By Rich Kozlovich
As I watch these Hollywood idiots like Meryl Streep spouting idiotic hyperbolic blather about what they think Trump will do - I thought it would be worthwhile to see what real catastrophes were ignored by these people - leftists catastrophes brought about by leftists they praised - about which she and her fellow travelers in Hollywood never uttered a word. This is for the leftists out there who have no idea why they believe what they believe. It's reality check time!
Over this last election we kept hearing university students enthusiastically calling for the nation to "Feel the Bern" and support Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. Young, enthusiastic and stupid. Doesn't anyone study history in school any longer? Well, yes they do, but the history they're learning isn't history. It's leftist propaganda. So let's take a small trip down history lane, and see what "Feeling the Bern" really means.
Venezuela is awash with riches, except since the people of Venezuela are facing massive poverty and starvation, it's hard to tell. Poverty, privation, starvation and misery. Those are the symptoms of what "Feeling the Bern" really means. Dystopia - poverty, misery, disease and early death - has been the end product of socialism throughout history - and that history is incontestable!
Oh, and don't let those reports bother your regarding the
socialist leadership living country club lives quaffing champagne while "middle-class mothers scavenge for food in the gutter". . . "even the dogs are starving.” And don't let the comment from one "wealthy Chavez crony who asks, “Should we stop enjoying ourselves just because the country is burning? Well, of course not", bother you either.
Please stand up for your principles and no what matter happens don't let reality stand in the way of your leftist visions of utopia, liberty, equality, fraternity. Oh wait.....wasn't that the slogan of the French Revolution as the leftist leadership implemented in what history calls
The Terror?
What I would like to know is where are all the rich elitist Hollywood lefties who praised Hugo Chavez and his revolution. Where for that matter is Bernie Sanders....oh....I know.....he's at his newly purchased $600,000 dollar home.
Hmmmmm....where did all that money come from? Why didn't he - as an ardent anti-capitalist - give it to Venezuela to help the poor starving people there? Oh....I know the answer to that one too. Leftist elites in capitalist nations only believe in giving other people's money to the poor...not their own.
As for Venezuela's riches, the country is awash with mineral resources including "diamonds, bauxite, gold, iron ore, natural gas, however Venezuela really depends on it's oil revenues, which amounts to "about 95% of the export value and around 12% of the country’s GDP value." Relying on the easy money from petroleum may not be a bad policy - if the price is high and there's a buyer for it - but for Venezuela it's now an economic disaster.
Fracking has changed all the rules regarding oil. The world is fracking and there's more oil available out there than you can shake a stick at - and the U.S. is the world's leader and we have massive amounts of untapped oil. And that's the problem for Venezuelan oil!
An article by Nicholas Casey and Clifford Krauss entitled "How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela?" notes Venezuela, having one of the world's great repository of crude oil, is buying U.S. oil. The country is a socialist mess. The authors note:
"One oil rig was idle for weeks because a single piece of equipment was missing. Another was attacked by armed gangs who made off with all they could carry. Many oil workers say they are paid so little that they barely eat and have to keep watch over one another in case they faint while high up on the rigs. Venezuela’s petroleum industry, whose vast revenues once fueled the country’s Socialist-inspired revolution, underwriting everything from housing to education, is spiraling into disarray. To add insult to injury, the Venezuelan government has been forced to turn to its nemesis, the United States, for help. “You call them the empire,” said Luis Centeno, a union leader for the oil workers, referring to what government officials call the United States, “and yet you’re buying their oil.”
Fracking oil is readily available, cheap, light and sweet, and has caused the price of oil to drop worldwide to the point OPEC thinks to turn the tide by reducing production. Good! That will take money out of the hands of those who are financing terrorism.
But Venezuela's oil isn't, sweet or light. It's filled with contaminants and costly to refine, and at this point there are few refineries who will take it, and most of them are in the U.S. But those refineries are shifting over to refine the light and sweet fracking oil, which is not just sweet and light - it's super sweet and super light - and once that happens Venezuela may be the only energy producing nation that can't sell it's oil - at any price.
