53percenter's Blog

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if a city or county government were more like a Home Owner’s Association, look no further than Arlington, VA. Apparently, it’s okay for a city to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a giant corporation and give them cover in case anyone goes snooping into their affairs, but God forbid a restaurant in that city paint a mural on its wall.

Goody’s pizzeria in Clarendon (which is part of Arlington County), tried to attract new customers to its humble storefront by painting images of food and ingredients on its outside walls. But the restaurant didn’t get the necessary county approval before painting the mural, and was issued a warning by Arlington’s Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development.

A spokeswoman for the Department, Helen Duong, told Arlington news outlet ARLnow that zoning inspectors “concluded that the artwork is considered a sign under Arlington County’s zoning ordinance because the artwork relates to the advertisement of a business and its services.”

This means, according to ARLnow, that Goody’s had to get a permit before painting the mural. Duong told the outlet that the restaurant “did not receive prior approvals from the county.” She also said the County has so far only issued the restaurant a “courtesy notice” about the mural, which included how Goody’s could square itself with Arlington officials (which no doubt include some form of payment to the County).

Arlnow spoke to Glenda Alvarez, who owns Goody’s. Alvarez says, as of Nov. 20, that she had not sought county approval for the mural yet and did not know she needed a permit before adding the mural. She said she commissioned the painting because the outside of her restaurant “was not attractive enough.”

“We just wanted to get a little more attention from people walking by,” she said.

Arlington has previously gone after Wag More Dogs, a dog daycare that painted a mural of puppies chasing bones on the side of its wall back in 2010. As with Goody’s, Wag More Dogs was found to have violated Arlington’s onerous “sign” requirements because the dogs were considered an advertisement for the business. A self-service dog wash across the street was allowed to keep commissioned graffiti on its walls because it did not contain any references to dogs.

At the time, ARLnow reported that the board responsible for the rules had taken steps to loosen the sign restrictions. Eight years later, it appears those steps led to nothing.

All of this over some paintings. You may recall the Virginia government recently promised online retail giant Amazon $573 million (including $23 million raised through increased taxes in Arlington) and promised to alert the company if someone filed a Freedom of Information Act request over its business practices to give it time to file a protective order to stop that information from being obtained.

Maybe the city won’t be so kind to Amazon if it paints pictures of household products on its outside walls without a permit.

When a “teenager” from Iran joined students at Stoke High School in Ipswich (a county town of Suffolk, England), students and parents immediately noticed something was off.

The alleged 15-year-old boy, Siavash, was 6’1”, stubble, a large Adam’s apple, and a hairline that some viewed as receding. Students and parents believed the “teen” was closer to 30 than 15.

When parents began complaining that an adult man was in school with their underage children, they say their concerns were “dismissed as racist,” according to the Daily Mail.

“I went in [to] complain but I was fobbed off. They are deluded and seem more worried about how the bloke might feel,” a father of two teenage students told the Mail. “I am not aware of this lad having done anything inappropriate, but it’s clearly wrong that he should be in a class with children.”

Another parent said she was told the man sat on a bench during lunch near teenage girls, “just looking.”

One student said Siavash started FaceTiming a female student, “sending her messages, asking how close she lived to the school.” The student took the messages to school officials but was told there was nothing wrong with them, according to the Mail.

It turns out, Siavash actually was an adult, and was removed from the school. He had told the school he fled from Iran and came to the United Kingdom with his little brother, who authorities believe actually is 12 years old. Siavash was seeking a free education while posing as a teenager.

As the Mail points out, Siavash benefited from Britain’s generous asylum system, which has been found to be abused by those seeking a free education by posing as minors.

“Britain’s system, under which around 3,000 unaccompanied youngsters – around 80 per cent of whom are male – claim asylum each year, came under intense scrutiny in 2016 when a busload of alleged teenagers arrived in Croydon after being transferred to the UK from Calais.

By claiming to be children, the new arrivals were entitled not just to free education, but also to places in local authority children’s homes (in areas with high migrant populations such as Kent, up to half the places in such homes are taken by unaccompanied asylum seekers).

Yet critics have long pointed out that those rules also create an incentive for adult migrants to simply destroy ID papers and pose as vulnerable children. Indeed, several of the young men who disembarked from the coaches in Croydon appeared to be square-jawed men in their 20s or 30s.”

