In Los Angeles,
Angry Green Girl
And her girlfriends
Wearing skimpy green
thong bikinis
Are giving a “Green, Free Car Wash”
To anyone driving a hybrid.
Alas, I have no Prius.
In this dry, desolate, and dying world
Is there no end to my longing?
Capitano Tedeschi
30
Eco-Lover's Lament copyright Aug. 25, 2009 by Jamie Jacks
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
McCarthy Follows Party Line on Health Care
Why is Rep. Kevin McCarthy smiling? Because as a congressman, he has government sponsored health insurance. On June 18, 2009, I received a letter from my health insurance company. It's not a letter someone with a chronic medical condition wants to receive,
"We reviewed your request to obtain Copaxone Kit under your plan. As we informed your doctor, we are unable to approve your request for the following reason, coverage is proved where therapy can preserve function and provide the patient benefit in performing activities of daily living. The information provided by your prescriber indicates that your use of this medication does not meet this requirement for coverage."
The letter, a portion of which was quoted above, was one part of a drama that started on June 18, 2009, when the company that manages perscriptions for the state of California refused to refill my perscription for Copaxone. An unkown and unnamed insurance company bureaucrat refused to refill a perscription for a medication that I need and gave me no reason except that my doctor did not answer their questions correctly. I was also told I had TWO HOURS!!! to call my doctor, get him to call the insurance company and then answer their question correctly (I asked what questions) but the operator refused to say. If I didn't get that done by the end of the business day, I would have to appeal the insurer's decision.
Needless to say, I was angry and in turmoil. I wrote about my concerns on my Facebook page."Having to argue with my insurance company regarding refill of medication. Told I had little more than 2 hours to get my to doctor to call their pharmicist for "prior authorization." This happens, but it is very vexing. Single payer health care I'm for it!" By the end of the week, my doctor called the insurance company, answered their bullshit questions correctly and got my perscription refilled.
But, I am still angry about because for five days my health was hostage to the whim of a FACELESS, NAMELESS, INSURANCE COMPANY BUREAUCRAT, whose job is to deny claims for no apparent reason. I discovered there is a reason, but first I'd like to talk about health care reform, Congressman Kevin McCarthy's stance on health care reform, and the fact that insurance companies are using "recission" to deny claims to policy holders who make the mistake of getting sick.
The 24/7 news outlets have been giving a great deal of coverage to health care reform and the bizarre reactions of certain segments of the American population. A lot of news coverage has been given to one of the more bizarre segments of the bizzarre population, the people who are protesting by participating in town hall mobs. Many of these people are so afraid that President Obama is the re-incarnation of Adolf Hitler, that they have no problem using Hitlerian tactics to disrupt important civic discussion on health when they are held by Democrats or moderate Republicans (Do they still exist?).
Do moderate Republicans still exist? I guess so, I mean supposedly Kern County Republican Kevin McCarthy is a moderate Republican. In the past, that description used to be given to men like Dwight Eisenhower or Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, I am beginning to believe that Rep. McCarthy is starting to flirt with the dark side of the Republican party. I have on occasion seen in on National Television basking in the dolorous glow of House Minority Leader John Boehner's fake tan. He is also beginning to quote the inane policy pronouncements of Minority Whip Eric Cantor on his congressional web site.
I mention Rep. McCarthy because on Thursday Aug. 6, 2009, I made the mistake of spending 15 minutes listening to Rep. McCarthy, R-Bakersfield conduct a "telephone town hall" on health care. It was sad to hear him reguritate the Republican talking points on health care, Government health care bad, Nancy Pelosi bad and so-on. He didn't actually lie, but he misrepresented the truth. If I had wanted that kind of crap, I would have watched Fox News. If you want to know the depth of Congressman McCarthy's views on health care you can visit his web site. It is the usual stuff, of letting the market set prices and give everyone, especially the rich a tax cut, and curbing ambulance chasers who are hounding well-heeled quacks out of the medical profession,
We must ensure that the quality of American health care received by our patients remains the best in the world. Doctors, not Washington bureaucrats, should make decisions about your health. Market-based solutions serve our families' freedom to choose their best health care option at an affordable price. Common-sense tax relief and lawsuit abuse reform can help work towards the goal that all Americans should be able to afford their own health care plan that meets their own unique needs.
