Northeast states cut heating aid to poor
WASHINGTON (AP) - Mary Power is 92 and worried about surviving another frigid New England winter because deep cuts in federal home heating assistance benefits mean she probably can’t afford enough heating oil to stay warm.
She lives in a drafty trailer in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood and gets by on $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits. Her heating aid help this year will drop from $1,035 to $685. With rising heating oil prices, it probably will cost her more than $3,000 for enough oil to keep warm unless she turns her thermostat down to 60 degrees, as she plans.
“I will just have to crawl into bed with the covers over me and stay there,” said Power, a widow who worked as a cashier and waitress until she was 80. “I will do what I have to do.”
Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.
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Northeast states cut heating aid to poor
I am trying to remember the last time the State of Texas offered ME any help on my bill in the summer, *The COOLING Bill*.
Granted, I am not 92 and frail, I don’t live in a drafty trailer and I get by on a little more than $11,148 a year in pension and Social Security benefits, but suppose I didn’t?
Texas is a great place, but I’m just not aware of the state paying electric bills for folks in the summer, and oppressive heat will kill just as sure as cold, and believe me, Texas has some seriously oppressive heat in the summer.
I’m not trying to make fun of Mary Power or her predicament, as a matter of fact, I am very sympathetic to her plight, I too am on a fixed income, I know what it means to *cut corners*.
I know what it means to see a notification of a donation to the blog in my email, if it weren’t for those donations I couldn’t operate on this format. I also know that during the summer we have to set our air conditioning to 77° or 78° in order to have a manageable electric bill.
Where Mary Power sets her heat at 60° and uses her bed covers to keep warm in the winter, we use fans to enhance our cooling in the summer and we wear shorts and Tee-Shirts. We plan our activities for the hours AFTER the sun goes down.
Here is one other little factoid for you; you can always put on more layers of clothes in order to keep yourself warm, you can’t take enough layers OFF in the summer. We ALL live where we live and deal with the nuance of our weather patterns. If people aren’t happy with the prevailing conditions of the weather, most move to a more pleasant, and more hospitable climate if feasible.
“They’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives,” said John Drew, who heads Action for Boston Community Development, Inc., which provides aid to low-income residents in Massachusetts.
The issue could flare just as New Hampshire votes in the Republican presidential primary.
OK, this *crisis* comes along just before the primaries, don’t the people realize that it’s the Obama administration that is cutting the Federal subsidies? And right about now, cutting is the best thing that Washington can do?
Does anyone suppose that a Republican, a Conservative, could, or would do otherwise?
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she hopes the candidates will take up the region’s heating aid crunch because it underscores how badly the country needs a comprehensive energy policy.
And up pops the RINO from HELL, Olympia Snowe.
OK, so this is WAY off topic, but has anyone noticed how those pictures that circulate over the ‘net every so often, the ones that compare how pretty GOP women are compared to Dem women, you NEVER have a pic of Olympia Snowe as a representative of the GOP? 
Sweet dreams peeps! 
She can always buy her an electric Snuggie Blanket with a long extension cord.
We keep our summer thermostat higher than that Fred-you must be rich!!!
You work days most of the time too…
And I know, you keep the A/C COLD in the Blue Bell Ice Cream truck…
Jesus Christ, Fred — have you no shame?
There I was on a Sunday, just awakened, nice cold can of Monster in my hand, cruising the net, checking my blog, when I came to this post and scrolled down to the photograph of Snowe.
I’m gonna send YOU the bill for cleaning that sticky shit off my keyboard and screen!
Blecchh!!
BZ
Olympia would be almost as effective as Helen Thomas for curing the “erection lasting more than four hours” problem.
Gee, so it sounds like Chavez is no longer sending oil to our poor. Recall the Kennedy ad with Bobby Kennedy extoling the virtues of “our friend from South America helping our poor”? But then, I no longer buy Citgo gas.
Snowe: “Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she hopes the candidates will take up the region’s heating aid crunch because it underscores how badly the country needs a comprehensive energy policy.”
Actually, Snowe is correct, but likely for all the wrong reasons. If we had a decent energy policy we would be drilling like crazy, bringing gas and oil wells on board, dropping the price like all billy hell and this poor lady on a fixed income could afford heat.
One more reason to get rid of that idjit in the White House.
Oh, and Fred, not help with AC, but during the dallas heat wave several years ago, didn’t a lot of charities and electric companies band together to get help for those that were in a real bind and deliver at least fans? Seems to me I remember that, but I’m getting old so who knows.
Some charities did band together, bought window units and fans for those without, but that didn’t help the electric bill…
There may have been some help from the electric companies, maybe a deferred bill, maybe… I know of a lot of folks having their power turned OFF…
Some companies seem to think they are in business to make money, imagine having that kind of capitalistic mindset..
One way to heat up your home so it is comfortable to sleep in is to bake a lot. Not just cookies and cakes, but a potato or two. I do that every evening here up near Chicago and when I get under the quilt (Goose down) I am warm until I awaken in the morning. Then it is making morning muffins and the house is warm until I start dinner.
It doesn’t take extra food to do this. Just cooking it to do 2 things.
Good point. We avail ourselves of that tool.
We also vent the clothes dryer air into the house.
A space heater might help Mary; nothing’s gonna help Olympia…
Yeah, to make MONEY… how gross of them. OF COURSE they should lose money year round. On the other hand, those folks in the north east would suffer year round as would the rest of us… just imagine, everybody loses money on every transaction, then, why then it would be utopia. Wouldn’t it?
We who live in the Northeast do have a significant problem with our heating bills. Many of us heat with oil, and we all know how that price has climbed to the ceiling.
My last bill was $1400 for two months @ $4/gallon. I am supplementing with electric space heaters, and my electric bill is double its usual.
I have a small house with hot-water radiator heat AND thermal windows. Our thermostat is set at 65 degrees. Mr. AOW can’t stand the thermostat to be set any lower since his stroke. In fact, if not for the heating pad that he keeps with him in the hospital bed at all time and if not for wearing a sweat suit as pajamas and having layers upon layers of bed covers (that last a problem when he has to transfer to the bedside potty), he wouldn’t be able to stand the thermostat below 75 degrees. I kid you not. I did notice that the nursing home where he was kept the thermostat over 80 degrees. Residents of a nursing home can’t stand the cold (their definition of “cold”).
Once Mr. AOW’s Medicare kicks in (March 2012), paying the heating bill will be easier. His monthly health insurance bill will drop by some $500.
But I’m not bitching. Not really. I’m just saying that the Northeast does have a crisis with heating bills. Of course, getting government aid for those bills is a problem in and of itself. People are getting way to used to The Nanny State!
Hate to be the cold blooded libertarian capitalist here but..? Imagine a sane energy policy, as noted above. Package that with church based charities like there used to be, and..?
Problems solved.