Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/20/hurricane-capitalism.html
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Nice tag with the iguana.
This has made Puerto Rico into a playboy’s paradise, full of luxury resorts and gate-guarded communities where native Puerto Ricans can find the odd job as a servant or administrator.
And now, to add to the misery, techbro collectors of energy-draining math beanie babies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/technology/cryptocurrency-puerto-rico.html
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I’m beginning to think that these administrative districts should also be represented on our flag as well… perhaps with moon symbols.then when they become states, they can get their stars!
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Time for some history:
Puerto Rico is occupied territory.
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Times like these, I’m surprised that Puerto Rico still is interested in becoming a full-fledged US state. They might be better off by striking out on their own completely, except that then there wouldn’t even be lip service to reining in the robber barons.
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Being in or out would have advantages. Stuck in the doorway, they get trampled.
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PR knows that they’d be given the Haiti/Cuba/Iran treatment if they ever gained independence.
The empire does not tolerate disobedience from its possessions.
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It’s been mentioned on bOING before, but never more true right now on that occupied, massively bamboozled island:
This…
This centers on the exploitation of national crises to push through controversial policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance.
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I don’t think the two are directly related. Puerto Rico is unlikely to have attracted any of those people without that sort of tax break. In exchange they get a few crumbs, and crumbs aren’t great, but they are still better then nothing. What they have done is given those folks a place to go to get rock bottom taxes, so nobody else lost a whole cupcake and Puerto Rico got a few crumbs (minimal taxes, a handful of byproduct jobs, and a few actual new businesses that aren’t in an of themselves tax scams, but exist because the owners have the huge tax break and need to do “something”, as well as actual businesses that get insane tax breaks)
It probably isn’t a good move for Puerto Rico (yeah, sure, you get crumbs…but you had to go to a lot of effort to do it, perhaps you could have found a useful solution to the problem instead?). It definitely isn’t a good move for the US as a whole as it loses out on nearly the entire cupcake. That said some of those people would have left the USA entirely, but many would not have because the US Passport (that they get to keep as a Puerto Rico resident) is a very useful tool.
In summary: I’m not a fan, but not for the reasons presented by BB.
If the USA won’t offer them State status, Canada should offer them Provincial status.
Now that we can’t stand to go to California or Hawaii for warm vacations, and Mexico is pursuing a don’t-investigate-tourist-murders policy, we could use a new vacation destination.
I’m surprised that PR statehood hasn’t come up as a suggestion from the Democratic party grassroots yet. New states come with two senators, and this one would be full of people who remember how 45 dealt with that hurricane.
After reading all the linked articles the dRumpf administration’s mismanaged, half-ass disaster of a disaster management process in Puerto Rico makes a really sick and twisted sense.
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