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So much so, that this tiny nation, all by itself, brought to a screeching halt Latin Americas disastrous shift to the right that, after progressive governments stumbled in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, experts had already certified as inevitable and unstoppable.

Yet, Moreno, a 64-year-old paraplegic who, from 2007 to 2013, was president Rafael Correas second in command, defeated former banker Guillermo Lasso, the Ecuadoran oligarchys great hope for recapturing power after 10 years of progressive policies under the popular and charismatic Correa.

I will be the president of everyone, but especially the poor, Moreno, who has been wheelchair-bound since he was shot by robbers in 1998, said after his victory.

Without a doubt, Correa, who was 43 when he became president for the first time in 2007, will be a tough act to follow. An economist trained in the U.S. and Belgium, he was able to bring stability to his country for the first time in years, invested oil wealth in important infrastructure works and social programs that lifted hundreds of thousands of his compatriots out of poverty.

Yet, Ecuadors economy suffered due to a downturn in oil prices, and the 2016 massive earthquake that killed hundreds of people, injured thousands more and left in its wake terrible destruction. The opposition tried to use the countrys tragedy for electoral gain, blaming Correa and his Alianza Pas party for the increase in poverty.

But Lasso, who proposed to cut social spending and reduce taxes for the rich and for businesses, could not bamboozle the majority of Ecuadorans who had not forgotten he was part of president Jamil Mahuads government.

Mahuad presided over a banking crisis known as the bank holiday that plunged the country into unspeakable misery and forced 1.5 million people to leave for Europe and the U.S. seeking a way to survive. The financial collapse destroyed the sucre, the national currency, and left Ecuador deep in debt, which Correa would later declare immoral and refuse to pay.

In this election, Ecuadorans were not willing to entrust the future of their country to someone like Lasso, one of the very same people who had impoverished them while making themselves even richer at their expense.

Not surprisingly, Lasso is disputing the results after having declared himself the winner, even though international observers have made clear the election was legitimate and there was no sign of fraud. The OAS and an increasing number of governments like Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela have recognized the legitimate triumph of Moreno and Alianza Pas and their Citizenship Revolution. Washington hasnt pronounced itself yet.

I leave the country in good hands, Correa said standing next to the president-elect.

"A big hug to those who believed in our proposal as well as to those who did not vote for us; we'll work for them too," Moreno tweeted on Monday.

Like it or not, 21st century socialism and its promise of justice and fairness for the people of Latin America is very much alive.

As I told you before, Ecuadorans are not fools.

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[OP-ED]: In Ecuador, 21st century socialism is alive and well - AL DIA News

After reading several comments in the OYM section, I'm submitting the following defense.

The following is the definition of socialism that I learned in school and the one I use in my debate with "Dutch." It is not for those of you who think the local fire, or police department and the military is an example of national socialism. I'm just not smart enough to debate the difference.

Socialism is an economic system where the means of production, such as money and other forms of capital, are owned by the state or public. Under a socialist system, everyone works for wealth that is in turn distributed to everyone. Under capitalism, you work for your own wealth. A socialist economic system operates on the premise that what is good for one is good for all. Everyone works for their own good and for the good of everyone else. The government decides how wealth is distributed among the people.

In a pure socialist economy, there is no free market like we see in a capitalist nation. The government provides for the people. The taxes are usually higher than in a capitalist system. There may be government-run health care and a complete system of government-operated education. It is a misconception that people do not pay for these services. They do pay for them through higher taxes. Socialist systems emphasize equal distribution of wealth among the people.

"What one receives without producing, another produces without receiving." Thomas Jefferson (I think)

How many of you want to share your paycheck with someone that refuses to work?

I believe in a safety net but I don't think it should equate to a middle class standard of living.

See the original post here:
What socialism is - Sierra Vista Herald

Jose Sierralta/newzulu/NewscomAfter a months-long standoff in Venezuela that included the Socialist-controlled Supreme Court overturning many of the opposition-controlled National Assembly's decisions, the court has explicitly ruled it will now act as the legislative branch, Reuters reports. "As long as the situation of contempt in the National Assembly continues," the court ruled, "this constitutional chamber guarantees congressional functions will be exercised by this chamber or another chosen organ."

The secretary general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, called the action a "self-inflicted coup dtat perpetrated by the Venezuelan regime against the National Assembly." Several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, expressed concerns and Peru withdrew its envoy, which Venezuela's foreign minister called "rude support for the violent and extremist sectors in Venezuela."

