42 Replies to “Let Me Fix That Headline For You”

  1. Just an aside to the article;
    ” You know, like, one of my daughters works for Oxfam.”
    That would be Noam Chomsky speaking.

  2. So you have a dictator runni…errrrr…ruining the country.You have the Useless Nations stealin….errrr…sending money.And you have a population dependant on the above. The United States of Obama in 1 year.
    As Kathy would say….should have picked their own cotton.

  3. “You have the Useless Nations stealin….errrr…sending money”
    It’s worse; the U.N. brought cholera to Haiti. One of the many articles written after the earthquake noted a church group from Canada that had been in Haiti teaching the locals how to raise goats. As Mark Steyn wrote, how dysfunctional must a society be when a foreigner must teach them to raise goats.

  4. Read Hernando de Soto’s, “The Mystery of Capital”. It pretty much sums up why countries like Haiti are perpetually stuck in poverty and dysfunction. Until the governance, legal and property ownership systems change, little else will.

  5. I remember after the earthquake when I wrote against sending money to Haiti on this blog and how I was chastized as heartless and selfish.
    But I warned that Haiti is run by and for about 30 elite families, who have no interest in the rest of the Haitian population. Haiti has been the recipient of millions in aid over many years but almost none of this has gone to the Haitian people. Schools, health clinics etc for this mass, are all run and funded not by the Haitian government but by external aid agencies.
    Haiti is rated as the most corrupt government in the world. The elite families control all investment, construction, shipping etc. They will build luxury hotels and hospitals for themselves and their cronies but the regular Haitian people lack even basic housing, schools, medical care – unless supplied by an external agency.
    Will this change? Not until the external world insists and even, stops supporting the majority of the Haitian population, leaving the elite families to ignore them.

  6. just about every one of these “AID” groups are infested with lefties, and we know that lefties even want some one else to think for them, never mind doing something themselves, nuff said!!!

  7. Hey, how’s Japan doing? I’m sure they still have the same problems as Haiti. Oh wait, didn’t they rebuild a completely destroyed bridge in 8 days? Never mind. Bad comparison. It must be Western racism that’s at fault.

  9. There was nothing stopping the people in tent cities from rebuilding other than entitlement and sloth, they’ve been waiting for foreigners to build and fund their new homes.

  11. Errrrr…..ummmmmmm….Are you suggesting that maybe the general population of Haiti should perhaps have a general uprising? Oh wait.

  12. Rose – what an incredible statement, a statement of ignorance on your part.
    The people in tents can’t rebuild if they don’t have, first, an infrastructure on which to build. Namely, sewage and water supplies, which are not provided by the Haitian government, roads which are not provided, electricity and energy sources, garbage services and police and fire protection. None of which are supplied. AND, the basic material to build a home, such as lumber or siding and so on.
    The majority of Haitians are unemployed, not due to sloth, but due to the reality that the Haitian government does not provide the infrastructure – that’s water, roads, hydro, police security to actually run and maintain a business. Over 80% of the people live below the poverty line and rely almost totally on external agencies for food, water, health care.
    They practice small-scale backyard farming to sustain themselves.
    Schools? The government doesn’t provide them.
    Haiti is the most corrupt government in the world. It operates essentially as a mafia gang, with the thirty odd elite families running the place, ignoring the population, and leaving that population to the foreign aid groups to support. More than 60% of the population don’t have a formal job – because there’s no infrastructure to set up and run a business. No hydro, no roads, no water. Nothing.
    Now, do you think they live like this because of ‘sloth’ or because of a corrupt government?

