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Yes there is a problem in the World with crime and CR is no exception, the crimes of opportunity are exponentionaly greater in CR.
My wife came back from CR and she is a Tica and told me of unbelievable stories about hard crimes in CR, in San Jose not the interior.
Puriscal, Domical, Limon, Heredia, Grecia you name it has a crime problem. Gated communities are not exempt, why do you think they have GATED communities in the first place?
open your eyes, crime is on the rise and CR is not priviledged to this fenomenom.
warren
Imxploring;
with 1,000 fps in .177 cal. you have a tack driver, none of my Diana’s RWS do those #’s because they are .22 cal. They are in the 700 – 850 fps using 14.3 gr. pellets but you cannot hide behind a quarter at 30 mtrs.
warren
Lucky me. that I had the wrong information and thank you Scott for clarifying this issue to me with more than an explanation.
warren
Why is it that %95 of the people in your website are Americans? Be nice? No profanity? and no name calling? What tone?
Can I say in your WebSite the USA SUCKS! Or can I say in your websire Costa Rica SUCK’s.
Can I say you SUCK.
What is the diference?
Let people vent, OK!
This only makes more people come back and vent some more and we are all growing in your website.
And thanks to your website. I am spending more and more time here.Scott, you are wrong. The 5th amendment in the Constitution of the USA grants freedom of speech, maybe you need to read it and establish who has more credibility, (we love CR or that 200+ year old piece of paper). Take back the last warning statement. dwaynedixon is defending his country in his own manner, you are defending your website. There is a difference. I do not agree with him but let him blog. Only if he parts with the rules established in your blog can you terminate him. Care to respond? Both of you.
Scott, you are correct in both counts.
The Euro and the British Pound are way ahead of the almighty $$.
And yes, I edited the $25,000,000.00 to $250,000,000.00. It is $250 million dollars over 5 years, 0r $50 million a year or close to a million a WEEK playing for the LA GALAXY team in California. Mr. Beckham (who is 31 years old) will make more money in the US than the Beatles ever did, isin’t this a shame? This is a structured contract of course. The soccer team is only liable for $400,000.00 a year and endorsements for the rest. Clearly endorsements from Wall Street companies and other mayor corporations.
dhsbooker:
Most certainly in the area. I live in South Tampa and work in St. Pete, Florida. It will be a chore for me to sell but eventually I can take a $25,000 negative hit if I sell. My equity has skyrocketed in the last 16 years. For those of us going to CR in the future, I should advise you that prices have also skyrocketed over there. The speculators are everywhere, even in CR. My brother is over there doing some dental work. He traveled from Virginia and last week told me that prices are going Up, UP and UP in San Jose in regards to houses. He no longer wants to invest in property but is looking for small apartments complexes, 4 to 6 units to buy and rent. I was amazed to read that Brit’s are buying most of the high end properties in FL to include Tampa/St. Pete. I just hope someone from London comes and buys my house, why not? Now that David Beckham (the soccer player from England) is moving to California, then his cousin can buy my house. DB contract is for $250 million over 5 years. He can loan his cousin a mere $300,000 for my house.
What do you think?Edited on Jan 17, 2007 17:17
Interesting:
It seems all the blog’s have a strong correct point in this topic. Everything is about demand and supply. In the trade world of stocks you have the ASK price (willing to sell) and BID price (offered to pay). Am I correct Scott?, you used to be a trader. But the markets change. Gas prices were almost $3,50 a gallon 10 months ago in the US, they are $2.00 average now. The housing industry is in a mess right now thanks to the lenders making adjustable mortages. You qualify for a $200,000 house but the lenders have loans that make you buy a $350,000 house. After 3 to 5 years the mortgage payment baloons from $1,500 a months to $1,750, then in 6 months $2,000. Now your head is way under water financially. So what do you do, you try to sell. But so are many in the same boat. Now we have 1 in 250 houses in foreclosure in the Tampa/St. Pete area (we are # 30 in the US in foreclosures) when 1 year ago it was 1 in 2,000. There are close to 800,000 new houses in the market for sale which is a huge inventory and the selling time went from 3 months to 9 months with the building companies giving %40 discounts. It is a buyers market now, sellers cannot expect to receive the same amount of profit the guy next door did 10 months ago, people were flipping properties like crazy and making a ton of money. This correction had to happen. I am sitting in an empty gold mine right now, Why? Because I did not sell 10 months ago, then it was a real gold mine. Now I have to wait for the glut of homes to sell. And it is even worse for those that bought condos. Seven new highrises (1 from Donald Trump) were cancelled already. The original investment money for these projects was lost by the investors since the plans were scrapped.
