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One of the greatest achievements of Hugo Chavez was his fight against the injustices of corporations. When companies sold goods at unfair prices, Chavez (and then his stooge Maduro), had a simple answer. They would simply confiscate the company and the goods in question, and then give them away to their supporters.
Yes. It’s true…and it happened many times. This is the regime that the likes of “esteemed” MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Vermont’s Communist Senator Bernie Sanders, “public intellectual” Naomi Klein, and Hollywood bigwig Danny Glover cheered as they created a just society.
The 2016 Christmas was indeed a good one for the lowlife and lazy Chavistas. Maduro, in his infinite wisdom, discovered that toy prices were too high, so with much pomp and circumstance he unceremoniously confiscated 4,000,000 toys, to distribute to their layabout government supporters in poor neighborhoods. It may not be as great as the Obama phone program, but it certainly warmed the hearts of many of Venezuela’s most low-income, under-achieving people. And, of course, it served as a very good teachable moment: socialist parents could use the Marxist redistribution scam to teach their children about the benefits of government theft of private property.
After his triumphant toy redistribution, Maduro moved on to 2017 with another target on his horizon: bakeries. Bread was just entirely too expensive, so Maduro instituted “price controls” to ensure that the Venezuelan people would only have to pay reasonable prices for this basic staple. Unfortunately, the plan flopped because it would have forced bakers to sell their bread for less than it cost to produce, so bakeries refused to go along with the government scheme. On to the next move: Maduro gleefully confiscated shipments of flour, and seized entire bakeries, decrying an “economic war” by a business oligarchy against the Venezuelan people.
Would Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren confiscate millions of toys and hundreds of bakeries and then redistribute the goods to their lowly supporters?
I certainly wouldn’t put it past them. Bernie has long called for the nationalization of major industries and utilities, and Elizabeth Warren believes that the government can steal private property from shareholders under the auspices of her so-called “Accountable Capitalism Act.”
But, it’s true, we are unlikely to see this on American streets any time soon. Even to the typical Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren supporter, who has no appreciation for the free market, this level of government interference would be likely to be quite unpopular.
But Elizabeth Warren is every bit the populist master of demagoguery and theft that Venezuelan Chavistas are.
How you ask?
Warren’s new plan to magically “cancel” trillions in student loan debt is probably the greatest example of populist demagoguery in modern American history…very similar to the Chavista blueprint…and far more destructive. Maduro’s confiscatory boondoggles only amounted to millions. Warren’s populist giveaway scam will run into trillions of dollars!
It is an outrageous affront to the rule of law, fiscal responsibility, and the Constitution. Where in the Constitution is there a single word of text that would suggest that the president of the United States has the authority to cancel legally binding private contracts between borrowers and lenders? What’s next? Why doesn’t Warren just propose to pay off mortgages as well? Lots of people have those and would love to not have to pay them back. How about car and boat loans? Credit car debt?
It is comical to hear the Democrats talk about Trump’s supposed “disregard for the rule of law” and “populism”…when the woman who is supposedly the “policy wonk” of the Democratic field is proposing legislation that is beyond the pale…outrageously out of line with anything in our Constitutional order or tradition. This legislation is not just unconstitutional…it is criminal.
It is very reminiscent of the populist measures used by Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro on a regular basis over the past 20 years…where they would accuse “greedy” companies of charging too much money for television sets or washing machines…promptly confiscate the merchandise, and give it away on their national television program to a “grateful Venezuelan people.”
Chavez and Maduro conveniently didn’t mention that it was their capital and currency controls that led to the hyperinflation that caused rampant price increases for appliances and electronics.
Warren’s proposal is a textbook example of rabid populist demagoguery. There is little difference between Chavez/Maduro and Warren: create an “enemy” in the public eye…and then use your authority to appeal to the most low information, low income voters (who are always easier to buy off than well informed, higher income voters)…
If Warren has the authority as president to magically cancel student loan debt…then I suppose she also has the authority to magically cancel mortgages, credit card debt, and car loans as well. Wouldn’t that be a delight. While we are at it…let’s just cancel the concept of debt, lending, and interest in the first place, and ensure that the government provides all goods and services to everyone at no charge. That’s what Warren would really like.
Key Democratic Party leader Linda Sarsour (whose highly coveted endorsement will go to either Sanders or Warren) has proposed this as well, justifying it with her conception of sharia law. Sarsour reports that the American people would be delighted to discover that interest payments would magically “disappear” on loans and credit cards.
Well doesn’t that sound wonderful! Perhaps sharia law is worth a try after all, but Sarsour doesn’t appear to understand that banks and financial institutes would then have no incentive to extend loans in the first place.
You'll know when you're living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound nice, doesn't it?
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) May 13, 2015
The hard-left of the Democratic Party represents the greatest threat in modern history to our free-enterprise system and the rule of law, all underpinned and justified by the Marxist hogwash that is en vogue on the vast majority of today’s college campuses.
How exactly would we pay for all this?
We could just print a lot more money to fund all this, and we will conveniently ignore our $22 trillion (and growing) debt.
Funny how Warren, as a long-time college professor, has never uttered a word about how to actually cut college costs. Canceling student loan debt is hardly going to cut college costs…it’s only going to raise them…and then future generations of low information voters will think that they, too, can take out thousands of dollars in student debt that they will never have to pay back thanks to their wonderful President Warren.
And how is this fair to people who faithfully paid back the principal and interest, on their loans? How is this fair to blue collar workers who didn’t go to college, but went into a trade?
I wonder what Elizabeth Warren teaches her own children at home? That contractual obligations don’t have to be honored? That you are not responsible for fulfilling the terms of legally binding contracts that you agreed to? That commitments don’t matter?
What Elizabeth Warren, everyone’s favorite “Native American”, seems to be saying to the youth of America is this: “Doing what you say you’re going to do doesn’t matter…and don’t worry about not living up to your commitments. Loans are inherently unfair, and you shouldn’t have to pay them back. We’ll just tack a few more trillion dollars onto the national debt and everything will be just fine!”
