Venezuela: Another Socialist Utopia Falls Asunder

Socialists always believe that government is the best way to control the destiny of mankind. They believe that without complete government control over people's lives, income inequality will rule and that the rich will get richer and the poor, poorer.

Such was the case in Venezuela.  Hugo Chavez in 1998 -- when elected President -- was to turn Venezuela into a socialist utopia with the working class and the poor finally enjoying a better life in a country he felt only served the rich.  All of this would would be based on a revolutionary movement that he founded in 1982 called the "Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200".

Properties were seized and given to the poor.  He took control of the media and the supreme court to insure that there was no insurrection while he did what he needed to do to bring Marxism to his country.  He even managed to make himself "El Presidente" for life. Even though Chavez died young in 2013, his dream was continued by his successor President Maduro -- his former Vice President.

Today, Venezuela is an economic mess.  There is no food on store shelves. Even toilet paper is in short supply. Inflation is completely out of control, and this year is expected to exceed 700%; well up from last year's 180% and 172%.  That means that prices went up 1000% in just 3 years.  Not exactly the ideal inflation rate of 2 to 3%.  Because the country is so dependent on oil export revenues, the extreme fall in oil prices has further crippled its economy.

On top of everything else, electricity is in short supply because they were too dependent on hydro-electric power, This, in a country that is awash with oil.  In order to conserve electricity, government workers have recently had their workweek cut to two days -- Thursday and Friday.  As it is, the country's 2 million government workers had already had the workday slashed to 6 hours.  This latest move by Maduro means that the government workers will only work 12 hours a week.  This simply means that the country will fall into more turmoil as government services are even more severely curtailed. 

Once again, this proves that Socialism does not work.  And, I believe that Venezuela will again see another upheaval that will overturn the Chavez-designed Marxist government; and, it could be a violent revolution. The truth is, it may be too late to do anything to fix the country since it has been damaged so much in the last 18 years.  The legacy of Hugo Chavez is that Venezuela may wind up being the poorest country in South America.  Just the opposite of his original utopian dream.

References:

Hugo Chavez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez

Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Bolivarian_Movement-200

Nicolas Maduro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro

Shortages in Venezuela - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela

Venezuela Inflation: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/inflation-cpi

IMF Sees Venezuela Inflation Rocketing to 720 Percent in 2016: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/imf-sees-venezuela-inflation-rocketing-to-720-percent-in-2016

Venezuela enforces public sector leave on three weekdays: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-enforces-public-sector-leave-three-weekdays-230119339.html?ref=gs

U.S. concern grows over possible Venezuela meltdown - officials: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-usa-idUSKCN0Y42MT

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Obama: Your Marxism Is Showing

Karl Marx, the communist and the social economist, often talked of the struggle among the classes. He obsessed about the class of people known as the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie of society were those who placed too much into the value of owning property. Today, if Marx was still alive, he might just call them corporate jet owners. At least that's what Obama referred them as in his speech at his press conference of just last week. In fact, he obsessively mentioned corporate jet owners 6 times in that speech. He also singled out the so-called billionaires and millionaires. Just another bunch of "bourgeoisie" property owners that Obama is obsessed with.

Pitting one class against another is straight out of the Marxist playbook. That's exactly how the Marxist, Hugo Chavez, got elected in Venezuela and, then, managed to literally become president (or dictator) for life. Like Obama, the Marxist Chavez is also about redistribution of wealth. Since being president in Venezuela he has taken land from the rich and given it to the poor and he has nationalized formerly private businesses. All one has to do to understand how Marxism is in Obama's heart is to go back to the 2008 campaign and recall what Obama told "Joe the Plumber": "We need to spread the wealth around.." However, spreading the wealth around takes a serious toll on any economy; usually in the form of inflation. For example, since Chavez has been in office, Venezuelans have suffered from 20+ percent annual inflation and empty grocery shelves. A fate we could see here if Obama isn't stopped in 2012.