The opposition won control of the National Assembly in late 2015 as the long socialist project in Venezuela was coming to a brutal and inevitable head. Since then, the government has doubled-down on the kind of centrally planned and redistributionist policies that brought Venezuela to where it is in the first place. Instead of changing course, the government has found more and more scapegoats and "enemies" to blame for the economic crisis. Earlier this month, the socialist government accused bakers of waging "economic war" against the country and started arresting them for making bread rolls.

The United States and the European Union also chimed in on the latest developments in Venezuela. A spokesperson for the State Department said the U.S. condemned the "decision to usurp the power of the democratically elected National Assembly" and called it "a serious setback for democracy," while the E.U. called for a "clear electoral calendar." The opposition has called for early presidential elections as the popularity of President Nicolas Maduro continues to scrape new lows. The government responded by accusing a "right-wing regional pact" of plotting against it. State-controlled Telesur TV called the characterization of the court's decision as a coup "fake news," insisting the court's ruling was because the occupants of 3 of the 167 seats in the legislature were accused of voting irregularities. The opposition controls 112 seats. Maduro tried to dissolve the legislature last year after it attempted to launch a recall effort against him.

U.S. responses to the crisis in Venezuela in recent years have largely been profoundly unproductive. A few months after the opposition party wrested control of the legislature, President Obama renewed the U.S. declaration of Venezuela as a a "national security risk," providing Maduro and the socialists new ammunition to smear opposition as foreign stooges. Yesterday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) joined Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in condemning the court's power grab, calling it "an attack on what remained of democratic institutions in Venezuela" and Maduro "an unhinged dictator who has systematically dismantled democracy in this country." The two also met with various opposition lawmakers. Menendez, who has called for an "independent" investigation of Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. election, should be keenly aware of how his words and actions could be weaponized by the ruling party in Venezuela and used against the opposition.

For Venezuelans, liberation from socialism won't come from the U.S. or the OAS or any foreign actor. Instead it will come from within, with the help of the kind of decentralized technology that is challenging state power around the world, like Bitcoin:

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Venezuela Socialist-Controlled Supreme Court Shuts Down Legislative Branch - Reason (blog)

The people of Oakland went into mourning this week while those in Las Vegas celebrated the news that the National Football Leagues Raiders were abandoning the East Bay and heading to Sin City. But while any sports fan understands the sadness felt in Oakland and the happiness in Las Vegas, the reaction from taxpayers in the two places should be quite different. Those of Oakland should be cheering their governments refusal to be shaken down by the NFL, while the people of Nevada ought to be up in arms about the way they are about to be fleeced by billionaires.

The iconic franchise was lured to Nevada by the state legislatures approval of $750 million in financing toward the building of a $1.9 billion domed stadium where the team would play. While the city of Oakland offered to donate 55 acres to be used for building a new stadium for the Raiders as well as infrastructure improvements that would benefit the team, the NFL preferred the more lucrative bribe from Las Vegas. That means the Raiders will be lame ducks in Oakland for the next two seasons until their current lease expires and they can fly to the desert where by 2020 they will be playing in what will presumably be a state-of-the-art stadium designed to produce far more revenue for the team than their current abode, which was renovated by the city for their benefit in the 1990s.

Teams do provide cities and regions with an almost tribal identity that provides an intangible boost to morale when they win and a sense of shared grief and solidarity when they dont. The tragedy here isnt the decision of the Davis family that owns the Raiders to pull up stakes and move their property someplace they can make more money. In theory, thats capitalism and the fans can always find other forms of entertainment. But the process by which the Raiders and many other professional teams have extorted tax breaks and public financing for their private businesses isnt free enterprise at work. Its crony capitalism at its worst.

Sports leagues argue that new stadiums boost local economies and that the money showered on their owners is a good investment since games provide employment and tax revenue that would go elsewhere if teams were to move. But economists from those at the left-leaning Brookings Institution to the libertarian Cato Institute have consistently debunked these claims for decades. The money most fans spend attending games both at the stadiums and the surrounding neighborhoods has been shown to be merely transferred from other leisure activities. There is also no net uptick in employment, and most of the jobs that are created by ballparks tend to be part-time and low-paying. As for tax revenue, studies have shown that even the most successful examples of new stadiums built with public money that are intended to anchor neighborhood development such as the Camden Yards ballparks positive effect on Baltimores Inner Harbor havent earned enough to justify the investment of public money. Almost all have failed to be self-financing and require substantial ongoing subsidies.

Los Angeles will soon have two new NFL teams (the Rams, who returned last year from St. Louis and the Chargers who are fleeing San Diego), but does anyone think the citys economy was substantially worsened because it functioned without a pro football team for two decades? There is also is no reason to believe Nevadas problems will be erased by the arrival of the Raiders. Las Vegas was the focus of a foreclosure crisis in recent years and Clark County where the city is located voted to increase class sizes and close a school for at-risk students because of budget shortfalls. Yet the state still found three quarters of a billion to spend on a stadium that will increase the profits of a private business.

