Posted on 03/26/2014 7:53:34 PM PDT by Lorianne
Cuba’s 1950s cars and Havana’s crumbling facades have long been its iconic symbols in the American imagination. They don’t disappoint, as I discovered on a trip to Cuba last week. But I didn’t expect zippy Hyundais with Miami FM on their radios or a private collection of contemporary Cuban art, installed floor to 20-foot ceiling in a fabulous apartment with a terrace overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Both the apartment and the art would put many wealthy New Yorkers to shame.
Cubans remain poor. It would be no fun to live on the $15-35 per month that is paid to most government employees. Even with subsidized (and rationed) staples as well as free rent, health care and education, many neighborhoods of Havana are decrepit. Balconies fall off apartment buildings. Whole buildings collapse into the street. People wait in long lines to collect remittances at Western Union, whose window has a faded poster of Fidel and Raul Castro declaring, “The Revolution, thriving and victorious, is moving ahead.” The woman in line wearing American flag tights—stripes on one leg, stars on the other—is no doubt in the revolutionary vanguard. Cuba depends for hard currency on remittances from the United States and Europe, as well as payments and subsidies estimated at $9.4 billion per year from Venezuela. Caracas is not in a position to continue that much longer, raising the specter of economic collapse and a massive outflow of people that could present the United States with an unexpected foreign policy crisis on its own doorstep.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Yes.
“Cuba’s 1950s cars”
Zero can unload a lot of exploding Chevy Volts @ $10.00 a month.
The last GM coup was selling ‘Novas’ (”won’t go”) to lateenos.
Correct answer!
It isn’t Obama’s fault. Obama had nothing to do with encouraging our energy independence which has resulting in less imports of the heavy crude Venezuela is known for.
Has he finally located the mysterious 58th state?
Obama could make efforts to bring Cuba into a better relationship, but instead Putin will come in and prop them up, building Russian bases in Cuba.
If Cuba fails, it’s only going to affect the locals. Like Putin and the Crimea - it’s just local according to dear reader.
The cuban people I’ve met in the free world are, in general, industrious and joyful people who are very family-oriented. I think they would come out of a regime fall on the bright side of the street pretty quickly. It’s not surprising the reporter didn’t hear much enthusiasm displayed by the man-on-the-street for political topics - people still tend to disappear for saying the wrong thing to strangers.
Ready? Hell, he is probably instigating this. Another major oil producer in chaos will allow him to drive up prices even further bringing the EUnuchs in line if they go against his coming invasion of Europe.
Cuba exports cigars don’t they?
After 60 years of expecting government to tell you what to do while relying on that same government just to eat every day, I doubt many Cubans would have a clue how to survive on their own.
That is the biggest sin of Communism. It destroys individual initiative. We see it even here with the children of LBJs Great Society.
Nonetheless, some of the most ardent freedom-loving people in the US are emigre's from the Eastern European bloc and refugees from the Soviet Union.
They are the ones who, more than anybody, have questioned what we're doing to ourselves in the Obama Era.
We have our own Castro problem here in TX, in San Antonio.
Our Alamo City has been taken over by prog commies.
And Saul Alinsky dedicates his influential writing to Lucifer.
And Hillary and Obama lap it up and try to make us swallow it.
And we are supposed to get in line and just mindlessly follow them by moving forward all the way into hell.
Look at NK...the people there are completely brainwashed.
The "Refugees" from those hell holes, those who did all they could the get away from those dictatorships, I'll agree with. I know many of them.
But those who just sat there and took it for their entire lives, that's a different story. They expect some 'authority' to dictate their lives. They do not understand any other way, and do not comprehend that they can do it on their own.
As another poster said above, look at East Germany as an example.
Which type will be the majority?
All will enjoy the freedom, but what percentage will embrace the responsibility that comes with freedom?
What percent of Americans even embrace that responsibility today?
I've no idea.
I'm not arguing with you. We seem to agree that both types will be present...for the reasons we've both outlined.
The exact proportion is anybody's guess.
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