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several of my friends in CR bank at Banco Costa Rica and they have “direct” deposits of their SS checks into those accounts, arranged for by the Embassy.
sorry you got robbed, deb. that had to be upsetting.
last night on the flight from san jose to atlanta, a man sitting across the aisle from me asked the man sitting next to him how he liked costa rica, to which he replied, he would never ever under any circumstances go back there. of course the other guy wanted to know what had happened that would make him say that so the middle-aged porky gentlemen explained that he had been in san jose one evening and two guys help him up. that’s terrible, exclaimed the other passenger. and the victim said, “yeah, man, those guys stole my $5000 Rolex and a $5000 gold chain I had on around my neck.” it was all I could do to keep from leaning over and telling him what a moron he was, but i held my tongue because he had yet another tale to tell. when asked where else he had gone besides san jose, he replied that he had gone to Jaco and met a really beautiful woman (hooker came to mind when i heard that) and he said when he woke up in the middle of the night she was gone and so was all the money in his wallet. some people should be given an IQ test before they are allowed to leave the US. But if he had walked downtown in any urban area wearing ten grand in flashy goods, the same thing would’ve happened.
my gardener makes 850 colones an hour. that´s up from the 600 colones he made last year. it´s still only about $1.60 an hour. the maestro de obra on my house makes about $340 a month. a common laborer makes 30,000 colones a week. recently the wife of one of my workers died and the neighborhood took up a collection to help him with his two small children. we raised $270. that was the equivalent of one month´s pay. someone who works for Intel will make around $800 a month. when i was at the embassy last year, a young Tica was applying for a work visa as Intel was sending her to <New Jersey for 6 months. the guy at the embassy asked her how much she made her. she told him $800 a month. he asked her how much she would be making in new jersey and she said the same. he told her, go tell Intel you ned a raise to $50,000 because that´s what someone with your job in the states would make. for $800 a month you won´t get a rat hole to live in. salaries are still hideously in costa rica, so i wouldn´t complain about what you have to pay anybody down here.
from what i´ve observed from watching the children in my neighborhood and on the bus and in public places, as well as observing the children of my friends here in costa rica, i can honestly say that most of them are respectful, well behaved, polite, and thoughtful. they are also not medicated for a bunch of phoney mood disorders such as ADD, bi-polar, oppositional defiance disorder, etc, which for me is the biggest plus about raising children in costa rica. children are still children here but as jerry pointed out, ther are other cultural differences, primarily the way children relate to their parents and their grandparents. the other day i saw a woman who had to be about 90, strolling down the street with her 13 or 14 year old grandson, who had her by the arm and was walking at her pace while they chatted animatedly. when would you ever se that in the States? the americans i know who came her with children about the age of your grandchildren are all happy they made the move.
i used javier as well, as did at least 7 other friends i have in costa rica. we were all very very happy with his fees and his expertise.
yes, alfred, you are right. i´ve been investigating big pharma and it´s incestuous relationship to the fda for ten years. even wrote a book about it. i am one of the people responsible for the new suicide and homicide warnings on a whole class of drugs, totally unproven, and bogus to boot. unless i were bleeding from every orifice i would never take a pharmaceutical that had not been on the market for 20 years. i wonder if the shareholders of merck or eli lily care about the havoc these companies wreak on an unsuspected citizenry who thinks their doctors know everything and the pharmaceutical companies care whether they get better or not. such is the conundrum we are in — some drugs are lifesavers; others are killers. thankfully, they are not doling out those mind-altering drugs to the pediatric population in costa rica.
publicly held corporations are mandated by law to make a profit for their shareholders. nothing else matters — take a look at big pharma for perfect examples of raping and plundering by putting out bad drug after bad drug to make enormous profits for the shareholders at the expense of the lives and health of the people who gobble all those worthless drugs. walmart, riteaid, etc are no different.
i think i saw the prohibition list of dogs to import on the ministerio de salud website for costa rica. it was written in spanish, but i do recall seeing a list of dogs that were not allowed, so if you can find that website, i would check there, or with the usda.
just because you´ve seen those dogs in country doesn´t mean you can bring them in, and i do believe that when i was researching bringing our dog to costa rica that i came across some info that also indicated they were not allowed. please check with the USDA veterinary services department and they should be able to tell you definitively if you can in fact import pit bulls.
what a laugh i´ve had. thanks, kids. here´s the latest article by my neighbor and best pal. seems he has some of my same viewponts. carry on, right-wingers!
