Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) and radio host Chris Plante joined Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle for a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) panel on Saturday discussing the collusion that took place in the 2016 election at the hands of the Obama administration, Clinton campaign, and Ukraine — something rarely mentioned among the establishment media.
“We did see another country engage in interference in the election in 2016. That was the Ukrainians. They came after President Trump, then-candidate Trump, ” Boyle said, kicking off CPAC’s Saturday morning panel discussion and noting a few instances of Ukrainian attempts at interference.
“They had their ambassador writing op-eds against him. They had other senior officials, their interior minister attacking him aggressively, so this is the story that the establishment media doesn’t tell,” he noted.
Hice, who watched this play out firsthand, said, “As it relates to Ukraine, there is absolutely no question in the world” that “real collusion” took place among three actors the establishment media does not tend to discuss.
“There was a collaborative effort to interfere with the elections of 2016, but that collusion involved the Obama administration, Clinton campaign, and Ukraine. Those were the centerpiece. That was the epicenter of it, and the individual that surrounded all of it was Paul Manafort,” Hice said.
Hice said it is “absolutely stunning” how “severe, how purposeful, how collaborative this attempt was to interfere with our elections,” but stressed that it “came from within our own nation” among “individuals here who need to face the consequences.”
The Chris Plante Show host noted that it is “not unfair” to call the establishment media’s refusal to discuss the real collusion a “cover-up.”
“It’s not unfair to call it a cover-up. They cover up the indiscretions of the Democratic Party quite regularly,” he said.
“When it comes to Ukraine and the focus – laser-like focus on Russia, Putin — this is a fiction conjured up by the DNC and the Democratic Party fed to their allies in the news media,” he added, referencing the “New York Times, Washington Post, and beyond.”
The panel discussed the origins of the interference, noting that Trump was “never supposed to win” the Republican Primary and 2016 election. Nonetheless, Trump took key primary states, surged in the polls, and steamrolled into the Republican convention. Clinton, however, was “absolutely confident” she would win.
Hice said Democrats underestimated Trump’s power and his connection with the American people, noting that they have been after him ever since. He also highlighted the significance of Alexandra Chalupa, the DNC contractor and Ukrainian-American activist who played a major role in the collusion effort of the Obama administration, Clinton campaign, DNC, and Ukraine.
“She is at the DNC, which is funded of course by, paid for by, Hillary Clinton, but she is kind of the center between Ukraine and the United States, and she connects a couple of key people over here to our government over here and these folks have ties to the Ukrainian government to funding the Clinton foundation to Fusion GPS to all this stuff,” Hice said. “She gets them to come over to the United States, and the Obama administration grants them meetings with the FBI the — all our departments — National Security Council, all these things. They have frequent meetings. Chalupa met 27 times in the White House during all this.”
When asked by Boyle how the GOP can move forward with the likes of Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) — two mentions that drew boos from the crowd — constantly resisting the president, Hice affirmed that Republicans must take the House back.
“You have never in your life seen anything more unfair,” Hice, who had a front-row seat in the impeachment depositions, said, citing no witness, no defense for the president, and 17 witnesses “handpicked” by Schiff.
Schiff acted as the “counsel, prosecutor, he was everything in these meetings and then leaked information that would be damaging to the president,” he continued. “I was shocked. I was fearful for our country to see how this was railroaded on the American people, all for the purpose of destroying a sitting, duly elected president.”
The Georgia lawmaker noted that there are investigations in the works, like the Durham investigation, but agreed with Boyle that “we’ve got to take the House back.”
Alice Johnson, the woman who had her prison sentence commuted by President Donald Trump in 2018, spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday.
“My life has been totally changed by President Trump,” she said, thanking the president for realizing her plight and acting to free her.
CPAC attendees were familiar with Johnson after she was featured in a Trump campaign Super Bowl ad in 2020, and his State of the Union speech, but her appearance at the conservative conference allowed her to share the details of her story.
“I made a mistake, I take full responsibility for something that was wrong,” she said, sharing the story of how she found herself as a divorced single mother of five children after 19 years of marriage. She admitted that she became addicted to gambling, lost her job, and lost a 12-year-old son in a scooter accident.
Under those circumstances, she admitted, she turned to crime, acting as a phone mule for a multimillion-dollar cocaine ring.
