Thursday, April 14, 2016

Brazil in the middle of a mess to say the least

(My new American Thinker post)

Can I take you back to the Clinton impeachment of 1998-99? What if President Clinton had accused VP Gore of pushing for his impeachment?   

Well, something like that is happening in Brazil, the world 7th largest GDP and host of the Olympics later this year.

According to news reports, there is a lot of "he said, she said" going on down in Brazil:
President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil said on Tuesday that her vice president was orchestrating a conspiracy to topple her, as efforts to impeach her gained momentum in the National Congress.
Aided by her mentor and predecessor, Luiz InĂ¡cio Lula da Silva, Ms. Rousseff scrambled to secure enough support from a dwindling array of allies to block impeachment in a lower-house vote set for Sunday that analysts predicted she would lose.
A congressional committee voted on Monday by a larger-than-expected margin to recommend that she be impeached for breaking budget laws to support her re-election in 2014, a charge Ms. Rousseff says was trumped up to remove her from office.
It may be true that VP Michel Temer wants her out. Frankly, he is not alone. President Rousseff has become one of the most unpopular politicians in Brazilian history.   

Back in 2014, our friend Monica Showalter wrote an amazing analysis of how the left had bought reelection with dependency programs. It got President Rousseff reelected but it set the table for the party's current mess. They threw so much money around that it backfired.

Impeachment is compounded by the nation's economic problems. The collapse of oil and commodity prices mean low growth for the region's biggest economy. As they say in Argentina and other neighbors, whatever happens to the Brazil economy affects all of us.

Finally, the corrupt leftist government has simply run out of luck. The corruption is so rampant that even Brazilians can't put up with it anymore, from colossal bribes to back room deals from a party that came into office promising transparency. (A party with a new face promising transparency sounds a bit familiar to what we saw up here in 2008?)

As a Brazilian friend told me, we overlook the politicians and live around their corruption.  

Unfortunately, the economy is now so bad that even Brazilians are complaining about crony capitalism.

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.


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