Grito

Happy Independence day Mexico... I think MEChA de Yale worked out and had a great Grito. I missed it on TV but I hope my sister shouted out a Que viva cabrones. I hope one day to be in the Zocalo to witness it. This also marks the real begining of the Presidencial race in Mexico. The final players are going to be named soon and the drama and scandals should really get going now. I'll try to drop a few insights or at least share some news reports from what's going on.

Have a tequila or at least some Mexican food today.

Indifference

Obama was asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether there was racism in the lack of evacuation planning for poor, black residents of New Orleans. He said he would not refer to the government response in that way, but said there was a much deeper, long-term neglect.

“Whoever was in charge of planning was so detached from the realities of inner city life in New Orleans ... that they couldn’t conceive of the notion that they couldn’t load up their SUV’s, put $100 worth of gas in there, put some sparkling water and drive off to a hotel and check in with a credit card,” Obama said.

Obama laments ‘historic indifference’
“There seemed to be a sense that this other America was somehow not on people’s radar screen. And that, I think, does have to do with historic indifference on the part of government to the plight of those who are disproportionately African-American.” He added that “passive indifference is as bad as active malice.”

Barack: I think it points to one of the big problems in this administration. They have excellent responses when it comes to PR, more detachment and less effectiveness when it comes to governing. I think that's been true in Iraq, it's been true across the board. A good example of this-We had a cabinet meeting this week, the senators had eight cabinet members, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Chertoff. What was striking was even if people were reading the statistics of all the evacuations that had taken place-were telling us of all the wonderful things that have been done. There was no sense of reflection, no sense that ahhh things didn't go the way they were supposed to and that we needed to take away....There was a terrific spin operation, but not the kind of soul searching that I 'd think you'd want to see...from any administration..."

My Lopez girls

Ciuapilli a month ago. Lety still in Mexico.

Perfect word

Kleptocracy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Kleptocracy (sometimes Cleptocracy) (root: Klepto+cracy = rule by thieves) is a pejorative, informal term for a government so corrupt that no pretense of honesty remains. In a kleptocracy the mechanisms of government are almost entirely devoted to taxing the public at large in order to amass substantial personal fortunes for the rulers and their cronies (collectively, kleptocrats), or to keep said rulers in power. Kleptocrats typically use money laundering and/or anonymous banking to protect and conceal their illegal gains.

Kleptocracies are by and large dictatorships or some other form of autocratic government, since democracy makes thievery more difficult to accomplish and conceal. Kleptocratic states consistently tend to be politically and socially unstable, while being stably kleptocratic. That is, the political governance of such states typically consists of one set of thieves displacing their predecessors by subversive or violent means.

The economies of kleptocracies tend to perform badly, as the systematic corruption engendered by kleptocratic governance means that the economy is subordinated to the interests of the kleptocrats. Kleptocrats realize that they have more to gain from taking a large share of a stable or shrinking pie than from a shrinking share of an increasing pie. Economies based on the extraction of natural resources (eg. diamonds and oil in a few prominent cases) can be particularly prone to kleptocracy, as the kleptocrats simply tax the Ricardian rent. Historically, the socio-political environment associated with colonial rule - in particular the dominance of colonial economies by a small number of commodities - has been particularly conducive to the later creation of kleptocracies, especially in Africa and South America.

The creation of a kleptocracy typically results in many years of general hardship and suffering for the vast majority of citizens as civil society and the rule of law distintegrates. In addition, kleptocrats routinely ignore economic and social problems in their quest to amass ever more wealth. As kleptocrats do not attempt to build or maintain functioning states, or even maintain large security forces for fear of coups d'état, kleptocracies are generally incompetent in the face of social crises, and often collapse into prolonged civil war and anarchy.

Some observers use the term 'kleptocracy' to disparage political processes which permit corporations to influence political policy. Ralph Nader called the United States a kleptocracy in this sense of the word during the 2000 US presidential campaign. A more accurate term for this influence over a state is plutocracy.