“I’m going to call it just what it was; it was an opportunity from hell,” she said. “You see what’s right now but you never ever see the end. Sin will always take you further than you thought you would go.”
Johnson drew audible gasps from the crowd after revealed she was sentenced to life in prison with an additional 25 years with no parole.
She said she was offered three to five years if she entered into a plea deal and had no idea that a life sentence was even on the table.
Johnson said she was sent to a prison 1,500 miles away from home.
“I had a family, and they would tell me that visiting me in prison was like visiting a graveyard because they would come and see the place where my body lay but they could never ever take me back home again,” she said.
In prison, she said, she worked to help other women’s lives with mentorship and counseling.
“I was able to bring light into a place that only is supposed to be darkness because I went there, but I did not go there by myself,” she said. “The Lord was with me.”
Johnson shocked the crowd when she revealed that she spent 21 years, seven months, and six days in federal prison and her appeal was turned down three times.
The rest is history, as video of her case made it’s way on Twitter to celebrity Kim Kardashian, who shared it on Twitter and brought her case to the attention of President Trump.
“We know it was divine intervention,” she said, adding that she, “had no idea who Kim Kardashian was.”
Johnson thanked the president for commuting the sentences of three other women that she singled out for a second chance last week, noting that she had become the face of criminal justice reform.
“I became a face of compassion, of redemption, of grace, and of second chances, because that is what this country has been built upon,” she said.
She praised Trump for signing the criminal justice reform bill and making it a significant part of his administration.
“It’s more than just a social justice issue, it’s a humanitarian issue,” she said.
Trump Blasts Federal Reserve and Jerome Powell for Reacting too Slowly over Coronavirus Market Scare
President Trump SLAMMED the Federal Reserve for their silence and invisibility during this horrid week in the markets — worse than Jerome Powell’s market crash in December 2018.
President Trump: Our Fed should start being a leader and not a follower. Our Fed has been a follower. We need a Fed that’s going to be a leader. We should have at least the same rates and ideally lower rates than other countries.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, waited until Friday, after the markets plunged more than 3,000 points to say anything. Economist Peter Morici slammed Powell this morning saying former Fed chiefs would have been much more proactive.
Meanwhile At A Costco In Brooklyn, The Hoarding Begins
The same long lines that we’ve seen in China, Japan, South Korea, and across the world as people panic buy food and health supplies have started in the US.
On Saturday, the US Surgeon General urged people to "stop buying masks," saying on Twitter that they’re not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9
Despite the CDC telling everyone to calm down, alleged video of long lines pouring out of a Costco store in Brooklyn, New York, surfaced on YouTube Saturday afternoon.
This comes days after we reported Hawaiians raced to Sam’s Club and Costco to panic buy food and health supplies as virus fears surge.
And as we noted earlier today: "The great panic of 2020 is underway" as Americans are now stocking up on supplies as the next pandemic could be imminent.
"Momentous Day": US, Taliban Sign Peace Deal To End 18 Year War
A peace deal between the United States and its once sworn enemy the Taliban has been sealed in twin ceremonies, in which the US has agreed to wind down the war in Afghanistan after more than 18 years of fighting that turned into the longest conflict in American history, and to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan.
In the historic signing ceremony with the top US diplomat and the Taliban’s second highest-ranking leader, the U.S. and the militant group agreed to begin to end America’s longest war. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met a Taliban delegation during a historic moment which they shared a stage in Qatar’s capital Doha. Pompeo, who called it "a momentous day", gave a list of pointers to the Taliban to follow to ensure success.
Included in the deal are the following key clauses:
Complete withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 14 months
Afghan govt to engage with United Nation Security Council to remove Taliban members from sanctions list by 29 May
US to reduce troops in Afghanistan to 8,600 within 135 days of – contingent on the Taliban’s fulfilment of its commitments under the agreement
US to refrain from use of force against territorial integrity of Afghanistan.
US will not intervene in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs
US commits to seek annual funds to train, advice, equip Afghan security forces
The deal – signed by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar – agrees to the complete withdrawal of US and NATO troops within 14 months, contingent on Taliban following through with its own side of the deal. The US has also agreed to refrain from the use of force against Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs. It has also committed to seeking annual funds to train, advise and equip Afghan security forces.
