Blog#239- 4/6/25
POLITICAL MURDER
By
Richard Davis
Over six million Americans who rely on federal government fuel assistance to heat their homes or pay electric bills to fend off extreme heat may have to find another way to pay for things that keep them alive. The government office that administers the LIHEAP (Low Income Energy Assistance Program) has been gutted and all of the staff have been fired.
Theoretically, the money still exists to meet people’s needs but there will be no way to get that money to people. The bottom line is that if this program doesn’t do what it has done in past years a lot of people are going to suffer and die. This kind of action by the Trump administration is nothing short of murder.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, “The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people from Maine to Texas during frigid winters and hot summers.”
Politicians are expressing outrage at the most recent action by our new dictator and his team of henchmen. But talk is not going to change anything and unless a majority of Republicans and Democrats in congress fight back against the decimation of America the rogue administration will continue its purge of democracy.
The only way to prevent inevitable deaths is for state and local entities to take matters into their own hands and find ways to come up with some of the funds that will not flow from the LIHEAP program. State and municipal budgets are tight and there is little room for the expenditure of the kind of money that LIHEAP provides.
Public protest may make people feel better about the miserable state of affairs in this country but Trump and his lieutenants will only feel emboldened to fight back harder. Protest is an important tool, but when you are dealing with a psychopathic, egomaniac president he will look at protest as a sign that he is doing a good job.
When it comes to the LIHEAP situation I think the best way to deal with it is for individual communities to set up non-profits quickly and solicit funding from individuals and businesses to help pay for fuel and electricity for vulnerable people.
We have a model here in Windham County in Vermont called the Windham County Heat Fund. Daryl Pillsbury and I created the fund 20 years ago to help people who needed more than just LIHEAP support. Now we may find ourselves the only lifeline for local people.
The fund usually raises anywhere from $30-$50,000 a year and those funds help people mostly at the beginning and end of the heating season before and after LIHEAP assistance. If the LIHEAP cuts remain in place I am going to try to mount an effort for us to at least double our donation income next year.
I don’t think we can do this alone so I will solicit help from other local human service organizations to develop a plan to save the lives of some of our more vulnerable residents next winter. It will take a lot of effort but I think our community is up to the task.
I hope we can raise enough money to show that we can effectively fight back against the murderous actions of the Trump administration and save the lives that he has put no value on.
