Free Republic

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- It's still possible to buy a gleaming Ford truck in Venezuela, rent a chic apartment in Caracas, and snag an American Airlines flight to Miami. Just not in the country's official currency. As the South American nation spirals into economic chaos, an increasing number of products are not only figuratively out of the reach of average consumers, but literally cannot be purchased in Venezuelan bolivars, which fell into a tailspin on the black market last week. Businesses and individuals are turning to dollars even as the anti-American rhetoric of the socialist administration grows more strident. It's...

​Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced new plans to create a subsidized food program for school teachers and other workers in the education sector. Maduro explained that the new program would benefit as many as 700,000 families of education workers, including the children of teachers and professors. The president added that his government is committed to ensuring all teachers are provided with a living wage. Earlier this week, Maduro approved a 50 percent increase in teacher salaries.

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...

WHY THEY QUIT BEING LEFTISTS By Carlos Alberto Montaner The Independent Institute November 17, 2008 What led these people (along with Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa, Ernesto Sábato, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, and so many other valuable intellectuals) to abandon communism and begin to defend the values of liberty? In the first place, the painful realization that the communist governments, without exception, built societies that were very poor and brutal, from which people invariably tried to flee in desperation. All the communist experiments failed, regardless of the substrata on which they tried to erect their systems. The Germans, the Slavs, the Latin...

From the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world's stage and which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the world's terrorist bogeyman, we suggested that the "straight to beheading YouTube clip" purpose behind the Saudi Arabia-funded Islamic State was a simple one: use the Jihadists as the vehicle of choice to achieve a political goal: depose of Syria's president Assad, who for years has stood in the way of a critical Qatari natural gas pipeline, one which...

They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too. The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies many BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.

The Muslims of the Americas (MOA), a Pakistan-linked Islamist group that runs 22 “villages” across the U.S., is waging a litigation jihad against Martin Mawyer, President of the Christian Action Network. His offense, for which MOA demands $30 million, is exposing the group’s extremism in a new book with the help of inside information from a former MOA leader. Readers of Twilight in America get an inside look at MOA, a cultish Sufi Islamist group that follows Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani as a representative of Allah. Gilani also leads Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani “Islamic sect that seeks to...

A U.S. Spanish-language news network that lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department on U.S. policies toward Mexico reported on those policies without disclosing its lobbying expenditures and is covering the U.S. presidential election without informing views of its company’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. The network, Azteca America, has employed two Clinton confidantes since late 2008 to lobby the State Department on various initiatives affecting U.S. relations with Mexico, where its parent company is based, during and after Clinton’s tenure at the head of the agency. Mexican parent TV Azteca, a foundation associated with the company, and that foundation’s U.S. counterpart...

China Retakes Top Spot as the Biggest Foreign Owner of U.S. Debt By IAN TALLEY It was a short-lived domination. After just a month of being the top holder of U.S. Treasury debt, Japan has once again been pushed into the No.2 slot as China bulked up on Uncle Sam’s bonds and notes. As we noted last month – and several times before that – Treasury’s data is a rough guesstimate. That makes it hard for analysts sifting through the obscure sheaves of digital data to glean anything but rough trends. It also makes it difficult to draw precise conclusions....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Foreign holdings of U.S. debt rose in March as China ramped up its purchases and displaced Japan as the leading owner of U.S. Treasury securities. The Treasury Department says overseas ownership of U.S. debt rose 2.1 percent in March to $6.18 trillion. That is below January's record of $6.22 trillion. China added $37.3 billion ... bringing its stockpile to $1.26 trillion... ahead of Japan, which added just $2.5 billion...to $1.23 trillion. ... The U.S. deficit topped $1 trillion from 2009 through 2012. Foreign governments...account for two-thirds of the foreign holdings...rose 1 percent from the previous month to...

Tucked away among the tilled plots and scrubby pastures of this rural town, the Seattle Mariners’ baseball academy is mostly abandoned. The weight room has been cleared of machines. The numbered locker-room stalls are bare. One afternoon last week, a grounds crew pulled out bases from the main field while workers packed away a few stray trophies, bats and uniforms. But the teenage prospects who shared bunks here just three weeks ago are gone, shipped off to a newer school in the Dominican Republic.

Venezuela's black market exchange rate weakened below a key level on Thursday, as the bolivar's decline steepened in the face of hyperinflation and a rapidly shrinking economy. Over the past couple of years the value of the currency has plummeted against the dollar to its present 300 bolivar level. In 2012, a dollar would get you 10 bolivars, according to unofficial exchange rates. By the time President Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated in April 2013, it was 24 bolivars to the dollar and by this January it was at 173. This black market rate of 300.72 on Thursday was almost 50...

Venezuelans are criticizing electricity rationing that government officials began carrying out this week after the country’s electrical system continued to overload because of an ongoing heat wave. Ministries and other public institutions will now work until 1:00 p.m., reducing their workday from 8 to 6 hours. Private companies have also been required to cut their electricity intake by 10 percent. The overall goal is to achieve a 20-percent reduction of country’s power consumption in order to prevent overloading the system. "We are in the presence of a significant increase in the temperature," said Jesse Chacón, the country's Energy Minister, according...

Laureano Márquez was performing a benefit at his old high school in the Venezuelan city of Maracay. The comedian dwelled on the absurdities of life in this oil-rich nation, where gas is cheaper than water but it's hard to find milk, toilet paper and many other everyday goods. In the supermarket, Màrquez said, desperate customers will steal scarce items right out of your shopping cart. "In Venezuela, you get robbed of stuff that isn't even yours yet," he said to a round of laughs. Turning serious, Marquez tells the crowd that the socialist revolution, launched 16 years ago by the...

Tucked away among the tilled plots and scrubby pastures of this rural town, the Seattle Mariners’ baseball academy is mostly abandoned. The weight room has been cleared of machines. The numbered locker-room stalls are bare. One afternoon last week, a grounds crew pulled out bases from the main field while workers packed away a few stray trophies, bats and uniforms. But the teenage prospects who shared bunks here just three weeks ago are gone, shipped off to a newer school in the Dominican Republic.

Already buffeted by widespread violence, crippling shortages, and skyrocketing inflation, Venezuelans will be confronted with a new burden in the coming weeks: nationwide electricity rationing. The government of President Nicolas Maduro said last week that a plan to ration and otherwise adjust energy usage would go into effect to address increasing demand, which has been spurred on in part by a recent rise in temperatures in the Caribbean country. The measures of the rationing plan include reducing workday length for some public officials to six hours, requesting that private firms increase their electrical efficiency, and the inspecting of factories and...

Political debates often pit fear against hope, and when it comes to international trade agreements, many Democrats prefer to scare. It's a durable strategy that they can't relinquish -- even though it usually fails. If you're going to make a horror movie, you need a villain who can make your blood run cold. Despite endless efforts to pump this one up, the audience mostly yawns. Americans have gotten too used to the obvious benefits of trade to be terrified by German cars, Canadian oil or Chinese toys. The Obama administration is currently negotiating with 11 other nations on a Trans-Pacific...

President Nicolás Maduro raised Venezuela's minimum wage Friday for the second time this year to help workers being battered by the world's highest inflation. Speaking at a May Day rally, the socialist leader said he is boosting the minimum wage and pensions for retirees by 30 percent, with two-thirds of the increase coming this month and the rest on July 1. He also said he would raise salaries for government employees and military personnel. The wage increase, while a welcome relief for many workers, fell short of expectations that the embattled Maduro might use Friday's celebrations to expand state control...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has promised to nationalize food distribution in the South American nation beset with record shortages of basic goods, runaway inflation and an escalating economic crisis. [Snip] Various estimates suggest the government already controls about half of the country's food distribution, but that hasn't stopped record shortages in shops and markets. Venezuela is struggling with a recession, 68.5-percent annual inflation and severe shortages of the basic goods that it relies on oil money to import. On any given day, people in Venezuela can wait hours to get some subsidized milk, cooking oil, milk or flour -- if...

Public employees will only have to work six hours a day until further notice, and police units will be sent to inspect private businesses to ensure they only use their allotted amounts. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed the measures on climate change. ... The Venezuelan government is responsible for providing electricity in the socialist nation, and concerns that power is running out in the OPEC nation have triggered alarm that power may be next on a list of basic scarcities in Venezuela that include milk, laundry detergent, and vegetable oil. ... Vice President Arreaza also made a bizarre call...