Puerto Rico’s unpayable debt, is product of US colonial rule

If Americans didn't get the message when Detroit went belly up, Puerto
Rico should sound the alarm. Our "Ship of State" is sailing straight
toward the reefs of our hapless colony, Puerto Rico. Look closely as
our captain desperately struggles to change course. What lies before
us is the result of more than a century of plundering and raping of
Puerto Rico's resources by that great American Experiment, Democracy.
Democracy as defined by the men who owned the Land. The men who
drafted the constitution and created the laws. The White men who
determined who could enjoy First Class Citizenship and who could do
the grunt work. And when Spain, who had been abusing the Island for
years, was kicked out, Puerto Rico was not encouraged to become a
Democracy. Puerto Rico merely saw its yoke transferred from one cruel
master to another. And while we average working class slobs skip off
to our beaches and mountain retreats, or push our way into our
favorite teams stadiums, or gather in our back yards and suck up a few
beers, do a joint or two and giggle about the latest reality show on
TV, those same plunderers and rapists are drooling over our meager
possessions, and plotting ways of taking it all. A few tweaks of a
law here and there, a tightening of our national security,
militarization of our local police, the list is endless, and the
result will be on us before we have time to say, "Grab another brew
while you're in there."
And of course we'll blame our corrupt, incompetent government, the
same government that is efficiently serving our Masters.
Some call it, "The American Empire", some say it's an Oligarchy. I
call it a, "Military Dictatorship". We have undergone one of the
cleverest, most cunning military takeover ever devised. Rather than
General Whatshisname parading before the world in his smart dress
uniform with all it's ribbons and medals, the Pentagon sits quietly
behind a facade of posturing "elected" officials. Do you disagree?
Fine. But consider this, we were once a nation that publicly
proclaimed our belief in free speech, independence and the American
Dream of a job, a home and a family. Today we have abandoned this
facade in order to support our world-wide, eternal war. We are held
captive by our military's efforts to "protect" us from Terrorists.
All we had to do was to sacrifice a little bit of our personal
freedom. Of course we need to be careful what words we speak in
public or on our iPhones, or what we write in our emails or face book
or tweets. But of course that's no problem for all of us Loyal
Citizens who want to protect the world against Terror. And we'll do
it at all costs.

Carl Jarvis

On 8/15/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://themilitant.com/2015/7930/793005.html
> The Militant (logo)
>
> Vol. 79/No. 30 August 24, 2015
>
> (front page)
> Puerto Rico's unpayable debt
> is product of US colonial rule
>
> BY SETH GALINSKY
> Hoping to push bondholders to grant Puerto Rico more favorable terms to
> repay $73 billion in loans, the government of the U.S. colony defaulted
> for the first time ever, paying just $628,000 of a $58 million payment
> due Aug. 3.
> "It's obvious that this crisis is the result of colonialism," longtime
> Puerto Rican independence fighter Rafael Cancel Miranda said by phone
> Aug. 8. "The Puerto Rican government has no real power, not even to
> declare bankruptcy. The real government here is the Yankee government."
>
> Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, backed by the Wall Street
> Journal and some politicians in the U.S., is supporting legislation
> before the U.S. Congress that would allow the 18 different Puerto Rican
> agencies and state-owned utilities that issued the bonds to declare
> bankruptcy — supervised by a federal court.
>
> The Journal called García's July admission that the debt is unpayable an
> "open secret." The paper said in a July 2 editorial that the 2013
> Chapter 9 bankruptcy of Detroit should be a model because it allowed the
> courts to "rewrite labor contracts, trim pensions, restructure public
> agencies." In other words, it's a model for making the working class
> bear the brunt of "restructuring."
>
> The paper also backed key proposals in the Krueger report, which was
> commissioned by the Puerto Rican government and released in late June.
> These include not applying the federal minimum wage, currently at $7.25
> an hour, on the island and exempting Puerto Rico from the 1920 Jones
> Act, which requires all maritime trade to be carried on U.S.-flagged
> ships, doubling shipping costs.
>
> Over the last five years the colonial government has cut pensions, laid
> off thousands of government workers, raised sales taxes and slashed
> social programs.
>
> Since 2005 Puerto Rico's gross national product has shrunk by some 10
> percent. Labor participation is only 40 percent of the adult population,
> compared to 63 percent in the United States. Mississippi, the poorest
> U.S. state, has a per capita income nearly double that of Puerto Rico.
>
> Some 300,000 residents of Puerto Rico, especially youth, have fled the
> island over the last decade, with most heading to the U.S. More than
> 3,000 doctors left over the last five years, with a devastating impact
> on health care. More than 60 percent of the island's residents receive
> Medicare or Medicaid, while reimbursement rates for doctors are 40
> percent lower than in the U.S., the New York Times said, and more cuts
> are on the way.
>
> In San Juan, the paper notes, "beds in hospital emergency rooms line the
> hallways. There are so few nurses that people often hire their own
> private nurses during hospital stays."
>
> A July report paid for by 34 hedge funds titled "For Puerto Rico, There
> is a Better Way" called for more drastic cuts in government spending to
> ensure full payment of the debt. Co-author Jose Fajgenbaum, a former
> International Monetary Fund economist, told the Guardian newspaper that
> the Puerto Rican government had been "massively overspending on
> education" while attendance had been falling. The Puerto Rican
> government has already closed nearly 100 schools this year and 60 in 2014.
>
> U.S. colonial rule
> Puerto Rico has been a U.S. colony ever since U.S. troops landed in
> 1898, wresting control of the island from Spain.
> Bourgeois economists and capitalist politicians often claim that
> Washington "sustains" Puerto Rico, because of the high percentage of
> people there who depend on food stamps and other welfare programs to
> survive.
>
> "But we're the ones who sustain the financial vultures and multinational
> corporations," Cancel Miranda told the Militant. U.S. pharmaceutical
> companies, hotels and agribusiness have made hundreds of billions of
> dollars of profits from Puerto Rico. Annual interest on bonds is
> currently at 12 percent.
>
> In the early decades of the U.S. occupation, thousands of small farmers
> were pushed off the land, and a once-diversified harvest was replaced by
> sugar. Today Puerto Rico — with three or four growing seasons per year
> compared to just one or two in most of the U.S. — imports nearly 90
> percent of its food, lining the pockets of U.S. agribusiness.
>
> Some defenders of Puerto Rico's colonial condition used to say "the
> Island of Enchantment had the best of both worlds," Cancel Miranda said.
> "But even they are now opening their eyes."
>
>
> Related articles:
> Independence for Puerto Rico!
>
>
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