Cheeto's shitty response to Puerto Rico has caused over 4,600 deaths

[Nitro Express]

No, it's about his lack of response to the weather event, which definitely contributed to the loss of life. And if you compare it to the response in states like Florida & Texas to the SAME weather event, the reason for the lack of response seems obvious enough.

Just as it did when the BCE inadequately responded to Katrina.... but this one is on big Orange steroids compared to that. Chimpy appointed a horse groomer to run FEMA and he did "a heckuva job". Cheeto's guy, Brock Long, supposedly has made a career out of emergency management, but yet STILL managed to fuck this all up. Which probably means he was TOLD to do so.

Who cares. Let's buy some Puerto Rican real estate and get the politicians to fleece the taxpayer for Puerto Rican foreign aid. We will use it to redevelop the island and the people there? Cheap labor!

[Nitro Express]

No, for his failure to give a shit about human suffering as a result. You.Dumb.Fuck.

There was no money left to give after giving it all to Israel.

[twonabomber]

Puerto Rico was fucked before the hurricanes.

New guy on our crew is Puerto Rican and says that there is rampant government corruption. Money and supplies are sent and don't get to where they are supposed to go.

[FORD]

Who cares. Let's buy some Puerto Rican real estate and get the politicians to fleece the taxpayer for Puerto Rican foreign aid. We will use it to redevelop the island and the people there? Cheap labor!

Foreign aid??

You DO realize that Puerto Rico is a US territory (just like Hawaii was when Pearl Harbor was bombed) and therefore all of those dead people are US citizens, right??

[FORD]

Let me correct that for you....

There was no money left to give after giving it all to tax dodging bilionaires, the "defense" industry, and Israel.

[ZahZoo]

No, it's about his lack of response to the weather event, which definitely contributed to the loss of life. And if you compare it to the response in states like Florida & Texas to the SAME weather event, the reason for the lack of response seems obvious enough.

Just as it did when the BCE inadequately responded to Katrina.... but this one is on big Orange steroids compared to that. Chimpy appointed a horse groomer to run FEMA and he did "a heckuva job". Cheeto's guy, Brock Long, supposedly has made a career out of emergency management, but yet STILL managed to fuck this all up. Which probably means he was TOLD to do so.

Hmmm... could the impact of the storm have anything to do with decades of mismanagement, corruption and failure to maintain an adequate infrastructure on the island long before Trump was elected..?

I believe the response... while probably wasn't perfect... it was the best they could do given there's over 1000 miles of ocean between the largest port/city (Miami) and Puerto Rico..? Think about that... even by air 1000 miles is a haul. By boat... it's a long haul.

With Karina and any other disaster on the main land you can truck in emergency supplies and equipment within hours... by sea that's a very different logistical challenge.

I'm not implying Trump did great with this... I just can't pin the blame for all those deaths on his management of it. That's pure nonsense... The contributing factors go way beyond POTUS and the ability of the US government to hold all responsibility for the tragedy there.

[twonabomber]

https://nypost.com/2017/09/30/inept-puerto-rican-government-riddled-with-corruption-ceo/

Jorge Rodriguez, 49, is the Harvard-educated CEO of PACIV, an international engineering firm based in Puerto Rico that works with the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. The Puerto Rican-born engineer says he has dispatched 50 engineers to help FEMA rehabilitate the devastated island — a commonwealth of the United States — after Hurricane Maria. He refuses to work with the local government, which he called inept and riddled with corruption.

For the last 30 years, the Puerto Rican government has been completely inept at handling regular societal needs, so I just don’t see it functioning in a crisis like this one. Even before the hurricane hit, water and power systems were already broken. And our $118 billion debt crisis is a result of government corruption and mismanagement.

The governor Ricardo Rossello has little experience. He’s 36 and never really held a job and never dealt with a budget. His entire administration is totally inexperienced and they have no clue how to handle a crisis of this magnitude.

For instance, shortly after the hurricane hit, the government imposed a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am and then changed it. Now, it’s 7 pm to 5 am, and makes no sense. The curfew has prevented fuel trucks from transporting their loads. These trucks should have been allowed to run for 24 hours to address our needs, but they have been stalled, and so we have massive lines at gas stations and severe shortages of diesel at our hospitals and supermarkets.

I’m really tired of Puerto Rican government officials blaming the federal government for their woes and for not acting fast enough to help people on the island. Last week I had three federal agents in my office and I was so embarrassed; I went out of my way to apologize to them for the attitude of my government and what they have been saying about the US response. When the hurricane hit we had experts from FEMA from all over the US on the ground and I was really proud of their quick response. The first responders and FEMA have all been outstanding in this crisis, and should be supported.