They’re shocked, shocked they tell you
by Mark Drolette | Feb 8 2007 – 10:20pm | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Mark DroletteThey’re everywhere.
Even in Costa Rica.
Which is where I was recently for the fifth time to check on my house construction and also officially become a legal resident of the country which, among other things, now allows me, for about forty bucks a month, to join its national health care system under which I will be fully covered medically, pre-existing conditions be damned. (You know, just like how we do it in America.)
That’s right; Costa Rica doesn’t care that I’m asthmatic or have been married three times. (If multiple marriages don’t sound like a health issue to you, you’ve obviously not met any of my exes.)
OK, then, so on with it: who are these “they”?
Shh! “They” are America’s real enemies:
Bush supporters.
I knew I was in trouble the moment I met them at the bed and breakfast at which I was lodging for a week. See, I have a well-developed sick sense, one that allows me to detect the unmistakable stench of fascism.
I see brain-dead people.
One of the B&B’s operators, a friend, introduced me to three other guests at the beginning of my visit: a man and two women who were traveling together. Their accents, combined with a certain air, raised my first alert.
When my amigo mentioned I was moving soon to Costa Rica, the inevitable question arose:
“Why?” they asked.
“Politics.”
Silence. Frozen smiles. Change of subject.
No me gustan, we have a problem.
Dinner at the inn later was peppered with enough “Praise Gods,” bible references and personal miracle witnessing to confirm my life’s karma account is still clearly in deficit.
(Maybe it was that third marriage. Or the second. Or the…)
Though I periodically encountered these individuals over the next few days, the subject of politics was thankfully avoided.
I wasn’t always so disinclined to join the fray, oh no not by a long shot.
During the two years I regularly wrote political satire for various ‘Net sites (until spring 2006), I was, of course, immersed in politics. But after deciding I could no longer abide the paranoia-laced, open-air insane asylum known as America and that I needed to get the hell out, I chose to focus my time and energy on doing just that. It wasn’t easy laying politics aside but, after much internal struggle and many discussions with others, I have (pretty much) managed to do it.
Try as I might, though, sometimes there’s just no avoiding it.
Even in Costa Rica.
Minutes before leaving for the airport at the end of my visit, as I ate breakfast, one of the women entered the kitchen.
“So…you’re going back to work on Monday?” she asked.
“Yes. Arnold needs me,” I replied sardonically.
(This would be Arnold Schwarzenazi, who is ultimately my boss as I am employed by the State of California.)
“Tell me,” she drawled, “what do the people of California think of Arnold?”
“Well,” I rejoined evenly, “apparently seventy percent of the voters think he’s doing just fine. Personally, it makes me embarrassed to be from the state.”
Pause.
“Well, we voted for Bush.”
Another pause.
“Twice.”
The kicker:
“Who knew?”
Old, familiar rage welled up quickly from within. I actually dropped my fork.
Who knew?
Who knew??
It was all I could do to spit out through gritted teeth: “Well, I knew. And lots of people I know, knew.”
But it was pointless to get into it, regardless how irate I was, for one thing I (finally) learned about right-wingers before semi-retiring the columnar keyboard was that it was an utter waste of time trying to “debate” them. It eventually became apparent, whether I’d spent hours composing well-constructed, painstakingly-sourced responses to flamers’ kooky cutter e-mails or gone toe-to-toe with a co-worker on the workroom floor, that America’s good Germans were always thrown by, and refused to respond to, certain annoying technicalities I always meanly and deliberately insisted on including in my arguments:
facts.
Yeah, who knew?
Who knew, for instance, that wooden drones couldn’t fly non-stop from Iraq, penetrate American airspace and then deliver their massive individual payloads of approximately two liters of Roundup®? (Lest you laugh, don’t forget: this was the new, improved, extra-strength formula.)
Or who knew that Bushco’s official embrace of the use of torture could ever tarnish the image America loves to project, that of being a highly-civilized country, that, you know, officially disdains the use of torture?
Who knew Bush and company would, every chance they got, shred the Constitution clause by clause, acting like they considered it to be nothing more than, say, just a goddamned piece of paper as well as a major irritant to their grandiose dreams of world corporate domination because, well…those are the very things they considered it?
Who knew the war in Iraq was really all about, after Hussein’s ouster, moving U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia (whose long-term presence there had been causing our good friends in the House of Saud some rather sticky internal problems) and onto permanent bases in Iraq so America could then indefinitely sit pretty atop Iraq’s oil tap? (Other than those, that is, who took the time to read even a few paragraphs of the treatise from the Project for the New American Century [PNAC] called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” that clearly laid the whole thing out one full year before 9/11.)
