Um esquema pirãmide ainda pior que o de Madoff:

A noite da vergonha

Classe política de pernas para o ar depois da farra dos vereadores

Por Lucia Hippólito

''Trabalharam muito as excelências''




Na calada da noite, como convém para a aprovação de uma desfaçatez dessas, o Senado aprovou a recriação de 7.343 vagas de vereador em todo o Brasil, contrariando decisão do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, que tinha determinado a extinção de cerca de oito mil vagas.

Os municípios com até 15 mil habitantes terão o mínimo de nove vereadores e os municípios com mais de oito milhões de habitantes terão o máximo de 55 vereadores.

Como se trata de uma emenda constitucional foram necessários dois turnos de votação no plenário. Como foi possível, se há prazos regimentais a serem cumpridos? O famoso “interstício” (intervalo necessário entre as votações) foi inteiramente atropelado por acordo de líderes.

Oito sessões extraordinárias foram realizadas, para que fosse possível perpetrar, numa só noite, este desperdício de dinheiro público.

No primeiro turno, a emenda recebeu 54 votos a favor, cinco contra e uma abstenção. No segundo turno, obteve 58 a favor, cinco contra e uma abstenção.

Hoje vamos conhecer os nomes das excelências que votaram a favor desta situação lamentável. Papelão!

Suas Excelências contam com a falta de memória e pequena mobilização dos eleitores.

O que mais impressiona nestas votações é o seu completo descolamento da realidade.

Os parlamentares querem sair para as férias de Natal e não se incomodam em votar qualquer coisa, contanto que possam partir para seu descanso remunerado.

Trabalharam muito, as excelências.

Não se viu um único parlamentar propondo a criação de uma comissão nas duas casas para acompanhar, durante o mês de janeiro, a evolução da crise econômica. Para assessorar o Executivo, entender como a crise afeta o Brasil, propor medidas que possam atenuar seus efeitos sobre os brasileiros.

Nada. Só a farra dos vereadores, criação de cargos em Goiás.

E férias. Pernas para o ar, que ninguém é de ferro.

A classe política brasileira continua gostando de fazer piquenique à beira do abismo.

Sessão relâmpago

Senadores aprovam aumento do número de vereadores sem redução de gastos

Publicada em 18/12/2008 às 02h01m

Maria Lima

BRASÍLIA - Com o plenário lotado de suplentes, numa sessão relâmpago e em rito sumário, o Senado aprovou na madrugada desta quinta-feira a proposta de emenda constitucional (PEC) que recria 7.343 dos 8.000 cargos de vereadores cortados pelo Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), em 2004, para reduzir gastos e adequar ao número de eleitores. Com a aprovação, pelo relator senador César Borges (PR-BA), suplentes que não foram eleitos em outubro passado poderão assumir como titulares em fevereiro, junto com os eleitos. Mas o caso deve ser definido pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF).

Um acordo de líderes permitiu pular os prazos regimentais de oito sessões entre o primeiro e o segundo turnos. A líder do PT Ideli Salvati (SC) foi a única que não encaminhou explicitamente pela aprovação da emenda. Ele liberou a bancada, mas os petistas votaram majoritariamente pela aprovação. No primeiro turno, foi aprovada por 54 votos sim, 5 votos não e uma abstenção.

Para liquidar a votação do primeiro e do segundo turno, e cumprir a exigência de oito sessões, o presidente Garibaldi Alves (PMDB-RN), com o apoio unânime de lideres da base e oposição, abria e encerrava as sessões umas atrás das outras. Ele se limitava a ler as PECs que estavam em votação. Outra PEC, aprovada no bolo da PEC dos vereadores, regulamentou a criação de 52 novos municípios criados depois da Constituição de 88 que estavam ameaçados de extinção.

Redução de repasse de recursos para as câmaras municipais é retirada

Em seu parecer, o relator retirou o parágrafo 2º do texto aprovado na Câmara, que condicionava o aumento do numero de vereadores à redução dos percentuais de repasse de recursos para as câmaras municipais. Essa parte que trata da redução de gastos será analisada numa PEC paralela, sem data para ser votada. Com o aumento de 14,1% no número de vereadores, eles passam de 51.924 para 59.267 em todo país.

O TSE já se posicionou sobre a impossibilidade da posse dos suplentes. Em decisão proferida no inicio do segundo semestre, entendeu que os suplentes só poderiam assumir já essas vagas, se a emenda constitucional fosse aprovada e promulgada antes de 30 de junho, prazo de realização das convenções partidárias. Na quarta, o presidente do TSE, ministro Carlos Ayres Brito, já se adiantou e avisou da existência dessa resposta do tribunal.

