One week after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, President Donald Trump says he’ll visit the island next Tuesday, under withering criticism. Maria was the most powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. territory in nearly a century, coming just after Hurricane Irma, and destroyed the island’s entire electrical grid, caused severe flooding, widespread damage to homes and infrastructure. Most of the three-and-a-half million U.S. citizens who live in Puerto Rico remain in the dark, without access to power, clean water, food and fuel. It took President Trump five full days to respond to the plight of Puerto Rico. He did not tweet about it over that period. Over the weekend, he tweeted 17 times about athletes protesting police violence and refusing to visit the White House. Facing criticism, Trump held a news conference Tuesday in which he congratulated himself on his response to Puerto Rico’s disaster, repeating nearly a dozen times that he was doing a “great,” “amazing,” “tremendous” and “incredible” job. He denied he had neglected Puerto Rico.
But many Puerto Ricans are criticizing the U.S. government and saying aid has not been arriving fast enough. Nongovernmental organizations are even reporting charter planes that brought donations for them to distribute never reached the groups, because the government decided to centralize all distributions.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Trump administration denied a request from several members of Congress to waive shipping restrictions to help get gasoline and other supplies to Puerto Rico as it recovers. The decision came even though the Department of Homeland Security waived what’s called the Jones Act twice in the last month, following hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit the mainland United States. Republican Senator John McCain called the decision “unacceptable” and called on the agency to reconsider.
Juan González talking:
this whole issue of the Jones Act, which Nelson wrote a fabulous piece in The New York Times just this week, is one of the key problems still bedeviling Puerto Rico. You mentioned that the Jones Act was suspended just this year for—to benefit Texas and Florida during the hurricanes Harvey and Irma. But there’s actually been previous suspensions of the Jones Act. During Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration waived the Jones Act for a period of time to help the people of New Orleans, as well as during Hurricane Rita that occurred that same year, in 2005. And during Superstorm Sandy, the Obama administration suspended the Jones Act for a period of time to allow other foreign vessels to come in and assist the people of the East Coast of the United States. So it’s not unusual for the federal government to waive the Jones Act in times of major crisis. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, the Trump administration has said that, for Puerto Rico, which has always suffered from the Jones Act, it will not happen this time around.
Nelson Denis talking:
Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 was initially promulgated to protect the United States from German U-2 boats. This was in 1920. But you fast-forward nearly a hundred years later, there’s no U-2 boats lurking off the coast of Puerto Rico.
What it does, however, is it creates an international price-rigging environment. The only way that foreign registry goods can enter Puerto Rico, under the auspices of the Jones Act, is one of two ways. The goods, all goods—food, water, medicine, oil for the electrical grid, which runs entirely on oil—all of it has to come one of two ways. If it comes directly into Puerto Rico, it has to pay fees, duties, taxes, import quotas, all sorts of costs that are passed on to the Puerto Rican consumer. The other alternative, the only option, is to reroute to Jacksonville, Florida. The foreign registry vessel goes to Jacksonville, they offload the goods, reload onto a U.S. vessel, then that vessel reroutes back to Puerto Rico. It’s the equivalent of digging a ditch to fill it again. The net result of this is that everything on those ships is then priced 15 to 20 percent higher because of all that activity, because of all those duties and because of what they pay in Puerto Rico or because of the rerouting from Jacksonville. That then creates a price-rigging environment where U.S. corporations can just slightly underbid. The same automobile costs $6,000 more in San Juan than it does in Miami. Food costs twice as much throughout Puerto Rico as it does in the mainland United States. And yet, Puerto Ricans—the per capita in Puerto Rico is about $17,000, less than half of that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the union.
So, we have a tremendous dysfunction going on. It’s extremely profitable for the Jones Act carrier companies and for the consumer goods. There’s more Walgreens and Wal-Marts per square mile in Puerto Rico than anywhere else on the planet. Puerto Rico is the fifth-largest market in the world for U.S. goods, all under hyperinflated prices due to the Jones Act. That’s why right now there has to be a tectonic shift in this relationship. We have to eliminate the Jones Act so that Puerto Ricans can afford to live.
As usual with Trump, you know, the devil isn’t even in the details, because they don’t make sense. They’re saying that, “Oh, well, there is—we don’t have increased port capacity. The ports are what—are the bottleneck in Puerto Rico, so, therefore, the Jones Act won’t make any difference.” Well, this doesn’t make sense. You had Florida ports involved, and they suspended it a week before Hurricane Irma hit. They already suspended the Jones Act for Florida, and the Florida ports were involved.
I did some just quick research last night and found out that the British Ministry of Defense can rebuild ports within 27 days. So, by the time Trump gets to Puerto Rico, they could be halfway to rebuilding the port structure that he’s supposedly talking about. It has nothing to do with the capacity of the ports. It has to do with the prices. And that’s what, clearly, they’re looking to avoid, because what we’re going to get is public-private partnerships that are going to now own the ports and the rebuilding effort for everything to do with the Puerto Rican waterfront. And that’s just about making money, not about saving Puerto Rico. So there is no reason why the Jones Act couldn’t be lifted. And it’s just plain doubletalk to say it won’t work.
