Tipsheet

FLASHBACK: When Bernie Sanders Agreed the American Dream Was Easier to Reach in Venezuela Than the U.S.

Katie Pavlich
Katie Pavlich  |  January 25, 2019 12:20 PM

After years of brutal dictatorship and running Venezuela -- a formerly rich and prosperous country -- into the ground, the reign of socialist Nicolas Maduro is coming to an end. 

But as Maduro desperately tries to hold onto power by ordering military forces to shoot protestors in the streets, lets take a look at the American politicians who have endorsed his disastrous policies.

First up, Bernie Sanders. On his official Senate website, Sanders touts a "must read" op-ed that declares the American Dream more reachable in Venezuela than the United States. 

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

Next, newly minted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 

And her freshman colleague Ilhan Omar: 

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Congresswoman Omar is of course ignoring the people of Venezuela.

As a reminder, Venezuelans have been breaking into zoos and eating the animals due to starvation under Maduro. They've been left to hunt cats and dogs in the streets and desperately smuggle milk on their bodies as drug smugglers do with narcotics. Medical care is non-existent.

Maduro's land confiscation left farms decimated and his Marxist policies of abolishing property rights, inheritance and centralization of credit to the state have led to mass poverty. Rationing of electricity and other utilities is severe. 

This is what everything comes down to, from the CATO Institute: 

Despite frequent references to the late Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian” revolution, the Maduro playbook is nothing more than a rehashing of Marx and Engels’ ten-point plan. This was laid out in the Communist Manifesto– a crystal-clear road map of where they wanted to take their adherents. Once you reflect on the Manifesto’s ten-point plan, you realize that Maduro (and many other politicians elsewhere) aren’t very original.

The results of these Manifesto-like policies are clear. The World Bank ranked Venezuela a dismal 181 out of 189 in its 2014 “Doing Business” rankings. This puts Venezuela well behind such war-torn nations as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

While Maduro may think of himself as modern-day Robin Hood, he has a lot more in common with Edward John Smith, captain of the RMS Titanic. That said, the economic misery created by adherence to the Communist Manifesto can take a long time to sink a ship (think USSR).

The left, unsurprisingly, continues to back Maduro's ideology and his devastating tyranny.