Pelosi: Haiti Earthquake is Urban Renewal

[JohnBrowdie]

this is a spectacularly stupid thing to say, even for the incredibly stupid nancy pelosi.  never mind the bodies, disease, and pestilence.   it's all a good thingy.   I wonder why she didn't think Katrina was an opportunity for new orleans to get it's political and economic act together?

Pelosi: Earthquake a chance for "fresh start" in Haiti

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the Haiti earthquake could give the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere a chance to "leapfrog" its lack of development.

"From my own experience with earthquakes, being from San Francisco, I think that this can be an opportunity for a real boom economy in Haiti," Pelosi said. "It can leapfrog all over its past challenges -- economically, politically, and demographically in terms of the rich and poor and the rest there and have a new -- just a new fresh start. And with all of the concern and compassion and enthusiasm to help the people of Haiti, nobody is better suited than President Clinton to channel that energy."

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[jafo2010]

What a pile of nonsense.  Haiti is a toilet bowl, and no amount of investment will change that.  I wrote a piece on my visit there, and there was much to tell, so much that I did not characterize everything.  However, suffice to say, when I was exiting the airport, and encountered a group of roughly 200 almost exclusively men standing about waiting on people, there was a hostility in their faces that left me with a feeling that it would not take much for a few of them to throw me into a pot to boil me up for a good meal like in Tarzan movies of the 30s.

I am married to a foreigner, and in her country, they frown on people making money out of air as she says, so much so that it is illegal.  Well, making something out of a country that has no capital of any kind, including a populace that is lacking in the most elemental levels of intelligence makes it virtually impossible for them to rise up.  Add to the fact that they embrace voodoo, and it leaves one with the sense of walking in the twilight zone.

Any money invested in this country will be wasted.  There is nothing to build upon in this country.  If anything, the French should be forced to take some form of responsibility for this bankrupt nation, and most importantly, the Haitians themselves.

In past years, aid organizations began withdrawing from the country because their aid workers were being killed and faced serious harm.  Corruption in Haiti was rampant, and much of the aid was confiscated, making every step difficult in aiding this country.

There is an old expression that goes, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  Haiti sadly does not rise up to the sow's ear.  There are roughly 190 countries in the world.  If the USA takes on a massive number of Haitians on a refugee status, then so too should every country in the world.  Depopulate the entire island. or at least the Haitian side of it, and use it for military target practice or something.  There just isn't enough money to change that country in any way positive for any length of time.

The obstacles are just too overwhelming to make any serious effort generate results.  Education is nonexistent, disease is rampant, to the point that 80% of the population deals with malaria, violence is a part of the culture, they have just too much going against them.  It would be like building a city on a swamp and expecting sustained success.

It is a shame we do not react to our own nation's needs like we do people of other countries.  Hundreds of billions spent on Iraq and Afghanistan EACH YEAR, and for what I would like to know.  It will end up being billions in Haiti, and little will change in that country.  We will end up bringing millions of Haitians to the USA when our own people are now struggling for survival.  I am one of them.  The burden on states like Florida is just unacceptable.

The USA has meddled enough in other countries.  It is time we put our own house in order, and let the rest of the world find their own way.