After this controversy, the asylum rules were tightened, and in the following year, 705 age disputes were raised. Sixty-five percent of the 618 resolved disputes found claimants over the age of 18 (who were mostly male) pretending to be children. Those handline asylum claims are now told to treat seekers who appear to be adults as adults if they lack reliable documentation, though when they are unsure, they are supposed to give the seekers the benefit of the doubt.

LONDON (AP) – Officials say a man has been arrested after a British Transport Police officer was stabbed outside a train station in east London.

Police said late Friday night that the officer is being treated in a hospital with injuries that are not thought to be life-threatening.

The stabbing happened outside Ilford Station while the officer was on duty.

The suspect has not been named or charged.

The chairman of the British Transport Police Federation, Nigel Goodband, said the attack was “totally unprovoked” and part of an “epidemic” of knife crimes and attacks on police.

The officer has not been identified.

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

TEL AVIV – An extremely rare stone weight inscribed with a word from the Hebrew Bible dating back 3,000 years was discovered by archaeologists near the Western Wall.

The weight, known as a “beka,” was used to measure worshipers’ half-shekel levy prior to ascending the Temple Mount. This was the first time such a stone weight was found with this particular inscription of the word “beka” written from left to right.

“Beka weights from the First Temple period are rare; however, this weight is even rarer because the inscription on it is written in mirror script,” archaeologist Eli Shukron told Haaretz.

Shukron said this is likely a sign that it was made by a seal-maker, “since seals were always written in mirror script so that, once stamped, the inscription would appear in regular legible script.”

“Apparently, the seal craftsman got confused when he engraved the inscription on the weight and mistakenly used mirror script as he was used to doing. From this mistake we can learn about the general rule: the artists who engraved weights during the First Temple period were the same artists who specialized in creating seals,” said Shukron.

The word “beka” makes two appearances in the Bible. The first instance is when the matriarch Rebecca is gifted a nose-ring weighing a “beka” in the Book of Genesis. The second occurs in the Book of Exodus as a weight for the Temple donation: “One beka per head; half a shekel, according to the holy shekel, for each one who goes through the counting, from 20 years old and upward, for 603,550 [persons].”

“When the half-shekel tax was brought to the Temple during the First Temple period, there were no coins, so they used silver ingots. In order to calculate the weight of these silver pieces they would put them on one side of the scales and on the other side they placed the Beka weight. The Beka was equivalent to the half-shekel, which every person from the age of 20 years and up was required to bring to the Temple,” Shukron said.

According to Shukron and others, the fact that the artifact was found next to King Solomon’s Temple is yet more proof of deeply rooted Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

“This is a word that is used both inside and outside of the Bible. You don’t need to ask too many questions, just open the Bible and see it. It’s very simple. You can see beka written in the Bible and what it was used for, and there you have it,” he said.

“The Bible, the artifact found close to Solomon’s Temple, north of the City of David, the Temple foundations — everything is connected,” said Shukron.

“This three thousand-year-old Beka weight, inscribed with ancient Hebrew, was likely used in the First Temple, anchoring once again the deep historical connection of the Jewish People to Jerusalem,” said Doron Spielman, Vice President of the City of David Foundation, which funded the excavation.

There were nearly a dozen explosions heard recently along the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, but it wasn’t a sign of the Korean War heating up again. The North Koreans reportedly dynamited ten of their own guard towers in advance of a previously agreed deadline for bringing down the structures. (ABC News)

North Korea blew up 10 of its guard posts within one kilometer radius of the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas on Tuesday in accordance with agreements made with South Korea earlier this year.

The explosions were carried out simultaneously within a four minute time frame after the North notified the South of the project, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

North Korean soldiers have been destroying the brick structures over the past couple of weeks. Analysts said they most likely decided to demolish the guard posts all at once to meet the November 30th deadline.

While it used to be a challenge to get any sort of reporting, particularly photography, on the activities of the North Korean military, the press is now clearly able to get in there and cover the action. This photo from the AP, taken by photographer Jung Yeon-je, captures the smoke rising from one of the detonated towers.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the project aimed at “dismantling” a number of these guard towers and clearing out some of the landmines along one stretch of the DMZ. Apparently, the process of taking them apart brick by brick was taking too long so the North Korean army opted for a more “direct” solution.

There’s been more of this activity taking place. Just a couple of days ago, soldiers from the North and the South met at the DMZ line out in the woods. Rather than shooting at each other, their officers shook hands and chatted for a while. Here’s the video.

