Dear Washington Post: I Hope Someday You Can Come Visit Us Here In Reality

I think the Washington Post should change its name, from the Washington Post to the Daily Example of Why Dean Baker Was Forced to Write "The Conservative Nanny State."

Here's today's example, from a story about the three year-old Bolivarian University of Venezuela:

Venezuela's people are already thoroughly politicized; even the university's physical structures are potent political symbols. Most of the buildings, including those on the main Caracas campus, once served as headquarters for the state petroleum company, an institution purged of many anti-Chavez employees after a crippling strike against the government in 2002. Offices once reserved for executives who favored free-market economics are now decorated with posters of the socialist icon Che Guevara.

The thought process of the reporter here is clear:

(1) The former executives at PDVSA, Venezuela's state-owned oil company, favored policies supported by conservatives, both in Venezuela and abroad.
(2) Conservatives support free market policies.
(3) Therefore, the former executives at PDVSA favored free market policies.

And indeed this would be sound reasoning, if we lived on some other plane of existence than this one.

Here in this world, though, the executives at Venezuela's state-owned oil company did not favor free-market economics. One indication they did not is that THE OIL COMPANY WAS STATE-OWNED. What the executives actually favored was massive state intervention that made them, a thin strata of Venezuelan society, and foreign companies extremely rich.

In other words, as The Conservative Nanny State says, there's really no one anywhere who favors genuine free market policies. There are people who want state action that helps regular people, and those who want state action that makes the richest even richer.

What's particularly impressive in this Post story is the reporter went from "state petroleum company" to "free-market economics" in just one sentence. This ability to write self-contradictory gibberish while sincerely believing it makes sense is really the core competency for a Post writer.

TO BE FAIR: The rest of the article isn't that bad. And I see the reporter, Monte Reel, can write some pretty good pieces.