Thursday, March 07, 2013

Joe for Oil


Joe Kennedy II, one son of Robert Kennedy, has been running ads on local television touting his and the recently departed Hugo Chavez’s generosity in providing heating oil for the poor people in Boston.  (As it turns out, this generosity is limited to 100 gallons of free oil per household … if you can get his company on the phone … and then you need to buy the rest of your oil-tank fill-up at normal rates.  See: Breitbart Story).

He has given himself the puffery title “Joe for Oil” and is seen on his TV ads dragging the oil filler hose with some impoverished child … preparing to provide (some) oil to the family of this urchin.  To see part of one of these self-aggrandizing ads go to: YouTube Video

Long ago, I wrote about this Kennedy charlatan (it seems to run in the family) … see: Sow's Ear, but Howie Carr has better scoured “Joe for Oil” in a recent column in the Boston Herald newspaper.  Joe Kennedy takes a salary of almost a million dollars from what he touts as a non-profit company, “Citizens Oil," and his wife pulls down well over $300,000 (for doing what it is not clear).  Basically, Joe Kennedy is running an ancillary for-profit oil trading operation (like Enron) and had gotten cozy with “our friend in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez” I’m reasonably sure to get a good price for the oil he then mostly resells at a nice profit … all the while giving the impression that he is a super do-gooder.  This is despicable behavior and I hope against hope that his unfair price leverage in now diminished as a result of Hugo Chavez’s demise.

Instead of “Joe for Oil,” I think that this Kennedy poppinjay might better be called “Oily Joe.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I learned first hand that Citizens Energy is a 95% for-profit company. I also discovered that CE gathers donations of various goods from American companies to 'give to the poor people in Africa' followed by gifting the items to governments which are under contract to sell oil to the for-profit side of CE.
The "my good friend, Hugo Chavez" looked suspiciously like advertising for Venezuelian Oil, which if anyone had the time and means, would learn was then turned into a discount for Oily Joe's company.

Anonymous said...

How do we get in on a gig like this?