This is despicable: The rich grab half of Colombia's poor fund

BlondeJamesBond says on Feb 10, 2005, 11:08:

A regular scandal It certainly is a scandal but it should not really surprise anyone.

Any large pools of money such as this will always attract the "vultures".

The U.N. - oil for food/cash
The Tsunami Aid Fund
Anything the European Union is involved with

It's guaranteed that huge percentages of these moneies are being siphoned off into the bank accounts of those who don't need it but know how to access it.

Unfortunately, I think it is so commonplace that there is a certain air of an acceptance of the inevitable.

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ARMacleod says on Feb 10, 2005, 13:04:

Ask yourself Those persons who get to those places where they can, almost with impunity, syphon off large sums of money and direct it to where they like. How do they get there in the first place?

They are inherently corrupt in the first place, they do not catch corruptness like some kind of disease. They have always been like it and they always will.

Such people may hide their sickness for a long time, some manage to keep it under control, but it is always there.

Sorry, I have just one dislike which borders on the point of loathing and that is reserved for politicians in general. I do not really believe that there is one honest politician in the world. No politician says what he says, or does what he does for the good of the country. It is for the party, and subsequently himself, which brings me back to the Money - Power - sex thing.

There are so many stories on this and other forums which under analytical scrutiny could be traced to corruption of some kind on the part of a politician, by word or deed, however distant.

Mr Leibovich stated, "there is no easy solution to this problem" or words to that effect. BS, it just need the political will, nothing more.

The brain is like a parachute, it only functions correctly when it is open. Pax vobiscum.

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VanMan says on Feb 10, 2005, 15:05:

politicians
I beg to differ that *ALL* politicians are corrupt. I knew a native canadian member of parliament and he worked his ass off for his community. But, yeah I do hate corrupt people and politics is a 'boys club'. This is dispicable.

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juancegomez says on Feb 10, 2005, 15:28:

Definitely something shameful But blaming the "rich" in general here for grabbing half of the "poor" fund (it's actually a subsidies fund, as the article itself makes clear) is misleading.

This is not so much a political corruption scandal (what exactly makes it so?) where a large amount of money disappeared or was pocketed directly, but rather a scandalous situation where SOME rich people and companies are taking unfair advantage of the government subsidies by locating themselves or their properties inside poor areas, and therefore paying less for taxes and public services. It's robbery, of course, but an indirect one.

Evidently such behavior is shameful and inhumane, I'm not saying otherwise, and steps should be taken to properly audit and track this sort of things (and while this is difficult to achieve, I'm not going to say "never". That's simplistic and pessimistic.), but one should properly describe the situation too.

On the other hand, it is also important to note that subsidies do not "eliminate poverty" by themselves, they only alleviate it.

One should teach a man (or woman) how to *fish*, after all, rather than simply distributing fish, to paraphrase a semi-famous proverb.

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juancegomez says on Feb 10, 2005, 16:25:

gringoinbogota "I hope you are right and I am beeing as you say "simplistic and pessimistic""

Hopefully. Though I wasn't using that to refer to you specifically, as a person, but to such a perspective in general.

"but I am sorry to say that I have over a hundred years of Colombian history to back up my pessimism and what you have is wishful thinking."

Can't really deny that, but those have been a hundred years which have had their share of bright spots and progresses even amid the presence of much (and, obviously, more noticeable given our present situation) darkness.

Yet, in more ways than one, I'd say that the steeper cliffs are behind us, even if there are still several and very dangerous ones ahead of us. One would have to be blind to deny their existence.

The question, IMHO, is not one of "if", but rather one of "when". It may take a long, long while for things to change...but a hundred or two hundred years are merely a drop in the oceans of history (compared to European history, for example).

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jaramillo says on Feb 10, 2005, 16:27:

I agree thate this is an appalling scandal. This kind of thing should be done in a more civilized way. In the U.S., for instance, a large tax cut has been given to the rich. Now we will cut services to the poor. Al very clean.

