1) Give the Oil to the People

We noted yesterday that under the left’s hero, Nicolas Maduro, 80% of Venezuela's citizens have fallen into poverty, and nearly half are in extreme poverty. Oil production has crashed, and none of the revenues have enriched the citizens.

Maduro no doubt is in line to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

To help alleviate poverty and get the oil industry up and running, the newly elected government should reprivatize the oil industry. Chevron and ConocoPhillips spent billions of dollars to discover and develop the oil fields, and some of the ownership and operation should be returned to them as rightful owners. That’s for the courts to sort out.

The rest should go to the 30 million Venezuelan citizens, with each being assigned an equal ownership share of half the profits on the country’s estimated 300 billion barrels of on and offshore oil resources. We think this is an exaggeration, but even if it’s only half that amount. It’s one of the most valuable assets in the world.

If profits are at or around $5 to $10 per barrel, this plan would ensure oil production and give every resident/citizen a personal asset valued at up to $100,000.  

2) Texas Wins the Moving Truck Wars

U-Haul keeps track of how many of its one-way moving trucks move from state to state.  In 2025, Texas edged out Florida as the top destination state - though our VoteWithYourFeet website points out that wealthier movers are relocating in Florida.

Southern states took the top five U-Haul positions, including Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The balance of the top 10 included two more Southern states, Alabama and Georgia.

Amazingly, California, which was once the top destination state, had more moving vans relocating people out than any other state for the sixth year in a row.  The state has lost four million people to net outmigration since 2000.

Illinois had the second greatest loss, while Northeastern states New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts rounded out the bottom five. The sixth greatest loss was in Maryland, with the balance of the bottom 10 including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Michigan, and Rhode Island. New York has lost four million net residents since 2000, according to the Census Bureau.  

Three of the top four states attracting movers have no personal income tax: Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. Nine of the top ten have a Right-to-Work law.  All ten of the bottom-ranked states are forced-union states.

U-Haul notes that nine of the top 10 destination states voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election, while seven of the bottom ten states voted Democrat.

3) Anatomy of a Scoundrel

Can you imagine if Kamala had won the election and the fraud-friendly Tim Walz were now one heartbeat away from the presidency?

Yesterday, the Minnesota Governor quit his race for re-election amid the mushrooming social services fraud scandal that he has presided over and covered up. He will continue to serve as governor, for now, but we think he should resign and be arrested.  

Walz knew the jig was up when last month, Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old citizen journalist, posted a video of empty state-funded "daycare centers" run by Somali immigrants across Minnesota. The video has now been viewed over 138 million times on X.

A federal prosecutor in Minnesota has suggested the Medicaid fraud alone in Minnesota could total $1,500 for each state resident. The state once known for "Minnesota Nice" is quickly being ridiculed as a "Minnesota Scam." Of course, a lot of those dollars came from Uncle Sam.  

Hats off to then GOP Congressman Jason Lewis who exposed the massive fraud schemes at a Congressional hearing back in 2018. But Democrats took control of Congress and kept the money spigots running on full.

"Minnesota had the good life and let it go," Lewis told HOTLINE. "Local elites with a guilt complex allowed the Left to double down on crazy from the George Floyd riots to COVID lockdowns to ignoring rampant fraud."

The state spends a stunning $45,000 per person in poverty, trailing only Massachusetts.

Now we know where all the money went.

4) Poland Is the Economic Recovery Model for Venezuela

We're not into nation building, so our profoundest hope is that a new elected regime is put in place soon, and the U.S. military pulls out of Caracas as quickly as possible. What the new government needs to do is to call in "the Chicago Boys" to jumpstart the economy with free markets, as happened so famously in the 1970s and '80s in Chile. That helped Chile become the jewel of South America.

The road to prosperity is pretty simple: Privatize, dollarize and incentivize (with lower tax rates).  

One nation that has pulled off this transition to rapid economic growth is Poland. Under "the warm embrace" of communism, it was an economic basket case. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, free markets have generated growth at such a rapid pace (almost 4% a year) that the Poles are likely to overtake Britain  (which has grown only 0.7% a year since 2008) in per capita GDP by the end of the decade.

5) Climate Change Hysteria Is Losing Its Media Wind Intensity

We predicted four years ago that climate change hysteria had peaked. We were right.  

The left-wing group Media Matters reports that the major four broadcast networks aired 12 hours and 51 minutes of climate coverage in 2024 -- a 25% decline in volume of coverage from 2023.  Preliminary numbers show that the decline has continued into 2025.  

Even better news is that a major climate grooming course for journalists has announced it will be "halted" this month.  The six-month program was run by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN) and funded by billionaire foundations such as the Reuters Institute.

Over its four-year life span, the Oxford program hosted some 800 journalists from over 100 countries.  One of its top speakers was Climate and Society Professor Saffron O'Neill from Exeter University, who discussed the need for "fines and imprisonment" of those skeptical of "well-supported" climate science.

6) And He Actually Pulled It Off  

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