"Such poor leadership ability by the mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort".
-- Donald J. Trump, September 30, 2017 (There. I said his name).
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico about ten days ago. It was a category four storm, carrying sustained winds of up to 155 miles per hour, leaving behind what can only be described as total devastation. For ten days now, there has been virtually no electricity, no water, little food, fuel, hope and most importantly, virtually no help from our government.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that the storm would leave in its wake the potential for a human catastrophe the likes of which we have never seen before, as the population desperately scrambled to stay alive without power, fuel, food or water, or any practical way to get any to it.
As of 2015, there were approximately three and a half million (that's 3,500,000 for those of you who need to see numbers) people living in Puerto Rico. That's three and a half million people who are citizens of this country, even if they do not get to vote in federal elections, even if many of them are of darker skin tone, and even if many of them do not speak English. So what? They are all American citizens.
Even more important, they are all human beings.
So, the reaction has been what?
After nearly complete radio silence for days, the occupant of the White House went on the air to say that he was doing a "fantastic" job responding to this humanitarian crisis. What exactly he had been doing up until that moment that was so fantastical remains a mystery to the rest of us. Right after making the announcement, it is believed he visited his orthopedist to get the shoulder he dislocated from patting himself on the back surgically reattached. He then strongly implied that one of the problems was the fact that Puerto Rico was struggling under massive debt that had crippled the economy of the Island, which seemed to further imply that he was reluctant to respond to a humanitarian crisis because those suffering owed money to those who could provide the relief, or that the storm was divine retribution for not paying the bills on time.
If only his creditors and the courts had reacted the same way each time he or one of his "world class" companies fell into massive debt and filed for bankruptcy.
Right after that, as emergency supplies began arriving at the port in San Juan and just sat there, we began to question what was being done to help our people, our fellow Americans, who were getting beyond desperate. We were told by those on the ground, that the supplies could not be delivered due to a lack of drivers, who were obviously at home trying to somehow survive and save their families, a lack of fuel and the fact that most roads remained impassable. So, where were the helicopters, the army of national guardsmen, and the aid professionals sent by the government who can drive trucks, the tankers who could deliver the oil, provide humanitarian relief and put boots on the ground to start making the roads passable enough to deliver food, water, medicine, fuel, etc.?
In the interim, further shipments of relief supplies sat off the coast and could not be delivered because of the Jones Act. What is the Jones Act? Look it up. 46 USC 688 and 46 USC 30104 for those who want to bother slogging through the United States Code. The Jones Act was originally codified in 1920, and remains on the books to this day.
In short, the Jones Act exists, at least in part, to protect the United States Merchant Marine by requiring all goods transported by water between the ports of the United States be carried by United States flagged ships, constructed in the United States, owned and manned by citizens of the United States. There is nothing in the statute that either obliges or prevents anyone on board from taking a knee as the ship enters port. Foreign ships inbound with cargo are not allowed to stop and offload their cargo at certain locations, specifically including Puerto Rico, without paying a significant tariff on the goods on board. As a result, many of these shippers simply do not send their goods via water to Puerto Rico in the first place.
The effects of the Jones Act are bad enough; however, it is not difficult in times of emergency to overcome the hurdles to humanitarian aid presented by the Act. All that is needed is an executive order by the president waiving the Act and allowing the aid to flow. He did that almost immediately for Texas after Hurricane Harvey. Texas went for him in the election. Ditto for Florida after Hurricane Irma. Florida also voted for him in the last election. He did not do that for Puerto Rico until he was practically shamed into it. He only did it after originally explaining that he was not going to waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico because the American shipping companies did not want him to do it. In other words, the potential protection of profits of American shippers was more important to this guy than saving lives of American citizens in Puerto Rico. Nearly three and a half million of them.
And when he did get around to finally doing the right thing, his order waiving Jones Act requirements, issued September 28, only waived the requirements for ten days. This at time when it is generally understood that it is going to take months, if not years, if not our entire lifetimes for Puerto Rico to get back to where it was before the storm hit. So eight days from now, Puerto Rico is going to be right back where it was ten days ago, unless he can be prodded or shamed into doing something again.
Puerto Rico does not vote in presidential elections.
Puerto Rico has a large population that does not speak English.
Many Puerto Ricans do not look like "us".
Besides, as our nitwit in office told us yesterday, Puerto Rico is an island. It is surrounded by water. Lots of it. As Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station said yesterday, we would all like to thank the president for filling us all in on what an island is. We never would have known otherwise.
Throughout this time, politicians in Puerto Rico; specifically, the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, and the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, complimented the president, telling us all that the president had been responding to all their requests. While they were complimenting the president, it was clear that the situation on the island (surrounded by all that water) was becoming more and more desperate by the moment. To many of us, both the governor and the mayor made their statements knowing that the only way to get something out of this president is to compliment him. So to save their people, they said he was fully responsive and on top of everything.
Until they could not say it any longer.
This has gone past the point of desperation. People -- American People are dying. People are dying of thirst. People are dying of starvation. They are dying because they cannot get their medications. They are dying because they are shut off from the rest of the world while our president is more concerned with the profits of American shippers and whether or not football players are standing at attention for the national anthem.
Finally, the mayor could not play the game any longer and criticized the lack of response from our government to save its own citizens.
"We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy".
His response? A tweet.
His people are dying, and he responds with a tweet.
And the tweet, of course, lashes out at the mayor, accusing her of poor leadership. Well it takes one to know one...
The tweet concludes with a statement that Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans "want everything".
No, they just want help. They want enough food and water so the citizenry will not starve to death, medical supplies for the sick and wounded, and help starting the rebuilding of their homes, their infrastructure and their lives. We did not seem to have that sort of trouble in Texas or Florida. As far as I can tell, at this point, he has not asked congress for anything for Puerto Rico, although he has repeatedly told us what a fantastic job he is doing.
Aside from the lack of concrete assistance, the lack of a plan, the lack of urgency, and the basic lack of humanitarianism, the tweet brings to mind that old stereotype of lazy Hispanics who want nothing more than to live off the largess of the rest of us, resurrecting an old canard that insults everyone, not just Hispanics. Especially not Puerto Ricans. Not now. Not ever.
I would like to think that real aid is on its way. I would like to think that there is much more going on to help than appears apparent from what we have seen on television, even on the Fox Cheerleading Network. One would hope that the allusion to the lazy Puerto Rican bringing all of this upon themselves is not what the president meant.
But then again with this guy, you never know.
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