[Suki]

Socialist haven? Hah! Let me laugh. Sweden and France are socialist havens. Sure they get taxed a lot. But if some Frenchman or Swede works for a living even as a school janitor he or she has 8 weeks paid vacation a year and has a lot of bargaining power for raises, pensions and security over the years and if he gets terminal cancer or diabetes, he can afford his medical treatment because it is guaranteed by the state. Every civilized industrialized country with some socialism in it has that basic medical coverage but not in the crazy USA (where I work with a woman who got cancer and she had insurance but they did not cover most of her cancer treatment and she wound up giving up her $175,000 life savings and no retirement left in order to get treated and is still working between losing weight and taking injections in stage 3 cancer) THAT IS YOUR SOCIALIST HAVEN FOR YOU NELSON. The average worker at $8 an hour in the USA can go into bankruptcy easily if he or she is uninsured. Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance companies are making a killing in profits and Dr. Linda Pino testified they turn people down if the operation is too expensive and people become commodities.

Go ahead and hail your socialist haven. It is not. It sucks, and the average USA worker works a lot longer, harder and with a lot less benefits---and pays more for basics like gasoline, housing, and so on than what he or she is earning in salary. Then they become ignoramuses and want to blame it on the illegal aliens. The truth is the corporate world is the one that needs the cheap labor and to keep the average worker in the USA on the low scale of salaries. The middle class have billions in consumer debt in credit cards. The economy sucks in general. Maybe you see it as wonderful. The PRC has state capitalism. That means the profits from the labor of the Chinese worker goes back into the government pockets in some form and they then regulate all the corporations doing business in China. Why? Because the PRC wants to build infrastructure and then modernize and buy out the competing markets. The 'strategy' is working. They currently own almost a trillion dollars of USA government debt and climbing. If the USA with its individualism and greed continues, they will be having to tow the line of the Chinese government among others to avoid a deep recession or a depression.

Capitalism is not a panacea. It is getting worse. You happen to think it is the natural order of the world. But capitalism's principles are unsustainable in the long run. It always has been. Markets get saturated, monopolies form, some corporations become huge and more powerful than many local governments and they contribute to the rot and the immorality of the politicians in many governments, and the governments don't serve the people at all after a while, and then the polarization occurrs and immigrant waves come in. Especially in an interdependent economy like the current economies. If Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and PRC and Japan sink, the USA's wall street is hurting. No such thing as standing alone anymore. So the socialist haven is a myth. What is real is that if international capitalism isn't reigned in by strong and people oriented governments then the whole system over time will be obsolete. Too much imbalance is inherent in that system. The only reason it survived this long is because in the Great Depression FDR decided government had to regulate the private sector and keep it from squeezing too much out of the local worker. Otherwise it would be riot after riot, repossessions and foreclosures galore, banks going under all the way and poverty, starvation and violence all the way. Or did you miss that little detail in the greatness of capitalism speech of yours?

A good study in the power of capitalism is MEXICO. The Mexican government taxing people and especially rich Mexicans sucks. The rich don't pay hardly any taxes at all. It is do or die capitalism over there. You sell tamales in the street for survival money. Become a criminal. A corrupt government official on the take, or you own companies and land and live the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or you fall down dead as a doornail cuz your appendix ruptured and your family could not scrape enough money together to pay for the operation. And you OWE BILLIONS TO FOREIGN BANKS GALORE and can only pay the interest mostly and never pay it off. If the USA continues with the spending non-stop and the corruption by the international capitalist types----it is gonna be an re-enactment.

Puerto Rico is never going to get out of the problem it is currently in. Why don't you point out to me one single country that in the long run colonialism helped instead of hindered its progress? I will answer that one for you. NOT ONE. All the way down the line, the only nations that were once former colonies of another more powerful nation state all only made progress as INDEPENDENT NATIONS. Not as dependencies.

