Worried for our children Loc: Massachusetts

The republic of Venezuela is teetering towards economic armageddon.

That’s not the prelude to an overhyped gold commercial on talk radio; it’s a sober assessment of the South American nation’s woes. The IMF predicts inflation in Venezuela will mushroom to 720 percent this year. The economy shrank by 5.7 percent in 2015 and hasn’t experienced positive growth since 2013. Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, has shed 93 percent of its value in two years. The country has literally run out of food, forcing the government to declare a “nutritional emergency.”

For President Nicolás Maduro, who inherited Hugo Chávez’s commitment to Chavista socialism but none of his charisma, the culprit—as usual—is the United States’ “economic war” on Latin America. The impenetrable Maduro has used the crisis to double down on socialist policies, targeting those who violate rationing rules and further collectivizing the farm system. As a last resort, he recently took a cue from North Korean Juche and encouraged citizens to become self-sufficient by growing gardens, a plan complicated by the fact that 83 percent of Venezuelans live in cities.

The Venezuelan people, unsurprisingly, regard this approach as inadequate. They responded in a resounding e******n last month that gave opposition parties a supermajority in the National Assembly, Venezuela’s legislative branch. This led many American conservatives to cheer and pose a morose contrast between Venezuela and the United States: while the former is ditching Chavismo after years of failure, the latter is swooning for the p**********l campaign of Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist.” Socialism, it seems, is waxing in North America just as it’s waning in Latin America.

Is this really true? To answer that question, we need to explore what’s actually happening in Venezuela. During his early days in power, life under Chávez was actually rather good. Venezuela is essentially a petrostate: oil is responsible for 95 percent of export earnings and 25 percent of GDP. During the boom time of the early aughts, abundant revenues allowed Chávez to fund extravagant government programs for the poor, similar to how the Saudi monarchy sculpted a generous social contract with its citizens around oil money. But recently, Venezuela has been hit by a savage one-two punch. First, the United States—which Venezuela simultaneously scapegoats and depends upon for exports—became the world’s number one producer of oil and natural gas thanks to fracking.

And second, Venezuela horribly mismanaged its own oil production through, among other abuses, mass firings after a strike in 2002 and a nationalization program in 2006 that created tension with giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. While capitalism made America into a petro-power, socialism enervated Venezuela’s oil industry. This is what Maduro obfuscates as “economic war.” To compensate, the government began printing more money, but this only inflated the currency.

A recent pact between Venezuela and other OPEC members that counters the worldwide oil glut by freezing production is likely to prove just as ineffective. These are the seeds of Venezuela’s collapse: American ascent, government incompetence and hostility to outside investment that borders on isolationism (in the actual sense, not the Jennifer Rubin sense). Now the question is how far the opposition will go to remedy troubled Chavismo.

First, they’ll need to hang on to their newly acquired power. Opposition parties have already ceded the supermajority they won in this year’s e******ns after Maduro’s judiciary probed three candidates for alleged v***r f***d. Those candidates stepped down last month, and while the opposition claims they still have a supermajority based on the number of filled seats in the Assembly, against the number of total seats they come up short. The Supreme Court is likely to insist on the latter calculation, given that it’s stacked with Maduro partisans.

Meanwhile, the Court has approved emergency powers that allow the president to trample on the legislature. Much of the opposition’s efforts this year will be spent fending off Maduro’s abuses, attempting to reform the judiciary and insisting on other priorities, like the release of political prisoners, rather than implementing economic policy.

Revulsion to the overreaches of Chavismo binds together the opposition, known in coalition as the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). But hold up the magnifying glass and you find a heterogeneous gaggle of parties, independents, and indigenous people representatives without a central pole like Chávez around which to unite. And while unfriendly Venezuelan media has obsessively characterized the MUD as “right-wing” and “pro-American,” that’s not entirely true. “Justice First,” the party inside MUD with the most Assembly seats, offers this bite-sized manifesto: “what is needed is a strong state that has clear rules and enforces and encourages companies to produce the quantities and varieties of the products that we all [need as] Venezuelans”—hardly a Hayekian formulation. The second and third most powerful parties, Democratic Action and A New Era, are members of the Socialist International. The MUD is center-right only if you’re peering through Venezuela’s Overton window.

Still, the opposition parties aren’t nearly as extreme as Maduro’s United Socialists, and have shown some appetite for privatization and economic diversification. Already, they’ve introduced a bill that would privatize the country’s housing mission, which led one MUD member to remark: “We believe in a Venezuela of property owners.” That’s encouraging—just don’t expect m them to make a full-throttle Thatcherite lurch towards neoliberalism anytime soon. Indeed, neoliberalism is still a dirty word for many Venezuelans, who blame capitalists for impoverishing the country during the pre-Chávez days. The more likely model will be to spread both political power and economic wealth among the people—a less centralized and more democratic flavor of socialism than what the regime offers.

