Sunday, January 08, 2006
GIVE TILL IT HURTS
Hugo Chavez to the rescue! Venezuela’s humanitarian leader plans to deliver desperately needed aid to impoverished blue states:
Venezuela has said it will expand a programme to provide cheap home heating fuel to poor Americans, helping low-income families in Vermont and Rhode Island, as well as four Indian tribes in Maine.
Those poor Vermonters, all shivering and ruined after Howard Dean bankrupted their state. Actually, Vermont has the fifth highest minimum wage in the US; Rhode Island is seventh highest, and Maine 12th (the Venezuelan Santa has previously sent aid to Massachusetts, eighth on the list of minimum wage overpayers).
Why these relatively well-off states? Well, perhaps they have extraordinary energy needs that can only be met with Hugo’s help. Except ... they don’t. Maine ranks 16th out of all the states in terms of energy consumed per capita; Vermont is way down in 40th; and Rhode Island, gobbling only 215 million Btu per capita, is the least-consuming state of them all. Chavez is draining his busted nation to assist folk who don’t need assistance. It’s grotesque.