why can't i thank you mis for your last comment??? i thank you all the same
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why can't i thank you mis for your last comment??? i thank you all the same
I think both you and others are misinformed as to the amount of people who managed to really "take advantage" of the situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by CocoChanel [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
From what I've seen, them majority of the homeowners who either lost a home, or had a home damaged did what they could in an extremely hellish situation.
If you guys are referring to the jobless, drug dealing, poor that had nothing to start, then yeah, who is surprised that they blew the money (if they even got their hands on it.) Not everyone got their hands on those handouts, even those who were fully qualified for it. On the other hand, many of those living in poor neighborhoods like the 9th ward were shipped all over the United States and have just set up shop wherever they ended up. Some of which still sit on their porches drinking, while others taking the opportunity, for the first time in their lives to explore a world outside of the Big Easy.
Doesn't matter which city you go to, you'll always find people looking to take advantage of the system. In fact I worked with a guy who lived in Jefferson Parish (suburbs), which didn't really get hit by the flood water. He owned a nice home and drove a mercedes. Didn't matter, he still claimed damages due to the hurricane even though it was at best, minor wind damage to roof. He ended up buying an off road F-250, a gaming computer, and a host of other bullshit.
So what we need is better policies and people who will make sure that the people who NEED the money are the ones who get it.
That kind of bullshit even happens at my school. They just built a new student center here, they are going to build a huge ass wellness center soon too.... but I am a very poor college student and they only give me enough money to eat 1 meal per day... sometimes none.
Dumbass athletes get a fully paid ride to come here... most of them can't get good grades. Most of them have parents who could pay their tuition and everything from their back pockets... those ****ing idiots are the ones with the really nice clothes, who have enough money to dye their hair and stuff. I know a girl who is on the swim team, she didn't know that v=d/t. A girl who is in my German class is on the basketball team. I am in 3rd year level German, and she still can't put a coherent sentence together. In class it takes her 3 ****ing minutes to answer a question. I have a 4.0 in my studies, and all I get is a $400 ****ing scholarship to *help* pay for the cost of my airplane ticket, which is pretty much the cheapest thing I had to buy for my study abroad trip. Luckily I was given scholarship money by some rotary clubs and some generous relatives.
And then, living off campus is going to be much cheaper, but I will bet anyone here that my uni cuts off a lot of my fin. aid because I am not going to be paying $3800/semester to live in their shitty 1 room dormitories that I have to share with another person, and have to stand up and take shits, and have to take cold showers every damn morning, even when I have something like strep throat :( which I probably contracted from the stupid dirty bathrooms here.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I"]YouTube - Dead Kennedys - Kill the poor[/ame]
We kiyu foist!
is there anyone looking for work because i'm offering my 5 bucks for a blowjob...hopefully it will be one of the females from the goddess thread, though i can't be very picky with 5 bucks.
raverboy
There is a sea of information and misinformation out there and people's opinions and biases will find basis on whichever proves their point. There are good people and there are bad people everywhere.
I believe it a fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely (except for me if I had power), and in the micro-economic sense, the store owner may rake in huge profits all for himself while paying the hard-working laborers just their salaries so that they can get by. Is this okay? Should the store owner be more fair and just with the profits?
A powerful country will exert a similar control over a lesser developed country. It can take advantage of its riches and its natural resources and hand out the scraps from the table. Is that fair? In my opinion, no.
I live my life trying to make the world a fairer place, but I have to accept that unless I go all out like Che Guevara, I'm not going to make a major difference and I'm not going to complain too much.
Humans move in masses and it's tough to change the momentum. Things really have to be unstable, and only then do empires fall.
i'll do it for free. actually, no, i'll pay you 5 bucks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Illusional [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Indy, you can pay me 10. That's twice as good a deal!
if you're willing to pay me to suck my dick, then you must really suck at this job... offer retracted.Quote:
Originally Posted by Indignant [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
NEXT!! haha
raverboy
Actually, Mexicans are the reason Mexico is so poor.Quote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
I had the chance to sit down to dinner with a gentleman who works at a local hispanic center here in Seattle. Prior to working there he was the head consulate at the Mexican Embassy in Seattle. Prior to that he was the Attorney General of Mexico.
