Venezuelan dictator oil program administered by Caroline Kennedy cousin, has been cancelled

Announced today in Boston. Citgo, a company owned by the Venezuelan dictator's government, is enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (Isn't everybody except Marvin Miller?)

• BOSTON — "Citgo has suspended its free heating oil program for low-income residents, Citizens Energy Chairman Joseph Kennedy announced Monday.

Kennedy said the Venezuelan government's Texas-based oil subsidiary cited falling oil prices and the world economic crisis for forcing the company to

• reevaluate all of its social programs,

• including the heating oil program aimed at 400,000 households in 16 states.

The program, started in 2005 with Citizens Energy, a nonprofit (tax exempt) headed by Kennedy, sent 100 gallons of free oil a year to eligible households.

"It remains unclear how long this postponement, if it is one, will last," Kennedy said in a statement on the Citizens Energy Web site....

• Kennedy drew fire from critics of Chavez when he began the fuel assistance program with Citgo. Critics charged that Chavez, a socialist and staunch U.S. critic who famously called President Bush "the devil," was using the

• heating oil program as propaganda.

Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., accused Kennedy of working with "a sworn enemy of the United States"

• and betraying the legacy of President John F. Kennedy, his uncle, who spoke of the perils of communism.

Kennedy responded that critics should hold oil-exporting countries and other trade partners, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia and China, to the same standards."

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