In his bright red shirt he looks more like Santa, but Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is being compared to the Grinch after he seized as many as 5 million toys from the largest toy distributor in the country last week. From CNN:

According to authorities, the operation began Thursday, but law enforcement officials were still at the warehouse Saturday.

Officials also detained at least two people as part of the operation.

“Now what?,” a Venezuelan woman asked on Twitter, “is (President) Nicolás Maduro the modern Grinch?”

Another Twitter user told CNN that the Venezuelan government is “worse than the Grinch.”

Naturally the socialist government takes issue with being portrayed as the Grinch. William Contreras, head of the Venezuelan consumer protection agency, told reporters it was the toy company that doesn’t, “care about our children’s right to have a merry Christmas.”

Let that sink in a little. The “right” to a merry Christmas is a lot like the “right” to a $15 an hour minimum wage. Just ask Bernie Sanders. It’s the kind of nonsense socialists everywhere say, i.e. demand someone else pay more (or take less) and then claim credit for essentially spending someone else’s money.

The socialists in Venezuela have been doing this for years. Shortly before every election there is a surge in government spending as Santa Chavez or Santa Maduro hand out goodies to insure people are going to vote for them. But things have gotten so bad that it’s not working anymore. Triple-digit inflation, a sky-high murder rate and people forced to eat just one meal a day (known as the Maduro diet) has driven Maduro’s approval rating into the toilet. That’s why his government has blocked an attempt to hold a legal referendum that could remove him from office. He can’t let the vote take place because he knows he would lose.

So now Maduro is trying to be the Grinch who saved Christmas. Seize the toys from the distributor and hand them out at artificially low prices to children. The problem, of course, is that you can only make this trick work so many times. Once Maduro’s goons seize 5 million toys the toy distributor can no longer sell them for the money it needs to pay its workers and have money left over to buy new inventory for next year. Without that money there won’t be millions of toys to seize next year.