Jeffrey Clemens points us to some of the nurses who organized the NYTimes editorial about the possibly stolen election in Venezuela. The episode begins logically enough:
Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of a tumultuous presidential election early Monday, despite a strong push by the opposition who believed this was the year to topple Mr. Maduro’s party.
Voting was marred by irregularities, with citizens angrily protesting the government’s actions at polling stations despite the results being announced.
The term “socialist-inspired party” is strange. The party in question is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) and its basic principles are, “The party is built as a socialist party, and affirms that a socialist society is the only way to defeat the capitalist system.” Therefore, I would have gone with ‘Mr. Maduro’s socialist party’. It doesn’t matter, that’s not a big mistake. Later the episode says:
If the decision of the election is still there and Mr. With Maduro still in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country’s socialist-inspired movement, into its third year in Venezuela. Founded by former President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro, the organization initially promised to lift millions out of poverty.
Time passed. But in recent years, the socialist model has replaced brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small minority connected to the government controlling much of the nation’s wealth.
Venezuela is now ruled by “brutal capitalism” under Maduro’s United Socialist Party!??? The NYTimes has lost touch with reality. From the link we learn that what they are saying is that some price and payment controls were removed, including allowing dollars to be used because the bolívar, “was made worthless by inflation,” and remittances from the United States were legal:
NYTimes: As the country’s economy has been devastated by years of mismanagement and corruption, and pushed to the brink of collapse by US sanctions, Mr.
Lifting some controls does not make Venezuela a capitalist country. In addition, the lifting of controls has led to improvements in:
…Seeing the shelves full also helped ease tensions in the capital, where anger over a lack of basic services has, in years past, helped fuel mass protests.
…The revolution has also brought relief to millions of Venezuelans who have family abroad and are now unable to accept, and use, their dollar currency to buy food from other countries.
Of course, the development was not evenly distributed. If you want to call unequal development, “brutal capitalism”. Well, I don’t think that’s helpful but if you do make sure you note that “under Maduro’s administration, more than 20,000 people have been extrajudicially killed and seven million Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country.” (Wikipedia.) That is brutal socialism.
Finally, I don’t expect the NYTimes to keep up with the latest fact-checking techniques so I don’t push them too hard, but it’s clear that the Chavismo regime has never lifted millions out of poverty. At best, poverty declined during the good years at a rate one would expect when looking at similar countries. The recent rise in poverty is unprecedented, as the NYTimes previously acknowledged.
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