I'm voting for the greatest President DR has ever had...Leonel Fernandez!!...Que Viva El Progreso!!

To Edward: Why are you living in the United States? Come on down to enjoy "el progreso"

I will. I'm going in August and I will be riding the metro! :-)

How can you guys say that leonel is the president for the country when he hasn't done anything right and let people starved and get taxed out of the little money they make u guys have alot of issues on your mind

I wish Pena Gomez be reincarnated, so I can give my vote to him. lol, that is defenitely wishful thinking. This will be tougher than voting for the U.S. president for me. I just do not see much substance on the candidates, but waiting till they come here and maybe after listening to them speak I'll be able to make up my mind.

This is good news. I hope our brethen abroad can try to force change by moving away from our clientelistic practices that infect our suboptimal political system.

LF may be the "best president" we've had, but he's far far far from perfect - how much did he spend on the harleys? how much did he over-spend on airplanes? and how much was the Metro suppose to cost? oh and luckily for us, inequality is going down, right? Wrong!!!

Stability is great, and LF brought the country back from the abiss that Mejia sunked us in. But LF has done very little to invest in the publis sphere, attack poverty or inequality. These are not a priority.

I hope people look into other political movement in the DR - e.g. MIUCA- that have a platform that, at least on paper, promises CHANGE from clientelism and corruption.

For more details, go and read some of the political articles in the OPINION section of this paper!

Edward, see if you can live and eat off a Metro!

People are so stupid. They don't stop and think that the Metro is part of the solution!. Many people say "why a metro when we need to improve education, jobs, health, etc?" well hello!!!....When you think about it the metro will help improve all that. A Metro would result in job growth, better health because there will be fewer old piece of junk cars, poor people will have better access to doctors and clinics, students will be able to get to school easier, etc...so before you criticize the metro please think about these things. The metro means progress across the board!!!

Dear Friends and Colleagues, here's something off topic - I'd be terribly interested in meeting some of you and potentially setting up a regular "salon" - not the beauty kind - to chat about DR matters. OBviously we're all interested, and I think we can all benefit from face to face interaction.

TO that end, maybe we can aim to have two running "salons"- one in Santo Domingo and one in NY.

We just need volunteers to help set up - essentially chose a location, and send out emails to whomever expresses interest.

How does that sound?

if you're interested email me @ baldoria23@gmail.com.

Also - I'm currently in NY and will be leaving back to the DR Next week, anyone up for getting together Monday @ 6:00pm in Manhattan?

I expect some emails ;)

Edward, can you please explain to me how the Metro will achieve the goals you outlined, such as improving health care, education, job growth, etc. i know you think it will, because you are a diehard supporter, but some analysis usually helps to fortify your arguments. bear in mind two things , Edward: it is a nine mile corridor of service which travels in one direction, and secondly, any area more than a half mile away from a station is not considered to be in the service area. so go ahead; enlighten me.

Edward ,

The Metro has already made an impact on those matters, but a negative impact. since the Gov has spent more money on the metro than Health care and Eduction etc...

From The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/world/americas/03domingo.html

The initial $470 million estimate of the cost of the project has spiraled to nearly $700 million. Some suspect that will end up costing far more. In a country with deeply rooted poverty, infuriating power failures and social indicators a notch below those of Sri Lanka, opponents say there are better things the country could have done with the money.

“Is it more of a priority than education or health care or fighting poverty?” said Hamlet Hermann, a former minister of transportation in Mr. Fernández’s government and now a vehement critic of the project.“That’s what I ask.”

I did the calculations and the DR has now reached high development with a HDI of .800. We are now in the top 75 countries when it comes to development out of 177. Life expectancy jumped from 67 years to 73 years since 2000, the literacy rate jumped from 87% to 89.2%, and in human rights Dr jumped from #93 to #69 from 2006 to 2007, but of course the UN Human Development study won't reveal this til 2009. As of the last report the DR is of medium development at .779 based on 2005 data. So things are not as bad! by the way Sri Lanka is way lower than DR in development at .740!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List....ntries_by_Human_Development_Index

Oh yeah there is development going on but in tourist areas from what i see. but just because i live in a tourist area, that is continuously growing, does not mean i don't see the campos on the other side, completely living in poor conditions. The school teacher here has to print tests in my internet caffe because the school does not have a printer.

And the 1 computer the school has was purchased by the teacher, from the government for 60,000 pesos, to pay on a monthly basis. something that should have been donated to the school by the government, not sold! and this is just a small scenario of the lack of Gov intervention on education.

Eduardo you pretty much have to be living down here to get the real 411 on what's going on.

Edward , what econometric models did you use to arrive at a figure of 800? it appears to me that you simply add the same coefficients in a linear manner for each succeeding year, in arithmetic fashion. if you keep doing that model, you will exceed 100 in 20 years! and the literacy rate does not mean crap!! i know people with high school diplomas who cannot find puerto rico on the map; i am not lying! be careful how you arrive at these figures; it is not as simple as all that

Well I know the formula that is used to calculate HDI so I just did it with the new info and I came up with a estimate of between .799 and .802

"It said OPREE officials registered Dominicans to vote in their homes, businesses and even in busy streets in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Staten Island, Ferry Town, Yonkers, Haverstraw and other suburbs of the metropolitan area."

With all that effort and they only registered 60,000. Are you sure thats not just the registrations the PLD obtained from tomb stones!

Edward, you are being elusive with this data stuff of yours. the hdi is a product of several indices. you cannot predict the future of hdi because you cannot predict the trend of the indices. if one variable changes, the figures are out the window. so you cannot say it was 790 this year, 780 last year, so it will be 800 next year! it is not that simple.

At times it safe to predict the HDI by simply calculating the trend in the 10 previous years and assuming that it would be close to it the next 10 years. However, caviat as dread puts it, is that it is impossible to predict if the trend will continued as such. So all you can do is assume, be carefull in presenting data as constant, since there is alot of facotrs that come into play.