Who you going to call when the lights go out?

IBD Editorial:

The lights are flickering in oil-rich Venezuela, a victim of the same shortages that appear wherever socialism is tried. With the grid verging on collapse, the final irony is to see Hugo Chavez calling Cuba to fix it.

Most leaders serious about fixing a collapsing power grid call up companies like Bechtel or APR Energy because they're capable of swiftly setting up small power plants in emergencies, even in infrastructure wastelands such as Haiti.

But that's not whom President Hugo Chavez called when he got word that Venezuela's electricity is in a state of collapse and may go black in as little as four months.

Instead, he opted for Ramiro Valdes, a septuagenarian Cuban guerrilla who once fought with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Inside the decrepit Castro regime, Valdes is a high-ranking survivor comparable to functionaries such as Vyacheslav Molotov in Stalin's Russia. Henchman, lackey and torturer, he didn't make it to Cuba's vice presidency by thinking for himself.

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Already Valdes' Cuban technicians are making a hash of things. Last week, El Universal columnist Nelson Bocaranda reported that Cubans damaged six Venezuelan energy-generating engines at four hydroelectric plants by forgetting to put oil in before firing them up.

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What the guy is experienced out is being a blood thirsty thug of an enforcer for "socialism." If Cuba's communism was really all that wonderful, why would it need men like this? Chavez is quickly driving the Venezuelan economy into the same ditch.