How would you like to live in a country that has severe food shortages, where eggs are a delicacy, the chicken is an endangered species, toilet paper is a luxury and meat an extravagance? What if you couldn't get your car repaired because the stores were out of spare parts? How about having to put off a life threatening operation because the medical equipment needed isn't working due to the delay in getting spare parts? And let's sprinkle in a dose of Jimmy Carter type inflation of over 20%. If this sounds intriguing to you, move to Venezuela, because that's what's going on.

What caused this mess? Here's a few of the main culprits: State owned industries and services like oil, farms, apartments buildings, health care, banking capital controls, mandatory wage increases, nationalization of foreign owned companies, massive government spending, high taxes on the wealthy and price controls. There just can't be more principles of basic economics being trashed here.  What really scary is several of these look eerily familiar in reviewing some of the democratic presidential campaign speeches going on in the U.S.

However, based on the mainstream media, you wouldn't think Venezuela was having any problems. I haven't seen anything reported. Have you? Oh, by the way, if you live in Venezuela, you won't hear it from the media there either. Chavez seized control of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) last Sunday. The other media outlets dare not mention these problems either, for fear of being nationalized, or something even worse.

Assault on free speech is right out of the liberal/socialist play-book. In the U.S. now that the democrats are in power, they are trying to revive the Fairness Doctrine which was abolished by the FCC in August of 1987. Liberal radio talk shows have failed miserably. So the purpose behind the attempted revival of the Fairness Doctrine is to silence successful conservative talk shows by requiring them to include equal time on each show to a liberal point of view. Liberals and socialists can never win in the arena of free ideas and free choice. They can only win by passing laws that are legislated and not voted on. Welcome to Venezuela!