So how much of this is real and how much is for show, as Kim Jong-un continues his charm offensive in an attempt to remove the international sanctions on his country? Last we heard, Kim and President Trump are still pushing ahead toward a second summit, possibly as soon as January. Kim’s lack of missile launches and nuclear tests have certainly impressed the Chinese, enough so that they’ve been quietly reducing economic pressure on the North and undercutting American pressure on Kim’s regime.

Denuclearization of North Korea, more freedom for their people and a formal cessation of the Korean War are all admirable goals. But while you may grow tired of hearing me repeat myself, there’s something important to keep in mind here. Kim Jong-un is still a monster. He and his family have been directly responsible for the murder of tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own citizens. They assassinate prominent military leaders and government officials with impunity while sending countless citizens to die in hidden work camps. His history shows that any promises he makes are valid only as long as they serve his purposes.

Kim has to be watched like a hawk. While much of this recent news is positive and encouraging, North Korea can still not be trusted.

After failing to guard its southern borders from Central America’s migrant caravan as it busted through and then providing buses and succor as it snaked northward, Mexico has effectively dumped the entire caravan mess onto its northern city of Tijuana, leaving it with the cost of caring for the uninvited migrants whose prospects for entering the U.S. legally are dim.

Such nice people. But it’s about par for Mexico City, given the famous contempt with which Mexico’s elites hold the country’s northernmost industrial metropolis. Americans can easily sympathize with the plight of Tijuana, given Mexico City’s behavior.

According to the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico City has actually abandoned them, sending no extra money to help cover the costs of its winked-and-nodded-at caravan. More migrants are arriving by the day, crime is up, and now disease is spreading. Now he’s calling for international help.

According to the Daily Mail:

The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and is asking the United Nations for aid to deal with 5,000 Central American migrants who arrived there.

The comments by Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum came as city officials and volunteers worked together to assist the 4,976 men, women and children who traveled there and are sleeping outside and inside a sports complex.

What’s more, Tijuana officials and citizens are placing the blame exactly where it belongs:

Manuel Figueroa, who leads the city’s social services department, said Tijuana was bringing in portable toilets and showers, as well as shampoo and soap. 

‘Because of the absence, the apathy and the abandonment of the federal government, we are having to turn to international institutions like the UN’, Figueroa said.

Rene Vazquez, 60, a Tijuana resident who was volunteering at the stadium, said Mexico’s federal government ignored the problem by allowing the caravan to cross the country without stopping. Now the city of 1.6 million is stuck with the fallout.

With that the consensus, it may be a golden opportunity for President Trump to step in and give Tijuana the resources it needs. Sure, diplomacy is done state-to-state, not state-to-municipality. But recent decades have loosened that up a bit, and Trump is nothing if not unconventional. Tijuana has a tradition of acting unconventionally, too. Meanwhile, Trump is one of the players in a position of strength, with Mexico City showing weakness and Tijuana feeling the squeeze. So any arrangement would not come for free, of course, but as part of extending Trump’s leverage through a deal.

Because the political aspect of the picture seems to present opportunities. In TJ, the general sentiment is that Mexico City is withholding aid because Tijuana’s mayor is a conservative and not part of the current ruling party. According to RT News:

[Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel] Gastelum, who is in opposition to the current Mexican government, has been vocal in his disdain for the federal authorities and has sided with US President Donald Trump. Gastelum stirred controversy after he was spotted wearing a red “Make Tujuana great again” cap, and invited an endorsement by the US President himself, who tweeted that like Tijuana, the US is “ill-prepared for this invasion.”

Friendly Tweets from Trump and signs of friendliness from the mayor of Tijuana, who after all, knows his city’s economy is closely linked to a gate with the U.S. and both are conservatives…

I’ll throw out a proposal and though I know not everyone will like it, it just seems like something that could happen to a good result, given President Trump’s experience and success with direct negotiations, and the desirability of keeping the UN’s corrupt pontificators out of the region.

The U.S. helps Tijuana with its humanitarian needs surrounding the migrant caravan as its denizens await their asylum appointments. Any aid, very basic, should also be open to the poor of Tijuana as well.

Tijuana does all it can to discourage future migrant caravans from making their way to the border, from added razor wire of its own on the Mexico side to added city security to prevent a border rush.  (Some of this has apparently already been done but there could be more.)

