Thursday, February 28, 2019

GOOD NEWS: CHINA IS NERVOUS

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN CHINA, TRADE, TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY

The New York Times reports that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, abruptly summoned hundreds of officials to Beijing recently. He did so, says the Times, in order to convey a sense of “anxious urgency.” The Communist Party, Xi told the officials, faces major risks on all fronts and must batten down the hatches.

“Globally, sources of turmoil and points of risk are multiplying,” [Xi] told the gathering in January at the Central Party School. At home, he added, “the party is at risk from indolence, incompetence and of becoming divorced from the public.”

According to the Times, Xi’s anxiety stems mainly from China’s slow economic growth and its “grinding trade fight with the United States.” Significant pressure from the international community over China’s political and business practices “add[] to its difficulties in dealing with its domestic issues,” explains Elizabeth C. Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York who wrote “The Third Revolution,” a study of Xi.

It’s unclear how China will respond to the “major risks” Xi perceives. A rational response would be to reach a trade deal with the U.S. and to modify, at least to some extent, the business practices that the international community is pressuring the regime to change.

This may not be China’s response. Indeed, the Times’ statement that Xi wants to “batten down the hatches” suggests a different response.

Either way, I think President Trump deserves considerable credit for applying so much pressure to China. His approach to China may not be flawless, but he has upped the cost to China of its unfair trade and other economic practices. If China’s leader wants to make meaningful concessions in response, that’s great. If he wants to ride out the storm Trump has helped create, at least China won’t be riding quite so high.

President Obama never dreamed of getting tough with China the way Trump has. But it’s not just Obama. As Michael Auslin of the Hoover Institution says:

Trump. . .has begun by blowing up past practice, specifically in no longer pretending China is a fair trading partner, in finally responding to cyber espionage, and in at least attempting to put more military pressure on Beijing by increasing naval freedom of navigation operations and aerial overflights near new Chinese military bases in the South China Sea. All in all, Trump’s approach is the first since the normalization of relations in 1979 to rattle the Chinese and put them on the back foot.

The mainstream media would rather disband than give Trump any credit for this. The Times article cited in this post studiously avoids doing so. Yet, the news reported by the Times in the article stands as a tribute to Trump’s China policy.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/good-news-china-is-nervous.php

Dems Reelect Trump by Staging Partisan Cohen Hearing During Nuke Negotiations

BY ROGER L. SIMON

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves from a car after arriving by train in Dong Dang in Vietnamese border town Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019, ahead of his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Minh Hoang)

The day the Democrats decided to schedule the House Oversight Committee hearing with Michael Cohen to coincide with Trump's negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi is the day the Democrats ensured the president's reelection. It was one of those rare moments of clarity you can imagine in the history books.

The Democrats revealed themselves as partisan hacks while the president was halfway around the world trying to save the lives of millions. That's not just bad timing, it's atrocious. And it has little to do with the success or failure of the talks with Kim. No one knows how that will turn out, probably not even the principals themselves. It has do with the priorities of the human race like global survival -- what a normal person should care about.

At first the consensus (at least among the talking heads) was that the hearing would outshine whatever was happening in Hanoi, but as the day wore on with no revelations that were even slightly new (Trump paid Stormy -- je suis shockay), no evidence of conspiracy with the Russians whatsoever, just tons of speculation and innuendo we have been hearing since the day Trump came down the escalator, and ended with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in some racist rant at Rep. Mark Meadows (we already knew she was an anti-Semite), we realized we were witnessing a bizarre clown show that only a CNN commentator could like.

And then it segued into coverage from Vietnam, Trump and Kim talking to each other live in front of the world, and we began to understand something of great magnitude was happening, something genuinely amazing. We leaned closer to the television to hear Kim's interpreter. What were they saying? Was it possible that things could change? Could the dictator be tamed by the businessman? What could be more dramatic?

Experts of all sorts were brought on, opining about things most people could figure out for themselves. Was Trump going to give away the store without guarantees? Kim's regime depended on nuclear weapons for survival. He would never surrender them. Trump was clever to stage the event in Vietnam, whose economic miracle could entice Kim. It could happen to North Korea. Then we heard that Kim went to boarding school in Switzerland, so he'd already seen the fancy life. He wouldn't be interested--or would he?