Pretty much your basic Mexican is ambivalent about the law. Corruption and graft are such a part of the politics there that it's insane. They don't care about the law, or whether it applies to them. It's part of their culture due to Spain's culture when they invaded Mexico. (They were pretty damn lawless and corrupt themselves at the time.) Add in the inclusion of the aboriginal peoples rather than expulsion and replacement (murder, disease, force marches) like what happened in the US and it becomes a bit of a hybrid mess.
Now, Mexico is struggling with the same immigration problems we are. Most of today's immigrants are not from somewhat decently educated N. Mexico. They're from S. Mexico and Central America where you have aboriginal tribes who don't actually speak spanish, just a tribal dialect. Hell, there are over 60 tribal dialects in Mexico itself.
But, pretty much central America's even worse than Mexico, so the people there are fleeing poverty. Extreme poverty.
As for those who don't support borders. In Phoenix 3 out of the last 6 police officers killed on duty were by illegal immigrants. Over 50% of the crime is caused by illegal immigrants. Violent crime has risen dramatically as the illegal immigrant population has risen.
It isn't a simple problem to solve. We need immigrants in this country. We also need to control population growth so that they do not overwhelm public infrastructure (See AZ Schools, and S. Florida as well for good examples.)
Are you sure you don't mean Cesar Chavez instead? Marxist revolutionaries aren't really quite the same as people who sought rights for immigrant laborers.Quote:
Originally Posted by nomas [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
However, even Chavez understood that an unlimited supply of cheap labor would drive down prevailing wages and hurt those at the bottom rung of income the quickest. Which were the immigrant laborers. Even he supported immigration control, however less strict than what we have today.
Why should they care about the law? Upholding the law means you have to actually pay law makers and law enforcers decent wages so they are (reasonably) above corruption. There, and in many asian countries, its basically expected you are padding your income with a gov't job.
Lite, I read a fascinating book on holiday, you should get it:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Insider-Unconventional-Wisdom-Business/dp/1403916578"]Amazon.com: The Asian Insider: Unconventional Wisdom for Asian Business: Michael Backman: Books[/ame]
Poverty in the US isn't generally like poverty in many other countries. What we considering unlivable here, is pretty much average for many countries. So there's a pretty big disconnect for much of the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
We look at a house full of 8+ hispanics and think, "How can they stand to be crammed together like that?" They look at that house and think, "I have a real floor that isn't dirt, a roof that doesn't leak, air conditioning, plumbing, fewer bugs (if any) than before.
No WONDER they want to come here. Even poverty here is a paradise compared to many countries.
Katrina was a huge ****-up on so many levels. Not just the Federal. People didn't evacuate, the city let an entire lot of school busses flood rather than use them to transport people out. The city refused a special amtrak train to help move people. A good number of people brought it upon themselves unfortunately.
The general response was dismal from much of the government, but we also had helicopter (Coast Guard & Army) pilots flying 30+ hour missions to rescue people from roofs of homes.
Now, the people you saw taking advantage of bad situations? New Orleans already had a very large unemployed percentage of the city. And a good number of those people are what are referred to as, "Unemployable." They're just basically worthless and don't want to work. It happens. That's why we have the Post Office, and the Army, and our government is the single largest employer in the US...
Anyway, yes there were idiots, and looters, but there were hospital patients that died or were effectively euthanized. There are large swaths of the city (See 9th Ward) where you basically have roads, but no homes. They're gone, wiped away. 3+ years later and they're STILL gone.
The trailers had levels of toxic gasses seeping out of them that were ILLEGAL. Not only was it harmful to live in them, it wasn't even legal to put people in them to begin with!
People should be pretty ****ing outraged at what happened w/ Katrina. Had they done the right thing and sent the army in, they would have had a centralized command structure to coordinate. Instead FEMA ****ed it all up and ****ed up other agencies below it.
Eco, the problems you point out are not as simple to solve as you seem to believe them to be. The US is larger than Europe, consider how many people there don't get along or agree on everything, and apply it to our country. That's pretty much just how it is. We're every bit as complex and disjointed (Think states instead of countries) as Europe is.
