Citgo to Continue U.S. Heating Aid After All
Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum, which had earlier indicated it might end a home heating oil assistance program for low-income Americans, yesterday said it had decided to continue the program.

Citgo chief executive Alejandro Granado cited “the current global financial crisis and its impact on the oil industry in general” as reasons for the renewing the assistance.

Before Christmas, Citgo, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company, had told the nonprofit group Citizens Energy, which administers the program, that the effort was “suspended until further notice.” At the time, Citgo said that it was reevaluating its social programs because of falling oil prices.

The program provided assistance to 200,000 households in 23 states last year.

“It is just an immediate PR remedy for a PR goof,” said Pedro Burelli, a former director of the Venezuelan state oil company.

“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.

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.

So no He didn’t get rich from bootlegging. It’s an old wivestale.

kanda on January 7, 2009 at 10:30 AM

I got the story from my grandparents who knew his buyers.

Russia accused its former Soviet neighbor of stealing about 15 percent the gas it ships across Ukraine to European states.

“Ukraine has stolen gas not from Russia, but from consumers who have bought the product and paid for it,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in televised remarks late on Tuesday.

Eastern Europe thanks you Vlad, far better for them to freeze to death than be allegedly robbed an extra 15% by Ukraine.

Venezuela is halting the program at least temporarily because the sharp drop in oil prices is forcing the country to reduce government spending…..

Didn’t he get the memo? The answer is to INCREASE spending.

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.

Is it true Joe Kennedy the Patriach was a bootlegger? How come he didn’t go to jail?

kanda on January 7, 2009 at 8:19 AM

1. Yes, it is true.
2. You’re kidding right? He supplied the rich and famous, then became one.

“Hugo Chavez cuts off free heating oil to the US”

Future headline?
“The US cuts off free oxygen to Chavez”

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.

The Kennedys didn’t get to where they were at through socialism, after all.

Indirectly, yes. Ole Man Kennedy was a middling bank manager until the great socialist experiment called Prohibition.

whoopee!

CHANGE!

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

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.

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.

aceinstall on January 6, 2009 at 3:50 PM

Thanks for the info. I had no idea Borax was so hard to find.

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.

UltimateBob on January 6, 2009 at 1:00 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!

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.