Good news, of a sort, the courts seem to be about to rule about some parts of the Decree from Hell, may be, but the administrative law and the labor law sectors are fighting about who gets to rule on it…
Well, one can hope.
In other news, the new president still doesn’t live in the presidential residence nor works from the presidential palace (“the pink house”).
Apparently he’s living and working in the prestigious Libertador Hotel (360 U$D per night), a price that according to his declared wealth he should be unable to pay.
Coinkcidentally by not living nor working in the official places he avoids any kind of visitor registry that could allow us to see who is being received by the president…
Also, in another curious coincidence, the owner of the hotel (and several important corporations) seems to be about to receive and important post in the government, funny that.
The doctor fix grift is IN!
Or
Austerity for thee, none for me.
Or
Sometimes I despair at the cyclical essence of human nature - we know better, we really do, but each time we think -this- time they’ll be intelligent, benevolent, honest, and effective. When we know damn straight we’ll be insanely lucky to get two of the above, and more likely just one.
The problem is that these guys don’t seem to be any of the above.
Aaand we have a stay, affecting the parts of the decree related to labor law, it’s a start.
My point being that if you take any two out (or often even ONE) those same traits make things a living hell.
Intelligent and effective can make horrendous tyrants.
Benevolent and honest, without the intelligent and effective is a waste (or more likely, someone who will be manipulated by those out of their depth).
For your new populist leader, it’s possible that he does indeed manage to miss ALL the possible possible positives and sink straight to the bottom. But why do we (the collective we) keep -picking- these obvious stinkers for the love of the FSM?!?!
Increasingly I think it’s all about somehow managing to read enough of the populace well enough to point the finger of blame, while promising to fix everything.
AND PEOPLE KEEP FALLING FOR IT.
I weep for your people, my people, and the species as a whole.
Yeah, his supporters (the original 30%) probably thought him intelligent and honest, and were willing to take a bet on effective.
The rest (the ones that pulled him over 50% and allowed him to win) can be explained by hate and/or exhaustion.
Things weren’t going well and many thought a change was needed, add to it an important % that hates Peronism with the fury of a thousand suns (because of its populist roots, because (among other things) it gave brown people the means to got to the beaches that self-identified “whites” used to frequent (I’m not exaggerating with this I just saw several tweets saying basically that), because it’s not lefty enough, because it’s too lefty, because of several loathsome characteristics it has, there are many kinds of “gorila”) and it’s enough to cause this particular disaster,
Did they leave in the part about its being illegal to be anywhere in the presence of more than one other person?
That’s not on the decree, that’s in the “omnibus” bill that hasn’t yet started it’s path through congress.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification; and sorry about my confusion.
Np, things here tend to be confusing, and this particular lot of anti-government and anti-politician politicians that now have to govern are making things even more confusing.
Today gas prices went up (again) and are now higher than in the U.S. (more than 1 dollar per liter, so if my calculations are correct more than 4 dollars per gallon).
And the average wages here are way lower than in the U.S.
I may be mistaking but reality seems to starting to bite Milei’s supporters and many seem to be regretting their choice, we’ll see…
A true grifter would buy a hotel and then charge the government outrageous rates for he and his security to stay there.
But that takes a lot of money, may be in a few year our esteemed president will have grifted enough money to do that.
I bet there’s a banker or two that would be willing to loan him the money at pretty favorable interest rates.
Bankers here prefer to own the politician outright and buy the hotels themselves.
Fascism Watch, weekly update:
Stays are flying fast an furious about the Decree from Hell, which is good, but they are only stays, no guarantee about the final decision from the courts and eventually from the Supreme Court (I’m not very optimistic)
On the congressional front, the administration continues to push its “omnibus” bill with their usual tact and finesse… meaning brutally and accusing anyone not voting from it of wanting to be bribed…
Sometimes it looks like they want it to fail so they can pin the incoming economic catastrophe on it “we tried but congress would not let us govern!”
On the other hand there are many signs that a lot of representatives want to vote for it, if just the government was a bit less inept about it…
Thank you for your updates. Keeping my fingers Crossed for you and hoping the US does not go down the same path.
Somehow I didn’t feel really scared until now.
Today Rodolfo Barra, ex-nazi (he says he’s repented his ways) and current government functionary declared in congress that “Si hay crisis económica, no va a haber Constitución vigente” the most generous (to him) translation would be “If there is an economic crisis the Constitution will tend to lose validity”. An ungenerous translation would be “If there is an economic crisis there would be no valid constitution” (!!!).
Furthermore the administration says that is going to ask congress for permission to involve the military in internal matters to fight “drug trafficking and terrorism”, something that fills me with terror when I look at what happened in Mexico when the same thing was tried, not to mention our own history with the military when involved in internal security matters (we are still looking for many of the people they kidnapped and killed and the babies they stole…)
Just replying to reiterate how much I appreciate your reporting, and sympathies.