It's the typical Republican health care boiler plate. Some of it might even be worthwhile. One interesting thing is the fact is that no one is talking about insurance companies issuing policies and then refusing to pay legitimate claims. Author Peter Gosselin in an interview on PBS' Tavis Smiley on June 24, 2008, had this to say about a woman named Deborah Potter who made the mistake of getting sick.
And then Deborah Potter gets diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and she couldn't collect on the very policy that she'd been selling to people. The company simply denied her claims and denied them for three and a half years, and it took this insurance insider three and a half years, the hiring of a lawyer, and an "L.A. Times" reporter writing a long story about it to get her benefits turned on.
Tavis: What do you make of that?
Gosselin: Well, the moral I draw from it, I try to step back from these stories of individual people and try to draw the broader moral. Her benefits in the case of that policy are governed by a single federal law. All of our benefits that we get from our employers are governed by a single federal law. It's called ERISA, and ERISA was meant by its authors, its congressional authors, to protect employee benefits. And we know that because it says so right in the preamble of the law.
But over the last generation, the Supreme Court and increasingly conservative federal appeals courts have rendered a series of decisions that have basically flipped the law on its head, making it easier for employers, for insurance companies, and for benefit administrators to deny people like Deborah Potter her benefits.
Deborah Potter was denied benefits due to an insurance company practice called "recissions." According to Gosselin in his book Highwire recissions are a method where, "insurers sold policies, collected premiums, and even sometimes paid small claims. But instead of carefully of carefully scrutinizing an applicant in advance, the insurer would wait until a policyholder filed a big claim, then sometimes cancel the policy and refuse to pay."
The result, according to Gosselin is that "It is hard to overstate how using recission except in the rarest of instances turns the very logic of insurance on its head." It's a great business, sell policies, collect premimums and then when the bills arrive stiff the poor schmuck who bought the policy in the first place. Bernie Madoff should have run an insurance company he'd be a free man today.
How good a business is it? McClatchy commentator Joe Galloway give us a glimpse in an Aug. 7, 2009, editorial on the McClatchy web site,
It's because those same corporations have, in just one decade, driven their profits and overhead (hiring those lobbyists and buying those congressional critters and building their fleets of private jets) from 5 percent to nearly 20 percent. In other words, the corporate bite has gone from 5 cents of every dollar paid in premiums to 20 cents of every premium dollar. It's good old unregulated American greed of the same stripe that drove this country into its current economic meltdown. Wall Street loves these guys.
The key question of the health care debate is simple, do we continue the status quo, or do we try to develop something better? No system will be perfect and there may be cost increases and rationing of care. Employer sponsored health insurance is going the way of the defined benefit pension. According to Peter Gosselin, insurance companies can not be trusted to provided a fair and reliable private option. Insurers will also refuse to allow all-Americans into a health insurance risk groups. Whether we like it or not the government may have to step in,
"Insurers cannot be counted on to assemble those groups on their own; the financial incentives to take the healthy and avoid the sick are simply too great. If employers are no longer to play the role they have traditionally played of assembling these groups, there is only one alternative--government. Unwelcome as many Americans may find the idea of goverment playing a bigger role in health care--and as much as we may object on philosophical and other grounds--we must not fool ourselves into believing there is some simple alternative."
Congressman McCarthy and many Republicans and some Democrats are asking you to trust them and oppose President Obama's efforts to achieve health care reform. If you like the status quo, do nothing. Oh, and do not get sick. Because if you get sick you will probably receive a letter refusing to pay for treatments you thought your insurance company would cover. I received such a letter, have you? If you haven't received such a letter, can trust the Republicans to carry out adequate health care reform?
