Monday, October 25, 2010

LA Quick Hits: Correa's Cops, Evo in Iran, FTA for Peru, Mex Senate Finds a Cash Cow, APRA's Pick, To Godoy or Not To Godoy & More

Grenada's Goons Still Silent After All These Years

Writing in the Guardian Gus John points out that the main characters who sank Grenada into chaos in '83, Bernard Coard and General Hudson Austin, are not only out of jail, but seem to be doing o.k. for themselves. He feels, justly, that they still have plenty to answer for:
Seventeen people — including Coard and General Austin — who were jailed for the Fort Rupert murders have recently been released from prison in Grenada. Coard now lives in Jamaica. Some of their fellow prisoners, including Austin, are employed by the Grenadian government.

But the released prisoners should not be embraced by Grenada's civil society without answering the many questions that still remain about the events which led to the Fort Rupert massacre: questions to which the island's long-suffering people need answers. Who gave the orders that live ammunition should be used against unarmed children and adults at Fort Rupert? Who ordered the execution of Maurice Bishop and the members of his government? Where were the bodies of those killed taken on 19 October 1983, and why were they not given to the public mortuary for relatives to identify, claim and bury? And for me, that to which I shall probably never find the answer is: who buried my father?

25 October is a public holiday in Grenada to mark the start of the "rescue mission" (as Reagan dubbed the invasion). Those who still mourn the victims of the massacre are calling for 19 October to be declared "Martyrs Day" and a public holiday, as a reminder that they have yet to bury their dead.

I should note that Mr. John's father passed due to a medical condition that could not be attended to; militia forces obligated his mother to return home when she sought help. Mr. John's was in a funeral home and taken by the army and buried at an undisclosed location during the American invasion.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

LA Quick Hits: Cholera Kills in Haiti, Juarez (Again), Hugo and Santos, Bolivia - Not So Gassy, Peru Talks Security, PRD Drops Godoy & More

Not VAT Again

Bruce Bartlett, an otherwise astute observer of the economic and financial scene weighs in on the VAT once more. Just as he did in his book The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, Bartlett stumps for the VAT as a solution to our growing fiscal instability. For someone who prides himself a realist on anything and everything related to our red-soaked balance sheet Bartlett is venturing into the realm of fantasy if he thinks the VAT stands a chance of ever being enacted.

Let's begin with the obvious, there is no way that any Republican would back a VAT as long as there is an income tax. Come to think of it I can't think of a politician alive that would go home to their district or state and explain who adding a new source of revenue for the federal government is good for them. So only way that you can get VAT is if you repeal the 16th Amendment. Let's go a bit further, our judicial branch is a bit more activist than in the late 19th century. Conservatives would not trust a strict repeal, they would want a repeal and replace with a prohibition on the implementation of a federal income tax. It is just too much and too academic.

The VAT would be an improvement over our current tax system, but the probability of it being put in place is highly unlikely. By the way, ignore the inflammatory title and read Bartlett's book. In his slim volume, in simple prose and a smattering of stats Bartlett lays out the challenges that we face. The slap at Reaganomics is the application of supply-side solutions to the current crisis. Bartlett actually defends (mostly) what the supply-siders were able to do in the '80's.