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jaramillo says on Feb 10, 2005, 16:51:

I am not attacking the U.S. I am simply saying that, as a general rule, you cannot trust the rich man to do the right thing. Chesterton said it more eloquently, but then gain, a lot of ideas are old. For instance, the notion that “If you are in extreme poverty in the US it is usually because you are lazy.” was ably articulated by Ronald Reagan. I just happen to think that it is dead wrong.

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william_andrew_channell says on Feb 10, 2005, 17:34:

I would agree with GIB on the "If you are in extreme poverty in the US it is usually because you are lazy" idea. Let's face it. It's the truth. For all the hooplah that people make about the shrinking job market, there is ALWAYS something to do, cleaning, working in restaurants, stocking grocery stores. If you really want to work in the US, you can find a job in a matter of days. It might not be what you wanted but it will give you at least minimum wage to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

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jaramillo says on Feb 10, 2005, 17:43:

minimum wage if you have children, minimum wage does not put a roof over your hard AND food on the table.

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Sr Tertius says on Feb 10, 2005, 18:04:

Beware of the blanket (and classist) statement Blonde: "Anything the European Union is involved with." This is an unjustified blanket statement.

James: "I do not really believe that there is one honest politician in the world." Another blanket statement. And just as dangerous: combined with the assumption that a political system is needed, it concludes that we should resign ourselves to corruption. A more constructive alternative is to identify and promote politicians that represent the interest of the community (they exist). By shunning politics aside, we are just leaving the space available for the worst elements in politics.

Gringo: "when will these people who took this money be going to jail???? The answer is...never!" This is not pessimism, but unjustified fatalism: if there is no way out, like an unpredictable natural disaster, what is the point of worrying about it? It is a fact that some people (admittedly, a small proportion) do face the consequences of their actions, and we can design institutional mechanisms to optimize these results... how is that wishful thinking?

James: "It just needs political will, nothing more." If it is so simple, then why is it that nobody has demonstrated such "political will". And whose will is it anyway?

The problem of corruption is not a simple one. One of the few wise things that former president Turbay said during his tenure was that his objective was not to eliminate corruption, but to be reduce it to its fair and appropriate proportions. The problem was with his definition of "fair and appropriate"; otherwise, it seems like a noble and realistic purpose: just like unemployement, it is unrealistic to pretend to eliminate corruption completely. The kind of things described above, although they technically do not constitute corruption (juance, thanks for the clarification), they are certainly beyond the "fair and appropriate".

The marginal cost of reducing corruption probably increases as larger levels of corruption are eliminated. If such cost is higher than the benefits obtained from the marginal reduction in corruption, it is not justified. At that point we may say that we have reached the "fair and appropriate" levels of corruption (or of any social malady). In Colombia we are, of course, very far from those levels.

Gringo: "If you are in extreme poverty in the US it is usually because you are lazy". This is a simplistic and outright offensive statement. I would like to see what, beyond your personal experience, justifies this kind of insult (hopefully with more numbers than anecdotes). Structural poverty exists in Colombia, the US, Sweden and virtually anywhere else, on obviously different proportions. Progressive economic systems generally try to "rotate" people through poverty (to put it simple: households that fall below poverty thresholds are assisted so that they don't stay there for too long). In the US, and increasingly in Europe, such rotation has been partially blocked by race and class issues. I don't think that the poor inner city dwellers, or those that populate the trailer parks of San Joaquin Valley (CA), would appreciate that you call them lazy.

In fact, I agree with Jaramillo that the kind of "corruption" we are talking about here is, to a large extent, institutionalized in the US economic system: under the born-again trickle-down doctrine, poor individuals subsidize wealthy corporations through unbalanced taxation, with the expectation that such corporations will drive economic growth and revert greater benefits to the subsidizing individuals. I will not discuss the merits of such doctrine, but it is consistent with the practices described in the article, and I just hope that they are not institutionalized in Colombia too.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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Lionheart says on Feb 10, 2005, 18:52:

unemployment/poverty in the USA Aside from the fact that a few comments were very offensive and flat wrong from several posters concerning people with financial problems in the USA, brushing them away as true problems is the same as brushing away dangers in Colombia. Plain ignorance. I know several cases with numbers.

