Juan González talking:
in Puerto Rico, where officials say the death toll from Hurricane Maria has increased from 16 to 34, though the Center for Investigative Journalism reports that number could still rise. Governor Ricardo Rosselló said Tuesday that 19 people died during the storm, while 15 more died from indirect causes related to its aftermath.
Rosselló made the announcement after a short visit by President Donald Trump to the U.S. territory, where nearly three-and-a-half million residents remain without electricity. At one point on the trip, Trump handed out supplies to hurricane victims and tossed rolls of paper towels into the crowd, an action that drew online condemnation for being out of touch, considering the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Trump made these wild comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, as if saying this was nowhere near as bad as Hurricane Katrina, where, obviously, many more people died in the flooding in Hurricane Katrina. But he doesn’t really grasp the severity of the crisis, that is still continuing and will continue for months on the island because of the failed infrastructure situation that people are dealing with.
The other interesting thing, though, I think, is his remarks that he made in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday. President Trump said his administration would help Puerto Rico wipe out its debt to help it recover from extensive damage caused by Hurricane Maria.
he would need to get congressional approval to come up with that kind of money. And I doubt that the Republicans in the Congress are in a position right now to say, “We are going to finance $70 billion in debt for Puerto Rico,” or try to get a huge amount of that wiped out, because, again, this is now before a federal judge. It’s the courts now that are trying to decide this, not Congress, unless Congress comes in with money, an appropriation, to be able to deal with the situation. So I think this is more Trump bravado, speaking to his friend Geraldo, which he knew would get some kind of attention in the Latino community across the country.
we’re talking about roughly $73 [billion], $74 billion in debt that is owed to the bondholders. But there is another $45 billion or so that is owed in unfunded pension liabilities. So, really, the total debt of Puerto Rico is more between $120 [billion], $130 billion. And the talk about forgiving part of the bond debt, without also dealing with how are the pensions of the Puerto Rican public, government employees, both those who are already retired and those who are still working—how are they going to be funded, because the government has no money available to fund the existing pension obligations that it has. So, it’s a much more complicated situation than the president saying we’re simply going to look at possibly wiping out the debt.
there were at one point an astonishing number of military bases, as about 13 percent of the total land area of Puerto Rico was taken up by military bases, including the famous Ramey Strategic Air Command base in Aguadilla; the Sabana Seca naval base; the Roosevelt Roads, which was at one point the largest naval base in the world of the United States; Fort Buchanan, which was a major base for training of the Puerto Rican National Guard and other Army troops.
But most of those bases have been closed down in the aftermath of the protests against Vieques in the early—in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Once Washington decided to close the Vieques training facility, it was almost as if the military, in revenge for these protests, began, one by one, closing all the bases, including closing Roosevelt Roads. So, basically, most of the military bases are no longer functioning bases.
some of the facilities have been turned over for the National Guard use, but most of the former military bases now have been decommissioned, for the most part. And so, actually, the role that Puerto Rico played as a military outpost of the United States in the Caribbean and Latin America has ceased to exist now for at least several years.
— source democracynow.org 2017-10-05