I don't.
Capitano Tedeschi
30
Photo of Congressman Kevin McCarthy source: http://kevinmccarthy.house.gov/showpage.asp?ID=62
Source for quotations from Peter Gosselin, High wire : the precarious financial lives of American families. Peter Gosselin. NY : Basic Books, c2008.
McCarthy Follows Party Line On Health Care, copyright Aug 11, 2009 by Jamie Jacks.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Honduran Political Crisis
What is Honduras to me? Or, me to Honduras? Those are two interesting questions. I have a Facebook friend who does mission work in Honduras, and she has been writing passionately about Honduras on Facebook. I admire her passion and her desire for social justice in that Central American country, so I decided to do some research.
In case you didn't know it, Honduras is the middle of a political and social crisis. Political and social crises in Honduras are fairly common. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. The United States is its major trading partner. Honduras exports bananas, clothing, illegal immigrants and drugs.
According to the CIA World Factbook,
Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy. Economic growth remains dependent on the US economy its largest trading partner, and will decline in 2009 as a result of reduction in export demand and tightening global credit markets.
Most Americans can't spell Honduras and most couldn't place it on a map. Since I had five years of Spanish in high school, my ignorance is less. Capital: Tegucigalpa. I know it fought a senseless little war with El Salvador (The Soccer War) in the late 1960s. It was one of our staging points for Reagan's dirty war against the Ortega Regime in Nicarauga and it was the place where KMart's Kathie Lee Gifford line of clothing was manufactured in sweatshops using child labor. (Bit of an embarassment that) I imagine the sweatshops are still there and indigenous people are still being exploited.
So now that I've told you a little bit about Honduras, I will describe, the current political crisis, the international and national reactions to the crisis and the interesting way that certain conservative political constituencies have attempted to use the crisis to embarass the United States and the Obama administration.
The current political crisis Honduras has been a democracy, but at best a fragile one. Its current president, Manuel (Mel) Zelaya, was elected as a conservative in 2005. During the last couple of years he has allied himself with leftist and populist elements in the country. Internationally, he has also embraced the Latin American brand of socialism expoused by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Like Chavez, Zelaya wanted to run Honduras beyond the end of his 2009 term. So he tried to hold a plebescite to allow him to continue past Nov. 2009.
Zelayas attempt to stay in power, caused a political firestorm. The Honduran Supreme Court declared his actions illegal. The Army rousted him out of bed and flew him to Nicaragua. He was replaced by Congressional Leader Roberto Micheletti. International reaction to Zelaya's ouster was swift and fairly consistent. The Obama Administration joined the European Union and the rest of the world in labeling Zelayas ouster as a coup and insisting that President Zelaya be allowed to return to Honduras and finish his Presidencial term. The Obama administration also encouraged both sides to negotiate a compromise under the auspices of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
I became aware of the crisis when my Facebook friend posted this op-ed by current Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in op-ed in the WSJ
One of America’s most loyal Latin American allies—Honduras—has been in the midst of a constitutional crisis that threatens its democracy. Sadly, key undisputed facts regarding the crisis have often been ignored by America’s leaders, at least during the earliest days of the crisis.
The op-ed made me curious, because while the Wall Street Journal is a great place for news regarding investment, its editorial page has become the mouth piece for American right wingers.
Once I started looking, I found considerable Right-wing support for coup Magazines, the National Review and the Weekly Standard support the Micheletti government and criticized the Obama administration for failing support the ouster of Zelaya.
Soon some Republican members of Congress were beginning to express dismay at the Washington’s lack of support for Micheletti. On July 24, Congressman Connie Mack of R-Florida posted an editorial in Human Events, castigating Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for supporting negotiations conducted by Pres. Arias.