If anyone doesn't think this President isn't a socialist/Marxist, they have got their head screwed on wrong or they are just blindly ignoring the truth in what the reporter/writer, Bernie Goldberg, calls a "Slobbering Love Affair". The economy is still in trouble because we have an anti-business President in office. His fixation is to spend and spend while hiding behind Keynesian Economics as the means of promoting wealth redistribution programs like Obamacare that will ultimately sap the economy and that will only further high unemployment. Just look at his handover of GM to the labor unions as a perfect example of Obama's application of Marxist principals. And, as for inflation? We've already seen a doubling of gasoline prices under his rule and many food products are seeing annual double-digit price hikes. Isn't Marxism lovely?

Proof That Global Warming Is Just A Ploy To Destroy Capitalism

The climate change movement isn't about saving the world from CO2 emissions. If it truly was, the advocates for the control of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere wouldn't have expended thousands of tons of the stuff so they all could converge on Copenhagen. That would be like 1920's America prohibitionists stocking the store shelves with liquor while campaigning to defeat its production, sale, and use in the United States. It makes absolutely no sense. A true believer in anything would never be so contradictory to the cause they are either fighting against or for.

What all those in Copenhagen really want is punishment of the rich nations and their capitalist societies. The proof of that came two days ago when Hugo Chavez spoke before the participants of the summit. During his diatribe against capitalism, the crowd erupted into a thunderous and sustained applause. An applause against capitalism; not against global warming (Click to See Full Story: "Blame capitalism, Chavez tells climate summit"). Hugo gave them the anti-capitalism red meat they had been waiting for and they just slurped it up.

Copenhagen is a socialist summit. Even the United States and Great Britain are being represented by socialists of their own such as Gordon Brown and our very own President, Barack Obama.

Everyone at that summit knows damn well that the CO2 being produced today will remain in the atmosphere for up to 200 years before dissipating. That's because the U.N. scientists on climate change have said so. So, when they are talking about reducing "X" amounts of carbon dioxide output in the next 10 to 40 years, they are just blowing smoke. If we truly needed to save the planet from the ravages of carbon dioxide, we should have started the process in the 1800's; long before man even began producing CO2 on a wide scale. This is why, even among all those left-wing scientists in Copenhagen, it is ridiculous to assume that world can be saved by even the most extreme reductions in CO2 output into our atmosphere. Even if a theoretical zero emission level could be achieved, there would be no actual improvement by 2050 because it is too late to undo the cumulative effect of the carbon dioxide that has already been introduced into our atmosphere. That's why Copenhagen is just so much B.S.

Man didn't create the planet's warming and man isn't going stop it.

The advantage that the left has in predicting future disasters from CO2, is that it would literally take decades before anyone will really know if what they are saying is true. In the meantime, they can demand social change -- to their ideological benefit -- without any scientific proof that the whole "green house gas theory" is truly applicable to man's activities. But, what they didn't count on was those pesky emails -- ClimateGate -- showing that temperature data was being manipulated to fit their theory. This is opposed to traditional science that would "test" any theory with actual data before declaring it a scientific fact. So we have ideology and not science that is driving this whole global warming scam.

As I have said before, this whole climate change thing is just a trumped up excuse to change society to fit the extreme viewpoint of all those anti-mankind progressives and anti-capitalist socialists of our world. That is why it is the political left that is pushing so hard for all these game-changing measures to redistribute wealth; limit luxury lifestyles of the Western world; and, basically, destroy capitalism.

Hugo Chavez isn't out to save the world. He's out to promote his personal belief in a socialistic dictatorship and to expand its application throughout the world. And, most of those attendees in Copenhagen agree with him.

On Honduras: Castro, Chavez, Ortega & Barack Stand Together!

Contrary to some reports, Honduras is not necessarily on the brink of civil collapse (See Full Story).

