There are good reasons Venezuelans like Chavez

"Something must be working, because his approval rating stands at 77 percent, the highest in the Americas..."

Here is today's multiple choice question: Who recently provided 1.15 million gallons of low-cost heating oil to thousands of poor and working class families in seven East Coast states, including 25,000 people in the Philadelphia area, and did so with the words, "No one should be forced to sacrifice food, shelter, or medicine to stay warm?"

a. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

b. Felix Rodriguez

c. George W. Bush

d. Oprah Winfrey

e. 10 major U.S. oil companies.

The correct answer is "b" and Rodriguez is the CEO of Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). On behalf of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he also distributed free heating oil to dozens of homeless shelters from Maine to Delaware.

Venezuela, owner of the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East and the world's fifth-largest oil producer, also sold oil at far lower costs to 15 poor nations in the Caribbean and Central America. Even Native Americans in Maine were recipients.

The 10 U.S. oil companies did not respond to requests to help the poor. One of them, in fact, Exxon, reported record profits of $36 billion in 2005.

In spite of these good acts, Venezuela's leader is very controversial. Can the twice democratically elected Chavez be the same fellow that Pat Robertson wants the CIA to assassinate, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has likened to Adolf Hitler; and official and semi-official types have placed on the White House "enemies list," labeled a "red devil," as "lethal as Osama bin Laden," and a "madman?" Further, the United States supported an unsuccessful military coup against Chavez in 2002 and Condoleezza Rice has called the Venezuelan government a "major threat to the region."

Assuming for the moment that preventing Pennsylvanians from freezing to death hasn't prompted this venomous rhetoric, what could account for it? Perhaps the answer lies in some evil deeds done by President Chavez back in Venezuela. What mischief has he been up to there?

The challenges are daunting in Venezuela, where 80 percent of the population is poor and a million children scratch out a bare subsistence in the major cities. After four decades of indifferent upper-class rule, Chavez, a 51-year-old former army paratrooper, was elected president in 1998 and again in 2004. According to Washington- based economist Mark Weisbrot, "The tangible improvements for those living in Caracas's poor barrios have been noticed in the rest of Latin America, a region with the most outrageously unequal income distribution in the world." Here are a few highlights of his tenure:

For the first time, universal health care is official state policy and peasants are living longer due to accessible health care.

Elementary schools are providing three free meals a day to all students, drawing some million new students to school.

Misiones (missions and government projects) are extending vital social services like literacy training, food subsidies and rudimentary health care to the poor.

Indigenous Venezuelans, homosexuals and women are now protected in the constitution.

Land reform is redistributing idle land to landless peasants.

Operation milagro (miracle), a joint venture with Cuban doctors, has restored eyesight to thousands of blind people in the region.

Venezuelan elites, who despise Chavez and call him a monkey, have tried mightily to sabotage the economy for eight years, but it grew at a respectable 9 percent in 2005, the highest in the hemisphere.

Venezuelan oil has made this possible, but only Chavez acted on the clearly subversive and radical notion that the country's resources should be used to benefit the country's people and even those beyond its borders. Oil was nationalized in 1976, but the oil bureaucracy operated as a "state within a state." The system remains imperfect, but Chavez finally took control in 2001 and the petrodollars are now staying home in the form of social spending, faithfully reflecting social ownership of this natural resource. Something must be working, because his approval rating stands at 77 percent, the highest in the Americas, according to Datanalisis, the country's major polling firm.

And, of course, this begins to explain why Chavez is viewed as a threat. An alternative development model where the citizens, not private U.S. foreign investors, are the primary beneficiaries of government policy is feared by U.S. elites. As Latin American expert Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros observes, from Washington's perspective the real threat is that if Chavez succeeds, he may "create an eqalitarian society that has the power to resist United States hegemony."

Who knows where this virus may appear next. To help it spread, I'm filling my tank at the Citgo station from now on.