I always love when foreigners make broad accusations about the country, or blame the people for the political policies the government ****s up internationally. Do people think we LIKE to be a laughing stock or appear to be idiots? Hell, we probably hated Bush more than you did!
I'll have to look at it.Quote:
Originally Posted by IndiReloaded [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Jesus, don't get me started at how often I run into Asians who are literally out to screw government and businesses out of every damn penny they can. From shady business deals, to outright illegal behavior. It's insane. You'll hear them speaking English one minute on their cell phone, but the moment they are confronted for trying to leave a restaurant w/out paying they don't speak the language.
I see it about 10% of the time I go out to eat here (Large asian community in Seattle)... At first it was kind of amusing, after a while it gets old.
I have a gal at work who tries to pull this on me to get me to do her work, then acts like she doesn't understand basic English if you get frustrated.
I started writing down her repeated requests on a marker board and would tick them off every time she asked until she asked what I was doing. I told her I was keeping track of how often she failed to do her job, write information down, or asked me the same technical question and passing it on to management because she wastes my time.
The number of requests she makes of my department dropped by 95% in the first week alone after that discussion.
When I go to work, I go to do my work and go home. Not my work and someone else's. I don't do games, and I'll happily hang people out to dry for being inept. If I have to do their job too, I want their pay on top of my normal salary.
Anyway, the point being there are always bad apples. In some cases it is inherent to the culture they are importing. And in some cases those cultures adapt and become lawful. (See Irish history in the US... Except that they were corrupt and manipulative too.)
I meant Che because I was speaking to the removal of foreign influence in a sovereign land, getting rid of puppet governments, trying to stop the snowball effect. I wasn't speaking to immigration issues. Indirectly, if you have a more even distribution of wealth, the immigration issues dissappear as well. Crime would follow suit because the root cause for theft is normally need, though it morphs into something much uglier with time and as people become desensitized.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lite [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lite [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
it's not because of their culture it's because they're poor! here in new mexico (which was mexico for a long time and was also invaded by the spaniards) people are a little more willing to follow the law, because we have some money.
much more of a disconnect when you live as far north as you do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lite [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
how we contribute to mexico's poverty: 1. we build dams and mexico doesn't get sufficient water access. the water they get is incredibly polluted, because of the north.
2. drugs being illegal. people cannot keep money making crops. when something is illegal, you create criminals who are disenfranchised and willing to kill for the money that is so scarce.
both of those cause extreme constraints to agriculture. no food= mass poverty. mass poverty= mass immigration.
Actually, the reasons why they're ambivalent about the law came from what their former attorney general said, not my own opinions on the matter. I'm pretty sure he knows far better why the culture developed how it did than you do.Quote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Prior to moving here I lived in a mini barrio in Phoenix, AZ. My house was robbed twice by illegal immigrants, property vandalized, a month before I moved someone was shot less than 300 feet from my front door.Quote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
When I first moved there 2 illegal teens executed 2 non illegal Hispanic teens who were working at Subway one evening.
Trust me, I've seen up close and personal the problems w/ immigration, and poverty.
2 people? what about the scores of immigrants that come in and work their asses off for very little pay and no benefits or appreciation?
non immigrants commit crimes too. i don't see how it is an immigrant problem.
Wow, you knew who robbed you and whether they had a green card or not. How'd you find that out? I assume, since you caught them, both times, you retrieved all your belongings, no problem, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lite [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
You seem to keep close tabs on which criminals have residence and which don't, and based on your research, you can significantly reduce the crime rate in the US by granting everyone amnesty. After all, illegals are the ones who commit the crimes, right?Quote:
When I first moved there 2 illegal teens executed 2 non illegal Hispanic teens who were working at Subway one evening.
Trust me, I've seen up close and personal the problems w/ immigration, and poverty.
You are quickly loosing credibility in my book.
If the US didn't gain the southwest territories during the Mexican-American War, it would have been just as much a shithole as Mexico is now. It's too bad our southern neighbors can't be as civil as our northern neighbors. At least they don't have an undeserved sense of superiority
The common denominator is always money, as sombra says.
