Thousands in Mass. to get cheaper oil (Hugo Chavez)

[zippy890]

Delahunt, Chávez help broker deal
Boston Globe 11/20/05
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/11/20/thousands_in_mass_to_get_cheaper_oil/

A subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company will ship 12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to local charities and 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts next month under a deal arranged by US Representative William D. Delahunt, a local nonprofit energy corporation, and Venezuela's president, White House critic Hugo Chávez.

The approximately $9 million deal will bring nine million gallons of oil to families and three million gallons to institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters, said officials from Citizens Energy Corp., which is signing the contract. Families would pay about $276 for a 200-gallon shipment, a savings of about $184 and enough to last about three weeks.

The contract is to be signed Tuesday by officials from Citizens Energy, based in Boston, and CITGO, a Houston-based subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The contract was arranged after months of talks between Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat active in Latin American affairs, and Chávez, a leftist former paratrooper and fierce critic of the Bush administration.

~snip~

Thanks to President Chavez & Rep. Delahunt on behalf of low-income families of Massachusetts.!!!

:yourock:

-edited for spelling

[Jon8503]

1. Sound like a well organized and caring government. Maybe Hugo

should be given a position where he could help organize and where we could start making more progress in LA for the victims of the hurricane.

[stepnw1f]

2. Thank You Mr. Chavez

I personally know many needy folks here in Massachusetts that will really needs this! He is a good man...

THANK YOU DELAHUNT. YOU JUST GOT MY VOTE!

[gizmo1979]

3. Chavez has really got to

be getting under Bush's skin!Makes the Repugs look more like the grinch's that stole xmas everyday.

[bullimiami]

4. WTF makes chavez a "leftist" in every damn news story.

he was elected. venezuela has a capitalist economy.

[1932]

11. And their private sector grew by 11% (annualized?) in the last quarter.

[goforit]

5. Chavez is turning out to be a savior!!

[freethought]

6. Mr. Delahunt, I thank and commend thee!!

Maybe "Mitt the Shit" should have taken care of this. But judging from some comments he made in the press lately Mitt seems to have, shall we say, a problem with the state he was elected to govern.

Dear Mr. Romney

You are an asshole!

Sincerly,

Freethought

[tecelote]

7. Shouldn't this have major implications

on the case for price gouging by the major oil companies?

[AX10]

8. KICK

:kick:

:bounce:

[Nashyra]

9. We don't have many CITIGO stattions

Does anyone know what other if any other gas stations are part of CITIGO?

Thanks

[Mairead]

15. It's CitGo, not CitiGo, and no, they are the only ones.

Did you use their station finder? http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp

[stillcool]

10. i love this state...

and my representatives. Wow.

[MADem]

12. And Citizens Energy was founded by a KENNEDY, fwiw

http://www.citizensenergy.com/Company_History.htm

Founded in Boston by Joseph P. Kennedy II in 1979, Citizens Energy became a leading innovator in the energy and health care fields and used its entrepreneurial ventures to help people in need in the U.S., Africa, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. In its first decade, Citizens' commercial activities included crude oil trading, oil exploration and production, electric power and natural gas marketing, mail-order service pharmaceuticals, and environmental business consulting.

[TomClash]

13. Solidarity with the Venezuelan People and Government

And by the way where's all that Iraqi oil?

[nickyt]

14. Oh My God!! This is awesome!! I didn't know such things were

possible! How freakin' pathetic does this admin. look NOW??

[BJW]

16. recc'd--Patty Whack should EAT his words!!!

[CTyankee]

17. Salute to my sister state! Love it!

In the absence of a real foreign policy by the Bush Administration, we have seen an absolutely unprecedented act of foreign policy by a state of the U.S.

Boo hoo, go the red states. Pity.

[Judi Lynn]

18. This is phenomenal. No comment from the State Department. Imagine that!

From the article:

Schwadron said the congressman did not get involved in the details of the contract, but had raised the issue with Chávez and helped connect the nonprofits with CITGO, which is owned by PDV America Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the national oil company of Venezuela.

When the discounted oil arrives early next month, Citizens Energy -- whose chairman and president, former US representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, also helped arrange the contract -- will screen recipients with the help of local organizations that serve the poor. Some 350 local dealers will then distribute three-fourths of the oil to local families.

MassEnergyConsumer Alliance, a nonprofit group that also offers discounted oil, will distribute or sell the remaining quarter to homeless shelters, food banks, and low-income housing groups, said Larry Chretien, the group's executive director. Recipients must apply for the help, he said.
(snip)

Kennedy said he was not concerned about Chávez's politics.

''You start parsing which countries' politics we're going to feel comfortable with, and only buying oil from them, then there are going to be a lot of people not driving their cars and not staying warm this winter," Kennedy said. ''There are a lot of countries that have much worse records than Venezuela. At the end of the day it's not our business to go choosing other peoples' leaders, particularly when they are duly-elected democratic leaders."

Kennedy said Delahunt has been working with Chávez ''for years now and has gone down there many times and developed a personal relationship with him."
(snip)

Thanks so much for this fine news, zippy890! :hi: :hi: :hi:

[Peace Patriot]

19. "The increasingly authoritarian self-styled leftist president of Venezuela

"--that's how the WSJ, the NYT and WaPo often describe him, attributing phrases like "increasingly authoritarian" to unnamed, unquoted "critics"--omitting who these "critics" are and what their beef might be; omitting the hundreds of election monitors, including the Carter Center, who have verified Venezuelan elections in which Chavez has repeatedly won by handy margins; omitting Chavez's commitment to Constitutional democracy, his lack of retribution against his enemies (the rich oil elite); his legal use of oil profits for schools, health clinics and other services to Venezuela's vast poor who have never before been served by government; his understanding that most Americans are victims, too, and his natural fairness, intelligence and humor.

They also never note the most important difference between Venezuelan and U.S. elections. Venezuela also uses an electronic voting system, but it has OPEN SOURCE CODE--that is, anyone may review how the votes are tabulated. In the U.S., our elections are now controlled by far rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--using 'TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY source code. Our election system is non-transparent and a fraud.

Open source code = good president, good government.

Trade secret, proprietary source code = bad president, bad government.

It's almost that simple.

But the man who is benefiting poor Americans with cut-rate oil prices is never given the benefit of the doubt; is never given a break; is never accurately described, and instead is continually vilified as some sort of "dictator" or "would be dictator." This is a man who turned away from a military solution to Venezuela's decades of woe at the hands of the oil elite, and chose constitutional democracy instead, and helped to write and pass a constitution that included a recall provision for the president--with the Bush regime soon helping to fund a recall of Chavez, which Chavez handily won.

Real constitutional democracy, and Chavez's several victories and non-violent and non-confiscatory reforms in Venezuela, should be applauded and celebrated by the United States, and would be, if we had a real president, honestly elected. It is a sad commentary on the state of our government that these things are not celebrated here. Chavez and his supporters would eagerly join with us in creating a just and peaceful world, if our government was willing. He and his supporters--the vast majority of Venezuelans--are not violent revolutionaries. They are peaceful people who are ESTABLISHING justice and real democracy in Venezuela for the first time--WITH NO HELP FROM US OR FROM OUR GLOBAL PREDATOR CORPORATIONS.

What an opportunity lost! It is so tragic! But I trust, from Chavez's actions, that he does not hold the Bush regime's hostility against us ordinary Americans, and that we can repair these wrongs, if we can restore our own democracy, and elect a true representative of the majority here.