While the people of Nevada may feel a certain pride about Las Vegas becoming a big league city with the addition of an NFL franchise as well as the one the National Hockey League has awarded it for the 201718 season, thats all they will get out of the transaction. By contrast, Raiders owner Mark Davis and his fellow NFL franchise holders will make a fortune out of a stadium whose design will be geared toward generating increased income from luxury boxes, restaurants, and other bells and whistles that the teams current home lacks. Taxpayers pay the bill for the stadiums, while almost all the benefits go to private interests. This is a Robin Hood in reverse system that amounts to nothing less than socialism for sports team owners.

Why do cities and states consistently do something that is not in their financial interests?

One can trace the political advantages of governments providing their people with bread and circuses back to ancient Rome. The appeal of team sports in our own day is also undeniable. No mayor or governor wants to be remembered as the person who lost a beloved team the way New York City let Major League Baseballs Giants and Dodgers depart for the West Coast in 1957, leaving behind legions of disillusioned fans. By contrast, politicians who agree to even the most egregious deals in which teams are provided new stadiums virtually free of charge (as, for example, was the case in Pennsylvania when the state agreed to finance two new parks for baseball and football in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at the start of the new century) that will make them incomparably richer are lionized even if the net impact on taxpayers is overwhelmingly negative.

At a time when Oakland faces a variety of devastating economic and social problems with limited resources, Mayor Libby Schaaf deserves credit for refusing to be intimidated by the NFLs shakedown. The NFL is a $14 billion business with television contracts that ensure that even their most poorly run teams are immensely profitable, while impoverished Oakland still owes $83 million on a deal that lured the team back from Los Angeles two decades ago.

Schaafs example should also inspire other state and municipal leaders who will face the same kind of blackmail in the future to stand firm. The real villains here are the politicians like the Nevada legislators who mortgage the future to build stadiums. As for the team owners who happily accept bribes from states that amount to public subsidies for successful private businesses, if they want new stadiums that will help make them more money, they should pay for them on their own.

Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter at: jonathans_tobin.

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Socialism for Sports Team Owners - National Review

In April of last year, Philadelphia right-wing talk radio host and Daily News columnist Dom Giordano cooked up a hot take comparing now former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie to Bernie Sanders. It ended with an almost Breitbartian non sequitur: Hinkie robbed area basketball fans of three years of competitive basketball. If elected, Sanders would rob us of a lot more.

This is a classic hack columnist move: Here are two things I dont like, therefore they are the same. But Hinkies Process is antithetical to socialism. Its strategies explicitly are copied from banks, which Hinkie openly admires; its actual basketball players are treated like widgets. (Hollis Thompson was the only Sixer on the roster for the duration of the Process, and he was waived this season.) It doesnt get less socialist than Stanford Graduate School of Business, from which Hinkie graduated and which shouldve been shuttered after Hinkies insane resignation letter. In short, Giordanos take is dumb as shit.

Except: Many of Americas ascendant socialists also are ardent Process Trusters. The Philadelphia chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is filled with Hinkie fans; heres a sign from an anti-Trump rally in Philly saying Trust The Process, Not The President. Heres Bernie Sanders policy staffer Billy Gendell copping to being a TTPer. And no one Ts the P more than Larry Website, who chairs the Central Jersey chapter of the DSA and does recruiting and outreach for DSA national. Hes tweeted some variant of his faith in Hinkie dozens of times already this year.

I asked Jacobin magazine editor, publisher, and founder (and Knicks fan) Bhaskar Sunkara why socialist NBA fans were so quick to embrace a disastrous strategy of losing basketball games on purpose that was ostensibly based on investment banking. Sunkara said that he doesnt want the Knicks to tankthat as a basketball fan, and as a socialist, I actually do believe in winning any reforms you can get today in the here and now ... Id rather take that two-percent chance that the Knicks get the eight seed and win it all than [have] a lottery pick.

But Sunkara loves the ideas that surround Hinkies failed team-building on several levels. I feel like the tagline for Jacobin should be Trust the Process, he told me. There is something about the slogan itself that resonates with me as a socialist. The struggle is ahead. Us trying to carve out a space in American politics for socialist ideas, in the long term trying to build an opposition movement that could hopefully one day, decades down the road, contend for power, requires a very patient strategy. And our time horizon extends way beyond next season, or next year.

