Hugo Chavez cuts off free heating oil to the US
posted at 8:45 am on January 6, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Hugo Chavez tried embarrassing the Bush administration by supplying free heating oil to poor American families last winter, claiming that his socialist government did more to help Americans than the capitalists at the White House. Unfortunately for Hugo, the oil bubble popped since last winter, and his sulphuric crude can’t even get $40 per barrel now. With electricity failing throughout his country and revenue dissipating, Hugo can’t afford to spend money on Americans any longer:
Venezuela’s state oil company is suspending a much-promoted program that provided free heating oil to hundreds of thousands of poor people throughout the U.S., the company announced Monday.
The program has been a public relations bonanza for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a socialist who frequently attacks capitalism and the U.S. Chavez repeatedly has tweaked the noses of U.S. policy makers by saying the program shows that he’s a good friend of America’s poor.
Venezuela is halting the program at least temporarily because the sharp drop in oil prices is forcing the country to reduce government spending, the firm said in a statement from Citizens Energy Corp., a Boston-based nonprofit that’s managed the program in the U.S.
That leaves Joe Kennedy II out in the cold as well. The former Congressman helped organize Chavez’ propaganda operation, which (it should be said) did help real people in need of a break on heating oil. He insisted that it mattered little where the oil originated or what Chavez’ purpose was in handing out the freebies, and refused to give up on Chavez even after the program ended. Kennedy asked people who benefited from the program to write letters to Chavez thanking him for his generosity.
Instead of fronting for a socialist nutcase trying his best to become a dictator for life, perhaps Joe Kennedy could use part of his family fortune to replace the oil. The Kennedys didn’t get to where they were at through socialism, after all. Acting as an apologist for a confiscatory wanna-be dictator from Kennedy’s position is hypocritical on a couple of levels.
Congress, for its part, doubled the assistance for heating oil this year, so that should help cover the gap.
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Yes we use a lot of insulation up here in the NE. But true to our welfare mentality it is subsidised for low income folks. My little insulation co. competes with giant out of state corps. AND govt. subsidised fly by night operations. The gov. programs mean well, but often produce shoddy work done by the lowest bidder. Please check into cellulose insulation, I’ve been using it exclusively for 15 years now, and when done properly works better then fiberglass in all applications. This is one of the few things I can comment on with any real knowledge, and 30 years of experience.
aceinstall on January 6, 2009 at 1:42 PM
Miriam Margolyes?
hawkdriver on January 6, 2009 at 1:49 PM
I would like to see Hollywood and the entire entertainment industry donate free CDs and DVDs to all of us who can’t afford them.
hawkdriver on January 6, 2009 at 1:51 PM
My only gripe with cellulose is that mice love it. I removed a ton from my attic that had a community network constructed through it. Pink fiberglass seems to be too much of an irritant for them to get into.
Cellulose is a great insulator though.
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM
Yes. We have a right to smiles and laughter and levity!
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM
I demand an entertainment rebate.
hawkdriver on January 6, 2009 at 2:39 PM
PEN – DECK – O
RobCon on January 6, 2009 at 2:46 PM
I find pink cat’s mouth also works ;-)
rhodeymark on January 6, 2009 at 2:47 PM
There are better ways to phrase that.
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 2:52 PM
Limeygeek, you either had rockwool or some really defective cellulose. We have been removing tons of fiberglass of late and replacing it with cellulose. We find rodent infestations in 90% of the fiberglass we remove, and next to none in cellulose. This is due to the addition of borax as a fire retardant which also repells insects and resists mold, celulose is also much safer for my installers.
aceinstall on January 6, 2009 at 2:58 PM
This was old cellulose. Very old.
I had heard about the addition of Borax…is it really that effective?
All I can say is that wherever I have installed pink fiberglass, my scurrying mice have vanished.
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 3:07 PM
The tax is not here..yet. But I expect the EPA’s little moratorium on the idea will not stop there.
Fight for your right to the burger!
Badger40 on January 6, 2009 at 3:09 PM
I suggest having enough cattle ‘die’ (yet mysteriously get sold for untaxed cash on the grey market) to offset the EPA theft against income theft. No net gain for the thieves in DC.
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 3:49 PM
LimeyGeek, yes it is. It’s only found in two places on earth, death valley and on the border of Turkey and Afghanistan. Maybe someone should tell the Afghans there is some contribution to the world they could make besides poppies? At currant rate of use it’s estimated there’s about 50 years worth left. Of more immediate concern to my industry is the decline of news print to be recycled.
aceinstall on January 6, 2009 at 3:50 PM
Thanks for the info. I had no idea Borax was so hard to find.
LimeyGeek on January 6, 2009 at 3:51 PM
Kennedy asked people who benefited from the program to write letters to Chavez thanking him for his generosity.
That’s precisely the problem: it’s not Chavez’s generosity. He’s giving away oil that his countrymen labored to produce. It’s not his, it’s theirs. Socialism, in a nutshell.
Joe Kennedy should offer to give from his own wealth, and then he should ask Chavez to ante up same, dollar for dollar. Anything less shows Chavez to be what he is: willing to give away stolen goods, but his own.
