It is no secret that millions of fellow human beings-- Americans-- in Puerto Rico suffer, and untold numbers die daily, because our ‘leaders’ in the GOP cabal occupying Washington choose to ignore the still unfolding tragedy, and abdicate all responsibilities to offer aid (I’d say they haven’t abandoned morality, because you can’t abandon what you never had in the first place).
It should come as no surprise that rather than address the urgent needs of those who call Puerto Rico home, the GOP is instead ensuring its industry patrons are looked after (even risking the health and safety of those on the mainland, if that’s what it takes):
How Neglect of Puerto Rico Sparked a National IV Bag Shortage
Feb. 20, 2018
IV bags, simple plastic bags that are used to mix and deliver a liquid medication or salt water to patients through an intravenous line, are involved in nearly every facet of patient care in a hospital. Health-care professionals use IV bags to administer drugs and to hydrate people who have difficulty swallowing liquids. They are one of the most basic medical items in a hospital: Many people stay in hospitals because they are unable to self-administer medicine, and IV bags are often the easiest and safest way for those patients to ingest their drugs.
There have been intermittent IV bag and fluid shortages across the country since 2014, but the hurricane amplified the problem. Dr. O’Neil Britton, chief medical officer at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, one of the country’s top hospitals, tells The American Prospect that while he’d seen other medical device or drug shortages, “they’ve never been this persistent or widespread, and it’s never affected the entire industry on this scale.”
About 30 percent of Puerto Rico’s GDP depends on exporting pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Two factories owned by Baxter International, a health-care product manufacturer, were flooded and temporarily shut down; in November, at least two of the plants were running—on backup generators. The recovery has been very slow across the island: 25 percent of Puerto Ricans still have no power. The Trump administration has been roundly criticized for its lackluster response to the disaster. The official hurricane death toll stands at 64, but outside groups have estimated that as many as 1,000 people died.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has approved plans to allow Baxter and other companies to import IV bags from their other facilities in Brazil and Mexico. But until those new supplies start to flow into hospitals, doctors have been forced to improvise. According to Dr. Paul Biddinger, MGH’s disaster medicine director, the facility uses various strategies to deal with the shortages, including substituting drugs usually delivered by an IV with medications that can be injected with a syringe. (emphasis added)
The origins of this humanitarian disaster stretch back decades, and are the result of strategic neglect and exploitation for maximum profit:
Puerto Rico’s $123 Billion Bankruptcy is the Cost of U.S. Colonialism
May 9, 2017
Puerto Rico is the largest overseas territory still under the sovereign control of the United States, and it is the most important colonial possession in this nation’s history. That relationship produced uncommon profits for American subsidiaries on the island for more than a century, even as the federal government kept claiming that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, created in 1952, was a self-governing territory. But now, with a Washington-appointed board directly overseeing the island’s economy, and with a pivotal Supreme Court decision last year affirming that Congress continues to exercise sovereign power over Puerto Rico, the mask of self-governance has been removed.
The old commonwealth is effectively dead. Absent a huge infusion of U.S. public dollars to prop up its collapsing economy, a scenario that is nearly impossible with a Trump White House and a Republican-controlled Congress, that relationship cannot be revived…
Civil society groups contend that the plunder of the Puerto Rican people through predatory and even illegal bond deals that island politicians concocted together with top Wall Street firms will now be exposed.
Amazingly, the 23-page petition that the federal government’s own financial control board filed in U.S. District Court in San Juan reached the exact same conclusion that Puerto Rico’s former Gov. Alejandro García Padilla reached back in June 2015 — that the island’s debt is “not payable.”…
On an island that has lost 10 percent of its population in the last 10 years, where 46 percent of the population lives below the U.S. poverty level, where the unemployment rate is more than 11 percent, and where the labor force participation hovers around 40 percent, lawmakers in Congress have kept insisting on greater austerity from Puerto Rico’s population. The reality is such dire conditions would never be tolerated among U.S. citizens in any other jurisdiction, yet they are allowed to persist in Puerto Rico. (emphasis added)
It is tolerated, of course, because Puerto Rico is home to millions of people whose skin is darker than milk, and whose native tongue is not English.
