Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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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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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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Call for action: Ask Pres. Trump to suspend the Jones Act.

UPDATE 9/28/17

Trump temporarily lifts Jones Act to bolster Puerto Rico relief
THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT

YESTERDAY’S POST
In addition to all the aide en route to and already in  Puerto Rico, in the very short term the best thing the Trump administration can do is to waive the Jones Act (a.k.a. Merchant Marine Act of 1920).

Pres. Trump is visiting PR next Tuesday. I urge you to call the White House at Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414, and email, right now urging the President to suspend the Jones Act during this emergency.

Read my post, Call for action: Ask Pres. Trump to suspend the Jones Act.

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A Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico UPDATED

Readers of this blog know that I have been consistently very tough on Puerto Rico’s mismanagement and debt.

And now things changed.

First Hurricane Irma, and now Hurricane Maria, have left the island and its 3.5 million American citizens, plus others who went there from the Lesser Antilles seeking aid after Irma’s destruction, in a most critical condition.

Very few have running water.
Very few have electricity.
Very few have internet.

I mean hospitals, police, firemen, emt, essential buildings, whole areas, not simply neighborhoods.

Most people have no jobs to go back to, especially if their businesses were destroyed.
This is what most roads are like:

Worse yet conditions in the mountains, with landslides.

And the farther away you are from the metro areas, the lesser the chance of help reaching you soon.

Governor Ricardo Roselló does not exaggerate when he speaks of humanitarian crisis (emphasis added):

Stressing that Puerto Rico, a United States commonwealth, deserved the same treatment as hurricane-ravaged states, the governor urged Republican leaders and the federal government to move swiftly to send more money, supplies and relief workers. It was a plea echoed by Puerto Rico’s allies in Congress, who are pushing for quick movement on a new relief bill and a loosening of financial debt obligations for the island, which is still reeling from a corrosive economic crisis.

You can kiss the debt good-bye.

Here’s the situation, and pay attention because I’m only saying it once:

Puerto Rico has no money.

Most of the island has been destroyed by the elements.

It’s not simply that “there ain’t no ‘there’ there.” What there is left, has to be cleared, removed, rebuilt.

Thankfully, help from FEMA, the US Coastguard and Navy is arriving.

The problems are immense,

Authorities have reopened Puerto Rico’s biggest port but say efforts to speed relief supplies to the island devastated by Hurricane Maria are being hampered by heavy damage to roads, computer systems and other critical infrastructure.

Cargo ships carrying supplies from the mainland U.S. began arriving at San Juan’s port on Monday. But distribution of water, food and temporary shelter is building slowly, federal officials and private companies taking part in the relief efforts said, with thousands of shipping containers waiting for transport at the port.

I estimate that at least a million Puerto Ricans are coming to the 50 States in the next six months. As U.S. citizens, they can, and will, do so legally.

The consequences of this migration will be very severe, both for the States and for the Island.

In order for those who leave to return, they would have to have confidence in the island’s economic future.

America has done it before, and in a much larger scale: The Marshall Plan.

A new Marshall Plan is what’s needed, now.

Leave Puerto Rico on its own, and you’ll have yet another narco-terrorist enclave. On whatever is left.

UPDATE
Whitewall comments,

A Marshall Plan may be needed, but it must be with heavy outside supervision

To which I replied, Absolutely, YES. Only with outside supervision and full transparency.
Otherwise the effort, time and money will be squandered, just as so much has in the past.

A Marshall Plan, not a blank check.

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Puerto Rico: They call the wind Maria

Maria blows the stars around
Sets the clouds a-flyin’
Maria makes
The mountains sound like folks was out there dyin’
Maria (Maria)
Maria (Maria)
They call
The wind
Maria

The scenes from Puerto Rico are horrific: Ruin, destruction, flooding, and no electricity, cell signals or clean water for three and a half millionAmericans.

Read my post, Puerto Rico: They call the wind Maria

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