What's A Socialist Pope To Do?

By Thomas DiLorenzo

Democratic socialist utopia Venezuela, according to the Los Angeles Times, has the following characteristics (for starters):

• Shuttered shops
• “Lines, lines, lines . . . queuing up for basics, from pasta to toilet paper.”
• “One of the planet’s great oil producers is now unable to pay for basic commodities, like the milk, flour and rice, which are mostly imported . . .”
• “The poor and working classes . . . are suffering most.” (Emphasis added).  Pope Francis: Call your office!.
• “Authorities limit purchase of basic items — nearly 4.5 pounds of pasta and rice per customer for instance . . .”
• “People are assigned certain days to shop based on the numbers on their government-issued IDs.”
• “Rampant corruption . . .”
• “Venezuelans regularly structure their day around la cola, the line.”
• “[H]ardly any food, beyond crates of tinned sardines and canned tomatoes, plus some bins of moldy potatoes and onions” are in many stores.
• “[F]resh meat and seafood sections [of grocery stores] are shuttered.”
• “Images of [Hugo] Chavez . . . adorn [grocery] stores’ walls . . .”
• “To buy . . . diapers [one Maigualida Perez] had to produce her son’s birth certificate, a government anti-hording requirement enforced at stores.”
• “I can’t find diapers, milk or sugar” in the stores, said one Andreina Escalante.
• Not surprisingly:  “The shortages have eroded support for the socialist government . . .” (Emphasis added).

A little too late for that, one would think.  Still no word on this from the pope, whose smile was as wide as the Grand Canyon when he had his picture taken with Fidel Castro a while back.  If he does mention it, he’ll probably blame it all on too many “pockets of capitalism” in Venezuela.

The above originally appeared at LewRockwell.com