Gaunilon on January 6, 2009 at 4:49 PM
Ahhh. Very interesting. If I didn’t like my cows, perhaps.
But then again, the state vet would probably quarantine us for anthrax or something & buy us out at rock bottom govt. prices bcs of these deaths.
I tell you, if there were a ‘grey’ market for them, I’d get a better price there.
Badger40 on January 6, 2009 at 5:22 PM
C’mon Kennedys, pony up and give some free oil to EVERYONE.
whoopee!
CHANGE!
ex-Democrat on January 6, 2009 at 7:50 PM
Indirectly, yes. Ole Man Kennedy was a middling bank manager until the great socialist experiment called Prohibition.
Pelayo on January 6, 2009 at 8:38 PM
Is it true Joe Kennedy the Patriach was a bootlegger? How come he didn’t go to jail? I think it is an unproven accusation. He made his money honestly just like and other ambassador did. Jack and Joe Jr were war heroes. Bobby died in service to his country as a Senator. Teddy will soon follow. The remaining Kennedys now inherit their wealth so they are not crooks either. They are the original annointed ones. Remember before Obama we had the Kennedys.
kanda on January 7, 2009 at 8:19 AM
What a blight the Kennedy family has been on this country and I’m sorry to say that.
NoDonkey on January 7, 2009 at 8:32 AM
Today’s headline:
Future headline?
“The US cuts off free oxygen to Chavez”
Akzed on January 7, 2009 at 8:50 AM
1. Yes, it is true.
2. You’re kidding right? He supplied the rich and famous, then became one.
Vashta.Nerada on January 7, 2009 at 10:03 AM
According to Straightdope.com
Joseph P. Kennedy was the ambitious son of a prosperous Boston saloon keeper and ward boss. He married the mayor’s daughter, went to Harvard, and generally made the most of his ample connections and talent. He ran a bank (admittedly two-bit) at 25, and was number-two man at a shipyard with more than 2,000 workers during World War I. At 30 he became a stockbroker and made a fortune through insider trading and stock manipulation. He was a master of the stock pool, a then-legal stunt in which a few traders conspired to inflate a stock’s price, selling out just before the bubble burst.
all it say about booze is
Kennedy may also have traded in illegal booze, although the evidence is circumstantial. His father had been in the liquor business before Prohibition, and Joe himself got into it (publicly, that is) immediately after repeal. Some believe the family business simply went underground during the dry years. He may have been strictly a nickle-and-dimer; Harvard classmates say he supplied the illicit booze for alumni events.
Its a far cry for circumstantial evidency you yes he was as you claim. I think it is untrue. He made millions on other less risky things while they were still legal. Doing bootlegging while there was real money to be made leagally doesn’t fit him.
straightdope goes on to say
Whatever the truth of the matter, Kennedy’s real strength wasn’t his alleged criminal ties but his business smarts, notably an exquisite sense of timing. In the mid-1920s he became a movie mogul (taking time out for a celebrated dalliance with Gloria Swanson), then organized a merger and sold out just when the industry was consolidating, clearing five to six million dollars all told. He pulled out of stocks early in 1929 and sold short following the crash, actually making money while others got creamed. Just before Prohibition was repealed he lined up several lucrative liquor-importing deals.
By the 1930s Kennedy was rich, but he didn’t make serious money by modern standards until he got into real estate in a big way during World War II, raking in an estimated $100 million. In 1945 he made the deal that remains the centerpiece of the Kennedy fortune: for a measly $12.5 million he bought the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, a huge wholesale emporium that had cost $30 million to build. Within a few years the annual gross in rent exceeded the purchase price. In 1957 Fortune declared Kennedy one of the richest men in America, with assets of 200 to 400 million bucks.
So no He didn’t get rich from bootlegging. It’s an old wivestale.
kanda on January 7, 2009 at 10:30 AM
Didn’t he get the memo? The answer is to INCREASE spending.
tgillian on January 7, 2009 at 11:16 AM
The better story is Chavez buddy Putin who cut off all gas to the Ukraine pipeline.
Eastern Europe thanks you Vlad, far better for them to freeze to death than be allegedly robbed an extra 15% by Ukraine.
Mark30339 on January 7, 2009 at 12:05 PM
The picture they use is the first time I’ve seen Yugo smile.
kanda on January 7, 2009 at 3:47 PM
I got the story from my grandparents who knew his buyers.
Vashta.Nerada on January 7, 2009 at 5:12 PM
Well then I would go with the eyewitness accout of your grandparents then. There can be no better source than someone who was there.
kanda on January 7, 2009 at 5:21 PM
I’m inclined to support Kennedy’s attempt to get more free oil from Chavez because as Sun Tzu said in “The Art of War”
“Thus the wise general looks to the enemy for food.
One bushel of enemy food equals twenty bushels of mine.
One bale of fodder equals twenty bales of mine.”
If he is giving us oil then we can put more of ours to better uses. We get stronger, he gets weaker. Ideal.
Loki on January 7, 2009 at 5:31 PM
From today’s Washington Post:
hicsuget on January 8, 2009 at 2:02 PM
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