How did Venezuela fall from prosperity so quickly? How did socialist policies affect the nation’s economy? Is there any hope for its future?

Jorge Galicia, a refugee from Venezuela and outreach fellow at The Fund for American Studies, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to answer these questions and describe what it was like to grow up in Venezuela.

Also on today’s show, we cover these stories:

—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls on the United Nations to remove Russia from its Security Council.
—Twitter offers entrepreneur Elon Musk a seat on its board of directors after he becomes the social media company’s largest shareholder.
—Individuals who live in Palm Springs, California, and identify as transgender or nonbinary are eligible to receive up to $900 a month.

Read the lightly edited transcript.

Virginia Allen: Two decades ago, Venezuela was a thriving country. Today, Freedom House ranks it not free and The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranks it 176, coming in just above North Korea. The question is, what happened in Venezuela? How did it get to this point? Well, here with us today to answer that question is a Venezuelan refugee and an outreach fellow at The Fund for American Studies, Jorge Galicia.

Jorge, thank you so much for being here.

Jorge Galicia: No, thank you, Virginia. Thank you for the invitation, it’s an honor.

Allen: I would love to begin by just asking you to share a little bit of your own background. You actually grew up in Venezuela. What do you remember from living there? What was your childhood like in Venezuela?

Galicia: Yeah, that’s a good question. I only arrived here to the [United] States like three years ago. So almost my entire life, I spent it there in Venezuela. I experienced the whole transition.

When I was a child, my childhood in Venezuela was pretty normal, pretty happy, to be honest. I grew up having the latest versions of my favorite video games, good birthday parties every year when I was a child. I could say I had a regular middle-class life when I was a child in Venezuela.

But then in the year 2014, probably that’s the year when we saw this huge transition in my life, that things totally change. I started to see a lot of different problems in Venezuela.

For example, in my house, we stopped having constant water supply; scarcity of food, you needed to do huge lines to get just a piece of bread; electricity started to fail constantly; internet connection started to fail constantly. Every single aspect of life, of living in Venezuela, started to decline.

I went from being a happy kid of a middle-class family to being basically poor. At some point I even stopped eating as much as I was used to eating because we didn’t have enough money to afford a lot of food. The scarcity in Venezuela was that big that it was really hard at some point to get what you’re required.

In the year 2017, I actually stopped eating meat for a long period of time. We substitute it with grains and other different stuff that we could afford. But meat, all kind of meat, was unavailable for me for that whole year.

Allen: Prior to 2014, you had never experienced hunger or your family really struggling to make ends meet?

Galicia: No, yeah. Before that year, honestly, neither me or my family imagined that something like that could ever happen to us because, as I said, we had a pretty decent life. We had our problems, as everybody else, but no, no, we had a good house and my mom’s income was pretty good.

I was a kid, but we never struggled that much until 2014. After this year, this is when the crisis actually hit us. Because I believe even before that year a lot of people were already suffering, but in our case, this was the year when everything went south. Yes, I went from being a happy middle-class boy to being poor, basically.

Allen: Take us back. What was happening in Venezuela at that time in the early 2000s? As you got into 2012, ’13, ’14, what was going on in your country?

Galicia: Yeah, well, 2014 for me was the year of the collapse, but the reason of that was happening decades ago when Hugo Chavez actually took power.

When he was in power, he managed to confiscate thousands of private industries within Venezuela. He confiscated the industry … that used to provide water, he confiscated the industry that used to provide electricity for Venezuela, and stuff like that. He did [that] during all these years before.

A lot of people actually saw this coming, it was no surprise for a lot of people. But, well, the consequences of this politics didn’t arrive, at least for my family, until 2014.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing with The Fund for American Studies, with TFAS. I’ve been traveling to college campuses to give a historical review and to give an answer to that question of how Venezuela became what it is today. How did we go from being one of the richest places on earth, basically, to one of the poorest nowadays?

Yeah, this is thanks to socialist policies promoted by Hugo Chavez, but not only by Hugo Chavez, because before Hugh Chavez we started to play a little bit with these socialist policies.