Who knew the Bushies were capable of treasonously outing a CIA agent and then, gasp!, lying about it?
Who knew Bush would more than double Hussein’s body count and keep those who toil in the mass graves business workin’ big-time on their dig time? (I’ll admit, I misunderestimated Dubya’s score on this one. I saw a sign at one of the 2003 pre-war marches in San Francisco that said “500,000 will die” and thought: “OK, that guy’s a little high.” Turns out, even he was low-balling.)
Who knew the proposition that the creatures who ru(i)n this country are in reality children-sacrificing, reptilian shape-shifters would end up as plausible as any for explaining why these heinous monsters do what they do?
(If this one’s accurate, I know a couple of little hellions they could start off with in the apartment next door.)
Who knew the cracked neocon-backed attack on Iran wouldn’t turn out so hot, unless, that is, you’re talking about the radioactivity released by the beyond-the-pale-nuts-even-for-them-and-that’s-really-saying-something use of nuclear weapons? (Whoops; this one hasn’t happened. Yet.)
Gosh almighty. Who, indeed, could have known any of this, or so very much more?
It was only inevitable, of course, that when Bush and his insane handlers finally got so out of control and the situation became so dire that their lunacy would be obvious to all but the most moronic (in other words, Dubya himself and others with similar IQs, like eggplants), we would then get from former Bushco supporters what I heard in Costa Rica, this utterly execrable insouciant self-absolution of any personal responsibility in the whole sickening, murderous affair.
It was only a matter of time, too, before the supremely self-satisfied, denial-drenched architects of the mad mayhem themselves began furiously backpedaling and breaking out the sharp blades best suited for insertion into the closest available back. In the January issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose records these U-turns from a whole nest of neoconservatives:
Longtime neocon Kenneth Adelman complains the Bush administration “national-security team” “turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the [post-WWII] era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.” (It is hard to take, I guess, if you can’t have your cakewalk and bleat it, too.)
Former Defense Policy Board chairman and general all-around vile thing Richard Perle points the finger at “opposition” and “disloyalty” within the administration for helping produce the fiasco in Iraq. Poor Perle’s particularly piqued regarding hurtful accusations he’s cruelly had to endure: “Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: they were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I’m getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war.”
PNAC charter member Frank Gaffney blames “skulduggery” and “palpable insubordination” at the White House for Iraq gone wild. Fellow PNACer Eliot A. Cohen gee whizzes he “wouldn’t be surprised if what we end up drifting toward [in Iraq] is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.”
Actually, I can relate to all these guys: back in the day, I remember how miffed I’d get whenever I’d use my considerable influence to push for war for years and then it, like, happened and stuff.
I mean, ’cause, really — who knew?
What made crossing paths with the unapologetic Bushites in Costa Rica even more unpalatable but so characteristic was the public piety they displayed at the dinner table. Though this is only supposition, it’s not a stretch to think at least part of the reason they backed Bush is because of his purported born-againism.
If that’s what Christianity is all about, please, direct me to the nearest pentagram. (I’m sure there’s one in Cheney’s office.)
Hypocrisy has always oozed from these types and has long been what I detest about them most. So it’s not surprising in the least to hear the excuses fly now about how it’s all turned to so much ashes and how oh how could they have ever seen it coming?
After all, who knew?
Unh-uh. Sorry. Not so fast. Just as Hitler wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did without solid support from and constant acquiescence by the German populace in the face of ongoing domestic and then, cross-border horrors, so neither would the Bush administration have been able to, in an astonishingly short time, dismantle just about everything that was good and decent about this admittedly deeply flawed but had-a-chance nation without the aid, whether overt or otherwise, provided by tens of millions of belligerently nationalistic, xenophobic, morally twisted, historically ignorant, scared-of-their-own-shadows Americans.
On a personal level, here’s the worst part: the trio of Bush fans I met in Costa Rica were there to seriously scout land for purchase, property that is very close to mine on which to live at least part-time, so it is likely our paths will cross often in the future.
Thus, in effect, they are fleeing the very mess they helped create, landing with a very loud thud right near me. If there were any justice in this world, these three and millions like them would be precluded from forever leaving the States and forced to work their asses off trying to right the ship that is America from sinking under the dead weight with which they’ve so willingly loaded it these last few benighted years.
But as we all know, justice is in very short supply these days.
It’s fair to ask what my responsibility is. Don’t I, as an American citizen, have a duty to stay and fight the good fight alongside the millions of fine, dedicated folks who are determined to do just that?
