The Politics of Hypothermia

Approximately 6 million households in the cold Northeast are heated with residential oil, which is currently running around $2.40 a gallon. Out of 6 million households, you can bet there are a lot of them having difficulty paying to keep the oil tanks filled or keeping warm in the winter.

Enter Citgo Petroleum Corporation. Citgo appears to have an active community involvement program, including distributing heating oil at discounted prices this winter as part of an initiative aimed at helping poor communities in areas of the country most affected by cold winters.

The parent company of Citgo is the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, and Citgo’s program has the full support of the parent company. Naturally, here’s the spin put on it by the liberal Washington Post:

Venezuela, where per capita income is about one tenth that of the United States, will provide 4.8 million gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount to Connecticut households that qualify for state home heat assistance, state officials said. . .

. . . [t]he exports are seen as an attempt by Chavez to embarrass the Bush administration, which the Venezuelan leader says neglects poor Americans.

It’s good that our Congressional representatives know how to respond to the shame of being provided winter heating oil assistance to low-income families from a country where, as few as 10 years ago, over 50 percent of the population of its capital lived as squatters:

Last month, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) wrote Citgo to demand documents about the program. The members, for example, asked how the company selected which communities would get the oil and whether the program violated federal antitrust laws.

It speaks volumes about how our current political leadership thinks, when a humanitarian and public health gesture is viewed as a tool to increase market share (selling discounted heating oil to the poor will do that?) or a threat to national security:

“So rarely does one find Fidel Castro’s best friend in the Western Hemisphere prepared to do Americans a favor, that just possibly it’s not a favor,” said Energy and Commerce Deputy Staff Director Larry Neal.

If we are under “attack” by Venezuela here, it’s only because we’re such a big target. It’s an application of soft power at its finest, and it’s a shame that we’re blind to the lesson.