My 5 year old wanted to know, why everything is made in China ?

Cubans are by far the best businessmen & the most productive people of the Carribean, Maybe all of South America too, excluding the Brazilians

 

There is no doubt that unions cured a lot of evil practices in this country. My grandfather was an organizer for the railroad union.

However, there is also little doubt that unchecked power corrupts everybody, including unions. You don't have to look any further than the Teamster for proof of this. Sadly, the overabundance of pro-labor laws tilted the axis too far in labor's favor. For example, not only are unions exempt from taxes, but they are allowed to directly lobby politicians and make campaign contributions. There is no other tax-exempt entity that can do this.

The bottom line is that it got to the point where paying union dues wasn't worth it for the majority of workers.

Dale

 

Well, today there would be no need to escape. You would simply book a flight like most normal people on a Cuban Airline.

http://www.cubana.cu

My parents were on vacation in Mexico last year and they met a Cuban couple around their age at the hotel. They were surprised when they heard that Cubans take normal vacations just like Americans do.

Surprised??

I know what you're thinking.....you're wondering why the hell people would risk their lives on a raft or in a little boat to try to cross the channel to Miami when they could just take a plane. The answer to that is quite simple.... They are not trying to sneak out of Cuba.... They are trying to sneak into the United States. No different than the Mexicans trying to sneak accross the border. Do you think they are trying to escape Mexico?

Our immigration services will not allow Cubans to immigrate unless they are some high profile athlete like Orlando Hernandez (pitcher for the Yankees). Even with him, there was some BS propoganda story about him floating on a raft to escape Cuba. The reality is that he was not trying to come to the United States and he was never on a raft. His American agent, who he hired when he was still in Cuba, advised him that if he came to the United States he would have to enter the amatuer draft. So instead, he took a flight on a Cuban airline to El Salvador where he met up with his agent, and then they negotiated a free agent contract with the Yankees. Only then did he take a plane to the United States. He probably agreed to promote this BS story in exchange for being allowed to come here.

As far as free speech, Cuba's press is very controlled. They do not have the free press that exists in much of Europe. However, with regard to speaking out against the government, things are starting to change.

Just last year there were major protests over a propsed bill called the "Varela Project". An opposition group collected over 14,000 signatures for this bill that Castro opposed which would call for various reforms in their election system. But according to the Cuban Constitution, there must be a vote by the National Assembly (parlament) on any bill which receives over 10,000 signatures, so they had a vote and are since adopting some of the requested changes.

These people who signed the petition are not in jail, and the leader who organized the petition, Oswaldo Paya, has not been jailed either and he has since been working on organizing more petitions for other things.

The Varela Project was even discussed in Barbara Walters' interview with Castro last year. She asked him about this, and he did not want to discuss the details. It would be like asking George Bush why there were no WMD's in Iraq.

While some of the stuff you hear about Cuba is true, most is not. The truth is that the reason our government does not like Fidel Castro is that he booted out American business when he took power. This is the only reason. The rest is just propoganda. If you really want an accurate picture of Cuba, read information from one of the international human rights bodies like Human Rights Watch, or Amnesty International, or even UNICEF. You will find a remarkably different (and more accurate) picture than what you have been indoctrinated with here in the United States.

 

Thats great but none of that changes the fact that Fidel is a MASS MURDERER & TORTURER.

So much for human rights in Cuba

 

Hey...I never said I wanted to live there....LOL

But there are some good things, such as their health care system, which we could learn from. Like how they manage to spend only $20 per person per year and provide health care to everyone in their country. Congress ought to hire their health minister as a consultant the next time they talk about national health care.

 

So the people in Cuba are not impoverished by their oppressive Castro-run government? Therefore they just drive 50 year old, patched up, American cars because they like their styling, instead of buying newer Japanese or European imported cars.

 

They are not impoverished. They all have jobs, places to live, plenty of food, eductation, health care, etc.

Are the thousands of homeless people of New York City impoverished by their oppressive government? How come they do not have a new Japanese car?

What about Mexicans? Are they impoverished by their oppressive government?

The answer to your question is in my previous posts. Cuba is a poor country and has always been. All the Castro-run government has done is to equally distribute the wealth and land among the population instead of the top 1% owning all of the land and the other 99% starving as was the case in 1959. May I suggest you read a book on what Communism is. Perhaps then you would understand its purpose.

