The ‘Occupation of Daka’ in socialist Venezuela turns citizens into savages

The ‘Occupation of Daka’ in socialist Venezuela turns citizens into savages

Nicholas Maduro
Nicolás Maduro

The recent actions of President Nicolás Maduro, who previously served as vice president under Hugo Chávez, is an illustration of how brutally damaging socialism is for a nation.

In the effort to mask the horrific government policies causing a 54% inflation rate, frequent power outages, and severe shortages of the most basic supplies, such as cooking oil, toilet paper, and even newsprint, and with the knowledge that the December election threatens his position of power, Maduro has stationed armed national guardsmen “around outlets of an electronics chain [called Daka] that Maduro has ordered to lower prices or face prosecution.”

At least one Spanish news outlet reported that some managers of the Daka appliance chain were “already in detention.”

The cut-rate prices on appliances, forced by Maduro, has resulted in citizens turning into savages, as they storm Daka looking for a deal. Not only did Daka get stormed by paying customers, people also looted the stores and smashed windows.

Maduro called the criminals “infiltrators” and “appealed for calm.”

Daka is just the beginning, it seems, as over the weekend, Maduro expanded the measure to force stores give away products at cheap prices to “textiles, footwear, toys, hardware and automobiles,” as “government inspectors were dispatched to check prices at an array of other businesses.”

A must-read article at the Times of Oman reported that Maduro “also said he would use special powers that he is seeking from the National Assembly to impose caps on private sector profits.”

One cannot help but reminisce of how Americans behaved in the recent EBT system outage in Louisiana. People on food stamps took advantage of the fact that their taxpayer-provided EBT cards were “not showing limits for a period of about 2 hours” and stormed “at least 3 Walmart stores in North Louisiana during that period, loading up shopping carts and clearing shelves,” as reported by the local news.

ABC News reported,

“Business groups have accused the government of carrying out a witch hunt, and shops in parts of eastern Caracas shuttered early Monday for fear of violence. In the suburb of Los Teques, police fired shots in the air to prevent crowds from raiding a toy store. On Saturday, looters cleaned out an electronic store in the city of Valencia.”

In typical socialist finger-pointing fashion, Reuters reported Saturday that Maduro blames

“rich businessmen and right-wing political foes backed by Washington of waging an economic ‘war’ against him…” [emphasis added]

Due to the government policy of “boosting public spending and printing money in record amounts to pay for it,” as pointed out by Girish Gupta of USA Today, inflation in Venezuela “soared to a two-decade high and the U.S. dollar shot up on the black market to nine times its official value,” as reported by ABC News.

The idea that Venezuela is “printing money in record amounts” should concern the citizens of Venezuela, as the 54 percent inflation rate is only hurting the people.

But right now, they don’t care, because they are getting good bargains.

Follow Renee Nal on Twitter @ReneeNal and Facebook

Check out her news and political commentary on Tavern KeepersGather and the Examiner for news you won’t find in the mainstream media. Renee is also a guest blogger for the Shire Blog.

Renee Nal

Renee Nal

Renee Nal is a co-founder of TavernKeepers.com, a news and political commentary site founded by former Glenn Beck interns. She is also the National Conservative Examiner. Renee is an associate producer for Trevor Loudon's political documentary, 'The Enemies Within.'

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