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Puerto Rico’s Ingrate Mayor Demands |
| By
Yoichi Shimatsu |
| The Hot Air Award for the 2017 hurricane season shapes up as a split decision
between: - Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica who moaned “Everything that money can buy is gone from here”, including himself after chartering a helicopter to a champagne welcome at a luxury hotel on the French island of Guadalupe, escaping the misery of his constituents with a satchel of diplomatic passports for sale to dodgy businessmen from places like Colombia, the deeds to dozens of prime properties amassed during his tenure, and a list of numbered bank accounts; - and rival blowhard Carmen Yulin Cruz, mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital San Juan, for her rage against the Trump administration’s “genocide”, which she asserted was the underlying goal of alleged non-delivery of federal aid to her partially flooded city. While accurate damage assessment is as yet to be done by insurance adjusters on either island, every photo taken during and after Hurricane Maria passed showed that some buildings were blown apart while most other structures, although flooded, were standing intact. Even one beachside bar at a Puerto Rican resort held onto its palm-leaf roof as if it was a Panama hat. So headline grabbers like “total devastation” and “apocalypse” were contrived hyperbole, a blast of hot air from the news media sufficient to lift off an international ballooning race. So which of these two Caribbean politicians is the bigger con artist? Skerrit is a reputed pal of common criminals who abandoned the distraught inhabitants of his wind-ripped islet to enjoy the comforts a hot bath, a massage and French cuisine; whereas Cruz is a shameless liar who claimed that no aid had yet arrived even while she was idling in front of pallets of bottled water instead of unpacking the donated life-support for her neighbors. “I am mad as hell. So I am asking the members of the press, to send a mayday call all over the world,” she exclaimed. “We are dying here. And if it doesn't stop, and if we don't get the food and the water into people's hands, what we are going to see is something close to a genocide.” One look at her waistline indicates she’s obviously not starving in some Ethiopian-type famine. People drinking from the creeks? Boil the water, por favor. It was far worse with Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013, killing up to 9,000 residents and leveling everything for real. And if the aid comes a little late, do what Puerto Ricans have always done for comfort in times of crisis: Fill the pot with tripe, heat with a fire of plentiful splintered wood and enjoy the menudo, the best soup in the world. At another press encounter--she seems to spend most of her hours complaining to the media instead of handing out aid packets--she claimed that Puerto Ricans were “inching toward genocide.” Her repetitious mantra of genocide is straight out of the Madeleine Albright playbook, a preliminary step toward forcing regime change as happened in Belgrade. Never mind the wholesale importation of jihadists and weapons into Kosovo, it was the patriarchal Slobodan Milosevic who was the bad guy. Under this same logic, it’s not a natural disaster that’s hit Puerto Rico, the catastrophe is caused by the unnatural cruelty of homegrown dictator Trump. Yes, and her little pills must have been blown away by the storm. A degree in folly Another reason that the Hot Air award should go to Cruz is due to her math skills as a magna cum laude graduate of Boston University and a master’s degree holder from Carnegie Mellon University, towering over Skerrit who went to University of New Mexico at Las Cruces and Oxford, no, not that esteemed institution but the University of Mississippi at Oxford. With her command of running the numbers, Cruz can add and subtract well enough to land at job at the U.S. Treasury Department and nuclear giant Westinghouse before minding the municipal cash register (which has since been emptied) in San Juan. Since she's no dummy, Carmen earns a ride on a self-powered balloon over the Caribbean whenever the next tropical storm hits. As for dictator Trump’s brutal campaign of genocide in Puerto Rico, the island’s death toll due to Category 4 Hurricane Maria was 16 people in a population of 3.5 million. How does this deliberate massacre stack up to casualties from hurricanes of the past? None in the same league. The death toll in the 1932 San Ciprian storm was 257; 1928 Felipe Segundo Category 5 killed 300; in the 1899 San Chiaraco fatalities totaled 3,000; and the 1780 San Calixto caused 24,000 deaths across the Caribbean, with at least a fourth of that total in Puerto Rico. So, Carmen, who’s to blame for those massive genocides? Please do not blaspheme God, Jesus or Mother Mary. Donald Trump wasn’t yet born, so who takes the fall? Of course, it’s all the fault of Christopher Columbus. Skipping out on FEMA If one thing’s for sure, it's that Carmen Cruz is not to blame for failing to participate in coordinating meetings at the FEMA depot where logistical plans were made for truck delivery from the major ports. She just wasn’t in the mood to discuss tiresome details such as mapping passable roads, assigning collection centers and security to prevent looting. It was more important to complain to the news media. Angel Perez Otero, mayor of nearby Guaynabo, has questioned why Cruz used the term "genocide" stating: "I don’t know why she is saying that. What I can tell you is my experience. She is not participating in any meetings and we had a couple already with the governors and with representation of FEMA and of HUD. These federal agencies have given us help and she’s not participating in those meetings, and some mayors from her political party have been participating, so I don’t know why she is saying that. My experience is very different." What impels her to make such outlandish accusations against the