Socialism - Helping the poor guy

IHT - Bureaucrats in oil-rich Venezuela can look forward to fewer expensive SUVs, top-of-the-line cellphones and whiskey-fueled parties next year. Finance Minister Alí Rodríguez said Sunday that Venezuela's 2009 budget "will have significant restrictions" compared with this year's $63.9 billion plan, as President Hugo Chávez's government keeps a close watch on falling international oil prices. "There are expenses that must be eliminated and others that must be reduced," Rodríguez said in an interview on the Televen network. "Many expenses, such as expenses on certain types of vehicles, cellphones and parties, will be eliminated."

Flamboyant spending is common within Venezuela's bureaucracy-heavy administration, and whiskey usually flows freely when state-run institutions throw extravagant parties in December. Chávez last year criticized political allies who purchase Hummers, saying true socialists must do without such luxuries. He hinted last month at spending cuts, saying that "zero waste" should be a mantra for government agencies. Buoyed by historically high oil prices, Chávez has increased public spending in recent years. But fallout from the financial crisis in the United States has caused prices to spiral downward.
Hummers and flowing whiskey ey, so where are the greenies squealing and screaming about their carbon assprints? Over in the US of hated-America, the angrier and more violent nutjobs of the mad-left vandalize SUVs and decry them as monsters, in the name of the planet. What about the poor in Venezuela, according to the CIA World Factbook, 37% of the population is below the poverty line, wasn't Chavez and his band of socialists supposed to help them out? Do they get to drive around in Escalades, sipping gin & tonics all day?

Yet here in the bastion of socialism, equality, social justice, revolution and all that, the bureaucrats have had the whiskey flowing freely and the hummers idling away for a while now. What happened greenies and socialists, cat got your tongues or are some carbon assprints and government excesses more equal?

Like I often say folks, Socialists are for the poor guy, for keeping him poor that is.

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