Hugo Chavez -

It is pleasing to see people get their comeuppance and sad when they take others with them. That is the way I feel about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In our opinion the man is a megalomaniacal windbag along the lines of Lybia’s Mohamar Gadafi and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Furthermore he is ruining the Venezuelan economy, while permitting no dissent and destroying freedom of speech by shutting down media outlets that do not support his policies.

One of those policies is the nationalization of major parts of the economy. In his years in office, Mr. Chavez has nationalized electricity and telecommunications companies, oil projects and the latest being a supermarket chain owned by a French company.

Mr. Chavez may seem like a hero to some socialists when he nationalizes someone else’s investments and efforts, but Mr. Chavez will eventually learn that in the long term you do not strengthen an economy by discouraging investment. It discourages investment because who wants to invest in an economy ruled by a despot and one where your assets could be nationalized at any moment, on that man’s whim.

That is the socialist part of Mr. Chavez. There is another side to him though. You see Mr. Chavez is always pushing OPEC to get the highest price possible for the oil that OPEC and Venezuela sell abroad ------- and that I think we call “Capitalism”. So Mr. Chavez likes to have it both ways you see.

We feel sorry for the Venezuelan population. But we look forward to seeing El Presidente toppled from power some day soon. Socialist dictatorships do not make good economies.