The agreement allows the US to immediately begin withdrawing some of its roughly 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, fulfilling a key campaign promise of President Donald Trump to start getting the U.S. out of “endless wars.” But it leaves many key details – including a lasting peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government, as well as the rights of women – for future negotiations. The deal – which followed a seven-day reduction in violence – is also expected to pave the way toward direct talks between Taliban officials and Afghan leaders in Oslo next month, according to Bloomberg.
Barring complications, US troop levels are expected to decline to about 8,600 within 135 days, with all troops being withdrawn within 14 months. Further declines depend on the Taliban fulfilling their agreement to engage in talks with Afghan officials and confront terrorists, according to U.S. officials.
In exchange for the initial U.S. troop drawdown, the Taliban pledge to sit down to peace negotiations with other Afghans to cut ties with all terrorist groups like al-Qaida – which the Taliban harbored ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, prompting a US invasion and over 18 years of war, and prevent Afghan territories from becoming militant havens. Despite almost two decades of war and $900 billion in spending by the US, the Taliban are at their strongest since being ousted by American forces in late 2001, after the group refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Speaking at a parallel ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani said: "All the people of Afghanistan are looking forward to a permanent peace." He said that "today can be the moment of overcoming the past" and called for a moment of silence "in honour of our mutual fallen heroes".
"The tragedy of 9/11 brought us together. Mutual sacrifice created human bonds between us. Mutual interest, your security and our freedom, sustains our relationship in mutual respect, which has made us partners", he said.
Calling the relationship "transparent" he said: "NATO and US partners have spared neither blood nor treasure for attaining the goals of the partnership. We ask you to thank the veterans, especially the gold star families, for their service. Our sacrifice has been immense… children, youth in their prime, and men and women in all ages in all walks of life, whose lives have been taken away by senseless acts of violence in terror and public spaces."
And he said: "We have the political will and the capacity to make peace because of the resilience of our society, the dynamism of our economy and the capability of our state."
* * *
After over a year and a half of negotiations, details of the final agreement were finally released on Saturday, although there are annexes that will not be released, according to senior administration officials, who said they do not include any U.S. commitments, only enforcement mechanisms.
While many of the steps in the deal are conditioned on actions from both sides, there are some immediate impacts as the ink dries in Doha, Qatar, where chief U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad, his deputy Molly Phee and their team have spent over a year and a half negotiating with the Taliban’s representatives.
A week-long deal to reduce violence will continue, as the US immediately begins to draw down its approximately 13,000 troops in Afghanistan to 8,600, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other senior administration officials. That withdrawal will take months to complete, but U.S. officials, including Gen. Scott Miller, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, have said that new number is still sufficient to carry out their mission.
Any withdrawal of U.S. forces beyond that is contingent on the Taliban meeting its commitments, according to the deal.
There is "an aspirational timeline for withdrawal that is entirely conditions-based, and it will depend on their performance as we judge their performance," a senior administration official said. Explicitly, withdrawal is tied to the Taliban meeting its counterterrorism commitments – to repudiate al-Qaida and other terrorist groups and take steps to demonstrate that.
"People are concerned about the historic relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaida. We think think this is a decisive and historic first step in terms of their public acknowledgement that they are breaking ties with al-Qaida," a senior administration official told ABC News.
There will be verification mechanisms in place to ensure that happens, the official added, including "our military and other asset presence on the ground." In exchange, they said, the U.S. will eventually start to deconstruct the "edifice" of economic and diplomatic pressure like sanctions.
But any further U.S. troop reduction is also tied to the Taliban’s behavior in Afghan peace negotiations, according to the senior officials, although it is not dependent on any particular outcome of that process.
"If the political settlement fails, if the talks fail, there is nothing that obliges the United States to withdraw troops," said a second senior administration official, before adding that President Donald Trump still has the "prerogatives as commander-in-chief" to withdraw U.S. forces as he sees fit.
Aiming for March 10, those peace negotiations will bring together the Taliban and representatives of Afghanistan, including government officials, civil society leaders and women, the senior officials said, to determine the future Afghan government and a "road map" for the country. But government officials will attend in a "private" capacity, as the Taliban still refuses to recognize the government or the constitution — a concession that has angered many Afghan officials.
