<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 By: Kay Onefeather

Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 19:10:52 EST From: Kay Onefeather Kaonefeather@aol.com To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Fighting Corruption

Dear Editor: For 500 years, those in control in Venezuela have had what is tantamount to FREE REIGN, leaving overwhelming poverty, substandard living conditions for the majority of the people, poor health care provisions for the impoverished, and bleak prospect for improvement.

Then came, President Hugo Chavez Frias.

In four years, despite battling deliberate and malicious sabotage of the economy, an attempted coup, ongoing attempts to force illegal elections and constant attempts to undermine his position, President Chavez Frias has persistently fought to stabilize the economy. He has instituted programs for food production, to ease hunger now and feed the people in the future. These programs will also strengthen the economy in the future.

President Chavez Frias has instituted programs for better health care for ALL Venezuelans, not just the privileged few.

 And, President Chavez Frias is addressing issues regarding education -- uninterrupted education -- for ALL Venezuelan children.

It is mind-boggling to think how much more El Presidente could have accomplished if he had had as much assistance as he has had hindrances during the last four years.

President Chavez Frias is fighting corruption ... corruption which has had 500 years to "root" itself in Venezuela ... and 500 years of corruption can not be "uprooted" overnight!

Even without the constant bombardment of one malicious maneuver after another from the opposition, it will take time to rid Venezuela of its deep-rooted corruption.

It will require a stern, steady hand, stubborn persistence, the patience of Job and the support of you ... the people.

Kay Onefeather Kaonefeather@aol.com

"If you don't know where you're going, when you get there you'll be lost." -Yogi Berra

Reuters, 04.01.03, 5:53 AM ET

LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) - Loss of oil supplies from war-torn Iraq and Nigeria, where bloody clashes have choked off some production, will keep prices bubbling at close to $30 a barrel over the coming weeks, analysts and traders predict. They say there is enough supply heading into international markets to prevent a spike back to the $39.99 for U.S. light crude touched briefly in the run-up to the war. Many Brent traders are targeting a $28-$30 price band for the near future, with U.S. light crude valued at a $3 premium. "It's very unlikely we'll go right back up," said Tony Machacek of brokerage Prudential Bache. The price spike ahead of the war was partly driven by concerns that Iraqi soldiers might set fire to oil wells but an early capture of the wells by U.S.-led forces minimised this. "What we can see from the action so far is that they seem to have covered most of the southern oilfields quite well," added Machacek. Most analysts and traders agreed an 11-day sell-off that pushed Brent down to a low of $24.00 and U.S. light sweet crude to $26.30 on March 21, the day after war began, was too extreme. They also said a subsequent rebound was based on the closing in of 37 percent of Nigeria's 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of production because of clashes between tribal groups in the Niger Delta.

DRIVING SEASON LOOMS Nigerian low-sulphur crude is a particularly valuable commodity ahead of the U.S. driving season because it yields large quantities of gasoline. The U.S. gasoline market consumes more than 12 percent of all world oil. Fears U.S. gasoline supplies will run short during peak demand, pushing up prices of gasoline and in turn crude, were stoked by inventory data last week showing a one-percent fall in U.S. gasoline stocks when they should have been rising. "Inventories need to start climbing very sharply to give any chance of avoiding a huge spike in gasoline prices," said J.P. Morgan's Paul Horsnell in a research note.

<a href=www.sfgate.com>SFGate.com Gwen Knapp   Tuesday, April 1, 2003

Adonal Foyle, the record-shattering center for the Golden State Warriors, accepted some sheets of paper after a practice last month. Someone had photocopied a story from Mother Jones and knew that he would be interested. That was how Foyle broke a record, by clutching the article, eager to read another take on the McCain-Feingold Act, to absorb more information about campaign-finance reform.

In 16 years as a sportswriter, this was the first time I had seen a professional athlete within a mile of Mother Jones. That's some kind of record. The NBA and the Elias Sports Bureau might not recognize it. After all, Bill Bradley probably picked up a copy or two on his way to the U.S. Senate. The record still stands, if for no other reason than that Foyle deserves to be a record-breaker.

