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Article Artículo

Robert Samuelson Says We Should Seize Bill Gates' Software Copyrights

In his column today he noted the need to seize Bill Gates property, telling readers:

"Copyrights were once thought to be legally and politically impregnable."

Okay, we know Robert Samuelson would never advocate policies that hurt the rich. He actually said "pension benefits were once thought to be legally and politically impregnable," as he celebrated pension cuts in Rhode Island and Illinois, along with the prospect of further cuts in Detroit and Chicago.

There is no doubt what is going on here, Samuelson tells us in his sentence:

"We are locked in a generational war, which will get worse before it gets better."

Samuelson is saying this in the context of a country that has seen the most massive upward redistribution of income in the history of the world over the last three decades, with the richest one percent of the population getting close to half of the income gains over this period. But Samuelson doesn't want people to pay attention to all the money going upwards, he wants them to focus on the money going to seniors, even when it means seizing their property.

The pensions, whose cuts Samuelson celebrates, are part of workers' pay. They already put in the time expecting that the government would follow through on its part of the deal. From a legal or ethical standpoint it is difficult to see a better argument for taking away workers' pensions than taking away Microsoft's claim to a copyright on Windows. Hey, it would be unfortunate, but if we're really broke, maybe the money going to Microsoft in licensing fees should be going instead to the government. After all, much of the system was developed with public funding anyhow.

The crassness of Samuelson's effort to pit young against old, while concealing the role of the rich, should be apparent to all readers. He gives us the usual story:

"The elderly’s interests are running roughshod over other national concerns. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — programs heavily for the retired — dominate the budget, accounting for about 44 percent of spending, and have been largely excluded from deficit-reduction measures."

Of course people paid for their Social Security and Medicare benefits. Social Security is a pension and insurance system run through the government. The elderly are entitled to these benefits in the same way that rich bondholders are entitled to millions of dollars of interest payments on their bonds. They paid for them. 

Dean Baker / December 09, 2013

Article Artículo

Latin America and the Caribbean

Honduras’ Flawed Election: The Case of El Paraíso

In El Paraíso, a city of 14,000 that sits right near Honduras’ border with Guatemala, Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party secured an impressive 81.4 percent of the vote. In second place, with 7.2 percent of the vote, was “invalid.”

Last week the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), declared that Hernandez had been elected president of Honduras with 35 percent of the vote, compared to 27.4 percent for Xiomara Castro, of the newly formed LIBRE party. Castro is the wife of Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a 2009 military coup. Alleging fraud, LIBRE has yet to recognize the results and is reportedly in discussions with the TSE to begin a recount process.

But no matter the outcome of the recount, if it ever occurs, there were numerous other irregularities on election day, including a number of reports of voter intimidation as well as other, perhaps more nefarious, means of voter manipulation. Although it is generally difficult to directly link election results to acts of voter intimidation, the case of El Paraíso provides an interesting example.

El Paraíso, in the Copan department[i] of Honduras, is located directly on what is known as the “road of death.” The road is a well-known drug trafficking route which travels through Honduras and on to Guatemala. The presence, and influence, of Mexican drug cartels has steadily been rising in the area. 

The mayor of El Paraíso, Alexander Ardón, who has referred to himself as “the king of the people”, is a member of the ruling National Party. A 2011 report from the Wilson Center states that, “Ardón works with the Sinaloa Cartel,” according to “Honduran police intelligence.” The report continues:

Ardón has built a town hall that resembles the White House, complete with a heliport on the roof, and travels with 40 heavily armed bodyguards. Cameras monitor the roads leading in and out of the town, intelligence services say. And there are reports that the mayor often closes the city to outsiders for big parties that include norteña music groups flown in from Mexico.

The 2013 Elections

In the weeks prior to the election on Sunday, November 24, rights groups in Honduras began to hear about possible fraud in El Paraíso. Prior to election day, with few local observers willing to go to polling places, a number of monitors were bussed in from other cities. The human rights group COFADEH released a statement on election day (see here for testimony from an electoral observer there), reporting that:

Also this day in the town of El Paraíso in the department of Copan, about 50 people who have been designated to monitor the election tables were locked in a hotel by over 100 armed men who threatened to burn them if they left the hotel to go to the voting centers.

Another group heading to 10 voting centers succeeded in making it through the obstacles at first, but on the way there the road was blocked by two Prado SUVs with heavily armed men who proceeded to stab their vehicles' tires with knives and threatened to kill anyone who continued toward their destination.

The intimidation seems to have its desired effect. In the two elections (2001 and 2005) prior to the 2009 military coup, El Paraíso had a voter turnout of 63 percent and 50 percent, respectively. In 2013, turnout was reported to be 85 percent. According to the official results from the TSE, the National Party took 81.4 percent of the vote. Looking deeper, the results are even stranger. There were 16,135 voting tables in Honduras; the ten which showed the highest number of votes for Hernandez were all located in El Paraíso. The 81.4 percent that went to the National Party was over 11 percentage points higher than in any other city in the entire country.

Overall, in Copan, the National Party took over 47 percent of the vote, one of their highest rates in the country.

CEPR / December 06, 2013