But if the nation's mineral rich why does this matter? It matters because no one is developing those resources. Venezuela has been wasting billions on subsidizing a "wide array of ideological allies from Cuba to Bolivia to Argentina", instead of developing the interior and the nation's transportation system, which is absolutely essential to economic development.
They poured the profits from Venezuela's oil - " more than $250 billion in all from 2001 to 2015 - into the country’s social programs, including food imports". Really? That's where all the money went? So how did Hugo Chávez 's daughter become a billionaire without ever having worked?
Huge amounts of that money was leeched off to the ruling socialist elite, just as was done in Nicaragua by Daniel Ortega, who hypocritically "rails against the evils of "savage capitalism", however the reality is that he owns and manages multi-million dollar business ventures providing him with a personal wealth of more than $50 million. For a man of humble beginnings from a poor country like Nicaragua, this is quite a fortune." Where did that money come from? Certainly not his salary as the tyrant of Nicaragua.
South America isn't a singular land mass, it has massive geological divisions that make inter South American trade difficult, including the Amazon tropics, which separates the northern tier states from potential trading partners in the south such as Brazil. Because of the geography of South America and the lack of transportation development, Venezuela is largely isolated from their neighbors to the South.
Venezuela's rail system doesn't even connect to another country, including Columbia, which is a northern tier neighbor. When they should have been developing their interior transportation, creating a very real potential for future development, trade and food production, they wasted it on socialist fantasies, and corruption. At this point Venezuela can't even meet it's own nutritional needs.
That's been the story of socialism. Make outrageous claims about equality and then rape their nation's economy for personal gain, and destroy the nation with their incompetent policies. That's history, and that history is incontestable.
Their only economic hope now lies to the North.....to the U.S.....and they desperately need to repair their relationship with the U.S. because time's running for the people of Venezuela, and these socialists find it easier to blame the U.S. rather than make amends with the U.S.
So where are they now? How's "the Bern" working?
"Venezuela’s epic shortages are nothing new at this point. No diapers or car parts or aspirin -- it’s all been well documented. But now the country is at risk of
running out of money itself.....Venezuela, in other words, is now so broke that it may not have enough money to pay for its money." They can't even
afford to print their own money, and with
inflation skyrocketing - to the tune of 720 % in 2016 -
so to is violence, "with the world's second-highest murder rate."
Venezuela’s currency is so devalued it no longer fits in
ordinary wallets and the government thinks this is a good thing.
Daniel Greenfield posted this article: "
Socialism Works Until You Run Out of Money to Pay for the Paper Your Money is Printed On, saying: here's a preview of
Bernie Sanders' economic policy over in Venezuela. Millions of pounds of provisions, stuffed into three-dozen 747 cargo planes, arrived here from countries around the world in recent months to service Venezuela’s crippled economy. But instead of food and medicine, the planes carried another resource that often runs scarce here: bills of Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar. The shipments were part of the import of at least five billion bank notes that President Nicolás Maduro’s administration authorized over the latter half of 2015 as the government boosts the supply of the country’s increasingly worthless currency, according to seven people familiar with the deals. And the Venezuelan government isn’t finished....Venezuela's Socialist government had to buy its own fake money from abroad because it couldn't afford to print its own money anymore.
"
As hunger mounts, people in socialist Venezuela turn to trash for food. Julio Noguera spends his evenings searching through the garbage for food. “I come here looking for food because if I didn’t, I’d starve to death,” Noguera said as he sorted through a pile of moldy potatoes. “With things like they are, no one helps anyone and no one gives away meals.”
