Chavez Expanding Petroleum Assistance To “Poor” Americans
Al Jazeera:
Jeff Goldstein responds:
More from Tim Blair:
Grotesque, sure, but not to the commie apologists in our midst who will no doubt heap praise on Chavez for compassion for America's impoverished who, they will allege, are being ignored by the Bush administration.
Forget that the Bush administration just released $100 million additional tax dollars to the states for heating aid. Forget that here in North Dakota heating aid recipients received approximately $933 each in heating assistance, and are on course (by my estimation) to get payments in the $800 range during this winter season. Our federal government is all but paying for heat for America's impoverished. We don't need Chavez's cheap oil, yet that man will receive praise from some domestic factions none-the-less, even as people in his country wallow in their own poverty.
hugo chavez, heating aid, petroleum, socialism, communism, politics
Venezuela has said it will expand a programme to provide cheap home heating fuel to poor Americans, helping low-income families in Vermont and Rhode Island, as well as four Indian tribes in Maine.
Venezuela%u2019s Citgo Petroleum Corp has already begun selling millions of litres of discounted fuel in Massachusetts and the Bronx in New York City as part of a plan by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, to aid poor communities that he says are neglected by Washington.
Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela%u2019s ambassador to the US, said he would sign an agreement on Thursday in Maine to start providing heating oil to four Indian tribes - the Penobscot, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians.
Jeff Goldstein responds:
if a few, key impoverished Blue States being oppressed by Chimpy%u2019s low tax rates and growth economy can%u2019t turn to a Latin American socialist state hostile to the US and its foreign policy and accept assistance to augment the assistance already provided domestically, then the terrorists will have won.
More from Tim Blair:
Those poor Vermonters, all shivering and ruined after Howard Dean bankrupted their state. Actually, Vermont has the fifth highest minimum wage in the US; Rhode Island is seventh highest, and Maine 12th (the Venezuelan Santa has previously sent aid to Massachusetts, eighth on the list of minimum wage overpayers).
Why these relatively well-off states? Well, perhaps they have extraordinary energy needs that can only be met with Hugo%u2019s help. Except ... they don%u2019t. Maine ranks 16th out of all the states in terms of energy consumed per capita; Vermont is way down in 40th; and Rhode Island, gobbling only 215 million Btu per capita, is the least-consuming state of them all. Chavez is draining his busted nation to assist folk who don%u2019t need assistance. It%u2019s grotesque.
Grotesque, sure, but not to the commie apologists in our midst who will no doubt heap praise on Chavez for compassion for America's impoverished who, they will allege, are being ignored by the Bush administration.
Forget that the Bush administration just released $100 million additional tax dollars to the states for heating aid. Forget that here in North Dakota heating aid recipients received approximately $933 each in heating assistance, and are on course (by my estimation) to get payments in the $800 range during this winter season. Our federal government is all but paying for heat for America's impoverished. We don't need Chavez's cheap oil, yet that man will receive praise from some domestic factions none-the-less, even as people in his country wallow in their own poverty.
