Posted on 08/03/2011 2:25:03 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Cuban ruler Raul Castro had blasted bureaucrats for blocking some of his ambitious reforms, an admission that one dissident economist said clearly outlines the shortcomings of his campaign for change.
The biggest obstacle to his reforms is “the psychological barrier formed by inertia, the defense of the status quo, the simulation … the indifference or insensibility” of Cuba’s bureaucracy,....
“I warn that all bureaucratic resistance … will be useless,” he declared. “We will be patient and at the same time persevere in the face of the resistance to change, be they conscious or unconscious.”
Castro’s reform plans call for an increase in private enterprise and foreign investments, deep cuts in state subsidies, layoffs for more than 1 million public employees, fewer government controls on state enterprises and expansions in the legal sales of houses and vehicles.
But his words rang hollow to dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who argued that Castro has not seriously tackled a bureaucracy that traditionally derives special benefits from its ability to game the system and the petty corruption prevalent in Cuba.
“He doesn’t want to realize that the bureaucracy has its own mentality, based on its own benefits,” Espinosa said by phone from Havana. “And those benefits have not been destroyed. They remain intact.”........
...During his speech, Castro also announced the government would take several steps to help Cuba’s fledgling micro-enterprises by cutting prices on raw materials and tools and allowing the businesses to obtain bank credits and hire up to five workers without paying extra taxes.
....Castro mentioned the “painful” case of an unidentified government official and Communist Party member who wrote to him to complain that she was almost fired from her job because she had not told her supervisors that she went to church on Sundays.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
And Obama is pushing us into what they're trying to claw their way out of.
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