The Bush administration has a serious crisis that outweighs helping the poor survive a harsh winter; showboating over Citgo instead of fixing the bad policy that allowed Hugo Chavez to embarass them.
CITGO TO COOPERATE ON HOUSE ENERGY PROBE
Fuel Aid To Poor Americans Called 'Belligerent and Hostile'
The News Journal
WASHINGTON-- Citgo Petroleum Corp. says it plans to cooperate with the House Energy Chairman's request for documents on Venezuela's program that provides heating oil to poor Americans, including families in Deleware.
"Citgo shall attempt to comply with your request," Felix M. Rodriguez, President and CEO of Citgo, a Houston based subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company, wrote in a Feb. 17th letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, (R) Texas.
Citgo to Cooperate in House Energy Probe
And why is this investigation being launched?
Well, lets here it from the Republican Congressmen themselves:
Joe Barton and Rep. Ed Whitfield, the Republican Chairman of the Subcommittee for Oversight and Investigations, last week asked Citgo to provide all records about the program by Feb. 23rd. The lawmakers said that they are concerned that the oil deals are "part of an unfriendly government's increasingly belligerent and hostile foreign policy" towards the United States.
Okay. Belligerent and hostile. Let's take a look. Is this a hostile act against the people of the United States?
CARACAS VENEZUELA: Citgo Extends Discount Sales
AP Wire Service
-- Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. extended discounted sales of heating oil on Tuesday, the company's latest effort to provide affordable fuel to low-income families in the United States.
Representatives of Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, has said it plans to provide 1.15 million gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount this winter to low-income communities that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has accused Washington of neglecting.
Venezuela's information ministry announced in a statement on Tuesday that 150,000 gallons would be sold at a discount to 5,000 Delaware households.
No. This is not a 'hostile and belligerent' action. It's good politics for Chavez. In fact, you could say that this is classic Karl Rove, if all of those media myths about Karl Rove's 'genius' were all true. By way of comparison, is this the action of Patriots bravely ready to defend America from the Venezuelan Charity Hun?
News stories from 2002 and 2005, on the Bush Fuel Assistance Record:
Proposed Bush cuts take $300M from home energy program
By Shir Haberman
Portsmouth NH Herald
November | 25 | 2002
PORTSMOUTH - The proposed Bush administration budget for fiscal year 2003 cuts the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by approximately $300 million from current funding levels.
In New Hampshire, this could equate to taking about 5,000 families off the LIHEAP rolls and many more families getting less money to pay home-heating bills than they received last year, the state's fuel assistance program manager said.
"This is a serious issue," said Celeste Lovett of the Governor's Office on Energy and Community Services. "The demand for fuel assistance is about the same this year as it was at this time last year."
Rockingham County normally gets about 12 percent of the funds allocated to the state for this program, said Rockingham Community Action's Executive Director Steve Geller. Last year, the county received 12 percent of the approximately $13.2 million allocated to the state, or about $1.6 million. If the Bush budget passes, the allocation to New Hampshire will drop to approximately $10.8 million, which means the amount going to Rockingham County will decrease to $1.3 million, a loss of $300,000.
Portmouth Herald
Officials opppose Bush proposal to cut home heating aid money $200M
By Beverley Wang Associated Press Writer
February 7, 2005
CONCORD, N.H. -- The president's proposal to cut home heating aid to the poor is getting a cool response from officials in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont Program administrators say the prospect of nearly $200 million less in federal heating aid for the country leaves two choices: to give out fewer grants or lower the amount for each recipient. The result would be the same, they said. More elderly, disabled and poor families would have to choose between paying for food and medication or heat.
"We can't serve everybody now," said Dale McCormick, director of the Maine State Housing Authority, which runs the state's home heating aid program. "I think it's pretty cold-hearted to cut fuel assistance when oil prices are up 40 percent."
The Boston Globe
No. This is the actions of a President just begging to have somebody who hates his guts make him look helpless and weak while not giving any excuse for any punitive action.
Worse, Bush's only real response is basically to keep the current budget cuts in place, and play a cruel shell game with the 2007 budget:
President Bush has recommended in his budget message to Congress that lawmakers provide a total of $2.782 billion for LIHEAP in Fiscal Year 2007. The president called for $1.782 billion in new spending over and above the $1 billion provided for LIHEAP in the budget reconciliation bill passed by the Senate in December and by the House in late January.
