Joe For Oil

[Boom_70]

Has anyone seen this commercial ? Joe Kennedy promoting Citizens Energy which is an oil company that provides subsidized heating oil for low income families. In said commercial he thanks Hugo Chavez for his assistance and mentions that Citgo is the only big oil company that was willing to help.

What an embarrassment that the other US based big oil companies would not help with all the money they make.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

It's embarrassing that he would thank Hugo Chavez for anything

 

[The Big Ragu]

Citizens Energy isn't an oil company. It's a nonprofit that Kennedy founded in 1979 to launch his political career. It provides free fuel to poor people -- started out in Boston and has expanded nationally. It relies completely on Hugo Chavez and Citgo -- the state-owned oil company that Chavez controls -- which gives it free crude oil. It doesn't refine that oil and give it directly to poor people. It actually resells into our marketplace and uses the proceeds to fund its mission. Because Kennedy pays 0 for that oil, it actually drives up oil prices for everyone to a small extent by dumping no-cost oil on our marketplace. At the same time, though, Citizens provides free heating oil to a few hundred thousand households.

Chavez has been milking it for years for public relations and to create members of our Congress who are beholden to him -- and presumably won't be tough with his dictatorship -- because he employs lobbyists who work directly with specific members of Congress to get poor neighborhoods in their districts Citizens oil. ... and Kennedy plays along with it. It's all part of Chavez's efforts to manipulate our political system and to sell a false image of himself to the American people. He gives away a few hundred million dollars of oil, uses it to make members of our Congress kiss his ass, has had a variety of advertising campaigns selling himself as a philanthropist. ... and Joe Kennedy is cool with it all and uses it largely the same way -- selling his "philanthropy" to fuel his political aspirations.

It isn't embarrassing for any other oil company -- which unlike, Citgo, are not the personal playgrounds of dictatorships. Chavez plunders his own people. Poverty in Venezuela is severe and has gotten worse under Chavez's regime. Chavez has nationalized anything of value to line his own pockets, including the oil industry, which is what gives him economic power and buys him the muscle to stay in power. While his own people suffer--many without electricity; homelessness is epidemic--why would it be embarrassing for anyone else to not match the corrupt games he plays with millions of dollars he stole and is using to buy influence in the United States?

 

[Boom_70]

Ok it was late and I was a bit lazy in my writing. Ragu does a great job of laying out what Citizens is all about. Next up free oil from Iran.

 

[Captain Obvious]

To write Citgo is the only personal playground of dictatorships is flat-out wrong.

 

[Azrael]

Hasn't the poverty rate declined under Chavez?

He's not a good guy, certainly - but were the people of Venezuela better off when companies like Royal Dutch Shell were taking their oil profits out of the country? Venezuela's been one of the few oil producers over the last century to successfully defend itself against the sort of predatory wealth extraction we see in other resource-rich countries.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Hasn't the poverty rate declined under Chavez?

He's not a good guy, certainly - but were the people of Venezuela better off when companies like Royal Dutch Shell were taking their oil profits out of the country? Venezuela's been one of the few oil producers over the last century to successfully defend itself against the sort of predatory wealth extraction we see in other resource-rich countries.

Jon Lee Anderson wrote a great piece in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that kind of touched on what Chavez has done to his own people. It was titled, "Slumlord: What Has Hugo Chavez Wrought in Venezuela?" The article is mostly about a half-finished skycraper called the Tower of David that has been taken over by squatters.

It's not entirely of Chavez's doing, because Venezuela was on the decline before he took power, but it has certainly gotten worse under Chavez. Anderson points out that for decades, the country was a stable democracy, had a growing middle class and a high standard of living. It was due to the oil it sits on. He wrote that other Latin Americans had come to regard the country as a beautiful place for beautiful people.

Under Chavez there has been neglect, corruption and social upheaval, and the article goes into how Caracas has deteriorated: "Venders wade through the gridlock, hawking toys, insecticides and bootleg DVDs, while drug addicts wash windshields or juggle for change. Spray-painted graffiti covers facades; trash is piled up on roadsides. The Guaire River, which runs through the heart of the city, is a gray torrent of foul-smelling water. Along its banks live hundreds of homeless indigents, mostly drug addicts and the mentally ill."

 

[Boom_70]

Hasn't the poverty rate declined under Chavez?

