puerto rico 2 bak
puertorico
see hurricane
colony? debt crisis
pvt grid fails more
10 24 hurricanes?
GRIST 7 26
Inside the government’s push to divert Puerto Rico solar funds to a bankrupt utility
===
alternet no lnx
Citizenship cannot save you from fascism
Donald J. Trump, joined by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and U.S. Attorney General William Barr, meets with states attorneys general on protecting consumers from social media abuse Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
John Stoehr October 31, 2024
The debate over Donald Trump’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden has focused primarily on fallout from insulting Puerto Ricans with a “joke” about the US territory being an “island of garbage.”
“That is the October surprise,” GOP strategist Mike Madrid told Greg Sargent. “Surprise, Donald Trump, you blew yourself up. Yes, it could absolutely bring Pennsylvania into the win column for [Kamala] Harris."
But something’s missing from the debate.
Why did this backfire?
I mean, Trump hasn’t been campaigning for president so much as leading a vengeance movement against alleged “enemies from within” – ie, anyone who displeases him. He has vowed to purge America of “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. Last weekend’s rally was merely a culmination of a year’s worth of prejudice porn. Speakers there assailed immigrants, Jews, Black people and more.
But somehow Trump seemed to have taken a lot of people by surprise, particularly Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rican celebrities seemed especially revolted. Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin endorsed Harris only after the “island of garbage” line blew up. Musician Nicky Jam had actually endorsed Trump, but rescinded his endorsement afterward.
“I never thought in my life that a month later a comedian would come along and criticize my country [sic], speak poorly of my country [sic], therefore I renounce any support for Donald Trump," Jam wrote.
How is this possible?
The answer might be rooted in the complicated nature of Latino identity and the hierarchies within it that have emerged in relation to white-power politics in America. Put plainly, some Puerto Ricans are white or can pass for white. Most of them speak English. Because the island is a US territory, all Puerto Ricans are US citizens who can vote.
Compared to Latinos who are not white, who do not speak English and who cannot vote, Puerto Ricans have a lot going for them in a country like ours that’s still shaped and formed largely by the cultural and political preferences of white people. Some Puerto Ricans might have even believed that no matter how bad Trump gets, it won’t affect them much. After all, they have the rights and privileges of citizenship.
I don’t want to undervalue the fact that lots of people just don’t pay attention to politics. Nicky Jam said he had endorsed Trump, because “I thought that was the best for the economy in the US, where many Latinos live, including myself, where many immigrants are suffering because of the economy, and him being a businessman I thought that was the best move." I would guess that Jam had other things to do.
But I don’t think Jam and others were shocked by “island of garbage” because they were preoccupied. I suspect they were shocked because they realized something profound – that their assumptions were wrong. They presumed that citizenship was an issue of legal status. Once a citizen, always a citizen, no matter how you look. But Trump’s hate-rally undermined that understanding. It revealed that his fascists will not honor the letter of the law, much less the spirit of it. They will target you if you’re illegal. They will target you if you “don’t look legal” – and “don’t look illegal” isn’t a matter of law. It’s a matter of whiteness.
I don’t mean to suggest Puerto Ricans don’t experience racism. That would be stupid. I do mean to suggest that some, including perhaps Nicky Jam, underestimate what it means when someone says, as Stephen Miller did, that “America is for Americans and Americans only.” It means there’s nothing legally special about being Puerto Ricans. From Miller’s view, they’re all “Mexicans” and all “Mexicans” need to go. If Trump wins, Miller would likely be in charge of executing a massive operation to arrest and detain everyone who doesn’t “look American.”
That operation is usually described as a “deportation program,” but I don’t see any reason why such an undertaking would be restricted to “illegal immigrants.” The point of the exercise is to purge the “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. It is to “cure the disease” and eradicate “the enemies within.” Things like legal status and citizenship won’t stop fascists from pursuing those goals once they have power. Nothing will, not even another white person’s whiteness.
This is why the “island of garbage” line should be profoundly shocking to more than the Puerto Rican population of the United States. It should shake everyone to their core. Its message is as simple as it is horrifying - the rights and privileges of citizenship cannot save you.
To achieve the goal of dominance and control – of making America for Americans only – fascists in power need only define “American” according to the most restrictive terms possible. But these terms would never be static. They would change according to need.
So even if you meet the fascist definition of “American,” you might not be white enough or male enough or Christian enough. This is what happened to the GOP. No one could say Mitt Romney wasn’t a Republican, but to the fascists, he would never be Republican enough. He didn’t belong and over time, they purged him from the party.
As it stands, the debate over Trump’ fascist rally is centered on the outrage felt by Puerto Ricans who are now remembering Donald Trump’s treatment of the island after Hurricane Maria ravaged it in 2017. They are remembering that he called them dirty, that he threw paper towels at them, and that he held up scores of millions in relief until the last days of his term. The story now is about how Trump alienated voters he needs to win. The story is about PR payback.
There’s more to the story. If native-born citizens can be dehumanized as “garbage,” anyone can be. If anyone can be, no one is truly safe.
===
MSG fail 10 24 no pix twt
Popular, famous, and highly-influential Latino stars, and superstars including Bad Bunny, Luis Fonsi, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin, are lashing out at Donald Trump after his six-hour Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday served up racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic rhetoric. A New York Times headline described it as "Trump's racist rally."
The most-noted racist remarks came from a comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, in an attack calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” and saying, "these Latinos, they love making babies, too, just know that. They do, they do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country,” before talking about Black people carving watermelons.
The Trump campaign waited several hours before issuing a statement saying, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” It was unclear why other racist remarks made throughout the event, including by Hinchcliffe, were not addressed by the campaign.
"Battleground Pennsylvania," NBC News reports, "where polling margins show a razor-thin race between Trump and Harris, is home to thethird-largest Puerto Rican diaspora in the country. Last month, the former president invitedPuerto Rican artist Anuel AA onstage at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to publicly throw his support behind the Republican ticket."
READ MORE: ‘What’s He Confessing to?’: Trump’s Mike Johnson ‘Secret’ Draws Electoral College Concerns
Variety reports, "Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin were among the notable industry figures who boosted Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Sunday after a speaker at Donald Trump‘s political rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico 'a floating island of garbage.'"
"Bad Bunny, one of the world’s biggest music superstar[s] with more than 45 million Instagram followers, boosted Harris’ campaign video targeting voters in Puerto Rico and noting what a contentious relationship that Trump had with the island during his tenure in the White House. Lopez posted Harris campaign material targeted at Puerto Rico as well as the same video pitch that Bad Bunny boosted."
"Singer-actor Ricky Martin, with 18.6 million Instagram followers, did the same thing on his Instagram Stories feed, adding the comment 'I remember' on the Harris video. He also included a clip of Hinchcliffe’s 'garbage' comment."
Variety continued, reporting, "Luis Fonsi, the Puerto Rican singer who had a worldwide smash in 2017 with 'Despacito,' also reposted the Harris video and added a comment."
“We are not OK with this constant hate. It’s been abundantly clear that these people have no respect for us and yet they want our vote,” Fonsi wrote. “I purposely wrote this in English cause yes we’re American too.”
Political strategist, CNN commentator, and co-host of ABC's "The View," Ana Navarro, has two million followers on the social media platform X and is a highly-influential Republican.
"Today, @KamalaHarris released policy proposals to help Puerto Rico. On the other hand at the Trump rally, this is going on," she wrote, pointing to a clip of Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
"But nah. They’re not piece of s--- racists who treat Puerto Ricans as second-class US citizens. It’s just our imagination. Puerto Ricans, pay attention!"
READ MORE: ‘:{Ten-Cent Dictator’: Trump Threatens Mass Arrests of Opponents in ‘Cease and Desist’ Post}:
She also noted posted a screenshot of Bad Bunny's post, in which he shared Vice President Harris's proposal for Puerto Rico with his 45 million followers.
And, pointing to Hinchcliffe's racist remarks about Latinos making babies, Navarro wrote:
"Latinos, defend our community’s dignity.
Show some self-respect.
A vote against racism is a vote for @KamalaHarris."
Monday morning on "The View," co-host Sunny Hostin, who is Puerto Rican, served up a monologue strongly criticizing Donald Trump.
"This Puerto Rican has something to say about the island that I love, where my family is from," Hostin began. "Puerto Rico is 'trash'? We are Americans, Donald Trump. Americans. We voluntarily serve disproportionately high in the military, while you have bone spurs."
"And we vote."
"Pennsylvania is home to almost half a million Puerto Ricans. North Carolina, 115,000. Georgia, 100,000. Arizona, 64,000. Wisconsin, 61,000. Michigan, 43,000. Nevada, 27,000. We vote Donald Trump."
"Trash?"
"And by the way, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny, Luis Fonsi, and Mark Anthony have over 345 million followers on Instagram. I think you only have 26 million, since you care so much about size. And we don't like what was said about Puerto Rico. And we know how to take the trash out Donald Trump. Trash that has been collecting since 2016. And that's you, Donald Trump. And finally, my fellow Puerto Ricans, trash collection day is November 5th, 2024. Don't forget it."
Former Fox News political commentator Geraldo Rivera let loose Sunday night:
"'A floating island of garbage…?' Referring to Puerto Rico??? 'Poisoning the blood of our nation…?' We have 'murder in our genes….?' Fuck these racists. Latino men of good will, have pride in yourselves and your ancestors. A vote for Trump is a vote against self-respect."
Monday morning he added: "Latino men, for the love of your parents and children, for your pride and your honor tell this little gringo s--- to go f--- himself."
See the video and social media posts above or at this link.
READ MORE: ‘Malignant Narcissism’: Trump Is an ‘Existential Threat to Democracy’ Health Experts Warn
===
4 23 email drilled
on Monday this week the Supreme Court finally weighed in on whether it would take up the jurisdictional argument that oil companies are making in multiple climate liability suits. The companies have been arguing for the past five years that these cases, brought on behalf of municipalities and states, are asking state courts for judgements that would impact federal policy and thus belong in state court. Attorneys representing state and local arguments have argued that their cases—which claim that oil companies' delay tactics on climate increased the cost of adaptation and thus the companies are liable for a portion of those costs—were appropriately filed in state court. Every circuit court has agreed, as has the Department of Justice, and now the Supreme Court as well.
"The companies' history of climate, deception, and misinformation, coupled with their unchecked fossil fuel production promotion, and so on, it makes them liable for at least some of the costs that these communities face, so that these costs don't fall entirely on the taxpayers." — Marco Simons, EarthRights International, attorney representing Boulder and other Colorado municipalities against oil companies.
| [audio] |
Suncor, a Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary is headquartered in Colorado, is a defendant in the Boulder climate case.
It's big news, but what will it mean for these cases? Some of them, including Boulder, which was the case invoked in the initial petition to the Supreme Court, will go back to arguing against other motion-to-dismiss arguments in state court. But others, starting with Hawaii, will move towards trial and that's a really big deal because it means some of these cases will get into the phase of litigation oil companies have been trying their hardest to avoid: discovery. In civil cases, the discovery phase is when companies will be asked to hand over documents and make their executives available for depositions. The evidence gathered during discovery in these cases could spell trouble for the oil company defendants in multiple other cases, including ongoing fraud suits in Massachusetts and Minnesota, a RICO, or racketeering, case filed on behalf of Puerto Rican municipalities, and even international cases given that the majority of these companies operate globally.
