Mexico's Calderon vows to build highways and homes

[Judi Lynn]

Mexico's Calderon vows to build highways and homes
Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:35pm ET

MEXICO CITY, July 20 (Reuters) - The conservative winner of Mexico's disputed election promised on Thursday to bump up investments to build houses and highways and make running water more widely available once he becomes president.

Felipe Calderon, who has yet to be declared the winner of Mexico's July 2 election, promised to boost the country's already thriving housing industry with subsidies to help low wage earners buy their first homes.

"I want to start a very vigorous program of subsidies with a credit structure for Mexicans with wages up to ($13 a day)," Calderon told construction industry executives.

Mexico's home construction industry has taken off in recent years because increased economic stability has made it possible for banks and other lenders to offer fixed-rate mortgages.
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=marketsNews&storyID=2006-07-20T213529Z_01_N20403783_RTRIDST_0_CONSTRUCTION-MEXICO.XML

[MrPrax]

1. He's going to sell water off

Bechtel's Water Wars
by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
May 1st, 2003

In November 2001 Bechtel sued the country of Bolivia for $25 million for canceling a contract to run the water system of Cochabamba, the third largest city in the country, after local people took to the streets to protest massive price hikes for water.

The worst clashes occurred in February 2000, when President Hugo Banzer of called out more than 1,000 police to crush demonstrations with tear gas and rubber bullets, leaving one 17 year old boy dead and hundreds injured.

Aguas de Tunari, the local water company which supplies an estimated 500,000 people in the region, was being managed at the time under a newly awarded 40 year contract by International Water Limited, a subsidiary of Bechtel corporation of San Francisco, the construction multinational.

Bechtel got the contract as a result of the World Bank's aggressive pressure campaign on Bolivia to privatize state enterprises. "Bank water officials believe in privatization - the way other people believe in Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, and Buddha," says Jim Schultz, an activist from California who lives in Cochabamba where he runs an organization named the Democracy Center.
Corpwatch

The thing about selling water off to hugh multinational corporations like Nestle or Bechtel is that really do have to have a massive totalitarian media that will present the 'unthinkable' as a good plan...sorta like you need one to tell people that losing their job in a domestic call center and then having it show up in India, is ultimately for your own good...

Neither Mexicans or Bolivians live an advanced totalitarian states where insanity passes itself off as sober economic thought and that will, in the end, carry those people a lot farther than in their struggle than we will ever be in ours.

[msongs]

2. dipstick needs to provide jobs not interest income for banks

here he is trying to make money for his cronies already before he is sworn in, if even elected.

lotta people making $13 a day are gonna buy houses. yeah, right.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[struggle4progress]

3. Felipe must be nervous -- he's still campaigning.

[gorbal]

4. I remember another disputed election like this recently

Does anyone else remember who it was...the "leftist" candidate was finally declared the winner after a long and strenuous recount. I just can't put my finger on the name.