Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, Dies at Age 58.

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his last words were "don't let me die."
why can't it be people like rush limburger and ann coulter?

It's easy to spend lavishly by eating your seedcorn (it's no secret corners were cut in maintenance and long term investments in the oil industry, Venezuela's only major successful industry, amounting to starving the goose that lays the golden eggs), printing money (Venezuela has the highest rate of inflation in Latin America), dumb luck of years of sky-high oil prices, etc. He ruined his country's higher education system, violent crime soared under his rule, and his administration was wasteful on a colossal scale ("pudreval", giving away oil almost for free to Cuba, etc). Sure, the poor got some handouts - and they, and their children, will be paying the price for years, if not decades, to come. I expect that they will blame his successor (who will probably try to stem the inevitable crisis by cutting subsidies to Cuba and so forth), however (with something like "this wouldn't have happened under Chavez" as a slogan), when it's time to pay the piper even though Chavez essentially left the cupboard bare. Politics as usual.

Sooo, in your mind a bullying dictator who crushed his opposition, set himself up as president for life, and curtailed the civil liberties of his "subjects" is less deserving of death than people who say things you don't like on the TV and radio? That's kind of a skewed set of priorities IMHO.

i can forgive a bully if he takes care of me and mine.

There are few politicians in history who didn't take care of at least their inner circle...or at least their enforcers that lacked the aptitude to usurp political office.

i have never considered your opinions to be "humble"

Please provide details. I know that Hugo Chavez was no great respecter of press freedom, but Venezuela doesn't have the death penalty. Whatever people consider to be his faults, Chavez has never ordered anyone to be executed (judicially or extrajudicially), unlike our own Barack Obama.

"eating the seedcorn" is the old right wing saw that annoys me exceedingly. Yes, better to close down the factories and idle millions because of insufficient gold mined from the earth. Not eating the seedcorn of course includes refusing to properly develop millions of people, includes ensuring that millions are stunted in their brain development as well as other physical development. It includes giving most of the wealth to those seen as gods who will punish the people if not appeased as in a kind of primitive cult. Yes, that's very very smart.

Hugo Chavez's coup attempt had backings from much of civilian society as Carlos Andres Perez betrayed the people completely and Chavez put his money where his mouth was by having a recall of the president mechanism implemented that could have got rid of Perez after his back-stabbing and massacring and though dead people's signatures made made up much of the recall petition he took the challenge and won easily. Had he done a Perez and forced IMF Structural Adjustment on this country it would have been adios, Hugo. The late 80s and 1990s was a time where Latin American leader after Latin American leader would be elected as leftists promising not to do free market reforms and then stab their people in the back the next day. Alberto Fujimori is another notable example.

That is irrelevant to its reality in this case. The reality is that Venezuela's oil company suffered declining production and mounting debts during the Chavez years - his spending was financed essentially by not investing in Venezuela's only successful industry, and by inflation, and Venezuela failed to develop any industries to compensate for that decline (unlike, to some extent, Mexico).



You seem to be confusing Venezuela with Brazil. In any case, developing people is hardly furthered by destroying higher education. As for food, look up "pudreval" - tons of food rotting in Venezuelan ports due to government mismanagement, while food rationing had to be introduced and the country became more dependent on food imports. That really says it all about Chavez.



Interesting that you should bring up Peru, which decided to abandon the path of popular strongmen and seems to be going for the rule of law - now Fujimori is in jail and Peru is experiencing Chinese levels of growth, unlike Venezuela's weak economic performance. Brazil also seems more or less to be going for the rule of law.

Doesn't anything about that statement strike you as immoral and/or ethically dubious? That's not quite at the Mussolini made the trains run on time level, but it's getting there.

Scratch that, it's actually worse as you're approving of brutality if it benefits you personally, not simply for its efficiency.

And?

Carlos Andres Perez killed hundreds in February 1989 in the name of the IMF and neoliberalism and it's Chavez the evil despot?

Faulty premise; the fact that his predecessor was a real a**hole doesn't mean he couldn't be one as well

so in your view i should reflexively support somebody that would screw over [me and] the working class just to keep the upper classes fat and happy? why should i accept the mean green weinee [systemic disenfranchisement] just so that tea partiers can continue to be able to evade taxation and live high on the hog at the expense of joe lunchbucket? the working class NEEDS a bully in their corner! the middle and upper classes have usually been able to take care of themselves, they don't need a bully in their corner. but the venezuelan average joe-types voted for chavez because he convinced them he was in their corner, which was a real novelty for the working class of that nation- a politician who actually seemed to listen to the concerns of those at the bottom of the totem pole.