A little rant about Brazil government

"DConsorti" (DConsorti) 02/26/2015 at 12:01 • Filed to: None

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I'm really, really pissed off at brazilian government.

Let me explain: since 2010, the government over here was artificially holding back the price of gas, so the inflation wouldn't go overboard. I'm not pissed of about that, since we could get gas a little less expensive because of this.

But what really got me ticking was that this year, after getting reelected, brazilian president (I REFUSE to say her name), nominated a new economic crew and they told her that the economy over here is bonkers... something that every single brazilian with half a brain knew already, and that the government must cut some costs.

But, like the a....ole they are, instead of cutting in the flesh, like salaries and some bonus and other things all the elected people get (like help to pay for a house in the place were you will work; they receive a large sum of money to spend with the people they employ (mostly people of theyr own familie and friends), postal service, etc), not mentioning that the receive for salary in a momth what a majority of brazilians FAMILIES receive IN A YEAR!

Since last week, trucker over here are on strike, blocking highways and shit, because of the price os Diesel, toll boths and such. Yesterday, the presdent made a speech telling the people that the government didn't have ways to lower diesel prices. Not to mention that they cut money from health, education, security and are raised taxes.

But the straw that broke this camels back was today, when the congress over here approved a raise in those benefits they get, even permitting that wives get free airplane tickets payed by us!!! Ah, this "raise" will cost nearly R$ 150 million per year!

Seriously, if anyone over here at oppo needs a lawyer and offers me a help to get the hell out of this country, PLEASE....

A couple of Copo muscle for your time

My citroen won't start > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 12:21

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From a brazilian lawyer to another, we are fucked. (I get 5km/l so I'm double fucked)

Frank Grimes > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 12:29

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wait other countries have problems? I thought my news man said america has all the problems and that foreign news woman said the usa was to blame for all the worlds trouble.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 12:37

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"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - attributed to George Washington, albeit disputed, and the comment about fire predates that as a proverb/axiom.

Limited government for defense, law and order, and otherwise severely curtailed and limited is a principle that applies everywhere to keep tyrannical tendencies of political power in check.

Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.

"Government is just a group of people, most notably, ungoverned." - Firefly TV show.

The people being governed are supposed to be the ones limiting the authority they grant to their administrative government... but governments lie, cheat, and steal, while the citizenry tends to be either too busy trying to survive, or too busy chasing entertainment to care about truly understanding political science and current events, and holding their leaders strictly accountable.

It is happening pretty much everywhere, unfortunately, due to the negative aspects of human nature, which is why utopian systems like Socialism or Communism that disregard the concept of corruption and tyranny, have never, and will never work. People aren't that deliberately, ineffably, selflessly magnanimous.

DConsorti > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 12:50

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AMEM!

Well, the problem over here is that the government, using populist aid programs, almost "bought" themselves a election for the last 3 presidential elections, using the fear agenda, saying that the opposition would cut of many of the programs, raise taxes, etc if they were elected.

The problem is that these programs allow people to became lazy, living in government money, while other work their ass off for 5 months (I kid you not), only to pay taxes!

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > My citroen won't start 02/26/2015 at 12:51

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From a non lawyer to... huh... two lawyers, we're all fucked, guys.

DConsorti > My citroen won't start 02/26/2015 at 12:51

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Dude... I have a 1.0l and feel butt f.... every time I go fill it up...

I feel your pain!

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 12:53

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Don't forget all these raises and bonuses came at a time when it is imperative to reduce the costs and size of the government machine. They're doing that alright, cutting public costs to spend more money on themselves.

My citroen won't start > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 12:55

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130 reais to fill my tank, and it is gone in less than a week. It can handle one trip do the beach.

My citroen won't start > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 02/26/2015 at 12:55

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The whole country is fucked.

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 13:04

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The problem is that in Brazil this is cranked up to 11... politicians will embezzle insane amounts of money, get caught red handed while doing, dent everything, get absolved by a court of even more corrupt politicians, then proceed to do it all over again. With the amount of money we pay in tributes alone, we should have the best quality of life in the universe, instead, we're behind almost every single countryn in south america, and things keep getting worse by the day. Whenever a crisis hits, the first thing the ones in power do is deny anything's wrong and then protect their own interests and privileges by increasing their salaries and benefits. As an everyday man, getting to the center of power and being heard is nigh on impossible, as our capital was designed and built to be as inaccessible as possible, in the middle of fucking nowhere. The only way out for Brazil right now is an all out civil war, with the complete eradication of the political class.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 13:04

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I know you are not kidding.

In the US, between federal, state, local, property, and sales taxes, car registration fees, fuel taxes, corporate taxes paid embedded into retail prices, and other government mandated costs, now including a mandate to either pay for over-prices and over-regulated health insurance, or pay a fine to the tax-collecting IRS, it covers wages earned from January likely into August. Almost nobody actually includes all of that when calculating their "Tax Freedom Day" for when they start earning money for themselves, rather than the government.

In 2014, Americans paid more for state and federal taxes alone than food, clothing, and housing combined.

