National Review: Big-Government Presidential Candidates, Look at Venezuela

They could at least call for the release of political prisoners held by the Maduro regime.

 

Michael Tanner @MTannerCato
                     

Even as Americans lurch toward the conclusion of a monumentally unsatisfying election campaign, Yon Goicoechea is sitting in a Venezuelan prison for demanding the basic political rights that we take for granted. Goicoechea, who won the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2008, for organizing student opposition to the Chávez regime, was seized by Venezuelan secret police a month ago and is being held on trumped-up terrorism charges at an undisclosed location. (Most observers believe he is in a cell at the secret police headquarters in Caracas.)

 

Goicoechea joins other prominent opposition leaders, including Carlos Melo and , who are being illegally held by Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro. There is serious reason to worry about his health and safety.  .........It’s also worth keeping in mind Venezuela’s economic crisis brought on by the Chávez-Maduro regime’s relentless class warfare and government intervention in the economy.

This is a government that has managed to create shortages of everything from food to toilet paper. In the latest Index of Economic Freedom, Venezuela ranks dead last among 159 countries. If ever there was an object lesson about the follies of government economic control, it is Venezuela........Read more