– Mitch McConnell’s wife—Mitch McConnell, of course, the Senate majority leader, and Elaine Chao, of course, the secretary of transportation—her family probably benefits from the odious Jones Act that keeps aid out of Puerto Rico and keeps Puerto Rican residents poor.
it’s a virtual monopoly. You have carrier companies, Sea Star, Trailways, Crowley. There’s just a small group of usual suspects that benefit enormously from this status quo, in addition to the consumer goods companies. As I said, cars—the same car will cost $6,000 more in San Juan than in Miami. So there’s a very tight knot of vested interests that are coming under the auspices of Citizens United, that are going to be lobbying intensively right now to do whatever they can to keep the Jones Act on the neck of Puerto Rico. But hopefully, the human values and the humanitarian crisis that is basically exploding right now will basically offset those lobbying efforts.
Juan González talking:
There’s been reports that the entire 911 system in Puerto Rico has not been operating. And I think that this is important to understand, not just for Puerto Rico, but for the rest of the United States. After the Twin Towers attacks in 2001, the federal government, because of the communication problems that the firefighters and the police had during the attacks on the World Trade Center, the federal government spent billions of dollars to create a new emergency response system for police forces and for public safety personnel throughout the United States. It’s called FirstNet. And it vowed that, within a few years, all of the police departments and emergency responders across the country would have it. We are now more than 15 years later, and the FirstNet system is still not operational in times of natural disaster. In fact, it was only in March of this year, 2017, that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross finally awarded a contract for $47 billion to AT&T to basically operate this system, because, for the early years, there was all kinds of conflicts of interest between the officials who were named to the FirstNet board, and so it took a long time to get this contract awarded. It was just on August 31st that the governor of Puerto Rico announced that it would buy into the FirstNet system, because all of these local governments are now going to have to pay AT&T to create this emergency response system. So Puerto Rico basically has an antiquated 911 system. And now, when the people need it most, it’s not functioning. But more importantly, the federal government has taken all this time, since the attacks on the World Trade Center, to come up with a workable 911 system in cases of natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
Nelson Denis talking:
there’s tremendous historical precedent there, when the United States—when, in 1898, the very next year, the most devastating hurricane of the century, of the 19th century, Hurricane San Ciriaco, flattened the island. It was actually worse than Hurricane Maria. And the response of the United States the following year, 1900, was to devalue the Puerto Rican currency by 40 percent. So that was the shock doctrine in its earliest application. And it worked. Within 30 years, the United States owned 80 percent of the arable agriculture in Puerto Rico.
Well, you fast-forward now, you have the PROMESA legislation, the financial control board, the Jones Act and a dilatory president, who’s going to do a sort of a New Orleans flyover and photo-op over Puerto Rico and then basically create public-private partnerships that will own public infrastructure in Puerto Rico rather than redevelop it. And so that’s where it’s headed at this point. And it is, basically, the shock doctrine on steroids in the Caribbean. But this is a—this isn’t time for fun and games. This is not an abstraction. These are human lives, three-and-a-half million people that don’t have electricity and are projected to not have it for up to six months. And that electricity runs entirely on imported foreign oil that’s brought in under inflated prices from the Jones Act. This is—it’s almost an international crime if you don’t address this.
Juan González talking:
there was mention of the continual blackout that is occurring in Puerto Rico. The crown jewel of Puerto Rico today is the Puerto Rico electric company. It is the largest publicly owned utility in the United States. It generates billions of dollars in revenue. And there has been a longtime desire by the electric power industry of the United States to privatize the Puerto Rico electric company. And so, the longer the blackouts continue, the greater the public cry will be to do something radical in terms of the Puerto Rico electric company. I noted in a piece I wrote for the Daily News earlier this week—I’m sorry, last week—that in the month of June alone, 60 percent of the municipalities in Puerto Rico had blackouts. That’s before the hurricane season. There’s been a constant—years and years of disinvestment in the Puerto Rico electric company. And now I think the—the private industry feels now is the time to actually move forward to basically privatize this company, and so that the profits from the company can flow to American investors, obviously, instead of generating revenue, as the Puerto Rico electric company did for so many years, for the Puerto Rican government.
Puerto Rico is completely under the plenary jurisdiction and exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, which was affirmed in the Sanchez Valle case last year. And Juan really hit the nail on the head. We’re in a situation right now, they’re called P3s—public-private partnerships. But in Puerto Rico, they’re P5s—public-private partnerships for the plunder of Puerto Rico. And it’s going to happen under an accelerated basis. And there’s the public and the private component. The public is the Jones Act. If we don’t see any of the Jones Act relief—that Juan is right on top of that—that means that it’s a run-up, that it’s a precursor to the privatization of the public infrastructure of Puerto Rico, because that is what will happen next if we don’t suspend the Jones Act.
____
Juan González
Democracy Now! co-host, former staff writer at the New York Daily News and author. His new book is Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities.
Nelson Denis
former New York state assemblyman and author of War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony.
— source https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/27/profits_vs_puerto_rican_lives_trump 2017-09-28