Diante do fatiamento da emenda constitucional, para a retirada da parte que trata da redução dos repasses, as Câmaras de Vereadores vão continuar a receber o montante previsto pela Constituição, sem redução nos gastos. Desde 2004, quando o TSE cortou 8 mil cargos, mesmo com os cortes, as Câmaras tiveram os números de vereadores reduzidos, mas mantiveram a mesma arrecadação.

Mercadante pede adiamento da votação e clima esquenta

A sessão ficou tensa quando o líder eleito do PT, Aloyzio Mercadante (PT-SP) subiu à tribuna e pediu o adiamento da votação, até que se pudesse votar junto a PEC paralela limitando os gastos das Câmaras. Ele propôs o adiamento da votação até que se resolvesse a questão dos gastos.

" Como vamos explicar nas ruas que aumentamos o número de cargos sem cortar gastos? "

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- Como vamos explicar nas ruas que aumentamos o número de cargos sem cortar gastos? Não acho que é um bom caminho para nós, para o Senado e para os vereadores. O Senado tem que resolver esse assunto hoje - discursava Mercadante, quando houve uma reação contrária e um burburinho dos partidários da aprovação sem corte de gastos.

Ele sugeriu que uma outra proposta de PEC fosse feita, com um dispositivo transitório dizendo que as Câmaras municipais não poderiam gastar com os novos vereadores o excedente dos repasses que estavam sobrando, com o corte das vagas em 2004, e que estavam sendo aplicados pelos prefeitos em outros programas sociais.

" Vocês vão ter que me ouvir em silêncio e com respeito! Vão me escutar porque o que os jornais e as TVs vão dizer amanhã será muito mais do que estou dizendo aqui "

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- Vocês vão ter que me ouvir em silêncio e com respeito! Vão me escutar porque o que os jornais e as TVs vão dizer amanhã será muito mais do que estou dizendo aqui. Sem essa condição de aprovar junto os cortes, é uma irresponsabilidade aprovarmos isso - disse Mercadante.

O senador Eduardo Suplicy (PT-SP) também cobrou de Cesar Borges o compromisso, firmado por ele na votação da matéria na Comissão de Constituição de Justiça (CCJ), de que a PEC paralela seria votada junto com a do aumento do numero de vagas.

- Eu me sentiria mais adequado em votar ambas hoje, já que lá houve compromisso lá de fazer tudo junto - cobrou Suplicy.

Ron Paul: Libertarianism is the enemy of all racism

Porque a esquerda exerce tanto fascínio sobre os jovens?

O Olavo de Carvalho está longe de ser libertário e fala muita besteira, que fique claro.
Mas neste vídeo ele acertou em cheio.

Não ao ato médico

E porque não?
Para começar, é importante dizer, essa ideia do ato médico é coisa de uns poucos médicos.A maioria deles é completamente indiferente e não tem qualquer opinião sobre esse projeto absurdo.
Mas o projeto em si nada tem de novo.Lembro sempre que no Seculo XII quando a escrita arabica ia entrar em Roma, os poucos matematicos que dominavam os numerais romanos fizeram motins e revoltas contra a simplicação do sistema.Todos querem proteção de mercado.Ontem, hoje e sempre.Assim sempre será pois trata-se de interesses difusos( a vida de todos um pouquinho melhor por podermos ter direito de escolha) contra interesses concentrados( a vida de uns poucos muito pior por nao terem mais a bocada)
Nada que o maravilhoso livro ''Salvando o capitalismo dos capitalistas'' de tres brilhantes economistas da Universidade de Chicago já não alertasse.
Ninguem pode tirar de ninguem o direito de escolha.Se eu confio mais no diagnostico de um padeiro ou de um farmacêutico do que no de um médico isso é problema meu.Não admito ser forçado a confiar em fulano e não em ciclano.Aliás se alguem precisa da força estatal para ''ter respeitados os seus direitos profissionais'' como eles gostam de dizer, é porque esse alguem não é lá muito competente.Os bons se sobressaem via mercado e não via proteção estatal.Duas palavras finais sobre o ato médico: não se intrometam na minha liberdade de escolha como consumidor( essa foi a primeira) e LIXO!( essa foi a segunda)

Os diferentes graus de liberdade sexual no mundo

The End of the US Piano Industry

From Mises Institute

Today the highest-price good that people buy besides their houses is their car, and this reality leads people to believe that we can't possibly let the American car industry die. We couldn't possibly be a real country and a powerful nation without our beloved auto industry, which is so essential to our national well-being. In any case, this is what spokesmen for the big three say.

