A RW email bashing Citgo - and my response

[giant_robot]

I have a friend that gets RW emails and forwards them to everyone. She's not really a wingnut, just naive enough to believe everything the right wraps in the flag and presents with an emotional argument. I usually just delete them, but this one got my goat and I had to respond. Anyway, here's the original email (sans email addresses) and my reply.

The original email:

Venezuela Dictator Vows To Bring Down U.S. Government

Venezuela government is sole owner of Citgo gasoline company

Venezuela Dictator Hugo Chavez has vowed to bring down the U.S. government. Chavez, president ofVenezuela, told a TV audience : "Enough of imperialist aggression; we must tell the world: down with the U.S.empire. We have to bury imperialism this century."

The guest on his television program, beamed across Venezuela, was Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist. Chavez recently had as his guest Harry Belafonte, who called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world."

Chavez is pushing a socialist revolution and has a close alliance with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Regardless of your feelings about the war in Iraq, the issue here is that we have a socialist dictator vowing to bring down the government of the U.S. And he is using our money to achieve his goal!

The Venezuela government, run by dictator Chavez, is the sole owner of Citgo gas company. Sales of products at Citgo stations send money back to Chavez to help him in his vow to bring down our government.

Take Action

Please decide that you will not be shopping at a Citgo station. Why should U.S. citizens who love freedom be financing a dictator who has vowed to take down our government?

Very important. Please forward this to your friends and family. Most of them don't know that Citgo is owned by the Venezuela government.

YOU CAN VERIFY THIS ON THE CITGO WEB PAGE.

Go to www.citgo.com read "about us"

My response:

Who in the hell sends you this batshit-crazy bullshit? Citgo is the only, I repeat, the ONLY place you can buy gas where the money doesn't go to the Middle East. Hugo Chavez is a democratically elected leader, NOT a dictator, and he has pledged to use oil revenues to help improve the lives of the poor in Venezuela, which is a struggling third world country. He also provided price breaks for heating oil for poor folks in the northeast US this past winter. I included an email below that provides links to back up this information. So, it's your choice. You can buy gas from companies where revenues go to make rich Arabs richer and finance terrorists, or buy gas from Citgo and worry about an army of Juan Valdez and his fucking donkey overthrowing the most powerful nation in the world because Chavez decided to use oil revenues to pull him out of abject poverty. Your choice.

Dear John,

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor.1 The money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela - not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East.

"Citgo is not just another oil company," says Citgo CEO Felix Rodriguez. "With Venezuela's state oil company, of which we are a subsidiary, we share a broad social mission." So buy Citgo gasoline and support democracy in South America:

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address.

And this winter Citgo is helping out less fortunate Americans, too.

You already may have seen the headlines about how Citgo, unlike every other oil company in the U.S., is making cut-rate heating oil available to struggling families in the Northeast. The Energy Department predicts a nearly 26 percent jump in heating costs this winter compared with last year,2 and despite a year of record oil company profits, the country's heating oil assistance fund is falling behind.3

Citgo has stepped in to help out. They're selling heating oil at discounted rates to poorer communities in Massachusetts and the Bronx, NY, and working on deals to keep low-income homes in Rhode Island and Vermont warm, too.

So while you're out on the road this month, you can help some fellow Americans by filling your tank with Venezuelan gas. Here's a link to find the nearest one of the 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the U.S.:

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address.

Naturally, if you can get where you're going without a car, do so. And we'll continue to work for a country with more renewable energy options. But in the meantime, help your Northeast neighbors by supporting Citgo when you drive.

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address:

http://www.truemajorityaction.org/find_station.php

Thanks for all that you do,

Matt Holland
TrueMajorityACTION

1 Buy Your Gas at Citgo : Join the BUY-cott!

2 "Poor get chilly federal reception ," USA Today, 12/15/2005.

3 "OUT IN THE COLD: How Much LIHEAP Funding Will Be Needed to Protect Beneficiaries from Rising Energy Prices?" Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

On edit: a cut & paste error

[unpossibles]

1. Where do they get this crap?

the sad part is, I bet I know people who will believe this garbage.

[Skidmore]

3. They've been trained to see any social consciousness as a

manifestation of godless Communism (with a capital "c"). It never ceases to amaze me that so many callers to CSPAN, for example, rant and rave about Communism. The cold war is over. But some won't let it go and use it to rally the uneducated and lazy people by playing on their fears and superstitions.

[tenshi816]

7. It's that scary word

socialist that scares 'em. Why, socialists are just one step away from communists to those people. If you buy some of that socialist gas, next thing you know you'll be wanting to get some of that there socialized medical care and maybe even subsidized university fees, and that's the start down the long slippery slope. Scary stuff...booga booga!

