Chip Bok's Bokbluster

Hugo Chavez used to give heating oil to poor Americans through Joe Kennedy’s Citizen’s Energy Corp. Now the mayor of Caracas tweets that Venezuelans are hunting cats and dogs for dinner.

Regular blackouts shut down hospital respirators for hours in Venezuela according to the NYT. Glenn Reyonolds, at USA Today, says socialism doesn’t help poor people. It creates them.

The Bern in Venezuela

Bernie Sanders says he’s for Denmark style socialism. Danes aren’t pleased. T.D. Tuccille, in Reason, quotes Bernie Sanders giving a shoutout to Socialism’s ability to make people equally poor:

“Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing,” Sanders told interviewers in 1985. “In other countries people don’t line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”

The Venezuelan elite aren’t eating their pets. Chavez’s daughter is believed to have a net worth in the billions.