This was the part of Hinkies strategy that bought him (and many failed GMs before him) years and years of job security: If were not trying to win right now, you cant judge me on the outcomes on the court. You just have to trust the process. This is bullshit out of the mouth of a man trying to lose basketball games on purpose; it rings truer when Bernie Sanders says that a political revolution is required before democratic socialism can be realized. But Sanders also is fighting like hell to win contests in the current conditions. Like Lenin (and Steve Bannon), Hinkie wanted to heighten the contradictions so he could rebuild after a total collapse.

Sunkara accurately identified a reason why Hinkie was able to attract so many fans, and its one that tracks pretty well with why Trump was able to beat Clinton in November. He prefers the Hinkie-era Sixers to the rudderless Knicks: People are like I dont mind what my team is doing, because at least it seems like they have a plan. Compare that to the Knicks in the Isiah Thomas era where it was like, Oh god, no one knows what theyre doing. Or even right now, our front office has gone back to that, where no one has a plan.

Analyses of the Trump and Clinton campaigns found that 25 percent of Clintons ads focused on policy; inasmuch as Trump had policies, 70 percent of his ads did. Announcing that you have a terrible plan and are sticking to it no matter what is more persuasive than seeming to have none.

Sunkara is glad that the Philly DSA is filled with Hinkie Bros. What I like about the Philly DSA using Trust the Process often is that it shows that DSA is now an organization filled with lots of young people who have pretty normal pursuits and interests. One pretty common interest among a lot of people in DSA is watching the NBA, which is what it would be for a broad group of people from their early 20s to their early 30swhich a lot of DSA members are.

A lot of its purpose is kind of a signal that were not just complete wackos. Were committed to a political purpose but its not the only thing we do in life. This is not dissimilar to the thinking that leads to the Democrats trotting out a phalanx of celebrities at their conventionLook, youths, we are cool!except that for a still relatively obscure and small (still less than 20,000 members) leftist party, it might actually help.

The pseudonymous Larry Website needs no such second-order rationalization of his Hinkie fandom. For Website, leftism and Process Trusting go hand in hand; he rejects Sunkaras incrementalism on and off the court. It taps into the political sphere in that, how many times can you try reformism? At some point, youre just like, this isnt working, and you need to try more radical ideas to try to win. Trying reformism and trying to do the bare minimum isnt working for the left or the Sixers.

Okay, sure, fine. I hated the post-Iverson Sixers; I cant stand Hillary Clinton, though I better admit right here that I supported her in the Democratic primary before coming to regret it deeply. But just because incrementalism is shitty politics doesnt mean its a bad way to run a basketball team. Id trade the last four years of non-basketball to be a fucking Bucks fan right now. Centrist politicians are who they are and will never radically convert to class-warfare politics. But a basketball team can hang around the playoff mid-pack for a few years while also positioning itself to jump to title contention with one big acquisition. Just ask the Houston Rockets.

And again, Hinkie is an archetypal Silicon Valley techno-libertarian. When I asked Website about that, he agreed, saying, Dont get me wrong, hes a horrible person. Like in his work life, hes a horrible person. But hes the one who was finally brave enoughin his terrible ruling-class kind of wayto be the first one to take a jump at this. And Website points out that even if Hinkie is of the ruling class, he was ultimately rejected by it when the NBA pushed him out for the Colangelos.

For me, its like, hes more of a class traitor in that hes willing just to fuck shit up. The Kings ownership are the ones who really make you wonderare these really the smartest people in our society making these decisions? The Kings, I mean man, a lot of these people fail upwards.

(Quick hilarious note here: the Kings reportedly are interested in hiring Hinkie. Website made that comment three weeks before news of their interest broke. Back to Larry.)

He definitely made enemies among that ruling class that we loathe, and he got replaced by someone that I equally despise. Some people take it too far in the way that they idealize him, but he was the one who was the one who was willing to actually do it.

I appreciate him for that, but in all other aspects, definitely not a fan. There are a lot of historic class traitors. FDR, he was mobilizing the working class; Hinkie was tapping into a rage that Sixers fans felt across the board. Theres something there. Even still, the Sixers are a horribly capitalist team. The Wells Fargo Center is still the name.

Website has been a radical acolyte of the Process since he learned about former Sixers center Andrew Bynum driving away from a gas station in his Ferrari with the nozzle and hose still attached. That was when I was like, Im fuckin done, the Sixers can do whatever. When I asked him if there was ever a moment in his political life if he had patience for reformism, he says that he was a pretty big Obama supporter when he first got elected.

Like Steve Bannons, Websites political views were hardened in the crucible of his dads finances getting ruined in 2008. The realization that the Obama administration wouldnt be arresting any bankers for their role in that years economic collapse was Websites political version of Bynum driving away with the gas pump flopping in the street.