"At this point, we're optimistic about moving forward and securing justice for our clients, who have been facing significant harms and costs due to the climate crisis while the oil companies, of course, continue to profit from their deception and misinformation." —Marco Simons, EarthRights International
[audio]
But of course, oil majors have not put all their eggs in the jurisdictional basket. As I've been writing about for years now, one of the key arguments they're making in these cases is a First Amendment argument. In broad strokes, the argument goes like this: anything they've ever said about climate was in the interest of shaping policy, which makes it political speech (or "petitioning speech" in legalese), and therefore protected. It was clear this was going to be the driving force of these cases when the oil company defendants appointed Chevron's attorney, Ted Boutrous with Gibson Dunn, as their spokesperson across the board. Boutrous is a renowned First Amendment attorney, and Gibson Dunn is the firm that brought and won the most famous corporate free speech in the country's history: Citizens United. And now, even as the broader jurisdictional argument seems to be dead in the water, oil companies have formulated another one: the First Amendment question in these cases is foundational, and is not something that state courts should be weighing in on.
That argument has already been briefed in multiple cases, and it's only a matter of time before it makes its way to the most pro-corporate Supreme Court this country has had in decades...maybe ever. In the meantime, cases will move forward, and it's possible that so many cases moving into discovery will prompt discussion of a tobacco-style settlement. But I wouldn't go counting those chickens just yet.
https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/puerto-ricos-grid-failure-climate-justice-story-national-tv-news-failed-cover-it
https://www.mediamatters.org/martha-maccallum/fox-news-anchors-covering-hurricane-ian-dont-realize-puerto-rico-part-united
an 922
As Pakistan drowns, as Puerto Rico is cast into darkness, and as Jacksonians remain thirsty, it’s past time for a climate tax on fossil fuel companies.
What do Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and Jackson, Mississippi, have in common? They’ve all recently experienced climate-related catastrophic rains and flooding, resulting in the loss of homes, electricity, and running water. But, even more importantly, they are all low-income regions inhabited by people of color—the prime victims of climate injustice. They face inaction from negligent governments and struggle to survive as fossil fuel companies reap massive profits—a status quo that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called a “moral and economic madness.”
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Pakistan, which relies on yearly monsoons to enrich its agricultural industry, has had unprecedented floods since June, impacting 30 million people and killing more than 1,500—a third of them children.
Zulfiqar Kunbhar, a Karachi-based journalist with expertise in climate coverage, explains that “things are very critical” in the rain-affected areas of his nation. Kunbhar has been visiting impacted regions and has seen firsthand the massive “agricultural loss and livelihood loss” among Pakistan’s farming communities.
Sindh, a low-lying province of Pakistan, is not only one of the most populous in the nation (Sindh is home to about 47 million people), but it also produces about a third of the agricultural produce, according to Kunbhar. Twenty years ago, Sindh was stricken with extreme drought. In the summer of 2022, it was drowning in chest-deep water.
The UN is warning that the water could take months to recede and that this poses serious health risks, as deadly diseases like cerebral malaria are emerging. Kunbhar summarizes that provinces like Sindh are facing both “the curse of nature” and government “mismanagement.”
Climate change plus government inaction on mitigation and resilience equals deadly consequences for the poor. This same equation plagues Puerto Rico, long relegated to the status of a United States territory. In September 2022, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and killed nearly 3,000 people, another storm named Fiona knocked out power for the entire region.
Julio López Varona, chief of campaigns at Center for Popular Democracy Action, spoke to me from Puerto Rico, saying, “the storm was extremely slow, going at like 8 or 9 miles an hour,” and as a result, “it pounded the island for more than three days” with relentless rain. “Communities were completely flooded; people have been displaced,” he says. Eventually, the electrical grid completely failed.
Days after the storm passed, millions of people remained without power—some even lost running water—leading the White House to declare a major disaster in Puerto Rico.
Even on the U.S. mainland, it is poor communities of color who have been hit the hardest by the impacts of climate change. Mississippi’s capital of Jackson, with an 82 percent Black population and growing numbers of Latin American immigrants, struggles with adequate resources and has had problems with its water infrastructure for years.
Lorena Quiroz, founder of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, a Jackson-based group doing multiracial grassroots organizing, told me how the city’s residents have been struggling without clean running water since major rains and resulting floods overwhelmed a water treatment plant this summer.
“It’s a matter of decades of disinvestment in this mostly Black, and now Brown, community,” says Quiroz. In a state run by white conservatives, Jackson is overseen by a Black progressive mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who is now suing the state government over inaction on the city’s water infrastructure.
Quiroz says it’s “painful to see how government is not doing what they should, how the state government is neglecting its most vulnerable populations.”
Over and over, the same pattern has emerged on a planet experiencing catastrophic climate change. Setting aside the fact that we are still spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as the world burns and floods, the impacts of a warming climate are disproportionately borne by poor communities of color as evidenced in Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Jackson, and elsewhere.
The UN head, Guterres is doing what he can in using his position to lay blame precisely on the culprits, saying in his opening remarks to the UN General Assembly in New York recently, “It is high time to put fossil fuel producers, investors, and enablers on notice. Polluters must pay.” Guterres specifically touted the importance of taxing fossil fuel companies to cover the damage they are causing in places like Pakistan. According to the Associated Press, “Oil companies in July reported unprecedented profits of billions of dollars per month. ExxonMobil posted three months profits of $17.85 billion, Chevron of $11.62 billion, and Shell of $11.5 billion.”
Contrast this windfall with the countless numbers of people who lost their homes in Pakistan and are now living in shanties on roads where they have found some higher ground from the floods. “If you lose a crop, that’s seasonal damage, but if you lose a house, you have to pay for years to come,” says Kunbhar.
Kunbhar’s view of what is happening in Pakistan applies equally to Puerto Rico and Jackson: Society is “divided between the haves and have-nots,” he says. “The poorest of the poor who are already facing an economic crisis from generation to generation, they are the most vulnerable and the [worst] victims of this crisis.”
In Puerto Rico, Varona sees displaced communities losing their lands to wealthier communities. He says that the local government in Puerto Rico is “allowing millionaires and billionaires to come and pay no taxes and to actually take over many of the places that are safer for communities to be on.” This is an “almost intentional displacement of communities… that have historically lived here,” he says.
And in Jackson, Quiroz says she is aghast at the “mean-spiritedness” of Mississippi’s wealthier enclaves and state government. “It is so difficult to comprehend the way that our people are being treated.”
Although disparate and seemingly disconnected from one another, with many complicating factors, there are stark lines connecting climate victims to fossil fuel profits.
Pakistan’s poor communities are paying the price for ExxonMobil’s billions.
Puerto Rico remains in the dark so that Chevron may enjoy massive profits.
Jackson, Mississippi, has no clean drinking water so that Shell can enrich its shareholders.
When put in such terms, Guterres’s idea for taxing the perpetrators of climate devastation is a no-brainer. It’s “high time,” he said, “to put fossil fuel producers, investors and enablers on notice,” so that we can end our “suicidal war against nature.”
Author Bio: Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations
https://theconversation.com/puerto-rico-has-a-once-in-a-lifetime-chance-to-build-a-clean-energy-grid-but-fema-plans-to-spend-9-4-billion-on-fossil-fuel-infrastructure-instead-169124
==
lil sis
ur work also helped broader national campaigns aimed at the investors, bankers, insurers, and attorneys behind the fossil fuel industry. Our research on Liberty Mutual’s director Jay Hooley’s board membership with ExxonMobil contributed to action backed by a range of groups, while our profile of the law firm Paul Weiss aided the growing #DropExxon campaign among law students. More recently, we began what will surely be a long project of mapping out the Biden administration’s ties to the fossil fuel industry - in this case, revolving around Ernest Moniz’s influence on Biden energy transition team.
On top of all this, we continued mapping the power in many other ways, from examining the antics of Puerto Rico’s debt vultures and Act 22 investors, to scrutinizing the powerful law firm running Trump’s Justice Department and the efforts of Uber and Lyft to stifle gig worker rights in NYS (see coverage in *Vice* and the *Markup*).
==
ew 720
Puerto Rico's governor declared a state of emergency on Monday after a severe drought on the island left 140,000 people without access to running water, despite the necessary role that hand washing and hygiene plays in stopping the novel coronavirus, as The Independent reported.
puerto Rico’s Power Failures Inspired a Rooftop Solar Movement. But Officials Are Undermining It — in Favor of Natural Gas.
Alleen Brown< ...;federal agency “knowingly stalled sending hurricane relief funding to Puerto Rico,” holding up billions of dollars in post-Maria housing funds. Officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development defended the delay to Congress The Hill reports, by echoing the words of President Trump, who has called Puerto Rico “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”
###
climate Crimes
:{Two Years After Maria, Relief Funds Promise Displacement for the Hardest-Hit Puerto Ricans:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:
Alleen Brown
919 intercept
==
lil sis
pAI Cited in NYT on Puerto Rico Vulture Governor’s Conflicts
Puerto Rico saw a major political upheaval this summer with the massive protests that threw out Governor Ricardo Rosselló. The appointment of his successor, Pedro Pierluisi, was found unconstitutional by Puerto Rico's Supreme Court, and Pierluisi lasted only about a week in office. PAI's was on the forefront of exposing Pierluisi’s serious conflicts of interest - our work was cited in a front-page *New York Times* article the day that he was ousted.
In June, we also reported on recent positive developments in the effort to cancel Puerto Rico’s debt - see coverage in *PrimeraHORA*.
==
==
719 bounced corrupt head trump pal 16 kia v 3k
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-the-teacher-movement-against-charter-schools-helped-send-puerto-ricos-governor-packing/
no lnx
How the teacher movement against charter schools helped send Puerto Rico’s governor packing
Written by Jeff Bryant / Independent Media Institute August 2, 2019
As Americans lament the current sorry state of democracy in Washington, D.C., government by the will of the people was very much alive recently in Puerto Rico, where a prolonged general strike that virtually shut down the island forcedGovernor Ricardo Rosselló to announce his resignation.
During the strike, huge crowds mobbed the governor’s mansion around the clock, closed highways in the capital of San Juan, and persuaded some presidential candidates in the Democratic Party to join in calling for the governor to resign.
Protesters had multiple grievances, but a “final straw” seems to have been a series of text messages leaked to an independent news organization in which the governor and his closest associates insulted political opponents and allies, members of the news media, and the LGBTQ community. Another notable target for insults in the text exchanges were the island’s public school teachers, whom the governor’s chief financial officer at the time, Christian Sobrino, called, “terrorists.” (Sobrino and other top officials participating in the chats have resigned since the messages went public.)