Esper is in Kabul to sign a joint declaration with President Ashraf Ghani and his rival and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah to reassert US support for the Afghan government and commit Ghani, Abdullah, their supporters and others to backing the next steps. Expected to take place in Oslo, Norway, the negotiations will be facilitated by the U.S., along with the United Nations, Norway, Germany, Indonesia and Uzbekistan, among others, the first senior official said.
Both senior officials cautioned those talks could be delayed, especially as post-election fighting between Ghani and Abdullah continues. Khalilzad will return to Kabul after the signing ceremony to push them to select an inclusive delegation to the negotiations, but it may prove difficult as Abdullah continues to claim to have won the presidency, five months after the votes were cast and 11 days after Ghani was declared the winner despite concerns over the count.
U.S. military commanders long ago assessed that the war would be unwinnable absent the presence of tens of thousands of more troops and a broad political accord. At its peak the U.S. had over 100,000 troops based in Afghanistan, but peace remained elusive in a country long known as the “graveyard of empires.”
More than two decades before U.S. forces arrived, Afghans had to contend with the Soviet Union’s invasion, a searing experience that led to a humiliating defeat for Moscow. As the Taliban consolidated power in the late 1990s, they became known for enforcing an extreme version of fundamentalist Islam that denied girls the right to an education and banned women from working.
* * *
Ahead of the signing of the Doha deal, U.S. officials described the agreement as the beginning of an effort to reach a broader political solution to a war that has spanned three U.S. presidencies and killed or injured more than 100,000 Afghans over the past decade alone, while costing the lives of over 2,400 American troops. Even as Taliban and U.S.-backed Afghan forces have fought to a stalemate, Islamic State terrorists gained a foothold in the country.
"Everyone is tired of war,” said Masood Mahfuz, a 42-year-old Afghan whose brother was killed in a Taliban bombing three years ago. “We are thirsty for peace. The only way is to make peace with the Taliban and forget the past."
The signing ceremony Saturday came only after a week-long truce to reduce violence across the country was deemed successful. The Taliban agreed not to undertake major attacks, while the U.S. and Afghan security forces pledged to hold any airstrikes or raids on Taliban facilities, according to the second senior official, who said the reduction showed the Taliban had "both the commitment and the capability to enforce" that kind of truce.
With the deal signed, there will be a further reduction of violence, the first senior official said, that is supposed to last as the Afghan peace negotiations take place. Both senior administration officials said the U.S. will push the parties to extend that reduction into a complete ceasefire across the country as quickly as possible — and for the protection of women’s and minorities’ rights, which critics say should have been a precondition all along.
But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday, "Our mission set there has been much broader than that," later adding "the Afghans will drive the solution," including on women’s rights. Senior officials have said the U.S. will use its financial assistance as leverage to ensure those protections make it into the new government.
Defending the southern border is a key part of protecting the United States from the coronavirus, a top U.S. immigration official said Friday.
A border crisis could exacerbate a pandemic, said Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of homeland security and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force. But the disease doesn’t currently pose a major threat in the U.S., he added.
“When you are talking about a pandemic, and you have a border crisis … we do not have facilities that can quarantine tens, scores, hundreds or thousands of people,” Cuccinelli said at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
“I’m not prepared to put my folks at risk, any more than any of you are,” he said of Department of Homeland Security personnel. “So, to prioritize their safety and health when we don’t have tools to necessarily deal with this, it limits our options rather dramatically.”
Joining Cuccinelli on the CPAC stage was Rich Valdes, host of the “This Is America” podcast and an associate producer of Mark Levin’s nationally syndicated talk-radio show.
The Brooklyn-born Valdes noted that he is Hispanic but stressed the need to look out for the interests of the U.S.
“We have to defend America,” Valdes said. “With the coronavirus, it is so important that we have a firm grip on our borders.”
Cuccinelli, former attorney general of Virginia, said Trump has pushed the task force on the virus to act decisively.
“The president has been very aggressive about this. Only this week, he formally spoke about it, but has been whipping us with wet noodles for weeks now,” Cuccinelli quipped.
“Make no mistake about it, whether it’s border security or the coronavirus, President Trump has made your safety and the safety of America his No. 1 priority,” he said.
Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke Thursday at CPAC, is Trump’s point man on the coronavirus. The president is scheduled to appear Saturday at the conference.
Cuccinelli said the threat of the virus is low now in the U.S., but that could change.
