[1]
Getting Rich by Fighting for the Poor [2] from the blog of Daniel Greenfield – Sultan Knish, 3//7/13
Excerpt:
Chavez died with an estimated net worth of 2 billion dollars making him the 4th richest man in Venezuela and the 49th richest man in Latin America. For a while, Chavez weathered attacks from the media empire of Gustavo A. Cisneros, the richest man in Venezuela. Then before the 2004 election, their mutual friend Jimmy Carter brokered an agreement [3] between them. Cisneros’ media stopped criticizing Chavez and both men bent to the task of getting even richer.
While the Bolivarian Spartacus lined his pockets with oil money, Venezuela’s middle-class was struggling to get by in a country where the private sector had imploded. Income increased on paper, but decreased in reality as inflation increases ate the difference. Around the same time that Comrade Hugo was launching the third phase of his Bolivarian Revolution, inflation had decreased household income 8.8 percent [4] while consumer goods prices increased 27 percent.
On his deathbed, Hugo Chavez devalued his country’s currency for the fifth time by 32 percent, after tripling the deficit [5] during his previous term when the national debt had increased by 90 percent [6]. From 2008 to 2011, Chavez’s oil-rich government increased the debt by nearly 50 billion in a country of less than 30 million. That same year, The Economist speculated that Venezuela might go bankrupt [7].
Chavez had swollen the ranks of Venezuela’s public employees to 2.5 million in a country where the 15-64 population numbered only 18 million. With 1 public employee to every 7 working adults, the entire mess was subsidized by oil exports and debt. When the price of oil fell, only debt was left.
Those public employees became Chavez’s campaign staff with no choice but to vote for him or see their positions wiped out to keep the economy from crashing. And they won him one last election.
The dead tyrant leaves behind the lowest GDP growth rate and highest inflation rate in Latin America. He leaves behind an economy where more than half the population depends on government benefits or government jobs. He leaves behind a giant pile of debt for the people and 2 billion dollars in misappropriated oil money for his heirs.
HKO
A true liberal would never glorify a tyrant that pocketed billions while his people suffered. Yet tyrants like Chavez and Arafat were glorified by the very same people who would never have tolerated it had these greedy bastards been a US ally. Apparently it is OK to glorify a tyrant as long as they strongly express hatred for either the US or Israel.