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Socialism: Want to lose weight fast? Don't worry about the latest fad diet. Just move to Venezuela. There, the new Socialist Diet has caused the population to lose millions of pounds in 12 months. Unwillingly, of course.

A new study of Venezuela's stunning decline under Hugo Chavez's socialist model, still followed faithfully by his lap dog successor, Nicolas Maduro, reports that the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in the last year. Today, the 2016 Living Conditions Survey finds, 32.5% of Venezuelans eat only once or twice a day, up from 11.3% just one year ago. And 93.3% of all people don't earn enough to buy sufficient food.

American Thinker blogger Ronald C. Tinnell called it "The Venezuelan Miracle Weight Loss Program."

We call it a shocking indictment of socialism, and should be a siren call to people around the world: Bring socialism to your country, and you bring misery. It's the one thing that socialism produces an abundance of.

It's a sad fact that Venezuela was once one of the wealthiest countries in South America, and even now has the second-largest oil reserves in the world. It should be a rich nation, filled with prosperous people worried about gaining too much weight, not losing it to hunger.

But as formerly middle-class Venezuelans scavenge for food some even stooping to dumpster diving and eating formerly beloved pets just to stay alive socialists allied with Maduro have changed nothing. Maduro followed Chavez's lead, spending all the money that the state-oil company earned on "social" programs, all the while attacking small businesses and companies and effectively nationalizing the supermarkets.

Meanwhile, inflation at close to 500% a year is the highest of any country on earth. Looking at the problems with declining food stocks and roaring inflation, Maduro decided to put the military in charge of the country's food distribution network. The result was predictable: Massive food shortages and rampant corruption, as armed military line their pockets by selling food on the black market.

"Mismanagement of the economy has created a humanitarian disaster beyond comprehension," wrote Ed Feulner and Ana Quintana in a piece that appeared on the RealClearPolitics website.

The country's infrastructure is collapsing from a lack of investment, while rule of law has been rejected for the rule of one tyrant. Children aren't spared; they're dying by the hundreds from curable diseases, a lack of medicine, electricity outages and no incubators for newborns. The resurgence of once vanquished contagious diseases is killing off the weak and the infirm. "Cases of diphtheria and malaria are re-emerging, and the number of Zika infections is estimated to be 'nearly 700,000', according to a Venezuelan health organization," wrote Feulner and Quintana.

Even worse is the chaos on the streets. Caracas' murder rate of 120 per each 100,000 inhabitants is the highest in the world. That's higher than in Damascus, Kabul or Tripoli.

It doesn't have to be this way. As recently as 21 years ago the Heritage Foundation gave Venezuela a 59.8 ranking on its Index of Freedom. Today it's at 27.0, just behind Cuba but barely ahead of last place North Korea. As with all nations that destroy freedom, socialist Venezuela has also destroyed whatever semblance of wealth it had.

If Venezuela seems remote and of little concern, consider this headline: "Democratic Socialists Make Headway In U.S. After Trump's Win." Yes, we know. The Democratic Socialists of America style themselves as kinder, gentler socialists. Think Sweden, they say, not Venezuela.

But the truth is, whoever practices it or whatever those who follow it call themselves, socialism is an economic system based on mass greed and class envy that has failed time and time again. There are no successful socialist nations, anywhere. Those that find this model appealing despite its obvious failures are the desperate, the poorly educated, the uninformed and those lacking entirely in basic common sense.

It is an economic philosophy of entitlement and grievance, one that always ends in poverty, wanton destruction, the breakdown of civilization and even death as the Venezuelans, who willingly handed control of their country over to the socialists, are now finding out.

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Originally posted here:
Venezuelans Now On A Forced Starvation Diet Thanks, Socialism ... - Investor's Business Daily

One day, President Donald Trump is at a prayer meeting talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger being lousy on TV, and on another, he is naming the brilliant Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser. I will hereby be an unsolicited national hope adviser. Do the second kind of thing much more and wholly eradicate the first kind of thing, Mr. President, and save us from a grave public enemy.

