The Left Loses a Friend

Hugo Chávez died March 5 – ironically on the same date that Joseph Stalin died 60 years ago. The two had similar genes in life and are probably comparing notes in the after-life on how they wrecked lives and national economies.

Hearing that Chávez had shaken off his mortal coil, however, the American Left went into a deep funk.

Jimmy Carter, cheerleader of anti-American sentiments around the world, released a statement of condolences to the family of Hugo Chavéz, who like Hugo won’t live long enough to spend the $2 billion that he stole from the Venezuela’s coffers. “We met Hugo Chávez when he was campaigning for president in 1998 and The Carter Center was invited to observe elections for the first time in Venezuela.  We returned often, for the 2000 elections, and then to facilitate dialogue during the political conflict of 2002-2004.”

Ah, yes. Chávez had a unique campaigning style. He shredded the country’s constitution in order to keep himself in office for life, he limited his opponents campaigning for the office of President to three minutes of air time per day whereas he could disrupt regularly scheduled programming at any time to harangue on air for hours. Opponents who “slandered” him in their campaigning would find themselves in prison. It was the kind of electioneering that only Carter could love. The “political conflict of 2002-2004” was a coup attempt to overthrow him.

Sean Penn opined that, “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have.” How quaint. Two years ago Penn said that anyone calling Chávez a dictator should be arrested. So much for free speech. In other words, Sean, you have the right to make stupid statements but deny Venezuelans the same right?

"He used the [money from] oil to eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free healthcare, [and] education [for] all," tweeted filmmaker Michael Moore. Ssooo, Michael, if I rob a bank and give the money to the poor, should I go to jail? You conveniently ignore that neither the oil nor the money from its sale was his to do with what he wished – which further proves that he was a dictator not a constitutional President.

Roseanne Barr tweeted her eulogy to the world assuming someone other than herself was interested in it: “ruling classes hated Hugo Chavéz. RIP.” Huh? Did Chávez answer to anyone? I didn’t think so. That makes him “ruling class.”

"His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere," said US Representative Jose Serrano, a Bronx Democrat, will be "a better life for the poor and downtrodden." Well, tell that to the poor and downtrodden, Jose. They’re still poor and downtrodden.

Last but not least … Oliver Stone, the man who believes the Soviet blockade of Berlin (June 1948 to May 1949) never happened. Someone tell my uncle who flew the airlift for a year to keep West Berlin from freezing and starving.  “I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place,” said Stone. “Hated by the entrenched classes … My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned.” Well, they weren’t that entrenched, Ollie. The ones I personally know had to abandon their assets and flee for their lives, including half the Jews who were citizens of Venezuela.

These encomiums would be laughable if they weren’t so pathetic. Lenin called enablers like these “useful idiots” whom he cynically used while despising their naiveté. Similarly, the real Chávez was not the saintly liberal his “useful idiots” believed he was.

A graduate of the national military academy, Chávez engineered and incompetently executed a coup attempt against the corrupt government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992 for which he was imprisoned two years. The presidential successor to Andrés Pérez, Rafael Caldera, released him from prison with the understanding that Chávez would not return to the military where he might launch another coup attempt. Therefore Chávez traveled around the country preaching a populist brand of Bolivarism – so-called after Simon Bolivar, an early 19^th century Venezuelan hero who liberated his country from the Spanish Empire as well as freed the countries of Colombia, Peru, Panama, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Bolivar hoped to recreate a version of the American Revolution that would draw these countries into a confederacy which he would govern as president. When that failed, he declared himself a dictator.  

Likewise, Chávez hoped to create a socialist United States of South America, which he would presumably govern as supreme leader. As he traveled about Venezuela and Latin America, his popularity rose among the Venezuelan poor and people in other countries in the region. His revolutionary radicalism caught the attention of Fidel Castro who saw him as a potential protégé for spreading communism throughout the region. With his election as President in 1998, Chávez renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In the swearing in ceremony, he refused to repeat the prescribed words of the oath of office, substituting "I swear before my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times," – code words for “I plan to trash this constitution and write one to my own liking.” He did and he became president for life.

