This is just too funny: Communists don't want to let people vote because popular vote would give poor too much power

From the WSJ:

Speaking in an interview with foreign media, Mr. Leung reiterated that the student demand for direct input from the public on candidates for the city’s top post was impossible. He said using a nominating committee as required by Beijing gives representation to a wide range of groups.
He warned that if candidates were nominated by the public, the population that earns less than the median monthly salary of $1,800 could dominate the process.
“If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month,” Mr. Leung said.
Hong Kong has one of the world’s biggest wealth gaps and some of the world’s highest property prices, factors that have increased the frustration of young people. . . .

Hugo Chávez’s family fortune at around $2 billion

Apparently, being a communist dictator pays very well.  Castro's family has also gotten extremely wealthy.

Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), a risk assessment and global analysis firm in Miami, estimated in a recent report that the Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has “amassed a fortune” similar to that of the Castro brothers in Cuba. 

According to Jerry Brewer, president of CJIA, “the personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion.” . . .

With North Korea possibly dumping communism, is there any place left?

North Korea's agricultural reforms are only about 80 years behind those in the former USSR, where private plots were created under Stalin and later encouraged under Khrushchev, but it is still a start.  While private plots in the former USSR may have accounted for just a tiny fraction of the farm land (just 2.8 percent in 1974), they made up a huge percentage of total agricultural output.  In 1974, 41% of eggs, 32% of milk, and 64% of potatoes were produced on these private plots.  You would think that the benefits of private property would then be obvious to even many of the most loyal socialists/communists.  Hopefully, this change in North Korea will eventually have the same impact.  Meanwhile, Obama wants to take the US in the opposite direction in areas such as health care.

From the Washington Post:

Under new leader Kim Jong Eun, North Korea in recent months has shifted its rhetoric to emphasize the economy rather than the military and is introducing small-scale agricultural reforms with tantalizing elements of capitalism, according to diplomats and defector groups with informants in the North. 

The changes, which allow farmers to keep more of their crops and sell surpluses in the private market, are in the experimental stage and are easily reversible, analysts caution. But even skeptical North Korea watchers say that Kim’s emerging policies and style — and his frank acknowledgment of the country’s economic problems — hint at an economic opening similar to China’s in the late 1970s. . . .

Yet, some caution is in order and the North Korean reforms are different from those in the former USSR.  In particular, farmers can only keep for private use output above their quotas.  One problem with this is that farmers might feel that if they exceed their quotas, the government could come back and simply raise their quotas in the future.  The farms are still collectively run, though the free-riding problem might be somewhat reduced.

Those measures, according to the reports, reduce the size of cooperative farm units from between 10 and 25 farmers to between four and six. The decrease is critical because it allows one or two households, not entire communities, to plan and tend to their own farms. . . .  

Castro says that Cuban model doesn't work any more

For a long time he was propped up by a subsidy from the USSR, then he was propped up with a subsidy from Venezuela. Even then you would think that he had noticed the decades old cars on the streets. The notion of direct government control over the economy has been crumbling there for years as they have open up more and more private operations. I suppose better late than never:

HAVANA – Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.
The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.
He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account. . . .

Remembering Communist Era Goods

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, remembering what life was like then could have been expected.

In Poland the Rotor Frania washing machine was a communist housewife's dream from the 1950s to the 1970s. The user had to pour water in and drain it manually but it had it is own rotor mechanism to clean the clothes. . . .

Many car brands also date from the communist era.

The old joke ran that the best way to increase the value of a Skoda, made in the old Czechoslovakia, was to fill up the petrol tank. Now it is thriving as part of the Volkswagen empire. . . . .

Where is the Obama administration outrage over this action in Venezuela?

The Obama administration seems to have no problem getting involve in Honduras' Supreme Court and Parliament's decision, but where are the comments about Venezuela? What about this move to take over the rest of the Venezuela's media.

More than a dozen of 34 radio stations ordered shut by the Venezuelan government went off the air on Saturday, part of President Hugo Chavez's drive to extend his socialist revolution to the media.

The association of radio broadcasters said 13 stations had stopped transmitting, following an announcement Friday night by government broadcasting watchdog Conatel that 34 radio outlets would be closed because they failed to comply with regulations. . . .

Tiananmen Square Massacre Map