He is a public figure making good money with his insane rantings.
Which is would explain his opposition to Chavez, a man who (*gasp*) uses his country's massive oil profits to support the needy!And feeding and clothing the poor.
Doubling the Venezualan weekly minimum wage?!?! We Christians cannot stand for this abomination!
Put good old Hugo in charge of Pat's profits. Poverty would be abolished overnight.
But seriously, we all know the real reason Robertson despises Chavez. Don't pretend you don't. All that precious oil money could be going to US corporations, who would be further equipted to continue their highly successful plight of screwing over the American people. Don't let his preaching of "moral values" fool you, all any true Right-Winger wants is to further fatten our friendly American corporate overlord's wallets.
As you can see, a truly evil man.So, why don't the Bush Administration and the right-wing extremists and religious fanatics in the U.S. like Hugo Chavez? Venezuela, after all, supplies the U.S. with 12 per cent of its imported oil and sits on top of the eighth largest known oil field in the world.
Oil is the problem — not that Venezuela has it, but what Hugo Chavez does with it. Rather than gratuitously fatten the profit margins of the international oil companies, the Venezuelan government under Chavez extracts higher taxes and fees from those companies, and plows that money back into the people of Venezuela. He facilitates the formation of grassroots organizations and worker cooperatives amongst Venezuela's poor.
He has increased the minimum wage from about $25 per week to about $40 per week, and raised personal income taxes up to a rate of 10-15 per cent. He has established food programs to feed the poor and traded oil to Cuba for doctors and teachers who provide free health care to the poor and enhanced educational opportunities. He has used oil wealth to increase public works in order to provide more jobs for Venezuelans.
Imagine, using national resources to improve the national society and raise living standards for the poorest citizens. Imagine increasing access to education, health care and affordable food. It flies in the face of modern, corporate capitalism and the demand for ever lower costs for resources and labour.
And, as far as the U.S. and its corporate sponsors are concerned, it sets a bad example for the rest of Latin America. Imagine if Chavez's programs of redirecting wealth to the people of the countries where it is produced rather than letting it be sucked out by foreign investors should catch on. That is the other part of the problem.
Chavez has named his political and social philosophy Bolivarianism and is pursuing a Bolivarian Revolution, not just for Venezuela but for most of South America. The name comes from that of Simon Bolivar who liberated what are now Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela from Spain in the early 19th Century. In this century Chavez is providing support to populist movements in neighbouring countries, a move clearly designed to spread his Bolivarian philosophy throughout the South American continent.
He is making oil deals with Brazil and Argentina and advocating Latin American military and trade alliances to challenge the power of the U.S. in the region. Venezuela, too, is the major partner in a Latin American satellite television network, Telesur, along with Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, which will provide a counter point to the messages broadcast to South America by U.S. networks like CNN.
Chavez is plainly becoming a regional leader in an area long dominated by U.S. influence and interference. Like Simon Bolivar before him, who challenged the rule of the Spanish, Chavez has become a challenge in the region to the power of the United States.
