Trump's War!

Leftism is a mental disorder

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently President Trump ordered a boat carrying illegal drugs to America to be blown out of the water.  This is huge, and for seven reasons.

First:  Trump took out a boat in international waters, where it had every right to be, because the intelligence was clear this was a drug runner heading to America, and he’s not going to tolerate that.   Nitwit Brigade actress Mia Farrow calls the death of these narco-terrorists murder, and of course mush brained Cory Booker agrees.  

Well it's no more murder than taking out Soleimani, and other murderous terror promoting Muslims, along with Iran's nuclear sites.   While this may be an undeclared war by the United States, we have to grasp this fundamental truth, by their actions, they've declared war on the United States, and Trump is responding.  They're terrorists and criminals, the rules of nations do not apply to them.  When Muslim terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers killing over 3000 people 24 years ago,..... that was murder. 

But perhaps these leftist nitwits should be more concerned about "killing more than 150 Americans with fentanyl each day."  Then there's "faux conservative" David Brooks who is all concerned about evidence, saying, "the targeting of ships using acts of war, what should be acts of law enforcement, really does cross a line to me.” 

Which bodes well these questions: Why does the left defend drug cartels, Illegal aliens, and criminals that are perpetuating unbridled crime in the nation's cities?  All of which weakens and destabilizing the nation in many ways?   Whose side are they on? What do they think will be the consequences of their destructive rhetoric and virtue signalling?   

Contrast that with Donald Trump who, as the nation's Commander in Chief and top cop, has openly declared war on the narco-terrorists that are destroying so many lives, working to provide crime control in out of control Democrat run cities, all in an obvious effort to restore order to strengthen the nation.  You can only conclude they're not on America's side.    

Second: Over and over again the left, America's “allies”, the enemies, and the rest of the world’s leadership complains they don’t understand the things he says, why he says them, and whether or not he's serious.   Good, it's not important for them to know, it's only important for him to know.  When he acts, then they know, and their confusion makes it impossible for them to know what he will do next and lay plans to thwart his action.

Third:  This sends a message to these corrupt leftist nations, including Russia, China, along with the Islamic militant nations like Iran and the entire Middle East, Donny don't play. There are some people one should never start a war with, and Donny's one of them

Fourth:  This rattles the Pravda media, the Democrat party, the RINO's, and the Deep State letting them know he really doesn't care what they think or what they say, and that he's coming after all of them. 

Fifth:  American conservatives are opposed to starting wars with no purpose and no end, so many of which has cost trillions of  wasted American dollars, and where thousands of gallons of American blood was poured for nothing. So many young men's live thrown away for nothing.  Wasted!  Conservatives understand the difference between wars with no purpose and no benefit to Americans, and a war where America actually has skin in the game with a defined mission. 

Sixth:  He's declared all these drug cartels are terrorist organizations, including those in Mexico, and it seems to me he's sending a message that he's not going to worry about permission to attack and destroy terrorists in their nations.   Mexico is watching, and Sheinbaum has been more receptive to Trump's concerns about cartels in Mexico to avoid tariffs, but after this, she, and her cabal of corrupt invertebrates on the drug dealers payroll,  are going to become far more reasonable. 

Seventh: Going back to the intelligence over that boat he had destroyed.  There are 16 major intelligence gathering agencies of the federal government, and I have no doubt they're focusing more on Venezuela now than in the past.  I'm also betting these narco-terrorists get it, he's declared war on the cartels, he's serious about this war, and all the stops are going to be pulled out to win this war, a war against villains who are killing thousands of Americans every year.  We need to get our heads on right and be more concerned about the victims than the villains.   Why is that so hard to get? 

Venezuela is no longer a legitimate nation.  It's a haven for drug dealing terrorists. As for Maduro, who claims to be President, is a major player in that trade.  Now a U.S. Navy fleet is headed their way. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated:   

"I don't care what the UN says. The UN doesn't know what they're talking about ... Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States and he's a fugitive of American justice."

It looks like we have a new Monroe Doctrine. 

Treasury Must Protect American Companies

By Paul Driessen

Continuing instability in the Middle East makes it imperative that America protect its domestic energy suppliers.  Under President Donald Trump, US energy companies that were nationalized or had assets seized by Venezuela’s government now have a chance for restitution – unless European bondholders get priority.

One such company is Houston-based Citgo Petroleum, the seventh-largest refiner in the United States. The company is actually owned through subsidiaries by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PdVSA), which is essentially an arm of President Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorial regime. 

Citgo is currently embroiled in a court-ordered auction. It’s being sold to repay debts incurred by Maduro and previous dictator Hugo Chavez, both of whom expropriated American companies and assets.

Until now, victims of these dictators’ thefts – more than a dozen companies – were unable to recoup their losses, because the Biden administration protected the company from being sold as part of a strategy to prop up Venezuela’s opposition. That could change now.

The auction has been scheduled, and various companies, including some that lost assets, have submitted bids. The fly in the ointment is that European bondholders are trying to jump the line – and claim proceeds from the auction ahead of American companies that the regime robbed. 

In 2020, those PdVSA bondholders helped bail out the collapsing Maduro dictatorship, betting that they would reap big payouts under a contract that collateralized their bonds with 50.1% of Citgo shares.

By late August 2023, the bonds had already surged 160% and “investors that scooped up one oil company’s bonds appear to be headed for a massive payout,” Bloomberg Linea reported.

The bondholders had to know they were dealing with a corrupt government and that Venezuela’s National Assembly had publicly announced it had never approved the Citgo bond, as required by the Venezuelan Constitution. That could make the collateralized contract for Citgo invalid.

However, the bondholders were clearly trying to profit from a nation in crisis. They had to have been betting they would profit from selling the collateral if Venezuela defaulted. In the meantime, their money helped Maduro cling to power, suppress dissent, and delay the economic reckoning that Maduro's own policies ensured. 

