The WSJ’s Editorial Posing as “News” about Ecuador
The WSJ’s Editorial Posing as “News” about Ecuador
Posted on August 19, 2014 by William Black
By William K. Black
Greetings from Bogota where I’m participating in an economic conference and teaching two class sessions.
Under the banner “Latin America News” the Wall Street Journal has poured out its pain that the people of Ecuador might reelect President Rafael Correa. The article is actually an editorial attacking Correa and the people of Ecuador for potentially voting to reelect Ecuador’s most successful President in the modern era.
The issue is term limits. I have always opposed term limits as an obstruction to democracy and competence. The U.S. had no presidential term limits for most of its history and the only president the population chose to elect to more than two terms was Franklin Delano Roosevelt – one of our greatest presidents. I am deeply thankful that our Nation had the great good sense to reelect FDR to four terms in office.
Term limits are an issue on which reasonable people should be able to disagree without rancor. Rupert Murdoch and his reporters do not fall within that category and they despise Correa Ecuador’s success and Correa’s popularity falsify their ideological claims that democratic government is the problem and plutocracy is the solution. The WSJ is enraged that that Ecuador’s democratically-elected parliament might remove term limits for public officials. The faux “news” story launches this fact-free smear: “Mr. Correa, whom opponents characterize as a semi-authoritarian leader who controls all levers of power.” Wow, I’m sure I could find “opponents” of every elected leader in the world who would say far worse. I’m also sure that the WSJ never ran a “news” story that read “Mr. Bush, whom opponents characterize as a semi-authoritarian leader who controls all levels of power.” It turns out that the “opponents” that the WSJ tries to dredge up are political opponents who define winning democratic elections as “authoritarian.”
We can test the claim that Correa “controls all levels of power” against the facts. He is the democratically elected president and a majority of the members of the democratically elected Parliament support him. That’s the norm in all parliamentary systems that Murdoch loves when conservatives are elected the PMs in Australia, the UK, and Canada. Correa’s party also lost democratic elections for mayor in Ecuador’s largest cities, so he plainly does not control all levels of power and does not act to prevent his political opponents from winning elections nor does he annul their victories. In Ecuador, the President is not the leader of the party or coalition that controls the parliament and for many years Correa held office with a parliament controlled by the opposition.
The WSJ lets slip the “opposition’s” real concerns – the people of Ecuador strongly support Correa’s policies and oppose the return of the oligarchs to power. The oligarchs are desperate to make it impossible for the people of Ecuador to reelect the leader they support.
More:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/08/wsjs-editorial-posing-news-ecuador.html#more-8494
= new reply since forum marked as read
before FDR was elected. Government after government fell, in Ecuador, in the decade prior to Correa winning the presidency. Ecuador saw many mass protests, fallen governments and extreme corruption of its oligarchic rulers. It was extremely unstable and basically ungovernable, due mostly to "neo-liberal"-induced mass poverty (the rich getting richer). Correa, like FDR, turned things around completely, providing a focus on poverty, and--equally important--presiding over Ecuador's most stable government in--I think--its entire history; certainly in the history of the last couple of decades before the Correa government (1990s to 2006). From what I can see, Correa DESERVES to be re-elected--just as FDR did. And also, Ecuador needs Correa, just as the U.S. needed FDR. That is a very apt comparison by William Black (the author of the OP). But the real test--the only test--in a democracy is the opinion of the people. The people of Ecuador continue to give Correa huge approval ratings. If they banish term limits, Correa will most certainly be re-elected.
Thomas Jefferson opposed term limits for the presidency--and no term limit for the president was placed in the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson, Madison and most of the founders of our republic believed that a term limit on the president would be UNDEMOCRATIC, and that the people should have the right to elect whomever they wanted as president, for as many terms as the people felt that they needed that president.
The term limit on the U.S. president was instigated by REPUBLICANS in the mid-1950s, in order to prevent a "New Deal" from ever happening here again, and to begin to dismantle the one we already had--which they have very nearly accomplished. They realized how difficult it would be to deconstruct the "New Deal" if a populist, pro-New Deal president could be elected again and again.
The "New Deal" means "we're all in this together." Its signature is creation of a widespread middle class, widely-based upward mobility and no abject poverty. It furthered the notion of "the Commons"--the building of schools, hospitals, town halls, courthouses, roads, bridges and other public infrastructure to benefit ALL. It instigated the SHARING of burdens, including a fair and equitable tax structure, and creation of collective financial efforts, such as Social Security, and--very importantly--it instigated CONTROLS on private financial institutions to prevent any further "crashes." Reagan got rid of the first of these--the regulation of savings & loan institutions (which resulted in millions of small savers being robbed); Reagan also flipped the tax structure over from fair to UNfair; and ("neo-liberal"
Bill Clinton then nixed the Glass-Steagle law (which would have prevented the crash of '08).
We're back where we started. I don't know that a third or fourth term for any president since Truman could have secured our future as a fair nation with a strong middle class, no abject poverty and no out-of-control robber barons, banksters and transglobal corporate monsters. I think that other corpo-fascist plans began to be more important than term limits--for instance, monopolistic control of the media, assassination (JFK, RFK, MLK), and endless war. But I do believe that THAT is what was in the minds of the Republicans who put a term limit on the presidency. They wanted to end the "New Deal" and prevent another.
This is also WHY our corpo-fascist media hates Rafael Correa so much--and of course hated Huge Chavez, and now hates his successor, Nicolas Maduro--as well as, to some degree, hating all of the other new leftist presidents in Latin America (Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador). The more "New Deal"-like they are, the more they are hated, and the more the corpo-fascist propaganda machine reviles them. They DON'T WANT OUR PEOPLE TO KNOW that Latin America is having a "New Deal."
It is no surprise at all to see the Wall Street Urinal doing this. I don't call them the Wall Street Urinal for nothing. But though they may be the stinkiest of the lot, they are by no means alone in disinforming our citizenry. The New York Slimes are no better, really--just snootier.
