Hugo Chavez is omnipresent.  He has his own tv shows.  He wins elections by a combination of voter intimidation, fraud, and pandering with bread and circuses.  The government of Venezuela wasn't changed, Chavez just took over while the people just watched in stunned disbelief.  

Friedrich Hayek, the famous political philosopher and economist, taught that socialism at first attracts many people because of a concern to help the needy, but eventually it attracts those who like to be the ones deciding who gets and who doesn't get handouts.  This is true not only in deciding the level of poverty for receiving welfare, and not only for the death panels that will decide who lives and who dies with a state monopoly on medical care; it is also true of which businesses get support from the government.

So now we're seeing the administration attempting to intimidate businesses for speaking out against B. Hussein's political policies.  This Chicago style politics is not new, but clearly has advanced to a higher level than before.  With total control and ownership of many banks and most of the car manufacturing industry, not only is B. Hussein getting quasi legal power over private business, he's also shown how he intends to quiet dissent.  He can threaten companies with either never getting government handouts or contracts, or he can nationalize them pretty much at will, or he can threaten them with "investigations" which is a very creepy precedent.

I'm all for the idea that businesses shouldn't be getting handouts from the government, but the fact is that with rising socialism we have gotten to the point that many businesses can no longer survive if they must compete against all the other companies that get these handouts or contracts.

This is perhaps the most fundamental problem with socialism.  Yeah, it's wrong to give one person's money to another person because that is essentially theft, but that is petty corruption.  The real problem is not the loss of money by individuals, though that is bad enough by itself.  The big problem is that socialism gives the govenrment power, and that attracts those that like to wield power for their own benefit.

If the government's power is limited, then there is less they can do, and there is less power to fight over.  The key to civilizing politics is to limit the power of government.

Instead we're getting Chicago style politics, inspired by the cult of personality of the likes of Hugo Chavez.  There's no need to be like Castro and Che and murder so many people when all you need to do is control who gets what in medical care or business.  Then the nation will gladly worship the dear leader, and fawn at his daily television broadcasts.  There's no need at all for such overt acts when all you have to do is be like Hugo, and smile your way into despotic power over a nation that will not rouse itself to protest so long as it gets its bread and circuses.