Yes, generalities have some basis on reality, but it's not a matter of civilized vs uncivilized people. You will find people at both ends of your definition of "civilized" in any country, and you'll find that in most cases the separation is parallel with money, which is also linked to education in most cases. It is too easy to criticize, that's just making a general observation. Try to analyze root causes behind trends.
they don't? could've fooled me.Quote:
Originally Posted by DoesntMatter [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Well Canadians think they are the cosmopolitan good-will ambassadors of the world, although who they think appointed them is beyond me
i was just reading in a book about the rio grande. in the book it says that natives left no mark on the ecosystem of the river, then when the spaniards came there was still relatively little impact. only when anglo settlers came was when dams when up and the river started going to shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by DoesntMatter [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
so i do believe you are wrong. do some homework before you go spouting off some ignorant shit.
Hahaha.... do you know what you're saying? My talk about Mexico being a shithole had to do with the level of corruption, the super low standard of living, and the absent economy. Compare Mexico to the US in that regards, and THAT is what qualifies my statement that Mexico is a shithole compared to the USQuote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
In other words, there would be corruption, poverty, no economy, and lawlessness in the SW now if it still belonged to Mexico
lol. ::waits for somebody with some knowledge and insight to come in here::
lol come on misombra, that's ALL you and other social liberals ever say in response to things like that. I'm "ignorant."
The easiest fact to look up of what I mentioned was pay, and the average US salary is almost five times higher than that of the average Mexican
$47,000 vs $10,000
dm did you even read this thread?
Misombra did you get my pm?
oh yeah shit i forgot! i'll look into it right now...
:shocked: :annoyed: :goofy: :sinister: :astonish: :) :lol: :awe: :horror: :smug:Quote:
Originally Posted by misombra [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Quote:
Originally Posted by DoesntMatter [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
We didn't ask for that position, we just happen to have a good reputation with the rest of the world, especially after WWII. I'll take it. Beats being hated on.
DM, it surprises me that you, being such a fan of generalities, wouldn't agree with bluesummer. I work at a call center and everyone says that whenever we receive calls from Canadians, they are usually the nicest people who are very polite and overall likable. The contrast is our redneck customers who hear an accent and begin to insult with racial slurs. As stated before, I'm NOT into generalities. Take this forum as a sample. There are many white Americans posting, most of which are not racist or have superiority complexes. There is a minority who do, (those you can expect to respond with a touch of hostility to posts with my bias).
DM, I don't think you're ignorant, just naive and short-sighted. You through out a figure like average salary and claim Q.E.D. Consider more factors like cost of living. On $10,000.00 USD here in Mexico you are covered for all of your necessities and then some. It is cheap enough for people to travel within Mexico, and people do. The quality of life is not directly proportional to the number of US Dollars you make a year.
I insist on my argument, consider the possibility that the US government is not completely free of corruption. Do you really think that being (still) the world's superpower, especially one currently fearing loosing it's footing, it will not bully lesser developed countries and exploiting them? The mentality is you keept he poor man poor. If they depend on you, you can do whatever you want because you are their master and rarely will someone bite the hand that feeds them.
Not surprisingly there are far more people racist against white people on this forum and in society in general because that is tolerable. Let's blame Anglos and Germans for all our problems is their cryQuote:
Originally Posted by nomas [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
A less extreme but opposite view of this gets people branded racist. The great double standard
The quality of life index from the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks the US at 13 and Mexico at 32. That would take into account cost of living and such. But again, this doesn't take the whole picture into account either. People who grew up in the US and are poor can blame themselves, because kids in the US are afforded all the opportunity they need to do well and get ahead in the worldQuote:
Originally Posted by nomas [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Not if you're the US- everything you do causes foreigners and citizens to piss and moan about how mean the US isQuote:
Originally Posted by nomas [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
Oh, yeah, and in regards to this:
That's because Canadians think they are far smarter than they actually are, and people think "rednecks" are far dumber than they actually are. My mom and grandparents are from the south, and fuccking EVERYBODY has a bone to pick with them for that. I HATE how everyone wants to shit on the southernerQuote:
Originally Posted by nomas [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]
The US had a better reputation at the end of WWII. Considering we lost 420,000 compared to the 45,000 you lost it is probably safe to assume that our contribution was greater to beating the axisQuote:
Originally Posted by bluesummer [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]