Tijuana holds the caravan organizers who foisted this humanitarian crisis onto the city, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, accountable – and if the latter can’t pay for the food and upkeep of the migrants they enticed to the border in this humanitarian crisis, well, then they’ll have to go to jail for humanitarian crimes.

Tijuana encourages the migrants to accept jobs at Tijuana’s labor-starved maquiladoras – or else no aid.

And some of the aid can be for bus trips for the migrants back to their homelands where they will be encouraged to apply to the U.S. legally.

It’s just a starting ballpark, but the fun of it is that such a deal would drive Mexico City (and U.S. Democrats) crazy. Trump is famous for unconventional dealings, and in an unconventional political challenge such as the invading caravan, a deal could do a lot of good, not just to restore regular legal migration, but to end the perception that Trump is anti-Latino when in fact he and his supporters are just pro-rule of law. Tijuana could benefit from the whole thing, too, and get its problem gone.

Here’s to hoping something like this could be tried.

 

After failing to guard its southern borders from Central America’s migrant caravan as it busted through and then providing buses and succor as it snaked northward, Mexico has effectively dumped the entire caravan mess onto its northern city of Tijuana, leaving it with the cost of caring for the uninvited migrants whose prospects for entering the U.S. legally are dim.

Such nice people. But it’s about par for Mexico City, given the famous contempt with which Mexico’s elites hold the country’s northernmost industrial metropolis. Americans can easily sympathize with the plight of Tijuana, given Mexico City’s behavior.

According to the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico City has actually abandoned them, sending no extra money to help cover the costs of its winked-and-nodded-at caravan. More migrants are arriving by the day, crime is up, and now disease is spreading. Now he’s calling for international help.

According to the Daily Mail:

The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and is asking the United Nations for aid to deal with 5,000 Central American migrants who arrived there.

The comments by Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum came as city officials and volunteers worked together to assist the 4,976 men, women and children who traveled there and are sleeping outside and inside a sports complex.

What’s more, Tijuana officials and citizens are placing the blame exactly where it belongs:

Manuel Figueroa, who leads the city’s social services department, said Tijuana was bringing in portable toilets and showers, as well as shampoo and soap. 

‘Because of the absence, the apathy and the abandonment of the federal government, we are having to turn to international institutions like the UN’, Figueroa said.

Rene Vazquez, 60, a Tijuana resident who was volunteering at the stadium, said Mexico’s federal government ignored the problem by allowing the caravan to cross the country without stopping. Now the city of 1.6 million is stuck with the fallout.

With that the consensus, it may be a golden opportunity for President Trump to step in and give Tijuana the resources it needs. Sure, diplomacy is done state-to-state, not state-to-municipality. But recent decades have loosened that up a bit, and Trump is nothing if not unconventional. Tijuana has a tradition of acting unconventionally, too. Meanwhile, Trump is one of the players in a position of strength, with Mexico City showing weakness and Tijuana feeling the squeeze. So any arrangement would not come for free, of course, but as part of extending Trump’s leverage through a deal.

Because the political aspect of the picture seems to present opportunities. In TJ, the general sentiment is that Mexico City is withholding aid because Tijuana’s mayor is a conservative and not part of the current ruling party. According to RT News:

[Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel] Gastelum, who is in opposition to the current Mexican government, has been vocal in his disdain for the federal authorities and has sided with US President Donald Trump. Gastelum stirred controversy after he was spotted wearing a red “Make Tujuana great again” cap, and invited an endorsement by the US President himself, who tweeted that like Tijuana, the US is “ill-prepared for this invasion.”

Friendly Tweets from Trump and signs of friendliness from the mayor of Tijuana, who after all, knows his city’s economy is closely linked to a gate with the U.S. and both are conservatives…

I’ll throw out a proposal and though I know not everyone will like it, it just seems like something that could happen to a good result, given President Trump’s experience and success with direct negotiations, and the desirability of keeping the UN’s corrupt pontificators out of the region.

The U.S. helps Tijuana with its humanitarian needs surrounding the migrant caravan as its denizens await their asylum appointments. Any aid, very basic, should also be open to the poor of Tijuana as well.

Tijuana does all it can to discourage future migrant caravans from making their way to the border, from added razor wire of its own on the Mexico side to added city security to prevent a border rush.  (Some of this has apparently already been done but there could be more.)

