Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Puerto Rico: Hoarding electric equipment

Corruption: ARMED FEDERAL AGENTS ENTER WAREHOUSE IN PUERTO RICO TO SEIZE HOARDED ELECTRIC EQUIPMENT

ON SATURDAY, A day after becoming aware of a massive store of rebuilding materials being held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the U.S. federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with their security detail — entered a Palo Seco warehouse owned by the public utility to claim and distribute the equipment, according to a spokesperson for the Corps.
. . .
“Due to the size of the warehouse,” Vera said, accounting for everything contained therein is still underway days later. Among the materials recovered so far are “2,875 pieces of critical material to contractors” along with the sleeves of full-tension steel, a component of Puerto Rican electrical infrastructure required to erect new power lines. PREPA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, though in a statement to the Associated Press, it rejected allegations that it had failed to distribute the warehouse’s contents. The AP only reported that “officials over the weekend also discovered some needed materials in a previously overlooked warehouse owned by Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority.” How they discovered them and how they were obtained is a story that has not been fully told.

Read it and weep.

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Puerto Rico governs by keeping the lights out

John Batchelor interviewed Mary O’Grady on Puerto Rico’s mismanagement in the 10 weeks after Hurricane Maria,

 

I posted last week, Puerto Rico Doesn’t Want Reform.

The governor refuses to implement furloughs and pension cuts mandated by the Promesa (Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act)  board while asking for $94 billion in aid from Washington for reconstruction costs.

Against the Congressional oversight board’s recommendation, Puerto Rico paid its government employees Christmas bonuses, to the tune of $100 million, because, “they were included in the budget approved last summer,” before Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck.

As I’ve said in the past, “forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” .

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Gutierrez, the guy who compared a terrorist to George Washington, won’t seek reelection

Democratic Congressman Luis Gutiérrez Won’t Seek Re-Election

Earlier this month, Gutiérrez joined a group of House Democrats in introducing articles of impeachment against Trump, albeit with little hope of passing, given Republicans’ control of the House.

Gutiérrez is a long-time leftie supporter of convicted terrorist Oscar López Rivera, his “comrade and brother,” who he compared to George Washington:

CONGRESSMAN LUIS GUTIERREZ (D-IL): Like all the great leaders and heroes of the struggle for the fatherland and for their nation. That is where he will be placed. Look, if this were the war for the independence of the United States, of the 13 colonies, Oscar Lopez-Rivera, in the London newspapers, they would have said the same of him that they said of George Washington. Look, the struggle for independence is a struggle that every people has the right to and a responsbility, as Oscar has said, to do.
. . .
Gutiérrez goes on to say that “One day, soon, I hope to be here, in my homeland, fighting (for Puerto Rico’s independence) alongside my brother and leader Oscar López Rivera“.

There are rumors that Gutiérrez may run for governor of Puerto Rico, but you can safely assume that, whether he runs or not, he’ll keep his congressional pension.

UPDATE
Trending at BadBlue.

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Puerto Rico doesn’t want reform

Puerto Rico is set to become the world’s worst economy next year (emphasis added)

the island’s economy will shrink by about 8% in 2018, according to a November forecast by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Puerto Rico’s economic mismanagement has been a roadmap for disaster for decades: A welfare state with huge numbers of government sinecures, while neglecting infrastructure.

What could go wrong, has. Two months later: Puerto Rico doesn’t have power, education or economy running again

But Puerto Rico Doesn’t Want Reform.  The governor refuses to implement furloughs and pension cuts mandated by the Promesa (Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act)  board while asking for $94 billion in aid from Washington for reconstruction costs.

Rather than settle with bondholders and pay (some) of the debt earlier this year,

More unthinkable was ruining the “flat broke” image the commonwealth has been cultivating so it can write down debt and skip the matching requirements necessary to receive Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. It’s also more convenient to tap taxpayers than to borrow money from private entities asking for accountability. This is particularly true for a state-owned monopoly like Prepa, which is as much a political instrument as it is an electricity company.

When critics complained last year that Promesa would alleviate the pressure on island politicians to reform the welfare state, their concerns were pooh-poohed. Congress said Promesa’s “financial management and oversight board” would impose the discipline necessary for reform. Negotiated settlements with bondholders were to be given priority and existing restructuring agreements—like the one between Prepa and its creditors—were to be preserved.

None of this happened.

In a “forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” move last week, governor Ricardo Roselló announced last week that the bankrupt commonwealth would pay Christmas bonuses to its employees.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Puerto Rico: Farms on the mend

National Geographic has an optimistic report,

While Plenitud and Flores Ortega have similar long-term goals, they may be taking different paths to get there. The Department of Agriculture is focusing on making sure the island is getting access to the right funds and programs, such as the Emergency Watershed Program, which “may bear up to 75 percent of construction costs for emergency measures,” according to its website. Flores Ortega says that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has promised Puerto Rico will be participating in the same programs that U.S. states have access to. Plenitud is focused on a more long-term grassroots approach, helping small groups at a time through their hands-on workshops. Somewhere along the line, maybe their programs will intersect.