The neo-colonialist framework for extracting wealth from Puerto Rico is facilitated by predatory and usurious debt financing:
In Puerto Rico, a skirmish over how much debt the bankrupt island can handle
Feb. 20, 2018
The price of Puerto Rican commonwealth bonds have soared since Congress passed the rescue package. Though the bankrupt territory has halted interest payments on its bonds, investors — including hedge funds — drove up the price of the general obligation bond due 2035 by 11 percent on Wednesday. The average price of the bond Frida was 32.01 cents on the dollar, up 26 percent for the week…
“We need to be unambiguously clear that the money Congress approved was for rebuilding Puerto Rico and to aid its citizens, not to line the pockets of Wall Street investors that bought the Island’s debt on the cheap,” Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Friday. “It would be a moral outrage if money intended for Puerto Rico’s vulnerable was siphoned off to creditors and vulture funds.”…
“Certainly, federal funds earmarked for recovery and reconstruction should not under any circumstances be utilized for debt service,” said Sergio Marxuach, public policy director for the Center for a New Economy, an independent Puerto Rican think tank. “In theory that surplus could be used to pay some debt service to bondholders,” but, he said, “it would be a big mistake to use that to service the debt. The number one priority should be to grow the economy, and any such surpluses should be directed to public investment.”…
Marxuach said that the analysis done by his center concludes that Puerto Rico should not pay any debt during the next five years and that the bankruptcy court should agree to wipe out 70 percent to 80 percent of outstanding debts.
The island’s creditors do not agree.
“Although every strained municipality would love to avoid paying its debts, Puerto Rico’s government cannot expect creditors to accept and trust a document built on fiscal metrics that are analytically flawed and completely inconsistent with historical precedent,” said a statement from the group of creditors that includes Ambac and MBIA.
We might expect racism and piracy from Wall Street, but do we expect the same from venerable Ivy League universities? We should:
Yale University Under the Spotlight for its Investment in Puerto Rican Debt
Feb. 20, 2018
A COALITION OF activists uncovered late last year that Yale University’s $27.2 billion endowment had a direct investment in Puerto Rican debt instruments through a Cayman Islands-registered shell corporation. It is believed to be the first documented proof of a university endowment holding Puerto Rican bonds directly in its portfolio. But the investment manager that maintained the bonds, Cyrus Capital, quietly sold them in January, just as critics were finalizing a campaign to condemn Yale for profiting from the crisis in Puerto Rico.
Yale’s endowment still has hundreds of millions in the care of at least four hedge fund managers that carry Puerto Rican bonds among their investments. In addition, Yale’s top alumni donor, Charles Johnson, is the retired board chair and largest shareholder in Franklin Resources, which holds $1.8 billion in Puerto Rican debt…
In order to pay bondholders, who include hedge funds backed by universities such as Yale and Harvard, Puerto Rico is slashing spending on education on the island, while pursuing extreme versions of privatization…
Yale did not respond to a request for comment. The school has previously said that its bond holdings are “ethically appropriate.”
The coalition hopes additional pressure will nudge the university into a leadership role. “I think we’ve seen in the past few years that issues of race are a real sore spot,” said Decker. “Puerto Rico is a bunch of issues, but a racial justice issue as well. There’s more appetite on campus now than I’ve seen before for holding Yale accountable on this.”
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico had its requests for a $300 million emergency loan for its power authority rejected, which officials fear will lead to rolling blackouts before power has even been fully restored. Several groups of Puerto Rican creditors released a letter last week complaining that the island’s latest fiscal plan allows the government to spend too much on payroll and not enough on repaying debt.
“As a Puerto Rican living in Connecticut, I am concerned about the role that Yale has in investing in hedge funds and corporations that are hurting my island,” said Ilanis Hernandez, a youth leader with Make the Road Connecticut. (emphasis added)
Making money not in spite of, but directly resulting from, the suffering and death of fellow human beings.
That’s the conservative economic creed, and along with no longer camouflaged racism, it’s the GOP platform for the U.S.