Puerto Rico

Trump has certainly been a catalyst for increased voter registration among Hispanics. A national poll of Hispanic voters indicates that Latino voter participation in November is going to break all records and that, overwhelmingly, it's because of animus towards Trump and the Republican Party.

Puerto Rican authorities have suspended two officers after a twitter user send them a link to a video.
The video is taken from above from a distance. The video reportedly shows a mostly vacant Walmart parking lot and zooms in on the action below.
A uniformed officer is seen grabbing a control of a man’s wheelchair and whipping him around. The officer lets go as the man attempts to stabilize his wheelchair, as the officer who does not seem to be letting up approaches to finally push him from his seat onto the ground.

118 years after U.S. troops landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico, the liberal political site the New Republic asks, “Why Are We Colonizing Puerto Rico?” The occasion for this comically tardy acknowledgment of Puerto Rico’s colonial status is a Republican proposal to deal with the island’s $72 billion debt problem by allowing a cabal of unelected technocrats to carry out austerity measures against the will of the Puerto Rican people.

Paul Singer, known as The Vulture, won a $4.65 billion payment from Argentina — nearly ONE HUNDRED TIMES his “investment” of $50 million in old Argentina bonds.  It was, in finance speak, the most successful “vulture attack” ever.

Just an hour before my wife and I landed in her native Puerto Rico last month, the island’s government had defaulted on $1 billion in bond interest payments. It was the second default in five months for the cash-strapped government whose debt now totals $72 billion. None of this was evident as we waded through the crowds in Rafael Hernández airport in Aguadilla, which had been converted into a civilian airport after the closure of Ramey Air Force Base 40 years earlier.

February 10, 2016 SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=17810 Although it gets short shrift in the history textbooks, in many ways the modern American empire can find its origins in the Spanish-American War. Today we talk to James Perloff of JamesPerloff.com about his article on the war, “Trial Run for Interventionism,” and how the bankers used […]

This week we bring you nihilistic news from the climate front, plus an update on the revolt in Turkey following the suicide bombing of Rojava supporters. Plus a Turkish comrade gives us an in depth look at the political landscape in the region. For background, check out our report on the Rojava revolution.

This week’s playlist:

Puerto Rico’s debt crisis will likely lead to the privatization of public enterprises including the electrical power authority and the water agency. The proposed solution reflects the application of neoliberal policies as if they were magic recipes for resolving a most complex situation. By Carlos Marichal | NACLA | August 18, 2015 The capitol building […]

Thursday, Nobel laureate in economics Joe Stiglitz and Mark Medish, a former Treasury official, penned on OpEd for the Wall Street Journal about the unfolding disaster in Puerto Rico, disaster that can be stopped before it spirals out of control. They are concerned that the U.S. is letting the island territory "fall prey to the claws of vulture creditors."

"America" from West Side Story. According to YouTube, this appears to be from one of the more recent Broadway Broadway performances. (Full movie scene at the end of this piece.)by Gaius PubliusBecause of the coverage of Greece and its debt problems, I've been fielding a lot of questions about Puerto Rico and its debt problems as well. Puerto Rico's problems aren't the same as the Greeks' though; similar, but not matching. For one thing, Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S. and subject to some unique-to-itself U.S. laws.