I'm not saying Chavez is a saint, but there are powerful forces in the U.S. and Venezuelan capitalist elite that have resources to distort the truth...and many of us have had it force fed.
Let's not fall for cliched one-sidedness.
Let's see what others are saying.
Centre for Economic and Policy Research:
http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/2005_11_01.htm
But Chavez' popularity is now among the highest of any president in Latin America, with a 77 percent approval rating, according to the latest polling.
A few economic statistics go a long way in explaining why the Venezuelan government is doing so well and the opposition, which still controls most of the media and has most of the country's income, is flagging.
After growing nearly 18 percent last year, the Venezuelan economy has expanded 9.3 percent for the first half of this year - the fastest economic growth in the hemisphere. Although the government's detractors like to say this is just a result of high oil prices, it is not so simple.
Oil prices were even higher and rose much faster in the 1970s. But Venezuela's income per person actually fell during the 1970s. In fact, for the 28 years that preceded the current government (1970-1998), Venezuela suffered one of the worst economic declines in Latin America and the world: per capita income fell by 35 percent. This is a worse decline than even sub-Saharan Africa suffered during this period, and shows how completely dysfunctional the economic policies of the old system had become.
Although Chavez talks about building "21st century socialism," the Venezuelan government's economic policies are gradualist reform, more akin to a European-style social democracy. The private sector is actually a larger share of the Venezuelan economy today than it was before Chavez took office.
One important reform, long advocated by the International Monetary Fund, has been the improvement of tax collection. By requiring both foreign and domestically-owned companies to pay the taxes they owe, the government actually increased tax collection even during the deep recession of 2003 -- a rare economic feat.
As a result, the government is currently running a budget surplus, despite billions of dollars of increased social spending that now provides subsidized food to 40 percent of the population, health care for millions of poor people, and greatly increased education spending. The official poverty rate has fallen to 38.5 percent from its most recent peak of 54 percent after the opposition oil strike. But this measures only cash income; if the food subsidies and health care were taken into account, it would be well under 30 percent.
VenezuelaAnalysis.com
Venezuela: Economic Populism or Pragmatism?
Tuesday, Jul 04, 2006
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1766
Recently a well known economist wrote a piece about Latin American economies, noting that "the spectrum of economic policies in the region in the last few years has spanned the entire range from pragmatism to populism...At the very far left corner there is the extreme radical populism of Venezuela's Chavez."
An examination of Venezuela's recent economic performance suggests that the country's economic policies actually fall into the pragmatic camp, not the populist one.
A look at macroeconomic indicators shows that the economy is performing well. Economic growth has been the fastest in Latin America for each of the past two years. In the first quarter of 2006 growth continued apace, registering 9.3%. Yet in the midst of the economic boom, inflation has been halved. This year, at least one forecaster expects Venezuela to experience its lowest inflation in 18 years though it will still be one of the highest in Latin America. Declining inflation in the midst of an economic boom, while not unprecedented, is atypical and suggests pragmatic economic management.
Factoring in social indicators, Venezuelan economic performance looks even better. Unemployment has been steadily dropping, reaching 10.1% in April 2006. In 2005 the government's index of social wellbeing reached its highest level in 10 years. Incomes of the poor doubled in the past two years. The poverty rate, which had been increasing for most of the past twenty-five years, has been dropping. In fact, the World Bank recently noted that "Venezuela has achieved substantial improvements in the fight against poverty."
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This one's a couple years old, but it's a good third-party market/investment analysis:
http://www.ameinfo.com/42051.html
Venezuela's economic recovery is bolstering Chavez's popularity. In the first quarter of this year, gross domestic product increased by nearly 30 percent. Economic growth should top 10 percent for all of 2004. The restructuring of PdVSA and the company's rapidly expanding domestic investment are contributing strongly to economic growth.
Restructuring is also increasing cash flow to the government. Increased revenue from PdVSA is being used to fund numerous social development projects as well as subsidized loans to farmers and small businesses. Both increased investment and cash flow to the government are laying a solid foundation for continued economic growth in Venezuela.
Though strongly contradicting the Washington Consensus, the Chavez government is proving that social development and firm state influence in the economy can produce strong economic growth. Other countries in South America are beginning to implement economic policies similar to Venezuela's. Such developments are natural, as the Washington Consensus has proven to be economically disastrous for South America.
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And how is Venezuela usually portrayed by U.S. media (and why)?
There's good insight here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/delacour06012005.html
Framing Venezuela
In analyzing U.S. press coverage of Venezuela, it is instructive to examine how U.S. news reports "frame" the political issues. Operating on the basic assumption that framing is a process of selecting certain fragments of a perceived reality and making them more prominent in a text, one can deduce that news frames are not necessarily neutral in a political or ideological sense. By emphasizing certain fragments of a perceived reality and omitting (or downplaying) others, U.S. media can promote their own political agendas.
A recent examination of reports about Venezuela in The Miami Herald, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor suggests not only that U.S. media frequently invoke biased news frames but also that their choices of which "independent" analysts to cite is strongly correlated with the level of bias.
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U.S. correspondents often invoke variants of the "property rights" frame in slanting their coverage against Venezuela's government. For example, an L.A. Times report (January 30, 2005) pays special attention to the complaints of Venezuela's privately-owned media, casting a highly critical eye on the government's new media law that restricts daytime broadcasting of sex, violence and profanity. The Times report --which is demonstrative of how U.S. media often fail to accurately contextualize the issues-- neglects to point out that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposes similar restrictions on public broadcasting.
Surely Venezuela's media law is partially designed to restrict the political manipulation of violent images, but only by reviewing the nature of the private media's anti-government propaganda can we begin to understand why pro-government legislators would feel the need to regulate. The L.A. Times neglects to seriously consider the ways in which Venezuela's private media have waged campaigns to politically and economically destabilize the country. As the political scientist Daniel Hellinger points out, Venezuela's private media have been more than simply biased; "they actively organized efforts to oust Chávez via coup, work stoppages, and recall" (Latin American Perspectives; May 2005). The manipulation of violent images for partisan political purposes has been a trademark of Venezuela's private channels.
Perhaps the most famous example is the private stations' telecast --during the failed coup-- of a video showing Chávez supporters firing handguns from a bridge near the presidential palace. According to the video's voiceover, the gunmen were shooting at a peaceful opposition march below, but Eva Golinger points out in an article for the alternative news site Venezuelanalysis (September 25, 2004) that the video "manipulated the setting and failed to include the wider angle of the scene." Simultaneous video footage evidenced not protesters on the street below but rather police --under the command of an opposition mayor-- "hiding behind vehicles and buildings, taking shots at the Chávez supporters on the bridge."
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