Chavez giving needy Americans free heating oil?

[chimx]

I just saw this on digg:


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants to give you 100 gallons of free heating oil to help survive the cold cruel capitalist winter. The hogshead of liquid warmth is available to anyone enduring a financial hardship who fills out a handy online form.

links:
http://consumerist.com/344124/get-100-gallons-of-heating-oil-for-free?=rss
http://www.citizensenergy.com/english/pages/13/individual-households

Anyone know more about this?

[FireFry]

It's a paradox of value, because it doesn't cost anything, people will assume it's worthless. Shopping isn't as fun when people don't have to spend and can just take things off of the shelves.

That's just our culture today, and it shows how unprepared we all are to overthrow the bourgoisie.

[ellipsis]

yah I think that it started with latino/black neighborhoods in the bronx and then they expanded the program to include more low income families. i think that it is a great idea as it has many benefits. first, saving lives/improving quality of life for low income people. second, it makes the U.S. gov look bad because it demonstrates that we don't/can't take care of our on people, due in part to our bad foreign policy, but a quasi-socialist country can. third, it should bolster public perception of chavez/venezuela in the U.S. especially among popular classes. they show commercials for the program in my area, some dude named joe is the middle man 1800 joe for oil or something. real intense/ political advertisement.