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We haven’t checked in on Venezuela for a while. Formerly one of the world’s richest countries, Venezuela has become destitute since it was taken over by socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The country has gone downhill in an ever-worsening spiral of poverty and dysfunction. Things have gotten so bad that American liberals no longer hold up Venezuela as an example of “real socialism.”
The London Times reports:
[T]his is a country still suffering the trauma of the most spectacular currency collapse of our times. The Venezuelan bolivar, which in the 1960s was considered as solid a store of value as the Swiss franc, is now worth less than the paper it is printed on. If you converted a million dollars into bolivars in 2013 — when Nicolás Maduro first came to power — and left it in an interest-accruing Venezuelan bank for the past decade, your current balance would be about 3 cents.
Let’s hear it for socialism! And also for money-printing. Venezuela kept printing currency until it could no longer afford the paper and ink, but how different is that from the path our own government is currently on?
All this became glaringly apparent during an especially precipitous period of the downward spiral, during 2018 and 2019. With annual inflation touching two million per cent, a brick of notes was needed to buy a sandwich. The government ran out of the ink and paper physically needed to print more money.
Debit cards, along with bartering, became essential; with everyone from coconut sellers in the Caribbean to barbers in Caracas using cheap card readers to make transactions. But banks were slow to keep up with the devaluation, failing to raise their limits per transaction. Buying just a few items in a supermarket could therefore require three or four bank cards.
Life under socialism isn’t just poor and violent, it is crazy, too.
In mid-2019, the Maduro government quietly threw in the towel and allowed people to officially use US dollars. It turned out to be a transformational moment, taming price rises and bringing in some stability.
At least 60 per cent of retail transactions in Venezuela are believed to be in dollars, either in cash or with cards.
So the viciously anti-American kleptocrats are rescued, sort of, by the American dollar. But the damage is done, as Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by 75%. The last word:
[One Venezuelan] lamented, “Nobody’s got any money. There’s nothing much left to steal.”
I suppose the kleptocrats long for the good old days, when there was still something in Venezuela worth stealing. Chavez’s daughter Maria Gabriela, a perfect exemplar of leftism who represented Venezuela in the United Nations, made off with a cool $4.2 billion. But she was a piker compared to her father’s Treasury Minister, Alejandro Andrade, who slipped away from Venezuela with $11.2 billion in Swiss banks. As I wrote back in 2015:
If you want a world in which a few obscenely rich jet-setters lord it over a sea of poor people, socialism is the ideology for you.
But even those halcyon days have come to an end, as “[t]here’s nothing much left to steal.” It is as Margaret Thatcher memorably said: the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.
DEI (racial and other quotas) is intrinsically evil. At The Hill, Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson reveal a shocking, practical downside to DEI hysteria: “DEI killed the CHIPS Act.”
The issue is critical because Taiwan now produces 90% of the world’s advanced microchips, and China has indicated its intention to annex Taiwan in the near future. So the CHIPS Act sought to incentivize chip production in the U.S. Unfortunately, that isn’t what is happening.
Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. …
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Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as [the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] discovered to its dismay.Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.
It isn’t only TSMC that is being stymied by DEI:
Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.
In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. …
[C]hipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”
No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland.
Access to microchips is a national security issue, as well as being fundamental to a modern economy. And yet Congressional majorities care more about DEI shibboleths and feeding pork to their constituencies than about American security and prosperity. Of course, that isn’t really an irony. The whole point of DEI is hating America, and if it imperils our security and our prosperity, so much the better.
According to his Martin Kulldorff bio, Ph.D., Dr.h.c., is an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom. He was a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University for thirteen years. Dr. Kulldorff’s research centers on developing and applying new disease surveillance methods for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance and for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. In October 2020, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating for a pandemic strategy of focused protection instead of lockdowns.
City Journal has just published Professor Kulldorff’s account of the censorship of his work and his involuntary departure from Harvard. It was something (many things) he thought and said — crimes against the groupthink of the Covid regime. His account runs to 2,500 words and is titled “Harvard tramples the truth.” It’s straight outta Cambridge. It’s straight outta D.C. It’s straight outta Orwell.
It opens: “I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.” Read every word here.
Via InstaPundit, I learn that Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. I concur with Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion that March 14 should therefore be a holiday:
Marx performed the difficult feat of being wrong about everything. Most people are right about some things and wrong about others; the law of averages sets in. But if you are an ideologue, like Marx, and if your ideology is stupid, you can be wrong across the board. Marx’s historical analyses were either recycled conventional wisdom or wildly off the mark. He knew nothing about economics, which is why his labor theory of value–the lynchpin of his entire philosophy–is absurd. (Even Marx recognized that; he never finished the key section of Capital, leaving that inglorious task to Engels.) And he pontificated endlessly about workers and the means of production, without even once, as far as is known, setting foot in a factory.