“We have concerns as it spreads outside of China, it becomes much harder to control in the United States,” he said. “We do need to err, as the president said, as a society on the [side of the] possibility this could get worse. He has had us preparing for that.”
“It is a daunting undertaking across the entire government,” Cuccinelli said.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.
America’s free and fair elections are under threat at the local and state level and in the movement to switch to a national popular vote to pick presidents, speakers said Saturday at an annual gathering of conservative activists near Washington.
Two panelists during a session at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, explained how the nation’s electoral system is under siege and why it matters.
Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who is member of the Republican National Committee for California, said Democrats have manipulated elections and made it easier for voter fraud to take place.
Republicans stood by and allowed “same-day voter registration,” Dhillon said, and “they’ve allowed no voter ID; less than a third of our states actually have voter ID, whether it’s a strong system or a weak system.”
“Republicans have allowed so-called nonpartisan redistricting commissions that are effectively run by Democrats,” she said.
A Republican donor, Dhillon said, backed the “top two” primary system in California, which effectively has kept Republicans off the general election ballot. She added:
When you have this toxic combination of a lack of verification, a lack of enforcement by our attorneys general and Department of Justice in terms of purging the polls of dead voters, and voters who have moved, and voters who are felons, and voters who have no business being on the rolls, you set up a system where fraud can occur.
Dhillon said ballot harvesting—a process in which third parties collect absentee ballots and deliver them to election officials—is another way that elections can be skewed.
Trent England, director of Save Our States, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Electoral College, talked about the left’s efforts to fundamentally change how America elects presidents.
England explained the National Popular Vote Compact, an effort to elect presidents based on the popular vote in each state rather than the Electoral College, and why he thinks the current system is essential:
When you go back and read the records of the Constitutional Convention, you find that–we hear about the compromise that created Congress and all these fierce arguments they had–you know what they spent more time [on], at least more weeks than anything else, was how to pick the president.
England, also executive vice president at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, said the framers of the Constitution developed the Electoral College after a process that took several months.
“After the convention,” England said, “this was a part of the Constitution that was popular with basically everybody.”
One of most important aspects of the Electoral College system is that it enforces “checks and balances” in presidential elections, he said.
That system ensures that the biggest cities and population centers are not the only places that have a say in picking presidents, England said. This forces candidates to appeal to wide swaths of the population.
What the national popular vote movement is really about, he said, is rigging the system, undoing the work of the Founders, and “creating a political environment where they can systematically and permanently disenfranchise small towns and rural America.”
America is “73% on the way to enacting the national popular vote,” he said, given how many states have joined the National Popular Vote Compact.
Though proponents argue that it won’t destroy the Electoral College, England said, it effectively would do so.
The Electoral College would go on as a “zombie” constitutional system that essentially would just “rubber stamp” the national popular vote, he said.
Adopting the national popular vote to pick a president is a way to abolish the Electoral College without having to go through the lengthy and difficult process of amending the Constitution, England said.
“If they did that, they would force chaos and fraud into the electoral system in a way we’ve never experienced because they could steal elections by stealing votes in Los Angeles and Chicago,” England said. “Today, all they can do in Chicago is steal Illinois.”
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.
The Trump administration is facing the coronavirus by preparing for the worst and aggressively pushing forward to tackle the disease, including “keeping sick people out of this country,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Saturday.
“At the Department of Homeland Security, our main mission when we talk about the coronavirus is to make sure we are keeping sick people out of this country,” Wolf told an audience of conservative activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington.
“So we do that at airports. We do that at landports and we do that a maritime ports of entry,” Wolf said. “The DHS medical professionals, contract professionals, we’ve screened over 50,000 individuals coming into the country that had some nexus to China.”
Trump administration officials stepped up speaking about the potential threat as the first confirmed U.S. death was reported in Seattle from the virus, which emerged in China.
In a news conference Saturday at the White House, Trump announced the U.S. death as well as new travel restrictions on visitors from Iran and new screenings for travelers from South Korea and Italy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is closely tracking the spread of the disease while spearheading efforts to contain and cure it, confirming 15 cases originating in the United States as of the weekend.
At the White House, Trump urged Americans to follow the recommendations of public health officials.
“We’re doing really well. Very, very professionally handled,” Trump said. “We will respectfully ask the media and politicians and everyone involved not to do anything to incite a panic.”
The president, flanked by federal health officials, said he is considering closing the U.S.-Mexico border as a precaution.
