One Step Forward, Two Steps Back in Puerto Rico

We will start with the one step forward and the good news, public schools are starting to open in Puerto Rico.  This applies to schools in San Juan and the far western edge of the Island.  Many of the schools do not have power, but it is now five weeks after the Hurricane.  Many of the schools that I saw were well built and seemed as though they were in pretty good shape.  In fact, I wondered why many of these schools were not being used as recovery centers or cooling centers.  Any return to some routine is only going to help the kids shake off the trauma.

Then the Washington Post released a report on a strange contract with a tiny Montana power company that received a $300 million contract. This was a company that had 2 employees when Maria hit Puerto Rico.  The strange part of this story is why the Puerto Rico electric company (PREPA) does not have a mutual aid contract with other power companies like the rest of the US power companies have in place.

"The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities — including those in Florida and Texas recently — to recover quickly after natural disasters.

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another — but only, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said."

The next story was from Vox Media about the power situation in Puerto Rico and how slow repairs have gone.   “People need to understand this is not something that can be turned on tomorrow,” José Sánchez, who is leading the Army Corps of Engineers’ program to restore the grid, tells me in an interview in San Juan. “This something that’s going to take months to fix. We’re dealing with a very tender system, a very sensitive system, and it will require a lot of work to get it back up.”

The Washington Post editorialized that the Government of Puerto Rico needs to get its act together. Amen!

Congress did pass new disaster legislation, but how are we paying for all this?  They want to give us all tax cuts so how are we paying for Harvey, Irma, Wildfires and Irma?  Can't we increase the estate tax and increase the tax on the wealthy to pay for these disasters? We could lower the corporate rate to 25% and get rid of all the loopholes.  We need more revenue to rebuild Puerto Rico.  The Congress only approved $36.5 billion for all these disasters, a small down payment on the need in all these areas.

Both Chicago and Cleveland were able to find transportation of all the donations to Puerto Rico both finding out how expensive it is to transport to the island.  The National Food Bank network, I-X Center, MetroHealth worked together in Cleveland to get thousands of pounds of supplies to Puerto Rico yesterday.  There was a depressing story in the Washington Post about sending Junk Food to Puerto Rico that a buyer would find at the check out of a convenience store.  The Mayor of San Juan was disgusted that the federal government was sending this fake food down to her people.

by Brian Davis