What about the time before the car? Look at the years between 1870 and 1930. As surprising as this may sound today, the biggest-ticket item on every household budget besides the house itself was its piano. Everyone had to have one. Those who didn't have one aspired to have one. It was a prize, an essential part of life, and they sold by the millions and millions.

That too was new. Americans before 1850 mostly imported their pianos. American manufacturing was nearly nonexistent. After 1850, that changed dramatically with the flowering of what would become a gigantic US piano industry. The Gilded Age saw a vast increase in its popularity. By 1890, Americans fed half the world market for pianos. Between 1890 and 1928, sales ranged from 172,000 to 364,000 per year. It was a case of relentless and astounding growth.

They were used in classrooms everywhere in times when music education was considered to be the foundation of a good education. They were the concert instruments in homes before recorded music and iPods. They were essential for all entertainment. American buyers couldn't get enough, and private enterprise responded.

New York, Boston, and Chicago were the homes of these companies. There was the great Chickering piano made by a company founded in 1823 and which later led the world in beauty and sound. There was Hallet and Davis in Boston, J. and C. Fischer in New York, as well as Strich and Ziedler, Hazelton, William Knabe, Baldwin, Weber, Mason and Hamlin, Decker and Sons, Wurlizer, Steck, Kimball in Chicago, and, finally, Steinway.

The American piano industry was the greatest in the world, not because the Americans came up with any new and great manufacturing techniques, though there were some innovations, but because the economic conditions made it most favorable to be manufactured here.

With the rise of this industry came a vast marketing apparatus. Piano ads were everywhere, as a tour of old magazines shows. It was widely believed that spending money on a piano wasn't really spending. It was an investment. The money you paid would be embedded right there in this beautiful and useful item. You can always sell it for more than you paid for it, and this was generally true. So people would make great sacrifices for these instruments.

With the growth of this manufacturing came an explosion of shops that served the piano market all up and down the industry. Piano tuning was a big-time profession. Retail shops with pianos opened everywhere, and the sheet-music business exploded with them. Ever notice how in big cities the music stores are typically family owned and established 40, 50, and even 100 years ago? This is a surviving remnant of our industrial past.

All of this changed again in 1930, which was the last great year of the American piano. Sales fell and continued to fall when times were tough. The companies that were beloved by all Americans fell on hard times and began to go belly up one by one. After World War II the trend continued, as ever more pianos began to be made overseas.

In 1960, we began to see the first major international challenge to what was left of the US market position. Japan was already manufacturing half as many pianos as the United States. By 1970, a revolution occurred as Japan's production outstripped the United States, and it has been straight down ever since. By 1980, Japan made twice as many as the United States. Then production shifted to Korea. Today China is the center of world piano production. You probably see them in your local hotel bar.

And what happened to the once-beloved and irreplaceable American piano industry? Steinway survives to make luxury instruments that few can afford (a reader notes that Baldwin is still around today too). Mason & Hamilin has made a great comeback in the high-end market. The rest moved overseas under new ownership or were completely wiped out.

Does anyone care that much? Not too many. Have we been devastated as a nation and a people because of it? Not at all. It was just a matter of the economic facts. The demand went down and production costs for the pianos that were wanted were much cheaper elsewhere.

Now, a piano aficionado reading this will say, buddy, you are crass. Listen to the sound of an older model Chickering and you can tell the difference. It was warm and wonderful, nearly symphonic. It is mellow and perfect for the best repertoire. By comparison, this new Chinese piano is sharp and angular and pointed. It sounds like a marimba. You can't play Schubert or Brahms on such junk. No one wants to hear that thing. Bring back the old days when pianos made sounds that sounded like real music!

Well, you can still get that old Chickering sound, even from a piano made in New York. You can buy a Steinway. Of course you have to pay $50,000 plus and even as much as $120,000, but they are there. You say that is unaffordable? Says you. It is all a matter of priorities. You can forego your house and live in a tiny apartment and still own the most gorgeous instrument money can buy. In any case, it makes no economic sense for you to demand a magnificent piano at a very low price when reality does not make that possible.