Day after day, the message from the State Department has been that we should let the negotiators negotiate and ultimately accept the outcome from the Arias talks. But in what seems to be Secretary Clinton’s first conversation with Honduran President Roberto Micheletti since the removal of Mr. Manuel Zelaya, Secretary Clinton joined the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and other leaders in the region and warned President Micheletti of serious consequences if he did not back down and allow Mr. Zelaya to return to power.
According to Congressman Mack, supporting negotiations was tantamount to letting the terrorists win,
“Our nation’s legitimacy as the leader of the free world comes into question when we accept the Administration’s argument that by joining the thugocrats, we neutralize their anti-American rhetoric and leave them deflated and without an enemy to fight.”
Mack then went down to Honduras to investigate the political crisis first hand. After returning from Honduras, Mack denounced the administration’s cancelling the visas of four Honduran diplomats.
“Having returned from a trip to Honduras this past weekend where I met with President Micheletti, Members of the National Congress, the Supreme Court President, Honduran and American businessmen, and human rights organizations, it is clear that the Honduran people want a peaceful, lawful resolution to the upheaval. They don’t want the United States to cut off aid to their country. They don’t want our country to pull diplomatic visas. And they don’t want us to stand with the “thugocrats” of the Western Hemisphere like Hugo Chavez.
“The Honduran people, in their fight for freedom from the tyranny of Manuel Zelaya, have earned our support and deserve to have the United States stand with them as they seek freedom and democracy for their country.”
Mack is not the only congressional Republican to criticize or express concern regarding the Administration’s handling of the Honduras’ current political crisis. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) have also shared their concerns with the State Department.
The Republican view point is wrong headed according to a July 23, 2009, article in the Economist
This argument is short-sighted and wrong. Mr Zelaya’s many faults did not justify his early-morning arrest and summary deportation. Coups are bad whatever the political colour of their victims. That is a lesson Latin America learned the hard way. Any election held under Mr Micheletti will be seen by many as illegitimate. But it is similarly wrongheaded to seek to reverse the coup through violence, as Mr Zelaya, egged on by Mr Chávez, seems to wish. The evidence suggests that only about one Honduran in three supports Mr Zelaya.
While the right-wing media and certain Republican members of Congress, condemn the Obama Administration for not supporting acting President Micheletti and blessing the coup, other voices are examining the implications of the long-term damage that endorsing the coup could cause.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, a Fellow at the Brooking Institution took a dimmer view of the view of the coup. The intervention by the military was illegal and wrong.
Now the Honduran military have responded in kind: an illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the constitution. Moreover, as has been so often the case, this intervention has been called for and celebrated by Zelaya’s civilian opponents. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the constitution, a disturbing notion in Latin America. When we hear that, we can expect the worst. And the worst has happened. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the sad role of the military as the ultimate referee in the political conflicts amongst the civilian leadership, a huge step back in the consolidation of democracy.
The U.S. has been spending a great deal of time and our tax dollars to provide a varity of of aid to Honduras. Some of that aid has been dedicated to improving the quality of the Honduran government. The U.S. has been working with Honduran officials trying to improve the quality of their government. Aid has been directed to improving the quality of government officials. Better government will allow the Honduran government to improve the quality of life of its people, reduce poverty and foster real economic growth. According the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) it has been ,
working to strengthen the transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of local governments; increase civil society participation in the oversight of public funds and local decision-making; support free and fair elections; and promote civic education among Honduran youth. USAID promotes democracy and governance in Honduras primarily through decentralization (the transfer of responsibility and resources from the central government to the local governments) to increase participation in local decision making.
To its credit, Honduras has been run by civilians and not the military for nearly 20 years. The use of soldiers to end the coup can be seen as a bad omen. No one wants the military to seize power. Some supporters of the coup said the soldiers were acting lawfully when the escorted President Zelaya to Nicaragua. But still having the military topple the current president is not in the best long-term interest of Honduran democracy.
Recognizing the Micheletti government would also play into the hands of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Zelaya was attempting to use the populist left-wing ideas exposed by Chavez to maintain his hold on power. The Obama Administration appears to have been acting wisely when it refused to recognize the coup and encouraging negoitiations mediated by Oscar Arias.