In a perfect world, he would be Shaquille O'Neal, the dominant player at his position, the biggest man in basketball. He would be interviewed constantly, invited to do Jay Leno every other week.

Sports don't work that way. The smartest, most interesting athletes generally aren't the superstars. They are the backups and the scrubs.

The point here isn't to bash star athletes. It's not to say that I think Foyle is smarter than all of his teammates, or everyone else in his business.

It's that I think he is smarter than I am.

It's that a recent conversation with him was more fascinating than the ones I have with people in my business.

"If we say that it is acceptable to invade another country because we perceive a threat from it," he said shortly before the start of the war on Iraq, "then what do we tell Pakistan? How can we tell the Pakistanis that India does not pose an immediate threat to their security?"

He went on and on, listing other tense regions (North Korea-South Korea, anyone?) where pre-emptive strikes could be rationalized all too easily. He wondered, rhetorically, why the Bush administration tolerated a leader whom many consider a dictator in Venezuela, but not in Iraq.

"Is it because he will give us oil?" Foyle said.

I wish I simply could play the entire tape for you. Quoting him is about as useful as typing up a description of Julius Erving in midair. A capsule can't do justice to either of them.

Foyle's point of view is appealing partly because it has so much range. At the time of our interview, he did not want to stake out a position on whether the U.S. should invade Iraq. He wasn't absolutely certain that a war, with U.N. approval, would be wrong. He simply wanted more information, more intelligent debate.

That is refreshing, in a record-setting way. As much as sportswriters long for prominent athletes to speak on social issues, what we mean is that we want to see more Arthur Ashe and Steve Nash. If the speakers are Reggie White, John Rocker or Charlie Ward, we want them to shut up.

Foyle does have a political bent, but it tilts mostly against apathy. He has steeped himself in the issue of campaign-finance reform, which has been championed -- perhaps not with equal sincerity -- by the left, right, Republicans and Democrats. He founded Democracy Matters in 1998 to lobby for reform, and he speaks passionately on the topic, whether he is on a college campus or sitting on the floor of the Warriors' practice gym.

"We cannot let our voices be drowned out," he said. He was referring to the corporate control of government, and to the stifling assumption that questioning war is unpatriotic.

He expresses his thoughts in a perfect blend of power and finesse. In that respect, Foyle is another Shaquille O'Neal or a Barry Bonds. He can put on displays that make an audience say: "I've never seen that before."

Foyle is an immigrant here, carrying a passport from St. Vincent of the Grenadines. He hopes to become a citizen someday. For now, he uses "we" and "us" when discussing this country.

He has become rich in the United States, after growing up in a home without electricity. Yet he understands that this country is supposed to be about more than limitless financial opportunities and consumer options.

His last words from the interview, though, are about the kind of car he wants to buy. He wants the kind that his adoptive parents drive in upstate New York.

"I wish they made one big enough for me," he said, his 6-foot, 10-inch body filling a door frame.

The car is a hybrid, a vehicle that runs on a combination of gas and electricity. I've never heard of an athlete lusting after one before. This might be another record for Adonal Foyle.

E-mail Gwen Knapp at gknapp@sfchronicle.com

The Daily Standard by Irwin M. Stelzer, contributing writer 04/01/2003 5:25:00 AM

IMAGINE that it is Day 1 in the post-Saddam era. The war is over, save for the mopping up of a few irregulars, the tyrant has been "dealt with," to use military lingo, and Jacques Chirac is leading a charge in the United Nations to wrest control of the reconstruction process from the Americans and Brits who liberated Iraq.

In Washington, the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy gurus can no longer credibly contend that the fog of war so obscures the economic outlook that they have no idea what course to take, and President Bush has found time to introduce himself to the economic policy team he hastily assembled after he replaced his secretary of treasury and chief economic adviser.

