Last month I referred to Maduro’s incarceration of business owners as the start of the really bad news: the mask dropped completely.

Must-read op-ed by Enrique Standish: Venezuela Finally Turns Communist

Maduro Follows Leninist Dogma to the Letter. Standish tracks the evolution in four stages:

The first stage entailed obtaining total control of all institutions of the Venezuelan state.



In the second stage, Chavez

passed 49 laws directed against the private sector. These laws eliminated private participation in the oil business, allowed for confiscation without payment of private lands, suspended constitutional guarantees for business owners, and established “military security zones” in major metropolitan areas — a de facto confiscation of prime real estate in Venezuela’s major cities. At the same time, he launched an all out attack against the country’s independent labor unions

Third stage:

Chavez nationalized the holdings of international corporations in all sectors considered essential by his Cuban advisers: telecommunications, mining, steel, construction materials, oil and oil services, energy generation, distribution and transmission, gas, agricultural services, and even glass companies. At the same time, Venezuela entered into a hugely expensive and disadvantageous agreement with China, with the sole purpose of diverting its oil exports from the United States to the Chinese market.

Now in the fourth stage, Maduro has declared “Economic War” by ending what was left of free markets in Venezuela as he approved a law setting price controls on all goods, and another law creating a National Foreign Trade Center monopoly that will handle all imports entering Venezuela.

Venezuelan blogger Miguel Octavio sees A Confusing Future Ahead For Maduro And Venezuela. Let’s look at a Zara store in Venezuela, before price controls,

and a Zara store after,

Enter the black market, in force.

UPDATE:

The Pope, the State and Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro needs cover for an economy in free fall. He gets it from an unlikely source. Pope Francis

trusts the state, “charged with vigilance for the common good.”

I hate to say this, but the Pope’s moral authority just went missing.

More on The Pope’s Rhetoric.

And, Maduro Now Set To Regulate Car (???) Sales.

Over at CNN, “Venezuela is on a fast track to ruin:”

UPDATE 2:

Linked to by Moonbattery. Thank you!