Puerto Rico’s school teachers have been a constant nemesis to the Rosselló regime, and the island’s largest teachers’ union, the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (AMPR), united with other labor unions on the island to organize the general strike. Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, which AMPR is an affiliate of, joined in the calls for Rosselló’s resignation.
The teachers’ disagreements with Governor Rosselló started long before the release of the insulting texts.
“People in Puerto Rico felt betrayed by the governor,” says Myrna Ortiz-Castillo in a phone conversation. Ortiz-Castillo is a third-grade teacher and serves as finance secretary at the AMPR local in Bayamon. She insists, “He is supposed to be the person who takes care of the people. Instead he took care of his friends.”
One of the “friends” Ortiz-Castillo is referring to is the charter school industry. During his tenure, Rosselló pushed through the first law allowing charter schools on the island, and after the bill passed, he continued to press for opening more charters. Now it seems his ousting, and the legacy of corruption he leaves behind, will likely damage prospects for the charter industry in Puerto Rico for some time.
‘Friends’ of Charters Take Charge
Much of the teachers’ disillusion with Rosselló goes back at least to December 2016 when then Governor-elect Rosselló appointed Julia Keleher to be the Puerto Rico secretary of education.
Keleher, a native of Philadelphia who barely speaks Spanish, was effectively already on the government payroll, as her firm Keleher & Associates had been awarded almost $1 million in contracts to consult on the island’s education system. Her outsized salary—$250,000 to oversee a system where the average teacher pay is only $27,000—also created controversy.
Shortly after taking office, Keleher pushed for a plan to close nearly 200 public schools across the island, which would have led to thousands of teachers losing their jobs. She also pledged to decentralize the school system and delegate school services, terms often used to introduce the idea of charter schools and other forms of public-private education partnerships.
Keleher’s proposals drew immediate pushback from multiple political factions on the island, but barely nine months into her tenure, she got the perfect opportunity to turn her proposals into policies when Hurricane Maria slammed the island. The storm inflicted $142 million in damages to schools, and 40 days after the storm, only 109 of Puerto Rico’s 1,100 schools had reopened.
Keleher repeatedly referred to the catastrophe as an “opportunity.”
A New Orleans-Style Agenda
While Keleher worked the policy channels to introduce charter schools to the island, teachers were in communities delivering aid and comfort.
Ortiz-Castillo recalls being a first-line responder to the widespread destruction. In her phone call to me, she describes traveling to devastated communities as part of the union’s outreach effort to use its extensive membership network to identify where parents and their children were struggling and advise where to direct supplies, food, and drinking water. Many schools became, essentially, relief centers.
Keleher seemed to have other priorities.
As Education Week’s correspondent on the ground in Puerto Rico reported, she was “diving deep into the lessons of loss and opportunity in previous natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005.”
In a tweet, Keleher said New Orleans should be a “point of reference; we should not underestimate the damage or the opportunity to create new, better schools.”
After Katrina, a state-appointed board shut down New Orleans schools, fired over 7,000 teachers, and deposed the school board. Today, 100 percent of schools in New Orleans have been converted to privately operated charter schools.
With nearly a third of Puerto Rico’s schools still without power and hundreds more plagued with crumbling walls, leaky roofs, and spotty internet, Rosselló announced a new fiscal plan that included closing nearly 300 schools and introduced a new bill legalizing charter schools on the island.
Rachel Cohen, writing for the Intercept, described the bill as “vague,” a weakness that could invite the types of fraud and corruption that have dogged charter schools wherever they go. Cohen also noted Keleher had sought the advice of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate, to help craft the bill.
Analysts at the National Education Association had similar concerns, saying the law “left unanswered” whether for-profit companies would be allowed to manage charter schools and whether charter schools would have to serve students with disabilities—services needed by 40 percent of the island’s students.
Teachers registered their opposition to the bill by holding a one-day strike that shut down schools across Puerto Rico.
The bill passed nevertheless.
Public Funds to Private Pockets
“Teachers have had big problems with the education secretary the governor hired,” says Ortiz-Castillo. “We suggested from the very start that she be investigated. We could see that money intended for school children wasn’t arriving in the classroom.”
Teachers had good reasons to be suspicious.
After justifying her call for closing schools by claiming a savings of $7 million, Keleher signed a $16.9 million contract with the California-based Josephson Institute of Ethics to teach “values” in Puerto Rican schools—an addition to the curriculum teachers believed was not needed, especially at a time when students didn’t have adequate supplies of basic materials and textbooks.
After the storm, Keleher barnstormed the island in a relentless marketing campaign to promote charter schools at a time when, according to a survey conducted by the teachers’ union, dozens of schools still had moldy classrooms, leaky roofs, unusable bathrooms, and rat infestations.
Keleher’s intention to redirect education funds to private enterprises seemed all the more obvious when the island opened its first new charter, a comparatively gleaming facility where teachers had smaller class sizes but were being paid $13,000 more than average teacher salaries. The fact that much of the school’s funding was being provided by a nonprofit did nothing to offset the resentment many teachers felt.
“Bringing charter schools to Puerto Rico is not a good thing,” says Ortiz-Castillo. “Charter schools are a way for politicians to redirect money to their friends. The money for the school should go to the school and to the children.”
Corruption Comeuppance
The backroom collusion between the Rosselló administration and those connected with charter schools continued even when Keleher decided to resign earlier this year.
As part of her departure, her consulting company received a contract to work with a law firm assisting parties interested in participating in the establishment of charter schools in Puerto Rico.The firm also employs Governor Rosselló’s brother Jay Rosselló,who serves as “contact person” to receive the requests for advice.
The law firm’s relationship with Keleher dates back to 2017 when the Puerto Rico Education Department under her leadership hired it for legal advice and technical assistance in education policy.
Keleher’s apparent propensity to steer public dollars to friends, however, seems to have finally caught up with her.
Days before the general strike would shut down the island and force out the governor, news outlets reported Keleher had been arrested for steering $13 million of education federal money to unqualified, politically connected contractors. She is alleged to have bypassed official bidding procedures to award contracts to her friends and to have committed money laundering and fraud.
In her statement calling on Rosselló to resign, Weingartendeclared, “Rossello and Keleher ignored repeated requests from the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico and the AFT to use federal recovery money to fund and restore public education on the island” and instead “diverted much-needed funding from public schools to start charter schools.”
A Lesson About Democracy
Though Keleher is out of office and Rosselló is likely heading that way, Puerto Rico’s teachers are not about to let up.
According to Ortiz-Castillo, teachers intend to meet with the new secretary of education and demand to hear what changes are being planned for the schools. They also participated in protests against a possible successor to Rosselló, Justice Secretary Wanda Vásques, who has since expressed some reluctance to occupy the position. Rosselló has recently inserted another possible successor into the mix, the island’s former representative to the U.S. Congress Pedro Pierluisi, and it’s not clear, as of press time, how teachers would receive his nomination.
But what Ortiz-Castillo and her fellow teachers want people to understand most is the teachers “demonstrated that, without guns and violence, we can hold politicians accountable to the will of the people. Now, we want voters to be more aware of who they are voting for. Candidates need to demonstrate they’re going to do what’s best for all the people and not just what’s good for themselves or their friends. We also want people to understand they should never give up.”
That seems like a lesson all Americans can benefit from.
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.
To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute.
Click here to read a selection of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access the complete text.
This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Tom Perez was elected head of DNC thanks to a ‘silent coup’ in Puerto Rico in 2017: Intercept reporter Ryan Grim
As Puerto Ricans celebrate the imminent departure of disgraced Governor Ricardo Rosselló, we speak with Intercept reporter Ryan Grim about how Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez benefited from what’s been described as a “coup” within the Democratic Party in Puerto Rico.
==
==
https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-trump-hurricane-maria-probe-puerto-rico-cc1909b51e1a/
With this year’s hurricane season in full swing, House Democrats are ramping up a probe into the Trump administration’s response to the 2017 season’s impacts on Puerto Rico, arguing that the White House has refused to release documents. The lawmakers are now threatening retaliation if the administration doesn’t act.
That latest escalation between Democratic lawmakers and President Donald Trump comes against an increasingly partisan backdrop. Disasters have seen a major uptick in intensity in recent years across virtually every part of the country. But some areas have received more attention than others. Meanwhile, impacted communities say that congressional feuding over relief funding has had severe repercussions for those that are still waiting for aid.
Members of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter on July 1 to Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, slamming the White House’s stalling on releasing documents relating to the 2017 hurricane season’s impact on Puerto Rico. This comes after all Democratic members of the committee had already requested in a May 6 letter that the White House turn over those documents, to which they say they received no response.
That silence from the White House has prompted Democrats to now “seek compulsory process,” Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD) and Environment Subcommittee Chair Harley Rouda (D-CA) wrote in the letter this week.
...
==
McConnell goes berserk – says granting Puerto Rico statehood, voting rights, representation is ‘full bore socialism’
==
new lil sis
February report, “Six Billion Reasons to Go after the Banks,” was cited in an April 1 letter, signed by Nydia Velázquez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other members of Congress, that urged accountability on the issuance of $6 billion in illegal Puerto Rico debt we reported on (read about it in *Caribbean Business*).
Also, Rep. Chuy Garcia grilled top bank CEOs about the underwriting of Puerto Rico’s debt. You can see Rep. Garcia citing PAI’s report on C-SPAN.
==
new
Warren Introduces Relief Package to Help Storm-Ravaged Puerto Rico 'Recover With Dignity'
==
NEW
Elizabeth Warren calls out Wall Street for trying to ‘squeeze out every last penny of profit’ from Puerto Rico
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trump-tries-to-turn-puerto-rico-into-a-culture-war-battle-and-senate-republicans-are-ready-to-help/
no lnx
After President Trump’s theater-of-the-absurd, paper-towel-tossing visit to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, Republicans in Florida — which is home to more than 1 million U.S. citizens of Puerto Rican origin — swept nearly every statewide office in the 2018 midterms. The state’s victorious GOP gubernatorial and senatorial candidates, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott, distanced themselves from the president when he denied Maria’s catastrophic death toll weeks before the election, but both campaigned with him in the days leading up to Election Day.
Since then, Trump has ratcheted up his disdainful rhetoric against the island’s political leadership, refused to meet with Puerto Rico’s governor, failed to mention recovery efforts during his State of the Union, and attempted to divert Puerto Rico’s federal aid to build his border wall. As one senior Republican aide in Congress recently told the Washington Post, “Trump brought the issue up unprompted at a meeting with senators last Tuesday on Capitol Hill and has repeatedly emphasized to senators that he doesn’t want additional aid going to the island.” On Monday, Senate Republicans failed to pass two bills meant to do just that.
Republicans in the Senate voted down a $14.2 billion emergency aid package for victims of hurricanes, wildfires, flooding and other natural disasters passed by the Democratic-held House, which would have put an additional $700 million toward rebuilding Puerto Rico and $600 million to fund the food stamp program on the island. (For reference on the delayed recovery efforts, Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017. The town of Culebra did not recover full power until March 20 of this year. Many small towns on the island still have no power or rely on FEMA generators.)
