More t'ings that does b'un me ass

Once people make up their mind to leave St Croix suddenly becomes the worst place on earth.......the planes fly both ways.

Perhaps some of us are negative because we are tired of dealing with people like Savage.

This is my home too and it is painful to me to see such a large percentage of my neighbors suffer due to crime and homicide. You cannot argue that a larger percentage of our us are affected by crime. The numbers don't lie. You can bury your head in the sand if you'd like, your neighbors and friends, and possibly yourself, are still more likely to die via homicide here on St. Croix than anywhere else in the mainland United States. The reasons for this can be debated, but acknowledgement of the problem is not really up for debate by rational people unless you don't believe that the people gathering the statistics can count (it's a pretty basic equation).

It would require a massive restructuring of society ingeneral for any viable reduction in crime statistics here or anywhere to be seen. This restructuring would require an emphasis on spiritual things. That alone makes the task impossible, because the mere mention of anything spiritual sends people into paroxysms of rejection and denial.

Yeah, because mass murder never happens in the name of spiritual things. Crusades, Jihad, etc. :S

As for "freedom" and "welfare," the two things are completely incompatible. When one takes welfare they do it by taking freedom from another. I have to pay taxes to pay someone else's welfare. Instead of choosing how to spend my money I am forced by the government (under threat of violent incarceration) to pay for someone's groceries because of the choices they made. Freedom IS free by definition, unfortunately the meaning of freedom has been lost.

Sean

Nobody from St. Croix ever went on jihad or crusade.

The Caribbean in general used to be quite religious. Back in the day on St. Croix, when our parents had the freedom to raise their children as they saw fit, including whipping that ass, the boys were better behaved. Discipline your boy now and the State steps in and jails you. They want the boy to go to jail. Prison is a growth industry. They can't make money if everybody is good.

You cannot expect to massively infuse an 84 square mile area with the worst components of American culture and have positive results all around. There will be repercussions. Of course, the people at the top who are making all of the money could care less. They get great entertainment watching the rabble convulse itself. They know that the occasional person who actually sees the game for what it is will get shouted down by the very rabble he/she is trying to educate. Checkmate.

to Cruz: yes it is a shame that I do not remember any local names, but I am not good at remembering names and you know what, I'm not going to apologize for remembering what I remember. As for the local schoolkid who I definitely remember was shot by a stray bullet on STT - I will research this and report back to you. I know he was shot and I believe airlifted to PR for emergency medical, but I might be wrong in that he did not die. However, there are so many murders and shootings it's easy to confuse one with the other. They happen so frequently these days and NO ONE HERE can deny that they don't!!!!

to Cruz, again: here is the news story about the schoolkid.

http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2009/05/07/elementary-school-student-recovering-after-being-hit-stray-bullet

OK so I remembered incorrectly -he did not die, thankfully! But it is pretty bad that these kinds of shootouts happen in the middle of the freaking day! Two LOW LIFE THUGS shooting at each other, near a school bus!! What the hell!!! Similar thing happened at Canegata Ball Park last year.

And my point, is that these kinds of shootouts are happening more frequently and you cannot tell people that to stay safe you must not go out late out night and avoid bad neighborhoods. This stuff can happen anytime, anywhere. JUST SAYIN!

You would be surprised at wherein lies the disillusionment of some of our youth with the system.You'd be surprised at how deep the roots to some of the violence here goes.

Please explain.

I'll extend an olive branch to you, Rusty. You're obviously quite intelligent and it's apparent that you have messages that you'd like to share here. You're just going about it all wrong.

As for the crime here, stats are stats. Your beliefs are not in agreement with the stats - such that we have. In order to solve or address a problem, you first have to be able to see it, acknowledge it, and then try to understand it. If you live in denial of the exceptionally high level of crime in these islands, it's unlikely that you'll be a part of the solution. Why fix it if it's not broken?

"Sullen are they in the sweet air that by the Sun is gladdened..." (Dante, roughly)

I must say I agree with JRF. People become addicted to their fear, among many other things, and can't be persuaded away from the despondency with which they have infected themselves and those around them.

The islands aren't for everyone, and the reality in no way matches the image we all as transplants arrived with. Life here is real and immediate, utterly without the layers of insulation that smother most stateside communities. One ting does bu'hn me'ass is people who persist here after allowing themselves to be overcome by the realities, all the while reaping the envy of their friends and family away and sowing morbid discontent among the people here with whom they share this vibrant community.

While I agree with SOME of the sentiments here, some of them are seriously ill-informed.

Reading and hearing such comments, I am regularly reminded of one of USVI's greatest problems: the ignorant blaming others for problems of their own making.

Examples:

The crime rate. One poster blames the gun manufacturers, but fails to blame the gun culture here. There are many places in the US with worse poverty but less gun crime.

The lack of care. I used to think public trash was the problem, until I started to get to know the neighborhoods and realized that many people trash their own property as well.

Blaming people in government for ripping off the people. Yet a third of the population works for the government -generally delivering poor service and clinging to their 16 paid holidays and generous retirement like it is a birthright.

I've thought and read and listened a lot about the island's problems. And I've concluded that the most fundamental problems can be traced to a singular cultural phenomeon: the high birthrate here to single mothers who continue to have babies with various men. Local radio and politicians address it as a "parenting issue". But I'd like to call it what it is: a birth control issue, and a teen momma issue. And that has no quick fixes.

I love St Croix, but I'm under no illusions.

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PS: "Island car" is offensive to locals? hahaha. c'mon.