“President Hugo Chavez will keep donating heating oil for poor American families in a costly decision that suggests the Venezuelan leader wants to keep to his pledges-and buttress his image-in spite of falling oil prices.

Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. announced the aid program would continue on Wednesday, just two days after its partner nonprofit group, Boston-based Citizens Energy, said Citgo had halted the free fuel shipments due to the world economic crisis.

‘Chavez decided that it was a mistake,‘ said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. He said Citgo officials probably recommended the cost-saving measure to Chavez in the first place, but the impact may not have sunk in until the president saw the reaction.” — The Associated Press

President George W. Bush’s response to the death and devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, was to do a quick photop flyby at 25,000 feet. Meanwhile on the ground death and chaos ruled under the inept leadership of FEMA Director Michael Brown. Nevertheless the equally clueless Dubya complimented Brown with his now infamous words: Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.

A few years ago when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez heard that poor Americans were freezing in the winter because they couldn’t afford heating oil, he did something about it. Chavez launched a program to donate free heating oil for low-income Americans, a remarkable gesture considering that Bush is his implacable foe.

Chavez, God bless his soul, has decided to continue this program in spite of the falling crude oil prices. I wish we had politicians in this country who would stick to their word, even if it costs them millions of dollars.

Some American critics of Chavez argue that he is only trying to make Bush look bad, but according to the AP article:

“Venezuela also ships fuel under highly favorable lending terms to countries across the Caribbean and Central America. Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez says that program, called Petrocaribe, will continue.”

Chavez is a statesman and he is more Christ-like than most Christians, he ministers to the poor wherever they may be found. Viva Hugo Chavez.

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Hugo Chavez Calls Bush — ‘A Donkey,’ ‘A Drunk,’ ‘An Immoral Mr. Danger,’
‘A Genocist,’ ‘An Alcoholic,’ ‘A Coward,’ ‘A Liar and A Sick Man,’ …..’

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“President Hugo Chavez ordered construction halted on a major shopping mall in Caracas on Sunday, saying the government will expropriate the unfinished building.

The Venezuelan leader said it would be out of line with his government’s socialist vision to allow the new Sambil mall to take up precious urban real estate — and that unbridled consumerism isn’t his idea of progress either.” Ian James, Associated Press Writer

Shopping malls, with shoppers scurrying like ants to buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, are the perfect symbol of consumerism run amok. The president’s timely action is more powerful than any Christmas sermon delivered by Rick Warren or Pat Robertson. At this time of the year our heads shouldn’t be filled with visions of Victoria’s Secret, Macys and Best Buy, but with images of the poor and needy who need our help.

“The president also has urged Venezuelans to shed their materialism and their taste for designer clothes, sport utility vehicles, Scotch whisky and plastic surgery” — AP

A statesman speaks the truth in love to his constituents, Chavez rightfully rebuked the Venezuelans for embracing American-style rampant consumerism. It’s instructive to contrast the Venezuelan president’s rebuke of his people with Bush’s advice to Americans in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead of calling upon Americans to make sacrifices in a time of war, he advised us to shop till we drop.

American critics of Chavez quickly labeled his action “socialist“, some of these same folks uttered not a word of protest when Bush was nationalizing banks, insurance companies and now automobile manufacturers. Bush and Chavez are both enamored with socialism, but there’s one big difference: Dubya takes over companies to bail out the wealthy; Chavez expropriates private buildings to help the poor. Chavez didn’t take over the mall to hand it over to an insurance company, he’s going to convert it into a facility that will serve the people of Venezuela.

If a politician with the integrity of Chavez had been president of the United States for the last eight years, our economy would not be in shambles and we would not be entangled in two unnecessary and pointless wars.

Viva Hugo Chavez!

Bush, don’t let the door hit you on your way out!

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References:

1. Can Obama Save Capitalism? [Fareed Zakaria]– The great sociologist Max Weber described the power of charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Some of Barack Obama’s supporters have at times sounded as if they saw “the one” in these terms. There’s no doubt that Obama is intensely charismatic and that it provides him with unusual political capital. But very soon — say on Jan. 20, 2009 — his powers will start to mutate, and they will derive less from his persona and more from his office. He will shift, in Weber’s terminology, from wielding charismatic authority to legal authority. — [READ MORE]

2. Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism [Arianna Huffington] — The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking. The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor’s mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil. — [READ MORE]