"Across town, unemployed people converge every dusk at a trash heap on a downtown Caracas sidewalk to pick through rotten fruit and vegetables tossed out by nearby shops. They are frequently joined by small business owners, college students and pensioners – people who consider themselves middle class even though their living standards have long ago been pulverized by triple-digit inflation, food shortages and a collapsing currency. Venezuela’s poverty had eased during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez. But a study by three leading Caracas universities found that 76 percent of Venezuelans are now under the poverty line, compared with 52 percent in 2014......The government blames the political opposition, accusing it of waging an “economic war” to stir unrest and oust President Nicolas Maduro from power. The administration has launched an aggressive program to build urban farms in an effort to address food shortages."
Even the New York Times is being forced to recognize the reality of socialist policies with this article,
Venezuelans Ransack Stores as Hunger Grips the Nation, by Nicholas Casey, saying: "With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.
Venezuela is convulsing from hunger."
"Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to
one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves. And they showed that even in a country with
the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food."
"In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass looting have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed. This is precisely the
Venezuela its leaders vowed to prevent".
Hungry Venezuelans stop a livestock truck and steal crates of chickens after country's food shortage spirals out of control. Venezuela's in a death spiral!
According to Maduro: "I doubt that anywhere in the world, except in Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one”. Considering how bad actual Cuban medicine is, he’s probably right." And what's going on in Venezuela demonstrates just how right he is.
Corpses are
exploding in decrepit Venezuelan hospitals "in a spray of toxic fluids and gasses. The ghastly incident earlier this month necessitated the partial evacuation of the hospital". Remember, this is a government that can't provide aspirin. "One in three
people admitted to public hospitals last year died, the government reports. The number of operational hospital beds has fallen by 40 percent since just 2014. And as the economy fails, the country is running short on 85 percent of medicine, according to the national drugstore trade group." "The left-wing administration of President Nicolás Maduro calls the medical crisis an invention peddled by opponents of the country's 17-year-old socialist revolution. The government has refused to let in humanitarian aid." But never fear, "the
Venezuelan military has taken over distribution of medical and surgical supplies amid shortages."
Venezuela’s crumbling mental hospitals "has long been a forgotten place, filled with forgotten people. But with Venezuela suffering from a severe economic crisis, this mental institution has almost no drugs to control the afflictions tormenting its patients. At the invitation of doctors, reporters from The New York Times
visited six psychiatric wards across the country. All reported shortages of medicine, even food."..."El Pampero Hospital, hasn’t employed a psychiatrist in two years. It has running water for only a few hours a day, and food is scarce. Omar Mendoza, pictured above, is one of many undernourished patients. He lost half his weight this summer and is down to about 75 pounds.
Venezuela's hospital hell Blood, flies, agony: "Plumber Freddy Herrera broke his leg in four places when he crashed his motorbike nine months ago. But his real troubles started when he got to hospital. The doctors fixed the leg. Then they had to operate 13 times more to cut out infections caught in the stinking hospital where he languishes. With open rubbish bins, flies in the corridors and rotting corpses stacked in the morgue, this
public hospital in the Coche district of Caracas could be the set of a horror film. But it is all too real: the dirty, miserable human face of Venezuela's economic and political crisis."
"There aren't many doctors here—just 18 for a community of 150,000 people. Medics warn harmful bacteria has grown to resist the few antibiotics that are available. "I'm scared that after fighting this for so long, they will come and tell me they have to take off my leg because the bacteria have infected the bone," Herrera says. "I don't want to go up to the operating theater anymore. Every time I do, I come back feeling worse."......."Being a doctor in Venezuela is an act of heroism," says the doctor who asked not to be named. The country's Medical Federation says 13,000 doctors have left the country since Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuela's "socialist revolution."
The lights are going out in Venezuela - 40 days of blackouts hit Venezuela amid economic crisis, in a country with massive oil reserves. Although they're facing a real problems selling their oil down the road, we have to ask - why didn't they develop their own refineries and sell refined oil? There must be profit in that or no one would be doing it. No, instead they wasted and stole the nation's riches.
