Posted on 01/22/2008 8:23:37 AM PST by jdm
Hugo Chavez leveled a threat against Venezuelan farmers over the weekend, another step in creating his socialist paradise. He called farmers who sell abroad to gain a better price for their goods "traitors", and told his ministers to identify them so that he could send the Army to confiscate their property:
President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to take over farms or milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and instead seek higher profits abroad or from cheese-makers.With the country recently facing milk shortages, Chavez said "it's treason" if farmers deny milk to Venezuelans while selling it across the border in Colombia or for gourmet cheeses.
"In that case the farm must be expropriated," Chavez said, adding that the government could also take over milk plants and properties of beef producers.
"I'm putting you on alert," Chavez said. "If there's a producer that refuses to sell the product ... and sells it at a higher price abroad ... ministers, find me the proof so it can be expropriated."
Addressing his Cabinet, he said: "If the army must be brought in, you bring in the army."
On Saturday, he made similar threats against bankers. He wants them to set aside a third of their loans as low-cost agricultural, residential, and small-business loans. If they fail to do so, Chavez will nationalize them as well, continuing his confiscatory practices and intimidation.
In the end for all Socialists, the Army takes property away from the people. Everyone who opposes them are traitors. The state must run all to achieve ultimate "fairness".
Chavez needs this more than most because his status as president-for-life could not get secured in last year's flop of a referendum. Food and milk shortages that have predictably arisen from state control of the markets have created anger and opposition to his socialist plan for Venezuela. He cannot afford now to allow for the proper solution, which is to reduce state interference in the markets and allow prices to normalize on their own.
Chavez has chosen the Mugabe way of state confiscation of farms, and will eventually get the Mugabe result -- taking his nation into poverty and starvation on land that should produce enough for export.
Cindy Sheehan’s favorite dictator.
I know! Because it worked so fabulously in Zimbabwe!
Prediction - Starvation in Venezuela in 2009 - it will come faster if oil prices come down...
So, is Sean Penn gonna show up in Caracas with his kegger cup, vest and “unloaded” shotgun to stand up for these poor farmers?
The people of Venezuela will starve. Those who understand this have a moral obligation to get their families out of their by any means possible.
There will be NO food, except for those in power.
This is how communism works, and yes, SOCIALISM always ends up as communism. Seizure of assets by government force, and shortages of everything. Things that remain are distributed as those in power see fit, to themselves first, of course.
What these nationalist-socialist kleptocrats never seem to get is that when the central government attempts to divvy up the pie, the pie gets smaller. Or maybe they do get it but just don’t care.
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And in The Ukraine.
And Joe Kennedy can run ads thanking the ‘People’ of Venezuela for the cheap food to the ‘poor’ of Massachusetts.
Hugo’s just Dizzy with Success.
I suspect that Col Hugo will soon feel the affects of his heavy handedness.
This could happen in America if Hillary is elected.
She has already stated that she will deal heavy handed with company's who make a profit.
Lets see with Hillary I see in my crystal ball, gasoline rationing, high taxes, high interest rates, inane socialization, high debt and the list marches on.
ok...now I think i’ll just skip lunch today
Hugo the weasel (look at his eyes) just seems to keep getting smarter and smarter doesn’t he.
How long before someone gives him a dirt nap? A bullet or a bomb?
What a maroon. He’s right up there with Mugabe.
Good thing he lost the last election/sarc
Hugo’s dizzy all right- but I think it’s on coca paste.
A communist AND a drug user- what a combo!
Hillary will take firearms by force
If EVER there was a reason to start developing our own supply, this brain dead moron is IT.
Drill the AMWR and the Gulf (tell FEE-del to move over), build refineries and nuclear plants. WHY, oh WHY do we allow the enviroloons to hurt us so much!?
What’s the Vegas over & under on Chavez? LOL
I give him a year...at best!
Sean Pencilhead’s and Jimmuh Carter’s best buddy.
It looks like global warming is just about to cause a drought in Venezuela.
The Dems first proposal is to create ‘central planning’. Your health care, your infrastructure, and your economy....