According to the July 28 article in the Miami Herald, a balanced, patient approach to the crisis has forced Mr. Zelaya depend on Washington and has limited Hugo Chavez to bellicose posturing,
Chavez has limited his action to calling for Hondurans to rise up to reinstate Zelaya, even as pro-Zelaya protests have been small. Instead, the Venezuelan president has been a talkative bystander, calling coup leaders "gorillas" and referring to Micheletti as "Goriletti."
This is not the role Chavez imagined for himself. In a decade in office, he has used his nation's oil wealth and his vision of a united continent free of "U.S. imperialism" to cultivate a leadership role beyond Venezuela's borders.
At the moment, Chavez cannot accuse the United States of preaching the benefits of democracy in one hand while supporting the overthrow of the democratically-elected Zelaya. This would give Hugo Chavez an opportunity and justification to meddle further in Honduran politics.
Conclusion,
As of today, not much has changed. Zelaya appears to be slowly running out of time and political options. The Micheletti government benefits by delaying his return and since the United States is still encouraging both sides to negotiate a solution, while holding the threat of harsher economic and political sanctions. The Obama's administration's demand that both parties negotiate a settlement will probably lead to a non-voilent transition of power, and a new election.
But what of the Honduran people? It appears that the current political crisis is just another in a long line of politcal crises. Most Hondurans don't have much faith in their government or their politicians. Until the country's chronic poverty and economic problems are solved it will not matter too much who runs the country. Politicians like Micheletti and Zelaya are just mirror images of one another. Roger Marin Neda, in a July 6, 2009, editorial "Who Cares About Zelaya?" described the political apathy of many Hondurans,
After almost 30 years of formal democracy, Julia, like most Hondurans, has lost all trust in politicians. While we have had basic liberties and precarious growth, our leaders have thoroughly failed to ease this country’s poverty and longstanding social divide. For these reasons, many Hondurans are apathetic about politicians — and politics in general.
According to Marin Neda, nothing will change until the politicians change,
Mr. Zelaya may or may not return to serve the remaining months of his term. But for the future of Honduras, does it really even matter? Until a new generation of young, uncontaminated, democratic politicians take control — and the deep inequalities in our economic system are addressed — we will not be able to trust our leaders.
Capitano Tedeschi
30
In case you didn't know it, Honduras is the middle of a political and social crisis. Political and social crises in Honduras are fairly common. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. The United States is its major trading partner. Honduras exports bananas, clothing, illegal immigrants and drugs.
According to the CIA World Factbook,
Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy. Economic growth remains dependent on the US economy its largest trading partner, and will decline in 2009 as a result of reduction in export demand and tightening global credit markets.
Most Americans can't spell Honduras and most couldn't place it on a map. Since I had five years of Spanish in high school, my ignorance is less. Capital: Tegucigalpa. I know it fought a senseless little war with El Salvador (The Soccer War) in the late 1960s. It was one of our staging points for Reagan's dirty war against the Ortega Regime in Nicarauga and it was the place where KMart's Kathie Lee Gifford line of clothing was manufactured in sweatshops using child labor. (Bit of an embarassment that) I imagine the sweatshops are still there and indigenous people are still being exploited.
So now that I've told you a little bit about Honduras, I will describe, the current political crisis, the international and national reactions to the crisis and the interesting way that certain conservative political constituencies have attempted to use the crisis to embarass the United States and the Obama administration.
The current political crisis Honduras has been a democracy, but at best a fragile one. Its current president, Manuel (Mel) Zelaya, was elected as a conservative in 2005. During the last couple of years he has allied himself with leftist and populist elements in the country. Internationally, he has also embraced the Latin American brand of socialism expoused by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Like Chavez, Zelaya wanted to run Honduras beyond the end of his 2009 term. So he tried to hold a plebescite to allow him to continue past Nov. 2009.