This is something that the American audience needs to also understand, because a lot of progressive people here say something like, “No, we want to do democratic socialism. We don’t want to do the kind of authoritarian socialism Hugo Chavez did.”

But, well, guess what? In Venezuela, at least in ’75, this is when the oil industry in Venezuela was nationalized, this was our major first step into socialism that we ever gave and this was under a vibrant democracy.

This was already democratic socialism somehow. This move already paved the way to what we have today. It is not accurate to say that the decline in Venezuela started with Hugo Chavez. It started, actually, decades before.

Allen: What were the promises that Chavez and the other government officials were making to the Venezuelan people?

Galicia: Well, the main promise, I would say, was equality for all Venezuelans. He promised that everybody could have exactly the same results in life, which is unnatural, of course.

His campaigns were fueled by creating hatred against the rich class, the top 1%. He made them believe that the reason why they were poor was because there was this rich sector of the society that was taking advantage of them. A lot of people, unfortunately, believed this message, so he created a lot of divisions within the country.

So yes, he said that by confiscating private properties and private businesses of these top 1%, Venezuelans were somehow going to improve their life. Of course, this was never the case.

Allen: As things started to decline, what were you experiencing on a day-to-day basis in Venezuela? Were you ever fearful for your own safety? Were your friends fearful? What were the conversations like that you were having with friends and family in the country as things were declining?

Galicia: Yeah, no. Of course, when this happened, I was still a teenager, but me and my family did see where the country was heading to. I was extremely worried, even despite the fact that I was a teenager. I was so worried about my future.

Actually, that’s the reason why, in the year 2014, when I started to experience all of this chaos around my life and I started to see the decline of my quality, this is the year when I actually decided to step in and go into political activism.

I joined the student movement of my university and I also joined a political party named Vente Venezuela, which is a classical liberal political party, because I knew that the reason why my life was not doing so good was because of all of these socialist policies.

I decided to step in and try to fight again for recovering our democracy, recovering our republic, our freedoms, because Venezuela, even though it wasn’t perfect, we used to have a much better country and I wanted that to be the case again.

But yes, because I saw all of these declines in my lifestyle, I decided to step in. This actually brought me also some consequences, because as you know, we have a dictatorship there. [Venezuelan dictator Nicolas] Maduro does not tolerate really well dissidence. And well, in the year 2017, I got in trouble with police because of my activism.

Actually, one of my best friends, I don’t know, I cannot say his name for security reasons, but he was captured by police. In the middle of the night, they broke into his house without a warrant, without any kind of legality or due process, and they took him away.

When this happened, I panicked because he and I were part of the same team. I knew that if the police knew about his location, they probably knew about mine as well so I needed to disappear. I went into hiding, I spent a long period of time hiding at some religious place in Venezuela. It was a pretty dramatic situation in my life. Again, this is all thanks to all of the consequences that we suffered because of implementing these policies.

Allen: Do you know what happened to your friend?

Galicia: Oh, yeah. Well, after three months, my friend was, thankfully, thanks God, released from prison. He spent almost three months in prison. Later, when he was released, he was under probation. He needed to go to court every eight days to sign some crazy paper.

But then, I think two years after those events, he managed to escape the country. He escaped through the border to Colombia and now he’s living a good life, I would say, in Uruguay, in South America. I’m happy for him that he’s already free.

Allen: Yeah.

Galicia: Yeah.

Allen: Oh, it’s good to hear that he’s safe. What was your journey to America? How did you ultimately come to the [United] States and what was that journey like?

Galicia: After my friend was released, people need to understand that in this year, 2017, there were millions of people in the streets of Venezuela protesting and demanding freedom.

Even though I was, of course, persecuted—and my friend actually confirmed to me when we managed to meet again, after these events, that the police did ask, my name did show up in the so-called investigations.

But after he was released, I just decided to resume my ordinary life in Venezuela because there were millions of people doing exactly the same. I knew I was never a high-profile leader or something like that, so the police never spent a lot of time just looking for one guy when there were millions on the streets of Venezuela doing exactly the same.

