A Caracas consumer shops in vain for household staples, while the Venezuelan government proposes more price controls.

CARACAS - Polling analysis from a range of firms has consistently shown that neither policy positions nor even a candidate's personal charisma carries the most weight with Venezuelan voters. The most impactful element of electoral campaigns has consistently been monetary and "in-kind" handouts.

Foreigners often ask Venezuelans how Hugo Chavez remains popular after driving foreign investment away, ruining the economy, and making Venezuela a laughing stock within the hemisphere. Polling data shows that the answer is nothing more than money - money from State oil coffers delivered into the hands of favored constituencies of Chavez.

Every election year, Chavez has increased his "missions," projects for the poor, and has brought in container loads of Chinese household appliances that he sells in Chavista neighborhoods at subsidized prices.

When a Chavista candidate was defeated by an opponent's slogan, "Go get your free microwave, then vote for me!", the tactic appeared to be on the verge of backfiring. To compensate, Chavez has had to become more stealthy in his vote-buying methodology.

CARACAS - Venezuela's attorney general Carlos Escarrá, a close ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, has died of a heart attack in Venezuela. 

Known as the "Lawyer of the Revolution," Escarrá was appointed by Hugo Chavez in 2011 as Venezuela's attorney general, and was a member of Venezuela's United Socialist Party of Venezuela. 

Escarrá was a committed leftist, stating in a 2010 TV interview with Globovision that the word "communism" originated from early Christians, and added that, "If someone says that communism is evil, then Christ was wrong, the apostles were bad."

Escarrá claimed to be fully supportive of Hugo Chavez's "21st Century Socialism," and stated that  "socialism is a stage of transition to communism."

He explained that within the PSUV Party, all ​​substantive discussions on the country's issues were made collectively, and added that, "Once a decision is made, we support it collectively (...) I am part of a political project."

Venezuelan operative Livia Acosta gives a solidarity fist pump to the Bolivarian Revolution.

CARACAS - The Miami consulate that serves as a governmental affairs liaison to thousands of Venezuelan expats living in the Southern United States will be shut down, according to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in an announcement on Friday. After Venezuelan diplomat Livia Acosta was recently expelled after a Univsion documentary played a recording of her conspiring with susected terrorists and radicals from Iran, Cuba and Mexico, that were allegedly plotting cyberattacks on U.S. installations, Chavez announced that he would not expel a U.S. diplomat in return, but would shut down the consulate "while we assess the situation."

A subsequent report revealed documentation that showed that Acosta was also a member of Chavez's secret police, and that her rise to a diplomatic post came in just eight years after starting out as a leader of Chavez's violent and illegal Bolivarian Circles, then subsequently receiving intelligence training in Cuba, before moving up the ranks to become a diplomat in the United States. 

The Argentine assassin Che Guevara, whose image is running a close race with Mao Tse Tung as the most capitalized of any anti-capitalist in history, has enjoyed a posthumous popularity that is inversely proportional to his competence in life. Guevara's "foco theory" of guerrilla warfare lasted about as long as he and his "peasant" revolutionary regiment lasted in the jungles of Bolivia. 

Today, the eponymous "Che" as he is modernly known, graces the walls of reluctant terrorists and dime store revolutionaries throughout the world, from Obama campaign volunteers to Palestinian terror apologists like Hatem Abudayyeh, a Chicago radical whose office was shown to be adorned with a Che poster in what was otherwise an innocuous 2004 PBS documentary on immigrants in America.