Tijuana holds the caravan organizers who foisted this humanitarian crisis onto the city, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, accountable – and if the latter can’t pay for the food and upkeep of the migrants they enticed to the border in this humanitarian crisis, well, then they’ll have to go to jail for humanitarian crimes.

Tijuana encourages the migrants to accept jobs at Tijuana’s labor-starved maquiladoras – or else no aid.

And some of the aid can be for bus trips for the migrants back to their homelands where they will be encouraged to apply to the U.S. legally.

It’s just a starting ballpark, but the fun of it is that such a deal would drive Mexico City (and U.S. Democrats) crazy. Trump is famous for unconventional dealings, and in an unconventional political challenge such as the invading caravan, a deal could do a lot of good, not just to restore regular legal migration, but to end the perception that Trump is anti-Latino when in fact he and his supporters are just pro-rule of law. Tijuana could benefit from the whole thing, too, and get its problem gone.

Here’s to hoping something like this could be tried.

 

Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó has condemned the UN Migration Pact for attempting to “legalise illegal immigration,” announcing his country will vote ‘no’ on the agreement in Marrakesh in December.

Mr Szijjártó told media on Thursday that “The goal of the UN Global Compact for Migration is to legalise illegal immigration, which is totally unacceptable and violates the sovereignty of member states, including that of Hungary.”

“The UN is making the same mistake as the European Union, which wants to base its own migration policy on mandatory resettlement quotas,” he continued.

“The UN Compact is more dangerous, however, because it is a global initiative, meaning it will have a greater effect than [European] policy, and represents a risk to the whole world.”

Confirming that Hungary will be voting “No” to the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration in Marrakesh, Morocco, next month, the minister said the government’s main issue with the Compact is “whether or not it is mandatory, and in view of the fact that the document contains the word ‘obligation’ on eighty occasions, the claim that it only includes recommendations is a false one.”

“A legally not binding document would not prescribe the establishment of national action plans, and accordingly it is ‘clearer than day’ that, just like the originally voluntary mandatory quota, the Global Compact for Migration will become a point of reference, mandatory, and the basis for international judicial decisions,” the minister of foreign affairs and trade explained.

 

Hungary’s statement that the ‘non-binding’ Compact can, in fact, be ‘binding,’ came days after Dutch MEP and Co-President of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group Marcel de Graaff said that “it is still the legal framework on which the participating countries commit themselves to build new legislation.”

Calling it “a legalisation of mass migration,” the Dutch populist said: “It’s declaring migration a human right.”

Belgian law professor Pierre d’Argent has argued the migration agreement, like other UN compacts, could be used by lawyers in interpreting laws, with German law professor Matthias Herdegen noting the UN compact occupied a “legal grey area” which “gives the impression of [state] liability.”

Mr de Graaff also warned this week that the document could be used as a basis for making criticism of mass migration illegal, saying: “One basic element of this new agreement is the extension of the definition of hate speech… Criticism of migration will become a criminal offence. Media outlets that give room to criticism of migration can be shut down,” he claimed.

‘No Compromises’: Merkel Launches Passionate Defence of UN Migration Pact https://t.co/HcfylEemUM

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 21, 2018

“In fact, it will become impossible to criticise Merkel’s ‘welcome migrants’ politics without being at risk to be jailed for hate speech,” de Graaff added.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of the European migrant crisis, made an impassioned defence of the UN Migration Compact, saying there should be “no compromise” on global mass migration and condemned opposition as “nationalism in its purest form.”

Apart from Hungary, Australia, Israel and several other countries have said that they will not sign the document or have signalled that they will not, following the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump who rejected the compact in December 2017.

World Follows Trump’s Lead: Nations Abandon Legal ‘Framework’ Building UN Migration Pact https://t.co/QivexL6Jsk

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 22, 2018

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

The popularity of socialism on America’s campuses and among a substantial fraction of Democrats defies the evidence of a natural experiment taking place in Venezuela, just across the Gulf of Mexico from America. Venezuelans already are starving due to socialism’s perversion of incentives. Food producers can’t make money under the price controls, expropriations and regulation of the socialists of Chavez and his successor Maduro, so they don’t produce food, and people must flee by the millions in order to stay alive.