What happened in Honduras has all to do with a leftist President, Mel Zelaya, who thought he could circumvent the Honduras Constitution and give himself extraordinary, Chavez-like powers to remain in power on an indefinite basis and control many other aspects of Honduran life. According to their Constitution, only the Congress of Honduras could, by majority Congressional vote, set up general elections for the people to vote to modify their own Constitution.

However, Zelaya, unable to get the required Congressional approval, decided to do an end-around to the Constitution and print up his own ballots -- vis-a-vis help from his dictatorial left-wing buddy, Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela -- and take the vote directly to the people; bypassing both Congress and the Constitution. The Honduran Supreme Court nullified Zelaya's actions by declaring them unconstitutional and illegal. The Honduran military enforced that illegality by arresting Zelaya and seizing all the ballots. The Honduran Congress has since appointed an interim President (as per their Constitution) and declared that a new, permanent President would be elected in fall elections (again, as directed by the Constitution).

All that was done in Honduras was to enforce the laws of their country as outlined in their own Constitution. Now, our own leftist President, Barack Obama, seems to think that this was done illegally; completely ignoring Zelaya's attempted power-grab. This is the same President who thought, initially, that Iran's election was all on the up-and-up and who was totally reluctant to decry the violence in that country that stemmed from what was obviously a bogus election to keep Ahmadinejad in power. Obama said that he didn't want to meddle. Now, with a leftist and possible dictator being removed for violations of the Honduran law, Obama has decided to "meddle" by declaring those actions, certified by the Honduran Supreme Court, as being "illegal" (See Full Story).

Does anyone see a pattern here? Which side does Obama always seem to take in these international situations? Just think back to last year when the then-campaigning Obama called for "restraint" on the part of both Russians and the Republic of Georgia when, in fact, Russia was both the invader and the aggressor in that international situation (See Full Story). In doing so, Obama, as in the case, now, sided with the anti-democracy Russia and completely ignored their aggression and violation of international law.

In this hemisphere, the loudest voices against what has happened in Honduras are: Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Barack Obama. Need I say anymore?

War Is All Around Us

Besides a failing economy, the incoming Obama administration has one thing they can count on: that's War. And, most importantly, there is the possibility of war in almost every corner of the world.

There is no doubt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't going to be wrapped up anytime soon. Then, this weekend's pounding of Hamas and the residents of the Gaza Strip by the Israelis just proves to reinforce the fragility of peace in the Middle East. But, that's not hardly where all the tensions stop.

Just Prior to Christmas, additional Pakistani troops were moved to their adjacent border with India in a new and more ominous troop build up between these two nuclear powers (See Full Story). The U.S. is caught in the middle on this one because both are our allies. But, the consequences of a war involving Pakistan and anyone else can seriously hurt our efforts in our war on terror.

Much closer to home, and rarely ever talked about, are the tensions between Columbia and Venezuela and Ecuador and Columbia (Venezuela's close political friend). My guess is that we could see war in this area within a year's time (See Full Story). Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, may just want to use a war with Columbia as a means to bolster his sagging popularity. The real question is whether the U.S. will intervene and assist Columbia as our ally and as a means of keeping Chavez from expanding his scope of power.

Then, there's the biggest tinderbox of all. That's the situation between Iran and Israel; with Iran obtaining and possibly using nuclear weapons against Israel. While no war exists now, this situation could be the biggest test for the Obama administration with Israel poised to stop Iran before they can complete their fulfillment of having nuclear weapons. While President of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad (that's All*mad*and*jihad), claims that his nuclear program is only for peaceful energy, the whole world knows differently. Mr. Obama claims he can put this situation to bed by simply talking to Ahmadinejad; something he feels that Bush has been neglectful in doing. However, that is a political lie on the part of Obama. For at least three years, key members of Europe (France, England, and Germany) have been holding talks with Iran; and, in 2006, the United States offered to have direct talks if Iran would suspend it's uranium enrichment activities while the talks are ongoing (See Full Story). Of course, Mr. Obama would talk without any preconditions. Sort of like Nero: "fiddling while Rome burns"!

