The Politics of Puerto Rico

Why isn’t the National Guard helping the cleanup needed in Puerto Rico? Sending them to the Mexican border to guard no army or anything much seems to be a waste of time. Why are they wasting so much time doing nothing in Puerto Rico? It has to be all about the Politics of Puerto Rico.

How the hell is Puerto Rico even considered a part of America? In 1898 we beat Spain’s Puerto Rican Colony  in a war to become our colony. So it is not a state but a common wealth of the United States and Puerto Ricans don’t like that.  They feel like second class citizens and literally are that status. They have a Congressional representative but she can’t vote on any legislation. Puerto Ricans can’t even vote in the Presidential Election. They have a raw deal that they didn’t even get to choose.  Most Puerto Ricans want to escape from this limbo and want their home to become a state.

Puerto Ricans are citizens and just want to be treated like any other citizen living anywhere else in the United States. But then there are people like Senator Juan Dalmau that wants independence from America. Senator Zoe Laboy wants statehood, Senator Jose Nadal Power wants to remain a Commonwealth and Former Senator Ramon Luis Nieves wants Free Association. There is no majority in even knowing what Puerto Rico wants to be. But we all know they want power, clean water a roof on their heads again and to sing and dance to the song Despacito. Who doesn’t want that?

Sure being a United States citizen has its perks but a Puerto Rican Passport doesn’t mean you are getting the best care. The recovery in Puerto Rico would be much easier if only the bad salsa dancers in Washington would only vote on it. In 2006 during the Bush Administration Puerto Rico went bankrupt. You remember President Bush, the guy who did nothing during 911. In 2006 the United States phased out corporate tax incentives. So manufacturing and jobs went down, tax revenues were gone and have continued even till now.

Desperate for money Puerto Rico began selling bonds. You might even own those bonds in your IRA and 401(k) plans but the jobs never came back. At the end of 2015 Puerto Rico’s total debt was at $71 billion dollars. Why didn’t Trump and his Russian friends build a golf resort there? Because no one with money lives there.

Puerto Rico is broke and they need money to rebuild the place. The new plan is to lure rich guys there with tax incentives. The pitch is , “move to Puerto Rico and pay less tax!” So if you move there for even as little as 183 days out of the year, you pay zero Federal Income Tax, zero Capital Gains Tax and zero Dividend Tax. What a massive giveaway for rich people. So honey, pack our bags with tarps, water and batteries. Let’s save money and go to Puerto Rico.

During the Obama era this tax incentive idea was rolling into place. Now it is luring shady rich guys like the Bitcoin Boys and other Crypto Currencies rich guys. These guys have no problem bringing their giant luxurious private yachts to a beautiful tropical island surrounded in relative poverty and not paying taxes. Is this the new American way? Trump’s America is Make Trump Wealthier Again anyway. Sure the rich guys buy stuff like scooping up land for their private estates and pushing the poor native people of the island into even more squalor poverty and now homelessness. Representative Manuel Natal Albelo from the Popular Democratic Party is in Washington shouting that Puerto Rico shouldn’t be for sale to the lowest bidder.

Should rich guys be allowed to personally benefit from the crisis in Puerto Rico while the people of Puerto Rico still are suffering? Trump of course is with the rich people and he is losing an opportunity to make Puerto Rico the poster child for clean energy, clean water and new technology that we have to make the island better than ever before. They have wind and sun and lots of people who would love to work in homegrown industries. He needs to say make American Commonwealths Great Again but he won’t. Maybe because he hates Spanish speaking people. He would  rather send soldiers too beat down poor Spanish speaking people than help them.