  13. “…I wrote against sending money to Haiti…”
    Hmmm … I can’t think of one place where we should send money. What was that saying about give a man a fish …

  14. ET,I don’t remember anyone here,except maybe trolls, arguing your point,which was backed by many others with experience dealing with Haiti.
    “Haiti is rated as the most corrupt government in the world.”
    And,coincidentally, in the post just below this one,is an article about Chief Teresa Spence and Attawipiskat, whose government may be vying for that title.The parallels are distressing and obvious.
    And you’re correct,of course, the people will never rise above their situation without the infrastructure the government is supposed to provide.
    It seems also that many private companies are cashing in on the U.S. government backed charitable efforts,running up the costs of everything they provide,just like they do back home.
    What a schemozzle, and no end in sight.

  15. DrD and ET point out what needs to be said.
    They wouldn’t have fallen this far without government “help”. Both their own, and France’s “gift” of colonialism. The other side of the island isn’t this messed up.
    Hernando de Soto could likely fill a book with just Haiti’s problems, and how everyone else helping contributes to their problems.

  16. Haiti is just reverting to the African mean.
    ET, who would tolerate such a corrupt government, one that is actually detrimental to their well being?

  17. ET 4:00pm
    You are so quick to blast Rose but have you read what you wrote? Government should do this, government should do that… sounds like a Democratic Party policy platform. Somewhere on that miserable piece of rock should be someone who will do something on their own. They sound like Hurricane Katrina’s poor cousins, waiting for someone to do stuff for them.

  18. Haiti is a good argument for old fashioned Western colonialism. A military imposed governing structure, infrastructure and institutions. By the second generation they’d be able to graduate into self-government.
    As for the present mafia of governing families, a choice between leaving or staying and being tried and hanged would be necessary.
    The present anti-colonial, white guilt, staying at arms lenght allows more corruption and unnecessary human suffering than can be morally justified.

  19. Oh stuff your arrogance ET, they have healthy bodies and can rebuild one brick and reused stud at a time. Your drivel is nothimg more than the usual propaganda.

  20. Post-colonial problems can still be blamed on evil white men, it’s only been 208 years since their independence, a couple more years and they’ll sort it all out…
    I recall a documentary from the early 1980’s, the old folks said Haiti ran best when it was run by the United States Marine Corps for a number of years ending in the 1930’s.

  21. Send more money. Yeah, that’ll fix it. Isn’t that what the left always says?
    Yeah, just send more money….and make sure it’s from those Capitalist Western Nations….

  22. Texas Canuck and Rose, neither of you acknowledge the difference between what an individual does and what a community does and the fact that both have their roles in a society.
    Texas Canuck, whether it’s the GOP or Democrat or any other political party is irrelevant; the FACT is, that human beings live both as individuals and within a community.
    No individual sets up a hydro power grid and provides electricity. No individual sets up the water supply and purification plant and the water system of a community. No individual sets up a hospital or a police service. These are all provided and paid for by the community, which pools its money and builds these common services. Again, these are common and not personal services. In ancient times and modern, it’s the community that provides these services.
    The Haitian government despite being given billions in aid over many, many years, has failed to provide the necessary common services to the population.
    If there is no electricity or energy source, no water supply, no roads, and no security, then, no modern business, even one making bicycles, can be developed.
    If there are no schools, then, one cannot educate oneself to even start up a business. If there is no electricity, then, one can’t ‘go on the Internet’ to self-educate – assuming that one has even learned to read. Only about half the population has some capacity to read and if you remove the elite families, it plunges even lower.
    Rose, you repeat your ignorance. There have to be bricks available for your idealistic village. Are there any? Were their homes before the earthquake made out of bricks? No. What about water for the concrete? Is there running water? No. What about electricity to run the mixer, what about a road to bring in supplies? Is there one? No.
    Your sneer of contempt for these people utterly ignores what a corrupt, the most corrupt government in the world, does to a population. It deprives them of the capacity, and I don’t mean the psychological capacity, to develop an economy.
    Again, without a supply of energy (and even a donkey requires food, which requires money, which requires a job, which…)..without a supply of water, without roads, without the means to even develop a business….your arrogant insistence that ‘If they want to, then they can’..is naive.

