Cuba: Land Of Paradise?

Once again I've been reading and hearing from the nut jobs in Hollywood about how wonderful every day life in Cuba is with their state of the art medical health care system. Forget congresswoman Maxine Watters who seemingly makes a trip to Havana on a weekly basis, her lips stitched to the butt cheeks of the Castro brothers. Most every member of the congressional black caucus thinks there is a utopia 90 miles south of Key West and it's a year round vacation paradise. And then there are the certified boobs; Michael Moore, Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte, Susan Sarandon and her boy toy live-in. There are the flavor of the month Hollywood wannabes who regularly go on Air America and speak to the three or four listeners and get sexually excited shouting the word, 'Che'. They'll brag about dipping their toes in the Cuban beaches teeming with gold and silver. They'll regale us of stories about how they got to ride around town in a deluxe 1957 Chevy, Cuba's vehhicle of choice.
Well, things seem to be changing. Two months ago we were told that come January, maybe December, there will be no toilet paper in the country. Yep! You read that correctly. It's either leaves or grass. Take your pick. Heck! There won't be a reason to toilet train your kids. "Do it on the floor, sweetie", says Mom. I find this almost unimaginable but the following article comes from The Associated Press:
"President Raul Castro is taking a bold gamble to ease communist Cuba's cash crunch by eliminating a costly government lunch program that feeds almost a third of the nation's population every workday.
The Americas' only one-party communist government, held afloat largely by support from its key ally Venezuela, is desperate to improve its budget outlook; the global economy is slack, and Havana is very hard pressed to secure international financing.
Raul Castro, 76, officially took over as Cuba's president in February 2008 after his brother, revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, stepped aside with health problems.
Though some wondered if Raul Castro would try to move Cuba's centralized economy toward more market elements, so far he has sought to boost efficiency and cut corruption and waste without reshaping the economic system.
And so far it has been an uphill battle, something akin to treading water.
But now, Raul Castro has moved to set in motion what will likely be the biggest rollback of an entitlement since Cuba's 1959 revolution -- starting to put an end to the daily lunch program for state workers, as announced Friday in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper.
In a country where workers earn the average of 17 dollars a month, and state subsidized monthly food baskets are not enough for families, more than 3.5 million Cuban government employees -- out of a total population of 11.2 million -- benefit from the nutritionally significant free meal.
The price tag is a cool 350 million dollars a year, not counting energy costs or facilities maintenance, Granma said.
But that will come to a halt in four ministries experimentally from October 1, Granma said. As workers stream to the 24,700 state lunchrooms, the government "is faced with extremely high state spending due to extremely high international market prices, infinite subsidies and freebies," Granma explained.
Parallel to the cutback, workers will see their salaries boosted by 15 pesos a workday (.60 dollar US) to cover their lunch."