Because Government is loaded with mentally ill politicians and genuinely certified insane wacko enviroloons run them. (I like enviroloons to describe them)
I have a relative who is a buyer for a major cheese producer. The venezuelans recently flooded the market with milk protein, due to rapidly rising global prices. The farmers there knew they could get much more for their product by exporting it, than they could by selling locally at Hugo’s state ordered cutrate prices. The farmers did what any good business person would do, they exported and took the extra cash and probably sent it out of the country to a safe haven bank. Hugo found out and is pissed off because the poor people who support him and not getting any milk. So much like Mugabe, he blames the greedy farmers and threatens to confiscate their farms. Of course, just like in his failing oil sector, replacing experienced farmers with peasants will only result in milk production plummeting, thus exacerbating the problems. Classic socialist market control, with classic consequences.
Kegger cup? Coke spoon and scales, more likely. Oogo recently announced he like eating coca paste in the mornings, courtesy of the Bolivian pres.
Just like the USA if the government wants your property for a lets say a park they take it,so much for the hige courts and bribes.
I think Chavez is about to reach the end of his rope. The only question in my mind is who will be dead first: Chavez or Castro?
Its telling Hollywood loves this guy. To them, he’s just your typical executive Producer.
In other words a megalomaniac.
Precisely.
“Hugos just Dizzy with Success.”
If Success makes him Dizzy, what will failure do to him?
I forgot that Penhead and Peanutbrain love this guy too.
What a moron. This type of delusional idiot will bring nothing but misery to the people of Venezuela. The whole notion of government control of markets has been tried...repeatedly...it has never worked. I don’t see anything in Hugo’s plan that looks different or new.
Somebody needs to make a bloody example of this socialist pig. Quickly.
We need to vocally encourage the opposition in Venezuela, and financially support them. And, we need to do it openly, above board. Same for the other despots and dictators around the world.
It’s time to reassert the vision of success that is this grand experiment, and let the world know about it.
This is the future of the US if Hillary is elected.
Socialist market intervention. Not a lot different than Hillary’s threat to confiscate the profits of oil companies if they don’t lower the price of gasoline.
Venezuela is the new Zimbabwe.
Sounds like a passage from an Ann Ryand book
Constitutionally, I think he's got 'til 2012. You may recall that his recent referendum to try and remove term limits for the president failed. No doubt he's presently scheming on another way to stay in power for life. Maybe when that day comes, he'll just refuse to step down.
Hiroshima, summer of ‘45, is the future of the US if Hillary or Obama is elected.
“I think he’s got ‘til 2012?”
I wasn’t thinking of “constitutionally.” LOL
Thing is, under capitalism if you screw up consistently you go broke, so the system tends to cull the stupid. In socialism you get to relearn the same lessons over and over. At least as long as the loot holds out.
Part of that loot pays the subsidies that Huey has to provide so the milk farmers don't go broke selling at a price that keeps the discontent down. That's how he can keep this little game in play, at least until that source goes broke as well, and being oil that might take awhile. Fear not - socialism can wreck even an extraction economy given sufficient time.
In the meantime, forcing farmers not to sell on the foreign market drives those prices up as well. And so, heaven help us, we are about to see milk smuggling rings and a black market. If that sounds stupid consider that they're smuggling gasoline into Iran.
Socialism means that it's always somebody else's fault - international sanctions, rapacious foreign capitalists, mysterious cabals filled with Jewish conspirators. Never the fact that socialists are incompetent. And absolutely never the hint that just perhaps socialism doesn't work.
She can have my firearms when she pries them from my cold, dead fingers...
Cause him to dance at the end of a rope, hopefully.
Probably not the success.
And just like Mugabe, Chavez was practically ‘installed’ by one Jimmy Carter...who never met a dictator he didn’t fawn over.
Up against the wall, MF!
This guy is a carbon copy of the nitwit dictator, Mugabe, of Zimbabwe. His foray into socialism will destroy Venezuela like Mugabe has destroyed the former self-sufficient Rhodesia—thanks to Jimmie Carter.
Nah, I see her being impeached and removed from office the moment she attempts to do anything remotely close to what Chavez is doing in Venezuela.
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