The Fed and the White House economic experts are likely to see the following as they gaze into their crystal balls: Oil prices will be easing. Saddam did not destroy Iraq's ability to resume and eventually increase oil production, Venezuela is gradually increasing its output, and the Saudis for once have been telling the truth when they promised to keep supplies flowing. The net effect is an economic stimulus about equal in force to the one the president hopes to get from his proposed tax cuts.

Despite a short uptick at war's end, the dollar will be weakening. That should help American manufacturers by providing a bit of stimulus to exports and a drag on imports, although an on-going recession in over-regulated, over-taxed Germany, and the insistence by the Chinese authorities on pegging the renminbi to the dollar will dilute the stimulative effect of the dollar's decline.

The housing market will continue to provide the economy with some upward momentum. Although the two w's, war and weather, reduced sales of existing homes by 4.3 percent in February (new home sales dropped a stunning 37 percent in the storm-racked Northeast), the market is already showing signs of a quick snap-back. Applications for new mortgages continue to flood lenders; interest rates remain low, keeping houses affordable; and increasingly affluent immigrants are swelling the ranks of first-time buyers.

But the seers in the White House and at the Fed will notice that consumers, nervous about job prospects, are intent on continuing to improve their balance sheets. They have already raised their savings rate from around 1 percent to over 4 percent, and are showing some signs of reining in spending, especially on new cars.

Which is why the president will, at war's end, increase his lobbying to save his 10-year, $726 billion tax-cut package. He won't get all he wants. The House of Representatives has gone along with him, but the Senate has cut his request in half. The best guess is that when the two houses of Congress meet to reconcile their views, they will split the difference, and approve something like a $500 billion cut. But that is only the beginning of the story.

The president wants the reductions devoted to ending what he calls the double taxation of dividends. His political team is telling him that America's share-holding class is now large enough to swing the 2004 election in his favor if share prices are moving up. Cut the tax on dividends, drive up share prices, and return to the White House for the second term that eluded his father. So say the politicians.

Most economists have a different view: They say that what is needed is a demand-side stimulus: more money in the pockets of consumers so that they can continue to keep the economy moving until they have sopped up enough excess capacity to encourage major companies to resume investing in new plant and equipment. So cut payroll taxes to put money into the pockets of lower- and middle-income consumers, and watch the economy grow while settling into the Oval Office for a long stay.

The likely outcome is the inevitable Washington compromise--some tax relief for dividend recipients, some for wage earners. The result will be mounting budget deficits that create a problem for the president's economic team. His secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, opposed large deficits before he gave up the candor allowed in the private sector for the circumlocution required of cabinet officers. Likewise chief White House economic adviser Stephen Friedman formerly of Goldman Sachs. And the new chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, became a millionaire from the sales of a textbook in which he argues that "expansionary fiscal policy raises the interest rate and thereby reduces investment spending"--the "crowding-out effect" of public spending that Bushies deny exists.

Bush has persuaded the members of his troika to fall into line--White House passes, worn around the neck for lesser mortals to see, are a treasured item here in Washington. And whatever its final form, there will be a fiscal stimulus. Which puts the ball in the court of that famed octogenarian tennis fanatic, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan.

The Fed can, if it chooses, offset the crowding-out effect by intervening in government bond markets to drive down long-term interest rates, something it has so far been reluctant to do. That might get businessmen out of their bunkers.

If consumer demand remains strong enough to make a dent in the excess capacity that is afflicting many industries, a weaker dollar improves the competitive position of U.S. manufacturers, and obsolescing equipment forces spending on new gear, executives will start signing the spending authorizations that have been piling up in their in-boxes.

We Americans are spoiled. Last year the economy managed a respectable growth rate of 2.4 percent, in the face of fears about terrorism, an impending war, a troubled stock market, and corporate scandals. Yet television watchers and readers of the financial press can be forgiven if they have the impression that the United States was experiencing a major recession. It wasn't. And it won't. Slow growth, perhaps. But nothing worse.

Irwin M. Stelzer is director of regulatory studies at the Hudson Institute, a columnist for the Sunday Times (London), a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.