However, I did decide to stay away from all of the activism because I really didn’t want to go through the same all over again, especially because I was worried about my family, especially my mom. She’s really overprotective and she almost lost her mind during this period of time.

But, well, thanks to this decision in the year 2018, I managed to finish my law degree in Venezuela. After that, I applied to participate in a leadership program named Project Arizona, which is a project being held at Arizona State University. Thanks God, I was selected to do that. Well, thanks to this, I was able to leave Venezuela and come here.

I was actually supposed to go back to Venezuela, but in the year 2019, thanks to the appearance and the ascension of Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela, everybody was talking about Venezuela during this year, it’s a little bit similar to what’s going on right now with Ukraine.

I started to receive also a lot of attention in Arizona, media invitations to speak about what’s going on, the students groups at ASU wanted to know more, so I resumed my activism while I was here in the states. I know for a fact that if I return to Venezuela under these circumstances my life is going to be in danger and I decided to claim asylum.

Allen: Is your family still in Venezuela?

Galicia: Half of them are. Yeah, my mom is still there, my grandma, my cousins, my uncle. Yeah, half of them are. My dad and sisters, they live here in Miami, but my mom, my grandma, almost everybody else is still there.

Allen: OK. As you travel around and speak to college students on campuses and various locations, what is your response to young people, or really any American, who might say, “Well, but what happened in Venezuela isn’t representative of socialism in its pure form. You can’t really claim that’s socialism”? What do you say to that?

Galicia: Well, I believe that what’s going on in Venezuela is the most pure version of socialism we have, well, probably surpassed by Cuba, of course, but in our Western Hemisphere, I don’t think we have seen a better example of socialism than the one we saw in Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez literally confiscated thousands of private industries within Venezuela. Well, even before Hugo Chavez, we nationalized our oil industry, it is almost completely operated by the state.

You have to understand that more than 90% of our revenues as a country come from the oil industry, so the government was already controlling more than 90% of all of our revenue as a nation.

Yes, Venezuela is a really good example of socialism and it is a really good example to explain why socialism actually doesn’t work.

A lot of people like to talk about, I don’t know, Norway or Sweden, but these are not actual examples of socialists. Actually, you have free market principles operating in the economies of all of these great countries. Even they actually have sometime freer economies than the United States itself at some cases.

It is not true to say that Venezuela is not a real example of socialism, I’m sorry, but Hugo Chavez claimed to be a socialist and everything he did was inspired by the Marxist doctrine, and now we’re paying the consequences.

Allen: What is the end goal of socialism?

Galicia: Well, that depends on who you ask. A lot of people who actually believe in this doctrine might say that they want to create a much equalitarian society. But I am not entirely convinced that people, especially politicians, that promote this doctrine actually believe in this.

I believe that many of these people, what they really want to is to control society, to gain unlimited power, and to gain just status and position. I believe this is all they want.

Because, look, in Venezuela, do you believe that this chaos was because of failure because they didn’t know what they were doing? I don’t think you can. How [can] you manage to fail that constantly every single year and get these horrible results?

If you really have good intentions, at some point you might say, like, “Hey, I think we’re doing something wrong. We better change this or that,” but no, they just went further into the system. I think their goal was actually to make us poorer so they can control society easier.

For example, in the year 2017, we had this problem because we were inviting society to join protesters, to join the demonstrations, but the problem is the majority of Venezuelans were so miserable, so poor, that they couldn’t afford to spend a single day in going into a demonstration against the government or doing any kind of activism, because they needed to spend that day doing a huge line to get, I don’t know, a piece of bread.

Or sometimes if the regime finds out that you are supporting demonstrations, they are going to stop delivering, I don’t know, some medicine or something. I mean, they make you dependent on government, so they can control you.

I feel like this was the end goal of Maduro and Hugo Chavez, at the end, they wanted to control us in the easiest way possible.

Allen: Do you ever worry that what you saw happen so rapidly in Venezuela could happen in other Western countries, even in the United States?

Galicia: Yeah. This is what I talk about in these presentations that I’m giving. It’s not like I feel like the United States is condemned to be exactly like Venezuela, but I do see a lot of similarities.