  23. “Where there’s a free handout,there’s a will to get more.”—-dmorris
    Yep.
    It’s like some, ET for example, don’t realize the limits of gov’t constructs.

  24. ET:
    Not until the external world insists and even, stops supporting the majority of the Haitian population, leaving the elite families to ignore them.
    I didn’t get the last part of your statement.
    If the external world turns off the taps, either slowly, or all at once — what would happen? Revolt? Isn’t there a less bloody way?

  26. Eagle, my sentence was indeed unintelligible. What I was trying to say, and garbled it, was that what has developed in Haiti is a situation where the elite families are in full control of the economy and run it for themselves. They ignore the rest of the population.
    Who looks after the rest of the population? The foreign aid agencies which provide food, shelter, health care, some education. That suits the elite families just fine; they don’t have to use any money to build a societal infrastructure: no water system, no waste treatment plants, no hydro, no roads, no schools.
    BUT, since these foreign aid agencies just provide what can be defined as Consumer Goods, and don’t provide the infrastructure for the people to start up a business (no hydro, no water, no roads), then, the majority of the population becomes totally dependent.
    My suggestion was to stop the foreign aid services, and insist that the massive amounts of money given to Haiti be spent, by that corrupt government, on the people. Not on the elite families.
    red gunlop, what you and several others here fail to understand is that it’s not the ‘free handout’ that is the problem. It’s the lack of societal infrastructures. Water, hydro, roads. These are, I’m sorry to say, never provided by any one individual, but are necessarily a community or government task. And the Haitian government, the most corrupt in the world, has refused to provide these basic services.

  28. ET your arrogance on the Arab Spring was beyond contempt, your stupidity on this issue is akin to your ignorance. Perhaps you should wallow in Academia.

  29. Heh, according to ET the pioneers who settled here did the impossible, since there was no government ‘infrastructure’, other than a land survey system.
    The fact is, they eventually built their own ‘infrastructure’, roads, telephones, hospitals (usually taken over by government). Developed their own water, etc, etc.

  30. My, my Rose, you certainly make quite the assertions. How about providing some evidence for those assertions? in contrast, I evaluated your comments and pointed out the specific flaws in your argument.
    Perhaps you can explain why common infrastructures are not economically necessary in a society? Do you think a society, and that includes non-industrial as well as industrial, can function without a common infrastructure?
    Have you provided any evidence for your claim that all would be well in Haiti if the people weren’t so slothful and entitled?
    As for your comment on the ‘Arab Spring’, perhaps you could explain your point. Otherwise it’s empty of content.
    It’s terribly easy to get trapped in rhetoric and thus to make wild assertions, but, facts have a way of trumping fiction.

  31. Haiti – another Liberal loving, welfare, gun ban ghetto country that ranks #164 out of 178 countries for private gun ownership.
    It’s a good thing they banned firearms long ago in Haiti or someone might have gotten hurt.

  32. No phone, no lights no motor cars,
    Not a single luxury,
    Like Robinson Crusoe…. hee hee
    Now, what was Marx going on about?
    Well… enough of the faux intellectual anyway.
    Amazing that the real problem has yet to be illustrated here.
    They’re French. ‘Nuff said.

  33. I don’t recall seeing a lot of infrastructure in rural Haiti thirty years ago. Most people lived in mud brick houses with thatch or metal roofs. The very poor scraped some branches together and built themselves nests. I lived in a tent for months. Nobody had electricity, telephone, running water or sewer. Life was fine if you didn’t get sick. Biggest problems were dependence on foreign aid and voodoo.

  34. Haiti is Haiti .They destroyed their own forests by overuse. Its a land of ex slaves who never quite got the hang of being individuals. Not owned by a government or company.
    It has no morality, a small but rich class who steal everything.
    A people more interested in drugs & voodoo than reality.
    Its why the Dominican Republic shoot them on sight trying to enter their own Nation.
    Which is a Tourist mecca.

