Caracas Chronicles

It must be nice to work for Centro Internacional Miranda: get a hefty salary, spout off a bunch of clichés, and be bathed in the veneer of official intellectual responsability. En tierra de ciegos and all that …

Here are some things I learn while watching this video of “intellectual” chavistas making sense of the close election and the numerous problems the government faces:

1. You can get paid to say: half of oil rents are stolen; oil rents used to be stolen by the oligarchs, but now they’re being redistributed (and being stolen by the boligarchs); the interests of the large monopolists have not been touched; if oil prices fall, we will have to take unpopular measures; and we need to organize “el proceso.”
2. There is no “revolutionary” party – the PSUV is an electoral machine.
3. Oh, and revolutionary motorbike riders are the pits, and it’s all the media’s fault.

As for this video, Mr. Álvarez discovers el agua tibia:

Yes folks, you don’t need to read Caracas Chronicles, Mr. Álvarez breaks it down for you.

From his talk, we learn that Centro Internacional Miranda has a factory for manufacturing data (!). He then states the obvious:

• The large flow of petro-dollars is being spent on importing stuff.
• We don’t export anything other than oil.
• Agriculture is declining – it should be at least 12% of GDP, but it’s only 4% of GDP – the rest we import.
• Manufacturing is declining – it should be at least 20% of GDP, but now it’s 14% of GDP.
• The private sector still dominates the economy, and most of the earning are going to capitalists.
• Workers are now more exploited than before.
• There is no socialism in Venezuela.
• Private companies are responsible for poverty and social exclusion
• Private companies using CADIVI are being subsidized
• Our economy is now more based on rents than before.
• The devaluation of the bolívar is not necessarily a bad thing.

And this is coming … from a supporter of the very government that put all this in place! The discussions and the obvious lack of answers to the glaring shortcomings of the Revolution are a searing indictment of chavismo’s dearth of intellectual capabilities.

These … are simply not the people that are going to find ways to lower crime, end scarcity, and overcome inflation. They simply can’t do it.

HT: Chigüire