Mark Drolette

Boy, for a free market, it sure is expensive

By Mark Drolette

I’m afraid I just don’t get this “free market” stuff. Recent government bailouts of private companies look to me like anything but adherence to free market principles, but then, what do I know? I’m just an average American, not someone economically savvy like George W. Bush who -- well, I’m not economically savvy.

So far be it from me, at a time like this, to ignorantly chime in with unhelpful negativity about the $700 billion plan by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen to fund the government purchase of oodles of “toxic debt” from companies that shoulda known better, even if its cost, when added to previous bailouts of $29 billion (Bear Stearns), $200 billion (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) and $85 billion (AIG), shoves the total tab for the American taxpayer past a trillion dollars for 2008 alone. (The silver lining: there are only three months left!)

Think we're tough? Think again

By Mark Drolette

Last month, in her article “Dear World,” Naomi Wolf appealed to the global community to save itself by confronting America. A quote:

“We Americans are either too incapable, or too dysfunctional, to help ourselves right now. Like drug addicts or the mentally ill who refuse treatment, we need our friends to intervene. So remember us as we were in our better moments, and take action to save us -- and the world -- from ourselves.”

Wimpy-sounding, eh? I thought so, too. And I should know, since I wrote something similar three years ago in a piece called, interestingly enough, “Dear Fellow Citizens of the World...” Addressing our “non-American brothers and sisters,” I said:

You go, Hugo, and take your goody-goody goodie bags with you

By Mark Drolette

With the recent expulsion of the U.S. ambassador from Venezuela, thus greatly reducing the chances of promoting a coup, I mean, cooperation there, I see that the anti-American, thrice freely-elected dictator, Hugo Chávez, is at it again. His belligerent refusal to play fair-and-square by doing things the right way -- ours -- brings to mind something I read about the underhanded, overly-informed oppressor a couple months back in Costa Rica’s leading English-language newspaper, The Tico Times. The article lead, “[S]ome 800 (Costa Ricans) have traveled to Venezuela for free eye surgery over the last few years, 93 (in June) alone, on a gift from President Hugo Chávez’s government.”

9/11 a conspiracy? Ha! Well, OK, so it was, but not the weird kind

By Mark Drolette

As yet another September 11 approaches, like it does so often this time of year, I need to address an issue that makes my true-blue patriotic blood boil. (Even though it’s red, really.) I’m talking about the 9/11 conspiracy nuts.

Sometimes, a wave is just a wave. Welcome to Costa Rica!

By Mark Drolette

Someone asked if I’m content with my decision to leave America.

I’ll put it this way: I’m content with how content I am. Despite a leaky (new) roof, a shower drain that doesn’t, a 10-minute walk down dirt or muddy roads followed by a 20-minute bus ride to town, a neighborhood with no phone lines and a state-run phone company with no cell phone numbers, at least I’m free of one concern: When will Costa Rica attack Iran? (For one thing, it’s pretty hard to do without a military, which Costa Rica hasn’t had since 1949. For another – well, there isn’t another.)