Hurricane Maria/Irma and Puerto Rico: 9/11 - Runway full of bottled water discovered untouched

[Serious]

Well looks like Trump managed to Katrina this shyt

Houston and Florida he had set up for him on a platter DeAndre Jordan style.

Puerto Rico threw the cross court pass to him all he had to do was knock down the open shot:



:DKRuss:
:DKMexMJ:

I wonder how long before he's back at the free throw line:

 

[88m3]

Bloomberg Politics
1 hr ·
The territory says it will run out of cash by the end of the month to pay government workers.


Paul Ryan Plans to Visit Puerto Rico
House Speaker Paul Ryan will visit hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Friday, a person in the speaker’s office said, as the island’s leaders press Congress for a large disaster relief package including relief from island’s $74 billion debt.
BLOOMBERG.COM


empty suit

 

[88m3]

The New York Times
2 hrs ·
“Because of the electricity situation, a lot of people died, and are still dying. You can’t get sick now.”


Puerto Rico’s Health Care Is in Dire Condition, Three Weeks After Maria
As the island struggles to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, sick people remain in mortal peril. Hospitals are short of medicines, power supplies…

NYTIMES.COM

 

[88m3]

Paulson, others could lose millions in Puerto Rico real estate bets

 

[88m3]

The Hill
3 hrs ·
BREAKING: Despite President Trump’s claim that his administration is doing a “great” job in Puerto Rico, the number of residents without electricity is actually growing weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the US territory.


Number of Puerto Ricans without power still rising weeks after hurricane
90% of residents remain without power.
THEHILL.COM

 

[88m3]

The Hill
25 mins ·
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello responded to President Trump’s threat to pull FEMA out of the devastated island by reminding him that Puerto Rican are US citizens who “are requesting the support that any of our fellow citizens would receive across our Nation.”


Puerto Rico governor to Trump: We are US citizens
Trump is threatened to abandon Puerto Rico disaster relief after just three weeks.
THEHILL.COM

 

[88m3]

Slate.com
1 hr ·
Here's just a few of the major problems that remain in Puerto Rico, as the president threatens to pull federal support:

- CNN reports that “[a]t least two people have died from leptospirosis, which spreads when the urine of infected animals gets into drinking water.”
- About 39 percent of the island’s 313 bank branches are closed.
- About 45 percent of the island is without phone service.
- The Washington Post reported that 37 percent of the island’s residents are still without clean drinking water and 40 percent of wastewater treatment facilities remained non-operational.
- CNN reports that hospitals have been running low on medicine and fuel and local officials expect the death toll to mount.


After Prompt from TV Personality, Trump Threatens to Abandon Puerto Rico

SLATE.COM

 

[Regular_P]

His tweets this morning were abominable. It's sickening that no Republicans are calling him out on this.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

no conspiracy theorist...

but if you think what's going on in puerto rico isn't what would happen to our black and brown communities in the event of a doomsday event, you're fukkn crazy

 

[88m3]

no conspiracy theorist...

but if you think what's going on in puerto rico isn't what would happen to our black and brown communities in the event of a doomsday event, you're fukkn crazy

look at Flint...

 

[tru_m.a.c]

In emergencies, Medicaid frequently boosts its spending to provide care to people without insurance who wouldn’t normally qualify for the program or to pay for special treatments. That happened after 9/11 and after Hurricane Katrina, as well as after the Flint water crisis and after Zika spread in parts of the United States. In Puerto Rico, however, where about half of the population relies on the public insurance — a much larger share than in any of the 50 states — the amount of money the federal government spends on Medicaid is capped each year, and the island, which is $72 billion in debt, currently has no way of increasing what it spends on the program without federal approval.

The problem for Puerto Rico is not only that it’s in debt, but also that it is responsible for paying a much larger share of Medicaid costs than it would if it were a state. Across the U.S. — in both the territories and the states — the federal government reimburses a share of the cost of the program. In poorer states, the federal government pays more — Mississippi, the poorest state, is reimbursed for 75.7 percent of the cost of providing care, while 14 states are reimbursed for 50 percent, the lowest level allowed.As with all things health care, the reimbursement formulas are complicated. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a full description of the formulas used to determine federal reimbursement for various parts of the program in different states.

But in the territories, the amount is set at 55 percent. If Puerto Rico were reimbursed using the same poverty formula as the states, the federal government would cover 82 percent of the cost, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, a nonpartisan agency that provides policy recommendations to Congress. The median annual income for Puerto Ricans was $20,078 in 2016, a fraction of the $57,617 earned across the U.S. In Mississippi, it was $41,754.

If Puerto Rico Were A State, Its Health Care System Would Recover Faster From Maria

 

[Yehuda]

Residents wade through flood waters at their home days after Hurricane Maria made landfall, on September 22, 2017 in Loiza, Puerto Rico. Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images News

[...] The Category 4 storm left the entire island without power. But Salvador and his mom, who had a generator and a cistern, were in a better position than most, and it made him realize just how many people didn’t have the most basic of necessities. His own grandparents had no electricity and had to come stay with them in their Condado neighborhood in San Juan. His grandpa brought his radio – which became their only lifeline to the outside world – and Salvador learned just how much people were suffering throughout the island.