 

Ok....I'm going to do this one last time. From the MSN Encarta Encyclopedia:

http://encarta.msn.com/text_761569844___97/Cuba.html

Prior to 1959, Cuba had sharp class divisions. The largest class was the peasants, who could barely support their families on the small plots of land they farmed. At the opposite end of the social scale was the handful of sugar mill owners, who enjoyed all the advantages of great wealth. Unlike most other Latin American countries, however, Cuba had a substantial middle class of lawyers, doctors, social workers, and other professionals. Industrial workers organized into very active unions, and they had a higher living standard than many workers in other Latin American countries. There was also a large group of fairly prosperous colonos, sharecroppers and tenant farmers, who grew sugarcane for the large mills under government protection. While Cuba’s social hierarchy allowed for some racial fluidity, the vast numbers of poor and uneducated people were people of color. Among these, the poorest were women of color.

Under Castro’s government, class divisions and social differentiations, such as elite education and membership in country clubs, disappeared. More equitable salaries, guaranteed housing, nationalized medicine and education, and employment for all leveled the social and economic hierarchy formed between 1902 and 1958. In protest, middle- and upper-class professionals left Cuba in large numbers between 1959 and 1962, which hastened the advent of a more socially level society. For instance, the income gap between peasants and urban workers narrowed as the government controlled wages and prices, and rationed commodities. After 1959, the highest-paid professionals, such as medical doctors who both practiced medicine and taught in universities, earned around 750 pesos per month, while unskilled laborers earned around 100 pesos per month. Prior to the revolution, successful sugar and tobacco growers were millionaires, while workers in their fields barely earned 160 pesos per month, and female domestic servants earned under half that amount.

Since 1959 racial distinctions have blurred as the Castro government has worked to eliminate race and class prejudices.

The government controls the educational system and provides education for essentially all Cuban children. School attendance is compulsory for children ages 6 through 14, and Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, claiming 97 percent adult literacy, compared to only 54 percent in 1952. Estimates are that virtually all eligible children attend the first six years of school.

Castro’s government attempted to narrow the gap between the educated and uneducated by allowing all children to attend school free of charge and by sending literacy brigades throughout the country during the early 1960s. These brigades, composed of teachers and trained students, taught reading and writing to Cubans in remote regions of the country that previously had no schools. As a result of their work, Cuba’s literacy rate increased dramatically.

The quality of Cuban medical services was highly esteemed before 1959, but the majority of the population was limited in receiving services. Since then the government has extended health services throughout the island using polyclinics in neighborhoods and hospitals for treatment of serious injuries and illnesses. Health education is communicated in school and through the media.

 

They dont have millions of lawyers and a system that promotes litigation. When a cuban citizens is butchered or killed by a crappy doctor... its tough luck sonny, shutup or prison for you! They also do not have anywhere near the high tech healthcare the US has.

Im glad you said you dont want to live there... you were beginning to sound like you view Cuba as a wonderful Utopia!


Terry

 

They can Claim whatever they like as they dont have a free press to dig for the truth

The USSR also worked to blur social & economic divisions. Everybody but the top politicians suffered equally LOL

 

Eliminating litigation entirely would only reduce our health care costs by around 5%. The main savings in cost is that there are no drug or insurance profits. Drug research and development is done by the government and then provided to the people free of charge. And obviously there is no need for insurance companies. That is where the cost savings lie.

When you eliminate private enterprise from the picture, costs go down since you have eliminated profit from the equation. That is how the European health care systems work as well. Unfortunately, due to our inefficient and poorly run government programs, that has not been the case here in the U.S. Perhaps the problem here is that our best people are in private enterprise and not in the public sector. For whatever reason, we have never been able to achieve the efficiency that other countries achieve in any of our government programs. Even our military, which is something we do better than anyone, is rediculously wasteful.

 

Solution to made in China problem:

Start AMERICAMART corporation.

Begin with a few test stores in fiercely patriotic areas of the U.S. selling only products made in the U.S. and benefitting U.S. companies. Branch out from there.

 

One more thing on the Cuban subject. I think this just demonstrates the level of propoganda floated by our leadership in Washington and shows to what extent they were willing to go to overthrow Castro:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1

ABC News: U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba."

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

Ironically, the documents came to light in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed. But somehow, these remained.

 

That was 40 years ago!

Who knows what direction Cuba would have gone in with Castro?

For me, basic human dignity, like not been spied on my neighbors counts for a lot. Castro is a dictator and a despot. Freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that is what its all about. Not some old stoggie smelling fart with no term limits.

The Carribean and Latin America has its own set of problems, but communism is not the answer and all the facts and figures and statistics will not change that.

 

Does it bother you that our military leaders actually supported a plan to commit terrorism by killing American citizens in order to gain support from the American public for a war?

If you read that document, it becomes very clear that the Generals have no doubt that they could pull this off and that the people would believe it. The general tone of that document is that this is not a new idea but somewhat of a normal procedure -- perhaps one that had been used before and had been successful.