“[Agriculture] is one of the economic sectors that can be easily recuperated, and we are going to prove that,” says Flores Ortega, who believes the island will have poinsettias for export by Christmas. “We will be the first economic sector in Puerto Rico that can stand again.”

Read the whole thing.

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A primer on Puerto Rico’s debt

Mark DeCambre at Market Watch explains how Puerto Rico has more than $70 billion in debt

Why is Puerto Rico in such bad economic shape?

More than a decade of economic decline and ballooning deficits, amplified by an exodus of the territory’s best and brightest, including doctors, to the U.S. has dealt a heavy blow to the Puerto Rican economy. It has been in a recession, defined as at least two consecutive periods of declining growth, since 2006.

  • The Commonwealth had an unemployment rate of 12% before the hurricanes, compared with an unemployment of 4.4% for the U.S., as of August.
  • 43.5% of its residents live below the poverty line, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, more than double that of Louisiana and Mississippi.
  • Its population is 3.4 million as of July 1, 2016, representing a decline of more than 8% since 2010.
  • [emphasis added] The island’s debt load represents $12,000 per capita, with its debt representing more than three-quarters of its annual gross national product, which would make it one of the most indebted countries in the world.
  • As a U.S. territory, the island uses the U.S. dollar, That means it can’t devalue its currency in a bid to improve competitiveness.

The article was published twelve days ago.

As if things weren’t bad enough, Howard Dean wants to put the Clinton Foundation in charge of Puerto Rico relief. That would make it official for the Clinton political machine, but, on the other hand, Howard ignores the Clinton shenanigans in Haiti. (Related: How the Clinton Foundation Got Rich off Poor Haitians)

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Will Puerto Rico turn Florida blue?

The state of Florida, population 21 million, currently has 29 electoral votes.

On the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton lost Florida to Donald Trump by 112,911 votes (Trump’s 4,617,886 – Hillary’s 4,504,975).

In 2015 89,000 Puerto Ricans left the island for the States, with Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut (in order of preference) receiving the largest numbers. Central Florida, especially, has a growing Puerto Rican presence.

Fast-forward to Hurricane Maria’s aftermath.

The island has been devastated. The entire electrical grid was wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of people have nothing left but the clothes they’re wearing. They have no jobs to go to, since entire areas were wiped out: businesses, residences, buildings, name it.

I heard on PR talk radio that now Puerto Ricans are leaving at a rate of 3,000 per day; essentially, as fast as the commercial airlines can carry them. The lines at the airport are so long that the airlines are asking passengers to arrive at least six hours ahead of time.

Most will initially stay with relatives.

And understandably so.

Imagine, if you may, that your savings were depleted from emergency expenditures from Hurricane Irma. Then Hurricane Maria strikes, totaling your car and your house with everything in it. Your cash is gone by now, and then you find out that your job is gone, too. Your relative(s) in Orlando offer to pay for your one-way plane ticket, so you can have a place to stay with running water, electricity and food (which are lacking in Puerto Rico, and you have no money and no job), until you find work. They will buy you clothes so you can go job hunting.

You accept their offer, and have your relative(s) apply on line for jobs so you can at least start on the job hunt.

You arrive with a small wheelie containing all you own. You are an American citizen and are acting entirely within the law.

Now multiply this by a few hundred thousand people.

Already 300 children arriving from Puerto Rico have enrolled in Orlando’s public schools, and 100 in Kissimmee.

On September 26 I estimated that at least a million Puerto Ricans are coming to the 50 States in the next six months. The rate so far is 3,000/day; for my estimate to be correct, it’d need to double.

Now here’s the problem for the Republicans: How are you reaching out to this newly-arrived demographic of voters, unprecedented in size and circumstances, coming from an area so imbued in the Democrat machinery that the pro-statehood Governor was a DNC delegate for Hillary in 2008 and for Obama in 2012?

Long-time friend of this blog John Clement writes (emphasis added)

I do not think the Republicans understand the significance of Maria. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced the Puerto Ricans are welcome in Chicago. He wants more voters. The Puerto Ricans can turn some Red states to Blue.

This is not the first time a weather event changed the political scene. In 1927 there was a bad flood on the Mississippi River in Mississippi. This was the first time the federal government tried to do disaster relief. Up to that time the Red Cross and local sources did it.

Calvin Coolidge appointed Herbert Hoover to head up the relief effort. The blacks were trapped on top of the levees. The plantations owners convinced Hoover to leave them there. They were afraid the blacks would run off. They left anyway. That is when Chicago and other urban areas received an influx of them.

Up to that point the blacks had voted Republicans because Lincoln had freed them. The blacks blamed the Republicans and switched to voting for the Democrats.

Puerto Ricans can turn Florida blue. How about the rest of the country?

As mentioned earlier, Puerto Ricans are not only moving to Florida. They’re also moving to Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut.

How many electoral votes are we talking about?
Florida 29
Texas 38
Pennsylvania 20
Ohio 18
Connecticut 7

One hundred and twelve.
Let that sink in.

UPDATED
Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

Trending at BadBlue.

Linked to by Director Blue. Thank you!

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