Tag Archives: Private Property

News

80,000 tons of food rotting in Venezuela government warehouse

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Story from CNBC. (H/T Barb’s Blog)

Excerpt:

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

[…]Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

Jose Guzman, an assistant manager at a store raided in Catia, watched with resignation as government agents pored over the company’s accounts and computers after the food ministry official and the television cameras left.

“The government is pushing this type of establishment toward bankruptcy,” said Guzman, who linked the raid to the rotten food scandal. “Somehow they have to replace all the food that was lost, and this is the most expeditious way.”

Well, the best way to get control of the people is to create an artificial shortage so that they depend on the government. It’s like passing a carbon tax, or instituting a moratorium on drilling – you reduce supply and then take control when the people get angry.

Who Chavez remind me of?

Hey Chavez! How do I get the economy to grow?

Oh yeah.

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News

Liberal Democrat Treasury Secretary paid 68K of taxpayer money to gay lover

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Story here from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws was fighting to avoid becoming the coalition Government’s first casualty tonight after it was revealed that he funnelled £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to his secret gay lover.

The Liberal Democrat, who is in charge of slashing public spending, is facing growing pressure to quit after he claimed up to £950 a month in expenses for five years which was paid in rent to his partner.

Mr Laws was last night confronted with evidence that he could have breached Parliamentary rules on expenses, which ban MPs from renting from spouses or lovers.

[…]Mr Laws is a multi-millionaire former investment banker who earned a double first in economics at Cambridge.

[…]Mr Laws escaped censure by the numerous Parliamentary inquiries into expenses because he had never admitted his homosexuality, meaning officials had no way of knowing his landlord was also his lover.

But between 2004 and 2007, Mr Laws claimed between £700 and £950 a month to sub-let a room in a flat in Kennington, South London, owned by Mr Lundie, who was also registered as living at the property.

He’s a Liberal Democrat, which is the socialist party in the UK. His secret gay lover is a lobbyist who used to work for former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. So, Liberal Democrats all around. Lib Dems are not just hostile to capitalism, they are totally opposed to religious liberty, the rights of the unborn and traditional marriage. Their UK leader Nick Clegg wants to force Christian schools to endorse homosexuality, (similar to what Dalton McGuinty tried to do in Ontario, Canada).

Something similar happened a while back in Canada

This is not the first time that a prominent socialist has stolen tens of thousands of dollars. Svend Robinson, a former New Democratic Party Member of Parliament in British Columbia, Canada, also committed theft.

Excerpt:

Former NDP MP Svend Robinson has received a conditional discharge and one year probation after pleading guilty to stealing an expensive diamond ring from an auction.

Robinson faced a range of penalties from absolute discharge to a maximum of 10 years in prison.

[…]Robinson had been shopping for a diamond engagement ring he wasn’t sure he could afford just a week before he committed the act of theft.

[…][Robinson’s defense attorney] read several letters from MPs, friends and other colleagues attesting to Robinson’s good character. The letters were from such high-profile as former NDP leader Stephen Lewis, environmentalist David Suzuki, and cabinet minister Stephen Owen.

In court to show their support were Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies, and Bill Siksay, Robinson’s longtime constituency assistant who won Robinson’s seat in the June federal election.

Svend was able to avoid jail time, but this scandal did not break before he had played a crucial role in legalizing same-sex marriage and passing Canada’s hate crimes and hate speech legislation.

The NDP is the Canadian equivalent of the UK Liberal Democrat Party or the US Democrat party. Robinson was instrumental in criminalizing speech critical of homosexuality in Canada, (Bill C-250). Speech that is offensive to the secular left can be prosecuted criminally in Canada and in the UK, and Obama also passed a bill criminalizing free speech in 2009.

But all of this stealing by socialists is not surprising when you reflect on what socialism is. Socialism is the view that demagogues should gain political power by promising “victims”, (people who freely choose to make irrational and/or immoral decisions), their neighbor’s money. It’s basically theft. So it isn’t really surprising that two socialists should be convicted of stealing other people’s money. That’s what socialism is – THEFT.

Note: comments to this post will be strictly monitored in keeping with Obama’s law restricting free speech.

News

Hugo Chavez confiscates private property as Venezuelan economy declines

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Bad news from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Acting like Robert Mugabe on cocaine, Venezuela’s dictator went on a shopping spree over the weekend, confiscating one farm and industry after another.

[…]One taking stood out, however — a 370-acre ranch in Yaracuy state that grows oranges and coffee and raises cattle with 38 shareholding farm workers. The scenic property on an otherwise desolate stretch of highway is owned by Diego Arria, Venezuela’s former president of the U.N. Security Council. It’s been in his family since 1852.

Arria had spoken out against Chavez, so Chavez got personal. “If he wants to farm now, he will have to topple Chavez, because this now belongs to the revolution,” El Presidente pronounced.

Arria told IBD he’s been pressured for two years with acts of vandalism and the kidnapping of farmhands. A month ago, Chavista Ministry of Culture operatives approached him in Norway, demanding that he quit criticizing the Chavez regime. If he didn’t “play ball,” he’d lose the ranch, Arria was warned. “But I never negotiate with thugs,” he said.

Chavez’s red-shirts finally acted over the weekend, opening the farm to “the masses” in a show of class warfare. Chavista leaders from the National Institute of Lands headed first to Arria’s living quarters, rolling over his bed, pawing through his wife’s clothing and desecrating a chapel dedicated to the Arrias’ late daughter.

For their big photo spectacular, they hauled in 300 or 400 children to swim in Arria’s swimming pool, ride the ranch horses and tour the main house — encouraging the kids to take “souvenirs.” Chavez said it was all proof he was “socializing happiness.”

Business Week explains what happens when a socialist tyrant like Chavez destroys the right to private property and confiscate profits from business owners.

Fitch Ratings cut its Venezuelan economic growth forecast by more than half on concern this month’s currency devaluation will spur inflation and erode consumers’ purchasing power, said analyst Erich Arispe. Venezuela’s gross domestic product will expand about 0.7 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of about 2 percent, Arispe, who covers the Andean region for Fitch, said in a telephone interview from New York today. He estimates the South American nation’s economy shrank 2.5 percent in 2009.

[…]President Hugo Chavez has threatened to seize businesses that raise prices following the devaluation of the official exchange rate of as much as 50 percent. Trade Minister Eduardo Saman said yesterday the government began to expropriate six Hipermercado Exito stores after Chavez said the French-Colombian owned retailer broke the law by raising prices.

[…]Morgan Stanley said yesterday that Venezuela’s inflation rate will surge to 45 percent this year from 27 percent last year, which was the highest rate among 78 economies tracked by Bloomberg. A 45 percent increase in consumer prices would be the biggest since 1996.

[…]The devaluation comes at a time when Venezuela began rolling blackouts this month for two to four hours a day to save power as the worst drought in 50 years threatens to shut the nation’s biggest hydroelectric plant and collapse the power grid.

If you attack business like this, you lose jobs. Entrepreneurs shut their businesses down when they have to take losses because government inflates the currency. It’s madness. It’s like asking someone to make gold out of straw, and whipping them when they can’t. But that’s socialism. And Chavez isn’t any different from any other socialist. The whole system doesn’t work. And this is what you can see today in places like North Korea of Zimbabwe. Or Greece and Venezuela, if you like.

I have to post this picture of Obama and Chavez. You know the drill.

Hey Obama! I think there's a point when people who disagree with me have made enough money!

It’s coming.

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