The biggest one I find is the levels of spending here in America and how hard it is for this country to actually try to bring back fiscal responsibility, to try to eventually balance the budget. I feel in Venezuela we struggle a lot with this same issue, especially during ’75.

In ’75, this is when the oil industry was nationalized, Venezuela started to receive a bunch of new resources. I mean, the government had started to receive a bunch of new resources because of the nationalization. They started to spend like crazy, creating social programs, subsidies, all kinds of different stuff—free college for everybody, health care free for everybody.

I mean, at some point Venezuela was called “Venezuela Saudi” for all of the revenue and all of the expenses that we were having during this time.

Well, during these five years, ’75 until the ’80s, Venezuelans were used to this idea of living out of government assistance. But then when we started to see a decline in the oil prices, … this is when our problems began, because the government didn’t find a way to stop spending as much as they were used to.

They started to bring money out of nowhere, borrow more money out of the international market, raise taxes. The vibrant Venezuela economy that we used to have basically came to an end and started to decline during the ’80s.

Again, what we’re seeing right now in Venezuela is just a continuation process from the ’80s until today, because we never found a way to actually say we cannot afford this living anymore, because it was politically not viable to just cut spending.

Actually, at some point in ’89, Carlos Andrés Pérez, a president of Venezuela, he did try to make some reforms that were actually pointing in the good direction. He tried to cut a lot of the subsidies and reduce a lot of the social programs, but the backlash from the population was so big that thousands of Venezuelans went to the street to protest, to rally against the government, to loot private businesses.

The chaos was so big that even the police was participating with looters, so the government was forced to send military forces and a lot of people died. It was a really horrible scenario. Again, this is all because people really got used to this idea of just extending the hand and receiving something out of government.

I’m fearful that something like that might be already happening here. We hear a lot of Republicans complaining about the levels of the spending and the deficit and that’s OK, but whenever they reach power, they realize that, well, it is not that simple just to start cutting things here and there because when they control the federal government, the spending keeps rising, the deficit keeps rising.

I don’t know, I’m fearful that we might be already in that point where this is just a snowball that we can no longer stop and when is going to be the end, right?

Allen: Yeah. What do you think of President Joe Biden’s approach to the Maduro regime?

Galicia: Well, I’m extremely worried about that situation. Venezuelans were really hopeful about seeing some sort of liberation process under the Trump administration. All of the sanctions we saw, all of the diplomatic pressure we saw, actually, we saw some minor results.

Some members of the regime abandoned Maduro, some members of the military also abandoned Maduro. Of course, it was not near enough, but we were experiencing change, some kind of changes within Venezuela.

But now it feels like all of the is hard rhetoric against the dictatorship in Venezuela is now completely gone. We don’t see the same pressure that we were seeing before under the Trump administration.

Now, all of these talks that we are seeing between Washington and Caracas to try to lift sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry is something that completely, if that ever happens, my heart is going to be broken, because I know that we’re not going to get rid of Maduro anytime soon without American support. If he starts … receiving revenue coming from these oil industries, he’s going to be, again, stronger than ever.

This money is not going to go to, I don’t know, to regular Venezuelans to help them improve their ordinary life. This is just going to go to the military to acquire new equipment, to make it easier to repress society even further. …

I’m deeply concerned. I mean, I hope that we don’t see any kind of new deal within the American states and the Venezuela dictatorship, because I feel that’s going to be the end for our cause.

My dream is to return to Venezuela. Even though I love America, I love all of the experiences I having right here in this beautiful country, I don’t feel yet like this is actually my home. My home is still there in Venezuela and I want to be able to eventually return. I don’t feel like I’m heading to a situation where that’s going to be possible with this new administration.

Allen: Hmm. How can we follow your work, Jorge? You are on the forefront of this issue and we want to keep up with what you’re doing.

Galicia: Well, yeah, you can always follow me on social media. That’s going to be @jorgegalicia95 on Twitter and Instagram.

Listen, if you have a request, if you are in need of some speaker to speak about these very same issues, I’m available. This is my work with The Fund for American Studies. They are going to send me whenever I’m requested, basically for free. They’re going to cover all the expenses of my travel and fees or whatever. All you need to do is find me an audience and a good place to speak and a projector, stuff like this, and that’s going to be it.