Once in office, Chávez raised the kleptocracy of previous regimes to a new high.

As other charismatic demagogues peddling socialist policies have done, Chávez promoted class hatred. Then, using his keen oratorical skills, he leveraged his Bolivarian vision of hope to establish himself as a messiah to the majority of Venezuelans, notably the poor who had everything to gain and little to lose. He silenced the free press. Venezuelans got indoctrination instead of objective news.

All of these moves enabled Chávez  to steal the Venezuelan crown jewel – the oil industry – which he used to buy influence throughout the region by giving (either by outright gift or under-priced) billions of dollars’ worth of oil to Cuba, Nicaragua and others. His oil gifts helped populists in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador join him to push a trade bloc that excluded the hated US.

During the 14 years that Chávez was in power, the world and Venezuela enjoyed a fortuitous rise in oil prices that brought an estimated $1 trillion into the Venezuelan economy. Where did it go? The Venezuelan economy should have boomed. The growth rates of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru averaged 3% to 5% during the time Chávez held office. Venezuela averaged only 2.8%. Every member of OPEC out-performed Venezuelan growth, even Iraq.

The Criminal Justice International Associates believes that Cuba has been receiving about $5 billion per year from Venezuela in money payments, oil shipments, and other resources. According to Jerry Brewer, president of CJIA, “the personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion. The Chávez family in Venezuela has amassed a fortune of a similar scale since the arrival of Chávez to the presidency in 1999. We believe that organized Bolivarian criminal groups within the Chávez administration have subtracted around $100 billion out of the nearly $1 trillion in oil income made by Venezuelan state oil since 1999”

Chávez fired 19,000 well-trained employees who ran the national oil infrastructure and replaced them with his cronies, turning the industry into his personal cash cow. Rather than reinvesting in infrastructure maintenance, the oil system has essentially been stripped for parts. It has never recovered from the Chávez management regime. Production during his control of it fell almost 30% to 2.3 million barrels per day. Most of the wealth it produced can’t be accounted for. Some was used to buy reelection votes by giving cash handouts, state-run grocery stores, and other wasteful and ineffective social programs that superficially improved poverty rates, albeit at a high social cost.

Even as he was grabbing the national oil industry, Chávez turned his lustful gaze to privately-owned land, most of which was efficiently employed in food and cattle production by owners who knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, many of the landowners were rich by national standards, making them Public Enemy No. 1.

Chávez began seizing private farms, ranches, and land as part of his wealth redistribution scheme. He justified his theft by appealing to fairness. "Let's not forget that Bolivar has also a deep passion for justice and equality. There was no better way to honor his memory than taking over 47 large estates …” he said on the occasion of one expropriation. There were many more.

In a television appearance, Chávez said, "To those who own the land, this land is not yours. The land is not private … [it is] the property of the nation." Hmm. Sounds like an American president who claimed business owners didn’t create their businesses – the government and others did.

According to the International Property Rights Index, Venezuela under Chávez ranks 121 among 125 economies in terms of property rights protection. Predictably the disenfranchised owners have left the country, poorer for sure, but now employed in making the lands of freer countries more productive with their know-how.

The land theft program turned once productive crop farms and cattle ranches, which Chávez gave to the poor, into arid and unproductive lands because the poor are incompetent to manage them. El Commandante’s scheme to make Venezuelan food production self-sufficient has now made the country six times more dependent of foreign food imports than before he took office.

In addition to the three million acres of land that he stole, Chávez expropriated 1,600 private companies – some Venezuelan, some international. These included cement production owned by Mexico, supermarkets owned by France, glass making owned by an American company, steel, rice production and packaging, and many more. Capital fled the country, leaving Venezuela poorer. When Chávez imposed capital controls to prevent capital flight, assets had to be abandoned and those who could afford to flee – the intelligentsia, the real assets a country has – left. Those who remained are incapable of rebuilding the economy, if that ever happens.

