[NYTr] US Won't Fund Aid to Help Poor Pay Heating Bills; Venezuela Does That & More Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:10:48 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [Scandalous -- Bush wants billions more for war, but the US program to help the poor pay for heating bills is only funded sufficiently to cover 16 percent of the households eligible for the aid. (see Reuters for Oct. 19th below). Meanwhile as VIO Venezuela News Roundup reports: "A recent donation of $3.6 million to community groups in the South Bronx by Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum is improving lives in New York City's poorest district. The New York Times reports that the Citgo funds are benefiting community groups that empower young people through cost-free programs in areas such as education, environmentalism, food provision, child care and family development. "This is in addition to a program which provides a 40 percent discount on heating oil to poor households and will benefit about 250,000 families across 23 US states this winter. The Bronx was targeted for anti-poverty aid from Venezuela following a visit by President Chavez in 2005, and in response to requests for assistance by residents. The Times notes that while some may dislike President Chavez, there is no ideological dimension to the aid besides a basic humanitarianism; 'On the ground, Citgo's money seems to come without strings.'" The Times Oct 21 story follows Reuters. -NY Transfer] Reuters via Yahoo - Oct 19, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071019/pl_nm/poor_usa_winter_dc Government money short to help poor pay heating bills By Tom Doggett About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program. The poor, already digging deep to pay for expensive gasoline, also will face much higher heating fuel costs, especially if oil prices stay near record levels. Consumer groups and state energy officials have sounded the alarm, saying a federal program to help poor families pay heating bills will have nowhere near the money needed to cover those expected to seek assistance. The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program. The current $2.16 billion LIHEAP budget in only $300 million more than what the program had when it was created by Congress in 1981. Despite higher energy costs, the Bush administration has proposed cutting the program's budget. "We've got in essence the same level of funding, yet increasing energy costs," said David Fox, executive director for the National Low Income Energy Consortium. The Energy Department forecasts that household expenses for all heating fuels will rise this winter from last year, with costs for heating oil up 22 percent, propane up 16 percent, natural gas up 10 percent and residential electric bills up 4 percent. "If it is a typical winter, it's going to be a real struggle for these (poor) households. If it's colder than normal all bets are off," Fox said. Heating bills will be even higher if the recent jump in U.S. crude oil prices sticks. Oil has soared more than $10 a barrel this month and topped a record $90 on Friday at the New York Mercantile Exchange. "These record prices will place a significant burden on low- and moderate-income families this winter," Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, said recently, appealing for more funds for LIHEAP. U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Friday that current oil prices were "far too high" and the White House said this week the Bush administration was concerned about the impact high energy prices have on low-income families. Still, the administration did not back away from its threat to veto legislation to boost funding for LIHEAP to levels it has called too high. LIHEAP has an interim annual budget of $2.16 billion, but the White House wants to cut the program to $1.78 billion for the 2008 spending year that began on October 1. The House of Representatives has passed legislation to boost the program to $2.66 billion, while a Senate committee has cleared a bill keeping LIHEAP at its current $2.16 billion budget. Fox pointed out that if funding for the program had increased to keep up with inflation each year since it began in 1981, LIHEAP would have a $4.2 billion budget. "The program has not kept up with the pace of demand or need," said Vivian Lausevic, spokeswoman for the American Gas Association (AGA). "Without question there's going to be higher demand for LIHEAP," she said. The AGA has called for more funding for the program, not surprising when three out of five U.S. households depend on natural gas as their primary winter heating fuel. About two-thirds of the households that receive LIHEAP assistance have annual incomes of less than $20,000. Because more people asked for help, the average grant under the program fell from $451 last year to $314 this year. Copyright B) 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. *** he New York Times - Oct 21, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/21citgo.html