The irony is that a population that is significantly deeply religiously conservative is being clearly driven into the liberal camp. Might not seem relevant since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory without a right to vote for either the president or a voting member of Congress, but life is so bad in what’s left of that territory that tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans (or more) are moving to Florida… where their vote is enough to turn a swing state in a federal election into a blue state. Irony, yes, but what the Republican Congress and Donald Trump have done to Puerto Rico is immoral if not downright illegal. But I guess shame is simply not important to a once-great political party – the party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower – that has now taken to mendacious slogans to justify callous votes against anyone and anything other than the richest elites and the most fundamental evangelicals in the land.
And as much as the victims of recent federal action – from disaster relief to the tax reform act – are littered across the United States, conveniently worse in blue states where Republicans’ hold has all but slipped entirely away, no one region can claim a higher level of suffering and pain than Puerto Rico. It started long before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island in September, decimating homes, people, the entire power grid and the water supply system. The territory had been floating in a pseudo-bankruptcy, unable to pay its bond burden and saddled with an unworkable GOP-Congressional bill of insolvency-lite. Its infrastructure was in dire straits, governmental services were shutting down and its credit rating trashed into oblivion.
Then came Hurricane Maria, taking down much of what was left of the physical part of this island territory. Federal emergency action instantly became bogged down from a combination of the island’s location, underwhelming actions from FEMA (which was totally unprepared for the magnitude of the damage and injuries) as well as the rest of the federal government and sheer ignorance on the part of Donald Trump and his administration that Puerto Rico is actually a part of the United States of America, that its citizens are also full-fledged American citizens. Red tape hindered assets being put into place to relieve the death, injury and destruction that pretty much has rendered the entire island a “do-over” at almost every level.
As the water system shut down, the entire electrical system collapsed, as patients in hospitals lost oxygen and access to vital meds (and as hospital backup power systems ran out of fuel to sustain life support systems), supplies just sat on the docks with no viable way to deliver those necessities to the people who needed them. Roads everywhere were impassible. As the feds finally realized that only a well-organized military effort, with trucks capable of traversing rough terrain, helicopters and ships, a momentary respite helped some of the people with some of the issues. But even there, federal red tape kept a hospital ship off-shore virtually empty of patients (only six beds were filled), even as Puerto Ricans were dying from lack of medical care.
And then came the litany of fake news. A visiting Donald Trump symbolically tossed rolls of paper towels to the small crowd gathered soon after he landed. He feuded with the mayor of San Juan, twisted the words of the governor to suggest that the federal relief efforts were sufficient, and left never having seen the true death and destruction the hurricane had actually inflicted. As people lay dying, exposed and without much hope, Donald Trump kept harping on Puerto Rico’s pre-storm financial issues as if these factors “trumped” the desperate need of the local people.
As of this writing, the official death toll sits at 64. At least 911 additional deaths were officially recorded in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria as “natural causes,” but there are still people listed as missing who are probably dead. The problem with those “natural causes” is that no one examined the bodies to determine if those “natural causes” occurred because people could not get life-saving medication, oxygen or medical attention by reason of the hurricane damage or would have died no matter what.
“A CNN survey of 112 Puerto Rican funeral homes in November found that there were at least 499 storm-related deaths reported between Sept. 20 to Oct. 19. On Dec. 8, a New York Times review of the island's daily mortality rate found that 1,052 more people than usual had died in Puerto Rico in the 42 days after the hurricane struck. Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism also reported that at least 985 more people died in the 40 days after the hurricane, when compared to the same time period in 2016.” BuzzFeed.com, December 18th. Since the stench of rotting corpses had led to many bodies simply being burned for sanitation reasons, we may never get a full count of the storms true death toll. Under pressure to report the numbers accurately, in mid-December, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló ordered a re-examination of those reported “natural causes” fatalities.
Meanwhile, FEMA tells us that 95% of the island’s population now had restored routine access to “potable” water in what seems to be yet another false fact from the government. If seriously contaminated and bacteria laden water falls within your definition of “potable,” then FEMA is right. If you use a medical definition, most of Puerto Rico’s water supply does not meet those standards. Also, over a third of the island is still without electrical power, months after the storm.
