Venezuela

Hugo Chavez Steals More Productive Sectors of the Venezuelan Economy

by Lee Doren on October 26, 2010

in Economy, International

CBS is reporting today that Hugo Chavez “ordered the expropriation of U.S.-based glass maker Owens-Illinois Inc.’s unit in the South American country.” This is just a fancy way of saying that Chavez stole another company. Moreover, Chavez isn’t too concerned that he is impoverishing his citizens and that Caracas is running out of milk and eggs.  If he was remotely concerned, he wouldn’t be nationalizing the entire country.

What is so depressing about all of this is that the American media largely ignores, or doesn’t understand, the economic ramifications of what Chavez is doing. For example, last month The New York Times printed a glowing article on Chavez’s new government-run coffee shops. Here are two relevant excerpts:

The planners behind the cafes have multiple objectives: to provide food and conviviality at democratic prices, to serve as commercial linchpins to renew some of the city’s most run-down districts and, not incidentally, to remind satisfied patrons of the government’s populist program in an election year.

Judging by the long lines that snake from the counter onto the sidewalk on most days, they are a hit.

The reporter doesn’t seem to understand that the long lines are due to the fact that Chavez instituted massive price controls on the coffee, using subsidies and government force at his disposal to undercut all private coffee shops. Moreover, the reporter laughably mentions the shortage of eggs and milk, but can’t seem to figure out that the price controls on those products are what caused the shortages in the first place:

The government’s entry into the restaurant business is part of its effort to alleviate shortages of basic foods like milk and eggs, which weighed heavily on voters in 2007, when Mr. Chávez lost a referendum about overhauling the Constitution, his only major electoral defeat since rising to power in 1998.

So here we have an example of the reporter supporting policies and programs based on good intentions rather than results.  However, I do not give Chavez the benefit of the doubt that he has good intentions behind what he is doing.  There is too much evidence that his policies are a recipe for disaster.   Instead, he will continue to accumulate power and the people will get poorer.  Eventually, violent force will be the only way to prevent Chavez’s democratic opposition, which  may have already started.

Link to photo.

LibertyWeek 92: FCC Power Grab

by Richard Morrison on May 10, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner team up with William Yeatman, Ryan Radia and Iain Murray, to bring you Episode 92 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on the prospects for cap-and-trade climate legislation, the FCC’s broadband power grab, tales from a hung parliament and an exciting new job opportunity in Venezuela.

LibertyWeek 77: The Future of the Senate

by Richard Morrison on January 19, 2010

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott and the American Spectator’s Joseph Lawler assemble to bring you Episode 77 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We explore the Massachusetts Senate race, Google vs. China on web censorship, the debate over global warming in Detroit, the cost of doing business in Venezuela and the inspiring philanthropic response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti.

Chavez (and Marx) a hit at Copenhagen

by Fran Smith on December 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, Personal Liberty

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez couldn’t resist another opportunity to bash capitalism — and the COP15 Copenhagen Conference on global warming gave him a perfect setup. Protesters against globalization, capitalism, energy use, and other aspects of modern life thronged in the streets, while in the conference center, leaders from rich nations that want to “level the playing field” for CO2 emissions and poor countries looking for massive handouts gave Chavez a warm response.

In his harangue posted on YouTube, Chavez hit the “group of countries who think they’re better than us” and that provide a “world imperial dictatorship.” He, of course, made reference and deference to his hero Karl Marx:

There’s a ghost lurking…and Karl Marx said…a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen.  And I think that ghost is silent, somewhere in this room…amongst us…coming thru the corridors and underneath.  And that ghost is a terrible ghost.  Nobody wants to name him or her…it’s capitalism.  Capitalism is that ghost.  (applause)

Chavez got a lot of applause here too. He tied capitalism to the degradation of the earth: “the destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life.”

President Robert Mugabe, credited with destroying the economy of his own country,  Zimbabwe, also railed against Western countries and capitalism:

“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

And this is the conference where “world leaders” are supposedly coming together to plan the world’s energy future?  It’s a scary thought.

LibertyWeek 72: Champagne Wishes and Climate Change Dreams

by Richard Morrison on December 7, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your host Richard Morrison teams up with collaborators Jeremy Lott and William Yeatman to bring you Episode 72 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin with UN climate hypocrisy in Copenhagen, presidential arm-twisting on health care and a cloudy look at government transparency. We conclude with the end of the tobacco road in Virginia and scandal of banking and nepotism in Venezuela.