He's not a good guy, certainly - but were the people of Venezuela better off when companies like Royal Dutch Shell were taking their oil profits out of the country? Venezuela's been one of the few oil producers over the last century to successfully defend itself against the sort of predatory wealth extraction we see in other resource-rich countries.

Not according to the story in last week's New Yorker -- Letters from Caracas by Jon Lee Anderson.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/28/130128fa_fact_anderson

"LETTER FROM CARACAS about the Tower of David, which is the world’s tallest slum, and the man who runs it, Alexander (El Niño) Daza. Hugo Chávez has said that he wants to remake Venezuela into “a sea of happiness and of real social justice and peace.” His pronounced goal was to elevate the poor. In Caracas, the country’s capital, the results of his fitful campaign are plain to see. For decades, as one of the world’s most oil-rich nations, Venezuela had a growing middle class, with an impressively high standard of living. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the rest of Latin America and from Europe helped give Caracas a reputation as one of the region’s most attractive and modern cities. That city is barely perceptible today. After decades of neglect, poverty, corruption, and social upheaval, Caracas has deteriorated beyond all measure. It has one of the highest homicide rates in the world; last year, in a city of three million, an estimated thirty-six hundred people were murdered, or about one every two hours. The murder rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez took office. Caracas is a failed city, and the Tower of David is perhaps the ultimate symbol of that failure.

 

[Football_Bat]

I don't live in the Northeast, so the short answer is no, I haven't seen it.

 

[Armchair_QB]

Hasn't the poverty rate declined under Chavez?

He's not a good guy, certainly - but were the people of Venezuela better off when companies like Royal Dutch Shell were taking their oil profits out of the country? Venezuela's been one of the few oil producers over the last century to successfully defend itself against the sort of predatory wealth extraction we see in other resource-rich countries.

Not according to the story in last week's New Yorker -- Letters from Caracas by Jon Lee Anderson.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/28/130128fa_fact_anderson

"LETTER FROM CARACAS about the Tower of David, which is the world’s tallest slum, and the man who runs it, Alexander (El Niño) Daza. Hugo Chávez has said that he wants to remake Venezuela into “a sea of happiness and of real social justice and peace.” His pronounced goal was to elevate the poor. In Caracas, the country’s capital, the results of his fitful campaign are plain to see. For decades, as one of the world’s most oil-rich nations, Venezuela had a growing middle class, with an impressively high standard of living. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the rest of Latin America and from Europe helped give Caracas a reputation as one of the region’s most attractive and modern cities. That city is barely perceptible today. After decades of neglect, poverty, corruption, and social upheaval, Caracas has deteriorated beyond all measure. It has one of the highest homicide rates in the world; last year, in a city of three million, an estimated thirty-six hundred people were murdered, or about one every two hours. The murder rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez took office. Caracas is a failed city, and the Tower of David is perhaps the ultimate symbol of that failure.

That sure sounds like a veritable Utopia compared to the years before Chavez took over... Dude's a saint.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Wow. If what Chavez does is so bad, then perhaps those staunch defenders of democracy and clean politics like Exxon/Mobil, BP, etc., should divert a small portion of the billions and billions of their profits and start similar but larger programs in this country to save those poor people without the means to pay for heating oil, Joe Kennedy, and all those corrupt congressmen from falling under Hugo's mystical evil spell.

Or, maybe those elderly, poor, disabled and others without the means to pay the high cost of heating oil will just continue to take some measure of aid from Citgo so they can stay warm in the winter, and somehow still not turn into socialists, communists or wobblies.

Poor Americans receiving free oil from dictatorships like Venezuela = bad.
Rich corporations sending American jobs overseas to dictatorships like China, Vietnam, etc. to save labor costs = good.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Wow. If what Chavez does is so bad, then perhaps those staunch defenders of democracy and clean politics like Exxon/Mobil, BP, etc., should divert a small portion of the billions and billions of their profits and start similar but larger programs in this country to save those poor people without the means to pay for heating oil, Joe Kennedy, and all those corrupt congressmen from falling under Hugo's mystical evil spell.

Or, maybe those elderly, poor, disabled and others without the means to pay the high cost of heating oil will just continue to take some measure of aid from Citgo so they can stay warm in the winter, and somehow still not turn into socialists, communists or wobblies.