And then there was the matter of the Chinese. What did they really want? Was there going to be a peace treaty, ending the decades-old Korean War? A unified Korea looming in the future would be a threat to China, Samsung versus Huawei. But then what what if South Korea stayed separate and went nuclear with Japan? That could be worse. Was Xi playing two sides against the middle and four diagonals against a horizontal in three dimensional chess?

In all, this was a thousand times more interesting than the partisan palaver in Washington and a million times more significant.

What we are watching is a new form of diplomacy, more public than anything seen before, even though the crucial parts take place behind closed doors. We should recall, when we are quick to criticize, that the old method failed, miserably.

Trump says this negotiation will take time. That makes sense and we should give him the space. The test for Americans of all political parties, indeed of citizens of all countries, is whether they actually wish Trump well in this endeavor. If they don't, they are truly evil.

Roger L. Simon - co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media - is an award-winning novelist and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/dems-reelect-trump-by-staging-partisan-cohen-hearing-during-nuke-negotiations/

FOR YOU, AOC, THE ANSWER IS NO

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, FEDERAL BUDGET, GREEN NEW DEAL

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, God’s gift to conservatives, is at it again. The Valley Girl socialist says, like, it may not be OK to have children, because, like, the planet is doomed:

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested on Sunday night that people should consider not having children due to climate change because there is a “scientific consensus” that life will be hard for kids.

“Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don’t turn this ship around and so it’s basically like, there’s a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult,” Ocasio-Cortez said while chopping up food in her kitchen during an Instagram live video. “And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, ‘Is it okay to still have children?'”

She raises a great question. Are you listening, fellow socialists?

Ocasio-Cortez criticized Senator Dianne Feinstein for not genuflecting before a group of ignorant children:

“This idea that ‘I’ve been working on this for x-amount of years,’ um, it’s like not good enough,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Like, we need a universal sense of urgency, and people are like trying to introduce watered-down proposals that are frankly going to kill us. A lack of urgency is going to kill us.”

You’re going to kill us, Alexandria. With laughter.

Meanwhile, the American Action Forum announced that Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New ~~Deal~~Socialism would cost between $51 trillion and $93 trillion to implement, over 10 years. The American Action Forum is credible because it is run by economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who formerly directed the Congressional Budget Office.

I haven’t studied the AAF report and don’t know whether those numbers are right or not, assuming Green New ~~Deal~~ Socialism is a coherent enough program to be implemented. But they are certainly plausible. My organization, Center of the American Experiment, is about to unveil an exhaustive study that shows achieving a 50% “renewable” target in Minnesota would cost $80 billion. And a 50% goal, unlike the Green New ~~Deal~~ Socialism, is actually achievable. Although it requires increasing our reliance on fossil fuels, specifically natural gas, so there’s that.

Those many trillions of dollars are your money, of course. If the AAF report is correct, the Green New ~~Deal~~ Socialism would bankrupt pretty much every family in the United States. Nevertheless, most Democratic presidential candidates have embraced it. Kamala Harris, the New York Times candidate for president, said, “It’s not about a cost. It’s about an investment.” Liberals like to call government expenditures “investments.” Unlike those who work in the private sector, they never have to worry about whether “investments” are profitable or not.

All in all, it has been a tough day for the Left.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/for-you-aoc-the-answer-is-no.php

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

UNFAKE THE NEWS: ANDREW MCCABE IS MISLEADING AMERICA AND THE MEDIA IS GIVING HIM A PASS

Scott Morefield | Reporter

In this week’s edition of Unfake The News, The Daily Caller’s editorial director Vince Coglianese makes the case that President Donald Trump was actually “encouraging” justice rather than obstructing it when he participated in that now infamous interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in May 2017.

In addition to playing the short snip from the interview that Trump’s attackers’ focus on, Coglianese played part of the “little noticed” extended version. In it, the president’s own words make it “obvious” that he wanted the “Russia investigation to continue,” Coglianese noted.

“It’s totally exculpatory,” said Coglianese, but the “NBC interview has been used as the basis for attacking the president for so-called obstruction of justice for two years.”

Yet, Andrew McCabe “relied” on that interview to launch his counter-investigation into the president of the United States.

