Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced today that his government would be expropriating the plants operated in his country by Ohio-based Owens-Illinois, a world leader in glass bottle manufacturing. It’s not the first nor certainly the last time that Chavez has nationalized foreign assets as a means of sustaining his leftist populist agenda.
Chavez was somewhat vague as to the reason for the expropriation, saying that Owens-Illinois, which has operated in Venezuela for over fifty years, accusing it of environmental damage and exploiting its workers, but really, any good socialist will say that about basically any company – they are inherently against symbols of capitalism like foreign-owned corporations.
The State Department has said it expects Venezuela to fairly compensate Owens-Illinois for seizing its plants, but it’s not really clear what America would do if Chavez gave the company peanuts for its factories. This isn’t even the first seizure this month – Chavez nationalized the Spanish farm supply company Agroislena on October 4th, calling it an oligopoly.
Chavez has also seized assets of ExxonMobil, steel maker Sidor, cement company CEMEX – overall, 195 businesses have been seized this year, making Owens-Illinois just the latest casualty in Chavez’s war on foreign investment. Chavez may think he’s helping Venezuela by getting some nice factories and turning them into national agencies, but within a few years they’ll be shells of what they once were.
This is the way of the global socialist – death to any and all business above the level of corner store, and even they must have the proper permits. It’s a terrible recipe for economic stagnation, and a major reason Chavez’s opposition only narrowly missed knocking out his legislative majority earlier this year.
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Wellsy's World 
Lawrence
October 29, 2010
Communists steal companies. In the new USSR, Lenin created the New Economic Policy (NEP) to allow free enterprise to get things started, then years later those companies were stolen. In the new communist China they violently stole private businesses. Now Chavez is stealing companies. In the USA, the bogus government regulations are used to shutdown private business and to drive business out of the country. The federal government creates an unfair advantage for businesses to move to foreign countries where they don’t have minimum wages and bogus environmental regulations. With this the communists will be able to prevent the US military from getting weapons and other equipment. With this the federal government can create more dependency of the people who are unemployed. Business and free enterprise is the engine for liberty. Without it, the soft tryanny of the federal government can turn to hard tryanny of future elected officials and beauracrats. This is a multi political party problem. Remember history: socialistic and communistic governments steal business and take over the people.
Already the bogus environmentalists have shutdown a coal electric plant in Montana which lead to the shutdown of arguably the world’s largest aluminum smelter. This is the type of actions leading to the high unemployment. President Obama acted tyrannically by preventing US companies from drilling in the Gulf, yet gave $ 1 billion dollars to the Mexican oil company which drills in the Gulf.
Things to do
1. Minimize and eliminate purchase of products made in communist China and other foreign countries
2. Write your elected officials and apply effort to have the USA stop importing from enemies like communist China, and to allow drilling and mining in the USA again, to allow burning coal for electricity, to refuse imports that don’t follow all USA laws and regulations.