Instead, Republicans offered an alternative bill that respected Trump’s opposition to sending any additional aid to Puerto Rico, allowing only for additional food stamp funding at the behest of the aforementioned Sen. Rick Scott, who narrowly won election last November. The GOP-held Senate failed, however, to advance either disaster relief plan.
So Senate Republicans have managed to leave disaster-stricken citizens in California, Iowa and Georgia without federal relief because the president doesn’t want to help Puerto Ricans any further. Trump pointed to “incompetence” by San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz — rather than overspending by government contractors with suspicious ties to former Trump Cabinet members — to suggest this week that Puerto Ricans “only take from USA” and that Democrats now “want to give them more, taking dollars away from our Farmers.” The callousness with which Senate Republicans have responded to Trump’s outright appeal to racism appears to be part of a political strategy to keep control of the chamber following the 2020 election.
“This is no time for our colleagues across the aisle to prioritize a political fight with the president ahead of the urgent needs of communities across our country,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor Monday. Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday, Sen. Scott of Florida blamed Democrats for rejecting the GOP’s bill because they found funding for Puerto Rico was inadequate.
Embedded video
Rick Scott
?
@SenRickScott
.@SenSchumer says that he cares about Puerto Rico, but he blocked a clean bill to support their community. Not only is this halting relief $$ for Floridians and Puerto Ricans, but also farmers that have had their lands recently devastated. Enough is enough!
717
2:08 PM - Apr 2, 2019
Republicans appear poised to hit Democrats for holding up aid to presidential swing states in the Midwest, like Iowa, which will hold the first caucus of the Democratic primaries. As CNBC’s Jacob Pramuk explained, the bill would also provide “relief for hurricane damage in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia — all states that could host competitive presidential and Senate contests next year.” Republicans currently hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate, but must defend 22 of those seats next year, while Democrats will defend only 12.
Playing politics with disaster relief is hardly a new game for Republicans (recall the controversy surrounding Hurricane Sandy relief efforts). But with Trump showing no qualms about suggesting diverting billions from the military to pay for his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Democrats should have little trouble deflecting incoming GOP fire in this particular battle.
==
Puerto Rico Passes 100% Clean Energy Bill. Will Natural Gas Imports Get in the Way?
==
NEW
==
contrast to alabama storm aid?
==
Transparency to Profiteering off of the Puerto Rico Debt Crisis
We’ve been focusing a lot on researching the profiteers and conflicts surrounding the Puerto Rico debt crisis. Last month we wrote a story for the *American Prospect* - which was based on a story we initially posted on our news site - that shows how Wall Street is the big winner from Puerto Rico’s first round of debt restructuring. We also released a report that looks at conflicts surrounding the issuance of the debt and the growing case for legal action - see media coverage at *Caribbean Business*.
==
ew 119
==
intercept
VULTURE FUNDS SCOOPED up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Puerto Rican debt after Hurricane Maria hit — underwritten by Wall Street and purchased at a massive discount, according to new numbers compiled by the nonprofit LittleSis and provided to The Intercept.
Now it’s time for the payoff. A deal agreed to last week between creditors, the Puerto Rican government and the Washington-appointed fiscal control board overseeing the island’s finances could now funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to those same bondholders in the coming decades. There’s also ample reason to suspect at least some of those funds will be siphoned from federal recovery dollars, intended to help rebuild after the storm.
According to court filings made public as a result of ongoing debt negotiations, several hedge funds have bought up massive amounts of Puerto Rican bonds in the year following Hurricane Maria, after which prices dropped. GoldenTree Asset Management, a bondholder for the Urgent Interest Fund Corporation — known by its Spanish-language acronym COFINA — owned $587 million worth of Puerto Rican government bonds before the storm, as noted in a filing dated August 18, 2017. As of another filing almost exactly a year later, the company owned $1.5 billion.
Tilden Park Capital Management, another COFINA creditor, increased the value of its holdings by $370 million over the same period. General obligation bondholders Aurelius Capital Management and Monarch Alternative Capital have increased their holdings from $39 million before the storm to $488 million as of the last filing. (Aurelius and Monarch both also hold some COFINA bonds.)
...
==
==
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/21/planned-misery.html
Hurricanes Irma and Maria left Puerto Rico in tatters, but it would be a mistake to blame the weather for Puerto Rico's suffering; Puerto Rico was put in harm's way by corrupt governments doing the work of a corrupt finance sector, then abandoned by FEMA, and is now being left to rot without any real effort to rebuild its public services so that they can be privatized and used to extract rent from the island's residents.
:{
As Naomi Klein writes in The Intercept, this wasn't an "Act of God." Men -- greedy men -- laid off the skilled electrical workers who were needed after the storms; greedy men gave relief contracts to politically connected grifters who pocketed the money and did little or nothing for it; greedy men switched Puerto Rico from growing substistence crops to cash crops, leaving them starving when the island's only port closed; greedy men decided to make the island dependent on fossil fuels rather than solar, wind and waves.
That is why dozens of Puerto Rican organizations, under the banner of JunteGente, are standing together to demand a different future. Not just a little bit better but radically better. Their message is a clear one: that this storm must be a wakeup call, a historic catalyst for a just recovery and just transition to the next economy. Right now.
That begins with auditing and ultimately erasing an illegal debt, and firing La Junta because its very existence is an affront to the most basic principles of self-government. Only then will there be the political space to redesign the food, energy, housing, and transportation systems that failed so many — and replace them with institutions that truly serve the Puerto Rican people.
This movement for a just recovery draws on local brilliance and protected knowledge to make the most of the richness of the soil, as well as the power of the sun and wind.
Today I am reminded of the words of Dalma Cartagena, one of the great leaders of Puerto Rico’s agro-ecology movement: “Maria hit us hard. But it made our convictions stronger. Made us know the correct path.”
There’s Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico’s Disaster [Naomi Klein/The Intercept]
}:
==
d@w
amazing what you find when you follow the money.
One of the most overlooked elements behind the issues plaguing Puerto Rico, is the massive lobbying effort that has created the bizarre legal landscape. Who are the mysterious "third party groups" behind the lobbyists? The latestPuerto Rico Forwardexposes the groups and individuals behind the legislation affecting Puerto Rico, and some of the names may surprise you.**Listen to*****Puerto Rico Forward: A Look Behind the Smoke and Mirrors*****and note your thoughts in the comments!**
==
https://www.alternet.org/fema-head-blames-hurricane-deaths-puerto-rico-spousal-abuse
Long, the administrator of FEMA, echoed Trump's statements disputing the death toll in Puerto Rico last year on Meet The Press today, going so far as to claim some of the hurricane-related deaths may be incidents of "spousal abuse."
Long was being interviewed in large part over FEMA efforts with Hurricane Florence, but the topic shifted to Hurricane Maria and President Trump's accusations that the 2,975 deaths reported by the Puerto Rico government were inflated by Democrats to make the president look bad.
Initially, Long attempted to deflect, claiming the president was "taken out of context" when he said there were no lessons to learn from the response in Puerto Rico and blamed the local government and the private sector for the botched response.
SPONSORED
When pressed on the disparity of death counts, Long claimed that FEMA only takes counts from local coroners, noting that the number of deaths were "all over the place."
Long then attempted to break down these cases into "direct deaths" and "indirect deaths."
"IN MY OPINION, WHAT WE'VE GOT TO DO IS FIGURE OUT WHY PEOPLE DIE FROM DIRECT DEATHS, WHICH IS THE WIND, THE WATER, AND THE WAVES -- YOU KNOW, BUILDINGS COLLAPSING WHICH IS PROBABLY WHERE THE 65 NUMBER CAME FROM, AND THEN THERE'S INDIRECT DEATHS."
"SO THE GEORGE WASHINGTON STUDY LOOKED AT WHAT HAPPENED SIX MONTHS AFTER THE FACT -- AND WHAT HAPPENS IS... YOU MIGHT SEE MORE DEATHS INDIRECTLY OCCUR AS TIME GOES ON BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE HEART ATTACKS DUE TO STRESS, THEY FALL OFF THEIR HOUSE TRYING TO FIX THE ROOF, THEY DIE IN CAR CRASHES BECAUSE THEY WENT THROUGH AN INTERSECTION WHERE THE STOP LIGHTS WEREN'T WORKING."
"YOU KNOW THE OTHER THING, THERE'S ALL KINDS OF STUDIES ON THIS THAT WE TAKE A LOOK AT. SPOUSAL ABUSE GOES THROUGH THE ROOF. YOU CAN'T BLAME SPOUSAL ABUSE AFTER A DISASTER ON ANYBODY."
Long has been under fire for his misuse of FEMA vehicles.
Watch the video below:
20x kia
==
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/6/the_battle_for_paradise_new_intercept
- Part 1: Naomi Klein: 4,645 Deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria Were “State-Sponsored Mass Killing”
- Part 2: “The Battle for Paradise”: New Intercept Doc Goes Inside Struggle over Puerto Rico’s Future
- Part 3: Puerto Rico Is a “Playground for the Privileged”: Investors Move In as Homes Foreclose & Schools Close
https://www.ecowatch.com/fema-san-juan-mayor-2494757627.html
FEMA Chief Says 'We Filtered Out' San Juan Mayor After She Pleads 'We Need Water!'
The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dismissed the mayor of San Juan's vocal criticism of the Trump administration's Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico.
"We filtered out the mayor a long time ago," FEMA administrator Brock Long said in an interview with ABC's This Week on Sunday.
"We don't have time for the political noise," he continued. "The bottom line is that we are making progress every day in conjunction with the governor."
Long's comment was in regard to Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz's tweet alleging that FEMA did not respond to a request for support after a hospital in San Juan lost power and patients needed to be transferred out.
Cruz also tweeted over the weekend, "WE NEED WATER!" and "there is no help in the horizon."
"In regards outages and the hospitals, we've built an entire 9-1-1 system," Long insisted during his interview. "We monitor the hospital system daily. So if there is a power failure at a hospital … we're actually life-lighting the ICU patients out of those hospitals."
"But as far as the political noise, we filter that out, keep our heads down, and continue to make progress in restoring essential functions in Puerto Rico."
Several weeks after the Sept. 20 Category 4 storm devastated the U.S. territory, only 11.7 percent of the island's electricity consumers have power, and 56.8 percent of Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority customers have potable water, according to FEMA's website tracking the federal response to Hurricane Maria.
FEMA was under scrutiny last week for removing stats about Puerto Rico's electricity and water access from the website. That information returned by Friday afternoon.
==
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/leaked-memo-reveals-white-house-strategy-duck-blame-puerto-rico-catastrophe
memo leaked on Sunday and published by Axios.com reveals that President Donald Trump’s administration is aggressively trying to shift the blame for its dismal response to Hurricane Maria and to carry out “planned hits” against the president’s critics.
Trump’s top Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert authored the memo, which detailed the administration’s plans to “start a theme of recovery planning for the bright future that lies ahead for Puerto Rico. Planned hits, tweets, tv bookings and other work will limit the need for reactionary efforts.”
