The Socialist Utopia has come to Venezuela and so has triple-digit inflation. Inflation is soaring at about 65%, murder rates are the second highest in the world, they don’t have food, chocolate,cooking oil, sugar, beer, shampoo, chicken, beef or even toilet paper. Businesses put the blame on the socialist government’s economic policies and the government blames it on everyone else.

A number of U.S. movie stars have gone to Venezuela many times to applaud their regime and compare their economy to ours. Sean Penn was one.

Maduro “inherited a lot of the growing pains that were left,” Penn said last May. He added that Maduro is similar to Chavez in that he is “in love with his people and his country.”

The people weren’t demonstrating over oppression but because of “economic hard times” we are all experiencing, Penn assured Americans.

The movie star who hates Republicans compared problems with Maduro’s dictatorship to those of Barack Obama:

“The frustrations are real, but, you know, they are frustrations of an identity up against — we see it on an economic level with President Obama and the United States,” the actor continued. “How quickly we forget the devastated economy he inherited. The devastated credibility of his country he inherited.”

American leftists cheered the Socialist government and the social justice he forced on the people. Social justice is the mantra of both Barack Obama and Pope Francis.

Tampons are so scarce, one package eats up a third of Venezuelan’s salaries. The government sets the “fair” prices. The cost went from 15 cents for a package to three dollars which is a lot on a Venezuelans paltry salary. Other personal hygiene products are priced out about the same by the government.

All companies in Venezuela are governed by onerous foreign exchange and price controls. No company manages or keeps their own assets.

Oil used to pour the ground but now the socialists are in charge. They have gone from an oil-rich, average income country into a wasteland not even as productive as Ethiopia. The Socialists did it in only 16 years.

When Chavez came to power, Fox News interviewed a farmer whose land was being stolen because Chavez said he was one of the evil rich. He seemed like a very nice, gentile farmer, an older man, and his life was stolen from him. I remember him saying, “This isn’t right.” He then went through a litany of the people he employed and the people he helped. Now the people don’t have food because the government keeps seizing it from the farmers.

Federal authorities ordered producers of milk, pasta, oil, rice, sugar and flour to supply between 30 percent and 100 percent of their products to the state stores, the Food Industry Chamber said.

Seized Market

Polar Beer can’t get barley – they don’t have the money to buy the necessary raw materials and the government has seized several of their major plants. Polar has stopped production at two plants, putting people out of work

The Venezuelan beer industry owes about $200 million to foreign suppliers. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are about to be lost.

President Nicolas Maduro has accused Polar of sabotaging the economy by hoarding goods and intentionally creating shortages, a charge the company has denied.

President Nicolas Maduro in recent months has stepped up attacks on the private sector, which he accuses of profiteering and sabotage, as his popularity wanes ahead of the Dec. 6 congressional elections. He has blamed the companies for the food shortages and hyperinflation as a scare tactic leading up to the elections.

Government currency and price controls is what has made most of national production unprofitable.

They have an $11 a month minimum wage which hasn’t gotten one person a job.

Unions have been shutting down plants demanding more pay

The head of Venezuela’s liquor store federation warned the nation was about to run out of beer because producers had reached “zero hour” amid widespread shortages in raw materials.

Days later he was arrested and no one can say why.

Troops seized one factory also shared by Nestlé, workers because they say it’s needed to house the poor as they create more poor by putting all these people out of work.

Nestlé is looking for another means of distribution.

When the one major plant was seized about 50 workers protested inside while contractors joined in the protest outside.

“If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said truck driver Carlos Munoz, a 43-year-old contractor for Polar. He transports food and drink from the site to shops and distributors.

“There’s no food in Venezuela and now they do this! How are people going to eat?”

Polar sent 12,000 tons of food and six million liters of drink out every month from the site.

Other companies renting space at the site include Cargill, Coca Cola, Pepsi, industrial gases supplier Praxair and the clothing firm Zara, according to a statement from Inmobiliaria Carapay, the owner of the complex.

Check out this upsetting video of one of their supermarkets. This is being played out all over the country.

Venezuela’s largest private telephone operator, Movistar, ended service to all but 10 countries last May. The other major private operator, Digitel, cut service to more than 100 countries around the same time, and later told congress it was tens of millions of dollars in debt to foreign providers.

Some have access to Skype but there is very limited Internet. Foreign airlines have abandoned the country over the past year because of Venezuela’s limits on repatriating profits.

Last year, the state-run postal service indefinitely suspended international mail deliveries.

Vacations and any travel are out because the government allows very little conversion of Bolivares to dollars.

The people of Venezuela are shut off from the world.

They have Universal Healthcare – Communist Care – and their doctors are paid $15 a month, the sick buy drugs on the street. Cancer patients wait a year-and-a-half for life-saving surgeries.

The Bolivar is monopoly money and the hyperinflation is off the charts so the Socialist government forces companies doing business overseas to use U.S. dollars but they don’t give enough U.S. dollars to import even basic foods and goods.

Stand-up comics who joke about it are barred from all government-run hotels and facilities and private organizations who allow them to do their routine are often closed down for supposed violations.

Nicolas Maduro

After meeting with John Kerry, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro agreed to hold parliamentary elections, but there has been no effort to release opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez or any of the 70 political prisoners currently held by the Venezuelan government without trial and without proven charges.

If elections were fair, the ruling party would fail but the chances of them being fair are very poor. The Marxist revolution is here to stay in Venezuela. It’s impossible to get rid of the oppressors once they are in control. People in the United States might think about that as they cheer the loss of freedoms in the hands of a president who has assumed unilateral rule.

Venezuela relies on Cuba’s special forces of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and it is Cubans who help train several thousand trusted Chavistas. Called collectivos, these motorcycle gangs can be seen in the videos and pictures helping the National Guard repress peaceful protests and shooting unarmed students.

Cuba is also heavily involved in drug trafficking with Venezuela. Cuba and Venezuela have forged a close political and military alliance. Venezuela was sending millions to Cuba each year but that stopped at the same time Cuba looked to trade with the United States so they can fill their coffers and continue their oppressive Communist regime.

This video was made in February, 2014.

Sources: Daniel Greenfield, Yahoo News, CNBC, YouTube, The Center for Security Policy, PanAm Post, Newsbusters