Proponents of big government-

[Newt]

Stupid proponents of big government--Families abandon children in Venezuela
LINK

These dictators come to power in democracies with promises of changed lives through the power of government. They certainly change lives.

"Oh that could never happen in the US!!!" you say.

Well it already has. It was called the Roosevelt Depression. He had almost dictatorial power. He set prices. He control the money supply. He dictated production. He nationalized industries and rationed goods and services.

People starved. Families split. But even today he is a hero to the left. They point to the pittance he gave families through the CCC and newly formed welfare programs never admitting that such things would not have been necessary but for FDR's policies.


FDR and his machine thought they knew what was best for the people. William Wallace was a communist. That same attitude exist today and can be found among the left throughout history. (They thought they knew so much better than black families how they should live that they started planned parenthood.)

We see it today in the attitude of the left and make no mistake about it should an economic crisis occur again they would move advocate moves similar to FDR and Chavez and Castro and now Maduro. They admire those dictators.

Some poor Venezuelan parents give away children amid deep crisis


By Girish Gupta and Mircely Guanipa

PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Struggling to feed herself and her seven children, Venezuelan mother Zulay Pulgar asked a neighbor in October to take over care of her six-year-old daughter, a victim of a pummeling economic crisis.

The family lives on Pulgar's father's pension, worth $6 a month at the black market rate, in a country where prices for many basic goods are surpassing those in the United States.

"It's better that she has another family than go into prostitution, drugs or die of hunger," the 43-year-old unemployed mother said, sitting outside her dilapidated home with her five-year-old son, father and unemployed husband.

With average wages less than the equivalent of $50 a month at black market rates, three local councils and four national welfare groups all confirmed an increase in parents handing children over to the state, charities or friends and family.

The government does not release data on the number of parents giving away their children and welfare groups struggle to compile statistics given the ad hoc manner in which parents give away children and local councils collate figures.

Still, the trend highlights Venezuela's fraying social fabric and the heavy toll that a deep recession and soaring inflation are taking on the country with the world's largest oil reserves.

Showing photos of her family looking plumper just a year ago, Pulgar said just one chicken meal would now burn up half its monthly income. Breakfast is often just bread and coffee, with rice alone for both lunch and dinner.

Nancy Garcia, the 54-year-old neighbor who took in the girl, Pulgar's second-youngest child, works in a grocery store and has five children of her own. She said she could not bear to see Pulgar's child going without food.

"My husband, my children and I teach her to behave, how to study, to dress, to talk... She now calls me 'mom' and my husband 'dad,'" said Garcia.

FOOD

Every day at the social services center in Carirubana, which oversees Pulgar's case, more than a dozen parents plead for help taking care of their children in this isolated, arid corner of Venezuela with a shaky water supply and little food.

Last year, the rate was around one parent a day.

"The principal motive now is lack of food," said Maria Salas, director of the small and understaffed center, echoing colleagues at two other welfare groups interviewed by Reuters elsewhere in the country.

Salas added that her organization - the Council of Protection for Children and Adolescents - lacked the resources to deal with the situation and had asked authorities for help, even just a dining room, but had no luck.

Not far from Salas' office, long supermarket lines under a hot sun help explain why parents are finding life so tough, a scene repeated across the country of 30 million people.

Venezuelans suffer shortages of the most basic goods, from food to medicine. Millions are going hungry amid triple-digit inflation and a nearly 80 percent currency collapse in the last year.

The government blames the United States and Venezuela's opposition, yet most economists pin the responsibility on socialist policies introduced by former president Hugo Chavez, which his successor Nicolas Maduro has doubled down on even as oil prices - the economy's lifeblood - plunged.

Venezuela's Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The Caracas municipality of Sucre, which encompasses Petare, one of the region's largest and poorest slums, has seen an "exponential" increase in parents needing help, say officials.

"The parents come in crying," said Sucre welfare director Angeyeimar Gil.

"It's very dramatic to see parents' pain when saying they can no longer look after their child," she said. "We're seeing a lot of cases of malnutrition and children that come to hospital with scabies."

Two-thirds of 1,099 households with children in Caracas, ranging across social classes, said they were not eating enough in a survey released last week by children's' rights group Cecodap.

ABANDONED

In some cases, parents are simply abandoning their kids.

Last month, a baby boy was found inside a bag in a relatively wealthy area of Caracas and a malnourished one-year-old boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in the eastern city of Ciudad Guayana, local media reported.