Should we ask Hugo Chavez for foreign aid?

If the shortage at food banks isn't enough, the New York Times reports today that "Government money short to help poor pay heating bills". Excerpts:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program.

The poor, already digging deep to pay for expensive gasoline, also will face much higher heating fuel costs, especially if oil prices stay near record levels.

The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program.

The current $2.16 billion LIHEAP budget in only $300 million more than what the program had when it was created by Congress in 1981. Despite higher energy costs, the Bush administration has proposed cutting the program's budget.

The Energy Department forecasts that household expenses for all heating fuels will rise this winter from last year, with costs for heating oil up 22 percent, propane up 16 percent, natural gas up 10 percent and residential electric bills up 4 percent.

"If it is a typical winter, it's going to be a real struggle for these (poor) households. If it's colder than normal all bets are off," Fox said.

Heating bills will be even higher if the recent jump in U.S. crude oil prices sticks. Oil has soared more than $10 a barrel this month and topped a record $90 on Friday at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Remember 2005?

See "Chavez ships discounted heating oil to US Families"

At the end of November [2005] , 12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil for 45,000 poor families and social-service organizations started rolling into Massachusetts from Venezuela. The Bronx also is receiving discounted heating oil under Chavez' program, and discussions are underway with other states that experience cold weather. Home heating oil costs are expected to rise 30 to 50 percent this winter - because of Big Oil's price gouging and restrictions on production, say critics. Despite record-breaking profits in 2005, all the major U.S. oil corporations reportedly refused to participate in similar programs.

I've watched this phenomena in upstate New York for 25 years and know what this means in practice. I don't know the exact numbers, but let's estimate that 1 in 10 of the families without heat rigs up some foolish heat source - an old kerosene lamp, a fire in the sink, a space heater that should have been discarded (or was) years ago. Of those, say 1 in 10 leaves the room unattended or with just children in it; Of those say 1 in 10 actually succeeds in dropping something flammable in the heater or tipping over the heater; of those say 1 in 10 starts a house fire; of those say 1 in 10 results in fatalities.

I'll do the math. How many will die from this policy? 30 million times (1/10) times (1/10) times (1/10) times (1/10) = 3000 lives. This lack of "funding", if those numbers are correct, will result in the same loss of life as the World Trade Center attack, fires, and building collapses on 9/11.

Somehow, the way humans perceive things, the 3000 lives lost in NYC are visible tous, but the 3000 people lost from not funding this heating subsidy is invisible. To those who die, there is no difference. To the families of those who die, there is little difference, and sometimes equal bitter anger.

But, it won't announce itself. You'll just see, here and there, on a regular basis, all winter, in every city in the north, headlines like "Horrified neighbors watch as mom tries to rescue 3 children in fire" and some details about how some makeshift space-heater was responsible.

IN public health we try to go upstream and, like Toyota, ask "Why?" five times.

Why did they die? The fire killed them.
Why was there a fire? Space heater caused it.
Why was there space heater? They couldn't afford to pay for heat.
Why couldn't afford to pay? Government inaction or indifference?
Just spent everything on food or medical costs?
No job.
Why no job? No jobs anywhere. "The economy" has tanked.
Why high cost of food and health care? Much debated.
Why was there government inaction? Because the voters tolerate it.

Why do the voters tolerate it?
Probably due to the number of levels that the consequences are removed from the actions that result in them, people actually don't see what's happening, or don't see it with enough clarity and confidence to change their behavior, given the other louder and more immediate problems they themselves have.
Possibly because they buy the argument that the children who die somehow deserve it for being poor.
Possibly because some human agency was in the middle of this causal chain they blame the parent or grand-parent for bad judgment -- possibly forgetting what their own judgment is like when cold and hungry and in pain and your kids or parents are getting sick and asking you why you can't do something to make it warmer.


Congress fiddles, and children will die. That's what will happen.
We just don't know which ones where and when, and no single incident can be clearly "blamed" on this chain of events, and we, as a society, outside of public health, don't have a way to pull together all these separate incidents and discover that there is a pattern here, a common thread and cause.

It's the same problem we have with smoking. Half of smokers will die of smoking-related diseases. Half. But we don't see it. It happens later, far away, out of sight, with too much in-between for our human eyes to relate the two.