As food scarcities appeared, price inflation in foods soared. Chávez responded like a true socialist. With no understanding of how markets work, he imposed production quotas and price controls. Private business owners who attempted to survive by selling products for more than they had to pay for them were called “saboteurs” and arrested. Forty butchers were arrested for selling beef above the government authorized price – about $4 (in bolivars) per kilo versus a $3 cost, which the butchers said didn’t allow them to cover their overhead and make a living at their trade.

Under orders from Chávez, who became frustrated that his communist model wasn’t working, agents stormed warehouses and seized allegedly hoarded food that wasn’t being sold at ridiculous prices. But the economic liberation so admired by Carter, Penn, Barr, and Stone has failed to fill the empty shelves of grocery stores. Supermarkets in downtown Caracas don’t have chicken, milk, cooking oil, beef, sugar, coffee, and cornmeal needed to make the national staple, arepas, which are corn cakes stuffed with chicken, meat, cheese, and other fillings.

Under Chávez the national currency has been devalued five times in the last decade. It lost 66% of its value in the last four years. Prices have risen 20-fold since he took over. Inflation has risen to 23% per year, making everything more expensive and hurting the poor more than anyone. The percentage of families living in poverty isn’t as large as before Chávez, but that’s not because they have been lifted up. Everyone has been pushed down.

Bridges and roads are in disrepair which makes internal commerce less efficient. The national electric power system was seized in 2007. Since then it has been so poorly maintained that blackouts several times per week are the norm.

And then there is Venezuela’s wretched education and healthcare system. In return for low-priced oil, Cuba provided Cuban doctors and nurses to help staff the Venezuelan healthcare system when it essentially collapsed as competent healthcare providers fled the country. Educators followed them. Cuba therefore supplied teachers to help indoctrinate the next generation of Venezuelans on the virtues of socialism. These Cubans were part of the Chávez “missions” programs for the poor. But the hospitals are nevertheless falling down and the quality of care is third world. While people may be better educated than they were, for what? The economy doesn’t produce enough jobs, and those that exist don’t pay an adequate income.

Cuba also flooded the country with intelligence and security agents who will spy on citizens and turn them into stool pigeons to spy on each other. It worked well in East Germany during the Cold War. Where do you think Cuba learned it?

A country in an economic straitjacket is a haven for crime. Crime was high during the corrupt regimes that preceded Chávez. But the murder rate has tripled since he arrived on the scene. Murders in Caracas make it the most dangerous city on earth. The country of Venezuela has more murders than the US and the European Union combined, despite having a population that is only 3.5% of the combined US and EU. Who suffers most from high criminal activity? The poor, of course.

Venezuela had every opportunity to be among the wealthiest countries in the world. It has one of the biggest recoverable oil reserves. It is among the top five oil suppliers to the US. It had a large educated and urban middle class. And then it elected a socialist who promised to transform the country, preached class envy, ignored the constitution, and destroyed the democratic institutions. His Chavista legacy probably can’t be undone.

After Chávez assumed room temperature, the Weekly Standard published one of many commentaries on his legacy. The author, a Venezuelan, recalled speaking to a poor Cuban, asking why he liked Chávez . He answered, “Because he looks like me, he sounds like me …”

Like the Chávez regime, the first Obama term caused considerable economic pain like no other administration except inept Jimmy Carter, who because of it, was denied a second term. Yet Obama won a second chance, as Chávez did, and did, and did – four terms in all and too sick to take the inaugural oath in the last one. Asked in exit polls which candidate “cares about people like me,” Obama was chosen 80% of the time versus Romney’s less than 20%.

Romney may have been patrician, but Obama is hardly warm and fuzzy. So did voters choose between the candidates or their politics – a choice between Left or Right?

My opinion: there’s little difference in the Venezuelan voter and the American. Every nation is corruptible if the makers are despised and the takers become the majority and dependent on government. We are a left-leaning nation now and proved it in 2012.

Maybe that’s worth a blog in the future.