I’m more than happy to contribute with debate whenever you need me. Of course, I usually speak at colleges, but I could speak anywhere where [this] kind of message is needed. So, yeah.

Allen: Excellent. Jorge, thank you so much for your time, we truly appreciate it.

Galicia: Yeah. Thank you, Virginia. It was an honor.

Source: https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/06/how-socialist-policies-destroyed-his-home-country-of-venezuela/

The post How Socialist Policies Destroyed His Home Country of Venezuela first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A worker of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA waves an Iranian flag as the Iranian-flagged oil tanker Fortune docks at the El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello, in the northern state of Carabobo, Venezuela. AFP

Workers on the ‘Fortune’ the Iranian ship with gasoline in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. EPA

Iranian-flagged oil tanker Fortune docked at the El Palito refinery after its arrival to Puerto Cabello, in the northern state of Carabobo, Venezuela. AFP

The Venezuelan industry minister Tareck El Aissami (C), speaks next to Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino(R) after the Iranian oil tanker Fortune docked at the El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello, in the northern state of Carabobo, Venezuela. AFP

Venezuelan authorities celebrated on Monday as the first of five Iranian tankers loaded with petrol docked in the South American country, delivering badly needed fuel to the crisis-stricken country that has the world’s largest oil reserves.

The petrol shipments are arriving in defiance of stiff sanctions by the Trump administration against both countries, and they mark a new era in the burgeoning relationship between Venezuela and Iran, which is expanding its footprint in the Western Hemisphere.

“We keep moving forward and winning,” Venezuela’s Minister of Energy Tareck El Aissami said on Twitter.

State TV played images of the ship pulling through Caribbean waters as Venezuelan fighter jets flew overhead. Mr. El Aissami posted photographs on his Twitter account of the sun rising over the tanker docked at El Palito refinery.

Washington says Iran and Venezuela are run by repressive regimes. It recently announced a $15 million reward for President Nicolas Maduro’s arrest on drug smuggling charges in a “maximum pressure” campaign against the socialist leader.

The US recognizes opposition politician Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader in a coalition of nearly 60 nations, which consider Mr. Maduro’s election a fraud because his most popular rivals were banned from running.

In a sign of rising tension inside Venezuela, the chief prosecutor on Monday asked the pro-Maduro Supreme Court to decide whether Mr. Guaido’s political party Popular Will should be designated a terrorist organization.

“Confronted with the impossibility of obtaining power through votes, Popular Will has turned to violence,” Attorney General Tarek William Saab said, accusing the party of hiring “mercenaries” who carried out a recently failed incursion, among other alleged acts. Mr. Maduro’s advisers had dealt with the man leading the attempt, though Mr. Guaido himself denied any involvement.

The first Iranian ship to arrive, the Fortune, is trailed by four other tankers expected to arrive in the next few days. The shipments, however, only carry enough fuel for two or three weeks, analysts say.

Russ Dallen, head of the Miami investment firm Caracas Capital Markets, said the Iranian shipments were anything but a victory for Venezuelans. The first tanker carries an estimated 11 million gallons of petrol to a nation with roughly 5 million cars, he said.

“Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, is now reduced to importing millions of gallons of gasoline from another failed pariah state halfway around the world,” Mr. Dallen said.

Venezuela also has one of the world’s largest refineries, which has fallen to disrepair. The country produces a fraction of oil it did when Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, rose to power two decades ago and launched Venezuela’s socialist revolution.

Critics blame corruption and mismanagement amid an economic crisis that has led to huge migration by Venezuelans seeking to escape poverty, shortages of basic goods, and crime.

Deep petrol shortages have plagued Venezuela for years, though the problem had until recently largely spared the capital of Caracas.

Despite Washington’s objections, the first ship arrived with no interference from US ships patrolling the Caribbean on what officials call a drug interdiction mission.

Mr. Maduro on Sunday expressed gratitude to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ai Khamenei and the Iranian people from “the bottom of my heart”. He said Iran and Venezuela have a right just like any other nations in the world to engage in trade.

