Venezuela to Help Supply Low-Income Massachusetts Residents with Discounted Home Heating Oil.

The upcoming cold winter months will be tempered somewhat by a deal with Venezuela to help supply low-income Massachusetts residents with discounted home heating oil. Yahoo News AP Wire excerpt:

QUINCY, Mass. - Thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents will receive discounted home heating oil this winter under an agreement signed Tuesday with Venezuela, whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration.

A subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices. It will be distributed by two nonprofit organizations, Citizens Energy Corp. and the Mass Energy Consumer Alliance.

The agreement gives President Hugo Chavez's government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. residents at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so and Congress has failed to expand aid in response to rising oil prices.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., met with Chavez in August and helped broker the deal. He said his constituents' needs for heating assistance trump any political points the Chavez administration can score.

The two nonprofit organizations will screen recipients for financial need and cooperate with oil distributors that will make discounted deliveries to qualifying homes and institutions, such as homeless shelters and hospitals.

Chavez proposed offering fuel directly to poor U.S. communities during a visit to Cuba in August. He has said the aim is to bypass middlemen to reduce costs for the American poor — a group he argues has been severely neglected by Bush's government.

Chavez has become one of Latin America's most vocal critics of U.S.-style capitalism, which he calls a major cause of poverty. U.S. officials accuse Chavez of endangering Venezuelan democracy by assuming ever-greater powers.

During a short-lived 2002 coup against Chavez, the U.S. government promptly recognized the new leaders, who were soon driven out amid a popular uprising.

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Can you imagine the size of the brick Preznit Flight Suit Fantasy is going to shit at this news? If, as some tabloid stories assert, he is back on the booze, this will definitely send him on a bender. Bush HATES Chavez.

Putting that element aside, tips of the cap go to Rep. Delahunt and to Joseph Kennedy II, the founder of Citizens Energy, which has been providing discounted home heating oil to low-income Bay State residents for years.