Honduras Agreement Did Not Promise Return of Authoritarian Ex-President, Contrary to Earlier Press Reports

by Hans Bader on October 31, 2009 · 2 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

The small country of Honduras did not agree to return its authoritarian ex-president to power after all.  Press reports said it did, but The Wall Street Journal says it merely agreed to submit a request for his return to Honduras’s Congress and Supreme Court, which previously backed the ex-president’s removal, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of upcoming election results.  Under continuing U.S. pressure, they may soon allow his return to office, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The Washington Post admits that the ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, was trying to make himself into a dictator, like his mentor, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  But the Post demands that he be returned to power anyway because he was “illegally deported” by the military after being removed from office.

But the ex-president is busy spinning the agreement as an unqualified recognition of his right to rule, which it isn’t.  And Obama Administration officials, like the State Department’s Thomas Shannon, are busy threatening Honduran legislators with sanctions and cancellation of their visas if they vote against reinstating Zelaya, in a manner seemingly at odds with the agreement itself.

Honduras removed ex-president Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers: he sought to circumvent constitutional term limits, used mobs to intimidate his critics, threatened public employees with termination if they refused to help him violate the Constitution, engaged in massive corruption, illegally cut off public funds to local governments whose leaders refused to back his quest for more power, denied basic government services to his critics, refused to enforce dozens of laws passed by Congress, and spent the country into virtual bankruptcy, refusing to submit a budget so that he could illegally spend public funds on his cronies.

By levying sanctions on Honduras, and refusing to recognize its current government, the Obama administration has destabilized the country, one of the poorest in Latin America, resulting in mass layoffs leading to 65% unemployment among workers at small and medium-size enterprises in Honduras.  Vulnerable social groups in Honduras, like orphans, have suffered especially acutely, and malnutrition has risen.

Even before the current crisis, the World Food Program noted that “One out of  four Honduran children under 5 years old falls  to chronic malnutrition. In some rural communities to the west of the country, chronic malnutrition can reach 48.5 percent.”  Since the crisis, things have gotten much worse: “A woman caring for six grandchildren can no longer afford milk. A bricklayer who used to work six days a week now is lucky to get two. A shop manager has seen his earnings evaporate.”

The Obama administration insisted that Zelaya’s removal was illegal, although many legal commentators said that Honduras’s removal of ex-president Manuel Zelaya was legal — and thus, not a coup. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many lawyers and foreign policy experts, including attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, Stanford’s William Ratliff, and The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady.  Former Secretary of State James Baker, a lawyer, says that Honduras’s removal of Zelaya from office was legal, although its exiling of him was not.

Obama’s “Willful Disregard of Political Oppression” by Anti-American Dictators Is Admitted by Liberal Washington Post

by Hans Bader on July 13, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama has demanded that Honduras allow its anti-American would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, to return to power, arguing that President Zelaya’s removal by the Honduras Supreme Court, with the backing of his country’s Congress and military, was “undemocratic” because the now-unpopular Zelaya was once elected. He has ignored the many legal and foreign-affairs commentators who have pointed out that Zelaya’s removal was a legal response to Zelaya’s flouting of the constitution, and not a “coup,” such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady.

But Obama has shown no interest at all in criticizing the human rights violations, violent repression, and anti-democratic behavior of Venezuela’s anti-American strongman, as even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, noted today in an editorial by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl, “Double Standards on Latin America.”

The Washington Post‘s Diehl notes Obama’s “willful disregard of political oppression” by anti-American regimes in places like Venezuela, and the fact that his Administration “for months refused to publicly” criticize human-rights abuses in Venezuela.

Obama’s glaring double-standard in favor of despotic anti-American regimes is not new for him. In 1983, the left-wing populist ruler of the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, was overthrown and murdered by hardline Communist thugs backed by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Caribbean nations led by Dominican Prime Minister Eugenia Charles beseeched the U.S. to intervene to fight off Cuban imperialism and restore human rights and democracy, which the U.S. did, with the backing of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, producing a jubilant response among Grenada’s oppressed people. (Disgracefully, the UN General Assembly, representing mostly countries run by dictators, voted to condemn the U.S. for liberating Grenada).

How does Obama view this act of liberation from oppression, which has brought Grenada 25 years of peace and democracy? In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, he derides it as “the invasion of tiny, hapless Grenada.” This is exactly how Cuban dictator Fidel Castro disparaged America’s liberation of Grenada. It’s also how it is disparaged by former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, the Obama associate who sat on charitable boards along with Obama and helped him disburse tens of millions of dollars for left-wing causes.

