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Costa Rica Elects First Woman President

Yet another country beats the United States to electing a woman President. Costa Rica has elected Laura Chinchilla as their next President. Thus Costa Rica joins India, Pakistan, Israel, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Liberia and Chile, to name just a few, in accepting a woman as a democratically elected leader. This is one way that the US remains a bit backwards.

Laura Chinchilla is fairly right wing in my book. Pro-free market (which is fine up to a point), anti-abortion and anti-marriage equality, she wouldn't be my first choice for President. Her predecessor and mentor, Oscar Arias, supported legislation to separate church and state in Costa Rica. Chinchilla's views make me wonder if she will be more right wing than Arias. Somewhat paradoxically, Chinchilla's party, the Partido Liberación Nacional, is a member of the Socialist International, which makes it's free-market stand seem a bit at odds with its supposedly socialist claims. It should be noted that there was an even more right wing candidate in the running, so Chinchilla would qualify as "centrist" to many.

As a minor aside, Costa Rica has been developing into one of the greenest and happiest nations on earth. It ranks third in terms of Environmental Performance Index, along with Sweden, Iceland and Switzerland (sadly, the US ranks 63, along with Paraguay, Brazil and Venezuela). And Costa Rica came out on top in terms of Happy Planet Index. And, I will add, they are the source of one of my favorite hot sauces: Iguana Mean Green Jalapeno sauce.

Viva Costa Rica!

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Submitted by mole333 on 8 February 2010 - 2:53pm.
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Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes --indeed, deletes-- the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

But most of the people who use the new designation --economists, in particular-- are innocent as to the effect. They see nothing wrong with their bland, descriptive terminology. They pay no attention to the important question: Whether money "wealth" accords a special power. (It does.) Thus the term innocent fraud.

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