Even our government's accounting department, the Congressional Budget Office, projects that 60% of american households receive more federally-funded benefits than they pay in federal taxes. More than half of american households take more than they give... so the other 40% of households float that, up to the point that the HUGE deficit, and 18 TRILLION dollar debt is incurred to pay more than federal incoming revenues.

It is well known by more conservative and libertarian minded citizens that the more socially liberal and as you aptly put it, populist leaders have been BUYING votes with tax dollars, to varying degrees, for most of the last century.

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin.

This quote shows that if these policies aren't DRAMATICALLY reversed, and the effects reduced, we may be dead as a nation, we just don't know it yet, like a 'dead man walking' into an unavoidable end.

Yet it is only getting worse... as the government (and most governments likely do) continues to PRINT un-backed currency. That US policy is probably not doing Brazil any favors with international trade, as well as stealing value of every US citizen's pocket and bank account by making each dollar worth and capable of purchasing less results, and devaluing our work for stagnant wages.

Regardless of which country, unchecked power, and the powerful hedging their influence by getting a tighter grip over anything and everything, is strangling the people they mean to *rule*, despite them being elected to "serve."

DConsorti > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 02/26/2015 at 13:04

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That's my rant!

DConsorti > My citroen won't start 02/26/2015 at 13:05

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My fiancee moved last august to a city 200km from São Paulo, and I go there every weekend... So, I spend 100 reais avergae in gas and 60 in toll every weekend!

DConsorti > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 02/26/2015 at 13:08

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AH... let's just remember that in last years, our awesome government spent BILLION building stadiums for the world cup! Stadiums that are not being used because of the cost for the teams!!

And don't even get me started with the olympics! (R.I.P. Jacarepagua!)

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 13:11

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I can't talk about the specific numbers in the US case, but down here, we work over six months a year for the government to earn its share. More than 50% of everything you make in a given year foes straight to politicians' pockets.

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 13:14

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One can only hope the 2016 olympics will turn out to be the embarrassment of the year. Or the decade. We paid for it man, all of it, and we're getting fucking nothing in return. The olympics aren't for the everyman, like us, they're for that incompetent whore some people call president to showoff.

DConsorti > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 13:14

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Well, at least you guys get better health, security and education than us!

I listen to a lot of Jello Biafra spoken word gigs, try to read what he post and I can see that the problems are not so different. The difference, IMO, is that over here, unfortunately, we have corruption so embedded in our politics that there is no solution (at least I don't see any)! Just look at the Petrobras scandal...

DConsorti > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 02/26/2015 at 13:24

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Let's say that is for the squidward and for patrick star (get the pun??heheh)

DConsorti > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 13:26

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and now that this came to the topic, I just beg that no athelte get sic with the events that are going to be held at Baia da Guanabara... they will not clean it... (I'll go hide in shame!)

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > Frank Grimes 02/26/2015 at 13:29

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Trust me, our government is not above blaming the US for everything bad happening here in the most ridiculous ways imaginable. Like stating that the current political/financial/civil/infrastructure crisis is a direct consequence of... the Monroe Doctrine. Yuuuuuuuuup.

Axial > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 13:33

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Can I star this 100 times? Please?

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 02/26/2015 at 13:33

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The government never earns a single red cent.

Politically, they seize money, sometimes by the consent of the governed by representative legislation. Increasingly more often, by representative legislators acting contrary to their constituent's consent, and agencies of the government enacting policies with congressionally-abdicated force of law, which itself should be highly illegal.

Economically, the government is a political and societal 'cost center', not a revenue generating organization. A cost center in business terms is an essential business function that incurs expense as it functions, but doesn't directly generate revenue, and relies on other business functions to generate enough revenue to pay it's expense as well.

Legitimate government under the enumerated powers is an acceptable cost for the societal benefits. Beyond that, (and the US government, and most governments are WAY, WAY beyond it) additional taxation for extra-constitutional activity is confiscatory and economically destructive, and akin to legalized theft, especially wealth redistribution activities. Government is a horribly inefficient charity, and is not intended to be one. Charity should be left to individual people, one to another, or very transparent charitable organizations that people can freely choose weather or NOT to patronize. Taxation is not optional, as it is seizure.

"If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." - Lysander Spooner

"Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity." - Arthur Laffer, free-market economist.

"The Constitution doesn't permit the feds to steal your money. But steal, the feds do. —Constitution to the oaths that everyone who works for the government takes — indicates that the government exists to work for us. The Declaration even proclaims that the government receives all of its powers from the consent of the governed. If you believe all this, as I do, then just as we don't have the power to take our neighbor's property and distribute it against his will, we lack the ability to give that power to the government. Stated differently, just as you lack the moral and legal ability to take my property, you cannot authorize the government to do so." - Judge Andrew Napolitano - http://www.creators.com/opinion/judge-…

Axial > Frank Grimes 02/26/2015 at 13:35

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If we are to blame for all of the world's problems, does that mean the British are also to blame since they are to blame for us?