Soft Spot for the South Bronx By Anne Barnard Henry Lajara is mapping out where to install a rain barrel in his manicured South Bronx backyard, to show his neighbors how they can channel storm water to feed their gardens and keep runoff from flushing sewage into the Bronx River. Stephen Oliveira, Alexie M. Torres-Fleming, center, and Kate Zidar of the Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, which is getting $230,000 from Citgo for various projects. Lenard Ramsook, 20, glides down that river in a wooden boat, teaching local high school students how to row. He shows them the ospreys and leaping fish that share the estuary with concrete plants and expressway bridges, making the point that environmentalism is not just for the rich. Across the South Bronx, residents are beginning cooperatives to create jobs and tend to their communities' social needs and physical health. One will recycle demolition debris. Another sells fruit and vegetables. A third will provide child care for working families. Behind all these projects is a man who has called President Bush "the devil," embraced Iran's firebrand leader as a fellow crusader against "the U.S. empire," and vowed to help the poor and disenfranchised everywhere, even ? or, perhaps, especially ? in the world's most powerful country. That man, Hugo ChC!vez, the president of Venezuela, began his love affair with the Bronx during a visit in 2005. Since then, he and his socialist government have funneled millions of dollars of aid to the South Bronx, home to New York's poorest Congressional district, through Citgo Petroleum, the American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. It is an unlikely flow of largess, from an oil-rich South American country where much of the population lives in poverty to one of the neediest pockets in the seat of American capitalism. Citgo started its outreach in 2005 with a 40 percent discount on heating oil for poor households and expanded it in August to finance social and economic development. The company has committed to donating $3.6 million over the next three years to nine Bronx initiatives that would use the money to create jobs, foster community empowerment and clean up the urban environment. The program has made Mr. ChC!vez the talk of the South Bronx. "He came in here and took over -- like a Spanish Napoleon!" Lucy Martinez said. Ms. Martinez, 57, said Mr. ChC!vez has helped the needy residents she meets while working the front desk at Nos Quedamos, a nonprofit community development corporation. But she knows, too, that his philanthropy has chafed some American politicians. Patrice White-McGleese, 37, an employment counselor who saved $160 to $300 a month during the past two winters through the discounted oil program, said she knows why Mr. ChC!vez's actions have rankled. "It's a sore point because it took what most people would consider a third world nation to help the U.S.," she said. "Which is kind of a slap in the face because we're supposed to be one of the superpowers; why can't we help our own?" Some people in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, have the same question for their own government, said Leopoldo LC3pez, mayor of the downtown district of Chacao and a leader of the Venezuelan opposition. "Why is the government giving away money to the richest city in the world?" he asked. Mr. LC3pez said Mr. ChC!vez should first tend to the needs of Venezuelans who lack shelter, sewage and drinking water. He said Mr. ChC!vez was giving the money to the Bronx to win support around the world while distracting attention from his moves to crack down on the opposition at home. So the program has made Bronx residents, who are trying to solve the most local of problems, party to a global dispute. They are caught between Mr. ChC!vez, who markets his populist platform as a counterweight to the worldwide influence of the United States, and the Bush administration, which contends that Mr. ChC!vez's stress on racial and economic equality masks a dictatorship-in-the-making. Mr. ChC!vez began clashing with Venezuela's corporate leaders and the United States shortly after being elected in 1998. In 2002, military officers staged a coup to oust him. The Bush administration quickly recognized the new government. But Mr. ChC!vez returned to office days later after a wave of street protests, and he accused the United States of aiding the coup. He turned his attentions to the Bronx in the fall of 2005, when he visited South Bronx community organizers with Representative JosC) E. Serrano, the Democrat who represents the district. Those meetings led to the discounted heating oil program. By the winter of 2006-7, the program had doubled to deliver 100 million gallons to 1.2 million people from Alaska to Vermont. Citgo said it expected to supply 110 million gallons this winter. Some recipients bridled in September 2006, when Mr. ChC!vez stepped up to a United Nations podium ? one that President Bush had used the day before ? and declared that he smelled