Poor Americans receiving free oil from dictatorships like Venezuela = bad.
Rich corporations sending American jobs overseas to dictatorships like China, Vietnam, etc. to save labor costs = good.

I'm just glad Exxon or Shell do not support dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

 

[Azrael]

It's interesting if you read all the way through the NYer piece, at the top of pp 47, you get Anderson's overview of things since Chavez came to power and the fact that some programs have worked only a little and some haven't worked at all. "The poorest Venezuelans are marginally better off these days."

Which is the constituency that elected him and which is borne out here -

www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/poverty-headcount-ratio-at-national-poverty-line-percent-of-population-wb-data.html

fair.org/extra-online-articles/wrong-numbers/

www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ve.html

www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/venezuela/ECONOMY.html

venezuela-us.org/2012/01/13/eclac-venezuela-has-third-lowest-poverty-rate-in-latin-america/

But the decline of Caracas Anderson describes was - as he points out - well underway long before Chavez ever got power.

 

[Boom_70]

"The murder rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez took office"

Chavez has been President since 1999. It's not like he's turns things around.

As an aside to debating Chavez the benevolent dictator, the work that Anderson does fascinates me. His ability to get to the most troubled places in the world and talk to the people he does is amazing. The guy is fearless.

 

[Azrael]

"The murder rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez took office"

Chavez has been President since 1999. It's not like he's turns things around.

As an aside to debating Chavez the benevolent dictator, the work that Anderson does fascinates me. His ability to get to the most troubled places in the world and talk to the people he does is amazing. The guy is fearless.

The rising violence/declining poverty thing has people vexed.

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/10/2012101817912697153.html

Yeah. Anderson is fearless. Like Chivers and Filkins and a couple others. In fact, this might be one of the great ages of the foreign correspondent.

 

[The Big Ragu]

"The murder rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez took office"

Chavez has been President since 1999. It's not like he's turns things around.

As an aside to debating Chavez the benevolent dictator, the work that Anderson does fascinates me. His ability to get to the most troubled places in the world and talk to the people he does is amazing. The guy is fearless.

The rising violence/declining poverty thing has people vexed.

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/10/2012101817912697153.html

Yeah. Anderson is fearless. Like Chivers and Filkins and a couple others. In fact, this might be one of the great ages of the foreign correspondent.

You keep stating declining poverty. But you can say that about most places in the world since 1999.

He has made the country as a whole worse off. Venezuala's GDP since 1999 has significantly lagged behind the rest of Latin America. People living below the poverty line (As the UN measures it) has declined during that time for Venezuala, but no more than it has for Latin America as a whole, and less than it did it for the capitalistic countries in Latin America, such as Peru and Brazil, which have seen their poverty rates decline to a much greater degree, and have seen their economies take off compared to Venezuala's.

He has destroyed his country's economy, really. Before Chavez, Venezuela had an export industry that included all kinds of non-oil products. Today, oil represents 96 percent of its exports. Business has fled his country, if they could before everything they had was expropriated by his thugs and stolen out from under them. He drove away virtually all domestic and foreign investment -- at a time when that investment money has been flowing into Latin America at record levels. Brazil, for example, has been drawing tens of billions of dollars of investment every year, which has been dramatically remaking the country. Venezuela, on the other hand, has bled companies, which had to flee to Panama and Columbia. On top of it, its currency is a mess. Inflation has been through the roof. Prices have gone up on average 23 percent a year (that isn't a typo) since Chavez took over, compared to less than 5 percent for Latin America as a whole. At the same time, he enforces strict price controls, so the economy is a mishmash of black markets and shortages. Related to that is the fact that the new currency introduced in 2008 has lost 2/3 of its value. It reduces the value of whatever wages people earn and increases the cost of imports -- the inflation we have been seeing and will continue to see because he has created a mess that can't be quickly fixed by someone else. Poverty rates have declined, but more people across the board are living subsidence lives and it will get worse because of the currency problem -- which is how Jon Lee Anderson ends up writing a story like that.

And then there is the violence. You posted that a crazy murder rate in Venezuela is vexing somehow. Who exactly is vexed, and why? Everything I just typed has created a crime-ridden society, in which people are economically struggling. They can't use the country's own currency for anything, because its not worth the paper it is printed on and price controls make every transaction (when there aren't shortages) into a black market mine field that is controlled by some corrupt thug operating only with the approval of Chavez. That is why the murder rate is so high.