Now, those bondholders want to acquire Citgo as payment, thereby cashing in on the misery they helped prolong. (The PdVSA bondholders are not private citizens, but large corporations, including London-based Ashmore Group PLC, Madrid-based Auriga Global Investors, and UK- and Morocco-based Altana Credit Opportunities Fund.) The question is whether they should take priority over the actual victims of Maduro’s expropriations. 

Thankfully, under President Trump, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has already refrained from issuing licenses to take over Citgo through December 20, thereby denying an acquisition by the bondholders that would have helped prolong Maduro’s regime.

However, OFAC must go further – and clarify that it will never permit speculating bondholders to profit before defrauded American companies are repaid.

This clarification is sorely needed, and just this week, one of the defrauded companies filed an emergency request with the Delaware District Court that is overseeing the Citgo auction. Citgo’s lawyers asked the court to seek guidance from the OFAC as to whether the Office will continue to prevent the bondholders from taking over Citgo past the deadline for the auction.

This uncertainty – whether a new owner is purchasing an asset or incurring a liability – must be resolved, hopefully with the result that swindled American companies can recoup some of their losses.

With the final auction deadline set for July 2, OFAC has a short window in which to act.

By issuing this clarification, OFAC can score another win for President Trump’s impressive record of championing American justice and prioritizing American companies.

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law.

 

The 2024 Tax Hell Index

May 6, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

The 1841 Foundation has released a new version of the Tax Hell Index. And just like last year and in 2022, let’s see what nations qualified because of the combination of bad fiscal policy and low-quality governance. There is a tie for the world’s worst tax hell, So “congratulations” to Russia and Venezuela.

The Tax Hell Index mostly focuses on Europe and the Americas, which explains how some awful nations in Asia and Africa are not on the list.

I’m somewhat surprised that Romania is in the “risky” category, but I’m not shocked by Hungary since its policies are not good by European standards.

Some readers will be surprised to see Argentina tied for the third-worst tax hell, but the Index is based on 2023 data and President Milei did not take office until the end of that year.

So it will be interesting to see Argentina’s score in the next Tax Hell Index (and I’m also looking forward to how much that nation improves in Economic Freedom of the World and the Index of Economic Freedom).

Let’s hope the improvement is dramatic because Argentina is one of seven nations that has appeared in all four editions of the Tax Hell Index. Not exactly something to be proud about.

By the way, 10 countries ranked at “tax heavens,” with Ireland being the best of the best.

The United States was not among those nations, though it is a bit better than average. So lots of room for improvement, but I suspect America will get worse rather than better in future editions of the Index.

P.S. While I expect Argentina’s score to improve significantly, it will be very interesting to see what happens in Ukraine when the war ends. I don’t know when that will happen, but I’ll predict western nations will offer lots of aid for reconstruction. I fear that money will be wasted unless somehow it is used as leverage to improve Ukraine’s awful economic policy. But since foreign aid usually leads to more bad policy instead of good policy, it’s hard to be optimistic.

End Of Year World Socialism Round-Up: Cuba, China, Venezuela

December 26, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

For obvious reasons, our legacy media have very limited interest in reporting regularly on economic news from the various socialist/communist paradises around the world. So if you want to learn the latest, best to turn to the Manhattan Contrarian.

Needless to say, all the economic news from these places is bad. If you think that Bidenomics has been bad for America, you really need to look at the destruction that serious socialism can bring to a country when given a chance.

Cuba

I last checked in on Cuba on October 29 with a post titled “Cuba: The Collapse Accelerates.” A Spanish demographer had just published an analysis indicating that Cuba had lost more than 10% of its population over the past two years. The island had also just gone about a week, October 19-26, with almost no electricity; but by the 26th it had returned to the “status quo ante” of mere power “cuts” of up to 20 hours per day.

Things continue to get only worse. On December 4-5, Cuba suffered yet another nationwide power blackout, the third in two months. From the European Commission’s site ECHO:

On 4 December, Cuba was affected by a third nation-wide blackout in less than two months, causing the closure of schools and the suspension of non-essential services. The incident is attributed to the failure of the Guiteras power plant, the biggest of Cuba’s eight thermoelectric power plants. Shortage of fuel continues despite increased oil shipment from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia.

The fundamental problem appears to be that all of Cuba’s power plants are old and wearing out. There are no new thermal power plants under construction in Cuba. Therefore there is almost no prospect of Cuba’s power situation getting fixed any time soon.

According to CiberCuba on December 19, the Cuban government has recently acknowledged that it has become an importer of sugar:

The Cuban government acknowledged that it is "shameful" for the island, traditionally one of the leading sugar producers in Latin America, to be forced to import this product. Despite efforts to revive the sugar industry, the sector continues to face serious challenges, including failures in the last harvest.

Reuters had a summary article on December 19. Excerpts:

As blackouts, food, fuel and labor shortages in Cuba grow more acute by the day, a trip to the Caribbean island has become a hard sell. . . . Taxi driver David Sarzo, who drives a vintage U.S. sedan in Havana, said he and his colleagues could not see "any light at the end of the tunnel because of the crisis ... which is leading tourism agents to steer clients away from Cuba." . . . Canada - which sends more tourists to Cuba than any other country - is now telling its citizens to "exercise a high degree of caution in Cuba due to shortages of basic necessities including food, medicine and fuel."

China

A long front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal on December 23 has a good analysis of China’s current economic malaise. The headline is “Xi Sticks To His Guns as Economy Teeters.” (The first 8 paragraphs are available outside of paywall here.). Excerpt:

More than 10 years into the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that much of China's growth under his watch was driven by unsustainable borrowing, real-estate speculation and investments in factories and infrastructure the country didn't really need. . . . Now, China is drowning in debt, reeling from a property bust that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth, and verging on a deflationary spiral. Growth has slowed, Western investment has collapsed and consumer confidence is near a record low.  And yet, as China squares off with the U.S. for a second showdown over trade, Xi is digging in. He’s convinced that his top-down approach to managing China’s economy, with plans to make it an even bigger industrial power, offers the best path for China to eventually surpass the U.S. in economic might.

