Go to PDF Version | Go to Recent Issues
To save time in the future, you may select one of the preferences below. You may update your eIBD preferences at any time by going into My IBD and selecting Update Your eIBD Preferences.
Set Web-Based Version as Default Set PDF Version as Default Set Recent Issues as Default
Get QuoteSearch Site
Daily Graphs Online
It was everybody into the pool after Hugo Chavez took over the ranch of a former U.N. Security Council president who's been critical of the dictator. View Enlarged Image
Socialism: After 12 years in power and $960 billion in oil earnings, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is down to stealing private swimming pools to bring the good life to Venezuela's "poor." It's a new milestone on his road to ruin.
Acting like Robert Mugabe on cocaine, Venezuela's dictator went on a shopping spree over the weekend, confiscating one farm and industry after another.
First, a flour factory run by Mexican multinational Gruma was plundered, followed by the nationalization of a bauxite unit of U.S.-based NorPro. After that, a steel subsidiary of Luxembourg-based Tenaris called Matesi was taken, along with a group of transport companies.
Unsated, Chavez then announced — via Twitter — the takeover of the private University of Santa Ines in Barinas state. And for good measure, he launched new exchange controls, another form of expropriation.
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."
In reality, the attack on Arria's farm was proof of Chavez's own failures. Unable to create any prosperity, even after 12 years in power and a trillion dollars in oil cash, Chavez still resorts to crude medieval plunder to bring any spoils to his supporters.
It would be logical to think Venezuela's oil earnings would be sufficient to build swimming pools for the children of Yaracuy. But Chavez's destruction of property rights and rule of law from these confiscations — now numbering 500 or so, have ended any prospect of prosperity coming to the country's poor.
Not a single expropriated property in Venezuela produces what it produced when it was privately owned. In a year Arria's ranch will be a wasteland, and Venezuela will find itself importing even more than the 76% of its food it now imports.
With disrespect for property rights goes disregard for human rights, as the confiscation of the Arria ranch attests.
Allies: What do you do when a friend with financial problems of his own generously offers tens of billions of dollars to help you out? Why, you investigate and maybe even sue him. At least, that is, if you're Greece. Just days after it was announced the U.S. would help the European Union pay ...
Political Correctness: While New York City OKs construction of a "monster mosque" at ground zero, the feds pay rent to a D.C. mosque tied to the Pentagon attack. Have we gone totally soft? Imagine on the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we let the Japanese erect a cultural center at the ...
Nuclear Iran: President Obama's "direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions" has, not surprisingly, led us down a blind alley. Now China and Russia are about to mug us with Turkey's phony uranium deal. The White House is learning that its "tough diplomacy" is a boomerang that may soon ...
Public Spending: Government gobbled up the British economy with amazing speed in the past decade. Here's how it happened — and why something very much like it could happen in the U.S. It was not so long ago that Great Britain was rightly seen as the most "American" of the major European ...
The Obama administration last summer handed over $49.5 billion in taxpayers' money to Big Labor-controlled, money-hemorrhaging General Motors. The White House pitched this costly taxpayer-funded bailout as a bid to save American jobs. But in reality, GM's reported U.S. employment shrank by nearly ...
Posted By: Judith from Michigan(1595) on 5/17/2010 | 11:46 PM ET
Let's see. Chavez is pals with Bill Ayers (who received an education award from Chavez several years ago), who happens to be buds with Mr. O. Who is giving directions to whom on how to take over and destroy a country? As the old saying goes, Birds of a feather....
Posted By: antisocialist(430) on 5/17/2010 | 9:56 PM ET
Despots like Chavez don't care about the welfare of the citizens. They know that even after they have decimated the economy, and destroyed private enterprise, there will still be enough wealth left to confiscate to keep them living in the lap of luxury.
Posted By: chunga2(50) on 5/17/2010 | 9:01 PM ET
I hope Obama is paying attention. This film of "income redistribution" has failed wherever done ( think Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe and on and on). But the temptation to TAKE is very strong when the government has the power. Again showing the wisdom of our founders and Constitution's LIMITED GOVERNMENT!
Posted By: Serfdumb(1985) on 5/17/2010 | 8:44 PM ET
Look Obots, move to Venezuela for some 'socialized happiness' & skip the passport, Hugo won't ask for your papers.
Posted By: joevil(65) on 5/17/2010 | 8:00 PM ET
Sounds like Chavez is playing from the Zimbabwe manual . The African National Congress(Nelson Mandela 's party) Youth League(ANCYL)just visited Venezuela on a fact finding tour,to see how they have do things. Talking about the blind leading the blind.
To participate in Community areas, please Sign In or Register
Register
Learn to spot faulty bases.
Get QuoteSearch Site
Read Full Article »