Recession of 2008 and impact on the DR

[cobraboy]

Originally Posted by pedrochemical

I was going to respond,"Then why don't you?"

But it might be work in progress, I suppose.

Also, being capable of something is not the same as actually doing something.

From what I see, things ain't as rosy as they should /could be here.

One wonders why there are charity NGO's on every corner if it's true.

[catcherintherye]

Pedro's point about the difference "being able to do something and atually doing it" is well taken. It seems if an entity (such as the DR government) has the ability to do something about a problematic situation and chooses to do nothing, then that entity must have a vested interest in keeping thing as they are.

Perhaps there are those who benefit from a system that offers poor education to thea majority, with few if any, opportunities for most, leaving the elite few with all the power and wealth.

[cobraboy]

Originally Posted by catcherintherye

Pedro's point about the difference "being able to do something and atually doing it" is well taken. It seems if an entity (such as the DR government) has the ability to do something about a problematic situation and chooses to do nothing, then that entity must have a vested interest in keeping thing as they are.

Perhaps there are those who benefit from a system that offers poor education to thea majority, with few if any, opportunities for most, leaving the elite few with all the power and wealth.

IMO it goes back to the political will of the people.

The constitutionally mandated % of GDP goes unabided and the people barely make a sound.

The closing time of bars goes down and the people raise hell.

Kinda telling, no?

[Malibook]

Originally Posted by PICHARDO

There's not mistake about drug money being used for all kinds of investments in the DR, but to say all of the actual and past two decades in development owes to that, is baseless on your part!!

Who claimed that?

[Malibook]

Originally Posted by cobraboy

Harvard International Review

$US3,300,000,000. Through the Caribbean. If the DR gets even 20% of that flow...a modest claim...that means the impact would be around $US660,000,000.

That has no impact? Granted, not all "sticks" in the DR. But to say that kind of jack flowing through the country has little to no impact is absurd. NAL's, I know you're known as a cheerleader, but you lose a bunch of cred making assertions like that.

I'm sure middlemen transit people make some decent coin, as do some local dealers, but their take is likely a very thin slice of the pie.
I highly doubt that 20% is "a modest claim".
The DR is not a producer and not a big consumer so I wouldn't think that drug money is a very significant part of the Dominican economy, not that it is insignificant.

[PICHARDO]

Originally Posted by cobraboy

How about you post links to the pictures and news stories that account for 15,000 laptops.

To think politicians wouldn't publicize such charity for personal benefit is absurd. There would be PLENTY of available publicity about it.

I just did!!!

Go visit Skyscrapercity.com and shift to Dominican Republic and check local news to see the endless pictures of Laptops being handed over to kids.
Why is not being put in the front pages of Listin Diario or used by Politicians to further their public office ambitions? This work is 100% on the personal level for all those involved, unlike the myriad of charities touting their "aid" everywhere they hand out crank up radios and a drinking well to Haitian kids, which btw are being used to show poor Dominican kids in need...

Cobra my world is not fantasy land in Cap Cana's marina or at one of the endless AI around the coast. We're the average Dominican citizens, living in the "real" cities where people work, shop, live and go about their daily chores.

The ones paying cash for cars, homes, the new cell phone that came out tomorrow, paying more than US$ 5 a gallon at pumps, killer rates for electrical billing, private clinics for our kids, etc...

Our problems in the DR are mainly of a blown population of dirt poor people that we assumed costs for, to the tune of almost 20% of the population today. Go back exactly 30 years in time and things were nowhere near close to today's embarrassing poverty around. Poor? Pueblo Nuevo was a poor Barrio! Go visit today and tell them they're poor while standing in their living room and watching a 42" flat tv, which you don't even have at home in your expat's nest...

We imported a big size headache from Haiti, one that puts to shame the immigration problems of the US and Mexico alike. You measure poverty by looks, but a campesino sipping freshly roasted/grinded/percolated coffee from his grounds in his porch with the Jarabacoa or Constanza backdrop, is far from being called "poor"...

Your one size ruler for poverty and development from your first world developed countries, are not compatible here in the DR...

