McClaughry: Socialism’s descent in Cuba

By John McClaughry

While our progressive element continues to find wonderful things to say about Cuba, its baseball team is rapidly disappearing.

Mary O’Grady, the Wall Street Journal’s longtime Latin American reporter, tells us that “Cuban baseball set a new record in recent weeks when half of its under-23 national team—12 members—defected in Mexico during a World Cup tournament.”

Wikimedia Commons

Children going home from school in Santa Marta, near Varadero, Cuba.

“From baseball to national health care, Cuba is in tatters. Cubans, in ever greater numbers, are finding ways to escape. The ballplayers were part of what the regime called its “patriots” team because they were supposed to embody youthful zeal for the communist state. Instead, when they saw freedom, they bolted.

“The 12th one to disappear, according to El Nuevo Herald, vanished while on a team shopping trip to Walmart. He could hardly have chosen a more poetic escape from a life sentence of deep privation, disappearing as he did in a big-box store that screams capitalism…”

“The military dictatorship condemned the players for ‘vile abandonment.’ It’s especially outraged because during the Obama administration it had a deal with Major League Baseball to send players to the U.S. In exchange, baseball executives agreed to garnish part of the paychecks of the young men—most of whom are Cubans of color—and send the dollars to regime fat cats in Havana.” President Trump put an end to that arrangement, as illegal human trafficking.

Bad news, Bernie. Your darling Cuba is a police state poorhouse, a total socialist failure.

John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.

Image courtesy of Osvaldo Salas/Public Domain

8 thoughts on “McClaughry: Socialism’s descent in Cuba

  1. ELON MUSK MOCKING BERNIE

    Fast forwarding to today, Nov. 14, when in this most surreal and absurd of timelines, in response to the latest demand from Dem/Prog socialists to redistribute wealth in a way that’s “fair”, or in other words, in a way that “Socialists” find most beneficial to their own selfish interests, when failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, 80, said “we must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period”…

    … Elon Musk pulled off his best “Donald-Trump-at-twitter” impression by responding, as only the world’s richest man would: “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.”

    And just in case Musk still had any democrat/progressive/liberal supporters left, Musk hinted that he was happy to send TSLA stock sliding even more, perhaps until such time as it dragged the broader market down with it, when he said “Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …”

    So far Bernie – who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and as a life-long Socialist, has long demand that the wealthy should pay more taxes, tweeting in March that the amount of wealth accumulated by Musk and Jeff Bezos was “immoral” – has not “said the word”, although we are confident the outraged army of blue-check op-ed writer cabal at the fake media WaPo/NYT/CNN won’t have a problem saying lots of words in the coming days.

  2. Speaking of bad news for Bernie?……….Why is he so quiet and what’s he up to?

    Like Cuban baseball, looks like Bernie and his “Socialist Freebies for All” squad are in a tough game. It’s the bottom of the 9th with two outs and the Socialist Freebies trailing the US Senators by 2 to 1 in a game for the Built Back Better Trophy.

    Joe Biden is on third base, Bernie is at bat with rookie Kyrsten Sinema on the mound, Joe Manchin calling balls, strikes and everything else from behind the plate.

    Simema winds up and delivers a fast ball down the middle, Bernie swings and smashes a liner into center field……Biden takes off from third and heads for what?……. Second base! …..Biden is going in the wrong direction and is thrown out by Mitch McConnell from center field…….Game over!

    Yup, bad news for Bernie just as John sez.

    The White House blames Trump.

    • Hilarious, Peter.
      Wow.
      See my comment as well.

      You can fool people with smoke and mirrors once, as with the dastardly Coup d’Etat, 2020, Election, but not again and again.

      That is the problem with Dem/Progs.
      They pi.. in their own bed time and time again.
      Can’t help themselves
      They do not know when to stop their craziness
      If it were not for the Media, the in-the-basement, grafting/grifting Biden farce would have gotten off the ground.

      Thank you

      • Willem…….I do read your comments and take the time to understand what you’re saying……..Anyone really interested in honestly understanding dealing with climate change mitigation MUST read your comments…….The numbers count.

        Considering the volumes that have been written over the years in Vermont about the proposed remedies to solve climate change, it is difficult to find anything from the activists or renewable energy industry that is supported by hard numbers.

        So much of what Vermonters are fed is nothing more than worn out talking points that collapse under the the least bit of scrutiny. It’s doubtful that anything new to be proposed by the Climate Council will substantially change things other than causing hardship for the people.

        Willem, keep the data coming…….At some point when the supposed solutions proposed to solve climate change collapse in failure, you’ll be able to say “Told you so.”

  3. I vote for burnee, aoc, and all the other progressive socialist to go to Cuba and help
    them get their communism back on the right track… and don’t come back until
    you get it fixed.. oh what a glorious dream…

  4. Bernie knows this well.

    See he’s looking at how Castro lives, not the “subjects”. Some people are really good at spinning lies and stories to benefit themselves. Bernie knows well the place to be is ruler in a socialist country, that’s why he wants to be a leader in a socialist America, rather than a citizen in Cuba, Venezuela, China, etc.

    Bernie could easily move to one of his socialist utopias and be a citizen. Notice that’s not what he does? Mean while he keeps feeding him self the rectangular green leaves off the tree of corruption.

    Bernie knows what he’s doing all to well, he wants to be Fidel of American. He’s loved his Fidel of Vermont job, he’s gotten quite rich off that gig.

  5. Castro nationalized a reported six billion dollars of U.S. owned assets – not to mention all the valued possessions of private Cubans and foreigners who departed Cuba. There’s that to be repaid, restored, and sixty years of accumulated interest. And recompense for a lot of people who are dead because they disagreed with Castro. The Progressives who call Republicans Fascist want centralized totalitarian control of the country; they know neither the definition of Fascism nor the history of the Third Reich nearly a century ago.

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