Zelayas attempt to stay in power, caused a political firestorm. The Honduran Supreme Court declared his actions illegal. The Army rousted him out of bed and flew him to Nicaragua. He was replaced by Congressional Leader Roberto Micheletti. International reaction to Zelaya's ouster was swift and fairly consistent. The Obama Administration joined the European Union and the rest of the world in labeling Zelayas ouster as a coup and insisting that President Zelaya be allowed to return to Honduras and finish his Presidencial term. The Obama administration also encouraged both sides to negotiate a compromise under the auspices of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
I became aware of the crisis when my Facebook friend posted this op-ed by current Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in op-ed in the WSJ
One of America’s most loyal Latin American allies—Honduras—has been in the midst of a constitutional crisis that threatens its democracy. Sadly, key undisputed facts regarding the crisis have often been ignored by America’s leaders, at least during the earliest days of the crisis.
The op-ed made me curious, because while the Wall Street Journal is a great place for news regarding investment, its editorial page has become the mouth piece for American right wingers.
Once I started looking, I found considerable Right-wing support for coup Magazines, the National Review and the Weekly Standard support the Micheletti government and criticized the Obama administration for failing support the ouster of Zelaya.
Soon some Republican members of Congress were beginning to express dismay at the Washington’s lack of support for Micheletti. On July 24, Congressman Connie Mack of R-Florida posted an editorial in Human Events, castigating Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for supporting negotiations conducted by Pres. Arias.
Day after day, the message from the State Department has been that we should let the negotiators negotiate and ultimately accept the outcome from the Arias talks. But in what seems to be Secretary Clinton’s first conversation with Honduran President Roberto Micheletti since the removal of Mr. Manuel Zelaya, Secretary Clinton joined the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and other leaders in the region and warned President Micheletti of serious consequences if he did not back down and allow Mr. Zelaya to return to power.
According to Congressman Mack, supporting negotiations was tantamount to letting the terrorists win,
“Our nation’s legitimacy as the leader of the free world comes into question when we accept the Administration’s argument that by joining the thugocrats, we neutralize their anti-American rhetoric and leave them deflated and without an enemy to fight.”
Mack then went down to Honduras to investigate the political crisis first hand. After returning from Honduras, Mack denounced the administration’s cancelling the visas of four Honduran diplomats.
“Having returned from a trip to Honduras this past weekend where I met with President Micheletti, Members of the National Congress, the Supreme Court President, Honduran and American businessmen, and human rights organizations, it is clear that the Honduran people want a peaceful, lawful resolution to the upheaval. They don’t want the United States to cut off aid to their country. They don’t want our country to pull diplomatic visas. And they don’t want us to stand with the “thugocrats” of the Western Hemisphere like Hugo Chavez.
“The Honduran people, in their fight for freedom from the tyranny of Manuel Zelaya, have earned our support and deserve to have the United States stand with them as they seek freedom and democracy for their country.”
Mack is not the only congressional Republican to criticize or express concern regarding the Administration’s handling of the Honduras’ current political crisis. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) have also shared their concerns with the State Department.
The Republican view point is wrong headed according to a July 23, 2009, article in the Economist
This argument is short-sighted and wrong. Mr Zelaya’s many faults did not justify his early-morning arrest and summary deportation. Coups are bad whatever the political colour of their victims. That is a lesson Latin America learned the hard way. Any election held under Mr Micheletti will be seen by many as illegitimate. But it is similarly wrongheaded to seek to reverse the coup through violence, as Mr Zelaya, egged on by Mr Chávez, seems to wish. The evidence suggests that only about one Honduran in three supports Mr Zelaya.
While the right-wing media and certain Republican members of Congress, condemn the Obama Administration for not supporting acting President Micheletti and blessing the coup, other voices are examining the implications of the long-term damage that endorsing the coup could cause.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, a Fellow at the Brooking Institution took a dimmer view of the view of the coup. The intervention by the military was illegal and wrong.