I have 50 engineers that I have sent out pro bono to help local companies get back on their feet. This includes getting people gasoline and cash, and helping them connect to others that can assist with repairs without delays.

I won’t allow my people to work with the local government.

I have a message for the U.S. Congress: Watch out what relief funds you approve and let our local government handle. Don’t let the Puerto Rican government play the victim and fool you. They have no clue what they are doing, and I worry that they will mishandle anything that comes their way.

They don’t need another aircraft carrier. They need experienced people to run a proper disaster command center.

[twonabomber]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/09/storm-dealt-puerto-rico-knockout-blow-after-decades-fiscal-failure-corruption.html

Storm dealt Puerto Rico knockout blow after decades of fiscal failure, corruption

Six months after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, many leaders there are pointing the finger at Washington, but the scandal, corruption and waste that now plague the U.S. territory were around long before last summer's storm.

Decades of dysfunction, mismanagement and embarrassing abuses of power left Puerto Rico reeling well before the storm delivered a knockout blow, say obervers. Enormous debt, absurd infrastructure projects and a tradition of corruption have hampered the commonwealth's ability to get off the canvas.

“There’ve been so many problems that have built up year after year,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., told Fox News. “It’s a tough situation.”

Reckless spending sprees by a revolving door of politicians have turned the commonwealth into a bloated bureaucracy that can’t pay its bills and yet enjoys the benefits of a welfare society without any of the responsibilities attached to it.

Before Maria hit in September, Puerto Rico was already navigating the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. government history at a whopping $120 billion in combined bond and pension debt.

For years, the island blew through billions of dollars in borrowed money.

Pricey and impractical infrastructure projects almost always got the go-ahead.

“Every town in Puerto Rico has a new baseball park," Emilio Pantojas-Garcia, a sociology professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, told Bloomberg News. “All these mayors were using borrowed money to build things that were underutilized.”

One such project was a 1,000-seat performing-arts center in the small city of Humacao. The building was designed for big-budget Broadway-style performances. Instead, it was rarely used and ended up being the place where the occasional stand-up comic performs.

The territory’s towering debt and mismanagement also led to less money being available for schools and hospitals.

Then Maria hit and things on the island went from bad to catastrophic in the blink of an eye.

Multiple cases of corruption and greed by local leaders, government officials and inexperienced contractors surfaced, shedding light on the toxicity that is still very much a part of everyday life in Puerto Rico.

Those who can leave, often do.

The government of Puerto Rico now estimates that by the end of the year, another 200,000 residents will have moved to the mainland.

But for residents stuck in Puerto Rico, the future looks grim.

“We’re used to it by now but that doesn’t make it right or fair,” Sunita Howell, a waitress in Old San Juan, told Fox News. Howell’s family, who lives in the Hato Rey neighborhood of the city, struggles daily.

Howell says after Maria hit, her family was approached by someone offering to restore power to their home for $3,000.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” she said. “Who has that here? You are supposed to be helping us not taking our money.”

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority - PREPA- has already suspended three employees without pay and says it is looking into another 25 reported cases of possible bribery in the days and weeks after Maria.

PREPA confirmed to PBS that all of the cases involve field employees responsible for restoring power.

El Vocero, a San Juan-based newspaper, said that some employees demanded up to $5,000 to reconnect power.

PREPA’s director was forced out in November after the utility, the commonwealth’s sole electricity provider, failed to call for help from its mainland counterparts after the storm.

Instead, PREPA granted a power-restoration contract to Whitefish Energy Holdings. It was a disaster of a deal and PREPA was forced to rescind the contract after public pressure.

PREPA was also accused of stockpiling supplies badly needed to help with rebuilding after Maria.

“The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority has become a heavy burden on our people, who are now hostage to its poor service and high cost,” Governor Ricardo Rossello, who is planning to sell PREPA to the private sector, said in a statement. “What we know today as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority does not work and cannot continue to operate like this.”

PREPA’s problems are just one of several crises slowing down recovery on the island.

The federal government recently awarded a $156 million contract to a one-person Atlanta-based company that was supposed to deliver 30 million meals to Puerto Rico. Owner Tiffany Brown, who had no disaster relief experience, got the gig but managed to deliver only 50,000 meals to the storm-ravaged island.

There have been problems with the housing situation too and now, the island’s largest restoration contractor says it will pull out of Puerto Rico in the next few weeks after maxing out its $746 million contract.