However, the silver linning for me is that my home in CR is paid off and being rented and I have to wait 2 more years to retire. If the housing market stabilizes in 12 months, I sell. And then it is 12 months for me to move to PURA VIDA.Maravilla, check who some of the recipients of food stamps are? You will be surprised to find out 20,000 active military receive food stamps. Active duty men and women in the US Armed Forces, junkies and druggies?
From the Washington Post, recent news. This article addresses many issues with what is wrong in the US with Our Commander in Chief and his policies. Just some more “FACTS”. I bet anyone that more children go hungry in the US than in Costa Rica taking the both populations in proportion of size and numbers..
Children Going Hungry
By David K. Shipler
If you spend a day in a malnutrition clinic, you will see a dismal parade of babies and toddlers who look much younger than they are. Underweight and developmentally delayed, they cannot perform normally for their ages. Some are so weak that when you hold them in a standing position, their knees buckle. When they lie on their stomachs, they cannot push themselves up. Long after they should be able to roll over, they can only flop around listlessly.
Doctors describe these conditions as “failure to thrive.” If President Bush’s budget is enacted, there will be many more children in America who fail to thrive.
The most direct reason is his proposed cut in food stamps. But there is another cause of hunger, less obvious and no less damaging: his budget’s diminished housing subsidies, which will leave more families exposed to escalating rents.
It may seem odd to think of housing causing hunger, but the link becomes clear when you talk with parents who bring their children into a malnutrition clinic. They usually lack government protection against the private market’s steeply rising housing costs. They can’t get into public housing; they are languishing on a long waiting list for vouchers that would help pay for private apartments. Or they are immigrants ineligible for government programs. As a result, some find that rent alone soaks up 50 to 75 percent of their earnings.
They have no choice. They have to pay the rent. They have to pay the relentless electricity and telephone bills. In most of the country, they need automobiles to get to work, which means car loans and auto insurance. None of these can be squeezed very much. The main part of the budget that can be squeezed is for food. What happens then is documented by a soon-to-be-published study in which nearly 12,000 low-income households in six cities were surveyed. It found an increased incidence of underweight children in families without housing subsidies.
There has been a lot of talk since Sept. 11, 2001, about the need to “connect the dots” to share intelligence and combat terrorism. It’s about time that the country did the same to fight poverty. The factors that retard children’s futures are interrelated; connecting the dots is the clearest way to see the lines of cause and effect.
Housing costs contribute to malnutrition, and malnutrition affects school performance and cognitive capacity. It weakens immune systems and makes children susceptible to illness, which diminishes appetites and thereby increases vulnerability to the next infection. The downward spiral can lead to frequent absences from school and expensive hospitalization.
Even when hungry children are able to go to school, they don’t do well. “Learning is discretionary, after you’re well-fed, warm, secure,” says Deborah Frank, a pediatrician who heads the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center. She treats infants who look like wizened old men, and older children who are bony and listless.
What is not visible may be more serious. Inadequate nutrition is a stealthy threat, because its hidden effects on the brain occur long before the outward symptoms of retarded growth. Several decades of neuroscience have documented the impact of iron deficiency, for example, on the size of the brain and the creation and maturation of neurons and other key components. If the deficiencies occur during the last trimester of pregnancy or the first two or three years of life, the results may last a lifetime.
Long after malnutrition ends, such children have lower IQs. In adolescence, they score worse than their peers on arithmetic, writing, spatial memory and other cognitive tests. Parents and teachers see in them “more anxiety or depression, social problems, and attention problems,” according to a volume of studies compiled in 2000 by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.