If you doubt that, most of the largest biz by Dominicans in the US are owned by sons of campesinos from places like Los Ranchos, Sabana Iglesia, Las Matas, Juncalito, Los Montones, etc...

Those same sons from who today you see kids driving on a late model Benz, Ferrari or else and automatically label them as Drug dealers, for their age and wealth. There's family wealth and acquired one via fast biz, we all know in the DR which comes from which, you don't!

Cobra even thus you think you have learned much of what the DR really is and how it works, one must understand the past to fully grasp the today and now.

I don't blame Haitians for the poverty levels in the DR, I blame us Dominicans for that. We were the ones paying better rates to have our manicured lawns taken care by them, building our homes for close to nothing, securing our properties overnight with a flashlight and shotgun for long hours and little pay and the endless things we got used to having for close to pennies.

We created that problem and it’s our responsibility to fix it down the road...

Just because it's hard for you to spare a couple of bucks to donate some laptops to kids in poor sectors of our society, doesn't render us equally incapable of doing it. After all, we paid cash for our late model car, home and live-in domesticas... We can afford it quite well, with time!

If you really want to help the situation for all of us in the DR, do so when you complaint about the gov and services. So far it has seemed to be working just dandy for all of us!

So many came to support us in terms of environmental problems and protests, that it has shown to our kids that their voices have a real power to move even government to act accordingly. We need more social interaction with our youth from those with active experience in social cause championing, not to tell us how to properly educate our kids unlike theirs back home. Dominican students are more respectful of their teachers and elders, than first world developed kids and their parents could ever dream of.

While kids back in the States of UK would make a party for having their home room teacher missing days of work, the DR kids protest the missing teachers from theirs... That's something you must think about!!!

When you see the DR, see it as what it is: We're a developing country, unlike the developed one you come from. You expect to see and match what you had to what the DR should look like, given all the infrastructure around fooling you into thinking otherwise.

I have yet to see a Super Wal-Mart in the US match the Jumbo Luperon alone... Yet does that means that we're to expect the same in colleges and schools alike?

[cobraboy]

Originally Posted by PICHARDO

I just did!!!

Go visit Skyscrapercity.com and shift to Dominican Republic and check local news to see the endless pictures of Laptops being handed over to kids.
Why is not being put in the front pages of Listin Diario or used by Politicians to further their public office ambitions? This work is 100% on the personal level for all those involved, unlike the myriad of charities touting their "aid" everywhere they hand out crank up radios and a drinking well to Haitian kids, which btw are being used to show poor Dominican kids in need...

Cobra my world is not fantasy land in Cap Cana's marina or at one of the endless AI around the coast. We're the average Dominican citizens, living in the "real" cities where people work, shop, live and go about their daily chores.

The ones paying cash for cars, homes, the new cell phone that came out tomorrow, paying more than US$ 5 a gallon at pumps, killer rates for electrical billing, private clinics for our kids, etc...

Our problems in the DR are mainly of a blown population of dirt poor people that we assumed costs for, to the tune of almost 20% of the population today. Go back exactly 30 years in time and things were nowhere near close to today's embarrassing poverty around. Poor? Pueblo Nuevo was a poor Barrio! Go visit today and tell them they're poor while standing in their living room and watching a 42" flat tv, which you don't even have at home in your expat's nest...

We imported a big size headache from Haiti, one that puts to shame the immigration problems of the US and Mexico alike. You measure poverty by looks, but a campesino sipping freshly roasted/grinded/percolated coffee from his grounds in his porch with the Jarabacoa or Constanza backdrop, is far from being called "poor"...

Your one size ruler for poverty and development from your first world developed countries, are not compatible here in the DR...

If you doubt that, most of the largest biz by Dominicans in the US are owned by sons of campesinos from places like Los Ranchos, Sabana Iglesia, Las Matas, Juncalito, Los Montones, etc...

Those same sons from who today you see kids driving on a late model Benz, Ferrari or else and automatically label them as Drug dealers, for their age and wealth. There's family wealth and acquired one via fast biz, we all know in the DR which comes from which, you don't!

