Ever since Hugo Chavez passed on to that great anti-American rally in the sky, admirers have been painting him as another Mother Teresa.
Among those hailing Chavez’s concern for the poor is our own Gregory Meeks — the Democratic congressman from Queens who was also one of President Obama’s official delegates to the funeral.
Years ago in Caracas, Meeks helped set up a meeting between Chavez and Joseph Kennedy III. Not long after, Chavez worked out a deal where he’d send Venezuelan oil to Kennedy at a below-market price, which Kennedy would then sell and use the proceeds to buy heating oil for struggling American families, including some in New York.
Leave aside that for all Chavez’s overseas oil charity, it didn’t seem to help the long-suffering Venezuelan people much. We’re more struck by the contradiction of Gregory Meeks. If he was so concerned about oil for the poor, why was he so often a vote against tapping into America’s oil resources — against drilling in ANWR, against drilling on the continental shelf, against new oil refineries and so on?
Maybe if Meeks had supported efforts to lower prices by developing our own oil reserves, working families in New York would be able to afford to heat their homes without having to go beg for charity from a dictator who hated our country.