That would be the kind of socialistically inspired future represented by Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. She wanted more freebies but less freedom, more spending, more regulations, a marketplace coerced into failures, identity-group divisiveness, contemptuous elitist supremacy and judicial power usurping democracy along with constitutionalism.

President Barack Obama was also a champ at all of this, and while the public mostly liked him, many did not like what he was doing. Thus, after his eight years in office, Democrats had lost a net of 62 seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, 12 governorships, more than 900 state legislature seats and the presidency, according to a Fox News report. Republicans took charge, and there is now an extraordinary opportunity to reverse a big-government trend threatening to encapsulate us for eons.

The thing is, we may be cheated out of that chance if Trump does not give up on his stupidities and instead provides his enemies the wherewithal to stymie the best in him and turn the country back over to their contrary dreams. If he loves America, therefore, he should please, please quit obnoxious tweeting for starters. It is absurd and makes him look like a misbehaving child with a misused toy.

Then he should quit holding zany press conferences in which he overstates everything, insults everyone and further institutes enmity. He should in fact avoid adlibbing as much as possible. He is a non-linear, now-you-see-it, now-you-dont speaker who treats us to unconnected, unexplained phrases that can mean just about anything and are advantageously interpreted by critics as saying he favors hell over heaven.

Still more advice. He should quit substituting glances at a TV set for actual study. He should quit having reckless phone calls with heads of state. He should quit putting together policy plots with minimal trustworthy advice. He should quit the small-mindedness that puts claims of crowd size above real issues.

Yes, it is absolutely the case that his critics are often far worse than he is. Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Sen. Chuck Schumer? There is nothing polite to say. The reputable press is not so reputable when its commentators, for instance, issue baseless growls about anti-Semitism.

It is also despicable that protestors carry signs referring to Trump as anti-gay when there is absolutely nothing to back them up. It is simple-minded and worse for anyone to insist Trumps criticism of someone who is black is ipso facto racism, and yet we have seen it. In terms of evidence at this point, the Russian collusion theory is right up there with the birther theory. Vandalizing college students should be required to clean up after themselves before packing their bags and going home, and the leakers in the intelligence community should be worried about criminal prosecution.

There is lots of good in Trump, as seen in his executive orders on pipelines and absolutely smothering regulations, his choice for the Supreme Court, most of his Cabinet picks and, as mentioned earlier, his choice of McMaster as a top advisor.

He may very well do something about a crime rise the left uncaringly dismisses as nothing much. Watch for an improved world order. Some of his tax ideas are excellent, if not the one on imports, and we should replace Obamacare with something better, although prudence is needed. The wonders already happening in the economy are signs of how he actually could do splendid things.

But if Trump does not cut out the bad, there are those waiting in the bushes with a ruinous future in mind.

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Jay Ambrose: How Trump could lead us to socialism - Winona Daily News

Posted by Laura Handly on February 23, 2017 Leave a Comment

(Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)

At 18 years old, I moved to Norway and fell in love with the Norwegian way of life. While others spoke of the American Dream, I learned that equality and justice were relegated to the cold climes of Scandinavia. Ideologically, socialism is the best solution to the problem of human governance. It is a system that advocates for government regulation and promises a relatively high quality of life to everyone. In practice, that means that people pay higher taxes but things like healthcare and education are free and virtually no one is homeless.

Socialism works in Norway. With its relatively small and homogenous population and its massive oil wealth, the Norwegian government has the ability and the incentive to provide extensive social benefits to the people. The country is surrounded by similarly governed countries and separated from conflict due to the ocean and the arctic. It offers free higher education and even provides low-interest loans to support students living expenses.Political participation is widespread and encouraged from a young age, with each major party supplemented by a youth branch. One friend explained Norwegian political discourse as many voices advocating different paths to the same goals.