Marx survives in historical memory for two reasons. First, hardly anyone has actually read Capital or his lesser works. Even a person of moderate intelligence could hardly do so without recognizing their foolishness. Second, Marx’s philosophy has served as a pretext for sadists to seize control of governments around the globe. Which is exactly what Marx intended.
Marx was a bad man, equally so in his private and public lives. He should be remembered only as an exemplar of how much damage a single-minded and hate-filled man can do.
Al Roker and his production company have been sued by a producer who alleges he was fired after objecting to the company's failure to implement diversity initiatives for an upcoming PBS animated show.
The post Lawsuit Claims Al Roker ‘Circumvented’ DEI Quotas on PBS Kids Show ‘Weather Hunters,’ Fired Producer for Objecting appeared first on Breitbart.
Actor Ncuti Gatwa is promoting his first season as the star of Dr. Who with a litany of woke grievances, from "white mediocrity" to "transphobia."
The post ‘Doctor Who’ Star Ncuti Gatwa: ‘There’s so Much White Mediocrity that Gets Celebrated’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Distributor A24 is facing public backlash after it apparently used AI technology to generate promotional artwork for the movie "Civil War."
The post A24 Facing Backlash over ‘Civil War’ Promotional Artwork Apparently Generated by AI appeared first on Breitbart.
Dengue fever cases have topped 5.2 million in the Americas, and a United Nations health agency is calling it an "emergency situation."
The post Panamerican Health Officials: ‘Breakbone’ Dengue Fever Cases Reach Emergency Levels appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, issued a statement after Florida-based marketing firm Citadel Securities slammed Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes as being a "proverbial loser."
The post Trump’s Truth Social Responds to Attack from Citadel Securities: ‘World Famous for Screwing Over Everyday Retail Investors’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Anti-Israel protesters reportedly placed tents on the lawn of Columbia University in New York City days after others were removed by law enforcement officials.
The post Anti-Israel Protesters Place Tents in Encampment on Columbia University Lawn appeared first on Breitbart.
A study on juvenile delinquency in a German province found that radical ideology is prevalent among the Muslim youth population.
The post Germany: Nearly Half of Young Muslims Want Islamic Theocracy, Third ‘Understand’ Violent Retribution for Insulting Mohammed appeared first on Breitbart.
Police said they laid white roses on the anniversary of Hitler's birth and posed for photos and one gave the Nazi salute.
The post Four Germans to be Prosecuted After Caught by Police Laying Roses at Adolf Hitler Birthplace appeared first on Breitbart.
Platinum-selling rapper Drake has revived the late Tupac Shakur by using artificial intelligence technology in a new diss track against rival artist Kendrick Lamar.
The post Rapper Drake Uses AI to Resurrect Tupac Shakur for a Guest Verse appeared first on Breitbart.
Planet Fitness's incoming boss Colleen Keating also reportedly backed "hiring through a DEI lens" in her former position.
The post Planet Fitness Incoming CEO Forced Workers into ‘Unconscious Bias Training’ at Former Company appeared first on Breitbart.
A transgender middle school athlete won a shot put competition in West Virginia last week, as a slew of female competitors refused to throw and walked off the pitch in protest.
The post West Virginia Middle School Girls Walk Out of Shot Put Competition in Protest of Trans Athlete appeared first on Breitbart.
A public library in Illinois will be hosting a "pronoun" seminar for children considering cross-dressing and sex-change surgeries.
The post Illinois Library Hosting ‘Pronoun’ Seminar for Children Considering Cross-Dressing, Sex-Change Surgery appeared first on Breitbart.
The bill would theoretically see illegal migrants removed from Britain to Rwanda, however, getting illegals on flights is not a certainty.
The post UK Finally Passes Rwanda Migrant Removal Bill, But No Guarantee Illegal Migrants Will Actually Be Removed appeared first on Breitbart.
Roughly half a million Colombians took to the streets of the nation's main cities on Sunday to protest against far-left President Gustavo Petro.
The post Half a Million Colombians Protest Against Socialist Healthcare Reform appeared first on Breitbart.
The woke mob is turning on Taylor Swift for her new song "I Hate It Here" in which she sings that she would have liked to have lived in the 1830's.
The post Taylor Swift Faces Racial, Gender Backlash for Singing She Would Like to Have Lived in 1830’s appeared first on Breitbart.
A transgender student, who is accused of beating a fellow student, attacked police officers during his hearing.
The post Police: Trans Student who Bashed Teen Girl on His ‘Hit List’ with Metal Tumbler Also Attacked Officers in Court appeared first on Breitbart.
The U.S. Senate approved a bill late Tuesday night that could see TikTok banned in America over national security fears.
The post TikTok Faces U.S. Ban as Bill Set to Be Signed by Biden appeared first on Breitbart.
A group of senior clinical psychologists apologised for the role their profession played in promoting transgender treatments to children.
The post ‘We Are Ashamed’ — UK Psychologists Apologise for Role in Promoting Transgender ‘Medicine’ to Children appeared first on Breitbart.
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