Saturday, March 17, 2007

Spectacular orchid exhibit this weekend in Caracas This weekend was the orchid exhibit of AVO, Asociacion Venezolana de Orquideologia, where hundreds of Venezuelan orchids were exhibited. Venezuela has an amazing variety of orchid species, some of them disappearing with development, but there is also a very active orchid community preserving and propagating them in the laboratories. What you can see at that exhibit is absolutely unique, as only in Venezuela can you see such an incredible variety of orchids. Lighting was not great, but I managed to take some good pictures, which you can see here in the slide show or in still pictures in the Orchid section of this blog. Enjoy! 9:35:07 PM    comment []

Open the gap, partner by Teodoro Petkoff Nothing beats the Government's own numbers in monitoring the progress of the "revolution" and in the pen of Teodoro Petkoff, they also make for entertaining reading Open the gap, partner by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual The government of the “revolution”, in spite of all its diatribes and beyond the “missions”, has clearly underprivileged the popular sectors. With an economic policy that has destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs - more than half of the manufacturing plants of the country have closed between 1999 and 2006-, it has not only created unemployment and maintained and reinforced the informal sector, whose remuneration is precarious and lacks the rights consecrated in labor legislation, but it so happens that the proportion in which the annual Gross Domestic Product is distributed (GDP) (that is the value what is produced sold in the country in a year) between companies – both Government and private, and the workers, has been made more and more unfavorable for the last few years. In other words, during the years of Chavismo the gap of inequality has widened. The numbers do not lie. In any case, they come from the Central Bank, still not forced to lie, that is to say, to fabricate statistics for use of the Emperor. The excess of Explotation (EE) - a concept that the BCV uses to denominate the income of the companies, both Government as well as private, was in 1999, 34% of the GDP, whereas the remunerations of employees and workers (REO) reached 36% of the GDP that year. Indirect taxes (II) amounted to 10% of the GDP. In 2006, the EE was 46% of the GDP, this is, 12 points more than in 1999; whereas the REO went down to 28% of the GDP, that is to say, 8 points less than in 1999. The indirect taxes stayed at 10% of the GDP. In other words, during “the process”, the status of workers went down atrociously. The breach that separates the income of those “that have” from those “that do not have” has widened during the government of I the Supreme.. Like in so many other aspects of “the socialist” management, the distance between what is said and fact are as wide as the big mouth of its Maximum Leader. But, there is more. On the matter of inflation, which, as is already known, constitutes the most regressive of all “taxes” that the population pays, because the rise of the prices punishes with greater force the poorest, the situation of our humble people is horrible. In comparison with the richest layers, the poorest have supported an inflation, between February of 2003 and he same month in 2007, 14% higher than that of the first group. In that period, always according to the BCV, the accumulated inflation for the poorest was 104%, while for the richest they data shows an accumulated inflation, for the same period, of 89.7%. Comtrast this data with the equivalent one for the period February-1999 to February 2003, when the accumulated inflation struck evenly to all layers of the population. That is that as went from humanist Bolivarianism to anti-Capitalism and “socialism”, the cost of living showed no mercy and was much more cruel with the poorest Venezuelans. When the car of good intentions (supposing that they really exist) is driven by an inept novice, it inevitably ends up in Hell. 7:33:35 PM    comment []