Donald Trump ran his political campaign on a populist fiction. He promised to return power to the people and to drain the swamp of elites in Washington. Like Bernie Sanders, Trump challenged the concentration of government elites and appealed to voters who felt excluded or ignored by the current system. Using rhetoric inspired by socialism, Trump spoke of redistributing power, creating new jobs and, infamously, making America great again.People responded to these promises. The populism of this Presidential Election reshaped the political landscape. In the end, the division between establishment and outsider proved just as important as party affiliation for the candidates.

Since coming to office, Trump has demonstrated he has no plans to remove the Washington establishment from positions of power. Trumps cabinet isthe most affluentin United States history, with members regulating agencies they would prefer did not exist. He has abused his executive power to undermine the system of checks and balances and to push through a hateful and unconstitutional immigration ban. He has announced that he will cut funding to arts programs, which will savejust 0.0625 percent of the projected federal budget, while moving forward with his plans to elect aborder wall with Mexico for $21.6 billion. His regular weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago cost taxpayers an estimated$3 million each, while security to protectTrump Tower drains the budget of $500,000every day.

This election has given us all a lot to consider. It has taught us that truth can be subjective, and that those in power may seek to redefine reality to serve their own interests. It has shown that our democracy is fragile at best and that elected politicians can threaten our freedoms of religion and speech. I have learned that we cannot overly depend on our government or the structures that value the interests of elites above the rest. Socialism works when people have faith in their institutions and their leaders. The Trump administration has done little to abate the fears of many Americans.

Trumps abuse of power demonstrates that the American people must guard their rights vigilantly. When a president explicitlylies to their people, foreign powersintervene in our elections andscientific truth is disregardedfor a more profitable fabrication, we must seriously reconsider the powers we grant to our government.

Laura Handly is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at lhandly@umass.edu.

Filed under Archives, Columns, Headlines, Opinion, Scrolling Headlines Tagged with Border Wall, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Mexico, norway, President Trump, Socialsim, Trump, Trump Tower, Trump's Cabinet

Excerpt from:
Trump's election and the end of a socialist dream - The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Vox

Congratulations To Bolivarian Socialism - Venezuela Discovers The Perfect Weight Loss Diet Forbes Is there nothing that that Bolivarian socialism cannot achieve? That anti-economic brainchild of the Chavistas which is so enriching the people of Venezuela has, at various times, managed to make the country run out of beer, Coca Cola and Big Macs--one ... Venezuela's economic crisis is so dire that most people have lost an average of 19 poundsVox all 2 news articles »

The rest is here:
Congratulations To Bolivarian Socialism - Venezuela Discovers The Perfect Weight Loss Diet - Forbes

When the former administration expressed its desire for greater accessibility to health care, it was condemned as socialism. When it proposed regulations to rein in profiteering in financial institutions, again, these were railed against as socialism. There are many other examples. Yet no one admits that any and all corporate protections are a form of socialism--an intervention by a government designed to aid proponents of free enterprise.

So it really isn't free enterprise. Without corporate socialism, energy companies would ultimately have to contend with competition. Without corporate socialism, only extremely large farms would be able to withstand the ebb and flow of markets and the environment. Without corporate socialism, certain industries would not be propped up while others are left to flounder and fail.

It isn't really the evils of socialism that is at issue, is it? It's who a legislative body chooses to enrich. Protecting jobs is important. Protecting contributors to an economy is important.

But when a legislature opts to intervene on behalf of a company or an industry, with no guarantee of any quantity of jobs, or contributions to the common good, or agreements to the preservation of a natural environment, we are left to believe that the primary function is simply to enrich those who derive the greatest profit from these enterprises, and everyone else be damned.

The average citizen of this state gains little security from these interventions. The companies are still free to reduce payrolls, damage the environment, and behave in every manner contrary to the public good. And to ignore the validity of other perspectives, especially for long-term effect, is fundamentally dishonest.

Unrue lives in Fargo.

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Letter: Proposed moratorium on wind development is a form of socialism - INFORUM