Hugo Chavez Dead

Listening to NPR mourn Chavez’ death this morning I was struck by a comment made by a reporter for the New Yorker who once interviewed Chavez and asked him why he came to Socialism so late. Since socialism and its sibling, Communism, has led to so much poverty, misery and death throughout the world the question why anyone would come to Socialism - late or early - is baffling to me. But the question itself reveals something about the questioner. It would not have occurred to the reporter to ask a Fascist dictator why they had come to Fascism “so late.” The question would have been phrased to ask why he was a Fascist, that discredited political movement, at all. But asking a Socialist thug about a political philosophy that was destroying his country seemed to this reporter to be as normal as asking him why he became a Presbyterian so late in life.

One of the aspects of the lives of Left wing dictators like Chavez and Castro that the NPR crowd averts its eyes from is that the rulers of these “people’s republics” manage to become ultra-wealthy.

Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), a risk assessment and global analysis firm in Miami, estimated in a recent report that the Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has “amassed a fortune” similar to that of the Castro brothers in Cuba.

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 Frías family in Venezuela has amassed a fortune of a similar scale since the arrival of Chávez to the presidency in 1999,” said Brewer in an analysis published in their website.

Beyond the criminal mismanagement and corruption that's a feature of all Socialist states, that's two billion dollars that was not used to alleviate the misery of Venezuela's poor and crime ridden people.  The life of Socialist Leader is the royal road to riches.

 

The New York Times, a reliable cheerleader for Socialism of all stamps tells us that ...

Mr. Chávez, 58, changed Venezuela in fundamental ways, empowering and energizing millions of poor people who had felt marginalized and excluded.

 

Exactly how he "empowered and energized millions of poor people" is not explored.  Exactly what does that mean?  "Empowered" how?  "Energized" how?  In the same way that a large group of people in the US believe that Obama "cares about them" while unemployment, wage losses and poverty among these same supporters increase?   Possibly.  The Times goes on to explain what these empowered and energized people are experiencing in oil-rich Venezuela. 

At the same time, the country struggled with an out-of-balance economy, troubled by soaring prices and escalating shortages of basic goods.

 

Scenes like this must bring back memories to people who are old enough to remember the 1930s.  To others, like the readers of the NY Times, it will seem entirely normal

 

Mr. Chávez’s new six-year term began on Jan. 10, with the president incommunicado in Havana. In his absence, the government held a huge rally in the center of Caracas, where thousands of his followers raised their hands to pledge an oath of “absolute loyalty” to their commander and his revolution. Officials promised that Mr. Chávez would have his inauguration later, when he had recovered.