Venezuela's Chavez

Washington Post via RCP.

President Chavez, not satisfied with stifling opposition media and running his mouth off in the filed of foreign affairs, now plans to go completely Fidel and nationalize both the telecommunications and electrical industries and eliminate the independence of the national banking system.

"In the past couple of weeks Mr. Chávez has shaken up his cabinet to eliminate quasi-independent voices, said he will form a single ruling party and announced plans to govern by decree in the coming year. He has said he will close down the country's most popular television network, which has been critical of his government, eliminate the independence of the Central Bank, and nationalize telephone and electricity companies -- including one partly owned by Verizon and another by Alexandria-based AES. The commercial code will be changed; one minister said the intent is to place new limits on the profits of the remaining private companies. Though some private media will remain, Andres Izarra, the head of a state network and a close collaborator of Mr. Chávez's, declared that the regime's plan is "a communications and information hegemony for the state."

He has already crippled the oil industry by nationalizing it. It is unbelievable this moron won re-election in Decemeber. I wonder how long it will be before the riots start.