Now the Honduran military have responded in kind: an illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the constitution. Moreover, as has been so often the case, this intervention has been called for and celebrated by Zelaya’s civilian opponents. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the constitution, a disturbing notion in Latin America. When we hear that, we can expect the worst. And the worst has happened. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the sad role of the military as the ultimate referee in the political conflicts amongst the civilian leadership, a huge step back in the consolidation of democracy.
The U.S. has been spending a great deal of time and our tax dollars to provide a varity of of aid to Honduras. Some of that aid has been dedicated to improving the quality of the Honduran government. The U.S. has been working with Honduran officials trying to improve the quality of their government. Aid has been directed to improving the quality of government officials. Better government will allow the Honduran government to improve the quality of life of its people, reduce poverty and foster real economic growth. According the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) it has been ,
working to strengthen the transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of local governments; increase civil society participation in the oversight of public funds and local decision-making; support free and fair elections; and promote civic education among Honduran youth. USAID promotes democracy and governance in Honduras primarily through decentralization (the transfer of responsibility and resources from the central government to the local governments) to increase participation in local decision making.
To its credit, Honduras has been run by civilians and not the military for nearly 20 years. The use of soldiers to end the coup can be seen as a bad omen. No one wants the military to seize power. Some supporters of the coup said the soldiers were acting lawfully when the escorted President Zelaya to Nicaragua. But still having the military topple the current president is not in the best long-term interest of Honduran democracy.
Recognizing the Micheletti government would also play into the hands of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Zelaya was attempting to use the populist left-wing ideas exposed by Chavez to maintain his hold on power. The Obama Administration appears to have been acting wisely when it refused to recognize the coup and encouraging negoitiations mediated by Oscar Arias.
According to the July 28 article in the Miami Herald, a balanced, patient approach to the crisis has forced Mr. Zelaya depend on Washington and has limited Hugo Chavez to bellicose posturing,
Chavez has limited his action to calling for Hondurans to rise up to reinstate Zelaya, even as pro-Zelaya protests have been small. Instead, the Venezuelan president has been a talkative bystander, calling coup leaders "gorillas" and referring to Micheletti as "Goriletti."
This is not the role Chavez imagined for himself. In a decade in office, he has used his nation's oil wealth and his vision of a united continent free of "U.S. imperialism" to cultivate a leadership role beyond Venezuela's borders.
At the moment, Chavez cannot accuse the United States of preaching the benefits of democracy in one hand while supporting the overthrow of the democratically-elected Zelaya. This would give Hugo Chavez an opportunity and justification to meddle further in Honduran politics.
Conclusion,
As of today, not much has changed. Zelaya appears to be slowly running out of time and political options. The Micheletti government benefits by delaying his return and since the United States is still encouraging both sides to negotiate a solution, while holding the threat of harsher economic and political sanctions. The Obama's administration's demand that both parties negotiate a settlement will probably lead to a non-voilent transition of power, and a new election.
But what of the Honduran people? It appears that the current political crisis is just another in a long line of politcal crises. Most Hondurans don't have much faith in their government or their politicians. Until the country's chronic poverty and economic problems are solved it will not matter too much who runs the country. Politicians like Micheletti and Zelaya are just mirror images of one another. Roger Marin Neda, in a July 6, 2009, editorial "Who Cares About Zelaya?" described the political apathy of many Hondurans,
After almost 30 years of formal democracy, Julia, like most Hondurans, has lost all trust in politicians. While we have had basic liberties and precarious growth, our leaders have thoroughly failed to ease this country’s poverty and longstanding social divide. For these reasons, many Hondurans are apathetic about politicians — and politics in general.
According to Marin Neda, nothing will change until the politicians change,
Mr. Zelaya may or may not return to serve the remaining months of his term. But for the future of Honduras, does it really even matter? Until a new generation of young, uncontaminated, democratic politicians take control — and the deep inequalities in our economic system are addressed — we will not be able to trust our leaders.
Capitano Tedeschi
30
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