The New York Times on December 12 reports on the solution which Xi and his minions are implementing. The headline is “China Pledges More Stimulus To Shore Up Flagging Economy.” Excerpt:

China’s top leaders on Thursday pledged more stimulus measures to shore up the country’s economy, building on steps they have taken in recent months to bolster growth. At an annual gathering of the Chinese Communist Party and the cabinet, led by the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, officials agreed that the government should allow a bigger budget deficit, borrow more and cut interest rates, the state television broadcaster said on Thursday.

This time they are tossing around numbers of $1 trillion and up for the “stimulus.” The result will only be more useless factories to produce things that nobody wants or needs.

Venezuela

Nobody seems much willing to report on the disastrous state of the Venezuelan economy since dictator Nicolás Maduro stole the election back in July. Maybe the fact that he rounded up and jailed hundreds of people who protested the stealing of the election has something to do with that. The latest I can find on Venezuela’s economy is this report from Economics Observatory dated September 23, headline “Why did Venezuela’s economy collapse?” Excerpt:

The country [of Venezuela] has seen the largest ever decline in living standards outside war, revolution or the collapse of the state. Living standards in oil-rich Venezuela plummeted by a staggering 74% between 2013 and 2023. This is the fifth largest fall in living standards in modern economic history.

Economics Observatory notes that there have been larger declines in living standards than that suffered by Venezuela, but all of those have been in the context of war or civil violence. (Examples: Iraq, Libya, Lebanon.). Venezuela’s collapse has been self-inflicted by bad economic policy. Excerpt from EO:

[T]he Venezuelan government ran double-digit fiscal deficits as the economy boomed. Government spending far outpaced income from taxes and other revenues. To finance these unnecessary shortfalls, they raised the external debt sixfold by saddling the state-owned oil company and government with over $100 billion in obligations. The country also became increasingly reliant on the central bank printing money.

Somehow EO leaves out other pieces of the Venezuela economic program, like widespread nationalizations, price controls, and crushing disfavored businesses by restricting access to foreign currency. But they’ve got the basic idea.

Let’s look forward to a new year where the United States pulls back from its recent dalliance with socialism lite.

Great Moments in Socialism

September 6, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Was my three-part series (here, here, and here) on Venezuelan socialism unfair?

I focused on boring and technical data regarding living standards.

 

At first glance, those numbers make Venezuela look bad. But maybe per-capita GDP dropped because rich people are no longer rich.

And since one of America’s presidential candidates has embraced equality-of-outcomes as a goal, some people might argue that what has happened in Venezuela is a good result.

I don’t find that argument compelling (especially since there’s so much evidence about dramatic increases in poverty in Venezuela), so I’m going to give my leftist friends a different suggestion.

They should celebrate and publicize the fact that socialism can make Christmas show up early!

You might think that’s absurd, but CNN has the details.

Christmas will start next month in Venezuela, authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro has decreed… “September smells like Christmas!” Maduro said in his weekly television show on Monday, to the apparent delight of his audience. …This is not the first time Maduro has extended the official national period of Christmas celebration, which in Venezuela often comes with extra bonuses for public employees and more lavish gifts in government handouts. Last year, Maduro ordered Christmas to start on November 1, later expressing regret that he didn’t start it earlier. In 2021, …Maduro decreed that Christmas would start on October 4

How thoughtful of Maduro to accelerate Christmas.

And it may be time to crank up the printing press since he likes to play Santa Claus with “extra bonuses for public employees and more…government handouts.”

Which is probably an improvement compared to the other time he played Santa Claus. But I guess we’ll have to wait for Joseph Stiglitz to bless the plan.

P.S. A 2015 column about “great moments in socialism” also was about Venezuela.

P.P.S. Since socialism is such a big success, I’m surprised that the New York Times avoids mentioning the word when writing about Venezuela.

It Happened Again! The New York Times Writes about Venezuela’s Collapse and Fails to Mention Socialism

September 1, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I sometimes make the theoretical case against socialism. Usually, this means exposing the flaws of the core components of the socialist ideology.

• Government ownership of the means of production is a recipe for resource misallocation.
• Central planning has a miserable track record of failure because consumer preferences are ignored.
• Price controls distort incentives to make wise decisions about consumption and production.

I think these are very compelling points, but many people are more persuaded by real world evidence.

Which is why frequently write about socialist basket cases (and I’m limiting this list to genuinely socialist nations and excluding countries with big welfare states).

• Cuba
• North Korea
• The former Soviet Union
• Mao’s China

But I’ve probably written more about Venezuela than those four nations combined.

Why? Because it a clear case of a nation that had a decent economy until the left took over about 25 years ago and dramatically increased the size and scope of government.

 

Venezuela is now a basket case. Living standards have dramatically declined over the past two decades.

It’s gotten so bad that some folks on the left are now disavowing their former favorite country.

But of all the columns I’ve written about Venezuela, the one that stands out in my mind was the one I wrote in 2020 about how the New York Times wrote a long report about that country’s economic collapse and never once mentioned socialism.

As I pointed out at the time, that’s “like writing about 2020 and not mentioning coronavirus or writing about 1944 and not mentioning World War II.”

Well, it’s happened again. An article today, written by Frances Robles, has nearly 1700 words on how the national economy is a mess and how one town has been devastated, yet nary a word about the policies that caused the downfall.

It was once a thriving metropolis in the heart of oil country in Venezuela. That city, Maracaibo, no longer exists. Today, the city is rife with abandoned houses, some of which look like bombs were dropped on them, because homeowners tore windows and roofs off to sell for scrap before they took off on journeys to Colombia, Chile and the United States. …

Nearly eight million people — more than a quarter of the population — have fled Venezuela in recent years, driven out by economic misery… Maracaibo, which is in western Venezuela and remains the country’s second-largest city, has been battered by a collapsed economy, routine blackouts and persistent gasoline and water shortages. …Taxi drivers who frequently make the three-hour trip to the Colombian border reported long lines of Venezuelans leaving on foot.

Some of you may be thinking the reporter made an inadvertent mistake, but that seems very unlikely.

After all, Robles had a story in the New York Times in July that laughably claimed that Venezuela is suffering from “brutal capitalism.”