“It never ends,” Howell said. “Tomorrow I’ll wake up and there will be another scandal, another Whitefish.”

[twonabomber]

http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/353506-puerto-rico-was-a-disaster-long-before-maria-ravaged-the-island

Puerto Rico was a disaster long before Maria ravaged the island

Puerto Rico was a catastrophe of corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and ignorance long before the added misery wrought by Hurricane Maria, which exposed to the world what was there to be seen all along: an island ill-prepared for a sunny day, much less a stormy one. For at least a decade, the media has been sounding the alarm about the crumbling infrastructure and financial mismanagement of Puerto Rico.

But it all fell on deaf ears. Let’s flashback to August 2014, when Reuters reporter Luciana Lopez showed that Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority was teetering on insolvency. The power company relied too heavily on expensive oil and was plagued by aging infrastructure dating back to the 1960s, a bloated workforce, and a billing system that was arbitrary and difficult to justify.

As a result of the failing infrastructure, rolling blackouts, high unemployment and fleeing manufacturing, people were fleeing Puerto Rico prior to 2014, when the island faced $72 billion in debt. Puerto Rico has lost more than 200,000 citizens since 2000. That works out to about $20,000 dollars for every man, woman and child on the island, where the median income at that time was about $20,000.

Puerto Rico’s roads, bridges, dams, ports, hospitals, water treatment plants and more have been decaying for years. And it has only gotten worse. In August 2015, CNBC again warned of the dangers to the citizens of Puerto Rico of inferior and dangerous critical infrastructure. Fred Imbert reported that the real problem facing the people of Puerto Rico is the lack of maintenance of infrastructure.

In May 2016, just more than a year before Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, the Atlantic published an article alleging that even without damages caused by hurricanes or storms Puerto Rico was heading for crisis with a huge human toll of man-made causes. Reporter Vann Newkirk cited the electric grid on the brink of collapse and schools with dangerous wiring and unstable construction. He also wrote about the island’s public health and its inferior healthcare facilities, noting that San Juan’s Centro Medico Hospital had to delay payments on debt to provide basic healthcare to patients. The medical director was quoted as saying, “We are hanging by a thread.”

It is important to understand that Puerto Rico was destined for humanitarian crisis and was in crisis long before Hurricane Maria. It was only a matter of time before it became evident to the mainland of the United States and the world. The Obama administration had years, but it let Puerto Rico slip into decay and put the people residing there at grave risk. Now, people are pointing fingers at the Trump administration that somehow the president is to blame for the harm that has come to Puerto Rico, when it is really years of neglect and incompetence by the federal government as well as local officials.

Today, the people of Puerto Rico need help on a scale that our nation has rarely seen before. Never in modern times have so many Americans suffered from what amounts to total devastation of their homes, businesses, neighborhoods and infrastructure. We as a nation must make every effort to provide all the help we can muster to provide the necessary support to the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But we must also manage expectations and not blame the current administration for the gross incompetence of others who created the crisis the people now face. This remediation will take a decade or more and cost tens of billions of dollars.

The plight of our fellow citizens should be a wake-up call for our nation. There are lessons to be learned and heeded. Policymakers kick the can down road all the time, believing there are no solutions, only band-aids or neglect. America is $20 trillion in debt. Our nation’s critical infrastructure is in dire needs of repair, replacement and maintenance. Our national health care and entitlement programs are teetering on insolvency. Our states and cities face their own financial challenges.

Puerto Rico’s collapse could be our future if we do not turn our attention to solving problems before crisis. A hurricane was the straw that broke the camel’s back in Puerto Rico, but the camel’s back was destined to be broken by the rider at some point. The main job of government is to prevent crises, not merely respond to them. It is time to fix things and make sacrifices for the greater good.

[FORD]

[private parts]

Total B.S. Puerto Rico would be a third world "shit-hole" if we had not "colonized" it. Just another Jamaica or D.R. I lived the first 6 years of my life there and have visited many times.
It has always been teetering on shit-hole or 51st state status because of rampant corruption, serious overpopulation, and the lack of major resources to export.
It's a fucked up dichotomy. On one hand it's a beautiful cosmopolitan place (San Juan has some sweet hotels, beaches, casinos, and the people are salt of the earth) and around the corner there's unemployed junkies everywhere.

[FORD]

Most of those problems can be laid directly at the feet of the colonial corporatist exploitation. Except for the overpopulation... that's the result of religious exploitation from the Catholic church.

[Nickdfresh]

There's blame to go around here, but the gov't shouldn't be lying about death statistics...