Practically every factor that contributes to malnutrition is worsened by a lack of cash. A child’s food allergies are harder to address if a family can’t afford to offer an array of choices, buy high-nutrition baby formula or live in a neighborhood with stores that stock fresh fruits and vegetables. Eating problems are compounded when working mothers have to pass their children among multiple caregivers who don’t provide healthy diets. Malnutrition is also exacerbated by welfare caps and time limits, Frank and other pediatricians observe.
Youngsters who cannot succeed in school usually drop out and go on to fail in other ways. So the Bush budget exchanges a short-term gain for a long-term loss, overlooking the simple fact that the less we invest in children now, the more we will have to invest in prisons later. Connect the dots.
David K. Shipler won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987. His most recent book is “The Working Poor: Invisible in America.”
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Maravilla, you are wrong. There are not 40,000 hungry children in the US. The numbers are HUGH. But thanks for bringing this issue to the open. Here are some FACT’s for those that think you came with bogus numbers.
Over 9 million children are estimated to be served by the America’s Second Harvest Network, over 2 million of which are ages 5 and under, representing nearly 13% of all children under age 18 in the United States and over 72% of all children in poverty. [i]
According to the USDA, an estimated 12.4 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2005. [ii]
Proper nutrition is vital to the growth and development of children, particularly for low-income children. 62% of all client households with children under the age of 18 participated in a school lunch program, but only 13% participated in a summer feeding program that provides free food when school is out. [iii]
51% of client households with children under the age of 3 participated in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). [iv]
Nearly 41% of emergency food providers in the America’s Second Harvest Network reported “many more children in the summer” being served by their programs. [v]
Emergency food assistance plays a vital role in the lives of low-income families. In 2002, over half of the nonelderly families that accessed a food pantry at least once during the year had children under the age of 18. [vi]
13 million or approximately 17.8% of children in the U.S. live in poverty. The rate of poverty for children under 18 remains higher than those aged 18-to-64 and for those aged 65 and older. [vii]
Research indicates that even mild undernutrition experienced by young children during critical periods of growth impacts the behavior of children, their school performance, and their overall cognitive development. [x]
In fiscal year 2005, 50% of children were food stamp recipients. [xi]
During the 2005 federal fiscal year, 17.5 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program. Unfortunately, just under 2 million of these same income-eligible children participated in the Summer Food Service Program that same year. [xii]
——————————————————————————–
i. Aldeen, Halley Torres, D. O’Brien. America’s Second Harvest-The Nation’s Food Bank Network. Hunger In America 2006. February 2006.
Sorry but outsourcing is not a new idea. In an open market economy he who sells for less has the advantage. Markets are defined by quality and quantity. You sell quality to few and quantity to many, Walmart is quantity, Hummers in quality. The bottom line is who owns the patents that produces the products. My oldest son workes for HP in Heredia, but he learned his English in Tampa, FL. Maravilla has a point. Schools produce the new generation of thinker’s, and we are way behind in the US. Microsoft has an advanced computer University in India (I mean highly advanced), while it is midnight in Redmont, Washinton, State in the US it is daylight in India. They comunicated between India and the US and you have 24 hours of non-stop work being generated. Why in India? because their study habits are one of the most dedicated in the world, they take school serious, while in the US it is a GED or High School diploma and that is it, with a 2.0 grade point average. Again to the global village, advances in technology makes it easy to have a presence in any part of the world, (any part). Companies are making a profit, but at what expense? I shudder at the thought of what my grandchildren will see in the workforce in the next 25 years. An education is not enough. Do you realize a plumber, electrician, drywall, mechanic, etc. makes more money than a white collar worker with an university degree, think about this. A trade worker makes more money than a college degree.
US citizenship is applied for after the birth at the US Embassy in CR under the law of Child born abroad from US citizen’s, the State Department issues the birth certificate. At the time my kids were born it cost around $50.00, do not know how much it is now. That is how my three children have dual citizenship. It does not affect the US citizenship, which they prefer to have but the other countries recognize them as citizen of that country also. I am married to a Tica with one of my children born in CR, they have dual citizenship with both passports from the US and CR. I can have residency in CR but not citizenship because I was born in the US.
PS: None of my kid’s can be President of the US.