“Yes, we are thinking about the southern border. We are looking at that very strongly,” Trump said in response to a question.
The administration established a coronavirus task force several weeks ago, and Trump last week named Vice President Mike Pence to lead the administration’s efforts against the disease.
“We are planning for the worst. I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Wolf said at CPAC. “You can rest assured we are doing everything within our power to make sure the American people are safe.”
Trump has been “forward leaning” in tackling the matter, he emphasized.
“We were the first country to introduce travel restrictions,” Wolf said. “We were the first country to funnel flights to 11 different airports.”
Wolf noted that Trump took heavy criticism for this.
“If you recall, the president was criticized for taking that bold action, several weeks or a month ago,” Wolf said. “Those same individuals are now criticizing this administration for not doing enough. We continue to push forward.”
The administration’s task force is coordinating government agencies’ response to what could become a pandemic abroad.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, sharing the stage with Wolf at CPAC, stressed that his department is applying research methods to the coronavirus challenge.
“For those not familiar with the Department of Energy, we have 17 national laboratories. We happen to own the two fastest supercomputers in the world,” Brouillette said.
He said a scientist at the department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is researching how to combat the virus.
His department is using biosecurity and artificial intelligence to establish models for dealing with the virus, Brouillette said.
“We are also breaking down the virus,” he said.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.
It was February 7, 1956 when the Vera Cruz Vessel sailed from the port of Vigo in northern Spain. Among its 800 passengers was my grandfather, Vicente Novo. Like everyone on that ship, he left everything behind in his homeland to pursue his dreams in a more prosperous country. In this land of opportunity, he and the other passengers found jobs, started businesses and raised families – all while sending money back to their hungry families in Europe.
But this newfound land of opportunity wasn’t the United States of America. It was my home country: Venezuela.
It’s hard to believe now, but in 1950, Venezuela was thefourth-richest country on earth. Tragically, over the course of the next six decades, Venezuela was transformed from a prosperous nation of immigrants to a devastated and poor land full of people in need of refuge.
Vicente hadn’t even finished elementary school when he immigrated to Venezuela. Yet, in that thriving nation, he found a job in a car garage that allowed him to save and send money back to his five siblings in Spain. And after years of diligently saving, he opened his own small parking garage, where he washed and parked cars.
My grandfather and the other voyagers on the Vera Cruz were not alone. From the 1940s through the 1970s, Venezuela was the destination of millions of immigrants from Spain, Portugal,Lebanon,Syria, and a host of other nations. Just like America, Venezuela became a thriving melting pot, and middle-class status was achievable for those who worked hard for it – even if they had no education.
This prosperity was possible thanks to free markets. Venezuela protected private property, had low taxation, and little regulation. Venezuela’s borders were open for immigrants who came to work, and foreign investment was welcomed, leading to a booming economy. All of this happened under an otherwise authoritarian dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez.
However, after Venezuela became democratic in 1958, the people elected leaders who put the country on the path of socialism.
In 1976, then-President Carlos Andres Perez nationalized the oil industry, and Venezuela’s oil production plummeted by more than40% over the next decade. Oil nationalization led to the expansion of welfare programs funded by the new volatile oil revenue. Despite this additional government revenue, the government kept getting in debt and started printing more money to pay for more welfare. This led to inflation and the establishment of price and currency controls, as well as the nationalization of key industries. That, in turn, led to joblessness and misery. Venezuela’s real wages declined andGDP per capita, which had been soaring since the 1950s, plateaued in the 1980s and 1990s.
My grandfather was a victim of these policies. His parking garage wasn’t profitable anymore because the government capped parking prices. Thankfully, though, he had been saving. With that money, he built a small four-apartment building where he lived and rented the other three units. But the government had to ruin this for him, too. It used eminent domain to expropriate his building under the excuse that it needed to build a hospital. Not only did the government give my grandfather a below-market rate, it never even built the hospital.
In the late 1990s, politicians were forced to apply free-market policies by the International Monetary Fund. They welcomed private investment in the oil industry, re-privatized some industries they’d taken away, demolished price and currency controls, and even balanced the budget. As a result, the economy improved, unemployment stabilized, inflation slowed rapidly, and oil production surged. But this proved to be too little too late.