Leftist don't love the poor. They hate everyone and have wrecked unending misery, horror and death on societies all over the world and they're clearly as insane as are the adherents to Islam. While the "elites" of these insane government elites live life to the fullest - the people live in dystopia. They constantly promise utopia - at the expense of others - and end up delivering dystopia
Leftists constantly make totally irrational claims to blame others for their failures and the failure that follows socialism. That's history! And that history is incontestable. Obama blamed Bush, Hillary blames Putin and Comey, and now Maduro blames Obama. Leftists hate everyone, including other leftists. But they offer lots of free stuff, at least until they've run out of other people's money, then they print money that has no value. It's never their fault when it all comes tumbling down.
Here is one Daniel Greenfield's concept of Bernies first year as President of the United States. "The Sanders campaign had eschewed a slogan; instead it listed all the things that would be given away for free. Free health care, free college, free homes, free phones, free internet, free cars and free money for everyone. In the last week of the campaign, President Sanders had unveiled a guaranteed minimum income that would be paid to every individual in this country making Welfare-for-All into a reality. The disappointment did not take long to arrive. Much of the financial sector that Bernie Sanders had hoped to tax began vanishing as soon as the election results were in. New York’s loss was London and Singapore’s gain. A trillion dollars in investment capital left the United States creating a ripple effect that brought businesses to their knees.The prices of milk and beef doubled. Ersatz bread made out of starch filled shelves while people waited on lines for the privilege of receiving government-subsidized milk from local welfare offices"....read more here.
Jeff Jacoby wrote,
As socialism shattered Venezuela, the useful idiots applauded, saying: When the Cold War ended 25 years ago, the Soviet Union vanished into the ash heap of history. That left the West's "useful idiots" — Lenin's term for the ideologues and toadies who could always be relied on to justify or praise whatever Moscow did — in search of other socialist thugs to fawn over. Many found a new heartthrob in Hugo Chavez, the anti-Yanqui rabble-rouser who was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and in short order had transformed the country from a successful social democracy into a grim and corrupt autocracy......was an unfettered, real-world example of anti-capitalist socialism in action. Venezuela since at least the 1970s had been Latin America's most affluent nation. Now it was a showpiece for command-and-control economics: price and currency controls, wealth redistribution, ramped-up government spending, expropriation of farmland, and the nationalization of private banks, mines, and oil companies."
And the useful idiots ate it up, including those two blithering idiots, Oliver Stone who "
filmed a documentary gushing over “the positive changes that have happened economically in all of South America” because of Venezuela’s socialist government. And Jimmy Carter who in 2013 with the death of Chavez, "
extolled the strongman for “improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.”
I keep asking where Sean Penn is these days. Remember when he ran down to Venezuela and embraced Hugo Chavez and told the world just how wonderful it was what Chavez and his leftist thugs were doing for Venezuelans? It's turned out their work "for" the people is more like "to" the people - and it isn't as if we have no history of what happens when economically incompetent communist thugs take over a country.
Leftists unendingly promise utopia and never fail to deliver dystopia. That's history and that history is incontestable! The question we should all be asking ourselves is this: Why are college students and the young in general so supportive of Bernie Sanders? He represents this very kind of insanity. Answer? Because they've been made ignorant, irresponsible and irrational by the leftists running America's universities. This crop of students may be even dumber than the crop of misfit students of the 60's and 70's. Why - because the history of leftism is available and incontestable. They're dumb as dirt, and Bernie Sanders must be insane.
I'm just concerned Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo or Joy Behar, Rosie O'Donnell, Matt Damon, John Cusack, Cher, Ashley Judd, Whoopie Goldberg, Cameron Diaz, Lena Dunham, Roseanne Barr, Jim Carey, Chris Rock, Russell Brand, Madonna, Orlando Jones, Oliver Stone and Bill Maher aren't there to share "The Bern" with the people of Venezuela.
Or even better yet - perhaps they can organize a massive fund raiser with their fellow celebrities and raise millions, or even better yet, tens of millions and then contribute those millions to the government of Venezuela. After all....it's a leftist government they claim to believe in passionately, so they "know" their money won't be wasted on the undeserving. Right? Hey Sean - we're waiting for you to organize such an event!!!!!
