MARTIN RODIL: It’s Time to Cut Off Venezuela’s Black Gold. “Tough sanctions on Venezuela’s national oil company will hit the Maduro regime hard, and may save the Venezuelan people.”

State socialism has once again proven to be a colossal failure. Private businesses have been looted by the criminal Maduro regime. Once profitable businesses lie in ruins, as the ruling party’s cronies are given jobs in state-run enterprises. Mismanagement is therefore a core principal of this regime, trickling down throughout the heavily centralized crooked system. When graft is ubiquitous, the people suffer. And the Venezuelan people are suffering.

The medical system has now completely collapsed with every public hospital in the country suffering from woeful shortages of medicine, anesthetic, and any semblance of hygienic equipment. Women are forced to give birth in the streets or in stairwells of hospitals. HIV drugs are almost non-existent. Diarrhea has once again become a serious killer of children across Venezuela.

In the meantime, the economy has completely imploded. Inflation is out of control. There is no food on the shelves, and basics like toilet paper are almost non-existent.

But would an oil embargo give Maduro a plausible scapegoat?