Venezuelan refugees in Colombia (photo credit: Daniel Cima)

Now, the same process of perverse incentives is shutting down the very resource that made Venezuela the richest country in Latin American before socialism ruined it.  Fabiola Zerpa of Bloomberg reports:

Venezuela’s fuel shortages are worsening as mass resignations at the state oil company’s tanker fleet have delayed gasoline shipments.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s refineries are running at less than a quarter of their capacity, forcing the country to rely on imported gasoline.

Of course, foreign currency is in very short supply in Venezuela precisely because its oil production and refining output are collapsing, as incompetent political appointees screw up, and have no incentive to perform well. Because gasoline is regarded as so essential, Venezuela controls its price, further reducing incentive to produce:

 Gas prices are still the among the cheapest in the world, with the black market rate earlier this month less than one cent per gallon. Maduro has yet to increase prices after vowing to do so at the end of September.

Price controls always produce shortages, as rent control regulations (also beloved by American socialists) demonstrate. Price may be affordable, but there are no goods available.

Now, not just oil production and refining, but also transportation is collapsing under cronyism and perverse incentives:

Resignations and requests for leave by personnel at PDV Marina, the oil company’s shipping affiliate, are reducing the tankers’ crews to a minimum, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. At least 11 tankers are affected, and minimal staffing is hindering PDVSA’s ability to deliver on time, the document shows. Venezuela’s Oil Ministry and PDVSA officials declined to comment.

“Tankers are now delayed all the time,” PDVSA union leader Gregorio Rodriguez said from Puerto La Cruz.“The situation is worse in cities far from distribution centers, where the truck fleet service is also shaky, as is eastern Venezuela.”

God forbid, a tanker disaster is possible with minimal crewing and inexperience.

Adam Smith wrote, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” Venezuela is demonstrating the process by which the ruin of a nation unfolds, as vital systems gradually shut down, poisoned by socialism.

Media favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who speaks Spanish, has never, so far as I can discover, commented on the ongoing tragedy socialism is foisting on Venezuelans.  The Babylon Bee has satirized her silence, but our media progressives are not going to press her on the issue.

It’s time for the American left to explain why the tragedy of Venezuela will not happen here if their policies are enacted.

The popularity of socialism on America’s campuses and among a substantial fraction of Democrats defies the evidence of a natural experiment taking place in Venezuela, just across the Gulf of Mexico from America. Venezuelans already are starving due to socialism’s perversion of incentives. Food producers can’t make money under the price controls, expropriations and regulation of the socialists of Chavez and his successor Maduro, so they don’t produce food, and people must flee by the millions in order to stay alive.

Venezuelan refugees in Colombia (photo credit: Daniel Cima)

Now, the same process of perverse incentives is shutting down the very resource that made Venezuela the richest country in Latin American before socialism ruined it.  Fabiola Zerpa of Bloomberg reports:

Venezuela’s fuel shortages are worsening as mass resignations at the state oil company’s tanker fleet have delayed gasoline shipments.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s refineries are running at less than a quarter of their capacity, forcing the country to rely on imported gasoline.

Of course, foreign currency is in very short supply in Venezuela precisely because its oil production and refining output are collapsing, as incompetent political appointees screw up, and have no incentive to perform well. Because gasoline is regarded as so essential, Venezuela controls its price, further reducing incentive to produce:

 Gas prices are still the among the cheapest in the world, with the black market rate earlier this month less than one cent per gallon. Maduro has yet to increase prices after vowing to do so at the end of September.

Price controls always produce shortages, as rent control regulations (also beloved by American socialists) demonstrate. Price may be affordable, but there are no goods available.

Now, not just oil production and refining, but also transportation is collapsing under cronyism and perverse incentives:

Resignations and requests for leave by personnel at PDV Marina, the oil company’s shipping affiliate, are reducing the tankers’ crews to a minimum, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. At least 11 tankers are affected, and minimal staffing is hindering PDVSA’s ability to deliver on time, the document shows. Venezuela’s Oil Ministry and PDVSA officials declined to comment.

“Tankers are now delayed all the time,” PDVSA union leader Gregorio Rodriguez said from Puerto La Cruz.“The situation is worse in cities far from distribution centers, where the truck fleet service is also shaky, as is eastern Venezuela.”

God forbid, a tanker disaster is possible with minimal crewing and inexperience.

Adam Smith wrote, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation.” Venezuela is demonstrating the process by which the ruin of a nation unfolds, as vital systems gradually shut down, poisoned by socialism.

