There's a fun bit at around 1 minute 40 seconds into in the following [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oTDT9iss9Y]video[/url] of an interview with General Honoré in San Juan, after [i]Il Duce[/i]'s Twitter Tantrum against San Juan's mayor:[quote]CNN's Christi Paul: What is your reaction to the President's tweets this morning?

Gen Honoré: I have no reaction. The, the, mayor's living on a cot, and, uh, I, I hope the President have a good day at golf.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;468958]There's a fun bit at around 1 minute 40 seconds into in the following [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oTDT9iss9Y"]video[/URL] of an interview with General Honoré in San Juan, after [I]Il Duce[/I]'s Twitter Tantrum against San Juan's mayor:[/QUOTE]
:picard::sad: My thanks to the General for tactfully speaking out.
The thanks are sincerely intended. The sarcasm is loaded on the word "tactfully." Much stronger language might have been used, but this simple statement hits like a hammer.

What's worse -- [i][b]much[/b][/i] worse -- than [i]Il Duce[/i]'s playing golf this past weekend, WRT relief efforts in PR, was his doing so the [i]weekend before[/i], right after the storm hit -- and the Admin's near total lack of action WRT how to deal with the havoc wrought by Maria. No meetings, no calls to people out in the field, no nothing.

In terms of assessing the situation and formulating the response, that time right after the storm hit was precious -- and they squandered it.

As may have been said previously, PR, to tRump, is inhabited by a bunch of brown people, who are collectively deep in debt, and therefore are losers, who remind the Cheeto in Chief of Mexicans. And we know his attitudes toward Mexican people.

[QUOTE=kladner;469036]As may have been said previously, PR, to tRump, is inhabited by a bunch of brown people, who are collectively deep in debt, and therefore are losers, who remind the Cheeto in Chief of Mexicans. And we know his attitudes toward Mexican people.[/QUOTE]

I think the problem is, that it's only once you look at per capita debt that PR is deeply in debt based on discussions I've seen. if you average the rough [URL="http://www.usdebtclock.org/"]US debt[/URL] over the 16 territories and 50 states each one is about 305 ( okay 306 now) billion in debt on average. PR's debt is about 70 billion I think most discussions I've read say. It's only because they have a lower population that it can be called a deep debt.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;468890]Memo to [i]Il Duce[/i]:

The commonwealth of Puerto Rico is United States territory. The people of Puerto Rico are United States citizens.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but they're clearly not first-class citizens like the folks in NYC, DC and LA, where - by curious coincidence - [url=http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/01/bob-schieffer-1-in-5-reporters-now-live-in-nyc-la-or-dc-video/]fully one on five U.S. journalists also happens to reside[/url]. (Up from 1 in 8 in 2004 ... ain't out-of-control media concentration in the hands of a tiny number of megacorprations great?) They're at best second-class like the folks in places like Flint, MI, or third class, like those in, say, Ferguson, MO.

Snark aside, the fact of PR being an island does in fact make relief logistics incredibly hard - right after the Jones-Act waiver hit the news I read an article which said the waiver might in the near-term make things worse because there were already thousands of containers piling up at PR ports, unable to be moved inland because of flooding, washed-out roads, gasoline shortages, etc. Inane tech-news natterings about "drones to the rescue!" aside, I do think a massive airlift-based short-term effort would seem to be the way to go, but there may be practical barriers (e.g. lack of landing places) beside the military not wanting its precious toys diverted to actual humanitarian missions ... I don't know, and I don't trust the U.S. MSM to report in non-propagandist terms on this stuff - after all, hysteria sells far better than actual journalism.

Oh, the president playing golf while people die due to stuff the administration did or failed to do is another now-deeply-entrenched tradition. Who can forget Bush the Elder exhorting Iraq's southern "marsh" arabs to rise up against Saddam and then cheerily golfing while they were slaughtered en masse due to the administration having forgotten to make a no-fly-zone for Saddam's air force part of the cessation-of-hosltilties agreement for the first Gulf War? (Some interesting presidential-golf stats can be found [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/08/barack-obama-plays-300th-round-of-golf-as-president/]in this Guardian piece[/url]from August 2016, commemmorating Barack Obama's 300th round of golf as president.)

As far as DT goes, I think the Twitter tirades ain't helping and that a personal visit to PR - preferably in conjunction with the opening of a truly massive relief program - would be highly desirable, but won't hold my breath waiting for either to happen.

On the debt-relief front, NC's Lambert Strether has [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/situation-puerto-rico-power-water-promesa.html]a piece up today[/url] on the history of the brutal austerity regime imposed on PR in a classic, resounding DC "display of bipartisanship" under the Obama administration.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;468890]The people of Puerto Rico are United States citizens.[/QUOTE]
Hm... Do they pay their taxes? :razz:
[COLOR=White][just ignore me, I have no business here, but I could not stop trying to be funny...]
[/COLOR]

[QUOTE=LaurV;469114]Hm... Do they pay their taxes? :razz:
[COLOR=White][just ignore me, I have no business here, but I could not stop trying to be funny...]
[/COLOR][/QUOTE]It's actually a valid question. Puerto Ricans generally do [i]not[/i] pay US income tax. They do, however, pay Social Security, payroll, import/export, and other Federal taxes. They are also [i]not[/i] eligible for Supplemental Security Income.