Writing for the December 21st Washington Post, Mekela Panditharatne, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, presents a very different picture: “[Power] power problems are water problems by another name. And a substantial portion of the island is still in the dark. According to the government of Puerto Rico, 34 percent of the territory, more than 1 million people, remains without power. Power and water are intimately connected: Water treatment plants are hooked to the electricity grid and rely on consistent energy. When treatment plants and pumping stations are propped up with generators, power can — and does — fail, resulting in frequent water shutoffs, as the island’s water authority indicates. Local officials in Puerto Rico say their water service typically goes in and out.
“There are numerous accounts of waterborne disease and bacterial illness in Puerto Rico. Leptospirosis, an often deadly bacterial disease, has seen a significant uptick in cases. Whether these illnesses are caused by floodwaters, drinking water or other sources of water exposure, they are a cause for serious concern.”
So with all this negativity, you’d think Congress just might wake up and do its job? Instead, the GOP Congress/Trump cabal just made things for Puerto Ricans a whole lot worse. Not only has disaster relief fallen incredibly short – proportionately less than the aid to states impacted by Hurricane Harvey – but the Republican-controlled federal government has singled out Puerto Rico, treating it as if it were a foreign country, for harsh treatment under that disastrous tax reform act they passed without a single Democratic vote.
Writing an Op-Ed for the December 20th Washington Post, Armando Valdés Prieto, a lawyer and political consultant in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a former director of Puerto Rico's Office of Management and Budget, tells us: “A 12.5 percent tax on profits derived from intellectual property held in foreign jurisdictions [including the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico!!!], included in the final version of the tax legislation, would be the latest setback. Puerto Rico is a domestic jurisdiction in U.S. law — except for tax purposes. For decades, this arrangement has exempted Puerto Rico residents from paying federal income taxes, although individuals do pay into Social Security through withholdings. It also has allowed for the attraction of needed investment and high-paying jobs in manufacturing, which now accounts for 47 percent of the island’s gross domestic product, or more than $48 billion. Much of that sector is composed of pharmaceuticals and medical devices that generate revenue from patented drugs and technologies.
“This new tax is designed to make offshore operations less profitable, thereby putting pressure on companies to relocate back to the United States. Because Puerto Rico is considered foreign by the Internal Revenue Service, and the most significant manufacturing outfits on the island are organized as controlled foreign corporations, the tax would be levied on these operations, potentially costing thousands of American citizens their jobs. Leaders from both of the island’s major political parties joined with a broad private-sector coalition to request an exception, but Congress didn’t listen…
“A second such knockout punch to the island’s most important economic sector now, after the virtual collapse of the economy in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, would be catastrophic not just for employment and investment, but also for Puerto Rico’s ailing public finances. Fully 30 percent of General Fund net revenue, close to $3 billion, depends on manufacturing. Driving those companies away would make it impossible to implement a fiscal plan under PROMESA, an Obama-era law ostensibly designed to return the local government to solvency…
“Today, despite a period of significant growth spurred by local leadership and collaboration with the federal government between the 1940s and the 1980s, the economy is again in a shambles. A recent study by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico concluded that Hurricane Maria produced an increase in the poverty level from 44.3 percent to 52.3 percent. Worse, a Census Bureau projection made public three days before the storm’s landfall pointed to a decline in the island’s population from 3.4 million today, to just under 3 million by 2025 and 2.1 million by 2050, 121,000 fewer residents than in 1950. And that doesn’t even take into account the migration off the island the storm has since caused.
“Now on top of all of that, the Trump administration and the Republican Party are signaling that Puerto Rico will be treated as something wholly foreign. It’s not just the tax legislation; the president also came to Puerto Rico and complained about the cost and duration of storm recovery efforts, as if citizens here were not entitled to the same response by the federal government as in Texas, Florida or California.” As full-fledged American citizens, Puerto Ricans are free to relocate anywhere in the United States, and once out of PR, they have a full vote in any state where they move. Hey Donald and the GOP Congress, guess who they are not voting for anytime soon. And they are moving back to the states in droves.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the colossal greed and rather dramatic lack of empathy represented by the GOP and particularly Donald Trump and his base – in what would seem to be the antithesis of the evangelical Bible – are beyond callous and shocking to me.
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