Hugo Hood and Little Joe
Take a whiff of this and tell me what you smell:
Hmmm. Castroite dictator; seditious left-wing Democrat pol; doesn't sound all that different, in spirit at least, from one-time House Speaker "Fort Worthless Jim" Wright and his illegal "Dear Commandante" diplomacy with one-time Nicaraguan Sandanista dictator Daniel Ortega. The biggest difference is that Hugo Chavez is sitting on a huge reservoir of petroleum that makes him a major player in regional politics, and that, thanks to another repropate member of the Kennedy clan, includes meddling in U.S. internal affairs.
Pedro Mario Burelli, the Founder and Managing Director of B+V Consulting, was an Executive Board Member of Petróleos de Venezuela until November of 1998. He knows all about Commandante Chavez and what is behind his "altruistic outreach" to New England. To summarize:
*The ostensible idea isn't new. Citizens Energy (A fine proletarian name, that) arranged similar deals as far back as 1980. It's just that back then, the Venezuelans, not being rabidly anti-American, didn't have a propaganda angle driving their end of it.
*Until Chavez seized power in Caracas in 1999, Venezuela had been the most reliable and responsible member of OPEC, boosting its oil production during the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Thereafter the country became the biggest gouger in the cartel, cutting its production in half. And this "price hawkishness" is aimed directly at the U.S., which means that Chavaz providing these 12 million gallons of "discount" heating oil is like a vampire making a donation to a blood bank.
*There was no reason for CITGO, the state-owned Venezuelan oil company, to go through Citizens Energy as an intermediary, since CE has no distribution capability. Little Joe, one of the biggest Hugotistas in the Democrat party, whored himself and his company to Chavez for the same reason that the latter cultivated him - to piss in George Bush's face.
*Pissing in George Bush's face is such a virtuous act that it apparently covers a lot of sins, at least in Little Joe's mind:
I'd love to know where this morally relativistic attitude was where, say, pre-Marxist South Africa was concerned. Or current democratic Iraq, which is far more legitimately democratic than Venezuela, where Comrade Hugo exemplifies the old Marxian axiom, "One man, one vote, one time." A concept no less a strongman-lover than Jimmy Carter gave his imprimatur.
*In 2003, the last year for which records have been made available, Little Joe collected a handsome four hundred grand in compensation from his "non-profit" enterprise.
I wouldn't be surprised if Hugo Hood is paying him a lot more than that - as well as subsidizing the table under which he's doing it.
A prominent member of the Kennedy family is joining forces with one of President George Bush’s most ardent foes – Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
A subsidiary of Venezuela’s national oil company will ship 12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to Massachusetts in a deal that former U.S. representative Joseph P. Kennedy II helped to arrange.
The $9 million worth of oil will go to 45,000 low-income families and institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters, said officials from Citizens Energy, an organization founded by Kennedy in 1979.
Hmmm. Castroite dictator; seditious left-wing Democrat pol; doesn't sound all that different, in spirit at least, from one-time House Speaker "Fort Worthless Jim" Wright and his illegal "Dear Commandante" diplomacy with one-time Nicaraguan Sandanista dictator Daniel Ortega. The biggest difference is that Hugo Chavez is sitting on a huge reservoir of petroleum that makes him a major player in regional politics, and that, thanks to another repropate member of the Kennedy clan, includes meddling in U.S. internal affairs.
Pedro Mario Burelli, the Founder and Managing Director of B+V Consulting, was an Executive Board Member of Petróleos de Venezuela until November of 1998. He knows all about Commandante Chavez and what is behind his "altruistic outreach" to New England. To summarize:
*The ostensible idea isn't new. Citizens Energy (A fine proletarian name, that) arranged similar deals as far back as 1980. It's just that back then, the Venezuelans, not being rabidly anti-American, didn't have a propaganda angle driving their end of it.
*Until Chavez seized power in Caracas in 1999, Venezuela had been the most reliable and responsible member of OPEC, boosting its oil production during the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Thereafter the country became the biggest gouger in the cartel, cutting its production in half. And this "price hawkishness" is aimed directly at the U.S., which means that Chavaz providing these 12 million gallons of "discount" heating oil is like a vampire making a donation to a blood bank.
*There was no reason for CITGO, the state-owned Venezuelan oil company, to go through Citizens Energy as an intermediary, since CE has no distribution capability. Little Joe, one of the biggest Hugotistas in the Democrat party, whored himself and his company to Chavez for the same reason that the latter cultivated him - to piss in George Bush's face.
*Pissing in George Bush's face is such a virtuous act that it apparently covers a lot of sins, at least in Little Joe's mind:
''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…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."
I'd love to know where this morally relativistic attitude was where, say, pre-Marxist South Africa was concerned. Or current democratic Iraq, which is far more legitimately democratic than Venezuela, where Comrade Hugo exemplifies the old Marxian axiom, "One man, one vote, one time." A concept no less a strongman-lover than Jimmy Carter gave his imprimatur.
*In 2003, the last year for which records have been made available, Little Joe collected a handsome four hundred grand in compensation from his "non-profit" enterprise.
I wouldn't be surprised if Hugo Hood is paying him a lot more than that - as well as subsidizing the table under which he's doing it.
posted by JASmius at 6:12 PM
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