I’m not joking.

So if someone ever asks you for evidence of media bias, I can’t imagine a stronger example.

P.S. Don’t forget that the NYT recently had an article expressing nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Unbelievable.

Venezuela Timeline to Marxism

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

 

Decades ago, Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) leader Alexander Trachtenberg (1884 - 1966) wrote to fellow CPUSA activist Bella Dodd (1904 - 1969) that:

“when communism came to America, it would come under the label of ‘progressive democracy.’ Today, the Democrat party uses the term “democratic socialism.”

Several days before his 2009 inauguration Barack Obama declared:

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Today, Obama plays golf with former presidents Bill Clinton (Democrat) and George W. Bush (Republican). The happy threesome is united in their desire to stop the America First movement. And what do America First Patriots want to stop? We want to stop America’s march toward communism/socialism/Marxism (whatever you want to call the destruction of our Constitutional Republic).

If you think “it” can’t happen here, put down your remote and consider how much has changed in our once great nation in less than four years of the damaging Harris/Biden administration. Didn’t you just see the coup that ousted Joe Biden, who won 14+ MILLION primary votes, and give it to a cackling’ ignoramus who never won a single primary vote?

Look how fast it happened in Venezuela:

1992 - Venezuela became third richest nation in Hemisphere
1997 - Venezuela became second largest purchaser of F-150
2001 - Venezuela voted for a Socialist president—“Income Inequality”
2004 - Venezuela’s private healthcare is completely socialized
2007 - Venezuela’s higher education becomes free to all citizens
2009 - Venezuela’s socialist government bans private ownership of guns
2012 - Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders praises Venezuela’s version of the “American Dream”
2014 - Venezuela’s opposition leaders are imprisoned
2016 - Food and healthcare shortages in Venezuela become widespread
2017 - Venezuela suspends its Constitution and elections are suspended
2019 - Unarmed citizens are massacred by the Venezuelan government

In recent weeks, we have witnessed Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro steal the July 28 presidential election, as his government-controlled National Electorate Council announced that Maduro had won reelection with almost 52% of the vote. (Just like Joe Biden won with 81 million votes.)

It didn’t take long before the Venezuelan government started arresting protesting citizens (just like January 6). And seek the arrest of his leading opponent María Corina Machado (just like lawfare against Donald Trump). Pictured: A small Venezuelan grocer—before and after socialism.

On August 16, Kamala Harris endorsed PRICE CONTROLS to reduce inflation. (Hellooo Kamala, you are already in office and can do something NOW to reduce the inflation that you and Joey caused!) Let’s see who else embraced price controls:

Soviet Union’s Stalin … millions starved to death
Cuba’s Fidel Castro … millions starved to death
Communist China’s Mao …. millions starved to death
Maduro’s Venezuela … millions are starving to death

Ronald Reagan warned us:

“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It’s not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

Friedman vs Stiglitz: Estonia and Poland vs. Argentina and Venezuela

August 25, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

About 10 days ago, I showed that Milton Friedman was a much better economist than Joseph Stiglitz by comparing Chile (which followed Friedman’s ideas) and Venezuela (which followed Stiglitz’s ideas).

It was a slam-dunk win for Friedman. Chile started poor and has become relatively prosperous.

The opposite happened in Venezuela, which started relatively prosperous and has since suffered a horrible economic decline.

I then noticed a tweet a few days ago that tells a very similar story. It includes this chart, showing what has has happened to per-capita GDP since 1998 in Argentina, Estonia, Poland, and Venezuela.

The author the tweet, Charles Lajoie, explained the significance of the data.

If you want to know the difference between Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz, I present to you 4 countries with a GDP per capita of about $15,000 in 1998 (Poland being a bit poorer back then).

The first one, Estonia, reformed its way out of socialism through shock therapy. Mart Laar, the architect of the reforms, cited Free to Choose as his main inspiration. The second, Poland, also reformed its way out of socialism, and it did so through even more radical shock therapy than Estonia.

Leszek Balcerowicz, who’s widely seen as the main actor behind those reforms, has won the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2014, a reflection of his reforms’ adherence to Friedman’s…ideas.

The third one, Argentina, has followed the ideas of Néstor Kirchner since 2003, a man who was directly advised and praised by Joseph Stiglitz. As late as 2022, Stiglitz praised its economic policies.

The fourth, Venezuela, followed economic policies that were openly praised by Stiglitz as late as 2007… And, there you go. That’s the difference between Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz.

I might quibble with a few details. For instance, I think Estonia’s reforms were more radical than Poland’s reforms.

But Lajoie’s core point I spot on. Friedman-style policies have worked and Stiglitz-style policies have failed.

P.S. Now that Argentina has the world’s best leader, it will be interesting to see how fast and how far Argentina will improve (President Milei faces a hostile legislature, so he can’t turn his country into Singapore overnight).

The Big Difference Between The U.S. And Venezuela Is Economic Policy

August 23, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Here in the U.S., we are accustomed to economic growth almost every year. Look at a chart of U.S. GDP over the course of the last century, and the impression is of near-continuous and extremely robust growth. Here is such a chart from USA Facts, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Commerce Department).

 (Editor's Note: Go to the original article to see the chart as I cannot reproduce it here. RK)

The so-called “Great Recession” of 2008-09 registers as barely a blip. Same for the Covid-related dip of 2020. (Note in the graph that backing out inflation flattens the slope of the curves to some degree, but does not change the basic form of robust and continuous growth.)

This pattern of continual growth is unfortunately not true for all countries. For an extreme case of the opposite situation, consider Venezuela. Venezuela elected the socialist Hugo Chavez in 1998, and he and his ideologically-aligned successor Nicolas Maduro have ruled ever since. It is not easy to get useful economic data from Venezuela. The best I can find for its GDP since the Chavez election and to the present is from Statista. Here is their chart: 

 (Editor's Note: Go to the original article to see the chart as I cannot reproduce it here. RK)

I would not necessarily take these data from Statista as gospel. The main source is necessarily the Venezuelan government, which is highly suspect. The large run-up from 2004 to 2013 is probably mostly not real, being created by a combination of blow-out government spending (counted as real in GDP by economists) and increasing oil prices. On the other hand, the post-2013 collapse is undoubtedly very real. In fact, the collapse is likely understated, because the Venezuelan government would clearly cook the books in any way it could. Even if you think the current figure is mostly accurate, it leaves Venezuelan GDP today at well less than it was in the year 2000, and barely more than a quarter of what it was in 2013.