We are “two rebel nations, two revolutionary nations that will never kneel down before US imperialism,” Mr. Maduro said. “Venezuela has friends in this world and brave friends at that”.

Source: https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/venezuela-celebrates-arrival-of-iranian-petrol-tanker-1.1024804

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Thanks to subsidies under socialist former President Hugo Chavez and his successor and protege, Nicolas Maduro, gasoline sold by state oil company PDVSA – which has a legal monopoly on fuel sales – is essentially free in Venezuela.

Motorists offer pump workers tips of snacks or a few hundred bolivares – under 10 U.S. cents – instead of payment.

But the country’s 1.3 million barrel-per-day refining network has all but collapsed, and U.S. sanctions aimed at ousting Maduro have complicated fuel imports, prompting Venezuelans to either wait hours outside gas stations or turn to the pricey black market.

Octavio Salom, 53, said he and fellow kidney patients in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz bought 20 liters of gasoline at $2 per liter for the nurses that provide their dialysis treatment to take a taxi to the clinic.

“They told us that if we could not secure transport, they could not give us dialysis,” Salom said.

In the western city of Maracaibo, black market dealers are offering to deliver 20 liters of gasoline for $50, according to a Reuters witness. In some areas, Venezuelans have reported paying up to $4 per liter.

That was above pump prices in Hong Kong, which surveys show has the world’s most expensive gasoline. Unleaded gasoline at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) stations in the city sold for $2.15 per liter as of Thursday, the company’s website here showed.

“Now we need to do sketchy deals to be able to get what is ours, gasoline,” said Maria Ines Urdaneta, a university professor in Maracaibo who always keeps a full tank in case her asthmatic son has an attack.

“As a single mother, I need to go negotiate with some guy who bleeds my wallet dry of dollars just to get gasoline.”

Venezuela’s spike comes as pump prices elsewhere are plunging due to falling demand amid the coronavirus outbreak. In the United States, prices averaged $0.48 per liter ($1.81 per gallon) in the week ended April 20, according to the Energy Information Administration.

PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment.

Venezuela’s government is seeking to repair refineries, and this week received refining material from Iran.

The post Venezuela’s gasoline goes from world’s cheapest to steepest first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Photo by: Leah Millis – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido waves as President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020. (Leah Millis/Pool via AP)

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Bipartisanship was in short supply at last week’s State of the Union address — with one notable exception.

Nancy Pelosi had been looking dyspeptic, shuffling the papers she would later rip to shreds when President Trump reminded his audience that “the United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.”

Suddenly, the House speaker applauded. Mr. Trump then introduced “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela: Juan Guaido.” Mrs. Pelosi rose from her chair, smiled and put her hands together for the tall, dark and handsome Latin American in the House gallery. When Mr. Trump said, “All Americans are united with Venezuelans in their righteous struggle for freedom!” she again stood up and clapped.

I wondered: Was Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator and perhaps leading candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, applauding, too? Or was he sitting on his hands and scowling? It turns out he was in New Hampshire, viewing the event on television.

However, Keane Bhatt, one of his policy advisers, tweeted: “There is no better distillation of Washington, D.C. than a State of the Union in which Nancy Pelosi-having just led the impeachment of Donald ‘All Roads Lead to Putin’ Trump-twice joins in a rousing standing ovation of Juan Guaido, Trump’s appointed ‘president’ of Venezuela.”

There’s more. A year ago, Mr. Sanders told Univision’s Jorge Ramos that he didn’t recognize Mr. Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Asked whether he regarded Nicolas Maduro as a dictator, he refused to say. That prompted Rep. Donna Shalala, a Miami Democrat, to charge that Mr. Sanders “has demonstrated again that he does not understand this situation.”

On the campaign trail, the Brooklyn-born Vermonter likes to say he’s a Scandinavian-style socialist. But in 2003, he signed a letter in support of Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, a self-proclaimed Marxist and comrade of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, whom Mr. Sanders also has praised. He’s called Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s far-left leader, “an impressive guy.” And of course, in 1988, newlyweds Bernie and Jane honeymooned in the Soviet Union.