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 13:40

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Sorry, I mispoke... I meant 6 months for us to earn the share the government takes.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 13:55

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I wouldn't count on that...

Healthcare is getting destroyed by government intervention, just as most nationalized healthcare systems do, and our veterans health care system has been shown to ignore veterans as they die while they wait.

Our military infrastructure is aging, not being replenished, despite high military spending, and being actively shrunk by the current presidential administration. our police are getting militarized with surplus military hardware against the citizenry they supposedly serve.

Our education system is getting gutted by policies like 'common core', and other efforts that keep graduation rates somewhat up, but graduates people that have little marketable skill, and sometimes less than acceptable levels of literacy, mathematical competence, or work ethic, and those who do have those skills, often develop them DESPITE the education system. Home schooling, charter schools, private schools, or choice in terms of public school open-enrollment, or re-allocation of property taxes to alternatives to government-run public schools, are all under attack and becoming more limited, not more open. Those property taxes increase every year on EVERY home or land-owner, and pay ABUNDANTLY for schools, as schools continue to cut performing and fine arts programs due to 'budget cuts', but school administration gets more bureaucratically mired.

Those aspects are being as badly managed as anything the government touches... yet some still think that the answer is more government involvement, more deficit spending, more agencies, and more bureaucracy, requiring more taxes.

Just yesterday, my state just voted to enact an increased gasoline tax, despite a high constituent opposition to increasing gas taxes, and tomorrow, unelected Federal Communication Commission is likely going to vote 3-to-2, to declare the internet to be a public utility, and regulate it, without any public view of the regulations that will be enacted with the force of law.

This stuff is running rampant by the day... sometimes even by the HOUR, topic after topic after topic, in rapid-fire succession, making it harder for any citizen to pay attention and oppose it, if it hasn't already become unaccountable to the public.

Welcome to the brave new world.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 14:06

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I stand corrected.

The internet regulations just passed a matter of minutes ago, 3-2 by the Federal Communications Commissioners, without public review of the 332 pages of regulations.

No public review. No Congressional debate or voting record. No direct representation whatsoever.

Although Google and other tech lobbyist organizations did have access and influence, so there is that.

Welcome to the new age of the regulated internet.

For Sweden > DConsorti 02/26/2015 at 14:09

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So Brazil is like Chicago, but an entire nation.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 14:17

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BATFE fast-tracks ban on 5.56mm ammunition.

Second correction. In light of FCC's regulatory coup-d'etat over the legally elected representatives of the people, aka the Legislative Branch; now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives wants in on the act.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/256075…

As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56 mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela 's, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

Remember what I posted an hour ago, about this stuff coming rapid-fire, by the day, or by the hour? Yeah. This is what I meant.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/26/2015 at 15:05

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I'm not intimately familiar with Net Neutrality, but based on the blurbs I've heard, I support the FCC decision. That said, you're right, there's been no public review of the proposal prior to it happening, and no vote by legally elected representatives. And that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As for the 5.56mm ammo, that's a complete shit show, but it's been in talks for at least a few days if not a couple weeks now. The law they are citing to give them the authority is a law that makes armor piercing ammunition illegal. The problem is, the law is only applicable to handgun ammunition, and M855/SS109 meets NEITHER of the two requirements in the law to be considered armor piercing.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > Snuze: Needs another Swede 02/26/2015 at 17:33

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Net neutrality is a false flag. They push it in public for being all about fairness, but what they are actually doing is bringing the internet under Title 2, in the telecommunications act of 1934, which regulated the telephone utilities then. That regulation and government purview stifled innovation in telecommunications until it was de-regulated in the 1980s... and magically cellular phones popped up, and have been innovating since. previous to that, the only major changes was the break-up of "Ma-Bell" into the "baby-Bells" regional monopolies, and touch-tone dialing, instead of pulse rotary dialing.

The government never puts its hooks into something without the intention of control.

And they never tell the truth about what they intend to do.

The same government that said, if you want your health insurance plan, you can keep it, and if you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor... which is proving to be a LIE.

There may have been issues between internet data sources like Netflix, and ISPs like Comcast, but those were private enterprise commerce issues, and negotiations about costs for service usage, but there were and are options for different ISPs and different data content providers.

Putting things under government control, means that there IS NO ALTERNATIVE to what the government controls.

If this was above board, it would have been a congressional hearing, a published and reviewed bill, and a congressional vote with an executive signature. THAT is how laws are made, and the law-makers are 'supposedly' held to account.

This was 5 unelected, government sector employee bureaucrats in the Federal Communications Commission, who made the decision, not even unanimously, without accountability, without transparency, and without consent, for a problem that was mostly trumped up.

Every aspect of this has been deceit, even the colloquial name, and there is nothing NEUTRAL about it.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 02/27/2015 at 08:32

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That's an interesting take on it. I say that because, as I said, I'm not very well versed in the matter. But you've given me something to think about, I'll have to dig a little deeper.

Conan > DConsorti 03/13/2015 at 09:15

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I think that's an issue for a lot of places, mind you, with Olympics/World Cup.