Before the end of 2017 Maduro and his crowd of thieves and thugs will be out of power and fleeing to - well, who knows where - with all the money they've stolen. Venezuela will be impoverished beyond belief for decades because their oil won't be able to be sold to anyone because it's so contaminated. All that money wasted by the Bernies of the world. The day will come when the people of Venezuela will beg the United States to help to keep them from starving to death.
Is it any different in other socialist run countries?
Kim Jong Un balloons to 300 pounds as famine nears, stating, "The road to revolution is long and arduous,” an editorial in the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said Monday, according to The Telegraph. “We may have to go on an arduous march, during which we will have to chew the roots of plants once again.” “Arduous march” in North Korean is code for famine. It’s how state media described the disaster that struck when Kim was a mere teen, which experts say was brought on by the economic mismanagement of his father, Kim Jong Il, loss of foreign aid and natural disasters."
Then there's the
Socialist ANC Slowly Destroying South Africa’s Economy.
The Liberty Bullhorn - The problems inflicted by big government are not confined to Europe or the United States. I have reported on
the enormous problems plaguing Argentina, and in August
I concluded about South Africa: The failure of South Africa over the past 18 years to become a prosperous nation is entirely attributable to the radically leftist policies of the ANC government."
"In addition to corruption, the ANC has handed out entitlements right and left and promised all kinds of perks to people without neither requesting nor providing an opportunity for them to work for the very same goodies. Instead of creating an economic climate of economic freedom and self determination, the ANC imposed its radical political agenda with no regard for how it was going to pay for it. And just like every welfare state, the South African one has failed.
The situation in "South Africa has not improved since then. Violent labor conflicts have shattered the mining sector, but that is only part of the nation’s problem. More important than anything else is the fact that the country is suffering under the heavy hand of a corrupt and economically intrusive government. This government is combining incompetence and arrogance into a poisonous pill that is slowly killing the South African economy. For one, as the
Business Day news site reports, unemployment is enormous".
Socialist Policies Undoing Success of South America’s Strongest Economy. "Why do very successful nations often adopt policies that lead to their undoing? After a revolution or major reform, some countries allow a high degree of economic freedom, establish the rule of law, protect private property rights and establish low tax rates with strict limits on government spending and regulation. The economy takes off, the citizens become far richer and then the government mucks it up, usually by attempting to redistribute income and expand state control. Is Chile, which has been one of the bright spots in the world economy, falling into this pattern under socialist President Michelle Bachelet?"..........".
"There is a field of economics called “public choice,” which explains how government bureaucrats operate in their own interests rather than the people’s interests. Professor Mark Zupan of the University of Rochester argues that the growth of governments is partly a result of “self-capture” by political insiders, including government employees and interest groups. What is happening in Chile is neither surprising nor new. It is hoped that the forces and institutions of liberty and limited government will be sufficiently strong in Chile to prevent it from becoming another rich country gone bad, like Venezuela and Argentina."
Paraphrasing something Thomas Sowell once noted: Some things seem so reasonable they can fail nine times out of nine and everyone will want to try it a tenth. And some things seem so unreasonable they can succeed nine times out of nine and no one is willing to try it a tenth. That's the problem between socialism and capitalism. Socialism is an abject failure in every category of human endeavor and untold millions love it. Capitalism - especially American capitalism - has been a massive success in every category of human endeavor, and almost half the nation hates it, and half of them think we should "Feel the Bern". I think they should move to Venezuela to find out just how good "The Bern" feels and then come back and tell us how they're loving it so much they're going to move there permanently!
The left is always the party of change, but they are dogmatically fixed in their positions and the only change they want it for everyone else to change to accommodate them.....to the detriment of humanity.
We really do need to get this once and for all! Dystopia follows leftism like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote - a madman!