Joe-4-Oil cut off

How predictable was this! Citizens Energy, run by former congressman Joe Kennedy II, may have to close up the oil delivery part of its operations for good after Venezuela begged off on its low-cost heating oil contributions for the second consecutive winter.

Memo to Joe-4-Oil: This is what happens when you hitch your wagon to a ruthless dictator, willing to impoverish his own people so he can make goodwill gestures to gullible American expols and other like-minded pals, like the Castros of Cuba.

The reports of Venezuela’s deteriorating economic situation began shortly after the 2013 death of President Hugo Chavez, who originally struck the deal with Kennedy in 2005 — shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Kennedy and Chavez found common ground in their mutual dislike of President George W. Bush.

So Kennedy’s nonprofit got the oil and Chavez got good PR from those sickening ads Kennedy used to run thanking “the good people of Venezuela” for their generosity — as if they had anything to say about it.

Now the “good people of Venezuela” are starving under the leadership of Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro. Inflation is rampant. Grocery store and pharmacy shelves are empty. The New York Times has reported that even oil production has been hampered because workers aren’t getting enough to eat and so fainting on the job is a concern — along with the inability of the national oil company to properly equip its own workers.

And then the greatest irony of all, last year Venezuela was forced to import U.S. oil — the kind of light crude needed to prepare its own oil for export.

Yes, eventually, as the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to say, “socialists run out of other people’s money.”

Cuba has already been cut off from Venezuelan largesse.

And now a nation which cannot feed its own people has decided it can no longer contribute to providing heat to people here.

“While this is not good news, it certainly isn’t surprising,” Kennedy told The Associated Press.

Well, at least he got that much right.