Virginia, educate your senator

Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 19:25:23 +0000
From: senator_allen@allen.senategov
To: Elio Cequea
Subject: A response from Senator George Allen

Dear Mr. Cequea: Thank you for contacting me regarding the political situation in Venezuela. I appreciate your concerns and value the opportunity to respond.

Since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has undergone enormous political changes, with a new constitution and revamped political institutions. President Chavez has seen his popularity slowly erode due to his ineffectiveness in improving the living conditions of 80% of its 23 million citizens that live in poverty.

As you may know, President Chavez resigned on April 12, 2002, under pressure from the military, but was ultimately restored to power two days later.

Mr. Allen is even further from reality than Lord Liar or Klueless Kerry. Only the very hard core opposition members in Venezuela itself are still saying that Chávez resigned (and some of them are obviously embarrassed when they do), knowing full well that dog won't hunt. One of the standard large screen images projected at Chávez speeches is his letter to the people smuggled from the location where he was being held captive assuring his supporters he did not resign. There's an independent Irish documentary which captured the whole incident filmed by a crew who just happened to be on the spot when he was taken away by the army.

And where has Mr. Allen been for the past six months? Check this out...

Moreover, Chavez continues to throw caution to the wind with his close ties to Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I thought Saddam Hussein was in prison. Are they letting Chávez visit him? Someone should tell Saddam's lawyers who have to date been denied that privilege.

It is important that we continue to put pressure on Chavez to hold a referendum on his rule through international observers to safeguard political and civil liberties.

Look at the date of this letter: July 14, 2004. The referendum was held last month. Mr. Allen really ought to update his files before he sends out his form letters.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me. If you would like to receive an e-mail newsletter about my initiatives to improve America, please sign up on my website http://allen.senate.gov . It is an honor to serve you in the United States Senate, and I look forward to working with you to make Virginia and America a better place to live, learn, work and raise a family.

Well, Elio isn't a Virgnia resident. Perhaps that wasn't obvious. But this line in Elio's letter to several American officials, including Senator Allen, which prompted Allen's reply, looks pretty clearly to me to indicate his Venezuelan citizenship: "Venezuela is a developing country. Just give us a fair opportunity to develop."

No, I don't think Elio is going to be working with Mr. Allen, although Mr. Allen's work might improve considerably if he did. I can only hope Mr. Allen's "initiatives to improve America" come with better research to back them than this letter did.

Elio responds painstakingly at length to Senator Allen, but it doesn't appear as though Elio is familiar with the U.S. Congress persons' despicable and wasteful practice of sending standard form letter responses (and in this case one that hasn't even been updated to reflect current events). He seems to be under the impression he actually got a letter from a Senator who actually read the letter sent to him.

And I haven't the heart to tell him otherwise.

Or maybe I should.


Jerk Allen R-GA

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Update 7/16/04: Bob has challenged my assertion that the referendum occurred last month. So, I'll have to clarify. I may be using the term incorrectly, as I have been calling the part of the process whereby people signed petitions to bring a recall vote on the president, the referendum. The actual vote which is scheduled for August 15, I have been calling the recall vote.

At any rate, I don't think this means that Senator Allen's letter isn't an outdated form letter. And as I read it, it seems to imply that it was written before the petition portion of the recall referendum was concluded last month, and nothing has been done to update the letter to reflect current events. You may read it otherwise. But since Mr. Allen wants to "continue to put pressure on Chavez to hold a referendum on his rule", I'd say he's behind the times, as the process is already underway.


Update 7/16/04 12:30 pm: Bob educates me:

What happened at the end of May was called the "repair process," which was used to address the validity of petition signatures. The National Election Committee determined that there were enough valid petitions for the referendum to proceed.

FWIW--Encarta's definition of 'referendum': vote by whole population on issue: a vote by the whole of an electorate on a specific question or questions put to it by a government or similar body.

Gracias, Bob.