Media favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who speaks Spanish, has never, so far as I can discover, commented on the ongoing tragedy socialism is foisting on Venezuelans.  The Babylon Bee has satirized her silence, but our media progressives are not going to press her on the issue.

It’s time for the American left to explain why the tragedy of Venezuela will not happen here if their policies are enacted.

The package of criminal justice reform proposals endorsed by President Donald Trump is not “soft” on crime. It’s tough on injustice. And it’s about time.

Known as the “First Step Act,” the legislation confronts the Titanic failure of the federal government’s trillion-dollar war on drugs by reforming mandatory minimum sentences, rectifying unscientifically grounded disparities in criminal penalties for crack vs. powder cocaine users, and tackling recidivism among federal inmates through risk assessment, earned-time credit incentive structures, re-entry programs and transitional housing.

There’s nothing radical about giving law-breakers who served their time an opportunity to turn their lives around and avoid ending up back behind bars. More than 30 red and blue states have enacted measures to reduce incarceration, control costs and improve public safety. Texas — no bleeding-heart liberal mecca — spearheaded alternatives to the endless prison-building boom a decade ago by redirecting tax dollars to rehab, treatment and mental health services. The Lone Star state saved an estimated $3 billion in new public construction costs while stemming the prison population tide.

Similar efforts adopted last year in Louisiana — long known as the prison capital of the world — have yielded promising reductions in the recidivism rate. Pelican Institute for Public Policy analyst Margaret Mire reports that “Louisiana’s re-arrest rate in the first nine months is 19 percent, or 7 percentage points, behind the national, annual re-arrest average of 26 percent.” State data show that the re-incarceration rate is down to 6 percent in the same time period — “on pace to be 9 percentage points lower than its full-year average prior to the reforms, or 15 percent.”

Mississippi GOP Gov. Phil Bryant overhauled sentencing mandates, embraced faith-based ministries and funded counseling programs for inmates preparing for their transition to life on the outside. “Crime is down 6 percent,” he reported at a White House prison reform summit earlier this year. “We have 3,000 less inmates. We saved $40 million since 2014. And you can do the same thing.”

Despite staunch support from conservative Republican governors, prosecutors and law enforcement closest to the ground on this issue, the same hyperbolic talking points used by some immovable “law and order” opponents at the state level are now being used against First Step: Cops will be endangered, critics balk. Violent monsters will go free. Child predators and drug kingpins will flood our neighborhoods.

Scary, but deceptive. The plain language of the bill makes clear that its “early release” provisions must be earned. Moreover, as Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee points out: “At all times the Bureau of Prisons retains all authority over who does and does not qualify for early release.” Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, a veteran of the criminal justice system for 20 years, notes that inmates convicted of crimes of violence (including assaults on police), drug trafficking (including hardcore fentanyl and heroin dealing) and child pornography would not qualify for credits. Period. The list of ineligible prisoners is a mile long.

As a staunch opponent of illegal alien amnesty for the past 25 years, the most potent attack by First Step critics concerns whether criminal aliens in federal prisons will be let loose en masse. They won’t. The law states that no prisoner can earn time credits “if that prisoner is an inadmissible or deportable alien under the immigration laws (as such term is defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” And legislative analysts assert that under current Bureau of Prisons’ regulations, a prisoner subject to an ICE detainer wouldn’t be eligible for placement in home confinement, anyway.

Critic Dan Cadman of the Center for Immigration Studies is not satisfied and argues that “the simplest way to make it a clean bill where immigration enforcement is concerned is to say at the beginning of the bill that ‘none of the sections that follow in this bill apply to incarcerated aliens.'” That should be a simple fix and is no reason to prevent First Step from moving to the Senate floor for vigorous debate.

My own awakening to the systemic flaws and failures of our criminal justice system came from viewing it through the eyes of the wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted. Prosecutorial misconduct, police malfeasance, investigative bias and a guilty-until-proven-innocent agenda have ruined lives and squandered limited resources. From there, I’ve come to appreciate activists and practitioners on both sides of the aisle educating people about sweeping “hang ’em high” mandates that ensnare millions of their fellow citizens, clogging up jail space and wasting away productive years.

Our system is at its best when all involved can admit policy failures and work to change them. Why wait?

Michelle Malkin is host of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” on CRTV.com. Her email address is [email protected] To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.