He continued by insisting that the Trump administration is not to blame for the fact that relief efforts did not begin in earnest until nearly a week after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.
“The storm caused these problems, not our response to it. We have pushed about as much stuff and people through a tiny hole in as short a timeframe as possible,” he wrote.
The administration’s enablers at Fox News set out early Sunday to carry out its “hit” on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, calling her a “far left” radical and complaining that commentator Geraldo Rivera and his camera crew did not actually witness people dying in the streets.
Other administration officials have sought to smear Cruz by saying she has been uncooperative with FEMA and not attended its strategy sessions, but Cruz’s office said that it has sent representatives to all meetings and has been more than cooperative with the bumbling, bureaucratically hamstrung federal relief effort.
The Trump administration went into a full court press on Sunday to congratulate itself on what an excellent job it has done in Puerto Rico, but on Sunday night, the Pentagon pricked the White House’s bubble with an urgent bulletin that half the people in the U.S. territory are still without access to clean water and the situation is steadily worsening.
vid]
https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/vulture-capitalists-circle-above-puerto-rico-prey
... Moyers: You’ve said that Puerto Rico was in trouble long before the hurricane.
Bonilla: Puerto Rico’s been in an economic recession for over a decade. The great American recession that was so debated in the United States during the early Obama Administration after the collapse of the banks in the US — all of that started in Puerto Rico much earlier, and whereas the US is said to have recovered to some extent for certain populations, Puerto Rico’s recession has only deepened. That is in part due to the lack of a strong economic base and to tax incentives that were put in place to bring foreign — “foreign” meaning US companies — to Puerto Rico. After the crash a lot of companies left and a base of employment in Puerto Rico was gone.
So even before this last hurricane, already Puerto Rico had huge unemployment, huge poverty rates — poverty rates that double any poverty rate in the US, even that of the poorest states of the US — and a very neglected infrastructure that was not ready for the storms.
Moyers: Donald Trump tweeted, “Texas and Florida are doing great after their hurricanes, but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure and massive debt, is in deep trouble.” And that seems to echo what you’ve just said and what you wrote in the Washington Post — that a state of emergency existed well before the hurricane hit.
Bonilla: I’m curious about that statement from Donald Trump. I wonder who in Florida and Texas is doing great and who is not. So that would be my first question. But you know, that’s for other folks to answer.
Moyers: Why was the inequality in Puerto Rico so great?
Bonilla: Because there’s been an erosion of the middle class. And so you have a lot of people at the bottom who can’t find work, who can’t start their own businesses. Many of them depend on government assistance, but there’s also a huge number who are working poor, who live paycheck to paycheck, who are supplementing their incomes with the gig economy. Retailers like Wal-Mart offer no job security. Most of the people working for them can’t predict their shifts — their shifts change from week to week. They have to keep their schedules completely open. They are paid for part-time labor, but have to be available full time.
And so all of this means that leading up to the storm, people already did not have enough money to prepare, to buy the supplies that they needed. Ideally, you would prepare for a storm of this nature by having a well-stocked pantry, plenty of water, lots of batteries, and if you can afford it, a generator. Also, your car would be full of gas and you would have a good amount of cash, because as can be expected and as we’re seeing now, ATMs are down. People who are just making ends meet, they don’t have the kind of money that is necessary to prepare for these storms.
There’s a lot of talk about the island’s environmental precarity and vulnerability. It’s true that the Caribbean is on the front lines of effects from climate change. But there are other forms of vulnerability, like socioeconomic vulnerability. And also a political vulnerability because Puerto Ricans don’t really have anyone in Congress advocating for them. They’re nobody’s constituents. They have no representation and no one who can leverage votes and trade deals with other states in order to get things expedited on the ground there.
Moyers: You’ve described these Caribbean societies, including Puerto Rico, as protected markets for national corporations.
Bonilla: Yes. If you look at the Jones Act, the only goods that can arrive in Puerto Rico have to be on US-made ships, and owned by US citizens, with a US crew flying a US flag. So this means that if the Dominican Republic wants to sell food to Puerto Rico, which it does, it has to send that food first to Jacksonville, Florida, unload it, put it on another ship that is allowed to bring it to Puerto Rico. So this makes it very difficult for Puerto Rico to engage in trade with other countries. We’re not an independent nation, so we can’t make our own trade arrangements. And that means that we have to buy mostly from the US.
Moyers: I understand the Jones Act goes way back to World War I, when German submarines were sinking so many American ships that Congress decreed the US maintain a shipbuilding industry second to none, with, as you say, ships carrying provisions to be owned, manned and built by America. This not only strangles Puerto Rico’s economy, but one writer called it a shakedown, a mob protection racket, with Puerto Rico as a captive market. Puerto Ricans have to buy mainly American products and pass the higher cost on to the consumers, who are then paying higher prices. Donald Trump has temporarily suspended the Jones Act, as you know.
Bonilla: That will help momentarily in terms of letting a few ships arrive and letting Puerto Ricans find more inexpensive methods of procuring the items that they need right now. A lot of us are very offended that it was only lifted for 10 days, as if you could resolve the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, which is of a devastating scale — as if you could resolve that in 10 days. It’s absolutely offensive for it to be so limited. A small crumb.
What I hope is that there are now a lot of people who have become educated about the Jones Act. Most people in the United States didn’t know anything about it before this. Maybe now there can be enough pressure to fully repeal it.
Moyers: You have described Puerto Rico and the other Caribbean societies as important economic cover for their colonial centers. What do you mean?
Bonilla: I mean that a lot of things happen in these places that aren’t supposed to happen — that’s what I mean by cover. The United States can claim to offer certain kinds of guarantees to its citizens, but those guarantees are suspended when it comes to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. So veterans benefits are less, guarantees of healthcare are less, guarantees of public education, all these things are reduced. And in addition, wealthy people who are supposed to pay their share, they’re able to completely evade their taxes and not contribute to the national interest by setting up companies in Puerto Rico.
Moyers: So things were really made worse by tax incentives to wealthy investors. I believe Puerto Rico’s Act #22 allows wealthy investors to evade both federal and local income tax by spending a minimum of 183 nights a year on the island.
Bonilla: Yes, it’s true. It’s hard to comprehend, but it’s true. You have a lot of wealthy Americans who say, “Oh, this is great for us, it’s the thing that can get you out from under the US Internal Revenue Service without having to renounce your citizenship.” So they retain their American voting rights, they retain all their benefits of US citizenship, but they do not contribute anything to the US, nor do they contribute anything to Puerto Rico because they’re also not paying local taxes.
Moyers: How did Puerto Rico get its unique privilege to offer triple tax-exempt bonds?
Bonilla: It’s basically written into its constitution. When Congress established Puerto Rico’s civil government in 1917 it decreed that any bonds issued by its government would be free from taxation. In addition, it is written into the 1952 constitution that the repayment of any kind of public debt must take priority over financing public services. In 1952, when Puerto Rican politicians tried to convince Puerto Ricans that they were no longer a colony, and they convinced the United Nations to take Puerto Rico off the list of non-self-governing societies, this constitution was put into place and one of its founding principles was that Puerto Rico was going to be a site for US economic investment. And so you can purchase these triple tax-exempt bonds and not pay any federal tax, any tax in Puerto Rico, or any tax in the municipality in which you live. This made these bonds incredibly seductive for US. I urge everyone to read the great story in New York Times “The Bonds That Broke Puerto Rico.”
Moyers: Earlier this year Puerto Rico officially became the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the American public bond market. In another tweetTrump points out how indebted Puerto Rico is to Wall Street and the banks and reminds Puerto Ricans that it “sadly must be dealt with.” He’s acknowledging this is the first thing Puerto Rico taxpayers have to do.
Bonilla: It was so offensive. Puerto Ricans have been kicked by Irma, then kicked by Maria, and now kicked by Trump. We’re really suffering. In the middle of our humanitarian crisis, he tells us, “It’s a shame but you have to pay back that debt.” It’s clear that was a message to Wall Street not to worry, they’ll get paid back. Puerto Ricans need to worry, however.
Moyers: Something I’ve learned from you: Wal-Mart and Walgreens have more stores per square mile in Puerto Rico than anywhere else in the world. How did that come about?
Bonilla: Wal-Mart has negotiated a series of benefits from the Puerto Rican government such as free or subsidized land to build on, subsidies for their payroll, and for the training of new employees. So they basically get to set up shop almost for free. In addition, we are a captive market. There’s not a lot of competition for them. So they’re the biggest employer, and the biggest retailer. Also, Wal-Mart USA sells to Wal-Mart Puerto Rico, at surprisingly inflated prices so that then it appears as if Wal-Mart Puerto Rico doesn’t have much profit, which means they pay very little taxes to the Puerto Rican government.
The Puerto Rican government wanted to raise the taxes but Wal-Mart threatened to sue and leave and then a federal judge decided that the tax would be discriminatory because Wal-Mart was the only operator of the scale to which these taxes would apply.
Moyers: So when the government tries to raise taxes on goods brought to the island from foreign sources because those taxes would help local improvement, the companies threaten to leave?
Bonilla: Yes, exactly. They don’t want to pay the government any of the profits that they’re making off the Puerto Rican people.
Moyers: So does this helps explain why the infrastructure in Puerto Rico has been so long neglected — the first priority is to serve this foreign debt and tax breaks for the wealthy?
Bonilla: Absolutely, and it’s only going to get worse because of the PROMESA Act [NB: Passed by Congress to deal with the financial crisis and bankruptcy]. Some critics have dared to describe it as a kind of bailout or aid package, but that’s not so. There is absolutely no transfer of money from the federal government to Puerto Rico as part of the PROMESA Act. If anything, there’s an imposition of an economic burden on the Puerto Rican government which now has to pay the overhead of the PROMESA board – which is estimated to cost 200 million dollars in its first year alone – and an astronomical, unjustifiable salary of over half a million dollars a year to its manager Natalie Jaresko. This completely overpaid expensive board arrives in Puerto Rico and the first thing that they say is that everyone has to tighten their belts. There are “furloughs” of government workers, the government has to reduce its payroll by about 30 percent. Now they are going to privatize a lot of the services. The first target was the University of Puerto Rico, which they completely gutted leading to a massive strike at the university.
Moyers: And as you wrote in the Washington Post, the PROMESA Act imposed a fiscal control board focused on the short-term austerity policies in order to restore the country’s market rating, which means lower wages and tax increases for the working poor and tax breaks and other incentives for the rich investors. Why did Congress do that?
Bonilla: They didn’t want to seem like they were “bailing out” quote/unquote a community of people who are not imagined to be Americans. So a lot of senators and congressmen wanted to assure their folks in their home states that the money of hardworking Americans were not going to bail out Puerto Ricans, who are not seen as “Americans.” That’s the reason. [laughs]
Moyers: You laugh but it hurts.
