https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/jones-act-waived.html

In this way, the American taxpayer subsidizes American employers on the island, and American companies selling stuff to the island. And the local government, desperate to employ its people, offers the yanqui companies tax breaks and leans on the unions so the US firms will invest there. Its cheaper to ship raw material to PR, build the product there, and then ship it to market than it is to pay CONUS wages to CONUS workers. And the “economic development funding”, (foreign aid, also provided by the US taxpayer), goes into building up the tourist industry and its supporting infrastructure so the Americanos can get some Caribbean strange and the locals can make beds, mix drinks and buss tables.

CAN YOU SPELL ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM?
Its not done with gunboats, or bayonets, its done with dollars. We owe these people, big time. If we don’t help them out of this mess, no matter how much it costs us, history will never forgive us.

Which reminds me about a stopped clock I’ve got to wind. We can take comfort though, from the fact that Trump hesitated before doing this, and almost sided with the shippers who wanted the Jones Act to remain in effect…so despite what might appear to be a glimmer of humanity, Trump is still the champion of all the angry old white guys.

Incidentally, did you notice how many of those news reports Oliver used to document his rant came from AlJazeera? Could that be because the US Press doesn’t really cover adequately the full extent and scope of US business activities overseas, and the way they are facilitated and abetted by US Government legislation and trade policy? This is the kind of “Deal” Mr Trump is always talking about.

There is one major ripoff Oliver left out. About a hundred years ago, Congress passed a law making it illegal for any cargo to be shipped into Puerto Rico except on US Flag ships manned by American crews. The result is that Puerto Ricans pay the highest shipping costs for maritime merchandise because the US merchant marine is one of the smallest and most expensive in the world. This law applies to all US ports, but in CONUS there are alternatives to ocean shipping. PR is an island, they have no choice but to pay extra for anything because they are an island where very little is produced. Most US companies register their ships in places like Panama and Liberia so they don’t have to pay their crews American Seafarer’s Union wages, and so they can skimp on safety equipment and regulations. Right now, if some other country wanted to ship emergency or relief supplies to Puerto Rico, technically, it would be illegal under US Law.

The major employers when I was there were labor-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals and machine assembly because of PR’s low salaries and tax advantages. Cheap labor brought American industry in. So not only were American workers losing jobs, but Puerto Rican ones were being exploited.

If you scratch, just under the surface, things start making themselves clearer. You don’t need Hessians in Red Coats or a tax on tea to have a colony.

Puertorriquena

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k

There are a half million new Puerto Rican immigrants in Florida alone who have come here escaping the troubles on the island over the last decade or so. That’s more than the Cubans who came here in the 1960s. New arrivals will have family and established communities here ready to welcome them. And they all vote Democrat. They can’t vote for Congress or President on the island, but they will be able to do so once they move here.

Maybe he will build a wall to keep them out.

Of course, if there is no god, or if god is unaware of us, or indifferent to us, or even if he has some Plan that somehow requires wholesale suffering of the righteous, then the disaster makes sense. Nature is random and chaotic and the massacre of innocents and the thriving of the wicked is just what you might expect from a random and chaotic Universe.

But if that’s the case, then prayer makes no sense at all.

PRAYERS DON’T HELP. They only make the people giving them feel like they have done something when they have done nothing. Asking people to pray discourages them from sending real help, be it a donation of money or time.