Does it make you wonder about other terrorist acts or attacks which have resulted in public support for war? Perhaps we have been lied to in the past and other attacks have been part of such plans?

 

Three points:

1. You need to start your own Cuba thread.

2. While the Military may have been behind the Bay of Pigs, it was excuted by RFK, with the support of JFK, who used the Mob to equipment an illegal army to invade Cuba.

3. To paraphase John Lennon, "If you're using Oliver Stone as your source, you ain't gonna make it with anyone any how."

Dale

 

William - is McDonalds playing fair when they give away FF for .29 to get you to buy burgers? Of course, it's called a loss leader (I know you know this) and it's done all the time. If you wanted to lower your commissions to your clients or prospective clients to gain more business is this an unfair business practice?

US needs to wake up and fast. We all know this country was formulated in the late 1900 by "slave labor" and if it hadn't we would not have the infrastrucure we have of RR, basic communications and electricity. Sometimes it just aint fair! but progress is made. I know you are a total advocate of space exploration, I am also. But, do you believe that all the $$ appropriated and allocated is done fairly. Sorry for the rant, but competition fuels new ideas.

 

Please if you do not understand what I was saying regarding the unions now having control over certain industries and hampering the ability to produce goods at competitive prices go back to your minimum wage 40 hr, unemployment ins, government provide for me mentality. I don't know anyone who works in these conditions.

Most folks I know make above minimum wage, work way more than 40 hrs and have their own business employing people. But thanks for the insights of what it must have been like to work back in the early part of the 20th century. I never would have know this terrible injustice if it were not for your keen sense of rightousness. BTW, how's that for sarcasm.

 

The Bay of Pigs operation was set in motion before JFK even took office. JFK fired Allen Dullas after the Bay of Pigs because the CIA lied to him about the whole operation. The CIA executed the entire operation. RFK was Attorney General and had absolutely nothing to do with this. Care to site your source that says RFK executed the Bay of Pigs operation? I would love to read it.

Apparently you had no understanding of what you read. The documents are original and are signed by the joint chiefs of staff. The source is the national archives in Washington. The documents were released by the National Security Agency due to the JFK Act which was passed by Congress in 1992. The JFK Act called for all files related to the JFK Assasination to be released by the government. The reason the JFK Act was drawn up in 1992 was in response to the sudden interest due to Oliver Stone's film "JFK". Nobody is using Oliver Stone as a source.

But since you seem to be interested, so far none of the researchers have found anything in the 6 million documents released that contradict anything shown in his movie. Many of the things he guessed at have been verified by the documents. But even though I do not know you, I'm 99% sure you never saw the film anyway. Contrary to what you may think you know, his movie is not about the JFK Assasination. The movie is about Jim Garrison's investigation of the Assasination in the late 1960s, and Jim Garrison not only helped write the script, but he acted in the movie as well.

 

I realize there are problems with the unions. There should really be no need for unions in this country. We should have a government that looks out for the welfare and safety of its citizens. Unfortunately, we have never had a government like this. Labor laws have only been passed after great struggle and lobbying by the unions.

When the queen was told the peasants had no bread, she said "let them eat cake". Whether or not you know them, millions of people make minimum wage.

Here are some government statistics:

As of 2003, 35.8 million Americans live below the poverty line, which is $18,810 gross per year for a family of four, or $12,015 gross per year for a family of two. 12.9 million of those people are children under the age of 18 -- this is one out of every 6 children in the United States.

So imagine you have a wife and two kids, and you and your wife have a combined takehome pay of $19,000 minus taxes. Well, if that is you, then you are ABOVE the poverty line and are not considered poor by the government, and you are better off than the 12% of Americans that are below the poverty line.

BTW, in 2003, 4.3 million more people were living below the poverty line than in 2001. Those Republicans running the country sure do have great moral values.

 

There should be no mimimum wage...each man should be free to sell his labor at any price he agrees upon...the government should stay out of it.

True, wages might fall, but prosperity will increase. Learn what real prosperity is.

https://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap30sec3.asp

 

Eric - I actually agree with you, believe it or not. I'm really a liberal (I'm from LI) but a fiscal conservative. I do believe the pendulum has swung a little too far for certain unions.

I don't believe we should be caring for other countries when we have people dying here of starvation/malnurishment. But that is why I hate politics and most politicians - too many career members.

 

Our government actually does very little "caring" for the people in other countries. If you look at our foreign aid numbers, they appear huge. But most of our foreign aid is military aid. I consider this corporate welfare, not aid.