“Unfake the News” is a Daily Caller program dedicated to debunking the mainstream media narratives that dominate our news cycle.

That’s where The Caller’s Vince Coglianese steps in to cut through the PC bull. Each week, Vince takes a closer look at how cable news outlets are telling the top story and then gives you his own unadulterated take.

This is “Unfake the News.”

https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/24/unfake-the-news-andrew-mccabe-misleading-america/

Harris on Green New Deal Price Tag: 'It's Not About a Cost'

BY RICK MORAN

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks to members of the media at her alma mater, Howard University, Monday, Jan. 21, 2019 in Washington, following her announcement earlier in the morning that she will run for president. Harris, a first-term senator and former California attorney general known for her rigorous questioning of President Donald Trump's nominees, entered the Democratic presidential race on Monday. Vowing to "bring our voices together," Harris would be the first woman to hold the presidency and the second African-American if she succeeds. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

It must be nice to live your life not having to worry how much something costs. Of course, you would have to be fabulously wealthy.

Or a liberal Democratic senator from California with access to an unlimited amount of taxpayer funds.

Or, in Kamala Harris's case, both.

Spending other people's money can be fun. It can also be politically profitable.

Just ask Senator Harris.

Fox News:

"There's no question we have to be practical. But being practical also recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to us as human beings," Harris began. "Being practical recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions are threat to our air, and threatening our planet. And that it is well within our capacity as human beings to change our behaviors in a way that we can reduce its effect. That's practical. Of course we can afford it."

And the science is settled. Besides, "being practical" means never having to say you're sorry if you're wrong. Some estimates put the cost of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 at $13 trillion. Other estimates are far higher.

CNN's John King asked Harris for her response to conservative arguments that progressive proposals could end up doing more harm than good, by crippling the U.S. economy even as major polluters like China continue unabated.

China is allowed to play by an entirely different set of environmental rules than other countries. This, of course, gives them a huge economic advantage -- one they take full advantage of.

"One of the things that I admire and respect is the measurement that is captured in three letters: ROI," Harris responded. "What's the return on investment? People in the private sector understand this really well. It's not about a cost. It's about an investment. And then the question should be, is it worth the cost in terms of the investment potential? Are we going to get back more than we put in?"

Harris' loose invocation of an economics term echoed language by Ocasio-Cortez, who has repeatedly and confidently said "there's a little thing in economics known as externalities" to justify her Green New Deal proposal.

Steve Suranovic, a mathematician at the Institute for Economic Policy, wrote this 12 years ago:

It is a fiction to believe that creating new technologies to combat climate change will be good because it will create new industries and new jobs. This belief is based on a misunderstanding of “opportunity cost.” All of the money spent, and jobs created to produce more fuel efficient cars, carbon-capture technologies, wind and geothermal electricity plants, etc., etc., is money that will not be spent on other things, like food, clothing, health care and entertainment. In order to do one thing – i.e., clean the environment – we must not do other things – i.e., provide other goods and services that people want.

Perhaps the most brilliant semantic change made by the left in the last 50 years has been to relabel "government spending" as "investment." We're not "spending tax dollars." We're investing. Sounds great, until you remember it's still cash coming out of your pocket being wasted by government.

The Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college for everybody, and reparations for slavery would cost tens of trillions of dollars to implement. The voters deserve to know how much they are going to be expected to pony up to make this socialist nightmare a reality. But Harris and other Democrats are going to be doing the liberal two-step to avoid talking about specifics because they know they would be slaughtered at the polls if they did.

In 2020, I doubt very much if Trump will miss a chance to inform the voters how much it will cost to save America and save the planet.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/harris-on-green-new-deal-price-tag-its-not-about-a-cost/

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Hate crime hoaxes, like Jussie Smollett's alleged attack, are more common than you think

Wilfred Reilly, Opinion contributor

In writing a book about hate crime hoaxes, I found more than 400. Such frauds damage good race relations.

The hate attack on Empire star Jussie Smollett is now alleged to be a hoax. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Smollett’s story was bizarre, bordering on the absurd. He claimed to have been attacked — at 2:00am in Chicago — by two men, in some early reports, wearing red MAGA hats, who called him “that Empire n_____,” yelled “this is MAGA country,” and poured bleach on him while putting a noose around his neck.