I personally think that Obama might find himself a little over his head on foreign affairs. He's got most of the Clinton people on his team that failed to get an accord between Israel and Palestine while Bill Clinton was in office. His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, hasn't got a history of being the diplomat. Just look back at her miserable failure in getting support for a Federal health care system at the beginning of Bill Clinton's first term. That was a domestic diplomatic disaster between the Republicans, the Democrats, Insurance Companies, and the medical industry (See Full Story). Now she's going international with that negotiation style? To me, the political animal, Barack Obama, made the Hillary choice for all the wrong domestic reasons and without considering the importance of having a tactful handler in foreign affairs.

What ever happens, the next four years could be very exciting and, hopefully, not disastrous.

Chavez' Big Test

On Sunday, it's election day in Venezuela. All indications are that President Hugo Chavez and the political party that he founded, the United Socialist Party or PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela), might lose key strength around the country. Chavez himself is not on the ballot.

While Hugo Chavez, himself, has regained popularity from a low 48 percent to the current 58 percent, things aren't very pretty in Venezuela and that could result in many PSUV losses in this Sunday's election. First, the nation's capital, Caracas, is the most crime-ridden city in the world as measured by the United Nations. Trash litters many of that city's streets. Food shortages, especially f0r staples like bread, milk and eggs, are constant and widespread throughout the country. Unemployment is still high and inflation is out of control and, as we all know, Venezuela's only real export, oil, has tumbled in price by 65 percent.

Oil, especially, has hurt the Chavez government. He had used it as his "socialist" goodwill tool. He either gave it away or sold it below market prices to show what a good friend Venezuela was. When oil prices were high against his low cost of extracting it, it was an easy thing for him to do. Now, with oil prices in collapse, his commitments are draining the Federal coffers. Further, when oil was high, Hugo went shopping. Like a kid in a candy shop, he bought tanks, planes, and guns from Russia and even more weaponry from other countries like Korea and China. That wasn't very long ago. Now, deliveries on his shopping sprees will be coming due soon and the money for his weapons fling will also be due. All those previous profits from oil will be going out the door and nothing will be replacing it since prices have fallen so dramatically.

Economically, Venezuela is a one-trick pony. Their entire strength is built on oil. Domestically, you can buy gasoline for 15 cents a gallon because the price is artificially controlled. My guess is that won't last long and the Chavez government will have to raise prices to stop the bleeding. That will just add more fuel to Chavez's out-of-control inflation.

Sunday's elections might be the beginning of the end of socialism in South America and, if the world does go into recession, it will be his form of government that will probably get hurt the worst. Friendly, socialists like Bolivia (who has no oil) won't be far behind. It will all depend on how many political seats Chavez and the PSUV loses on Sunday. Any significant number of losses could signal his end. On the other hand, if he maintains or increases his strength, that could easily signal an end to Venezuela's fragile democracy.

One last comment. Chavez might not go down without swinging. He may try to use the military to gain control of any lost areas of the country. However, the military has, in the past, been split in it's support of Chavez. In fact, parts of the military were instrumental in toppling Chavez during a very short-lived coup in 2002. Whether or not there are more or fewer Chavez loyalists in the military, today, remains to be seen. But, for Chavez and, for that matter, any other socialist dictator, the military option is always on the table. Whether Chavez wins or loses, this should be an interesting election and one that sets the tone for all of South America from this point forward. Just mark my words.

Obama and the Venezuela Example

Right now, for God only knows how many times in this world's history, there is another experiment in socialism taking place in our western hemisphere in the South American country of Venezuela. This Cubanesque conversion of that country from capitalism to socialism and, probably, from democracy to a dictatorial form of communism is being spearheaded by Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez. What concerns me is that much of Chavez' philosophies are being faintly echoed by Barack Obama and other far-left Democrats (Click to see a related commentary from 2005). I think this is especially true when you take this quote from Hugo Chavez, "...the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell.” and then you hear words from Mr. Obama about changing the world (See Full Story).