The difference is in their respective conclusions: Bannon famously views the future apocalyptically; Website, as is maybe temperamentally required for a Process Truster, is an optimist. He will not be content to go for the six seed: The static complacency of neoliberalism extends to the basketball sphere as well. We can do so much better than this; we just have to find radical alternatives to do this.

Preferring Hinkies radical approach over Democratic-style incrementalism is, essentially, an aesthetic preference. But pro basketball is not just a simulation of socialisms concerns; its a real industry with real management and a real unionized labor force. And more than just Hinkies credentials and style match up neatly with investment bankers; his practices do, too.

The Process, at bottom, is a suite of business practices designed to exploit the NBAs most management-friendly features, most especially the draft lottery and rookie wage scalemeasures that rob new workers of negotiating power and self-determination, and artificially cap their pay at a tiny fraction of their worth for what can end up being the first five years of their careers. The Sixers under Hinkie rarely and only grudgingly exceeded the collectively bargained salary floor; in tandem with the NBAs effective monopoly on pro basketball in the United States, the Sixers (ongoing) effective withdrawal from the market for the kinds of players who might help them win games shrinks the pool of jobs available for those players. And for years the Sixers have subjected young, unqualified workers to miserable public failure at the beginning of their careers for a benefit that, if it ever arrives, would be realized by their replacements.

This is all stuff that is counter to socialist values, obviously. When I pressed Sunkara and Website on this, both of them conceded that while they were intoxicated by Hinkies radicalism, its execution left something wanting.

Sunkara supports a pursuit of sabermetric efficiency, but not at the expense of workers. Socialists are for rationality and scientific management, but to what end? If theres a technique that could improve productivity in a workplace by 20 percent, I would say that in my vision of a socialist society, that technique would be employed. But then workers would have the chance to either get paid more or take time off. So the gains of this productivity advantage isnt just going to a couple people, but is more broadly shared.

Website compares the Sixers procession of cheap second-rounders and other obscurities to any other profession exploited by capital: Some of the playersand this goes back to alienation, and the disposable labor that Marx talked aboutare just lucky to get in the league. And some of the players have that mentality where theyre like, Im just happy to be in the NBA.

Some people would use the same language, like, Im just happy to be a miner. These players are remarkably disposable, but also, they deserve to get paid for their labor. He also added that the way they churn players through bothered him.

Both men displayed a desire to #sticktosports that was surprising to me, but maybe when politics is your full-time gig, finding it in sports is less interesting. I like sports enough where I dont like mixing it with politics, Sunkara told me. Theres certain people, I wont name them, that specialize in that kind of stuff. [Being a sports fan] is what I do in my free time, and I try not to find like hidden acts of resistance on the court at every corner.

Website was less sanguine about it, saying that rooting for the Sixers wasnt the most evil thing in which he actively participates: There can be no ethical consumption under late capitalism, so these are the compromises we have to make every day. When we go shopping at the food store, were making compromises, when we go to the gas station, were making compromises.

To put it all on something like basketball that brings to joy to my lifethe community around the Sixers is everything that is good about the world and that sense of solidarity and that were all in this together riding through it with the Sixers but then also in real life, that community, Ive met some amazing people. That is what is good. If this sense of solidarity excludes the workers providing the community its identity, well.

Website and I spoke just after the news broke that rookie center Joel Embiid, the jewel of the Process so far, would miss the rest of the season, but before the more recent news that Embiids knee would require surgery. Embiids play thrilled us both, but even the much sunnier Website was aware that any revolutionary project teeters on collapse. He compared the Process to the doomed Paris Commune that ruled the city for two months in 1871: The fragility of this project, of the revolutionary transformation of the Sixers, it is like a shot in the dark. And it can fall apart at any second.

Maybe the Sixers will never make it past or even back to mediocrity. Maybe the weirdest possible outcome of the Process would be turning the team into the American version of the Bundesligas FC St. Pauli soccer team, whom the Guardian called in 2015 the club that stands for all the right things ... except winning. Website points to European soccer teams like Livorno, whose support is deeply tied to militant communism.

Perhaps this will be the Processs legacy: making this eternally hapless franchise the unofficial team of an American socialist party, forever undermining one of the most visible unionized labor forces in the country but beloved by rose-handled internet leftists everywhere. At the moment, its a destiny that seems nearer than a championship; Id like to think that Sam Hinkie, neoliberal scum, would hate it.

Dennis Young is an editor at FloTrack with a bad twitter account.

Excerpt from:
Nobody Trusts The Process More Than America's Most Prominent Young Socialists - Deadspin