William D. Delahunt
Posted on 11/22/2005 2:05:58 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- While most of Congress was spending an August recess tending to local constituents, Representative William D. Delahunt was in Caracas, sitting down to a four-hour, one-on-one dinner conversation with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, one of the Bush administration's most ardent critics.
That meeting -- unusual for a sitting member of Congress and a head of state so critical of the White House -- sparked negotiations that led to the official announcement scheduled for today: A US subsidiary of a Venezuelan-owned company will provide 12 million gallons of discounted home heating oil to Massachusetts consumers and organizations serving the poor.
Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat who is emerging as one of his party's leading voices in Latin American affairs, said he was simply trying to smooth strained US-Venezuelan relations while helping low-income people in his home state.
Critics said Delahunt should not be working so closely with Chávez, an outspoken leftist.
Chávez is close to the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, who seems to delight in needling President Bush and his administration.
''He's been kind of an apologist for Chávez for some time," said Steve Johnson, a Latin American specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Meeting with the leader who calls himself a revolutionary populist, Johnson said, ''is not something I'd like my congressman to be doing."
Delahunt dismissed the criticism, saying he is doing his part to continue a dialogue with a country that is the fourth-largest provider of refined petroleum products to the United States. The heating oil agreement, he said, ''was something that wasn't about politics, was not about the bilateral relationship. It was about people. It was genuinely humanitarian in its intention and in its impact."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
William D. Delahunt
This really happened?
The approximately $9 million deal will bring nine million gallons of oil to families and three million gallons to institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters, said officials from Citizens Energy Corp., which is signing the contract. Families would pay about $276 for a 200-gallon shipment, a savings of about $184 and enough to last about three weeks.
''We recognized that we had an opportunity," Delahunt's spokesman, Steve Schwadron, said yesterday.
Chávez showed ''an inclination to do a humanitarian distribution" of oil, and poor families in Massachusetts had a ''desperate need" for relief from high home-heating prices, Schwadron said. He characterized the deal as one between ''a US company and two nonprofits to help them do more of what they already do, with terms that mean the price is good."
Delahunt was not available for comment yesterday.
Schwadron said the congressman did not get involved in the details of the contract, but had raised the issue with Chávez and helped connect the nonprofits with CITGO, which is owned by PDV America Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the national oil company of Venezuela.
......Kennedy said he was not concerned about Chávez's politics.
''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," Kennedy said. ''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."....***
Further down in the article:
***........As a legislator, Delahunt has been active in Latin American affairs for several years, and in 2002 he inaugurated a series of unofficial talks aimed at ending the acrimony between the Venezuelan government and the political opposition.
The idea, Delahunt said, was to get conflicting parties into a private, secluded place where they would talk to one another personally and participate in recreational activities together.
The group, which called itself ''Grupo de Boston," met in 2002 and 2003 on Cape Cod. Participants often engaged in heated political talks in the mornings (one session needed an intervention to stop a fistfight).
They also went whale-watching and played intramural baseball in the afternoons, with mixed teams and a bipartisan group of legislators as umpires.
Bottles of Scotch were in the guest rooms, and all had been consumed by the end of the session, a Delahunt spokesman said.....***
Who needs enemies, when we have Democrats ???? I am scared to death of the left.
Interesting... Ted Kennedy never does seem concerned about the politics of individuals... unless, that is, they are Conservative, Mormon, or actual Catholic adherents (and not cafeteria ones)... Psychotic bloodthirsty tyrants and other commie pigs, hey, they're all good ! ;-)
They won't give an inch on their march toward communism. That is something to frighten us all.
Fadi Kabboul, a Venezuelan embassy advisor on energy issues, said Citgo hoped to reach a similar deal with the office of Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., who represents the Bronx.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13221493.htm
Isn't it sad ? Virtually the entire Federal 'Rat establishment to the last sees nothing wrong with aligning themselves with America's enemies. Now somebody explain to me why the GOP is so far down in the polls again ? They're the last bulwark against international terrorism. :-(
Sounds like the Leftist Democrats are making their own deals with the Communists in South America....
Who would have guessed!
Selling their freaking souls, and who knows what else..
Semper Fi
Thanks you for the LINK!
Isn't Serrano one of the 3 who voted to bring the troops home? I heard quite a few NY reps voted "present" on the same thing.
The msm drumbeat has had 6 years to tear at Bush. He needs to use the bully pulpit more, regardless of his modesty. WE, the USA needs him to use it!
Serrano is the single-most leftist member of the NY delegation. He could easily segue into serving under a communist regime without batting an eye. Even calling him a Socialist would be too rightist a political label.
Wait a minute!
Aren't the folks in Mass and New England the strongest supporters of the ding bat chicken littles worried about Global Warming!!!!
Why do they need cheap oil, they SHOULD be buying air conditioners......
Looks like the only way we'll be rid of the loony bastards, is if they freeze to death...
Texas should cut off all fuel deliveries to the NE, since they're so freaking chummy with Chavez...
Semper Fi
Y'know, Massachusetts had a Communist revolution sometime in the late '60s. They didn't even bother to fight and sided with the bad guys. All the rest fled to more reasonable states.
Chavez told the Argentine newspaper Clarin last month that Venezuela has "a strong oil card to play on the geopolitical stage" He said, "It is a card that we are going to play with toughness against the toughest country in the world, the United States."
(snip)
Chavez recently struck a deal with left-wing opposition leaders in Nicaragua to sell subsidized oil to that country. Analysts said Chavez is trying to boost the Sandinista party and its leader, Daniel Ortega, a fierce critic of the United States who is expected to run for president.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112101800.html
I think states that allow exploration and drilling should get an energy discount and all states that deny exploration and drilling should be charged more.
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