Two Percent Comments from the PRD

The perredista governor of Chiapas has come out in favor of the 2 percent consumption tax proposed by Felipe Calderón. Carlos Navarette encouraged his fellow perredistas to not focus unduly on the consumption tax, but to rather consider the totality of the measures proposed by the president. The Mexico City PRD is planning to launch a campaign against the tax. And Alejandro Encinas says that the PRD deputies are on the verge of releasing their own proposal, one to be characterized (at least, according to Excélsior) "very strict austerity" measures. Which seems a bit odd for the party of the left, but I guess with a center-right party acting as the loudest voice for tax increases, one can't really expect orthodox ideological approaches to budget policy in today's Mexico.

Bummer

Ricardo Raphael is abandoning his weekly column at El Universal, to better devote himself to his editorial duties. Too bad; he has always been one of the more consistently readable columnists in the country.

Living Well

Mexico ranks 53rd out of 182 nations on the latest Human Development Report, which measures quality of life across the world. It also came in seventh place in Latin America, with Chile, Antigua, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, and the Bahamas ranking ahead of it.

Cuba is surprising. I've never been there (Thanks, embargo!), but the Mexicans who have generally come back horrified by the poverty they see. Although they've all said conditions are much better in the cities than in the countryside, and those who go to Cuba are generally middle-class or wealthy Mexicans who would be likewise horrified by a trip to their cities' worst slums.

PRI Popularity

Excélsior's populómetro takes the measure of the PRI today, and determines that Enrique Peña Nieto is the party's most recongizable and well liked figure. He is followed by Beatriz Paredes, Francisco Labastida, and Manlio Fabio Beltrones. Labastida's third-place ranking is pretty weird, given that he is less relevant than many others on the list, but that has more to do with the residual effect of his presidential candidacy in 2000. Following Beltrones are two of the party's most notorious governors: Mario Marín (the authoritarian who engineered the kidnapping of journalist Lydia Cacho) Ulises Ruiz (basically on Marín's level). Senator Jesús Murillo, Governors Humberto Moreira (¡arriba Coahuila!), Ivonne Ortega, Rodrigo Medina, and Deputy Francisco Rojas round out the top ten.

Bilateral Game of Telephone. Or, Today in Yellow Journalism

This sequence was amusing: an American analyst at the US Army War College wrote a report last called "A "New" Dynamic in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment: The Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies". Today, Excélsior ran a front-page story on the same report with the headline, "US Fears that Zetas Supplant Governments".

Why No Debt

Leo Zuckermann addresses the reasons (as expressed by Agustín Carstens) for Calderón's reluctance to forego new taxes in favor of a new tax (paraphrased):

1) Mexico has already experienced the consequences of out-of-control borrowing.

2) The present drops in income, especially from oil, aren't going to bounce back down the line once the crisis comes to an end, so a deeper structural change in Mexico's budget calculus is needed.

3) It's irresponsible to mortgage a future that doesn't belong to us.

4) An elevated debt inhibits economic growth because it crowds out investment, because the government must devote a greater proportion of its income to servicing the debt.

5) Debt could put Mexico's credit rating at risk.

Zuckermann's responds with the following:

Those are the reasons of the Finance Secretariat. It leaves out the most important that obviously can't be said. The government doesn't to go into debt because it doesn't know how to spend. In general, it runs through funs through funds from taxes or from debt. It favors current expenses over investment. It's a bad administrator of social funding.

From 1999 and 2009, real public expenses grew by 93 percent, and the economy only by 18.5 percent. Government spending didn't help foster economic development. The difference is that 40 percent of the spending was financed with oil profit, and now that oil production is plummeting, many politicians have the temptation to resort to debt to avoid raising taxes or lower spending. Let's hope that they don't do it because it would lending money to a guy who tends to spend it poorly.

Misleading

There are a number of misleading statements in James Kirchick's latest article on Honduras. First, he calls the administration's determinations in the wake of the coup "hasty", and, more generally, overly supportive of Zelaya. In fact, the Obama administration did not immediately call Zelaya's removal a coup, and Hillary wouldn't call it a military coup as recently as a few weeks ago. More broadly, the left has been all over the Obama administration for not doing more to bring about Zelaya's return.