As I wrote in an earlier column, we all gotta do what we all gotta do. For one thing, I am very excited about the possibilities that await me in lovely, welcoming Costa Rica. For another, I’m not the first to leave his or her country of birth from disgust and I sure as hell won’t be the last. I take solace I’ll be in good company.
Except for when, of course, I unfortunately find it polluted by the presence of those who, after willingly signing off on years of Bushit, now attempt to plead ignorance regarding the ramifications, looking for a free pass they don’t ever deserve.
Even in Costa Rica.
Copyright © 2007 Mark Drolette. All rights reserved.
P.S. Thank you, Molly Ivins. Rest in peace.
_______
About author Mark Drolette is a writer who currently lives in Sacramento, California, and whose next book Why Costa Rica? Why the Hell Not? will at last be his first, due to be published once it’s finished and then, finally, published. He can be reached at: mdrolette@comcast.net.
some of you really really really need to do some research and stop believing everything you read fromt he ultra-right-wing media. sheesh.
some of you make ann coulter look like a bra-burning liberal extremist, but i´ll bet not a one of you has her legs. i guess none of you mind that our presidency was hijakced (rule number one of fascism) and then the results were determined by a judicial body (number two rule of fascism), or that we invaded a country for no damn good reason except oil, since it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was zero-nada-zip connection between hussein and al qaeda, not to mention the nonexistence of wmds. guess the fact that habeas corpus doesn´t exist, or that you can disappear in our country never to be seen again, or have your house searched without your knowledge, in general, our basic civil rights have been stripped away, all in the name of terrorism, from which we are no safer now than we were before 9-11. we have unsecure ports, unsecure nuclear facilities, unsecure refineries. in short, the entire administraion is run by a bunch of power hungry war mongers who are incapable of doing anything to protect our citizenry from the threat of terrorism but will do anything to further global conquest. nah, those aren´t good reasons to get the hell out of the US. as for iraq, we´ll be there for the next 20 years, because it wouldn´t benefit us to leave, meanwhile we are sacrificing our young soldiers like pigs in a slaughter house, and i suppose the 100,000 innocent iraqis — men, women, and children — who died so we can all guzzle up the oil supply with our obscenely large hummers and other suvs doesn´t matter either. i chose costa rica because there is no standing army and people aren´t forcefed paranoia and fear every day of their lives. i will NOT support this war anymore than i supported the illegal war in southeast asia, but i suppose that most of you think that war criminal henry kissinger was a great statesman. what fine fascist soldiers you make, parroting the propganda that is thrown at us 24-7, instilling fear of everything until we don´t even know what we´re really afraid of anymore. i´m sure i`ve given you all enough fodder to compose a long litany of insults, which i can´t wait to read because i´m having a dinner party in a couple of weeks which will be attended by a couple of journalists and lord knows we need a good laugh!!! oh, and now that i´m living in costa rica, i rarely if ever check this board because i am too busy living pura vida.
bringing your dog couldn´t be easier. we just brought our dog down, and all i needed was the usda health certificate that showed his recent rabies vaccination. none of the paperwork needed to be stamped by the cr consulate, and neither did i need an import permit or pay to have some vet meet me at the airport to clear my dog. when we went through customs, i handed the packet of paperwork to the customs agent, he looked it over and handed it back to me. nobody inspected the dog at all. bringing your dog back to the us only requires the same rabies paperwork. all the other ideas about how to do this is just a way for people to make money. if you dog is a pet, all you need is the rabies and usda certificate. our dog travels in the cabin with us and does not have to be crated, and even that was a breze and the dog has its own seat and the flight attendant even offered a meal to me for the dog.
I brought back some brochures last year from the surf camp in Jaco and of course when he saw all the buff babes he was eager to sign up. Problem is, he wants to teach the dog to surf, too.
You know Type A’s — never sitting around doing nothing. We have 3 huge mosaics to do in April and May (one is 600 sq ft) so we might as well sit out the waiting time at the house in Costa Rica where we still have to install our Monet mural in my bathroom. Yes, he is forever entertained, and slightly annoyed that I always have something for him to do! All he wants to do down there is learn to surf! Maybe you could give him some lessons. LOL
When are you going back to Costa Rica, you pasty fatso? I’m leaving on Monday and will be there until April. If you’re around maybe you can come by and have a plate of dog food. The Italian chef will be cooking it. I rarely check the boards when I’m there, but I do occasionally check e-mail, so let me know if you’re in country.