[giant_robot]

10. Yet they don't seem frightened of Sweden at all...

...strange.

[tenshi816]

16. Two things:

One, Sweden's not full of brown people, who apparently frighten the RW.

Two, I'll bet a lot of the people forwarding the Citgo/Chavez e-mail aren't even aware that Sweden has a socialist government.

On a side note, I have several Swedish friends and have spent a fair bit of time there. Yes, they pay very high taxes (higher even than UK taxes) but, oh my, do they reap the benefits from it. Despite the taxes, many people own two homes (a "regular" home and a summer home). Educational standards are extremely high. There's not only extended maternity leave, but fathers get paternity leave as well. My female friends were encouraged by their companies to split their time between the office and working from home after their maternity leave was over. There's also government-subsidized childcare, and of course medical care and state pensions, and Lord knows what else. I love Sweden.

[unpossibles]

18. exactly. I doubt many put it together that high taxes is not inherently

bad, if it also gives a higher standard of living and actually benefits society. Then again, it is a smaller country and doesn't seem to suffer from our military penis envy problem.

[tenshi816]

19. Sweden's actually quite large for a European country

(7th in size, out of 47 countries), although it's not that densely populated (not quite 9 million people).

Leaving that aside, you're absolutely right, Sweden doesn't have a "military penis envy problem" (that did make me laugh).

Another thing I love about the Swedes is their pragmatic acknowledgment that they need to learn other languages to get ahead in the world outside Sweden. Every Swede I know has worked in either the USA, Australia or the UK (and a couple of them have worked in all three countries). Swedish children begin learning English intensively from the very beginning of their school years, and usually at least one or two more foreign languages. One of my friends said to me years ago that Swedes recognize that their language is very difficult for non-Swedes to learn and it's also not spoken regularly outside of Sweden, so they have always understood the importance of speaking other languages, particularly English. I wish more of us native English speakers felt the same way about speaking another language.

[unpossibles]

20. I meant smaller than America n/t

[ThomCat]

2. There are a lot of people out there

who think they're astute and intelligent who just wait to be fed the next myth they should believe, who wait for the next target they should hate. They will believe anything if it fits within their prejudices.

[peacetalksforall]

4. You friend said Chavez wants to bring down the U.S. Government.

Fighting imperialism is not bringing down the U.S. Government.

[giant_robot]

8. It wasn't my friend, per se. It was the right wing spam.

I agree with you, but I like to keep it short and simple when refuting this type of thing.

[Bozita]

5. Permission requested to steal your reply should THAT email ...

... appear in my inbox.

Superb response!

[Cha]

6. Oooooh..."Socialist"!

:scared: :scared: Citgo is my gas supplier, at least it was until I got rid of my car..but anytime I borrow a car that's where I go to fill it up.

Love, absolutely Love your email response to that batshit crazy rw propoganda Bullshit!

[giant_robot]

9. Thank you, zidzi!

:)

[Arugula Latte]

11. Be sure to tell her that OUR government tried to bring down THEM

WE'RE the ones who tried a COUP in THEIR country. (sorry for the caps ... I'm feeling the emphasis, man)

[giant_robot]

13. I understand the caps completely!

I used caps and a little more colorful language than usual in my response! It pisses me off too! :grr:

[Pool Hall Ace]

12. How ignorant can people be?

You don't even hard to look very hard to learn that Chavez is not a dictator. :crazy:

[giant_robot]

15. Maybe this means the Citgo buy-cott is working?

This smacks of a whisper campaign started by Exxon and their ilk, imho. Maybe their feeling the pinch from people who will buy only Citgo? Personally, this past week I was driving on fumes to get to my local Citgo rather than give Mobil a dollar to be sure I got there.

[Howland Owl]

14. This is asinine.

The only way to punish Citgo is to stop buying oil. If you buy oil from the Saudi's instead, you have still increased the demand for oil, meaning that the person who was buying that oil before will now buy it from Citgo. The author of this letter has no concept of free market economics.

Venezuelan oil is sour crap anyway. They sell it to us much cheaper because of its high sulfur content. There are only a handful of refineries that can handle it. It serves the environment better to have it refined in the US where the sulfur can be removed than to ship it to a Chinese refinery where they will leave the sulfur in, thus causing acid rain.

[BiggJawn]

17. I don't buy Citgo.

Most Expensive Station in Town.

My local "Gas n' Gulp": $2.80

The nearest BeePee: $2.85

The Citgo?

$2.96 a gallon.

And when we have a rash ov "over-three-buck-a-tosis" around here, the Citgo's the first through the 3 buck barrier and the last to come back down.