Want to guess which candidate Mr. Maduro is rooting for?

Let me remind you of Venezuela’s riches-to-rags story. Though the country possesses the world’s largest oil reserves, over recent years 90 percent of the population has fallen into abject poverty. Millions of Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries, burdening those economies.

The nation’s descent began during the 11-year rule of Hugo Chavez. He died of cancer in 2013, having designated Mr. Maduro as his successor.

On Jan. 10, 2019, following an election widely viewed as neither free nor fair. Mr. Maduro has sworn in again. The Organization of American States promptly declared his presidency illegitimate. Venezuela’s National Assembly invoked a state of emergency and, on Jan. 23, Mr. Guaido was declared acting president.

The United States, Canada, Brazil and dozens of other countries are behind him. But a Cuban-Russian axis, also including Iran, China, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Syria, supports Mr. Maduro. Oh, by the way: The U.N. sides with the authoritarian bloc. U.S. tax dollars at work.

Trump administration efforts to bring about regime change in Venezuela have been principled, persistent and, so far, ineffective.

Russia controls roughly 70 percent of Venezuela’s oil production, profiting to the tune of $2 billion last year, according to estimates I regard as reliable.

No fewer than 25,000 Cubans reside in Venezuela. Some are teachers and doctors but others advise and guard Mr. Maduro. Still, others are spies and de facto commissars within the country’s bureaucracies, military units and intelligence agencies.

Also playing an especially nefarious role — the Islamic Republic of Iran. Research conducted by Emanuele Ottolenghi, my colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reveals that the Maduro regime makes passports and travel documents available to Iranian agents.

Tehran’s regional propaganda headquarters is in Caracas. The two regimes collaborate in a disinformation war against the United States. Their Spanish-language television networks, Hispan TV and Telesur, respectively, share journalists across Latin America.

Hezbollah, a proxy of the clerical regime, is firmly ensconced within Venezuela’s large (about 200,000) Lebanese Shia community. “Simply put,” Mr. Ottolenghi notes, “Maduro and his cronies use the trappings of a sovereign state to run a criminal syndicate involved in pillaging state resources and taking commissions from organized crime to use Venezuela as a staging ground for their global smuggling operations.”

He adds: “Hezbollah supporters, concentrated in several areas of Venezuela and along the Venezuela/Colombia border, have, over the years, lent their businesses to trade-based money-laundering schemes designed to repatriate drug money for the cartels — minus a hefty commission for Hezbollah.”

The day after the State of the Union, President Trump met with Mr. Guaido to discuss how “to expedite a democratic transition in Venezuela that will end the ongoing crisis,” according to a White House press statement.

I’d argue that will require additional sanctions, not just on the Maduro regime but also and especially on Russia which is violating the Monroe Doctrine — President James Monroe’s 1823 warning to Europe that further imperialism in the Western Hemisphere would not be tolerated.

Of course, in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry announced: “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.” What he probably meant was that the Obama administration had no wish to dominate the Americas.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian neo-czar toward whom Mr. Bhatt believes Mr. Trump is too solicitous, may have interpreted Mr. Kerry’s words differently: As an invitation to exploit U.S. neighbors — an invitation he and others have been only too pleased to accept.

• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for The Washington Times.

Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/11/president-trump-finds-bipartisan-support-for-a-pro/

The post Trump finds bipartisan support for a pro-U.S. Venezuelan leader Guaido first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Supporters of socialism have taken to suggesting that the human tragedy unfolding in Venezuela has nothing to do with socialism, rather it’s the result of the dictatorships of former President Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro. In their view, dictatorships lead to the deprivation we’re witnessing, not socialism. They’re confusing types of government and economic theories.

Dictatorships or authoritarian regimes don’t always lead to economic misery. We only have to look to Venezuela’s south to see that’s true. Chile was under a dictatorship for 17 years, yet President Pinochet pursued free market economic policies that, in spite of the (inexcusable) tyranny and unchecked power, lifted huge numbers of Chileans out of poverty, the exact opposite of what is taking place under Maduro.