  35. A people more interested in drugs & voodoo than reality.
    Yes, but that is because they have no government infrastructure. Therefore they are forced into drugs and voodoo. Any sage can see that. lol

  36. “They’re French.”
    That was my first thought, too, when I saw the “HAITI” headline.
    ‘Glad you said it. For some reason, wherever they are, French and corruption seem to go together.

  37. Dependence is a totalitarian construct which is, in effect, servitude.
    Substitute ‘Haiti’ with ‘reserve’. Hmm

  38. Er, what assertion is unproved? Certainly our ancestors arrived here, cleared land, built farms. It was largely each family’s doing. There was no “community” in your sense to provide “infrastructure”, though in some instances the groups of settlers were linked by strong religious views. Sometimes; not always.
    “Community” and “infrastructure” are weasel-words. Your writing would be improved if you removed them and said what you really mean.
    As the dust settles, it is evident that the only thing which the intervention in Haiti has contributed is cholera. It was one thing that they didn’t have before – so I suppose the intervenors have contributed to the bacterial infrastructure of the community.

  39. By the way, how did the Canadian intervention go? It was cut off from the UN/USA botch, and was under the patronage of the then Governor-General, who is a member of one of the elite families.

  41. John Lewis, the facts are that the settlers came here, and, as a community, built their farms and economy.
    No individual built a house by and for himself; his family worked the land. Another settler might have helped, but, they got together and built a church; they together developed an economy, trading with each other; they helped build wells, they helped each other in times of fire, sickness etc.
    And, there was a government that legally authorized their settlements, that authorized their use of money and trade.
    Both the terms ‘community’ and ‘infrastructure’ are legitimate. I’ve no idea what ‘weasel word’ means. The fact that you don’t use or understand them is not my problem.
    A community is a term used to define a collective or group that relates to and with each other. An infrastructure is a term used to define the normative habits of belief and behaviour of this community.
    When I say that the Haitian government has failed to provide the basic infrastructure of a community to its citizens, I mean, that it has not provided hydro, water, roads, education.
    You may think that, gosh, why don’t they dig a well – without understanding that squatters on public land not only can’t do this, but, there way be no available water using that mode.
    You may say that, heck, who needs hydro service. Just use, um, a fire to cook your food. Where do you steal the wood from? Remember, it’s public land.
    You may say, heck, who needs roads, who needs schools, who needs a skill to get a job.
    You may say, humph, why don’t they do as the settlers did, and grow their own food? On public land? And they can’t take over private land.
    My point is that millions have been provided to the corrupt Haitian government to build this infrastructure (dreadful word, isn’t it) for the community (another terrible word). And the Haitian government has done zilch. Oh, it built a modern resort and hotel.

  42. Many many reasons not to cut and paste from wiki… but I just can’t resist the passage concerning the U.S. occupation….
    …”According to Paul Farmer, the US administration dismantled the constitutional system, reinstituted virtual slavery for building roads, and established the National Guards that ran the country by violence and terror after the Marines left.[41][dubious – discuss] It also made massive improvements to infrastructure: 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi) of roads were made usable; 189 bridges were built; many irrigation canals were rehabilitated; hospitals, schools, and public buildings were constructed, and drinking water was brought to the main cities.[citation needed] Sisal was introduced to Haiti, and sugar and cotton became significant exports.[42] The U.S. Marines supervised the operations of a client Haitian government, and emphasized American-style modernization of the infrastructure and universal education. Haitian traditionalists were highly resistant to these changes while the urban elites wanted more control. Together they helped force an end to the occupation in 1934…”
    What fun….
    It’s terrible when it’s done for them, terrible to allow poor standards of living to exist, and foolish to throw money at the the problem and, of course, racist to suggest they can’t do it for themselves. Sooooo I was curious to know how my neighbor’s squalor became my burden in the first place?
    Should I blame Kipling?

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