White House? A quick look at her political biography discloses an unusual degree of attachment to former President Barack’s inner circle. The full Hillary After hopscotching through the human resources departments in several leading U.S. corporations (Colgate-Palmolive, AT&T), Cruz was parachuted back into her hometown San Juan as an adviser to the mayor during the Clinton administration. There, after joining the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which supports continuation of colonial status and dependency on the U.S. larder, she did the full Hillary, barnstorming for women’s equality, LGBT same-sex marriage, and immigrant rights for migrant workers from the Dominican Republic. The activist posturing led to her selection as head of the PPD, which is affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party, at the end of March 2012. Just a month later, she traveled to the U.S. mainland to pay homage at a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) conference and held a meeting with Jim Messina, reelection campaign director for incumbent President Barack Obama, to discuss health care and education funds, citing that "it is important to take stances in U.S. politics, since half of all Puerto Ricans live there". In simple arithmetic, the population of 5 million Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland has more voting clout than the 3.5 million inhabitants left on the island. That electoral set-up is another dimension of colonialism. During that visit to the fatherland, Cruz established a Chicago-San Juan alliance with the Puerto Rican lobby, led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an old warhorse of the city’s Democratic machine and key ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. A leading figure in the Latino congressional caucus, Gutierrez was the principle sponsor of the DREAM legislation, which provides schooling and medical care for foreign children who enter the U.S. illegally, sharing in the Puerto Rican dream. Dirty tricks, dirtier needles In typical Clinton-Obama style, her path to power was paved with fallen rivals, in this case her party’s chosen candidate who conveniently was ensnared in a domestic abuse scandal just before the internal election in 2013. Cruz has voiced support for Obama’s release of imprisoned FALN members, who launched 200 bombings across the U.S. in the 1970s. Her support for an openly terrorist organization is reminiscent of Bill Ayers’ involvement in the arsonist Weather Underground, an agent provocateur operation under a secretive federal counterinsurgency program that aimed to discredit peaceful antiwar activists and grassroots minority organizations, while installing sponsors of terrorism into high office. Why would the head of the PPD, which is committed to maintaining Puerto Rico’s colonial dependency on the federal government, support a militant outfit like FALN that demands full independence? That question is best answered by another question: Why does Barack Obama in retirement provide funding for Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other “resistance” groups? For the answer, go ask George Soros. The easiest way to destroy genuine grassroots movements and the popular consensus against Wall Street is to incite mob violence, which results in public repudiation of populist democracy. There are other reasons why a pathological liar like Carmen Cruz can hold a major political office in Puerto Rico. While she was still hobnobbing in Chicago, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) took the opportunity to launch Operation Open Door, a major drug sweep at San Juan’s airport, arresting 31 suspects including American Airlines staffers. Puerto Rico is a major drug transshipment hub between Colombia and the Dominican Republic to Miami and New York. Her political base includes the public housing projects where the Rompe ONU and El ONU drug gangs do a thriving trade in heroin and cocaine, all under the protection of politicians in return for a cut of the profits. As the song “America” from West Side Story goes: “Everything’s free in America . . . for a little fee in America.” Much too much, of the Democratic Party leadership is financially linked to the bosses of drug trafficking gangs. This opium war against the nation’s poorer communities hearkens back to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program with its War on Poverty, which created a middle-man layer of social workers better known as “poverty pimps”, who are the eyes and ears of the urban political machine in the ghettos while nurturing the “informal economy” of heroin and cocaine street sales to keep minorities broke, weak and depressed. Statehood No, Independence Si Cruz’s flippancy and dishonesty are the strongest arguments against 51st statehood and in support of unequivocal Puerto Rican independence ASAP. Without Daddy Warbucks to kick around anymore, poor Little Orphan Yulin will finally have to get a real job back with the nuclear industry or a tax collection bureau, where she will undoubtedly be just as threatening to the lives and sanity of Puerto Ricans at home and abroad. Carmen Miranda, she’s not. Just one look at her maniacal smile while she curses the president, and you know that we’ve yet to see the last of Hurricane Carmen. So with a hat’s off to the storm that shot her to fame, let’s hear Ricky Martin’s tribute: Es que me tiene loco She's the one that always turns me on Sweet angel fallen from heaven She's the one that always drives me wild In her arms she's driving forever Asi es Maria, blanca como el dia Pero es veneno, si te quieres enamorar Asi es Maria, tan caliente y fria Que si te la bebes, de segura te va a matar Un, dos, tres, un pasito pa'lante, Maria Un, dos, tres, un pasito pa'atras Aunque me muera, ahora Maria Es que me tiene loco Maria is an angel in disguise Feeds my love with her devotion Search for a special place to hide As she conquers all my emotion Un pasito pa'delante, un pasito pa'atras |