Bonilla: Absolutely, absolutely. One must laugh to keep from crying in the face of such cynicism. And especially right now in the moment of this crisis where a lot of people are saying that Puerto Rico does not deserve the same kind of aid that US states deserve – Florida and Texas, you know — because it’s a territory. There’s also been a lot of debate about whether when you get FEMA packages, the government will do matching funds. So several folks have asked for the government to lift that requirement. The bondholders of the electric company, said, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll let you borrow more so that you can pay the matching funds.” Clearly the only solution being imagined for Puerto Rico’s economic future is permanent and sustained indebtment.
Moyers: Well, our federal government’s own financial control board is saying that the island’s debt is not payable, and the governor of the island of Puerto Rico is talking about selling all utilities to private owners — electricity, water and sewers, the public transit. Will these drastic measures help the problem?
Bonilla: Absolutely not. Some have described these privatization schemes as if you are selling off your house to pay your credit card bill. So okay, you do a fire sale on your home, you pay your Visa, you pay your MasterCard, but then you have nowhere to live. Then what do you do? I think some people have been so frustrated with the kind of public services they’ve been receiving from this ever-shrinking government that they say, “Yes, okay, let’s privatize it.” But privatizing is not going to make things any better and it’s certainly not going to help Puerto Rico in the long term.
We talked previously about inequality and about the high levels of income disparity in Puerto Rico. This means that there are very wealthy people who to a great extent don’t need public services. They have gas generators and water tanks. Some of them even have helipads. The people who need the government services are the poor. They’re the ones who are going to suffer the most. So instead of implementing progressive measures that tax the wealthy in Puerto Rico, the opposite is being done.
Moyers: Trump is tweeting that help is coming. The Fiscal Oversight Board says reconstruction projects will be accelerated, emergency funds will be flowing to the people, the checks are in the mail. Will all this emergency help produce solutions to the structural problems we’ve been talking about? Will Puerto Rico emerge with chances for an economy that works for everyone?
Bonilla: I would love to say yes. I was very closely connected to the events in Haiti, the Haitian earthquake there. And I remember how so many people talked about how we were going to rebuild Haiti better, we were going to finally fix the long structural problems that that country had faced. This wasn’t to be. I recommend people watch this movie by Raoul Peck, Fatal Assistance, about how all the aid that was sent to Haiti, in the end it did not help.
One big problem is that donors want to aid small scale organizations. And there’s good reason for that. But the problem is, that when you need to rebuild something like an electricity grid or a public water system, you can’t do it in a patchy way. In Haiti, a lot of money was sent to organizations like the Red Cross that was kept for overhead and not used for what was promised. But then a lot of people, to avoid that kind of thing, would send money directly to a community that would build just one school. So you have this kind of patchy education system. You have communities that have wells that don’t connect to each other. You have roads that are built to go from one town to the church that helped build them but that doesn’t lead to a national roadway system. What you need is a systematic process of rebuilding by a government that has decided what kind of society they want to rebuild and in what way.
If you also look at a place like New Orleans and what has happened after Katrina, we know already that in other disaster situations, the preexisting inequalities just get exacerbated. And so the folks who were already suffering the most in these places are the ones who will benefit the least from the reconstruction.
I really fear that there’s going to be a mass exodus from Puerto Rico — basically what Aimé Césaire once described as genocide by substitution. Puerto Ricans are going to leave and FEMA workers brought in from the US are going to arrive. More wealthy investors are going to come and Puerto Rico is no longer going to belong to Puerto Ricans. It will look more and more like Hawaii. When we talk about rebuilding we have to think about why rebuild an energy sector that is not based on renewable sources when you can rebuild with solar power, for example. But we also have to think about rebuilding for whom, who is going to remain on the island and what role are they going to play in Puerto Rico’s reconstruction?
Moyers: Have you read Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism?
Bonilla: Absolutely and we see it playing out. We see it playing out right now. When I was in Puerto Rico this summer – before the hurricanes – I talked to a wealth advisor at an investment center where rich Puerto Ricans go to create college funds for their kids and buy insurance and secure their retirements. She was very smart. Folks like her working in the banking industry and in investment and knew that bankruptcy and fiscal austerity was coming down the pike. The story was underreported so that there wouldn’t be a bank run. But folks like her told their clients to pull their money out of Puerto Rican bonds and put it into other sources. Most of her clients, their investments are in US stocks. So she said, “They’re doing great! Since Donald Trump was elected, stocks are high.” And then she said, “All we need now is a hurricane.” (Pause) This was last summer. I was naturally shocked to hear this because all I could imagine was the destruction that hurricanes bring. But of course what she was thinking about was how in a disaster the funds that flow in help precisely the kind of companies that her clients are investing in – say, Home Depot, the construction industry in the United States, wealthy contractors. She represents the kind of people who are going to benefit and profit and do very well in this post-hurricane economy at the expense of the folks who are now trapped in their homes without food, without water, without gasoline. So the suffering that people are experiencing right now could prove to be of economic benefit to a chosen few.
Moyers: The vulture capitalists, as they are sometimes called.
Bonilla: Absolutely. There’s no other way to talk about it, especially in a context where you literally have people dying in the hospital because there’s no energy to sustain their life-support systems.
Moyers: Most of us have a little bit of the vulture in us, so the question arises, who’s at fault when this happens? Did local politicians and local people just get too greedy or is this simply the way the Wall Street economy works – barracuda capitalism, so called? Or is what’s happening in Puerto Rico the inheritance of colonialism?
Bonilla: That’s an important question and something that really needs to be thought about carefully because there are so many contributors. We like to write simple articles that show simple causality, but you have wealthy folks like this investment manager, who is Puerto Rican, contributing to the situation. You have politicians — we see this in every disaster — you have politicians who are more focused on photo ops and political capital than they are really in doing what needs to be done in these moments.
...
==
sonali 6/14/17 1/3 women sterile by J&J?
==
https://waragainstallpuertoricans.com/2016/05/03/presidential-debate-moderators-scarcely-ask-questions-about-puerto-rico/
no links img
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vulture-fund-lobbying_us_57350001e4b077d4d6f2a374
Harvard-trained political economist, Shapiro is the head of a consulting firm called Sonecon. That business card doesn’t do it for you? He’s got a few more in his wallet:
Senior fellow at the Georgetown University School of Business.
Adviser to the International Monetary Fund.
Director of the Globalization Initiative at NDN, a progressive think tank.
Shapiro, a Democrat, has advised presidents and presidential candidates, and has held powerful government posts. It stands to reason, then, that when he has thoughts on public policy, he can find an outlet ready to publish them.
Recently, he’s had ideas on how the government can address the debt crisis in Puerto Rico and how it can end the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by moving them into the private market. Before that, he had a take on how to deal with Argentina’s debt crisis. For all three, he produced academic-looking papers, complete with footnotes and charts.
All three situations have one thing in common: If they were resolved the way Shapiro suggested, a variety of bets placed by a select group of the most politically powerful hedge funds would pay off in a huge way. In the case of Argentina, they mostly have. Fights over how to resolve the other two issues are still raging in Washington.
For this article, we called Shapiro to ask on whose behalf he has been waging these intellectual battles. His answer was surprising in its honesty: He’s working with DCI Group, a political dark arts master known to be advocating on behalf of a group of powerful hedge funds that are changing how Washington works.
Shapiro, it turns out, is but one foot soldier in the hedge fund infantry. A review of public documents, tax filings and interviews with people involved finds that in each of the three campaigns, hedge funds have enlisted the same set of lobbyists, political operatives, dark money groups and think-tank experts spanning the political spectrum.
No single document or set of disclosures ties all of these groups together. They don’t put out joint press releases, parade themselves around Washington as part of a coalition, or chat together on conference calls. Finding the players in this game, instead, is more a process of deduction. For a group of firms and experts to be working for vulture funds on the issue of Argentine debt is normal Washington practice. (Vulture’s meaning here isn’t pejorative: it refers to an investment strategy that feeds off of assets the market has left for dead.)
For the exact same people and groups to be working on the next big issue that these funds care about — the Puerto Rican debt crisis — could be a coincidence. But now, the hedge funds are focused on a third issue — government-sponsored enterprise reform, which refers to the effort to establish new housing finance policy in the wake of the federal takeover of lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it’s the same political firms and the same independent experts that are once again weighing in — coincidentally, all on the side of the hedge funds.
Maybe it’s all coincidence, but let’s run the traps either way.
The band that has gotten together for the big three hedge fund jam sessions includes some unlikely allies: There’s DCI Group, the powerhouse lobbying firm. Then there’s the Raben Group, operatives whose specialty is working in the progressive space and lobbying Democrats. There’s the American Continental Group, a bipartisan lobbying firm. There’s 60 Plus and the Center for Individual Freedom, two groups that call themselves part of the conservative movement, but in reality are dark money groups known to run whatever campaign they’re paid to run, and that are happy to conceal the source of the funding. All these groups have roughly nothing in common, other than that they all have united in advocacy campaigns that alternately go up against the Argentinian people, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the American public.
Each of these campaigns appears to have been run by or aided by the DCI Group. We say “appears” because DCI is one of Washington’s great black boxes — news articles that involve DCI routinely include a line informing readers that the organization did not respond to a request for comment. This article is no different.
Old Washington hands involved in these particular fights say that nothing they’ve seen before in politics has prepared them for the mercenary campaigns the hedge funds are now waging.
“There’s something about this that’s almost more disturbing, because you get an issue that’s not particularly a big public issue and people can spend and spend and spend,” said a veteran policymaker who found himself on the wrong end of the hedge funds. “And I don’t know how anybody can compete with it. And then you start losing the narrative and you see groups on the left get bought out and corrupted — really corrupted. I don’t know what to do about it.”
What is being done only exacerbates the situation. Current tax policy allows hedge fund managers to pay billions less every year than competitors who don’t get the same advantage. And tax-exempt pension funds — teachers, nurses, firefighters — invest heavily in hedge funds, hoping to make up big shortfalls with risky investments. The generous tax policy leaves hedge funds flush with cash. What money they’re not stashing off shore, they’ve been spreading freely around Washington.
They may have finally gone too far. A backlash is brewing, threatening not just their current bets, but their various tax benefits too. One senior House Republican aide who’s worked closely with the hedge funds says that members of Congress have seen enough. “I think on the Fannie stuff, they’ve hurt themselves,” he said. “We’re like, fuck em. If they’re not your friends, they’re your enemies.”
And the hedge funds may be losing a crucial progressive ally. Responding to concerns from the Hispanic advocacy community, the Raben Group dropped its work on Puerto Rico two weeks ago.
***
When big banks squared off against merchants such as Walmart in 2011 over the cost of debit card and credit card swipe fees, Washington saw a spending spree and a dirty campaign the likes of which it hasn’t seen since. But at least the arguments on both sides of the swipe fees issue made some rational sense.
“This one, I feel just disgusted by it,” said one GOP Senate aide who witnessed both.
With the hedge fund battles, a group of rich investors simply picks a side and then spends endlessly to tilt the battlefield to make sure that side wins. And in true Washington fashion, people are annoyed that the sellouts have sold low. As the same Senate GOP aide put it: “Sure, I’ll go after a few individuals, and help make Congress dysfunctional, so we can have Donald fucking Trump as our nominee, just so I can make $25,000. That’s just sad for our country.”
JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS
John Paulson, billionaire head of Paulson & Co., stands to make massive profits if lobbying campaigns on Puerto Rican debt and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go his way.
Not everybody sells out that cheaply. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday ran a piece on the hedge-fund lobbying around reform of government-sponsored entities, or GSEs.
Last year, The Raben Group, a Washington lobbying firm, offered a minority trade association $25,000 contingent on the association signing its name to an editorial arguing that Fannie and Freddie should be recapitalized and returned to private hands, said Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.
“They said, ‘If you won’t say exactly what you need to say, we’re not going to sponsor you,’” Mr. Acosta said. He said the association declined the offer.
Raben Group founder Robert Raben said the firm frequently matches funding from corporations with nonprofits that share a position but doesn’t ask them to change their stance. He declined to disclose the source of the money offered to the association.
What makes the hedge fund pressure campaign distinctive is the ambivalence, or even nihilism, that lies behind the public policy suggestions. Hedge funds want whatever policy outcome will make their leveraged bet pay off. It makes gauging the merits of a particular policy extraordinarily difficult. The targets of the campaign are largely beside the point: It’s not personal, it’s just business. Hedge funder Bill Ackman’s very public lobbying and PR campaign against Herbalife serves as the clearest example of the influence strategy deployed by hedge funds. But in that case, Ackman was only taking on a single company, so the damage to potential bystanders was limited. The same playbook applied to entire countries, a commonwealth or the housing industry itself amplifies the threat exponentially.
This one, I feel just disgusted by it.
And it’s not ideological, either. If a big group of hedge funds decided to short the health insurance industry, it could easily be in their interests to fund a dark money campaign on behalf of single-payer health care. If they short the big banks, they’ve now become allies with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
It’s less far-fetched than it might seem. Today, billionaire hedge fund managers are working the halls of Congress with civil rights groups and affordable housing advocates. The progressive groups have long wanted any GSE reform to include big money to make housing more affordable for the working class. Now that the hedge funds are in the game, the groups suddenly have an additional demand: Make sure any final plan pays out the shareholders (i.e., the hedge funds) handsomely.
The hedge funds bought a mountain of Fannie Mae stock after the government took it over and declared it worthless. The funds are trying to revive the share price by pressuring the government to let Fannie keep its profit and ultimately re-privatize the company. The alliance is understandable: For years, the progressive groups have been outmatched and out-funded, and along come some billionaires willing to back their effort. All these new advocates want is for their property rights to be protected. Why not?
“We knew we were getting in bed with people who wanted to see [Fannie Mae] pay them off,” Potomac Coalition founder Larry Parks told The Wall Street Journal for Thursday’s article. “It wasn’t anything we were so ideologically against.”
In Argentina, things didn’t work out so well for the folks on the other side of the hedge funds. In 2002, Argentina bucked years of social pressure from the International Monetary Fund and defaulted on its debt. No longer would it have its public policy dictated by international lenders backed by what became known as the Washington consensus — the notion that the best way for countries to grow was to slash spending, privatize whatever they could, cut taxes and make way for business investment. After defaulting, Argentina negotiated with lenders to resolve the debt, making deals with 93 percent of its creditors. A few American hedge funds held out, and waged a guerrilla campaign to recoup 100 percent of the value of their bonds, even though they bought them for pennies.
It took 15 years, and a pressure campaign against Argentina that linked it to terrorism and other atrocities, but the hedge funds could eventually land a $5 billion-$10 billion payout. It’s even reasonable to say the hedge funds helped bring down the Argentine government. Along the way, they blew up the international system of credit, as negotiations between sovereign borrowers and their creditors are no longer possible without 100 percent buy-in from creditors.
In Puerto Rico, the group of hedge funds waging the biggest lobbying campaign own debt that is first in line to be paid off in case of any calamity. (That’s not to say there aren’t other hedge funds that own different sets of Puerto Rican debt lobbying so that they’re the first to be paid; more on them later.) They’re now betting that they can stop Congress from rescuing Puerto Rico by amending bankruptcy laws to allow Puerto Rico to cover its basic expenses before paying out the hedge funds.
Betting that Congress does nothing is often a smart wager. If the island government is forced to pay off creditors first, it will have to take those funds from vital programs threatening the livelihoods of people who live there.
In a trip to the commonwealth this week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew emphasized the human impact that the hedge fund lobbying campaign is already having on Puerto Ricans. “The financial crisis is not just a question of bondholders, but a question of the lives that are being led by 3.5 million Americans who live on Puerto Rico,” Lew said during a visit to an elementary school in the heart of San Juan.
The school, Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary, looked like something out of a Third World country. Children studied in crumbling classrooms with termite-ridden walls, no air conditioning, and inadequate lighting. The only source of cooling from the 80-degree weather outside was fans and open windows. The TVs, laptops, desktop computers all appeared pointless. Teachers said that if they tried to run more than one simultaneously with another classroom, the electricity would go out. Faulty circuit breakers also mean the classroom lights stay off whenever it rains, and since it was drizzling that day, the students sat in the dark.
On the next stop, Lew saw Centro Medico, the primary medical center for the commonwealth and the Caribbean region, and home to the third-largest Level 1 trauma center in the U.S. and its territories. The center is preparing to reduce services by July if no relief comes. Already, a lack of personnel makes it nearly impossible to keep accurate supply inventory for children being treated for cancer or receiving dialysis. “We are hanging by a thread,” explained Dr. Juan Nazario, the hospital’s executive director.
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ
The walls in this kindergarten classroom at Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary in San Juan, Puerto Rico are crumbling due to termite infestation.
That’s not to say that there isn’t lobbying on the other side of these issues. An entirely different group of hedge funds and investment firms want relief for Puerto Rico so that the bonds that they’ve purchased will be paid in full. Legislation that they support has received the backing of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and has moved through a favorable committee. On GSE reform, big banks like Bank of America and Citigroup have lobbied for legislation that would eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a system of government insurance for bank loans. The banks employ dozens of lobbyists, but do not appear to be engaging in the kind of surreptitious campaign the hedge funds are conducting on the other side.
***
Corporate lobbying is often constrained by the need to play the long game. Sometimes a company, or an entire industry, realizes it needs to take a loss today, but will be back tomorrow to fight again. That can encourage corporate actors to rely more on carrots: Campaign contributions and cushy jobs are in store for staffers and members of Congress who play nice.
But because the hedge funds are fighting over a different bet each time — Argentina today, Fannie and Freddie tomorrow — the most bang for the buck may come from a run of negative TV ads in key congressional districts, or targeted campaigns against leading members of Congress on the wrong side.
Or even against staffers. In the midst of the debate over how to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early 2014, Jim Millstein was sitting down on Capitol Hill with Michael Bright, an aide to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was working on the legislation. Millstein, like other hedge-fund titans lobbying on the bill, had a set of structural recommendations he thought the Senate should take up.
Millstein was worth listening to: While a top Treasury Department official, he had overseen the successful restructuring of AIG after the government bailout. But Millstein had an extra recommendation: The Fannie Mae shareholders needed to be paid out — shareholders like Millstein.
The aide told Millstein he didn’t see why shareholders, who bought Fannie stock for pennies when the government had already bailed it out, needed a windfall. The meeting turned tense. “Don’t worry kid, you’re about to get yours,” Millstein said, according to a Democratic committee staffer later briefed on the episode. Bright, reached for comment, declined to speak for this article.
A week or so later, the conservative Free Beacon dropped a story headlined, “Banker Who Helped Crash Housing Market Helped Crafting Mortgage Reform.”
The headline was absurd — Bright had been a low-level trader at Countrywide Financial Corp. right out of college, hardly in a position to blow up the housing market. But the facts didn’t matter. With the story in print, political operatives could now put the claim on the airwaves, and for cover source it back to the Free Beacon, a neat trick since the same operatives may well have been the ones who fed it to the Beacon. Two weeks later, the 60 Plus Association, a conservative dark money group, put out an attack ad repeating the allegation that “a former Countrywide financial executive is even helping craft the legislation.” The ad ran in North Carolina, Virginia and Idaho, targeting specific lawmakers involved in the legislation.
The aggressive tactics appear to have included ethics complaints, too. Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog founded by former employees of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed complaints against Corker, the leading Republican sponsor of housing reform legislation with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). The complaints, filed in November, allege Corker engaged in suspicious stock trades.
The next month, Campaign for Accountability called for a Department of Justice probe of former Obama administration officials David Stevens, Michael Berman and Jim Parrott for allegedly breaking revolving-door laws banning them from lobbying their former offices. Stevens is the former Federal Housing Administration official under Obama who left to head the Mortgage Bankers Association. Berman and Parrott both worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as it shaped housing policy before leaving for the private sector.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was the leading Republican proponent of legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that was opposed by the hedge funds.
In February, National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint against Stevens over the same revolving-door laws. Stevens is a leading proponent of the Warner-Corker legislation.
Then, in March, Campaign for Accountability filed another complaint against Corker over omissions of large assets from his financial disclosure reports.
It’s not possible to prove that hedge fund money is driving these complaints. But let’s work backward again. Campaign for Accountability is run by operatives from the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. Last year, CREW took $40,000 from Herbalife, which was under assault from hedge funder Ackman. CREW pushed back, filing an ethics complaint against Ackman. When the $40,000 donation came to light, CREW promised to return it, citing the appearance of a conflict of interest.
CFA doesn’t release information on its donors. Former CREW honcho Melanie Sloan, who now does some work with CFA, said the group doesn’t take hedge fund money. But CFA itself might not even know if it takes hedge fund money: If a hedge fund gives to a foundation, which gives to a civil rights group, which then gives to CFA, it can be hard to track.
Either way, the Raben Group immediately circulated the complaints against Corker and Stevens around Washington by email. People close to Corker said they believe the ethics complaints were motivated by the hedge fund lobbying campaign. (Of course, the complaints might also have merit; in fact, both things could be true at the same time.)
When he was on the Hill pushing for GSE reform, Millstein had company. Michael Waldorf, with Paulson & Co., has been in the Senate to lobby on the GSE bill, as has Chris Katopis of the Association of Mortgage Investors, and Shawn Smeallie of American Continental Group, which works for DCI and Paulson, according to congressional sources.
Julie Chon, a former Democratic Banking Committee staffer, a top aide to Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), left the committee for Perry Capital Management, run by big-time Hillary Clinton donor Richard Perry. In early April, Chon organized a Clinton fundraiser that Senate banking staffers co-hosted. But at the height of the battle over Corker-Warner, she was a fixture on Capitol Hill — though she does not appear to have registered as a lobbyist.
“She wasn’t even shy that she was advocating for a payout,” said one of the former colleagues Chon lobbied in the Senate. As she’d roam the Senate halls, she’d cheerily greet staffers with a line that is such a perfect combination of talking point, banality and sarcasm that it could have been written by the creators of HBO’s “Veep.” “Just here trying to defend our property rights,” she’d repeat.
