By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--April 10, 2017
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Security forces blocked the march in Caracas, as they did during two other protests this week, prompting violent confrontations. Protesters lobbed rocks and petrol bombs and burned trash in the street while authorities responded with a volley of tear gas. "The government is afraid. If it were not afraid, it would not close the streets. ... It would not disqualify Capriles," said 27-year-old lawyer Gikeissy Diaz, adding that half of her graduating class has left the country and that she is thinking of doing so, too. Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate and current Miranda state governor, who was seen by many as the opposition's best chance in the presidential election scheduled for 2018, on Friday was banned from holding political office for 15 years.
The order from the national comptroller's office cited "administrative irregularities" including breaking contracting laws and improper management of donations, according to a copy of the ban.We've said it before but it bears repeating every time there's a development in this tragic story: This is the inevitable result of socialism. The state absconds with the private sector's wealth on the promise that it can distribute it more fairly to the population at large, but it doesn't take long before it's clear that whatever the private sector's failings, it's nothing compared to the corruption and incompetence found in the public sector. Very few people act responsibly with wealth someone else earned, and that's especially true when we're talking about people who have a philosophical hatred of everything that creates wealth in the first place. This is now the nation with possibly the world's richest oil reserves found itself with a gas shortage. It takes some kind of incompetence to pull that off, but obviously corruption helps a great deal. This is how Venezuelan bakers ended up being fined for baking brownies . . . because the nation is so short on bread that all available flour must be used to make more. Of course, if the government hadn't done so much to tamper with the private sector's profits in the first place, there would be more than enough resources for all the bread and brownies you want - and more than enough wealth for people to buy them.
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