Los Angeles Times article on CR, today, Sept 14, 2023

[Joe Harrison]

This is a major LA Times story published today.  It's not pretty.

Costa Rica battles violence as cocaine trade grows - Los Angeles Times

[Sam Wilson]

Hi Joe,

I thought the article had several very salient points...

Economic troubles have made the country fertile ground for the drug trade.

In our little town, crack is cheaper than beer.  Almost everyone has crackheads in their extended family circle or at least personally knows someone who is.

“We need an iron fist,” she said. “Here the policing is too relaxed.”

the police were not there to chase down and inspect the boats — just to act as a visual deterrent.

at the time of the killing, a police cruiser had been stationed nearby, yet officers didn’t intervene

Only a disingenuous idiot like AMLO (not a clinical diagnosis, just my personal opinion) could seriously think “abrazos no balazos” would work with narco gangs.  How has that been working out?  Right off the bat, AMLO's first 6 months were the most deadly in Mexico's modern history. I'm sure it just got worse...  Bukele's answer in El Salvador to this problem was perhaps not ideal, but it has at least been somewhat effective.  Extreme "wokeism" in the US seems to be working as well as AMLO's "abrazos no balazos”. Portland?  Are you ready to admit failure with this, already?

“Threats are absent not because we lack tanks, but because there are few of us who are hungry, illiterate or unemployed,” President Oscar Arias said in a speech to the U.S. Congress in 1987.

But in recent years, as Costa Rica weathered the 2008 global economic crisis and then the COVID-19 pandemic, funding for education and social programs fell sharply.

If I were king... Strong security forces, vastly improving the sloppy unionized education system and more pro-business policies to help the economy thereby reducing poverty, would be my initial off-the cuff approach.  ;-)

I would continue a forceful crackdown on graft and corruption.  Social safety nets would be mended and improved with an improving economy.

Sure that is all easier said than done, especially since there is little to no hope of getting even half of 57 cats to pull their legislative oars in the same direction. Why is that so hard?  Seems like a smelly tuna fish would be enough to do that...  Could it really be that the Illuminati have no interest in solving the concerns addressed by the grieving mothers in that article?

Hmmmm....

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Sam

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 9:39 AM Joe Harrison <joeharr...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a major LA Times story published today.  It's not pretty.

Costa Rica battles violence as cocaine trade grows - Los Angeles Times

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[Joe Harrison]

Excellent comments Sam; I agree totalmente.  Especially about the police and education as contributory to CR's current problems.  This was also the view of one of my Tico students this morning.  He's an executive, age about 60, part of the Monge clan.  He told me his first trip outside CR was when he was 18, a bus trip north to Mexico and it was the first time he had ever seen a firearm in his life -- or a military person.  And both were abundant all through his trip!  He also said that in his day, education was much more egalitarian -- very few private schools.  As to why there are so many now?  Maybe it's because so many parents are fed up with the power of unions in the public schools and what they have accomplished to lower the standards there.  (The same is true in the US, I think.)  At any rate, we are seeing an increase in violence even here in San Ramon, the birthplace of Don Pepe Figueres Ferrer.....

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[Sam Wilson]

Thanks, Joe...

Times sure have changed and of course the one constant is that this trend continues.  What seems to be so lacking in societal skill, is that we are not on a path of continual and constant improvement, or enlightenment...  jajaja.  Look at Japan's meteoric rise after WWII.  A lot of that (like Toyota) was based upon a simple concept or philosophy:  Kaizen - a concept referring to implementing continuous improvement, repeat.  The end result is world-class refinement.  Problems become smaller and smaller like a fading tumor and society as a whole gets better and better on their path towards Utopia.