It's a fancy way of giving tax money to the military hardware manufacturers. They give money to these countries with the agreement that it be used to purchase arms from one of several American companies. So you have F-16 fighters being sold to countries like Columbia, Pakistan, Israel, Yemen, Eqypt and Saudi Arabia -- and they are being paid for by these countries with American taxpayer dollars.

If they could, they would just give our tax money to the big corporations, but the GAO would make a fuss and the liberal media would complain. So by giving this money as aid, the liberals are happy and the conservatives are able to help the big corporations make an extra buck.

Washington has become one big corrupt mess, and I believe everything they do and every policy they make has something to do with someone making money, whether it be going to war, fighting terrorism, or passing medicare and prescription drug legislation. Socialism for the rich, Capitalism for the poor, and a shrinking middle class -- that is what we now have.

 

Sorry Eric, but you need to learn how to do research yourself. Try Google. It can be your friend. I don't have the time nor the desire to get into 40-year old dirty laundry, but it does rub me the wrong way when folks like yourself try to paint the Kennedys as the political equivalent of Mother Theresa. Neither JFK or RFK was a liberal in today's understanding of the term. They may have seemed liberal when compared to Nixon, but not compared to our modern day meatheads.

But please do some homework and you'll find that RFK's role in the Bay of Pigs was to bring in the Mafia to arm the illegal army that both JKF and RFK were putting together in Florida. Later this illegal army was moved, I believe, to Guatemala.

Moroever, while the planning may have started under President Esienhower, I'm positive that JFK knew all the details about planned invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Let's see JFK was elected in 1960, and the invasion happened in April 1961.

I'm also positive about JFKs involvment because my father was Chief of Naval Intelligence (spare the jokes please) in San Juan during the Bay of Pigs. many years later, while dying of cancer, he told me that he heard the order to stand down come directly from the White House. You see, the illegal army was supposed to invade and establish a new government which we would then recognize. Immediately after recognizing this new government, we would then provide air support for the invasion. Everything was in place, the illegal army was wading ashore and getting cut to pieces. (Castro knew all about the plan.) Our Navy planes were circling waiting the go order, when the wave off came. At the last moment, JFK got cold feet. My father believed that there was a direct link between backing out at the Bay of Pigs and the subsequent missle crisis.

Once again, if you are using Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone as your resources, you have got a real problem with reality. Please branch out. Garrison was widely recoginzed as being psychotic. Stone, by his own admission, is a movie maker whose goal in life is to make a lot of money by making movies.

Dale

 

My sources are not Garrison and Oliver Stone. I was just responding to your comment when I mentioned them.

My dad is the assistant to the president of COPA, the group who did all the research surrounding the JFK Act during the 1990s. His garage looks like a warehouse of government files purchased from the National Archives in Washington. Upon reading your post yesterday, I asked him if RFK was involved in the Bay of Pigs, and he laughed and asked where I read that.

My dad has read more on this particular subject than most poeple read on all subjects and all reading materials in their lifetime. We're talking upwards of a thousand books, tens of thousands of government intelligence files, etc.....he knows his stuff. When they make documentaries on the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missle Crisis, or the JFK, RFK or MLK assasinations, they usually interview my dad as an expert. On the JFK assasination particularly, I'm not sure if there is another researcher in the world that knows more than him.

On the subject of the Bay of Pigs, keep this in mind: Most of the files released through FOIA on this subject were released between 1995 and 1998 (the lifespan of the Congressional Review Board created by the JFK Act). Much of the released materials proved wrong things that were accepted as fact before this material was released. And as usual, the mainstream media rarely reported any of the new findings. The fact that ABC did a news special on Operation Northwoods shocked me. There are hundreds of things within those files that are just as shocking, and 99% of them were never reported by the mainstream media.

As far as JFK's involvement in the Bay of Pigs, this is what I have been told: First of all, JFK had only been in office about 3 months when this all went down. JFK had been told by Dullas that the CIA had organized a group on the ground within Cuba that would uprise once the soldiers landed. He was lead to believe the movement would come from within Cuba and we would only provide logistical support. He was never told about air support. When at the last second he found out air support was being given behind his back and without his permission, he called for a standdown of the Air Force. The invaders were defeated rather quickly and there was no internal uprising as the CIA had said there would be.

Kennedy took public responsibility for the falure, but behind closed doors he blamed the CIA for lying to him and he fired Allen Dullas who had been head of the CIA since its inception. Although the media at the time did not make a big deal of this firing, apparently it sent shockwaves through Washington and made Kennedy plenty of enemies. As you had hinted on in the JFK Assasination thread, Cubans and rogue agents within the CIA and ONI later were involved in the planning and execution of his assasination. But that is another subject that I don't wish to get into now.