Socialism does inevitably lead to what we’re seeing in Venezuela. It is an economic theory characterized by the government owning and operating the means of production. Chavez followed the playbook of a socialist economy to the letter. Socialism came first; his dictatorship came second. He referred to it as a socialist revolution and drew parallels with it to the liberation struggle of Simon Bolivar, even renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. His political party was named the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. His government nationalized businesses, including foreign owned companies. It also shut down private businesses, most notably media companies that were critical of his agenda.

Some supporters of socialism suggest that Venezuela’s plight is the result of low oil prices. If oil were the root cause, why don’t we see the same poverty and economic strife in other countries that are as dependent or even more dependent on oil than Venezuela? The real problem with Venezuelan oil is not its price, but socialism.

PdVSA, the state oil company, used to be reasonably well run prior to Chavez’s socialist revolution. People were hired based on talent and skills and the government operated it in a relatively hands-off fashion. After socialism, the inevitable happened. Economic policies led to overall higher unemployment and scarcity, and political cronies wanted jobs for themselves or their family members. Families of opposition party members and others were kicked out of PdVSA and the politically connected, but not talented, replaced them. This accelerated following a strike by managers and employees who wanted an election, concerned about Chavez’s heavy-handed rule. In 2003, 19,000 were dismissed and replaced by loyal party members.

Productivity at PdVSA has tanked as a result and its productivity is a fraction of what it used to be. In 1998, a year before Chavez was elected, it produced 3.4 million barrels a day. In May last year, it barely produced 1.5 million barrels in the entire month. Chavez’s socialism lowered its productivity to a level not seen since the 1950s. Worse still, over many years Venezuela has given away huge amounts of oil to Cuba, helping prop up the Castro regime, but not the citizens of Venezuela.

Socialism’s apologists will tell you that while they don’t support authoritarian socialism, democratic socialism is a good thing and doesn’t lead to what we’re witnessing in Venezuela. I lived under democratic socialism in New Zealand and the results were not good.

Here are just a few examples of what this economic theory wrought on the country. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, the government simply banned people from driving on certain days to reduce petrol consumption. When product innovations in margarine were made in the mid-1900s, the government, to protect dairy farmers, required you to obtain a prescription for it from your doctor. New Zealand only had two television channels until the mid-1980s and both were state run – this is straight out of the Venezuela playbook, which as noted has shut down many media companies and largely controls what remains.

Fortunately, an economic crisis in 1984 brought on from decades of socialist policies resulted in a new government in New Zealand. Some inspired leaders from its left-wing Labour Party reversed course and pursued more free market policies. (I delivered a detailed speech on this subject last year.)

Supporters of democratic socialism often point to “the Nordic countries “, but there too the story is very similar to that of New Zealand. Sweden went further than most other Nordic countries with its socialist experiment, but it too reversed course around the time of New Zealand’s reforms. There are similar crazy things its government did, in line with the examples above from New Zealand. But the story of Sweden’s success has not been a socialist tale, rather it’s a free market one. The country’s school voucher system is straight out of Milton Friedman’s playbook. Sweden’s healthcare reforms took it away from a failing government run system to one with significant private sector involvement. Its government has partially privatized its postal service and privatized or sold its stakes in dozens of other businesses.

Recalling that socialism is characterized by government ownership and operation of the means of production, Sweden has self-evidently moved away from this failed economic system in a big way. The same is true of other Nordic countries. Denmark has also adopted a popular school voucher system. And the governments of Denmark, Finland and Norway privatized or sold stakes in dozens of businesses in recent decades. Their relatively strong economies are not a result of their socialist history, but in spite of it. Lest there be any confusion, in 2015 Denmark’s current prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, went so far as to say:

I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.

Socialism is failing Venezuela just as it failed the Nordic countries, New Zealand and every other country that has attempted it. Kaitlin Bennet (@KaitMeriox) summed it up well on Twitter last month:

Source: http://nkerr.com/socialisms-apologists-ignore-venezuelas-human-tragedy/

The post Socialism’s apologists ignore Venezuela’s human tragedy first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.