Free Republic

Venezuela's economy is collapsing. The country has topped Bloomberg's "Economic Misery Index," which takes into account several economic measures, for two years. Runaway inflation and high unemployment are plaguing the country. Socialism is what produces bread lines in an oil-rich country. In developed countries, economic debates often focus on narrow questions, such as raising the minimum wage, where it's possible for reasonable people to disagree. This leads to an impression that the relative merits of free enterprise and big government policies can be in the eye of the beholder. To a certain extent this is true. Or, at any rate,...

If nations could have biographies, Venezuela's would read something like this: After a rocky adolescence, Vennie got his life straightened out, got an education, a good job, and lived a fairly comfortable life. However, in his dotage, he was suckered by a succession of con artists and blew through all his savings, ending his days penniless and bitter. That, in a nutshell, is pretty much what Hugo Chavez and his socialist caudillo successors have done to the country. By Latin American standards, Venezuela used to a prosperous and stable nation. Venezuela possesses one of the largest petroleum reserves in the...

Nicholas Maduro, the Venezuelan president declared a 60-day state of emergency on Friday due to what he called plots from within the OPEC country and the United States to topple his leftist government. Mr. Maduro did not provide details of the measure. A previous state of emergency, implemented in states near the Colombian border last year, suspended constitutional rights guarantees in those areas....... Earlier on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials told reporters they were increasingly worried about the potential for an economic and political meltdown in Venezuela and predicted Mr. Maduro was not likely to complete his term.....

Citizens turned out in massive crowds to add their signatures to the recall referendum against Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro. And for good reason. The country is in a state of paralysis: frequent blackouts; food, medicine and vaccine scarcities; closed-down factories and frequent looting. Chaos and anarchy hang over the nation that not so long ago was the most rich and advanced in Latin America. Without a doubt the fault of the country's dire situation is on the late president Hugo Chávez. His socialist policies devastated Venezuela's flourishing economy. But in a less obvious way, Venezuelan citizens are also to blame....

Life isn’t much fun these days in the world’s socialist paradise. If you had to choose a country you didn’t want to live in, Venezuela would be near the top of the list. Corrupt, dysfunctional, bankrupt, crime-ridden, drug-infested, short of practically every basic commodity, it can’t keep the lights on, keep the government running or brew its own beer. Last weekend six army officers were arrested for stealing goats from a farm because they were hungry. Venezuela has become the basket case of the western hemisphere, a case study on how not to run a country and a living example...

It's come to this: The country with the largest oil reserves in the world can't afford to brew its own beer, stay in its own time zone, or even have its own people show up to work more than two times a week. Venezuela, in other words, is well past the point of worrying that its economy might collapse. It already has. That's the only way to describe an economy that the International Monetary Fund thinks is going to shrink 8 percent and have 720 percent inflation this year. And that's not even the worst of it. No, that's the...

Under Bernie Sanders, the United States of America would become a failed state such as Venezuela If nations could have biographies, Venezuela’s would read something like this: After a rocky adolescence, Vennie got his life straightened out, got an education, a good job, and lived a fairly comfortable life. However, in his dotage, he was suckered by a succession of con artists and blew through all his savings, ending his days penniless and bitter. That, in a nutshell, is pretty much what Hugo Chavez and his socialist caudillo successors have done to the country. By Latin American standards, Venezuela used...

As for March, there was an increase in yearly prices due to inflation — a 582.9 percent increase for food,

The frightening thing about looking at schools in other countries is that you can see where our own education is going. At this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Gloria Alvarez of the National Civic Movement of Guatemala, showed the cover of a textbook circulating in Latin America which depicts deceased Venezuelan Marxist strongman Hugo Chavez shaking hands with Bolivian founding father Simon Bolivar in front of Jesus Christ. Just one of the ironies of this depiction, Alvarez averred, is that Bolivar was a great admirer of America's founding fathers: There is no evidence that Chavez ever was. In Guatemala itself,...

Three years ago today, I wept for my friend Chavez and myself, for the people of Venezuela and the world.In 2006, shortly after my first peace camp in Crawford, Texas to confront the person who I felt murdered my son Casey: George Bush, I was invited to Caracas, Venezuela to attend the World Social Forum. Amazingly, at the time I really had no idea that the World Social Forum was about socialism, and I really didn't know much more about President Hugo Chavez other than that he was a very vocal opponent of my opponents: George Bush and the U.S....

