Shame on you, JOE-4-OIL

My television has been inundated with those Joe Kennedy ads announcing free Venezuelan heating oil for “poor” Americans. He just took a load from benevolent Hugo Chavez this last week (The Patriot Ledger):

In collaboration with Joe Kennedy’s Citizens Energy Corp., Venezuelan-controlled Citgo will provide 120 million gallons of heating oil to more than 235,000 poor American households in 23 states this winter, Citgo President Alejandro Granado promised at a midday press conference. That will cost Citgo more than $100 million.

Kennedy, chairman of Citizens Energy, said every other major oil company in the U.S. and every other OPEC country rebuffed Citizens Energy.

“The only country and the only company that responded … was the Venezuelans,’’ he said.

Given Chavez’s fierce anti-American rhetoric, the Citgo program is viewed by some as a public relations stunt.

Kennedy did not shy away from the controversial connection Monday.

“I think our government gets, you know, their little panties in a knot much more than most Americans do about Hugo Chavez,’’ he told reporters afterward, saying it was possible to get along with the leader of the modern “Bolivarian revolution.’’ 

Our government, the Columbian government, the Brazillian government, the Argentine government all have had their “panties in a knot” over Chavez this last year. Regardless, the oil isn’t from the Venezuelan people, Joe. It’s from Chavez who’s buying off creeps like you to carry his water – special interest creeps. Let’s hear from Venezuelan people, as reported in the Miami Herald;

”We don’t want a socialism that would take away our right to live free,” Alcázar told El Nuevo Herald during a recent visit to Mamera.

In 2004, she worked long hours as a volunteer in the campaign to defeat a recall vote against Chávez. The president won the vote, and when her husband abandoned her and their seven children, she asked for help from her revolutionary brethren. The help never came.

”I felt I had been used and afterward nobody knew me,” she said.

I suppose Sra. Alcazar would’ve liked to receive a nickel a gallon from that fuel oil Chavez gave away – even a nickel/thousand gallons.

The truth is; this oil isn’t from the Venezuelan people, it’s from one man who doesn’t even provide his own people with food and milk.

UPI quotes the Chavez tool from Citgo on hand for the PR ploy;

“I believe this is the biggest social program any oil company ever has done in this country,” Citgo chief executive Alejandro Granado said. “Many people say we are doing politics, but life is politics. We are helping people. We are going to make sure that less people go to bed cold this winter.”

And what did those 235,000 people you’re giving 100 gallons of heating do three years ago before the propaganda began? I used 100 gallons of fuel oil about every three weeks to heat my house when I lived in the north, so what are they going to do in January? I’ll bet they’ll do just fine – every state has a program for the poor, the Feds have a program for the poor.

This isn’t a solution, it’s a patch. And the $100 million dollars Citgo spent on this patch would probably  house and feed the whole of Venezuelan poor for an entire year – instead Chavez would prefer to spend that money to stick his finger in the eye of the US government.

Joe Kenendy is right there with him – but then the Kenedys have a family history of helping facists against the US, don’t they – especially the Joe Kennedys.

But the good news is; according to the previously quoted Miami Herald story, Chavez is losing support among the Venezuelan barrios;

“I am pro-Chávez,” said Alfredo Sequera, 38, a Mamera resident who serves on a pro-Chávez militia. “But being pro-Chávez doesn’t mean that we have to agree with all of the reforms. There are many . . . that don’t smell good.”

Sequera said he was especially worried about the proposed constitutional reforms on the referendum that would have weakened private property rights and allowed Chávez to seek indefinite reelection.

Tallies from the vote showed Chávez lost an important part of the support he had in the Caracas metropolitan area, once a bastion of Chavismo, as well as in 13 other important cities in Venezuela.

Chávez still has an important measure of popular support — his side won 25 percent of more than 16 million registered voters on Dec. 2 — and still controls virtually all levels of political and economic power in the country.

But some analysts say the tallies show a surprising split between the rural and urban parts of the country.

“Chávez has been losing the support of the cities and has concentrated his forces in less urban areas,” political analyst Carmen Beatriz Fernández said.

The reason, according to Fernández: Big cities have been experiencing increased food and other shortages as well as street crime, and residents are better informed. The provinces, on the other hand, have less crime and more food.

I wonder how much support he’d have if the poor knew he was handing out fuel oil to “poor Americans” – all of whom are better off than the average Venezuelan.

Category: Foreign Policy, Hugo Chavez, Politics