So what has brought about such an economic collapse for Venezuela? Apologists for the regime often cite the rapid fall of oil prices that occurred in 2014 and thereafter. But then, Texas also has an economy highly focused on the oil industry, and yet its economy has boomed in the decade since 2014. The same goes for many other oil and gas producing states and countries.

The clear thing that distinguishes Venezuela from economically successful places, and from the U.S. in particular, is that Venezuela has adopted one after another of economically destructive policies, well summarized by the word “socialism.” Let’s list a few: extensive price controls, particularly on food; huge increases in government spending notably on housing subsidies and redistributions; destroying the independence of the Supreme Court and of election authorities; “free” public healthcare.

Now we suddenly have a presidential nominee of the Democratic Party who has gone some combination of silent and vague on what economic policies she would implement if elected. Isn’t the presidency just about “vibes” and “joy”?

However, what little Ms. Harris has had to say so far on economic policy bears a remarkable resemblance to the Venezuelan program, notably price controls and middle class entitlements. Since she has gone silent, we have little to go on. But Kimberley Strassel in today’s Wall Street Journal points out that Senate Majority Leader Schumer let some of the mask down in an interview with CNN on Monday:

[Schumer] declared he was “committed” to everything Ms. Harris has outlined so far—the child tax-credit blowout, the new housing entitlement and all the rest. The moderator at one point noted cost estimates were $2 trillion; Mr. Schumer didn’t bat an eye. Reminded that even liberals were panning her price-control proposals, Mr. Schumer brushed them aside. This is “a good thing to do,” he assured, and he later promised price controls on drugs, too.

How about destroying the independence of election authorities and the Supreme Court?:

One of his first priorities would be the federal voting takeover that Democrats have been laboring to impose since 2021. Also important, said Mr. Schumer, is changing the Supreme Court; everything is on the table—including term limits. And “we’ve got to do more on climate change.”

Even Venezuela isn’t crazy enough to be trying to solve “climate change.”

The entire difference between economic success and failure for a country is good economic policy. I certainly hope that the voters will be smart enough to look through the current program of obfuscation by the Democrats to see what they actually have planned for us.

Maduro Hangs On In Venezuela

August 07, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

As the saying goes:

Socialists: You can vote them in, but you have to shoot them out.  

We’re watching an extreme example of that saying play out right now in Venezuela.

The U.S. press seems remarkably uninterested in events in Venezuela following its presidential election held July 28. Likely that’s because those events show just how much a determined election fixer can get away with when he controls all the levers of power in a country and is in a position to block and stymie any investigation into election fraud. There are clear lessons from that for the upcoming U.S. election, lessons that the press would prefer not be learned.

First, a review of where we are. Last October, the Biden administration granted Venezuela major sanctions relief on its oil and other exports in return for a promise to hold a free and fair election. The election got scheduled for July 28. President Maduro and his regime then proceeded to take every conceivable step to undermine the fairness of the election: they prevented the opposition leader (Maria Machado) from registering as a candidate; then they similarly disqualified her initial designated successor; they jailed numerous opposition figures who were critical of the government; they allowed multiple minor candidates to register to attempt to split any opposition vote; they used their control of the press and television to effectively suppress any campaigning by the opposition; and so on. Back in April, recognizing what was going on, the Biden administration re-imposed most of the sanctions.

Despite the blatant and heavy-handed rigging, as the election approached it looked like the third opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, was way ahead. From the Miami Herald, July 28 (as voting was ongoing):  

“Most credible independent polls give Gonzalez a 30-point-plus lead over Maduro.”  

On the night of the election, after the polls had closed, opposition leader Machado claimed that Gonzalez had won 70% of the vote based on independent exit polls.

And then, just after midnight on Monday July 29, Venezuela’s National Election Commission — fully controlled by Maduro — announced the “official” results: Maduro had won with 51% of the vote! This is one of the most preposterously rigged elections of all time.

In the week plus since the election, the evidence of pervasive fraud by the Maduro has become ever more extensive. The opposition had had volunteer observers in most to all of the polling places, and obtained copies of the voting tally sheets at each such location. They made copies of the tally sheets and uploaded them on a website. The uploaded tally sheets represent about 80% of the voting machines, and show a sufficient margin in favor of Gonzalez that he would win even if Maduro won every single vote cast at the remaining 20% of machines.

Meanwhile, Maduro and the Election Commission have refused to release precinct-level vote tallies. They claim they are prevented from doing so because there was an incident of “hacking” from hackers in North Macedonia. Sure.

On August 4, the Washington Post, to its credit, published the results of its independent review of the polling sheets uploaded by the opposition. Excerpt:

Venezuela’s opposition candidate likely received more than twice as many votes as President Nicolás Maduro in the country’s election last week, according to a Washington Post review of more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition, a sample that represents nearly 80 percent of voting machines nationwide. That conclusion, which echoes the results of independent exit polling and similar independent analyses, offers further evidence against the authoritarian socialist’s claim that he defeated challenger Edmundo González in the July 28 vote.

The Post provides this link to the vote totals as uploaded and reported by the opposition. Note that that page contains a further link to the raw voting data by polling place.

The Post further notes that similar conclusions have been reached by the Associated Press and by the Carter Center, which conducted their own reviews. Also, an exit poll was conducted by Edison Research of New Jersey on Election Day, which “indicated that González captured 65 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 31 percent.”

The Post summarizes the response of the Venezuelan government as follows:

Maduro has claimed a cyberattack has prevented the government from releasing precinct-level results. He has not provided evidence of the attack. Election experts who observed the system on July 28 and an auditor consulted by The Post said the system did not suffer a disruption that would have affected the transmission of results.

