...because their defiance of "Shock Doctrine" dogma and policies has resulted in...guess what? ... prosperity for all. Steep drops in poverty. High economic growth rates. High employment rates. Good wages and benefits. Big increases in access to education and health care. Burgeoning of middle class ("upward mobility"
. And more. And they've done all this ("New Deal" policies creating prosperity) quickly, over the last decade, after decades of "shocks" by U.S. and European financiers and half a century of gross exploitation and interference.
Another surprise (for those who depend on corporate 'news' monopolies for their perception of the world): Venezuela leads the region in the above list of "New Deal" policies, maintained a sizzling 10% economic growth rate during the 2003 to 2008 period (most of the growth in the PRIVATE sector, not including oil), suffered only slightly in the Bush Junta "shock wave" with NO CUTS in social programs, is back up to over 5% economic growth, was recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, and Venezuelans rate their own country FIFTH in the world in the Gallup "Well-Being" poll (measure of personal well-being and future prospects).
Similar story in Brazil, in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Uruguay and other countries with leftist governments. Defiance of Wall Street and other U.S. propagandists on a host of critical issues--including big government spending, strong government regulation of the banksters and other 1%-ers, fair taxation, good wages/benefits, strong labor unions, many kinds of subsidies for the poor ("bootstrapping" , nationalization for scofflaw corporations, national ownership of major resources and use of the revenues for social spending, encouragement of small business and co-ops and more--are the keys to prosperity for all. "Austerity," on the other hand, is key to prosperity for the 1% with guaranteed poverty for the 99%.
The countries with rightwing governments--U.S. client states--are in the shits, with the highest poverty rates in the region, huge discrepancies between rich and poor, vast and ruinous exploitation of resources by multinational corporations, and other economic, political and social destruction, often accompanied by U.S. "war on drugs" militarization and consequent military/police fascism, rightwing death squads and bloody horror against labor unions and other advocates of the poor (Colombia, Honduras) or general bloody mayhem (Mexico).
U.S. "free trade for the rich" and the U.S. "war on drugs" have gone hand in hand, in Latin America, and only the countries that have stood up against these programs of imperial conquest are prospering.
We also suffer from both--the "war on drugs" with the "prison-industrial complex" and vast loss of civil rights, and "free trade for the rich" (outsourcing of jobs to the cheapest labor markets abroad, CEO/big investor looting of good companies, grand theft in the credit market, etc.)--plus the oil wars. We are now getting "shocked" with "austerity."
After close attention to the leftist democracy movement in Latin America, I can confidently tell you two of the main keys to its success: 1) honest, transparent elections*; 2) grass roots organization.
We don't have the first condition for "New Deal" reform--which is also the first condition for democracy: honest, transparent elections.
In fact, our vote counting system--all of it run on 'TRADE SECRET' code owned and controlled largely by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold)--is easily--EASILY!--riggable. Privatized vote-counting is a disgrace to democracy and it is the final blockade to reform. That has to change before we can get to square one on serious reform. We really need to understand that Obama is president by permission of the far rightwing, which also has the power to saddle him with a Diebold Congress. It is plainly obvious that the House of Representatives is NOT representative of the American people, not even close. It is also obvious that Obama is shackled.
Also, the second lesson from Latin American "New Deal" reform--the requirement of grass roots organization--will forever be frustrated, and our people more and more depressed and demoralized, and in danger of social chaos and bloody repression, without honest, transparent elections. Honest, transparent vote counting has to come first.
Grass roots groups have put forward enormous election efforts in this country, not just for president but also for Congress, for state governor, etc., and have often been dumbfounded by their losses in contests they should have won, and then suffered something more: the inability to continue participating in the political process, due to depression, demoralization and lack of resources. It is expensive and exhausting to be a grass roots activist, especially in a country that does not encourage public participation and, indeed, in a country where the government often greatly discourages public participation and adopts the culture of corporate secrecy to prevent the public from knowing what is going on.
"TRADE SECRET" code in the voting machines! Jeez. Could it be any clearer?
Latin America has been through all this before us. They were among the first to be "shocked" by the "Shock Doctrine." We need to learn from them. It took them decades of hard civic work to create honest, transparent election systems--but once they got the election systems democratized, economic reform quickly followed. We need to do that hard civic work, and we need to do it soon. We need, first and foremost, to restore PUBLIC vote counting.
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*(Venezuela uses electronic voting but it is run on OPEN SOURCE code--code that belongs to the PUBLIC and that anyone may review--and they do a whopping 55% audit (comparison of ballots to electronic totals)--more than five times the audit needed to detect fraud in an electronic system. Jimmy Carter recently called Venezuela's election system "the best in the world." His is correct. I've looked into it myself. There is none better--and, as a consequence, Venezuelans now enjoy universal free medical care, universal free education through college, many other "New Deal"-type benefits and general prosperity.
(By comparison, our system is run on 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is FORBIDDEN to review--and half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL, while the other half do a miserably inadequate 1% audit. Our vote counting system is made-to-order for fraud by the far right and the transglobal interests they serve, whether gross reversals of outcomes or subtler manipulations (such as getting us all to forget Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld, while tying Obama down with a grossly unrepresentative Congress, and with a far right-skewed false political dialogue on all of our public airwaves and in corporate-controlled print media). We mustn't be fooled by Obama getting elected. Believe me, his mandate has been shaved and he is in bondage--as are all of our Democratic leaders--to ES&S, the most evil corporation that has ever stalked a democracy.)
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