I've lived almost 20 years in our nice little community and we have had our little flare ups of evildoers...  The last police captain we had that commanded respect by all was from 10+ years ago.  Small enough to not attract the attention of many outsiders, and small enough that everyone knows who the thieves are -- that's how big our pueblecito is...  That captain would flat out explain to ladrón wannabes that it behooves their bienestar to get the hell out of dodge.  And they did.  Most headed into the big cities like Alajuela or their families sent them elsewhere to live with other family.  Petty theft dropped to an unnoticeable amount.  I had two bar buds who ended up with broken ribs after fighting with the cops on separate occasions -- in both cases, broken while they were in jail overnight. That capitán never even once hinted about asking for a bribe.  Ones before did and ones after did, but not that gruff old peacekeeper.  Once when someone did clear out a house while the owners were out of town, the word went out that every last bit of their stuff better be returned before noon, and by 11:30 AM there was a pile of their stuff under a tree in a nearby field. That capitán was both feared and respected. These days I don't expect ladrónes to get so roughed up, but if the sleepers in the police station just made a few rounds at night when the hooligans come out to play... and not just to be a "visual deterrent," it would seriously impact the amount of impact a little town has when overloaded with chico ninis

Very interesting observation about filling the gap when there is a need.  It never occurred to me that there were fewer private schools back then.  Obviously the quality of public education was head and shoulders above the disgraceful way things are being run now...  I say that as an involved parent who cannot believe how low the bar is and how very obviously the schools are being run by the inmates.  To wit, I regularly hear the excuse that there were no computer classes because it was raining and the roof leaks.  Yet just this past week the school built a huge covered parking structure for the teachers so their cars don't get too hot during the few hours a day they pretend to do their job.  Don't get me started!  We recently had most of the school shut down for 2 weeks because a handful of teachers went to a party and got diarrhea from something bad they ate. Two weeks because the teachers didn't feel well enough to work!  That was shortly followed by our 6th grader only having 3 (half) days of classes in over 2 weeks.  Of course there were good reasons for every single day, like "teachers had a meeting", "teacher had an errand to run in the next city over", "teacher's old mother needed someone to take her to the clinic", ad nauseam.  This is not sustainable. Even normally passive Ticos are getting fired up about this one. Maybe if the political system incentivized politicians to do a good job at keeping promises because, just maybe they could be re-elected, that would make for more feet being held to the fire than our current system of every president and diputado entering office as a lame duck. Their future employment does not depend upon doing a good job.  Sure everyone is supposed to be a mature adult, but there is something to that being held accountable thing.  ;-)

>  (The same is true in the US, I think.)

Sadly, I think it is true as well.  At least in large swaths.  When talking with a friend in the US with small kids and I bitch about the public schools ours are in, he tells me it is very similar to where he is.  On the other hand I've got a brother in a well-to-do North Dallas suburb full of very involved well educated parents, and their public school out performs the high dollar private ones in their area...

Maybe AI will save us all!?

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Sam

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[Joe Harrison]

That's a horrible thought = that we might have to rely on AI for the salvation of our civilization.   I quickly rejected it as a chiste on your part Sam.

Then I started thinking about it.  Sadly, you make an important point.  We could probably count on one hand the number of "leaders" throughout the world who genuinely make their decisions on their nation's (and the world's) best interests.  Almost all have uppermost in their minds self-preservation or worse.  I didn't see that during my time in government, but it's increasingly evident to me now and I think it's getting worse every day.  So, even though I don't understand AI (and don't want to try), I gotta admit its decisions on my (our) behalf couldn't be worse than what we have now.  While we wait for AI to improve, I do agree that CR could improve its system by allowing re-election, perhaps with some term or age limits.

We do have a large and very ineffective police presence in San Ramon.  There was a video taken 2 Saturday nights ago (shown widely on a SR FB page) that captured a street brawl outside a bar here, probably 25 kids randomly  attacking each other and approaching storefront windows.  About 10 uniforms stood idly by,  too chicken to do anything about breaking up the brawl.  But I guess it's "policy."  We have cops "patrolling" Parque Central, but they sit on their bicycles gossiping with each other in one predictable area of the park, certainly not on the lookout for anything, yet we all know that's where most of the teens buy their drugs after school.

My experience here with the public schools (3 kids at various levels) is identical to yours.  I can't believe it's good for kids to have such erratic schedules. Mostly the excuse is "teacher meetings."  My mom was a public school teacher all her professional life and hated the idea of unions; she considered teaching to be a profession, above the level of unionization.  As I remember, all her teacher meetings were after classes, not during the school day.  Unions (here and US) have changed that idea completely.  Aside from the fact that I can't afford it, I resist the very idea of private education (pre-university) as "snobbery" and I don't want our kids to get some sort of elitist attitude.  End of rant.  joe

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