Second, he writes that Obama's support for the Zelaya is motivated by the Left's mania for apology:

[Obama said] "it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections. We don't want to go back to a dark past." His invocation of U.S. support for armed opposition movements fighting communist insurgencies in Latin America during the Cold War is one of numerous apologies for past American actions that he has offered since taking office, a tactic which seems to be a core tenant of his diplomatic strategy.

There was as a matter of fact no apology in the quote offered, nor anything resembling one. Obama was merely supporting democracy as opposed to advocating its subversion, a position I don't ever remember Kirchick rejecting in the past.

Lastly, based on a single Library of Congress report (which is not, to my knowledge, the locus of US foreign policy considerations) and the opposition of Jim DeMint, he writes, "What explains the administration’s continued intransigence?" He sets up the question as though the Obama administration was completely alone among respectable governments in denouncing Zelaya's ouster, when in fact the coup turned the miraculous trick of uniting Calderón, Uribe, Chávez, and Castro behind one single point of view. Not that that should dictate American policy, but, as an alternative to basing an entire article on a single report, isn't the unified opposition of the Western Hemisphere's governments relevant enough to include?

New Database

The Secretariat of Public Security is completing a registry of the 230,000 Mexicans in federal and local prisons, at a cost of about $8 million. The database will be up and running next week. It would seem that such a database should have been up and running years ago (indeed, an SSP official said the first attempts to complete a prisoner registry date back to the days of Porfirio Díaz), but kudos to the SSP for catching up. There's been a fair number of little improvements like this over the course of Calderón's tenure, which have been understandably obscured by the years-long wave of violence. Nonetheless, taken together they will leave Mexico in a better position to defend itself from criminals for years to come.

Big, Big Seizure

Mexican authorities captured 37 tons of precursor chemicals for meth yesterday in two different seizures, one in Manzanillo and another in Nuevo Laredo. No information has been made public on the Nuevo Laredo stash, but the twenty tons that were seized in Manzanillo arrived in mid-September on a Liberian boat arriving from India. 

Support, Opposition

Felipe Calderón's proposal to use Afore (pension fund) money to pay for infrastructure products has won the support of the PAN and the PRI, and the opposition of the PT and the PRD. 

Horrible Year

Not sure where the stat comes from, but Felipe Calderón says the number of Mexicans living in "nutritional poverty" (meaning they don't have enough to eat on a daily basis) jump from 14 to 20 million in the last year alone. That would be a jump of roughly 43 percent in a single year, which is simply astounding. Calderón is using the fact to argue for his economic plan, which proposes a 2 percent VAT on everything. 

Happy Weekend

May we all tango more. If you can't dance but are in the mood for more Juanito, click here or here. 

Problems with Legalization

Coletta Youngers of the WOLA says that Mexico's decriminalization is flawed because it establishes such small maximums for personal use, such as half a gram of cocaine. This is an interesting point that I hadn't considered, and it is odd to set such a low minimum, given that lots of recreational drug users buy a week's supply of drugs, or they buy for themselves and a small circle of friends. The political risk was in decriminalizing drugs, not in setting two grams as opposed to half a gram as the limit.

New Human Rights Czars*

Mexico City already has a new one, Luis González Plascencia, a criminal justice expert who was in charge of the city's investigation into the New's Divine disaster in 2008.

The replacement to José Luis Soberanes, the leader of the National Human Rights Commission, has not yet been selected, but Jorge Fernández Menéndez has some thoughts:

All of the other possibilities are respectable candidates, but nevertheless, I believe that if what we want in CNDH is a change in perspective, a much more active participation from NGOs, and a man with independence and honesty, the selection should fall on Emilio Álvarez Icaza [the man whom González Plascencia is replacing]. With him there would exist the real possibility of conceptually modernizing the institution, giving it, in step with the times, greater autonomy and legitimacy in its decisions.

Fernández Menéndez also points out that his candidacy is a bit tricky because he is perceived to be closely linked to the PRD.

