Clinics, cable cars help Venezuela's Chavez in vote

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Clinics, cable cars help Venezuela's Chavez in vote
Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:01am EST

By Frank Jack Daniel

CARACAS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Cheap housing, health clinics and even a new cable car have kept President Hugo Chavez popular in the Caracas slum of San Agustin throughout a turbulent decade and help explain why Venezuelans may approve the socialist leader's bid to extend his rule.

Himself from humble roots, Chavez is relying on his enduring popularity among the poor to win a referendum vote on Sunday that would scrap term limits and let him govern Venezuela for as long as he keeps winning elections.

~snip~
Although major problems such as violent crime have cut into Chavez's once overwhelming support among the poor, he is still very popular here for investing in health clinics and projects to move families from precarious shacks.

A cable car will also soon be opened, saving residents of the hilltop slum hours of walking each week.

"He's the only president who has really worked for the poor," said Maria Acosta, 77, receiving free in-patient treatment at a clinic run by Cuban doctors. "If I could tie him to this chair so he doesn't leave us, I would."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1027903820090210?rpc=401&

[Peace Patriot]

1. "If I could tie him to his chair...I would." LOL!

He's Venezuela's FDR, as I've been telling anyone who will listen. (FDR ran for and won four terms in office--before the Republicans rammed the presidential term limit through, in order to prevent any more "New Deals" in the U.S.) The corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies often imply that Chavez "is buying" the loyalty of Venezuelan voters--like they are doing in this Rotters article--as if he had any personal wealth with which to "buy" anybody. Chavez and his government are responsive to peoples' needs. Is that "buying" votes? No. That is good government! But corpo/fascists have a different definition of good government--they think it's letting corporations buy the government they want, to make maximum profits and fuck the poor over. And if the government is, on the other hand, attending to the interests of the people and the good of the country as a whole, it's is "pandering" to the poor, "buying" votes, "purchasing" popularity.

But--reading between the lines, as we always have to do with Rotters and the others--we can guess from this article that the polls on lifting term limits are going well for Chavez and for those, like the 77 year old woman quoted in the article, who want him to run again in 2012, and Rotters, in anticipation of having to report a Chavez win in this referendum, are "poisoning the well" ahead of time, to make sure that stupid readers conclude what they want them to conclude--that Chavez is "buying" votes with frivolities like cable cars and low cost housing.

The corpos also fervently aver that it will all come to wrack and ruin "when the oil runs out." That's what they wish for--the rotten-hearted bastards--for the poor to live in cardboard boxes and remain illiterate. They've run the "first world" economies so well, have they? Now they would like "trickle down" and the "shock doctrine" to be re-inflicted on Venezuela (and all of South America). Chavez is outfoxing these fuckwads by educating and bootstrapping the poor, pouring money into infrastructure and local business, making new alliances and actually saving money (Venezuela has $40 billion in international cash reserves), because an oil-dependent economy that doesn't do this will fall apart "when the oil runs out." Do you put the oil profits into the pockets of sheiks and the super-rich, and Exxon Mobil, and give them yet more power to exploit the poor--or do you strengthen the poor majority, improve its skills, improve its lives, and get its energy and creativity working in the country's favor?

They are not idiots at Rotters. They are toadies to the rich men who hire them to promote fascist propaganda. It's saddening to see journalists become this corrupt. Anyway, they're hedging their bets. So the polls must be showing that "yes" on the referendum is ahead.

[bvar22]

3. My vote could be "bought" with:

*Single Payer HealthCare

*Low Cost Eco-friendly Mass Transit

*Universal Education

*Open, Transparent, Verifiable Elections

Yes. I'm definitely "buyable".

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. They'd never pay up. They never do. And the I.O.Us are piling up.

[wroberts189]

2. Oh oh...another positive article on Chavez helping the poor ...put on your flame suit. nt

and duck

[bird gerhl]

4. This will not impress a lot of DUers IMO

They always prefer rhetoric to results

[NuttyFluffers]

5. wow, actual progress! that's wonderful!

i'm a touch envious of course. ;)

[anonymous171]

6. This is why the RW here is against any kind of UHC system among other reforms.

[leftstreet]

7. While USAInc f**ks off in the ME, the Socialist tide sweeps South America

Hope it keeps coming north!

:thumbsup:

[DCKit]

8. And the Republicon Homelander Fascist Talibaptists can't do shit about it...

for, at least, another four years.

And I thought WE were frustrated.

[Greyhound]

9. K&R