In the same way, many people will bemoan the loss of the US car industry and wax eloquent on the glory days of the 1957 Chevy or what have you. But we need to deal with the reality that all that is in the past. Economics demands forward motion, a conforming to the facts on the ground and a relentless and realistic assessment of the relationship between cost and price, supply and demand. We must learn to love these forces in society because they are the only things that keep rationality alive in the way we use resources. Without them, there would be nothing but waste and chaos, and eventual starvation and death. We simply cannot live outside economic reality.

Let's say that FDR had initiated a bailout of the piano industry and then even taken it over and nationalized it. The same firms would have made the same pianos for decades and decades. But that wouldn't have stopped the Japanese industry from taking off in the 1960s and '70s. Americans would have far preferred them because they would have been cheaper. American pianos, because they would be state owned, would fall in quality, lower and lower to the point that they would become like a Soviet car in the 1960s. Of course you could set up tariff barriers. That would have forced American pianos on us. Except for one thing: demand would still have collapsed. The pianos still have to have a market. But let's say you find a workaround for that problem by requiring everyone to own a piano. You still can't make people play them and value them.

No one, but no one, tells the story of the Ford Motor Company like Garet Garrett.

In the end you have to ask, is it really worth trillions in subsidies, vast tariffs, impositions all around, just to keep what you declare to be an essential industry alive? Well, eventually, as we have learned in the case of pianos, this is not essential. Things come and things go. Such is the world. Such is the course of events. Such is the forward motion of history in a world of relentless progress generated by the free market. Thank goodness that FDR didn't bother saving the US piano industry! As a result, Americans can get a huge range of instruments from all countries in the world at any price they are willing to pay.

Today government is even more arrogant and absurd, and it actually believes that by passing legislation it can save the US car industry. It can subsidize and pay for uneconomic activities, and pay ever more every year. The government can also pay millions of people to make mud pies because mud pies are deemed to be an essential industry. You can do this, but at what cost and what would possibly be the point? Eventually, even the government will have to accord itself to the reality that economics reminds us of on a daily basis.

É nisso que dá ter uma companhia de petróleo estatal...

Preço do litro de gasolina no Brasil é o dobro daquele nos EUA,diz AIE

Valor Online

GENEBRA - O preço do litro de gasolina no Brasil é o dobro do preço nos EUA e bem mais do que em países desenvolvidos como a Austrália e Canadá, de acordo com dados publicados hoje pela Agência Internacional de Energia (AIE). Em novembro, o litro no varejo custava US$ 1 no Brasil comparado a US$ 0,50 nos EUA, enquanto nos outros dois países variava entre US$ 0,50 e US$ 0,75. O litro custa mais na Turquia (US$ 1,75) e em países como Holanda, Noruega, Finlândia, Alemanha, onde a pressão de ecologistas é forte. O preço do barril de petróleo teve uma queda brutal nas últimas semanas - de US$ 140 para cerca de US$ 40, ou seja, baixa de US$ 100 por barril -, mas não resultou em menos custo para os consumidores, de maneira geral. A AIE nota que, na verdade, vários governos na Ásia aproveitam essa queda para reintroduzir algum tipo de controle de preço, inclusive por razões políticas. (Assis Moreira | Valor Econômico para Valor Online)

Queremos justiça para Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay! Deixem seus protestos no site da prefeitura da cidade e no NY Times.

Attack on Ecuadorean Brothers Investigated as Hate Crime

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Published: December 8, 2008

The two brothers from Ecuador had attended a church party and had stopped at a bar afterward. They may have been a bit tipsy as they walked home in the dead of night, arm-in-arm, leaning close to each other, a common tableau of men in Latino cultures, but one easily misinterpreted by the biased mind.

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Jose Sucuzhanay was listed in very critical condition after he was beaten on a Brooklyn street Sunday.

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Suddenly a car drew up. It was 3:30 a.m. Sunday, and the intersection of Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a half-block from the brothers’ apartment, was nearly deserted — but not quite. Witnesses, the police said, heard some of what happened next.

Three men came out of the car shouting at the brothers, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay — something ugly, anti-gay and anti-Latino. Vulgarisms against Hispanics and gay men were heard by witnesses, the police said. One man approached Jose Sucuzhanay, 31, the owner of a real estate agency who has been in New York a decade, and broke a beer bottle over the back of his head. He went down hard.

Romel Sucuzhanay, 38, who is visiting from Ecuador on a two-month visa, bounded over a parked car and ran as the man with the broken bottle came at him. A distance away, he looked back and saw a second assailant beating his prone brother with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him repeatedly on the head and body. The man with the broken bottle turned back and joined the beating and kicking.

“They used a baseball bat,” said Diego Sucuzhanay, another brother. “I guess the goal was to kill him.”

At least five calls were made to 911. As police sirens wailed in the distance, the assailants, described only as black men by the police, jumped into their maroon or red-orange Honda sport utility vehicle and sped away. Jose Sucuzhanay was listed on Monday in very critical condition at Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was on life support systems and in a coma after an operation for skull fractures and extensive brain damage.

As word of the ferocious attack spread on Monday, an outpouring of anger and protest swept the city, from members of the City Council, the State Legislature and Congress; from religious, labor and civil rights organizations; from Latino and gay groups; and from the Ecuadorean and Hispanic communities.

“This won’t be tolerated,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall that drew dozens of public officials and leaders of civil rights groups. “We cannot and we will not let hate go unchecked in our city.”

The condemnations were amplified by Council members Diana Reyna, Rosie Mendez, Merlissa Mark-Viverito, G. Oliver Koppell, David Yassky, Miguel Martinez, Gale A. Brewer, Daniel R. Garodnick, David I. Weprin and Letitia James; by Representative Nydia M. Valazquez, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo, officials of the New York City Central Labor Council, the NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, and by Jewish, Catholic and Protestant leaders.

A spokesman for Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said the prosecutor was “shocked and appalled by this senseless, bigoted, brutal act,” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Because of the antigay and anti-Latino epithets shouted by the assailants, the police said they were investigating the case as a hate crime.

“Once more, we hear hate crimes,” said Carlos Zamora, president of the Ecuadorean Civil Center of New York. He recalled the fatal stabbing of Marcello Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorean, in Patchogue, N.Y., on Nov. 8, in an attack by seven teenage boys who said they had driven around looking for Latinos to beat up. Seven youths have been arrested in that case and have pleaded not guilty to various charges.

The victim, Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhanay, the co-owner of Open Realty International, a real estate agency in Bushwick, was described by family members as a gentle, generous man, a father of two children who live with his parents in Azogues, Ecuador, his native town. He lives on Kossuth Place, in a building that is also home to his brother Diego and a sister, Blanca Naranjo. The victim’s girlfriend, Amada, arrived about six months ago and has been staying with Mr. Sucuzhanay.

Diego Sucuzhanay said that his brother, one of 12 siblings, came to New York 10 years ago “because there were job opportunities.” He said Jose worked as a restaurant waiter for seven years, and founded his real estate agency several years ago. “He helped this community,” he said. “He loved Bushwick.”

On Saturday night, Diego Sucuzhanay said, Jose and Romel, who had been staying with Jose, went to a party at St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church on Linden Street at St. Nicholas Avenue in Bushwick, a neighborhood with a large Ecuadorean community, and later had dinner at a restaurant and then drinks at La Vega, a bar at 1260 Myrtle Avenue, near Cedar Street, five blocks from the victim’s home.

They left the bar before 3:30 a.m., said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, and were walking arm-in-arm. Despite the cold, the men were dressed lightly: Romel wore a tank top and Jose was wearing a T-shirt. One or both may have had a jacket slung over their shoulders, officials said.

They reached the intersection of Bushwick and Kossuth as the assailant’s car drew up at a stoplight. As the driver and two other men got out, Romel Sucuzhanay and another witness heard the shouted slurs. Romel Sucuzhanay, who was not seriously injured, had a cellphone but did not know the number for calling the police. He shouted to the attackers that he was calling the police.

One of those who called 911, Hiram Nieves, a retired store owner, said that he and his wife heard loud noises in the street.

“We heard bang, bang, bang,” as Mr. Sucuzhanay was being pounded with the bat, “and people were running from one side to the other,” he said. After the attack, he said, he saw one of the men throw something into the S.U.V. and get in with the others. The victim, he said, “was laying there, he wasn’t moving.”

Then a lot of people emerged from their homes on Kossuth Place, Mr. Nieves said, moving around the man lying in the street.

Um brinde!

Hoje fazem 75 anos que a Suprema Corte americana cancelou a nefasta lei seca naquele país, que apenas serviu para criar gangsters e aumentar a violência, ao mesmo tempo em que reduzia a liberdade individual.
Aí está um bom motivo para se abrir uma gelada!