***
The American people, of course, are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Political hedge funds, though, aren’t leaving things in God’s hands alone. For that, there’s the DCI Group.
The DCI Group most famously built its reputation doing the dirty work of the tobacco industry. That long-running operation involved funding “experts” who would question the medical science around smoking, and targeting individual advocates and lawmakers. It pioneered the use of shadow groups that concealed the true source of funding for the campaign, and can be seen as a blueprint for the hedge fund campaigns.
According to the lobbying disclosure records that do exist, DCI Group hired the Raben Group, American Continental Group and others to lobby on the Puerto Rico issue. American Continental Group is Paulson’s personal lobby shop, and also has a political intelligence arm heavily active in Argentina. Political intelligence differs from traditional lobbying in that its practitioners are not required to register their activities (thanks Eric Cantor) and it is not focused on influencing policy, but rather on learning in advance about upcoming policy changes or investigations, so that companies or hedge funds can get a jump on trades and business decisions.
DCI also ran a lobbying campaign against the Puerto Rican government on behalf of Doral Financial, a now-bankrupt Puerto Rican bank, and BlueMountain Capital. They brought Shapiro on board and hired Liberty International Group, a lobbying firm of former Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.).
Back in 2007, DCI was instrumental in killing legislation that would have regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a doomed effort that may have prevented the lenders from melting down. It earned $2 million from Freddie Mac for its work.
DCI was also part of American Task Force Argentina, the hedge-fund backed effort that battled Argentina over its default. Raben Group’s Robert Raben and Shapiro led the task force, and Shapiro’s consulting firm was paid at least $450,000. While there are no public filings today, the group is helping run the Fannie hedge-fund operation, according to DCI managing partner Justin Peterson, who has privately talked about DCI’s work. Shapiro, too, said he was working with DCI for his housing policy work.
All that work, even if it’s behind the scenes and unregistered, has to leave a trace. Here are two Facebook posts, one from late 2014 and another from early 2015, that have DCI organizing Fannie-related press events on the Hill for Investors Unite, a group of investors united to get a payout.
FACEBOOK.COM
A Facebook post by Wirestream Media shows that DCI Group is working with Investors Unite, an investment fund backed group lobbying on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform.
FACEBOOK.COM
A second Facebook post by Wirestream Media shows DCI Group’s involvement with Investors Unite.
Former DCI lobbyist Douglas Davenport is also on the hedge fund payroll, registered on behalf of both American Task Force Argentina and the Puerto Rican bondholders.
The same lawyer has suited up for all three causes, too. Matthew McGill represents the hedge fund BlueMountain, which owns some $400 million worth of Puerto Rico debt. He successfully persuaded a judge to throw out a Puerto Rico law that stood in the way of the hedge funds. “Now we have a real negotiation where the bargaining power is essentially even,” McGill said afterward. BlueMountain also employed DCI Group in 2014 and 2015 on the Puerto Rico debt fight.
McGill represents Perry Capital in its shareholder lawsuit related to Fannie and Freddie. He participated in at least one PR event with Investors Unite, a Fannie-fighting group that DCI also represents.
And finally — or, firstly — McGill represented NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, the hedge fund connected with GOP megadonor Paul Singer, in the lawsuit against Argentina, along with Aurelius Capital Management. That lawsuit allowed the hedge funds to extract billions from the Argentinian people. It came after the years-long slash-and-burn campaign run from the American Task Force Argentina — a lobbying coalition of Covington & Burling, DCI Group and the Raben Group.
Rob Shapiro, meanwhile, doesn’t appear on any lobbying reports or disclosures, but he was publicly attached to a pressure campaign that DCI Group ran on behalf of Doral Financial. The bank, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took into receivership on Feb. 27, 2015, was suing the island government over a disputed $229 million tax refund. A website DCI Group created — Doral Puerto Rico Facts — promoted Shapiro’s study on the island’s debt problems. But it wasn’t just the bank that wanted to get the money back. Its hedge fund creditors wanted to get paid.
Who is paying who isn’t always easy to tell. Take the paper by Shapiro and Elaine Kamarck, touted as the independent views of officials from both the Obama and Clinton administrations, that comes to the conclusion that the hedge funds ought to be paid dollars for the shares of Fannie Mae they bought for pennies.
Neither Shapiro nor Kamarck are housing finance analysts or experts. Kamarck isn’t even an economist — her work is in the field of political science, studying election and turnout trends. The paper itself offers a rather stunning giveaway: The three pillars of housing finance have long been Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. In the Shapiro-Kamarck paper, Ginnie Mae is twice referred to as “Ginny Mae.” Anybody can make a mistake. But nobody with a housing policy background would do that twice.
“It would be like somebody claiming to be writing as a progressive journalist and calling it The Huffington Globe. It just gives away the game,” said one policymaker who read the paper.
When we asked Shapiro who was funding his work on the GSEs, he said it “was sponsored by a low-income housing coalition.” The report thanks The Potomac Coalition, an African-American business and advocacy group. The Potomac Coalition’s Parks told The Wall Street Journal that his group indeed did pay for the paper, but that “Fannie and Freddie shareholders suggested the authors.” Parks added, in the Journal’s paraphrase, “the contents of the paper were drafted and negotiated by the authors, his group, shareholders and their lobbyists.”
Shapiro said he hasn’t been otherwise very active in the housing policy fight. “That’s all I did, and I haven’t taken any other role and I’m very proud of that analysis because it would provide more funding for low-income housing than any program in American history,” he said.
But what about the Fix Fannie & Freddie website, which exists to promote the study?
“I don’t have a website about fix Fannie and Freddie,” Shapiro said. “It’s not my website. That’s not true.”
The website specifically says it is “sponsored by Sonecon,” which is Shapiro’s consulting firm. Just above that, it says, “About Dr. Shapiro.”
FIXFANNIEFREDDIE.COM
The top of the Fix Fannie & Freddie website promoting Dr. Robert Shapiro’s paper on the subject.
FIXFANNIEFREDDIE.COM
The bottom of the Fix Fannie & Freddie website indicates it was sponsored by Dr. Robert Shapiro’s consulting firm Sonecon LLC.
Shapiro asked for the web address so he could check it out himself. But he was having a hard time finding it, so he read it back. “F-A-N-N-Y ...”
“No, F-A-N-N-I-E,” we told him, which unlocked his path to the site with his company’s name on it.
“Well, I will tell you it is not sponsored by me,” Shapiro said when he found it. He then added a new admission about the link to DCI. “But, I have worked with DCI on this. I’m not surprised that they’re promoting the study and myself and Dr. Kamarck.”
==
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/puerto-rico-debt-crisis-gop-attack-ads-221907
Republican lawmakers trying to hammer out a deal to avert Puerto Rico's looming debt crisis are bristling about attack ads being aired in their home districts by a conservative group that doesn’t disclose its donors.
The Center for Individual Freedom has spent close to $2 million trying to scare off the authors of a plan to restructure the island territory's debt ahead of a bill-writing session Wednesday and Thursday. The ads, which slam the deal as a bailout, support the position of hedge funds that stand to lose billions if Congress allows Puerto Rico to restructure its general obligation debt.
Those hedge funds declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests. The Center for Individual Freedom also did not respond.
Still, lawmakers and lobbyists are buzzing with speculation about the aggressive tactic. And backers of the congressional fix say they’re concerned the assault on members' conservative credentials could peel off support. Several of the House’s more vocal conservative iconoclasts sit on the Natural Resources panel, which has been assigned to write the bill because it has jurisdiction over territories. After a hearing Wednesday, some of those members said they wouldn't support the measure.
Speaker Paul Ryan has expressed his support for the latest draft of the panel’s bill, which would create an oversight board that could step in to restructure debt if the commonwealth’s negotiations with creditors break down. Lawmakers said Ryan is planning to bring the bill to the floor next week after a meeting of the entire Republican caucus Friday.
Lawmakers are racing to come up with a solution that will allow Puerto Rico to stave off default on its $73 billion in debt before payments are due in the coming weeks. The Puerto Rican government last week enacted a payment moratorium that will likely ensure a default on $400 million due May 1 if Congress doesn’t act. The government on Monday proposed a new restructuring of its debt to bondholders, offering a modest raise in the amount it would pay per year on the majority of its outstanding debt.
Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, told reporters today that Puerto Rico has become the number one issue in his district due to CFIF's ads.
"Who'd have thought the most pressing issue in the First District of Utah would be Puerto Rico?" Bishop said. "The commercials they're running against me have been helpful... Number one, they're over the top, and number two, they have given my phone number out there." Bishop said that's allowed his office to effectively explain the issue to constituents.
CFIF doesn't reveal its donors but has received grants from conservative groups American Action Network and Crossroads GPS, according to disclosures from those organizations.
CFIF dropped $900,000 on airtime on CNN, MSNBC and CNBC, plus more than $500,000 on D.C.-area broadcast and cable, and $86,000 on radio spots in Bishop's district, as well as those of fellow committee members Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) and Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.), according to data compiled for POLITICO by The Tracking Firm. The ads call the bill a bailout tantamount to allowing Puerto Rico to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy that would also open the door for states to follow suit — which proponents say is untrue. The spots urge viewers and listeners to contact their representatives.
The campaign takes the same position as hedge funds such as Aurelius Capital Management, Monarch Capital Group, Stone Lion Capital Partners, Davidson Kempner and Fundamental Advisors.
Monarch, Aurelius, Fundamental and Davidson Kempner declined to comment. The others didn't respond to requests for comment.
More ads came from a group calling itself Main Street Bondholders, created by the 60 Plus Association, billed as a conservative alternative to AARP. The New York Times reported that 60 Plus was recruited by DCI Group, a Republican firm specializing in grassroots lobbying, known to critics as "AstroTurfing."
DCI also hired former Rep. Connie Mack to lobby on behalf of Puerto Rico bondholders, whom he declined to name when contacted by POLITICO.
Gerry Scimeca, a spokesman for 60 Plus, said it has "thousands of active donors who fund our projects" and declined to elaborate. DCI Vice President Craig Stevens didn't answer requests for comment.
Holders of sales tax bonds, who are warring with holders of general obligation bonds over the bill, slammed the ads.
“The Main Street Bondholders group, which claims to represent retail investors despite widely reported ties to hedge funds, is misrepresenting itself to Congress and now miscasting Territories Clause legislation as Chapter 9,” Susheel Kirpalani, a lawyer at Quinn Emanuel representing a group of investors in sales tax bonds, said through a spokesperson.
Even some investment funds that hold general-obligation debt signaled frustration with the ads. Oppenheimer Funds, though a major stakeholder, distanced itself from the campaign. "OppenheimerFunds has maintained a constructive tone," spokeswoman Kimberly Weinrick said.
Alejandro Garcia Padilla, the governor of Puerto Rico, weighed in on the controversy himself on Tuesday.
“I'm wishing those ads do not affect the minds and will of the congressmen and women that need to deal with this," he said on a conference call with reporters
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/puerto-rico-debt-crisis-gop-attack-ads-221907#ixzz4EQNmYuan
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook