Posted on 01/24/2008 7:03:06 AM PST by jdm
Hugo Chavez recently started a state-owned food distributorship. In the past three days, Venezuelan troops started stocking their warehouses with product. Unfortunately for Venezuela's private-sector distributor, the troops simply confiscated Alimentos Polar trucks and their shipments to do so:
Venezuela's top food company has accused troops of illegally seizing more than 500 tonnes of food from its trucks as part of President Hugo Chavez's campaign to stem shortages.The leftist Chavez this week created a state food distributor and loosened some price controls, seeking to end months of shortages for staples like milk and eggs that have caused long lines and upset his supporters in the OPEC nation. ...
"Anyone who is distributing food ... and is speculating, we must intervene and we must expropriate (the business) and put it in the hands of the state and the communities," Chavez said during the inauguration of a new state-run market in Caracas.
Hugo's Zimbabwe strategy continues apace. Instead of directly nationalizing these industries, Chavez has looked for excuses to confiscate property a little at a time. With price controls keeping private production low, he has decided to raise prices just as the state enters the market on its own -- and then keeps his cost of production low by simply stealing the product.
It's actually more clever than just the simple theft it is on the surface. By forcing producers to sell below cost for so long, he's weakened the production capability of the private sector so that fewer targets remain. The shortages artificially increase demand and desperation. In raising prices, the root producers now have hope of earning and produce more -- just in time for the state to steal it and take credit for meeting the demand.
What do Venezuelans see from this process? Hugo steals from the rich and gives to the poor, without noting the manipulations necessary for him to succeed in doing so. At least Hugo hopes that's all they see. If Venezuelans start figuring this out, he'll have to have that last flight out of Caracas on standby.
The man who controls the food
controls the people
What can you expect in a land so arid, barren, rocky, frigid? Oh wait...
I’d be surprised if the shortages weren’t caused by Chavez in the first place.
Communism On The Move...take...hmmm let’s see...TAKE 8!
I think that is kinda the whole point. He’s Roberto Mugabe with a Spanish accent.
The man’s a monster. No doubt, he’s eating just fine because after all, he’s leading the country and must be in good health. Just like Hitlery would receive good medical care if she forces Hillary Care on this country.
Wasn’t it Reagan who said that if the Communists took control of the Saraha Desert, it would be a matter of time before there was a shortage of sand?
In the years immediately following Chavez’s coup attempt in the early nineties, Venezuelan politicians tried to capitalize on Chavez’ popularity by trying to out-Chavez Chavez himself, strange as it may seem, and they would send police and news cameras into grocery stores to intimidate grocery store owners, who were supposedly “hoarding” or charging unfair prices, and they would seize grocery chain warehouses and pass the food out to the mobs (with news cameras rolling). Not surprisingly, the food products disappeared off grocery store shelves pretty quickly, since grocers weren’t allowed to charge the cost of replacing them.
Chavez inherited an economy that was on the verge of collapse already. He began to further drive it into the ground, saved only in part by the rise in oil prices. He and the wannabes that preceded him have destroyed the country. When he blames Venezuela’s troubles on supposed “neo-liberal” economics (his term for capitalism and free enterprise), he is full of it. Venezuela has scarcely ever known a free economy, and in the several years prior to his rise to power was destroyed by politicians trying to deliver what the people obviously wanted, populist governmental control of the economy. Chavez isn’t new, he’s just the same thing in a higher dose.
The answer is “0-16, due to bad weather.”
The question is “how would the mainstream media have summarized the New England Patriot’s season had Hugo Chavez been the head coach?”
It won’t be long, now. Chavez will start a war and commit atrocities and mass murder within his own country in order to cling to power. They never learn.
It's sad that there are so many people who still fall for the Big Lie.
Most South American countries come with pre-wrecked economies. When people cannot be secure in the ownership of their property or their livlihoods, poverty, hopelessness and misery for the the vast majority is the result. Vide Mexico. Vide America with a Clinton presidency.
Bump!
Sheeple.
It’s time to help this guy to his ultimate reward.
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