Hugo Chavez Invites Homeless to Live in Presidential Palace

I take it uv never put up homeless families? moving staff out and putting in place somewhere for people you dont know to come and live requires massive effort. Even if he has people serving it stil takes time energy and money!

 

It seems the super hero Kanye went on to apologize to Bush stating that calling Bush a racist was premature..
Probably the most ganster thing he ever did in his life.. Now taking it back like the wangster that he truly is. A sell out a face in the Media ..

 

Moving your staff when you're the president of a nation means you have unlimited resources at your disposal, it's really not that hard. I doubt Chavez personally did any of the moving.

 

That's because the homeless people at home literally don't count. The census (both in the US and here in Canada (likely in most developed countries), counts people by their addresses... How many people to a household...

No household? No people...

Unemployment stats? They don't count how many people are unemployed... they count how many people are receiving unemployment benefits, social services and are doing job searches through some government agency...

It's only when the developed countries look at underdeveloped ones that they see a problem, because they purposely ignore the problem underfoot.

If it's not that big of a deal, why hasn't Obama done it? Why didn't Bush do it, or Harper... Hey, I betcha there's a lot of extra space in those british palaces and estates...

Why haven't you?

 

:iagree:

 

Because he isn't a wealthy president of an entire nation?
How much support an individual can/should provide is correlated to how much they can support themselves and their position in society.
Madcap doesn't have the money nor the means to house 25 families.
On the flip side, Chavez has the means and the power to do much, much more.

A leader's job isn't to help out 25 families, it's to help the entire country.

 

So... if you have ever chosen to not help someone, or you can only help a few, you might as well not ever choose to in the future, or at least expect to be berated for it?

Sure it was only a dozen families... but I am pretty sure that for those families, this seems like a godsend...

 

Nice excuse for doing nothing except putting others down who are...

 

It's obviously a feel good PR move Tom.
And I'd really like to know how you got information that I'm "doing nothing".

 

Exactly, why didn't Chavez do it 10 years ago and keep it as a running program.

 

Presidents do symbolic gestures to show the way, they are not right all wrongs.
If a president could do as he pleased all the time, it is too much temptation to abuse of power.
That's why there should be independent judges and legislators and rule of law, not rule by proclamation. That's why it is wrong to silence someone who disagrees with you. Maybe he's partly right and he just sees a different side of the question than you do.

So a president makes a grand gesture, a motivational speech and then the legislature hashes out how to do the same thing for all the needy in your country. It's not as easy as ruling by proclamation, but the law of unintended consequences demands that when a country does something good, it does it in a way that does the least harm and that takes consensus and negotiation.

 

Just because someone isn't a president, doesn't mean they can't do something to help those who need it.

If nothing else, they should at least have the sense to not ridicule those who are helping in some manner.

As for how I know if certain people are doing something to help or not... I don't, except by personal experience in that those who actually do offer to help, are often slapped for their efforts and tend to know better then to put down others for at least trying.

 

I'm not saying people who aren't presidents shouldn't help others and I think it's really cool that 25 poor families have a place to stay, but let's be honest, he's the president of Venezuela.
He can do more. This is news because he wants it to be news, because it makes him look good, and that is all. Just look at the knee-jerk reaction in this thread.
My criticism of this isn't because he helped people, that's great, my criticism is that Venezuela is kind of a shit hole and he is the president. If he really cared he'd crack down on the serious problems that nation faces rather than go for the easy publicity stunt to boost his rep.

 

Gonna use a joke I read once in response to this since there hasn't been a Chavez thread in a long time to be able to use it.

Chavez couldn't run a hotdog stand without banning mustard and having the crime rate around it explode.

 

I won't swear to this, seems I haven't been there... and I don't claim to be any form of expert on him, but on checking wiki I find the following things of note...

Since Chávez was elected in 1998

-over 100,000 worker-owned cooperatives—representing approximately 1.5 million people—have been formed with the assistance of government start-up credit and technical training;

-the creation and maintenance, as of September 2010, of over 30,000 communal councils, examples of localised participatory democracy; which he intended to be integration into regional umbrella organizations known as "Communes in Construction".[58]

-In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produce some of their own food, and are able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds.[59]

In September 2010, Chávez announced the location of 876 million bolivars ($203 million) for community projects around the country, specifically communal councils and the newly formed communes. Chávez also criticised the bureaucracy still common in Venezuela saying, when in discussion with his Communes Minister Isis Ochoa, that "All of the projects must be carried out by the commune, not the bureaucracy." The Ministry for Communes, which oversees and funds all communal projects, was initiated in 2009

- Education spending has went from 3.4% to 5.1%
- Healthcare spending, from 1.6% to 7.71%
- Spending on housing from 1% to 1.6%
- Poverty Rates went from 42% to 34% (or from 55.44% in '98 to 28% in 2008 according to the Washington Post)
- Economy grew on average 11.85% from 2004-2007
- Extreme poverty has been reduced by 72%

Theres more as well, but that demonstrates the point fairly well...

Look at the things that have been said against him, and BY WHOM....

Organizations that are beholden to the US and to capitalism in general, all have some nasty things to say about him...

As I said, I don't claim that any of this stuff is fact... but if you exclude the capatilistic self serving comments, he seems to be the type of leader a lot of people around hip forums keep saying they want...

Does this not sound familiar in tone and feeling to a lot of the "I wish we had" posts around here;

 

I have no real gripes on Hugo. I actually always liked him and I never swallowed the propaganda made against him by American TV. I just feel uncomfortable that we actually have to reward what is justly so.

 

I totally get what you are saying, but considering the world we live in, we really really DO have to reward those who do what is just and good.

 

Let's see what else Chavez has done
-Been granted rule by decree
-Shut down most opposition TV stations
-Had constitution changed so term limits for president were removed
-Gerrymandered electoral districts enough to his rural supporters before the 2010 election that despite the opposition and Chavez's PSUV each splitting the vote 50/50, the opposition got less than a 1/3 of the seats.
-Has had the homicide rate skyrocket
-Mismanaged economic policies caused him to devalue the currency to get more money out of falling oil prices
-Following this, sent troops into various foreign supermarket chains accusing them of price gouging despite the fact it appeared they only raised their prices to match the inflation from the devalued currency
-Imprisoned judges for following the law and having the official reason as being they said offensive things about Chavez, true story.

The OAS said it best:
http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2010/20V-10eng.htm

The fact remains when Chavez 1st took power, social spending actually dropped at first. As oil prices began to rise Chavez began to use oil money to pay for everything. Which is good, but the point is anyone who was president of Venezuela in the past 10 years should've been able to increase social spending dramatically given the much higher state revenues. There's no doubt Chavez has helped the poor a lot, but the cost is Chavez trying to increase his power as much as possible. On top of that what Chavez did not do however was invest the money in practical ways to make sure when oil prices dropped it wouldn't have that big an impact. Even simple things like the electricity infrastructure. Venezuela has been facing massive power strains as a majority of its power comes from one massive hydroelectric dam where there has been a drought reducing water levels but apparently no one ever thought to change this situation in the past 10 years.

 

They should shut down most mass media TV stations europe as well, its mostly propaganda, brainwash and lies...