Take, for example, Barack Obama's current stand on taxes. Then, read this CNN News article from April 1999, "Venezuela's Chavez assumes new powers, readies new taxes", and I think you will hear an echo in Barack's pledges of today. Chavez's reference of "leashing the devil" is in regard to the social and economic injustices of capitalism. Barack Obama's multiple comments on "spreading the wealth" sure sound a lot like Chavez's 2005 move to take land away from the wealthy and give it to those who are the lowest on the economic scale (See Full Story). One could argue that Chavez's seizure of lands is much different than just raising taxes on the rich so that money can be redistributed to the poorer in our economy. But, is it really?

When Maxine Waters talked about "socializing (err)...taking over" the oil companies in this video (Click to view) it was obvious that capitalism wasn't on her mind. Maxine is clearly taking a page out of Hugo Chavez's socialist/communist playbook when you read this story from 2007: "Chavez nationalizes oil companies" (click to view news article) .

And, doesn't this sound familiar: "Venezuela nets 4.3 billion US dollars in windfall oil profit tax" (Click to view complete article).

One thing that a leftist form of government can't stand is an opposing viewpoint. In this country, the Democrats are proposing the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" (See Wikipedia Article) to silence the right. In many ways, this is similar to some moves made by Hugo Chavez as seen in this news article: "Chavez to shut down opposition TV" (click to view). Certainly, neither move is intended to have a society with free and uncensored speech.

Chavez has gained more and more control because his left-wing political party has dominant control. Enough control to dramatically change the powers of that country (See Full Story). That control could be very similar to what might occur in this country in 2009 (See Full Story). Besides giving Chavez the power to lead that country for life, that news article points out: "Other reforms would create new types of property to be managed by cooperatives, give neighborhood-based "communal councils" administrative responsibilities usually reserved for elected officials..." Do I see a new future in this country for community organizing groups like ACORN?

The sad thing about socialism is that, in the long run, it doesn't work. In the 1950's to 1970's, some European governments tried to nationalize things like banks, railroads, and airlines. It didn't work, and those things, today, have been returned to the public sector. Russia and China have since succumbed to the ways of capitalism because the furthest left of socialist society, communism, didn't work either. Those countries who stayed with it, like North Korea and Cuba, have done nothing but drag their countries into the depths of economic nonexistence. Thousand are starving in North Korea as that country pursues it's military aspirations. Cuba is isolated and people scrape together spare parts so they can drive around in U.S. made cars from the 1950's and 1960's.

Venezuela is on track for a similar fate. Inflation in that country is just making the poor poorer (See Full Story). Milk and eggs and other essential foods are missing from grocery shelves (See story and listen to the audio). In a country that is awash with energy in the form of oil, there is a shortage of electricity, as seen in this news article: "Oil powerhouse Venezuela struggles to keep lights on" (click for article).

Chavez took over because of his populist message that appealed to the poor and the lower middle classes. This is, in essence, the Obama message; although, he has conveniently tailored that message of today to make it seem like the middle class will get the greatest benefit. But, it isn't the middle class that actually benefits from Obama's plans for this country. His plan is to redistribute income and wealth to the lowest income levels who don't even pay taxes; and, that is an attempt to turn America into a socialist, welfare state. Venezuela is an example of what Obama wants and what this country could ultimately be. As you can see, it ain't a pretty picture. The belief that you can take wealth away from a country's wealth builders is a failed belief that has been tested and proven wrong in one socialist attempt after another. Socialism only breeds inflation and shortages of goods and services with the poor getting hurt the most. Hopefully, this country won't be as complacent as Venezuela was in letting things get as far out of hand as they have today. Just hopefully!