That sounds great, doesn't it? But.
If Congress decides to shift the $1 billion designated for FY 2007 to the current year in order to address high winter heating costs now, however, LIHEAP could be left with significantly less next year than the $2.161 billion currently approved for the program later.
-Feb. 6th | The Campaign for Home Energy Assistance
The additional funding isn't there for the pain right now, and Bush's only answer is his usual budgetary answer: a sham fix, because the Administration's only way to fully fund the demand and meet the problem now is to screw the poor a year from now and borrow from future funding. Bill Frist, as a part of attempting to blackmail Democrats into forcing a faster Alito vote, promised a December effort to boost the program's funding for this year, but it was just a feint to get Alito in place, not an effort to fill in the gaps.
So, how do you possibly feel bad that Bush got played by a political enemy now? I can't. Bush got played. There is no way around it. In fact, if you are a rightwing thinktanker and you truly believe that Hugo Chavez is a fang and talon bearing monster who wants to conquer all of South and Central America in a red wave of menace... you should be more aghast by how badly this trainwreck unfolded for Bush. Where, in your fever dreams about the next war-planned-in-a-cubicle, did you ever imagine the your steely eyed Cowboy would be finding himself hanging upsidedown and backwards from his own horse's saddle suddenly watching the trail pass behind him like a bump on the belly between old paint's legs... over cuts in emergency assistance that is only valid in limited regions for only one season of the year?
The Bush White House, and the Republican Leadership in the Congress did this to themselves, and they could undo this damage to their egos and our national pride with a stroke of a pen. If you hate Hugo Chavez, don't give him the opening in the first place and you don't have to worry about things like this. This could all be over tomorrow with a special emergency bill to fund home fuel aid to reverse the cuts. Done and over.
But, no. Instead... they go gunning for the good guys like Joe Kennedy and Citizen's Energy for accepting the offer.
Joe Kennedy defends Venezuela oil charity
WASHINGTON -- Former Rep. Joe Kennedy fired back yesterday at the House Energy chairman who is investigating whether politics, not charity, is behind Venezuela's offer to provide low-cost heating oil to needy Americans.
"When one country and one company are helping the least among us keep warm in the winter, that should be your committee's lowest priority for investigation and highest priority for praise," Kennedy wrote in a letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas.
The former Democratic Massachusetts congressman heads the Boston-based nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp., which is helping to deliver the oil in several states
The Metro Daily West
Instead, they are going to grandstand on Citgo (and more than likely complain about and denounce Hugo Chavez) instead of closing the door shut on this sort of social, as well as public relations, disaster by taking care of the Nation's poor. I am sure will that will get lost in all of the red-hot conservative handwringing and pending Godwin's law violations about Hugo Chavez being hyped as the next Hitler, but Chavez couldn't pants the President of the United States unless he held his hands up in the air and did nothing as they were yanked down around his waist in front of the entire planet to laugh at. If you think he's so damned evil... why allow obviously bad policy to bend you over like a doe-eyed sap in the big city for the first time and let a Chavez kick you in the ass in the first place? Ronald Reagan and FDR probably don't agree about much in the afterlife, but they are both either pointing and laughing or watching with their heads slug low rolling their eyes at another self-inflicted moment of gall.
In a time when the Federal government is run exclusively by the most exteme wing of the Republican party and is slashing funding for the social safety net, the GOP is pissed off because this mess makes the President look bad. Because he does, and should, look bad. Would this event be any less internationally humiliating if we were getting this 'we feel sorry for you because you can't take care of your poor' fuel assistance as a cash subsidy directly from the British government to US charities? Or from Prime Minister Koizumi's cabinet? Or cheap oil vouchers from the PM of Norway to Citizen's Energy?
Hopefully, we never find out.
The answer to the issue of Hugo Chavez making the United States look like they don't give a damn about the poor is simple; remove the opening for embarassment. Completely remove the opportunity for being undercut and humiliated by funding home fuel assistance to the poor, and not by staging retaliatory Congressional hearings to make it look like Citgo is trying to do something nefarious and waving your hands screaming 'oooogie boogie.... look over there.... it's... a dangerous pinko... with poisonous charitable donations of oil!'.