On August 1, the U.S. State Department published this statement. Excerpt:

[T]he processing of th[e] votes and the announcement of results by the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) were deeply flawed, yielding an announced outcome that does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people. The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence.  The CNE still has not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets, despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community to do so. 

Needless to say, at this writing, Maduro remains fully in power. In the initial days after the election, there was some hope that the military and/or police would abandon Maduro, but that has not occurred, at least not yet. Over the past weekend, there were reports that thousands of opposition figures had been arrested, and that both Machado and Gonzalez had gone into hiding.

Could any country possibly support Maduro at this point? Of course, it’s the usual collection of losers: Russia, China, Iran and Cuba.

I just hope that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are competent enough at least to follow the lead of the Venezuelan opposition in combating fraud. Here, our voting manipulation problem is mostly confined to a handful of blue cities in swing states: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Detroit and Flint in Michigan; Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin; and Atlanta in Georgia. A full-on blitz of observers in those places would be very valuable.

Pathetic Spin from the New York Times

July 30, 2024 by Dan Mitchell

What’s the most unfortunate country in the world?

• North Korea?
• Zimbabwe?
• Cuba?

Those are three good answers, but another option is Venezuela.

Just a few decades ago, it was the richest nation in Latin America and life seemed very nice.

 

But then the country was taken over by socialists and living standards have since plummeted.

The situation is such a disaster that some crazy leftists – such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain – are denying that Venezuela is an example of their ideology. Instead, those clowns even claimed that Venezuela was an example of capitalism!

That’s the kind of crank argument one might expect from an extremist group of leftist ideologues.

It’s very disturbing, though, to see identical spin from the New York Times.

Yet that’s exactly what you can find in a report filed by Anatoly Kurmanaev, Frances Robles, and Julie Turkewitz

Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, was declared the winner of the country’s tumultuous presidential election early Monday… The vote was riddled with irregularities, and citizens were angrily protesting the government’s actions… In the past, security forces aligned with Mr. Maduro have crushed protests with violence. …If the election decision holds and Mr. Maduro remains in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country’s socialist-inspired movement, into its third decade in Venezuela. Founded by former President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s mentor, the movement initially promised to lift millions out of poverty. For a time it did. But in recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the nation’s wealth.

What a pathetic example of media bias.

All three reporters deserve some sort of prize for lying to readers, and every editor who saw that story before it went to print also deserve endless scorn.

Here are a few facts:

• Venezuela is the the lowest-ranked country according to Economic Freedom of the World. That makes it more anti-capitalist than any other country on the planet.
• Writing “state-connected” and “capitalism” in the same sentence should have been a giveaway to anyone with an IQ of room temperature or above.
• Notice that the reporters wrote “economists say” without actually citing a single economist. Even Joe Stiglitz had enough sense not to get quoted.

I’ll close by offering some advice to biased journalists. If you want to defend socialism while being at least vaguely honest, mention if your stories that there are different strains of leftism.

Can Fracking Fix the World?

By Rich Kozlovich

One of my favorite geopolitical analysts is Allison Fedirka who published this subscriber piece on May 1, 2024, Don't Expect Too Much From Venezuela's Elections, saying: 

The Venezuelan opposition has unexpectedly united around a single candidate: Edmundo Gonzalez. And though this is good news for a movement that has long been hindered by its inability to set aside its differences, much remains in the way of true regime change, which should still be seen as a long-term goal rather than a plausible outcome of the July 28 elections.

I've kept a running file on Venezuela, and written quite a lot about it in the past predicting Maduro's downfall.  And while I got a lot right, every one of my predictions of his downfall was wrong.  There was a lady who wrote a piece saying they were not going to be toppled and cited a lot of historical precedents, which I foolishly ignored, and unfortunately, I very stupidly didn't save her article, and she was right.

I don't see any real improvement in Venezuela for a number of reasons.  First, there’s no way Maduro and his band of thugs are going to give up power, it will have to be taken, and no one as far as I can tell is funding such an effort or supplying arms.  Secondly, there doesn’t seem to be a rebel movement in Venezuela.  I think there are and two reasons for that.  Their population has dwindled seriously, and the nation is as much under control of crime lords as it is the government.  The remaining population is scared, powerless, and just want to keep from starving for another day.

Everything else is maskirovka, a masquerade.  After Biden is gone…hopefully…. any deals between Venezuela and the United States will be toast.

Fracking oil isn’t just sweet, it’s super sweet making refinement less expensive or time consuming.    Venezuela’s oil is seriously contaminated and at one point it was predicted Venezuela was an oil rich nation that might not have a market, and there were few refineries that could handle their oil, and they were all in the United States.  

Well, it goes to show, there are no boundaries on stupid, and the Biden administration has done everything in it's power to destroy the use of traditional, reliable, easily available energy sources.   

Energy is fundamental, and he who has the most energy, is the boss, and America is massively energy rich, but it must be exploited or it's meaningless.

If Biden is gone America will return to fracking and drilling, and that will be a worldwide game changer.  That will disrupt all that’s going on in the EU, the Middle East, the Russo/Ukrainian War, China and South East Asia, and I believe the death kneel for BRICS.

Here are my seven rules of geopolitics

1. First Rule of Geopolitics: All geopolitics is about four factors, geographics, demographics, economics, and that most elusive factor of all, the happiness factor.  
   
2. Second Rule of Geopolitics:  Everything is about the basics.  You have to be able to see issues at their foundational root levels in order to understand and fix complex problems.
   
3. Third Rule of Geopolitics:  History is everything since historical events lay the foundation for the social paradigms of nations, which have been in effect for centuries in most areas of the world.
   
4. Fourth Rule of Geopolitics:  People are like nations, and will act in their own best interests, unless they don't.  
5. Fifth Rule of Geopolitics: Nothing is ever as it appears.  Look behind the curtain, there's always something hidden. 
6. Sixth Rule of Geopolitics:  The patterns of life keep repeating over and over again. 
   
