WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Socialism Kills, Venezuela Edition. “It is clear that the Chávez regime has been squeezing every last penny out of the oil sector, but despite the ‘Bolivarian’ socialist rhetoric promising equal distribution of this wealth, the money hasn’t just been used for social programs, but also to fund Venezuela’s expensive foreign policy, as well as its efforts to cover up the results of poor policy, rampant cronyism, and the general mismanagement of the public sector. When things go wrong, Venezuelan citizens are the ones who pay the price for the state’s poor choices. Three things seem likely at this juncture: first, no one will be able to trust whatever ‘investigation’ the Chavez government undertakes. It will be an obvious whitewash. Second, conditions for oil workers are unlikely to improve. Third, the usual crew of Chavez defenders in the United States, desperate after all these decades of misery and failure to point to some place some where, where authoritarian socialism isn’t a dreary charnel house and economic failure zone, will struggle to convince themselves that things are just fine in Bolivarian Venezuela.”

Venezuela is doing fine.

UPDATE: Reader John Steakley writes: “Based on how things are going, I would estimate that Hugo Chavez is about halfway through reading Atlas Shrugged.”