That brings us back to Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist. There’s a reason young progressives are buzzing excitedly about his candidacy. Whereas Chavismo represents Venezuela’s past—Chávez’s revolution began fifteen years ago—it’s neoliberalism that’s been tried for decades here in America. Sanders offers a departure that seems fresh, even if it’s based on ideas that are themselves anachronistic. Thus are some Americans looking leftwards at democratic socialism, while many Venezuelans gaze rightwards at the same thing. Yet with Hillary Clinton winning over superdelegates and Maduro further entrenching, this year seems unlikely to bring significant change in either nation.

~ Matt Purple

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/vermont-venezuela-sanderss-socialism-practice-15284?page=2

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

For some reason, we here in America seem to think we must be "left" or "right", as though that is the only directions that exist. Why not the middle? The center? That is what the founders had in mind when they drafted the Constitution and that is what the Constitution says.

There is no provision in the Constitution for political party's, neither is it prohibited, but the "party line" has gotten completely out of control. In order to get the most v**es, the party's have ventured further and further away from one another, to differentiate themselves and as a result, d**gged America along with them. The concepts of "left" and "right", liberal and conservative, were created by the party's for political purposes, many, many years ago - but have no practical application.

Tax revenues are to be used for the benefit of the people, that's what the Constitution says. The Constitution also says that we are each responsible for our own actions and that our common welfare is the role of the Governments, State and federal. That means, that "welfare" is Constitutional and is a mandate - but that reason, restraint and logic must be used in it's application. Both liberals AND conservatives have failed in that respect. The Constitution is neither liberal nor conservative - it is centrist - and anyone purporting to use that document as their guiding principle - must ALSO be centrist.

No other Nation has a document like ours, so comparing us to other countries is irrelevant and wrong. We are unique, but unfortunately, we are now unique in our resistance to following the very document that made us unique - and successful. For democrats and republicans to wrest power and control back and forth from one another - they must stretch and warp the very document each claims to be following. The Constitutions says what it says - and if they WERE following it to the letter - they'd be saying the exact same things. They cannot be different and alike all at once, so they choose to be as different as possible, taking them further and further away from the spirit AND the letter of the Constitution - and trying to take as many of us as possible with them.

They are BOTH wrong.

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

That's Right !!
Because This Is The USofA !!

All The Policies That That Have Pushed Other Societies Past The Point Of No Return
Will Suddenly Work In America, Because Our Socialism Will Be EXTRA SPECIAL
Because Our Socialists Are Smarter, Richer And Much, Much Prettier !!


And Because The 'Center' Of Which You Speak
Drifts Relentlessly Further Towards The Left, Like It Already Has Been In Europe

vernon

the political situation is very close to what we are suffering.

vernon

the document you are speaking of is to me almost as important as the bible.but i feel that both parties are trying to destroy the constitution with every move .

vernon

the center in the u s is running to the left.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Well said! BTW, how much are they paying you? I think I could make a lot of money missing the point, misdirecting and changing the subject like you just did.

For all of those NOT on someone's payroll ( not you, of course ) the center has not moved, nor CAN it move - but there are plenty of bone heads that will try to make you THINK it has - to try and cover the Un-Constitutional left/right shifts our politicians love.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

The center has never moved, it can't. It's anchored by the Constitution itself, which does NOT require t***slation by lawyers, politicians, or whoever doesn't like what it says.

To be clear. The Constitution IS the center of all we are. The "left" and "right" BOTH try to pull that document towards where THEY have decided America should be - and bring as many Americans with them as they can.

The center does not and cannot move, nor be moved, but people's perception can be, which is the crime being committed right this minute by both major political party's. Trying to convince people that their party or their candidate IS the "center" of all things, d**gging the Constitution with them through the mud - is equivalent to ISIS forming their caliph**e.

Ignoring or warping the letter and spirit of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to gain followers, power and control - is not only ethically and morally wrong - it's treason.

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

Those Are Both Very Sweet Lectures About The Constitution
And I Am So Very Grateful For Your Enlightenment

But The Political 'Center' Is So Far To The Left Now
That The Radical Fringe Of The Past Is Now Considered:

Mainstream Democrat

All Compromises With Democrats Pulls Even Further To The Left
They Don't Compromise...Ever
The Only 'Reach Across, Come Together'
Is On Their Terms, For Their Goals Only

There Are No More Loyal American Democrats
They Are All Ersatz European Marxists