The questions here are obvious. How many Trump supporters even exist in the downtown of a city that went 83% for Hillary Clinton — and how many of them watch "Empire?" How many guys looking for a fight carry rope and bottles of bleach around with them? Almost every normal citizen had questions like these about this incident, and we were justified in having them.

That this case turned out to be a hoax shouldn't come as too big of a shock. A great many hate crime stories turn out to be hoaxes. Simply looking at what happened to the most widely reported hate crime stories over the past 4-5 years illustrates this: not only the Smollett case but also the Yasmin Seweid, Air Force Academy, Eastern Michigan, Wisconsin-Parkside, Kean College, Covington Catholic, and “Hopewell Baptist burning” racial scandals all turned out to be fakes. And, these cases are not isolated outliers.

Doing research for a book, Hate Crime Hoax, I was able to easily put together a data set of 409 confirmed hate hoaxes. An overlapping but substantially different list of 348 hoaxes exists at fakehatecrimes.org, and researcher Laird Wilcox put together another list of at least 300 in his still-contemporary book Crying Wolf. To put these numbers in context, a little over 7,000 hate crimes were reported by the FBI in 2017 and perhaps 8-10% of these are widely reported enough to catch the eye of a national researcher.

Why do hoaxers hoax? In some cases, the motivations are tawdry and financial. Jussie Smollett allegedly wanted to make himself a sympathetic figure to boost his salary.

However, the motivations of many hoaxers are honorable if misguided. In college campus hate hoax cases (Kean College, U-Chicago), the individuals responsible almost invariably say that they staged incidents to call attention to real incidents of racist violence on campus. Certainly, the media giants that leap to publicize hate crime stories later revealed to be fakes, and the organizations that line up to defend their “victims” — the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, CAIR — think that they are providing a public service by fighting bigotry.

More commentary: Jussie Smollett's alleged plan to manufacture outrage diminishes impact of real hate crime

Angry about Jussie Smollett? Here's what you can do: Today's talker

News: Jussie Smollett suspended from ‘Empire’ after prosecutors said he faked attack to boost salary

However, hate crime hoaxers are “calling attention to a problem” that is a very small part of total crimes. There is very little brutally violent racism in the modern USA. There are less than 7,000 real hate crimes reported in a typical year. Inter-racial crime is quite rare; 84% of white murder victims and 93% of Black murder victims are killed by criminals of their own race, and the person most likely to kill you is your ex-wife or husband. When violent inter-racial crimes do occur, whites are at least as likely to be the targets as are minorities. Simply put, Klansmen armed with nooses are not lurking on Chicago street corners.

In this context, what hate hoaxers actually do is worsen generally good race relations, and distract attention from real problems. As Chicago’s disgusted top cop, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, pointed out yesterday, skilled police officers spent four weeks tracking down Smollett’s imaginary attackers — in a city that has seen 28 murders as of Feb. 9th, according to The Chicago Tribune. We all, media and citizens alike, would be better served to focus on real issues like gun violence and the opiate epidemic than on fairy tales like Jussie’s.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/22/jussie-smollett-empire-attack-fired-cut-video-chicago-fox-column/2950146002/

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News 2/26/2019

Biased narratives, picking sides

It used to be the normal, expected practice of the news profession that any given story line, any apparent narrative would be looked at from multiple perspectives, with supporting facts, before presenting it to the public. It was (think about this) considered responsible journalism to provide those narratives, or sides, without preference for either one if that could be done, with supporting facts as time or space allowed. The reader or viewer could at least be satisfied that, at the very least, it was an “on one hand…on the other hand” case and wait for further revelations to start making their own conclusion.

News events that illustrate the failure of journalists to abide by the above: 1) the herd that ganged up on the Covington Catholic boys with the media’s preferred perspective (a factual statement that reveals how far the news media have fallen) rather than wait for—or even search out—the additional video that ultimately fully exonerated the MAGA hat-wearing, pro-life kids. Had reporters and editors simply played the available video they would have probably gotten closer to the truth than they did, saving, for instance, the Washington Post from a $250 million libel law suit.