Man, 3 children, divorced, $1200 per month child support being collected by child support services. Got laid off, received $300 per week unemployment, which equals minimum wage job. CSS garnished 50%, leaving him with $600 per month. Couldn't pay rent and utilities anymore. Judge wouldn't change the child support amount due to the past due amount, plus requested monthly amount got raised to $1500 to pay back. Past due amount was entered into credit report and driver's license was suspended due to non-payment of past due child support.

I know at least 3 cases like this, 2 of them live in Salvation Army housing and live on $110 per week, because the rent and food costs them $40 there. The 3rd gave up and is living on the streets now. They are former engineers like me. In over a year they couldn't find a high-tech job anymore, they are all over 40.

Calling somebody lazy because of no work or being forced into poverty because of the laws belongs to the last century, since the millenium change the world has changed too. In Colombia you have families catching you when this happens, in the USA nobody gives a damn.

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BlondeJamesBond says on Feb 10, 2005, 18:59:

Blanket Statement IMHO the EU should be nothing more than a confederacy of free trading nations which lowers taxes on goods.

It is in actuallity a massive bureaucracy and massive money spinning gravy train. It spews out endless red tape via endless insane laws dreamt up in over paid quango', and as such fosters exactly the attitude that one can "not really believe that there is one honest politician in the world".

Obviously these are blanket statements but sometimes in politics they are neccesary for a little emphasis.

Removing from my argument what I know to be the corruption that occurs in the multi-billion pound agricultural and fisheries departments, there is still room enough for criticism of the MEPs "legitamate" earnings.

MEP's once "elected" recieve (off the top of my head)

A basic salary of £45'000
£200 per day 'attendance bonus' (they are only required to attend the parliament once per quarter)
Restaurant bills, flights, fuel, chauffers, prostitutes (basically anything they can get a reciept for) is put on expenses, or in other words covered by the tax payer.
They can appoint whomever they like as a secretary (usually their wife or mistress) on a salary of around £75'000 per year + "expenses"

All this money paid to people who sit there in Brussels informing us that certain bananas and cucumbers are far to curved to be edible and must therefore be thrown on to a food mountain! Or if you kick a burglar out of your house without laying down the red carpet, then you may have breached the poor little fellas 'human rights' as decreed by the Euro constitution, and end up in jail yourself (I wonder what happens to burglars caught in the act in Colombia).

In summing up this little rant, the EU is comprised of a bunch of rich, deluded, bored, corrupt etc people who invariably make the average Europeans' life that much harder, and presumably don't do us any favours in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Apologies if my statement appeared blanket, but it is an organisation that handles billions of pounds and is certainly self-serving and corrupt.

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Sr Tertius says on Feb 10, 2005, 19:09:

The Truth "Let's face it. It's the truth." Well, whatever the truth is, it is quite inconsistent with the statistics. Below I have included a link to some numbers in California: would you conclude that Blacks and US-born Hispanics are lazier than Caucasians in CA?

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/JTF_PovertyJTF.pdf

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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kernow62 says on Feb 10, 2005, 21:38:

BlondeJamesBond the quangos have been a fixture in Britain long before the EU stepped in, it has been one of my peeves for a long time. The EU though has really screwed up the fishing industry for the UK with the favouritism that has been lavished on the Spanish fleet primarily.

Where I grew up in the UK a common mistrust of anyone from London (actually Whitehall) perhaps shaped my cynicism so that now I also have trouble trusting any politicians. You should read some of the replies from Whitehall that I have received regarding the Race Relations Act, it is plain they don't have an inkling of a clue as to what is going on in the real world.

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Sr Tertius says on Feb 11, 2005, 21:23:

Your statistics are saying it for me! JAJA Mhhh... I fail to see the humor in bigotry. Maybe it's because I'm lazy.

Over and out.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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