Quote:
Originally posted by turbo6bar
Improving the local school is a very noble act, but it's like remodeling your kitchen while the siding is falling off the house and windows are being broken by thugs throwing rocks.
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I actually see improvng public education as more like fixing the foundation. We programmers often refer to "necessary and sufficient conditions" for things to happen. And while fixing the education system may not be a "sufficient" condition for improving the world, I think it
is a "necessary" condition. Without fixing the problem of edication first, I think we are royally screwed. Just my opinion.
BTW - I found more info on Joe Kenedy's oil company. The website is here...
http://www.citizensenergy.com
And here is part of the company bio...
COMPANY HISTORY
Citizens Energy Corporation is a non-profit company whose successful commercial subsidiaries support a wide array of social and charitable programs in the United States and abroad.
Founded in Boston by Joseph P. Kennedy II in 1979, Citizens Energy became a leading innovator in the energy and health care fields and used its entrepreneurial ventures to help people in need in the U.S., Africa, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. In its first decade, Citizens' commercial activities included crude oil trading, oil exploration and production, electric power and natural gas marketing, mail-order service pharmaceuticals, and environmental business consulting.
Citizens' first major charitable program used profits from oil trading ventures to buy low-cost home heating oil for the poor and elderly in Massachusetts. During the oil price shocks of the late 1970s, Joe Kennedy struck purchasing agreements with petroleum-producing nations, negotiated finance, shipping and refining deals and sold off the refined petroleum products. Using the dividends to dramatically write down the cost of home heating oil, Kennedy arranged storage deals with major terminal operators and contracted with hundreds of retail dealers to deliver the oil to needy Massachusetts families at 40% below market rates.
Citizens Energy continued to identify and capitalize on market opportunities to become a widely recognized and profitable innovator. Through its history, Citizens has been:
* One of the largest independent lifters of crude oil from Angola, Nigeria, and Venezuela, with over $1.2 billion in annual sales.
* The pioneer electricity trading company in the pre-deregulated market, becoming the first non-utility to win a federal license to trade power between utilities.
* A leading marketer of natural gas to Local Distribution Companies after successfully challenging monopoly control of the nation's natural gas pipelines.
* A leading innovator in the energy conservation field, achieving average energy savings of up to 40% through retrofits in clients' properties.
* A major marketer of mail-order prescription drugs, helping to sell billions of dollars of pharmaceuticals while achieving 40% savings over conventional delivery.
Dividends from these ventures have gone to support charitable programs as innovative as the businesses that financed them. Emphasizing practical, self-sustaining development projects that foster self-reliance rather than government aid, Citizens' social enterprises have included projects that:
* Expanded fuel assistance to thousands of Massachusetts families through bulk oil purchasing.
* Provided low-cost AZT and other medications to hundreds of low-income and uninsured people with AIDS.
* Established a public health initiative to fund programs and research benefiting the uninsured and those without access to health care. Funded projects ranged from well-baby clinics at homeless shelters to street outreach for at-risk youth.
* Introduced and distributed hybrid seeds to Nigerian farmers, increasing yields of staple crops and raising the nutritional values of local diets.
* Channeled microenterprise loans to the poor of Ecuador, Colombia, and South Africa, enabling bootstrap entrepreneurs to finance and start their own businesses for the first time.
* Introduced the use of solar energy hot water systems in hospitals in Venezuela and Jamaica.
* Helped create Angola's first private institution of higher education, the Catholic University of Angola, bringing valuable learning opportunities to a country torn apart by 30 years of civil war.
* Pioneered bio-mass technology in Costa Rica, generating electricity for the first time in rural farming communities.
Citizens Energy's ongoing charitable efforts include its Oil Heat Program, which has provided millions of gallons of low-cost fuel to thousands of low-income and elderly households in Massachusetts. Citizens also covers the winter energy needs of over 150 homeless shelters in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and channels funds to pay the natural gas heating bills of thousands of low-income customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.
Citizens Energy has developed a new non-profit initiative, Citizens Health, a prescription drug discount card to lower the costs of medications to senior citizens and uninsured working families. The burden of rising prescription drug costs falls the hardest on older Americans living on fixed incomes and family bread-winners working at jobs without benefits or enough income to afford health insurance. Using the Citizens Health card, members receive deep discounts on prescriptions at most local pharmacies or through mail-order delivery.
Since 1998, Joseph P. Kennedy II has served as Chairman and President of Citizens Energy Corporation, returning to the company full-time after serving six terms in Congress representing the 8th District in Massachusetts.
After Kennedy's departure for Congress in 1987, his late brother, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, took the reins of Citizens as company President. Under Michael Kennedy's leadership, Citizens launched humanitarian relief missions to Eastern Europe, Angola, Congo, Namibia, and Nigeria while expanding Citizens' charitable programs on the African continent, including efforts to remove deadly landmines from the Angolan landscape. He also helped launch an award-winning initiative to stop handgun violence and created a new charitable venture supporting programs and research to benefit the homeless, the uninsured, and others without access to quality health care.