2) With that cluster screw-up in mind, perhaps the coverage of actor Jussie Smollett could have been somewhat more cautious when his bizarre tale was first told. It wasn’t, for the most part, because a mentality has taken over most of journalism that there are “white hats” and “black hats” from the get go; events that have even a tangential overlap with the political realm can be blithely “pigeonholed” into preset good/bad analysis based on OrangeManBad (likewise, Trump’s supporters). His opponents are assumed to be, if not virtuous, at least commendable for their good intentions.

We are now seeing the results of a 2-year quasi-jihad waged by, first, the extended circle of Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama acolytes, campaign staff and Dept. of Justice officials; and second, virtually the entire national, coastal, beltway news media establishment that has morphed into little more than unelected mouthpieces of the Democrat National Committee. Their shared goals include 1) creating such hostile public opinion that President Trump leaves office, 2) dissuading anyone, with something to lose to the fury of the literal or virtual mob, from being part of Trump’s administration,

3) Elect Democrats to Congress (half way done) who can then use their committees and publicly-provided resources to so sully Trump’s reputation and image that not only do Republicans and voters run away from him in 2020 but they also associate the Democrat/media-created slime fest with Trump and Republicans in general. We know the media all vote, contribute and report in support of Democrats; what now becomes apparent is that they shamelessly propagandize to advance Democrat fortunes and beat Trump.

What more evidence do you need beyond the example of the highly edited clip of Trump’s May 2017 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, a fine journalist who treated Trump respectfully and fairly. The abbreviated quote, where Trump talked about his thinking behind firing then-AG James Comey, was used to advance the charge that Trump fired Comey to obstruct the Russia investigation. In the little-played additional video, Trump made clear that he wanted “the Russia investigation to continue” and “be done properly,” as you can see and hear in “Unfake the news: Andrew McCabe is misleading America and the media is giving him a pass,” at the DailyCaller.com.

McCabe is touting the inaccurate edited assertion to charge Trump with obstructing Mueller’s Russia collusion probe, belied by the fact that Trump hasn’t taken one single step to stop Mueller. How the media can treat fired-for-lying McCabe with soft ball questions, fawning, credulous interviews and nary a skeptical raised eyebrow is beyond belief. The media has, in fact, picked a side—and Trump’s their enemy.

Together with the phony Hillary Clinton/DNC/FusionGPS/Steele dossier—the existence of which is irrefutable proof of collusion with Christopher Steele’s Russian sources—you have the near-entirety of “proof” of Trump’s perfidy. In other words, there is, as any objective observer has stated, not a shred of proof; on that, liberal legal scholar Alan Dershowitz agrees with Republican Sen. Richard Burr. What is disgustingly apparent is that such odious politicians as Rep. Adam Schiff won’t take “no evidence” for an answer as they crusade to unearth something, anything in Trump’s pre-presidency to fill an impeachment brief. His obsessive investigation will only help Trump sail to reelection.

Worth reading: “As The Russia Hoax Begins To Unravel, The Gaslighting Begins—The media has started backing away from the Russia collusion hoax. Many seem to know a reckoning is coming,” by blogger “Adam Hill” at TheFederalist.com. Suffice it to say that “Trump Is On Solid Legal Ground In Declaring A Border Emergency To Build A Wall,” the title of a lengthy piece also at The Federalist.com. Finally, Matt Margolis mines the deep well of Democrat hypocrisy in “I’m Old Enough to Remember When Democrats Loved Unilateral Executive Actions on Immigration.”

As is his wont, Mr. Minch continues to pick a fight by attacking me, “the Tuesday columnist,” over infanticide and race. He accused me of mistreating my dog; for the record, I haven’t had a dog since childhood. We care well for the indoor and outdoor cats, making the effort to have them spayed or neutered.

Liberals and progressives seem to place great stock in facts. A baby is still a baby if it survives a late-term abortion; when that living, breathing infant is either allowed or induced to die, that is literally “killing a baby.” I take it Mr. Minch thinks that a woman, a mother, has a right to make the decisive choice to kill that live baby. I don’t and, moreover, neither do most people whether they support abortion in early months or not. I answered his question; will Mr. Minch acknowledge and answer the above facts?