traces of "the devil." "It smells of sulfur still today," Mr. ChC!vez added. Said Mr. Serrano: "Was it tacky? Yes." But, he said, Mr. ChC!vez was just being emotional. Meanwhile, Citgo and Venezuelan officials made follow-up visits to the Bronx. During one of them, Mrs. White-McGleese said she wanted to thank Venezuelans for their generosity. Within weeks, in April 2006, she and 62 people who had received the discounted oil were on a plane to Caracas as Mr. ChC!vez's guests. A band met them at the airport. They watched an African-Venezuelan dance performance. And they visited Mr. ChC!vez at Miraflores Palace, the president's official residence. A few of the American guests -- including Pamela Babb, a vice president of the Mount Hope Housing Company, a nonprofit group that provides low-income housing in the Bronx -- appeared on Mr. ChC!vez's weekly television show. "It was pomp and circumstance," said Ms. Babb, 47. She said she remained suspicious of Mr. ChC!vez's efforts to expand his presidential powers. ("I question that," she said.) And a Mount Hope tenant, Lenice Footman, noticed children playing in garbage on Caracas's streets and came away "grateful for what we have." But many of them were impressed when a Philadelphia woman told Mr. ChC!vez of the lack of jobs and services in her neighborhood and the Venezuelan leader declared it was time to aid development in poor United States communities. "And all these ministers started writing things down," Ms. Babb said. "It shows you what happens when a visionary person starts to do something. And I was there." Ms. Babb said Citgo officials visit the Bronx more often than the other corporate donors she works with. They have asked community groups what kinds of grants they need, awarding one to Mount Hope for a child care cooperative. And they celebrated with the locals in Hunts Point Riverside Park over Venezuelan food -- arepas and carne mechada -- and Latin American music. The Citgo donations are a tiny percentage of its annual budget. It does not have to disclose financial statements because it is not a publicly traded company. Citgo, which sold 25.1 billion gallons of petroleum products last year, estimates that last winter's oil program cost it $80 million, according to a Citgo document provided by Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States. That is about the same amount that Exxon Mobil -- the largest publicly traded oil company, with roughly 10 times the revenue of Citgo -- reported spending on philanthropy in the United States in 2006. "We are not trying to impose," Mr. Alvarez said, "or to intervene in the politics here." United States petroleum industry officials are not happy, however, with Citgo's program. It is "designed to embarrass us," Larry Goldstein, the president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an industry-supported analysis group in New York, said when it was launched in 2005. "It's not designed to help poor people," he said. "ChC!vez is astute, clever, with a major political agenda, largely to get under our skin, and he does that everywhere and anywhere he can." On the ground, Citgo's money seems to come without strings ? or even much branding. At Rocking the Boat, the Bronx River education program, Mr. Ramsook, who left behind a fisherman's life when he moved to the Bronx from Trinidad, said he could not place Mr. ChC!vez's name. "It sounds familiar," he said. He was more enthusiastic about taking seniors from Bronx Guild High School on the water to learn the history of the river. "There's no sharks, right?" asked Shawnisha Roebuck, 19, as she settled into the stern. On shore, an iron claw lifted metal scraps from one pile to another. But on the river, gulls stalked the banks, and the movements of small fish made the water flicker. An osprey plunged to the water, but came up empty. Citgo's $210,000, three-year grant has allowed the group to expand the high school program and hold free Saturday rowing lessons that have drawn 500 people since August. A $230,000 grant is helping Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice build rain barrels, plant rooftop vegetation and reshape gutters to feed sidewalk trees. And the South Bronx Food Co-operative will use its $49,000 to open a storefront to sell affordable produce. Anna Vincenty of Nos Quedamos, who is working on a program to improve the diets of elderly residents, said she takes Mr. ChC!vez's good will, like she does with all politicians, with a grain of salt. "He says he wants to help people over here," she said. Yet her Venezuelan friends have told her that "some of the people over there are afraid of him." On the other hand, she said, in the United States, "one of the most generous countries in the whole world," pervasive inequality is on display. But no matter what one thinks of Mr. ChC!vez, she said: "If your child is cold and hungry and someone offers to help, do you care if it's Moe or Larry or Curly? I don't think so." * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================