A political leader undertaking a hunger strike to push for constitutional changes to permit him to stay in power is outrageous, in my opinion. No one denies that political empowerment of the poor in Bolivia is a worthy goal. But Morales has gone beyond that to other extremes. The worst, as I see it, is re-empowering tribal justice in some areas, which completely circumvents federal and state law and invites "Harper Lee-type" legal abuses.

This is a step backwards. Further, his lack of busniness sense is rotting the natural gas company from within. The Brazilians that I work with use natural gas to make boiler steam, and I've noted that theirs is the highest cost I've seen in the Western Hemisphere. This translates into less competitive goods and postponing use of more environmentally-friendly processes due to weird steam economics, and it can be traced directly back to supply crunches caused by inefficiencies on the Bolivian side.