Venezuela Isn’t Just a Failed State. It’s a Failure of the Left.

Venezuela Isn’t Just a

Failed State. It’s a Failure

of the Left.

Conservatives are not wrong when they say socialism deserves

some blame for the nation’s collapse.

Tyler Cowen

As Venezuela careens toward a further economic and political collapse, the blame game is

heating up. In the U.S., Republicans are labeling the country “socialist,” using Venezuelan

problems as a weapon against more left-leaning Democrats. Commentators on the left, in

contrast, are arguing that Venezuela is more of a failed petro-state with bad leadership, rather

than a test of socialist ideals. Who is right?

If we look at government spending as a percentage of GDP, Venezuela seems far from socialism. In recent years government spending in Venezuela has been measured at about 40 percent of GDP, with the caveat that these statistics are not fully reliable. For the U.S., the corresponding figure is about 37 percent.

Yet emerging economies typically cannot afford the same government programs as wealthier countries, and they cannot run them with the same efficacy. Poorer countries that try to expand their governments to size of wealthier countries, such as Brazil and Venezuela, typically encounter sub-par economic performance. These are indeed stories of big government run amok, as some of conservatives are suggesting.

Furthermore, rates of change are important. The Venezuelan figure of about 40 percent is up from about 28 percent in 2000, a very rapid increase. By boosting government spending so quickly, the Venezuelan government was sending a message that the key to future riches is courting government favor, not starting new businesses.

Or consider exports, which for most developing economies play an especially critical role. They bring in foreign exchange, provide contacts to foreign markets, and force parts of the economy to learn how to compete with the very best foreign companies. Yet over 90 percent of Venezuela’s exports are oil, and those resources are owned and controlled by the government. For this all-important growth driver, Venezuela comes pretty close to full socialism — to its detriment.

Chile has prudently managed its state-owned copper reserves (also a big export earner), but Venezuelan leaders have treated state oil money as a slush fund for themselves and their cronies, and furthermore they borrowed against future oil revenues. The daughter of former President Hugo Chavez, who died six years ago, is still reportedly one of the richest women in Venezuela. Of course that came largely from state resources, and it happened while the Venezuelan citizenry was sinking further into poverty.

In fact, nationalizations under Chavez were numerous — encompassing much of the oil sector plus parts of the agriculture, transport, power, steel, telecommunications and finance industries. Even though many of those nationalizations were small in scale, the threat of further encroachments on private property rights discouraged investment and sent the wrong signal about where the nation was headed.

And this may be the most important point: Socialism, capitalism and other systems matter not only for the conditions they create but because of the ideas they propagate. This is true even if these ideologies are followed incompletely or imperfectly.

One simple way to trace that influence for Chavez is to look at Wikiquotes, where you will find plenty of utterances against globalization and the market economy. “Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan,” he said in 2005. “Health can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can’t be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.” That rhetoric of victimization and absolute moralizing against markets doesn’t sound so different from a lot of what I hear from non-Venezuelans on social media.

Like his praise for anti-capitalist, anti-American regimes such as Belarus and Iran, a lot of Chavez’s rhetoric might have been written off as political posturing. But it has continued under his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who has also failed to use his post to educate Venezuelans about the benefits of capitalism and globalization — in stark contrast to many East Asian leaders. Instead, the promotion of socialist ideas has helped to make Venezuelan society less economically robust and more vulnerable to collapse.

And while many on the left are now keen to disavow any connection to the Venezuelan disaster, their earlier enthusiasm is on the record. Greg Grandin, writing in The Nation in 2013, offered a laudatory take on Chavez and suggested that Venezuela “might be the most democratic country in the Western hemisphere.” (He also argued, oddly enough, that Chavez “wasn’t authoritarian enough.”) Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the U.K.’s Labour Party, has also been a big Chavez fan, while Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz praised Venezuela’s economic policies in 2007 and declared that the risks of higher inflation were overrated.

Yes, there are some exaggerations and mischaracterizations in the right-wing charge that Venezuela’s system is socialism, pure and simple. At the same time, the evidence shows that, for some parts of the ideological left, the cause for embarrassment is very real indeed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-20/venezuela-is-a-failure-of-the-left-not-just-a-failed-state