[url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/trump-says-puerto-rico-debt-needs-wiped.html]Trump Says Puerto Rico Debt Needs to be Wiped Out[/url] | naked capitalism
[quote]Mind you, not only is Trump capable of saying five contradictory things before breakfast, but he very rarely says the same thing over time (save declaring things he says he’s done to be “great”).

Nevertheless, having Trump go off the Wall Street/neoliberal script, likely by virtue of his own experience with bankruptcy, and say that debts that can’t be [paid] won’t be, is one of his occasional displays of speaking inconvenient truths. Does anyone want to place a bet as to how long it takes one of Trump’s Goldman operatives to walk his remarks back?[/quote]
I'm guessing that said inconvenient truth will have been officially walked back by the time I check back in tomorrow afternoon. The top-secret role of Boston hedge-fund vulture Seth Klarman as a major holder of PR debt is very interesting, and one wonders whether his switch in support in the last election from traditional Republican candidates to a traditional Republican candidate running as a Democrat has anything to do with Trump's debt-jubilee talk:
[quote]Klarman, who has been described as the Oracle of Boston, has a history of buying unpopular or distressed assets on the cheap in hopes of a payday. Baupost manages over $30 billion in assets. He is known as the top campaign contributor in New England, and has been a major donor in Republican politics in Massachusetts, including largely secret support for 2016’s Question 2, an ultimately unsuccessful effort to lift a state cap on charter schools. Klarman supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, calling Trump “completely unqualified for the highest office in the land.”[/quote]
Again, no real irony in Klarman's party-support switch, since HRC is, in all key respects (e.g. support for the Big Money and Big War constituencies, avid acolyte of the Neocon permawar project, Fracking Queen of upstate NY, etc), a traditional Republican. So a replay-in-microcosm of last Fall's pretzel-logic electoral match-up. But it's not clear to me at this point if Trump knew about Klarman's PR debt holdings when he made his statement. Stay tuned.

One comment from the NC article-
[QUOTE][INDENT]President Donald Trump said on Tuesday while on a trip to Puerto Rico to observe hurricane recovery efforts that the island’s massive debt will have to be wiped out.
[/INDENT]Important to remember the [U]rule of last conversation[/U] with regards to Trump: he tends to parrot the views of the last smart-sounding person he talked to. So he comes to Puerto Rico, talks to some official on the ground who pleads for a debt jubilee, Trump parrots them.
[/QUOTE] Emphasis mine.

Puerto Rico on Democracy Now!
 

Puerto Ricans Protest Trump's Visit, Denounce Militarization Amid Lack of Aid Distribution
[QUOTE][B]AMY GOODMAN:[/B] Trump’s visit comes just two days after he called Puerto Rican leaders who have criticized his hurricane response "politically motivated ingrates," and said Puerto Ricans, quote, "want everything to be done for them."
In a minute, we’ll go to San Juan for a live update from a protest against Trump’s visit today, but first we turn to a report from the interior of Puerto Rico filed by [I]Democracy Now![/I]’s Juan Carlos Dávila, our correspondent on the ground there. He traveled to the town of Utuado to speak with residents who have yet to get help, other than a few bottles of water.
[/QUOTE][URL]https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/3/puerto_ricans_protest_trumps_visit_denounce[/URL]

Father of Lin-Manuel Miranda Slams Trump's "Racist" Attack on Puerto Ricans After Hurricane Maria

[URL]https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/2/father_of_lin_manuel_miranda_slams[/URL]
[QUOTE]
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million residents still have nearly no electricity, and supplies of food, fuel and freshwater are dwindling. President Trump is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday, but attacked San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz in a series of tweets while he was at his private golf resort in Bedminister, New Jersey, this weekend. Trump wrote, "The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump. Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island [U]doing a fantastic job[/U]."[/QUOTE]Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie."
Juan González: Puerto Rico's Financial Control Board Worsened Crisis After Hurricane Maria
[URL]https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/2/juan_gonzalez_puerto_ricos_financial_control[/URL]
[QUOTE][B]AMY GOODMAN:[/B] This is [I]Democracy Now![/I] I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, the capital San Juan is still facing a dire lack of food, clean water, electricity. Hanging over one of San Juan’s freeway overpasses near the neighborhood of Playita are multiple cloth signs reading, in Spanish, "SOS Playita needs food and water."[/QUOTE]And, by the way, let us remember tRump's egregious lies and self-promotion while he was on PR. Also, remember that he told the Puerto Ricans that THEY had "thrown our budget out of whack." Didn't hear anything like that about the near-instant allocation of $15B+ for Texas.

One more piece:
Could Trump Actually Cancel Puerto Rico's Wall Street Debt After Devastation of Hurricane Maria?
[URL]https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/4/could_trump_actually_cancel_puerto_ricos[/URL]
[QUOTE]Puerto Rico officials say the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico has increased from 16 to 34, though the Center for Investigative Journalism reports that number could still rise. The announcement came after President Donald Trump visited the U.S. territory on Tuesday and repeatedly praised his administration’s response to the storm, comparing it to George W. Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During Trump’s visit, protesters also gathered outside the convention center in San Juan. On Tuesday evening, Trump shocked observers by suggesting that he might seek to cancel Puerto Rico’s $74 billion debt. We get response from Democracy Now!’s Juan González.[/QUOTE]