*If we can use czar for anyone in a position of authority, I think a conscious effort should be made to use it in the most incongruent circumstances.

Final Judgment

Mexico's electoral tribunal has ruled that Julio César Godoy, the half-brother of the governor of Michoacán who stands accused of working with the local gang La Familia, cannot be sworn into the deputy seat he won in July's election. He remains at large.

Bomber Arrested

A suspect has been arrested in the bombing of a handful of banks, department stores, and auto dealerships in Mexico City over the past month. The suspect, Ramsés Villarreal, is 27, and is a former student at UNAM, the nation's flagship public university. There has been no announcement about whether Villarreal was working alone or whether he is part of a subversive group.

Controlling Mexico City

After taking Marcelo Ebrard to task for his lack of tolerance for local opposition in DF, Leo Zuckermann says that placing the committee in the Chamber of Deputies that deals with DF in the hands of the PAN will benefit chilangos:

It seems positive to me that [Gabriela] Cuevas will be the president of the DF Committee. It's good for the city that there is another counterweight, even a limited one, from the Chamber of Deputies. Because democracy is precisely a regime of weights and counterweights. James Madison had it right when he said that the best way to avoid tyranny of one politicians is by countering his ambition with the ambition of other politicians. In this struggle of ambitions the population is favored with a better government. I think the capital city denizens will benefit from the struggles of ambitions between Cuevas to be the next mayor of DF and of Ebrard to be the next president of Mexico.

Not Going Softly

His health evidently recovered, Rafael "Juanito" Acosta is today attending the inauguration of the new Mexico City government. You may be wondering, how is he behaving after he surrendored his dubious claim to the Iztapalapa chiefdom? Ashamed? Camera-shy? Philosophical?

None of the above, in fact. After taking his oath (which is to proceed his handing the post over to adversary Clara Brugada), Juanito shouted, "Death to the traitor Workers Party!".

Update: Juanito continues to earn American press, first with the NY Times, now the AP.

Disgusting

A lovely story about traces of feces in Mexico City's potable water supply is making its way through the papers today. It's easy for those of us in the provinces to get bummed out about all the cool stuff we miss out on by not living in the capital city, especially on weekend nights. What I felt when reading the above story is the exact opposite.

Another Idea from Calderón

There must have been an idea session at Los Pinos in the last couple of days.

Earlier today, Calderón proposed using the money in Afores (Mexico's retirement accounts) to pay for infrastructure projects, which Mexico has had a hard time funding in recent years. Presently, the money sits in one of two dozen or so mutual funds, administered by a handful of different banks. I have no idea what is the risk involved or therefore whether or not is a credible idea, but much of Mexico needs new infrastructure investment. My dream project would be a triangle train between Monterrey, Mexico City, and Guadalajara.

Update: Carstens discounts the risk, calling the plan "very safe".

Victims' Law

Felipe Calderón yesterday came out in support of a new victims' rights law for those who suffer a kidnapping, extortion, or blackmail. It would guarantee transparent processes and establish safer mechanisms for criminal complaints, the president said.

Laws like these aren't a bad thing, but the reason that extortion, et al is such a huge problem is not the lack of a victims' rights law, but the fact that those charged with investigating and punishing such crimes (namely the police) are largely corrupt and/or incompetent. A new law won't be worth a whole lot if the Mexico doesn't improve the quality of the people who implement it at the most basic level.

Martí on Jails

Alejandro Martí (who, incidentally, looks more than a bit like Alex Trebek) says that prison reform is urgently needed in Mexico, because prisons operate as crime schools. That's something you hear a lot in Mexico, and, although I've never set foot in a Mexican jail, I have no reason not to believe it. Aside from that, the examples of criminals running the jails are many. Given that, it makes you wonder why prison reform has never taken off politically. It's the kind of issue that transcends the deep ideological differences between the parties, and, if passed, everyone involved would be able to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Not Happy

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is not pleased with the rumors of a PAN-PRD alliance in Oaxaca, which would be aimed at upsetting the machinery that brought Ulises Ruiz to power. He said such an alliance would contradict the PRD's philosophy and the base would be confused.