Cobra even thus you think you have learned much of what the DR really is and how it works, one must understand the past to fully grasp the today and now.

I don't blame Haitians for the poverty levels in the DR, I blame us Dominicans for that. We were the ones paying better rates to have our manicured lawns taken care by them, building our homes for close to nothing, securing our properties overnight with a flashlight and shotgun for long hours and little pay and the endless things we got used to having for close to pennies.

We created that problem and it’s our responsibility to fix it down the road...

Just because it's hard for you to spare a couple of bucks to donate some laptops to kids in poor sectors of our society, doesn't render us equally incapable of doing it. After all, we paid cash for our late model car, home and live-in domesticas... We can afford it quite well, with time!

If you really want to help the situation for all of us in the DR, do so when you complaint about the gov and services. So far it has seemed to be working just dandy for all of us!

So many came to support us in terms of environmental problems and protests, that it has shown to our kids that their voices have a real power to move even government to act accordingly. We need more social interaction with our youth from those with active experience in social cause championing, not to tell us how to properly educate our kids unlike theirs back home. Dominican students are more respectful of their teachers and elders, than first world developed kids and their parents could ever dream of.

While kids back in the States of UK would make a party for having their home room teacher missing days of work, the DR kids protest the missing teachers from theirs... That's something you must think about!!!

When you see the DR, see it as what it is: We're a developing country, unlike the developed one you come from. You expect to see and match what you had to what the DR should look like, given all the infrastructure around fooling you into thinking otherwise.

I have yet to see a Super Wal-Mart in the US match the Jumbo Luperon alone... Yet does that means that we're to expect the same in colleges and schools alike?

Wow.

A lot of words when "There are no media articles about the 15,000 laptops" would have sufficed.

Surrender noted.

[PICHARDO]

Originally Posted by cobraboy

Wow.

A lot of words when "There are no media articles about the 15,000 laptops" would have sufficed.

Surrender noted.

Yes they are plenty to see! You just want me to do your work for you!

Just that the kind you'll be looking for (as in well placed political adds +++) will not be the ones you'll be seeing the pictures at.

Follow the link I gave you and do some clicking away there. Plenty of pictures and data for you to see and read on this there!

You're just like some other fellow in another forum, who likes others to do his work for him. Which I never do!!!

Some of the ones you'll find:


San Jose de Ocoa.


Moca.













The rest you got to fish by yourself...

Most of the Laptops provided to kids were donated on private functions, by many private citizens just like you in the DR.

Indotel keeps tracks of the numbers, since they capture the MAC id on the laptops and provide the free access, to those into the already rolling out and extending Wi-Fi services around the rural areas of the DR.

Cobra go and donate a couple of late model laptops to our kids via Indotel...

Thank you in advanced for the gift to our children!!!

[cobraboy]

Originally Posted by PICHARDO

The rest you got to fish by yourself...

-. Indotel .- Instituto Dominicano de las Telecomunicaciones - Buscar

Darn if I can't find diddly about 15,000 laptops. Seems that even Indotel shows that 14,800 or so are "missing."

I must not be using the correct bait...

Maybe the "unaccounted for" are the laptops that will be bought when the DR funds the education system to the Constitutionally mandated level.

[Onions/Carrots]

It is POSITIVE to see that number of laptops given to needy children. I wouldn't knock it. I wonder how many of those laptops won't be sold by the parents of those kids once they hit a financial snag OR the more famous "empeno" mode of securing funds widely used by dominicans.

But, nonetheless it is positive. It is true that decades ago such an action would be unheard of. President Fernandez has changed the manner in which government responds to the people. Grievances on behalf the populace was met with the army in the past. Today, criticism is tolerated and for the most part citizen outrage is allowed to express itself within certain limits.

Now as far as government numbers concerning growth, UE, etc we all know the numbers are cooked. If the US engages in such number cooking methods, what is to be expected in the DR?

Also, any improvement is NOT commensurate with the continuing level of crushing poverty on the island. There is an extreme disconnect in that sense.

But if you come from the vantage point that in prior times it would have been worse which is accurate, then any improvement is a welcome change. In that sense Pichardo's DR pumping is accurate.