By the time election season rolled around, two years after these reforms, jobs were still scarce – and the Venezuelan people were outraged at the rampant corruption among establishment politicians. So, in 1998, Venezuelans elected Hugo Chávez, a radical socialist candidate who promised to crush the wealthy and redistribute oil and wealth to the poor by giving “free” housing, healthcare, education, and food.
My grandfather remembers folks saying that “Venezuela isn’t Cuba,” as they dismissed warnings from wise citizens who said that Chavez’s socialist policies would usher in destruction.
Indeed, Chavez doubled down on crushing business through regulation, price and currency controls, and nationalizing companies. His policies, and those of the current dictator Nicolas Maduro, have caused the greatest humanitarian crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Nearly 5 million Venezuelans have fled the country already, including my family.
There’s a saying in Venezuela that before socialism took hold of our country, “We were rich but we didn’t know it.” Many Venezuelans who initially supported socialism and those who didn’t vote at all have now recognized that truth the hard way.
My family’s story, and that of millions of other Venezuelans, should serve as a warning to all those who believe America is too prosperous and powerful to fail. Socialism can and will destroy this country – unless voters curb the recent wave of popularity it’s gained in the United States and prevent radical leaders from getting elected.
The next time someone tells you that “America isn’t Venezuela,” remind them that we Venezuelans once said something all-too similar.
Daniel Di Martino(@DanielDiMartino) is a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at the University of Kentucky, a Young Voices contributor, and a Dissident contributor.
In what amounts to a plea of “guilty” to the charge of being full of crap and criticizing President Trump no matter what he does, Senator Chuck Schumer has deleted his February 5th tweet reading:
“The premature travel ban to and from China by the current administration is just an excuse to further his ongoing war against immigrants. There must be a check and Balance on these restrictions.”
Bruce Carroll spotted the deletion and rescued it from Orwell’s Memory Hole: (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit)
I hope that President Trump ruthlessly mocks Schumer for this. If Schumer had an honest bone in his body, he would acknowledge that Trump did the right thing, and the he was wrong to criticize him. Schumer and all Americans should be grateful that President Trump took quick and effective action that has so-far limited the impact on us of the epidemic. Had he followed Schumer’s advice, the epidemic would have spread here, as it has in Italy.
The stealthy deletion is a low and slow softball right across home plate for Trump to knock out of the park with scathing derision at his next rally. And it is fodder for internet video commercials illustrating why nobody should trust what the Democrats say about the epidemic.
Schumer also once again, in typical Democrat fashion, falsely accuses the president of being anti-immigrant because he is anti-illegal immigration. It is an absurd and malicious charge, especially considering that President Trump has married two immigrants.
My sense is that with their knee-jerk and often hysterical denunciations of President Trump, the media and other Democrats have become background white noise for Americans not afflicted with TDS. Who would bother taking their criticism seriously when Schumer proves that that they don’t care about anything substantive and will just criticize everything Trump does?
In what amounts to a plea of “guilty” to the charge of being full of crap and criticizing President Trump no matter what he does, Senator Chuck Schumer has deleted his February 5th tweet reading:
“The premature travel ban to and from China by the current administration is just an excuse to further his ongoing war against immigrants. There must be a check and Balance on these restrictions.”
Bruce Carroll spotted the deletion and rescued it from Orwell’s Memory Hole: (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit)
I hope that President Trump ruthlessly mocks Schumer for this. If Schumer had an honest bone in his body, he would acknowledge that Trump did the right thing, and the he was wrong to criticize him. Schumer and all Americans should be grateful that President Trump took quick and effective action that has so-far limited the impact on us of the epidemic. Had he followed Schumer’s advice, the epidemic would have spread here, as it has in Italy.
The stealthy deletion is a low and slow softball right across home plate for Trump to knock out of the park with scathing derision at his next rally. And it is fodder for internet video commercials illustrating why nobody should trust what the Democrats say about the epidemic.
Schumer also once again, in typical Democrat fashion, falsely accuses the president of being anti-immigrant because he is anti-illegal immigration. It is an absurd and malicious charge, especially considering that President Trump has married two immigrants.
My sense is that with their knee-jerk and often hysterical denunciations of President Trump, the media and other Democrats have become background white noise for Americans not afflicted with TDS. Who would bother taking their criticism seriously when Schumer proves that that they don’t care about anything substantive and will just criticize everything Trump does?