Why does Obama think it is OK to meddle in foreign countries’ internal affairs to force them to accept the return of a would-be dictator — but not to liberate them from tyranny and oppression?

Obama has argued that the mere fact that Honduras’s would-be dictator was once elected means he couldn’t be removed even if he violated the law — a ridiculous argument that would have left Richard Nixon in charge of the U.S. after Watergate.

His nominee for Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela has made the ridiculous, legally-unfounded argument that even though Honduras’s president was removed on orders from Honduras’s Supreme Court, it was still illegal because he should have received more “judicial process.” Valenzuela has a soft-spot for Anti-American dictators, reflecting his reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

Obama’s claim that the removal of Honduras’s president was “undemocratic” is belied by the fact that the Honduran Congress overwhelmingly voted to ratify the president’s removal and replace him with the speaker of the Honduran Congress.

Honduras did not use a formal impeachment process to remove its president because its constitution does not have a well-developed impeachment mechanism, says Latin American scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the Cato Institute. But its unwieldy constitution does have other, less elegant means of removing abusive presidents: Article 239 bans presidents from continuing to hold office if they seek to extend their tenure, or merely propose an end to presidential term-limits. And Article 272 gives the military the power to enforce those term-limit provisions, which it did by executing a warrant for Zelaya’s arrest issued by the Honduran Supreme Court.

(The military’s law enforcement role is not unique to Honduras: in the U.S., federal troops were used to enforce a court order desegregating the schools in Little Rock in 1957, when the court’s order was thwarted by the Arkansas Governor. When confronted with powerful officials who refuse to comply with the law, the courts cannot rely simply on a handful of U.S. marshalls, but rather must look to federal troops or the national guard).

Church leaders and U.S. Senators are now opposing Obama’s demand that Honduras be forced to return Zelaya to power.

LibertyWeek 42: Hugo Chávez, Robber Baron

by Richard Morrison on May 12, 2009 · 1 comment

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist bring back special guest co-host Jeremy Lott to create the work of art known as Episode 42. We start with the continuing buzz over the Supreme Court’s next member, President Obama’s trillion dollar healthcare plan, and an update on how Hugo Chávez is turning Venezuela’s petroleum reserves into his personal piggybank. We add good news from East Texas for beer drinkers, bad news from Europe for technophiles and sad news from Philly for basketball fans.

Listen to the episode HERE.

Latin America Should be on Washington’s Agenda

by Silvia Santacruz on October 9, 2008 · 2 comments

in International, Politics as Usual

Yesterday, Nelson Cunningham, one of the panelists at a Hudson Institute conference on Latin America’s “Radical Populism Challenge” commented that it is better that the presidential campaign and debates don’t even mention the region. He said that speaking of Latin America would only bring bad news: illegal immigration and drug-trafficking.

As a Latin American myself, I could not disagree more. The region is one of the United States’ most important commercial partners, with U.S. exports valued at more than $150 billion a year, almost as much as its exports to the European Union, as Inter American Dialogue President Peter Hakim notes.

A more balanced argument was delivered by Jaime Daremblum, director of Hudson’s Center for Latin American Studies, who moderated the panel, but didn’t argue with the speaker. In his article, “What Will the Election Mean for Latin America?,” he shows how the 9/11 terrorist attacks pushed Latin America to the background of the U.S. foreign policy discussion. Meanwhile, Russia is gaining ground exploring oil fields in Venezuela.

The same controversial panelist also commented that Senator Barack Obama, if he becomes President, would probably enjoy future good relationship with Latin America—because of his Indonesian background. It is not clear how his Indonesian experience can increase his interest in a region he didn’t consider visiting during his international campaign.

[click to continue…]

Neither carrots nor sticks II

by Ivan Osorio on October 6, 2008

in International

Further to my earlier post on Latin America, The Wall Street Journal‘s Mary O’Grady points to a good way for the U.S. to deal with loudmouth thugs like Hugo Chavez:

Hugo Chávez provoked nary a peep from the Bush administration when he recently welcomed Russian fighter jets to an air base in the state of Aragua. For a man desperate to prove his importance, nothing could have been more insulting than the yawn in Washington when the Russians touched down in Venezuela.

Indeed, which makes the American politicians who choose to pal around with Chavez’s lackeys all the more pathetic.

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