Senator Bernie Sanders wants to raise Medicaid caps and
wants a Marshall Plan for the our protectorate in Puerto Rico. While much of Congress were in Washington attempting to come up with ways to give tax breaks to corporations and wealthy folks, Sanders was touring the devastation in Puerto Rico. This is the symbol of how out of touch the Congress is to the real needs of Americans. They are debating adding $1.5 trillion to the debt, but not to repair our infrastructure or to transform Puerto Rico or to provide high speed internet to the nation or to staff treatment beds to reduce the 64,000 yearly overdose deaths but instead to reduce taxes on their donors. Anyway, Sanders saw the dangerous conditions in Puerto Rico and responded as any good legislator should do. This would provide debt relief and $146 billion in support to replace aging infrastructure. Currently, only Democrats are co-sponsors, but with all the islanders moving to the states the Republicans might want to consider the political cost of ignoring this group.
José Andrés, the great chef, was interviewed on
60 Minutes this last week. It was really great that Anderson Cooper put on his disaster black t-shirt to interview Chef
Andrés signifying that the disaster had not ended.
Andrés had served millions of meals and talked about the fact that he found no one in charge when he got to Puerto Rico. No one was in charge of distributing food, and so he went to work. It was a really good interview that I would recommend watching. We recognized the lot that he setup his food service operations. We walked past that location a number of times and wondered why the two idle food trucks were not operational. The Chef must have gotten to Puerto Rico after we left because we did not see the food operations, but we sure would have loved to enjoy his food. There were no credit card usage and long lines for the few ATMs that worked with limited power and a closed banking system making it difficult to buy food.
Andrés had walked away from the Trump Hotel in Washington because of the future President's comments on Mexico and Immigrants. So, it was good to see that he is still poking the President, but on something more meaningful.
WCPN FM 90.3 locally looked at how Cleveland is welcoming to those displaced by the Hurricane. This was good to hear of the work of Cuyahoga County and the Spanish American Committee helping the hundreds of families who came up from Puerto Rico.
NPR has also been doing a number of stories about Puerto Rico including fact checking the President's speech today about the Hurricane Recovery effort.
There was a story about the starter seed shortage as a result of the hurricane in Puerto Rico.
There was a really good story about the power situation in Puerto Rico on NPR as well.
San Juan Mayor was in New York City and was frequently interviewed.
There was another story about a company engaged in a multi-million delivering blue tarps to Puerto Rico was given to a seeming pop up company with a residential address in Florida. As a former homeless outreach guy, blue tarps are gold for those who do not use the shelters. They are also essential of plugging a leaky roof while repairs are underway. The most amazing part of this story was that FEMA did not realize these tarps were not being delivered for four weeks.
Vox is reporting nearly 1,100 deaths as a result of Hurricane Maria. The official death toll is 55 or I think 58 at this point, but that is a far undercount since coroners are not marking "Hurricane Maria" under cause of death.
Brian Davis
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