Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Second rate reporter says what?

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Republicans do not trust women.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We still have time to mess this up!

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Puerto Rico: So Close to the Mainland, So Far From the GOP

Puerto Rico: So Close to the Mainland, So Far From the GOP

by | 23 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,



Eric Lutz, at Vanity Fair, “Trump Is Still Whining About Having to Help Puerto Rico”:

President Donald Trump is once again ranting about Puerto Rico, complaining about the amount of aid money the U.S. territory has received in the wake of Hurricane Maria, and lashing out at its leaders who “only take from USA.” The president’s string of tweets, which began late Monday and picked up again Tuesday morning, came after the Senate rejected a $13.5 billion disaster-relief bill that included just $600 million to the struggling island’s food-stamp program. “The Democrats today killed a Bill that would have provided great relief to Farmers and yet more money to Puerto Rico despite the fact that Puerto Rico has already been scheduled to receive more hurricane relief funding than any ‘place’ in history,” Trump wrote. “Puerto Rico got far more money than Texas & Florida combined, yet their government can’t do anything right,” he added. “The place is a mess—nothing works.”…

Trump, who claimed back in September that the death toll from the storm was artificially inflated by his political opponents to “make [him] look as bad as possible,” has continued to bash the island whenever possible, often using statistics of dubious origin. He has claimed multiple times that the island received “91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before.” That’s not exactly true. Per The Washington Post, $91 billion is actually a high estimate of what the federal government could spend over the life of the disaster. As of Tuesday, per the Post, it had actually spent about $11 billion…

…[T]he core dispute is not over whether Midwestern disaster relief should be funded, or by how much. It’s over whether more money should be added to help Puerto Rico. And even if more were added for Puerto Rico, as Democrats want, it would not come out of funding for Midwestern relief.

And so, the underlying premise of the Republican attack is that it should be a political liability for Democrats if they want to fully fund disaster relief for everybody.

In the real world, of course, if the true nature of this dispute were understood, it probably wouldn’t be a political problem for Democrats. That’s why they are embracing their demand for funding relief for all who are afflicted. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it, “we help our fellow Americans when there’s a disaster, wherever the disaster strikes. We do not abandon them. Period.”…

The underlying premise of this story is that the voters Trump plainly hopes to arouse with it will be inclined to believe those lies….

Remember the ‘basket of deplorables’?…

Reader Interactions

23Comments

  3. 3.

    Amir Khalid

    In fairness to Trump, as it were, he’s not really any kinder to people he knows are Americans. Unless they’re very rich.

  5. 5.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    If Puerto Rico is a “negative business transaction”, what about South Carolina, North Dakota, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida*?

    *Top 5 in expenditures-taxes.

  8. 8.

    Jay

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    @smike:

    As a NYC convicted racist landlord, Insane Clown POSus is well aware who Puerto Ricans are, where Puerto Rico is, and that it’s a US Dependency.

    It’s just cruel revenge fot getting his ass sued in NYC by tenants and losing,

    With a triple dose of his Naziism.

  9. 9.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Jay:

    As a NYC convicted racist landlord, Insane Clown POSus is well aware who Puerto Ricans are,

    True, and hates them.

    where Puerto Rico is,

    I have my doubts.

    and that it’s a US Dependency.

    No, he doesn’t know that.

  10. 10.

    Jay

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Puerto Rico 86’d a Trump Development in the ‘90’s.

    Playing ignorant is one of the tactics Trump uses to get his opponents to chase after the narrative rather than stay focused.

    Now, I’m not saying Trump is smart, but he does have a basic grasp of a few facts, he just pretends he doesn’t to f€ck with people and waste their time.

  13. 13.

    wenchacha

    One of my cousins told me after the hurricane that “we can’t just drive trucks over there, it will take time,” when I expressed disgust with how 45 was dealing with the aftermath. She is now muted on facebook. She was sure that I just did not understand. And I guess she was right about that.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    “They should have listed all those paper towels I personally touched on ebay. Would have raked in more than enough to Fix The Place Up. I literally threw opportunity into their arms and they weren’t smart enough to take advantage of it.”

    (snark-o-meter needle pinned)

  16. 16.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Would it be appropriate to start referring to the rightful winner of the 2016 election as Cassandra? She predicted essentially all of this, and she was treated as a raving loon by our sexually harassing media idiots. It’s eerie. Not to mention depressing.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    He’s playing the rotten landlord game. If he can run off or kill the current residents, buy up all the houses at 10 cents on the dollar to bulldoze down, put up condos, houses, and golf courses with his name all over them, he will make out like a bandit.

  18. 18.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @(((CassandraLeo))): Ugh. I probably shouldn’t have actually watched the clip. Now I’m tearing up over what we almost had, but now feels lost forever. Memo to self: don’t watch clips of Hillary Clinton late at night unless you want to depress yourself.

Comments are closed.