7. Seventh Rule of Geopolitics:  Everyone lies.    
   

Can fracking fix the world?  No, as an overall concept, the world's unfixable, there are entirely too many nutrolls in powerful positions.  But it can go a long way to stabilizing the world.  Everyone wants perfection, but the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection, and stable is the most acceptable imperfection we will have to accept.

Everything You Need to Know about the Difference Between Free Enterprise and Socialism

January 31, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve written critical columns about the failure of Venezuelan socialism and I’ve written laudatory columns about the success of Chile’s free markets reforms.

Today, let’s compare and contrast what has happened to these two countries.

Here are two maps of South America showing per-capita economic output. Amazingly, Venezuela was more than twice as rich as Chile in 1980 but now Chile is more than three times as rich as Venezuela.

At this point, I normally would pontificate about the meaning of these two maps.

But there’s no need for me to write anything because the person who shared them on Twitter (X) nailed the obvious takeaway.

Game, set, and match. Economic liberty trounces statism.

The same message that you see in this chart.

P.S. If you want to learn about Milton Friedman and Chile, click here.

Another Conflict In Which The Left Has No Interest: Venezuela/Guyana

December 05, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian  34 Comments

The response by Israel to the October atrocities of Hamas seems to have roused the international Left into a furious frenzy. Widespread demonstrations supporting the Gazans’ slaughter continue on a daily basis in major cities around the world and, especially, on university campuses. The demonstrations feature thinly- or not-so-thinly-veiled calls for elimination of Israel as a state, and for violence against Jewish people. The demonstrators call the Jews every horrible thing they can think of, the very worst in their vocabulary being “settler colonialists.”

Meanwhile, other comparable conflicts go on around the world without even a hint of interest from the same international Left. In this post on October 11 I discussed the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, where at that very moment the Azeris were in the process of completely expelling a large community of Armenians from their historical homeland in a section of the Caucasus region called Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians have apparently continuously occupied the area since well before the time of Christ, and converted to Christianity as a nation in 301 A.D. Encyclopedia Britannica dates the arrival of the Azeris (Muslims) from Central Asia around the 9th to 11th centuries A.D. Doesn’t that make the Armenians “indigenous” and the Azeris “settler colonialists”? You will be hard pressed to find a handful of news articles covering this situation, let alone even one tiny demonstration on a college campus.

And now consider the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana. Are you even aware that such a conflict is going on? This dispute is instigated by one of the most thuggish losers on the international stage, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, against his peaceful neighbors the Guyanese. Does the Leftist outrage meter register even the slightest vibration? Not that I can find. But then Maduro is a “socialist” in good standing, while Guyana is in the process of making the huge error of getting rich via capitalism.

To be a little fair, the Venezuela/Guyana dispute has roots that go back deep into colonial history. Here is a brief history from a site called Dialogo Americas. The gist is that Britain set boundaries in the region, including the Venezuela/Guyana border, back in the mid-19th century. Venezuela did not agree to the boundaries, and laid claim to a region of the Guyana it calls Essequibo — which is actually the majority of Guyana by land area. The matter went to an arbitration panel back in 1899, and the panel ruled in favor of Guyana. Venezuela did not officially accept that result, but the matter was largely dormant from then on. In 1966 the two countries entered into a Geneva Agreement by which they committed to either resolve any further dispute peacefully or, failing that “they shall refer the decision as to the means of settlement to an appropriate international organ upon which they both agree or, failing agreement on this point, to the secretary-general of the United Nations.”

But in recent months, suddenly Venezuela has started rattling sabres and threatening military action to press its claim to Essequibo. To ramp up pressure, Maduro scheduled a referendum supposedly to ask the Venezuelan people if they support the takeover of Essequibo. The referendum was held Sunday December 4. Here is a report from the Miami Herald. According to the Herald, Maduro claims that 98% of the voters favored invading Guyana. But the Herald goes on to say that “many question referendum results.” This was a typical example of what passes for “voting” in Venezuela. As an example, from the Herald:

[T]he reported participation did not match the empty voting stations seen during the day and was more than twice as high as that of independent exit polls.

So what is really going on here? Maduro is almost five years into a six year term, and he has completely run Venezuela into the ground since taking office initially in 2013. While there is no meaningful opinion polling from Venezuela, his popularity is thought to be deep in the toilet. Meanwhile, his next-door neighbor Guyana is turning into an incredible success story on the capitalist model. Something must be done!

Let’s look at just a few statistics. Venezuela could be the worst story of economic failure for any country in the world over the past couple of decades. (Maybe North Korea is worse, but there are no usable numbers at all from that prison state.). With the caveat that all economic statistics coming out of Venezuela must be viewed with skepticism, here are some from Venezuela. From Statista.com, Venezuela’s GDP per capita has fallen from a peak of $12,688 in 2011 to $3,474 in 2023. The same statista.com website gives Venezuela’s 2023 inflation rate as 359%, which to be fair is a substantial improvement from the 65,374% registered in 2018. Meanwhile, production of Venezuela’s key product, petroleum, has plunged from over 3 million barrels per day in the early 2000s, to under 800,000 barrels per day today, as corruption and incompetence by Maduro cronies have destroyed productivity in the state-owned oil monopoly. Here is a chart of Venezuela’s oil production since 1998 from Trading Economics:

In Guyana it is, shall we say, the opposite. Here is a piece from CNBC on September 26, 2023, headline “This is the world’s fastest-growing economy, and it could grow an ‘explosive’ 100%.” Excerpt:

The world’s fastest-growing economy may be on track to grow by more than 100% by 2028, largely fueled by profits from its oil production and export sector, according to one analysis. Guyana, a country in South America with a population of about 800,000 people, is projected to grow 38% by the end of the year — an “extremely fast” pace, according to recent gross domestic product forecasts by the International Monetary Fund.

So how has that happened? Easy: Guyana leased some offshore territory for exploration by an international group of private oil companies led by Exxon. And sure enough they made huge discoveries, that are just now ramping up into major production:

BMI [a unit of Fitch] sees oil production in Guyana to jump from around 390,000 barrels per day this year to over a million barrels per day by 2027 as new offshore fields in the country’s Stabroek Block are opened by a consortium led by Exxon.