As far as the United States dealing with Hugo Chavez specifically is concerned, he is not my President, my Senator, my Congressperson, or my Governor. He is the elected leader of another country and he has to be dealt with or dealt around. Love him or hate him, you can't do a worse job of dealing with him that the Bush White House has from triumphantly recognizing the half-baked coup that flopped to this mess:
On Hugo Chavez (4.00 / 4)
To me this is not really about Chavez or his government, its about the Bushies having only one political speed: campaign mode.
The constant whining and carping and demonizing of Hugo Chavez in Washington is a boon to him. Chavez isn't on any American ballot. Constantly making the President of Venezuela out to be the gravest threat since it was decided that Saddam Hussein was Hitler is a gift from the heavens to a man alledgedly governing on 'opposing everything we stand for'. If Chavez is the ultimate anti-American... and his appeal is to anti-American sentiment... isn't making him out to be the bane of your existence... well, the best thing that you could do for him strategically? I say it is. If I were Chavez and I wanted the US to be annoyed to no end with me, I would be gleefully drinking every ounce of this Bushie handwringing in.
Condi gave a speech??? Again??? Viva ME!
If Chavez is truly everything that the wingnuts of the Bush White House says he is, a truly competent statesman, seeing that we need Venezuela's oil pretty badly and eyeing Chavez warily, wouldn't say a damned thing about Chavez in public. They'd act like he was nothing but a regional crank. They'd let him rant when he rants, let him rave when he raves, talk to him when you need to, but otherwise act like you think of him as a small fish in a big pond.
If you really have an ax to grind with the United States, George W. Bush is your best friend. Rattle a sabre. Make a fiery speech, and the next thing you know, the permanent campaigners will send Condi Rice marching right out on television saying you threaten the very existence of freedom and western civilization in a week or so.
The Washington Post takes the gold for most dishonorable partisan hack as an ombudsperson
by LeftHandedMan on Sat Feb 18, 2006 at 03:21:39 PM PST
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Of course there is an element of gleefully humiliating an ideological opponent. That is a given. I personally don't care. If George W. Bush looks like a fool, its only because he has allowed himself to be made to look like a fool. Period. The poor need the oil, Bush isn't providing any leadership on the issue except to deny the poor basic Christian kindness and charity, and accepting the steeply discounted oil as a charitable donation is only as humiliating as Bush's lousy policy has allowed it to be.
The GOP finishing up a lengthy grandstanding session on Citgo by barring the oil, or banning foreign donations of petroleum without going through the State department with administration approval first, only mades matters worse.
This diary inspired by hard work of the blogger Slacktivist in
highlighting the GOP's Citgo hearing announcement entitiled:
Man's ingratitude
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is a petulant jerk.
At Slacktivist you will find more detail on the
fuel assistance program and backgrounds on GOPers
involved in (potentially) stopping this oil charity.
Slacktivist Blog: Joe Barton is a Petulant Jerk
Links:
Joe Kennedy and Citizen's Energy:
Citizen's Energy is a not-for profit agency founded in 1981 in Massachusetts that provides home fuel assistance for the poor in the bay state. They are one of the charities that distrubutes the oil purchased from funds that the Emergency Fuel Assistance Program provides, as well as from money raised from their own local fund raising. They are one of the organizations singled out for GOP scorn over the Citgo donation.
Citizen's Energy
The Campaign for Home Energy Assistance:
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps pay the winter heating bills or summer cooling bills of low-income and elderly people. During extreme weather conditions, people living in poverty and low-income elderly should not have to choose between buying fuel to heat or cool their homes and buying food for themselves and their families. Since two-thirds of the families receiving LIHEAP assistance have incomes of less than $8,000 a year, the program clearly helps the people who need help the most
LIHEAP
The National Energy Assistance Directors' Association
(NEADA) is the primary educational and policy organization for the state and tribal directors of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). LIHEAP is a federal program providing formula grants to states to help low-income families pay their heating and cooling bills.
NEADA
The Department of Health and Human Services
If you can't afford to pay your home energy bill, your home may not be safe, and you may be at risk of serious illness or injury. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is a Federally-funded program to help eligible low income homeowners and renters meet their home heating and/or cooling needs.
The US Department of Health and Human Services LIHEAP site