There were two things that he couldn’t get out of his mind: people didn’t have light or the ability to wash their clothes. With Puerto Rican officials estimating that it take up to six months for the entire island to have power again, Salvador began thinking of how this would impact people across the island. [...]

After speaking to his mom about this, she put him in contact with two people, a military veteran who served in Afghanistan and Neha Misra. The vet told him about the hand-cranked washing machines they used when they didn’t have electricity, which is how he ended up contacting The Laundry Alternative, a company that produces a $45 portable WonderWash machine. And his mom’s friend, Misra, who works with Solar Sister – a company that provides solar-powered lamps to communities without electricity – helped him figure out how he could give light to his fellow Puerto Ricans. Because Salvador didn’t have access to the internet and his text messages were painfully slow, Misra helped him set up a crowdfunding page on Generosity. The campaign launched about a week after Hurricane Irma.

Titled Light and Hope For Puerto Rico, Salvador aims to raise $100,000 so he can help 1,000 families. On top of working with The Laundry Alternative and Solar Sister, he’s also enlisted Cleancult, which has pledged to donate 1,000 gallons of laundry soap, and Omnivoltaic and Schneider Electric will also donate solar lights. Right now, the products will cost about $100 per family, but Salvador is hoping to drive the cost down a bit more so that he can help even more people.

The benevolent teen will donate the products to Loiza, a largely Afro-Puerto Rican community that was hit by both Hurricanes Irma and Maria, in the first week of November. Right now, he’s at about 60 percent of his goal, and he hopes to reach $100,000 in the next week or so. Donate to the campaign here.

Teen Is Fundraising to Equip 1,000 Puerto Rican Families With Solar Lights and Washing Machines

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Pentagon accidentally included reporter in Puerto Rico spin talks

Wild

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

69 Republicans vote against aid for Puerto Rico, other disaster sites


There’s a special place in hell for these people

 

[Yehuda]

[...] the rationale to acquire colonies in the Pacific and Atlantic on the heels of the Spanish-American War of 1898 rested on the notion of white racial superiority. The entire legal edifice that defines Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory that “belongs to but is not part of the U.S.” is unapologetically racist.

Through a series of decisions known as the Insular Cases (1901-1922), the Supreme Court opted to create a new body of law to distinguish incorporated territories on the path to statehood from the newly gained possessions (Guam, Philippines, Puerto Rico), and justify that the U.S. Constitution would not entirely apply.

The main reason given was that territorial inhabitants were unfit and not mature enough to self-govern or be part of the union because of their condition as “uncivilized” and “alien races.” This view was etched in the cartoons of the early colonial period, in which Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Filipinos and Chamorros were often drawn as black “pickaninnies” in need of Uncle Sam’s paternal direction.

Not surprisingly, the court that ruled on these cases was nearly made up of the same justices who reached the 1896 “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding state racial-segregation laws. As current U.S. District Judge Juan R. Torruella summed up, the Insular Cases were “a more stringent version of the Plessy doctrine: the conquered lands were to be treated not only separately, but also unequally.” Even further, while Plessy was eventually overturned, the Insular Cases have not been. The Supreme Court still routinely relies on them to decide cases before it.

In addition to a new type of law, the U.S. created a new type of citizenship. Through the little-known Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, Congress extended U.S. citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico. But unlike American citizens living in the States, Puerto Ricans were not entitled to fundamental rights such as voting for president or electing a proportional, voting delegation to Congress.

The reasons against full citizenship are also entangled in racist logic. For some policymakers, the risk was that given their makeup as “lesser races,” the people of Puerto Rico simply could not understand “Anglo-Saxon principles.” For others, the fear was that political incorporation would enable nonwhites to make laws for or govern not only themselves but also the “whole American people,” and even “[give] the republic its presidents.”

Ultimately, to the extent that Puerto Rico was considered too densely populated to make large-scale white settlement viable (as would happen in once-Mexican-majority territories like Arizona and New Mexico), unincorporation and colonial citizenship became the legal wall keeping Puerto Rico out of national governance.

[...] although it has become liberal sport to insist on how different Trump is from everything and everyone else that preceded him, the president’s response to the hurricane is consistent with American colonial history. This is manifested in both the slowness and limited scale of assistance during Hurricane Maria, and by the fact that when local leaders criticized him for it, Trump defended himself by invoking century-old racial stereotypes of Puerto Ricans as lazy and ingrates who “wanted everything to be done for them.”

Trump’s brief visit to Puerto Rico’s “best” neighborhoods also exposes another racial layer. Whereas elsewhere in the U.S., Puerto Ricans are collectively considered nonwhite, on the island, additional racialized power dynamics apply. Some of the poorest and hardest-hit areas like the municipality of Loiza are predominantly black. Assistance, however, has tended to come faster to less affected but more affluent and whiter cities like Guaynabo. Equally revealing, island politicians and government spokespeople are largely light-skinned Puerto Ricans.

All of which is why the crisis in Puerto Rico needs to be part of the national and global anti-racist dialogue. As evidenced by the hurricane’s rising death toll, which will at least reach the hundreds, failure to do so will likely continue to cost lives. It will also make the task of expanding coalitions more difficult and limit the potential to address both old and new challenges like climate change. [...]

The Crisis In Puerto Rico Is A Racial Issue. Here's Why