To its credit, the UN appears at least for now to be standing by Guyana on this one. When Venezuela started its recent campaign, Guyana referred the matter to the UN. According to PBS here, last Friday, the UN’s International Court of Justice issued a ruling “order[ing] Venezuela not to take any action that would alter Guyana’s control over a disputed territory.” But as yet the ruling is only a preliminary one, pending a full trial later, possibly years from now.

Meanwhile, don’t expect any activity from the leftist outrage machine. That outrage is reserved for the likes of the United States and Israel who defend themselves and stand up for Western values.

 

The Failure of Socialism in Venezuela, Part III

March 23, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

In Part I of this series, I documented the dramatic decline in living standards ever since socialists took power in Venezuela.

 

In Part II, I compared Venezuela’s decline to the other Latin American nations, particularly the success story of Chile.

Initially, I planned on this being a two-part series. After all, what else needs to be said when a nation does so poorly that even other socialists try (and fail) to disavow its policies.

But I decided to add Part III because of a remarkable report in the New York Times.

Authored by Isayen Herrera and Frances Robles, it actually acknowledges that socialism has created massive problems. Here are some excerpts.

…a socialist revolution once promised equality and an end to the bourgeoisie. Venezuela’s economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history. …Conditions remain dire for a huge portion of the population…prices still triple annually, among the worst rates in the world. …Half of the nation lives in poverty…one in three children across Venezuela was suffering from malnutrition as of May 2022… Up to seven million Venezuelans have simply given up and abandoned their homeland since 2015… Last year’s inflation rate of 234 percent ranks Venezuela second in the world, behind Sudan.

What makes this story especially noteworthy is that the Times wrote another article about Venezuela’s dismal economy less than three years ago, yet that piece never once mentioned socialism.

So it’s a sign of progress that the paper now acknowledges that statist policies deserve the blame.

And I also think it’s remarkable that the article noted that socialism produces a grotesque version of inequality, with government insiders and other cronies getting rich while ordinary people suffer horrific deprivation..

Venezuela is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, and one of the world’s most unequal societies… the wealthiest Venezuelans were 70 times richer than the poorest, putting the country on par with some countries in Africa that have the highest rates of inequality in the world.

The poster child for undeserved socialist wealth is Hugo Chavez’s daughter, who amassed more than $4 billion of ill-gotten gains.

P.S. In spite of the wretched state of the Venezuelan economy, some nutty leftists put together a “Happy Planet Index” that ranked Venezuela above the United States. I still haven’t figured out whether that was crazier than the Jeffrey Sachs’ index that put Cuba above America.

 

Venezuela: Socialist Elite Purge Rocks Maduro’s Inner Circle

Christian K. Caruzo 22 Mar 2023

The sudden resignation this week of Tareck El Aissami, one of the most powerful people in the Venezuelan socialist regime, has shaken the core of dictator Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle.

Maduro and his regime have framed the arrest of an undisclosed number of chavista officials that began over the past weekend as part of an “anti-corruption” purge, a surprising move given Venezuela’s status as the most corrupt country in the region. Many, including defectors from the regime, are rejecting this official explanation however, suggesting Maduro and his closest allies are eliminating anyone from within who could potentially challenge Maduro for leadership...........To Read More....

The Failure of Socialism in Venezuela, Part I

March 12, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Socialism is an immoral system that has a horrible track record of misery and failure.

One of the most tragic examples is Venezuela.

It used to be the richest nation in Latin America. But per-capita GDP has collapsed according to IMF data.

As you can see from the chart, there were a couple of decent periods, peaking in 2008 and again about five years later.

But those were driven by world oil prices. The overall trend during the Chavez-Maduro years has been negative.

Socialism has been such a disaster that the country is now largely incapable of benefiting when oil prices rise.

By the way, if you somehow think IMF data is suspect, you can also look at the UN’s Human Development Index. Over the past couple of decades, only Syria, Libya, and Yemen performed worse than Venezuela.

In his column for the Miami Herald, Andres Oppenheimer documents Venezuela’s descent into misery.

As Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro celebrates his 10th year in office this week, a reality check shows that his presidency has been much more disastrous than people think. Maduro…has performed an economic miracle in reverse: He has turned what used to be one of Latin America’s richest countries into the poorest one, alongside Haiti. …Venezuela’s gross domestic product has plummeted from $350 billion in 2013 to $60 billion today… Venezuela’s poverty rate has soared from 40% of the population in 2013 to 94% today… Venezuela’s annual inflation rate has risen to nearly 350% this year from 56% in 2013… More than 7.2 million Venezuelans have fled the country during the past decade, according to United Nations estimates. That’s the biggest mass exodus in Latin America’s history.

That’s a depressing indictment.

But there’s more bad news to share. Here are some excerpts from an article by Dominic Wightman for the U.K.-based Critic.

Caracas has grown into one such city from hell. …there’s all-round cynicism, the pongs of death and dank deprivation ubiquitous. …The capital city is flatlining, the flatline only spiked by oases of ill-gotten gains underwritten by Russian gangsters, by wannabe Cuban puppet masters and the Chavistas themselves, whose grip on Venezuela has been transitorily perpetuated by narcodollars… No politics class or textbook can prepare a man for fifteen years viewing first-hand this latest chapter in the failure of socialist doctrine. The descent to hell in Venezuela has been swift and gruesome. …Too often in the West we have discussed Socialism as if it were a cheese on a cheeseboard, some kind of edible mushroom from which we might find nourishment, even as a side dish in a broader menu of political possibilities. The truth is that Socialism is poison, whichever way it is prepared or digested. It is appropriate — no, it is vital — to be so black and white about it.

Wightman’s analysis is particularly persuasive since he is married to a Venezuelan woman and has personally witnessed the nation’s decline over many years.

P.S. I’m still flabbergasted that the New York Times published a lengthy article on Venezuela’s economic misery and somehow never mentioned socialism.

P.P.S. Here’s my description of what it’s like to encounter victims of Venezuelan socialism.