Another thing that bothers me is that so many people in the USA point fingers....they say, the problem is that in Latin America and the Caribbean they have corruption, lack of law and order, they think they are above the law, cronyism, nepotism, buy offs, presidential assassinations, scandals of cooking the books....OH THE HORROR of those terrible Latino nations!! What do I do....I laugh.....why? Let me think.

1. No one is above the law in the USA. Just take a look at the 'commuting' of the sentence that Bush pulled on that guy, Scooter Libby. Lol. He is not above the law. No sirree, he is a fine MISUNDERSTOOD GENTLEMAN.

2. Cronyism. No, Harriet Myers and Alberto Gonzalez don't come to mind. Lol.

3. Nepotism? No family members in the USA's history passing on the torch of power is there? John Quincy Adams, John Adams, The Roosevelts, George Bush, Sr. and George "W" Bush Jr. aren't related. Or Jeb Bush or Neil Bush from the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal either right? Let me laugh. That Senator Rockafella is not there cuz his ancestors had some money right? That aint nepotism at work here is it? Or the Kennedy's and Joseph, Robert, John F., Edward, or Teddy either right? Let me laugh.

4. No buy offs. No not at all. No enron, Carlyle group or anything of that nature. NO.

5. Presidential assassinations. No. No Lincoln, McKinley, John F. Kennedy etc. No, no inside group knocking off the prez of the USA happens in the USA for power and money grubbing reasons? No. That doesn't happen ever in this perfect system. Not like those corrupt Latinos! LOL

6. No scandals at all either. LOL. I won't even mention rug burn in the white house, breakins in the Watergate hotel and secretaries falling off of bridges? No.

I rest my case folks. Maybe Nelson might want to have tons of ones who want the American dream but get a rude awakening and become part of the reality of the perpetuation of the working class from generation to generation as a model of success? The ones with the best chances for becoming middle class in the USA as immigrants themselves were those who came from the middle class and higher in their own nations. So, the truth is the USA is not a magic formula for doing better than the last generation. It is good at reproducing the same class that the initial immigrant came from with some exceptions to the rule here and there. Most kids in ghetto schools can't "make it" in the society of the American Dream turned nightmare. Why? They have schools much better equipped than in Haiti, DR, and PR generally?

The truth is the reason why Puerto Ricans can't be as successful materially as many in the USA, is cuz there is a boricua gene that stops the wealth and the intelligence from happening. It is called the gene of the "CAFRE" that Miranda likes to bring forth all the time. This cafre gene enters the body of the fetus at conception and it metasesizes into a series of ineptitudes that have to do with not following some model based on some consumer rich nation way to the north of Puerto Rico. They are not born with this 'cafre' gene and that is the reason they (the two percent with big homes, vacation homes and fancy cars) are successful and the vast majority are not. It is the BORICUA cafre gene folks that keeps all us Puerto Ricans from being rich and famous. Lol. Seriously some of these people defending capitalism are out there in pluto somewhere. I really think they have not talked to someone with regular problems in a long long time.

Or the reason why Puerto Ricans are not rich and powerful is cuz of the "Secret". Yes, the Puerto Ricans don't visualize en masse a nation of plenty and writing themselves $14 million dollar checks. The law of attraction. That is the reason why Puerto Ricans don't make it in the world as an ethnic group. Why? Because they don't stop the negative thinking of "I can't do it without the USA." Literally that is what the "Secret" (featured on Oprah folks....the last word on how to be successful you know). The reason why Puerto Rico is poor and on welfare is because not enough Puerto Ricans attract good fortune into their lives by sending out positive thoughts, meditating on positive thoughts, and visualizing how it feels like to be rich, and successful and then getting out of debt and working hard and setting goals for themselves. All of us Puerto Ricans who come from poverty at some time in their family history, have to say to ourselves, "I can do it. I can be rich too. Let me visualize how it feels to be in that Lexus and have a Dominican maid clean my bathroom." Lol. Is that why we can't move forward as a group and make money in this perfect system? What do you think people?