Perhaps nobody on the planet knows more about intelligence protocol than Edward Snowden. If Snowden says it's "completely ridiculous" to believe that Clinton's emails were safe, then yes, it's fair to include his viewpoint in any critique of Hillary Clinton's latest controversy. In addition, since I believe Senator Bernie Sanders is desperately needed at this point in U.S. history, and electing Clinton or a Republican would essentially be nominating the same president on war and foreign policy, it's important to address relevant analysis of the email controversy. There seems to be a bizarre paradigm of thought among some Democrats that...

Sean Penn's "secret interview" inadvertently led authorities to arrest El Chapo despite security precautions. What pun name can you give him based on his role names, movie titles, girlfriend dramas or public statements?

Venezuela's opposition party has claimed the majority of seats in the National Assembly in elections held Sunday, the first major shift in power in the legislative branch since the late President Hugo Chavez took office in 1999. The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) took 99 seats to just 46 for the United Social Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Tibisay Lucena, president of Consejo Nacional Electoral announced. "Venezuela, we won!" said opposition key figure Henrique Capriles, governor of the state of Miranda. "I always told you all, this was the way! Humility, maturity and serenity. Long live the people of Venezuela!" Setback for...

........."We were 'Chavistas'," said Julio Coromoto...a workman next to a queue of dozens at a shabby supermarket."But they destroyed this town.".... Nationwide polls predict voters will punish the socialists next month, possibly taking away their majority in the National Assembly for the first time since Chavez took power in early 1999.To hold on to loyalists, the government is milking Chavez's legacy at every turn, re-naming voting centers after him, splashing his smiling face on billboards and filling state television with his most rousing speeches.In Barinas, his brother Argenis and cousin Asdrubal are running for the legislature, hoping to follow in...

The daughter of Hugo Chavez, the former president who once declared 'being rich is bad,' may be the wealthiest woman in Venezuela, according to evidence reportedly in the hands of Venezuelan media outlets. Maria Gabriela Chavez, 35, the late president's second-oldest daughter, holds assets in American and Andorran banks totaling almost $4.2billion, Diario las Americas reports. The figure would make Gabriela Chavez wealthier than media mogul Gustavo Cisneros, whom Forbes named the wealthiest Venezuelan earlier this year with $3. 6 billion in assets. Others close to Chavez managed to build up great personal wealth that was kept outside the petrostate....

The daughter of Hugo Chavez, the former president who once declared 'being rich is bad,' may be the wealthiest woman in Venezuela, according to evidence reportedly in the hands of Venezuelan media outlets. Maria Gabriela Chavez, 35, the late president's second-oldest daughter, holds assets in American and Andorran banks totaling almost $4.2billion, Diario las Americas reports. ... Others close to Chavez managed to build up great personal wealth that was kept outside the petrostate. Alejandro Andrade, who served as Venezuela’s treasury minister from 2007 to 2010 and was reportedly a close associate of Chavez, was discovered to have $11.2billion in...

The Socialist Utopia has come to Venezuela and so has triple-digit inflation. Inflation is soaring at about 65%, murder rates are the second highest in the world, they don’t have food, chocolate,cooking oil, sugar, beer, shampoo, chicken, beef or even toilet paper. Businesses put the blame on the socialist government’s economic policies and the government blames it on everyone else. A number of U.S. movie stars have gone to Venezuela many times to applaud their regime and compare their economy to ours. Sean Penn was one. ... American leftists cheered the Socialist government and the social justice he forced on...

Venezuela is afflicted with the world’s highest inflation, its second highest murder rate and crippling shortages of food, medicine and basic consumer goods. Its authoritarian government is holding some 70 political prisoners, including the mayor of Caracas and senior opposition leader Leopoldo López, and stands accused by human rights groups of illegal detentions, torture and repression of independent media. All of that is now pretty well known, and it is finally beginning to gain some attention from Latin American leaders who for years did their best to appease or ignore Hugo Chávez and his “Bolivarian Revolution.” What’s less understood is...

The thing that caught our eye in the plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport and its oil lines concerns a detail in respect of the arrest of one of the key Guyanese suspects. It was the fact that the former member of the Guyanese legislature who was fingered in the plot, Abdul Kadir, was arrested in Trinidad on his way to Caracas, Venezuela. According to Mr. Kadir's wife, who was quoted in the Guyanese press, he was there to pick up an Iranian visa that would enable him to attend an Islamic conference in Tehran. No doubt...

Gerardo Hernandez, a spy for Communist Cuba and the man responsible for the murder of four humanitarian workers (three of whom were American citizens) over international waters, was freed from prison last year by the Obama administration, due in part to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This was revealed at a February 6, 2015, celebration of Hernandez’s release, along with two of his fellow Cuban agents (collectively known as the “Cuban 5.. At the beginning of the event, an IPS official thanked all who who took part in the 17-year campaign and singled out a number of organizations that...