in 1970.  His presidency divided the country and created economic chaos, i.e. food shortages, labor strikes, and rampant violence.

The nation was in turmoil and President Allende had lost control of the situation.

Please don’t get fooled with the international left’s romantic and nostalgic recollections of the Allende years.  They were bad for Chile.

Of course, Allende was elected and nobody likes to see a military “coup” replacing what voters selected.

At the same time, Allende was trying to transform the Chilean economy way beyond what anyone had voted for:

“He embarked on what he called “the Chilean path to socialism,” nationalizing the copper industry that had been dominated by U.S. companies and using the money to fund land redistribution while improving health care, education and literacy.

The embrace of socialism, which included a three-week visit by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was a Cold War nightmare for U.S. President Richard Nixon, who approved a covert campaign to aggravate the country’s economic chaos and helped provoke the military takeover.

The Sept. 11 coup initially was supported by many Chileans fed up with inflation that topped 500 percent, chronic shortages and factory takeovers. But it destroyed what they had proudly described as South America’s strongest democracy.”  (AP)

Pinochet’s term was not easy either.  There were serious human rights violations.   We can not overlook those excesses when we praise the work of “The Chicago Boys” in the economy.

Where is Chile today?  Chile is the jewel of Latin American economies.  It is no longer a 3rd world country and enjoys a very stable economic and political environment.

Is Chile better off today?  I say yes but I respect those Chileans who lost loved ones during a very difficult period.

Like in Egypt recently, there are times when elected leaders push the country into chaos and the army has to step in and clean things up.

Finally, Pinochet left power after losing big in a plebiscite in 1988.   Chile began its return to democracy the next year and here we are.

At the end of the day, Pinochet’s legacy is a prosperous and non-communist Chile, as Paul Weyrich wrote when Pinochet died in 2006.

P.S. You can hear my discussion with Fausta Wertz and Michael Prada about this.

 

Yes, President Obama should have spoken to Univision, but…

Jorge Ramos of Univision was right when he “…took to Twitter to call out Obama for not including Univision in his big pre-Syria address media blitz, calling it a wasted opportunity.”

It’s true.  I agree with Jorge Ramos!

President Obama should have spoken to Unvision because there are thousands of Hispanics serving in the armed forces. Their parents, and older grandparents, would benefit from hearing their president in a Spanish interview.

You can put my mother in that group since we have a son in the US Army.

Furthermore, some of Univision’s affiliates, such as Channel 23 in Dallas, have huge audiences for their newscasts.

So why didn’t he?

First, he remembers his trip to Univision last September. It was not pretty.  He was confronted with difficult questions about Benghazi, “Fast & Furious” and others.  Also, he does not want to talk about immigration reform.   It’s going to be very difficult to deliver immigration reform with so many Democrats facing a tough reelection.

Add the recent “job reports” and it will be very hard to legalize people competing with US workers out of work!

Second, President Obama is gambling that Hispanics won’t punish him for skipping the Spanish speaking networks.

Frankly, Hispanics have not punished him so far despite some incredibly lackluster results!

For example, he never proposed immigration reform despite huge Democrat majorities.  Yet, they still voted for him!

Unemployment in Hispanic districts is bad, i.e. “si se puede” really means “no se puede” when it comes to looking for work.  Yet, he is still popular!

And check out the lousy public schools in our inner cities.

How bad are the public schools in our big cities?  Well,  the Obama daughters went to private schools in Chicago and continued that tradition when they moved to Washington DC.

Today’s Democrat party has a simple message:  Private schools for the children of Obama, Biden, Kerry, Gore and the Clintons.  Public schools for you who keep reelecting us!

The Obama White House is betting that Hispanics won’t care that he doesn’t care about them.

Sadly, the White House has been winning that bet for 5 years!

Unfortunately, there are too many Hispanics too happy to hear meaningless “5 de Mayo” speeches rather than expect results from this president.

We repeat: Why should President Obama care about people who will carry his water no matter what he does?

Hispanics need to learn an important lesson or they won’t ever be an electoral factor in US politics. There is more to being relevant than demographics!

There are two kinds of voters in the world:

a) automatic voters….politicians remember those on Election Day;
and more importantly,
b) independent voters…..those are the ones that you court and pay attention to.

Unfortunately, there are too many Hispanos voting automatically for Obama and that’s why he takes them for granted.

P.S. Check out my show CANTO TALK here.