$3.7 Billion (Remember That’s 3 Thousand 700 Million Dollars) Is Not Much When You Consider All The Awfulness Out There | Eastern NC Now

    My awful statistics quoted in this Blog Posting are not my awful statistics. I lifted them from a column written in 2014. These awful statistics describe the 2014 conditions in Guatemala, Honduras & El Salvador and these awful statistics showed no signs of getting better and every sign of getting worse.

    The Awful Truth...

     Bloodshed, gang intimidation, drug wars, robbery, rape, murder of children in the streets and widespread dropping out of school because of belief in certain death at a young age are all a fact of everyday life.
     Among the casualties during a mild mid-July weekend were three killed and at least 24 others wounded by gunshots, many of them teens. If we took it back to the prior Wednesday, we need add in a pregnant mother of five was shot in her head while driving her minivan down a street.
     It is common to have toddlers beaten to death and their tiny bodies sometimes set on fire.
     Public school education is a joke, there are no jobs, there are no opportunities and there sure isn't much hope.
     It is estimated that the cost of gun violence is about $1 million per gunshot injury. This estimate takes into account police time, medical cost, court costs and decreased tourism revenue from bad publicity.
     There were about 3,500 shootings in 2013, most were driven by desperation.

    I can see you shaking your head in agreement that the 3.7 Billion Dollars (Remember that's 3 Thousand 700 Million Dollars) needs to be spent to try and fix this awful situation and even that huge sum may not be enough.

    My heavens! I made an awful mistake! I misread that 2014 column. The awful situation I described above does not describe Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It describes the Ongoing Awfulness of Chicago in 2014.

    How could I be so careless? I've got to start reading what I read more carefully.

    Would I kid u?
    Smartfella

    Lagniappe: Did you read the 6 bullet points too fast? To get the full impact, you might want to go back and read them slowly and carefully. Let the awfulness sink in.

    Lagniappe Again: Did you just say to yourself that you are certain the Chicago Awful Situation must have improved in the last 3 years? If you did, you are Sillier than I am and I write about Silly all the time.

    Lagniappe Last: I never mentioned where the $3.7 Billion (remember that's 3 Thousand 700 Million Dollars) figure came from. It is hard not to wonder what kind of impact that amount of money might have had on the traumatized children of Chicago's South Side. Instead this was the amount of money the Federal Government had set aside to deal with the Child Migrant Border Crisis.

    Meanwhile the people of Chicago were thinking, "Hey, we're dying over here!"