{"id":181198,"date":"2016-09-03T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T01:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/03\/from-up-and-coming-to-basket-case-in-under-6-months\/"},"modified":"2016-09-03T20:43:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T01:43:00","slug":"from-up-and-coming-to-basket-case-in-under-6-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/03\/from-up-and-coming-to-basket-case-in-under-6-months\/","title":{"rendered":"From Up and Coming to Basket Case in Under 6 Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am referring, of course, to Brazil, which has just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2016\/aug\/31\/dilma-rousseff-impeached-president-brazilian-senate-michel-temer\">removed its president Dilma Rousseff<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As near as I can figure out, it was driven by two things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The right wing party that controls the legislature wanted to take power.<\/li>\n<li>The entire political establishment was attempting to distract people from their own corruption.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Brazil\u2019s first female president Dilma Rousseff has been thrown out of office by the country\u2019s corruption-tainted senate after a gruelling impeachment trial that ends 13 years of Workers\u2019 party rule.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Following a crushing 61 to 20 defeat in the upper house, she will be replaced for the remaining two years and four months of her term by Michel Temer, a centre-right patrician who was among the leaders of the campaign against his former running mate.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In a separate vote, the senate voted 42 to 36 not to bar Rousseff from public office for eight years.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Despite never losing an election, Rousseff \u2013 who first won power in 2010 \u2013 had seen her support among the public and in congress diminish as a result of a sharp economic decline, government paralysis and a massive bribery scandal that has implicated almost all the major parties.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">For more than 10 months, the leftist leader fought efforts to impeach her for frontloading funds for government social programmes and issuing spending budget decrees without congressional approval ahead of her reelection in 2014. The opposition claimed that these constituted a \u201ccrime of responsibility\u201d. Rousseff denies this and claims the charges \u2013 which were never levelled at previous administrations who did the same thing \u2013 have been trumped up by opponents who were unable to accept the Workers\u2019 party\u2019s victory.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In keeping with her pledge to fight until the end for the 54 million voters who put her in office, Rousseff \u2013 a former Marxist guerrilla \u2013 ended her presidency this week with a gritty 14-hour defence of her government\u2019s achievements and a sharply worded attack on the \u201cusurpers\u201d and \u201ccoup-mongers\u201d who ejected her from power without an election.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Her lawyer, Jos\u00e9 Eduardo Cardozo, said the charges were trumped up to punish the president\u2019s support for a huge corruption investigation that has snared many of Brazil\u2019s elite. This follows secret recordings of Romero Juc\u00e1, the majority leader of the senate and a key Temer ally, plotting to remove the president to halt the Lava Jato (car wash) investigation into kickbacks at state oil company Petrobras.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">While Rousseff was in the upper chamber, her critics heard her in respectful silence. But in a final session in her absence on Tuesday, they lined up to condemn her. As in an earlier lower house impeachment debate, the senators \u2013 many of whom are accused of far greater crimes \u2013 clearly revelled in the spotlight of their ten-minute declarations. Reflecting the growing power of rightwing evangelism, many invoked the name of God. One cited Winston Churchill. Another sang. Another appeared to be in tears.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the right wingers who seized power are already trying to do their best to f%$# the poor by rolling back social programs.<\/p>\n<p>This is ugly, and I only see this as getting uglier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am referring, of course, to Brazil, which has just removed its president Dilma Rousseff. As near as I can figure out, it was driven by two things: The right wing party that controls the legislature wanted to take power. The entire political establishment was attempting to distract people from their own corruption. Brazil\u2019s first &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[761,766,891,799],"class_list":["post-181198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-latin-america","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}