Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands Equitable Rebuild Act

Please contact your Senators and Representative to support this bill. My Resistbot:

The governmental response to this season's hurricane impact in the Caribbean has been a national embarrassment. Aid to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands has been inadequate, ineffective, slow and grudging. Every bit of aid has come only after massive waves of public outrage. Even then, the aid has been circumscribed by unnecessary and mean-spirited rules and restrictions.

Please co-sponsor and support the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands Equitable Rebuild Act. This bill represents a balanced and equitable approach to helping our fellow citizens to recover from a historically massive national disaster. It also remediates some of the effects of America's colonial treatment of these areas. The bill addresses several critical areas, including the debt crisis, reconstruction of the grid and other infrastructure, parity in Medicaid and Medicare funding, recovery of the agriculture system, fair treatment of Puerto Rican veterans, educational improvement, economic development, and environmental remediation.

Please work with the existing cosponsors to address this national scandal: Senators Sanders, Blumenthal, Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, Markey, and Warren; Representatives Plaskett, Velazquez, and Soto. Stop the slow genocide of passive aggression we are seeing in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands Equitable Rebuild Act

Ingrates

Every facet of the current administration’s response to Hurricane Maria has been late, half-hearted, and grudging. Even common sense measures such as a waiver of the Jones Act and the dispatch of USNS Comfort required massive waves of pressure from voters asking that our government remember that Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders are also US citizens. And then our current president and his supporters have the temerity to ridicule Puerto Ricans and call them ingrates.

I’m going to leave the racial aspects of this rhetoric for another day. There are no shortage of opportunities to point out the barriers our society puts in the way of black and brown people.

But let’s examine the charge of ingratitude. Whenever our country has called, Puerto Rico has willingly sacrificed the time and blood of its children at rates far out of proportion to its tiny population. Ask any veteran, and they will be able to tell you about the courage, dedication and work ethic of Puerto Rican service people. To have a charge of “ingratitude” levied by a draft dodger is doubly ironic.

And then there is the ridicule of the president for Puerto Rico’s dire economic situation. What led to the budget crisis and the debt that was the subject of his first official statement on Hurricane Maria?

As we learned in school, European colonialism sought to extract wealth from its colonies using whatever methods were necessary. Some methods were more brutal than others. But every American school child has learned to express resentment at the Stamp Act as a tool to enforce taxation without representation and celebrate the revolution that followed.

But it turns out that the US treats Puerto Rico far worse than the writers of the Stamp Act ever did. The Jones Act results in a doubling of the cost of shipping of every item that comes into Puerto Rico over water. As the president recently discovered to his apparent surprise, Puerto Rico is surrounded by water. Over time, the costs of the Jones Act to the Puerto Rican economy more than account for the total cost of the territorial debt.

Fortunately, international organizations, private citizens, and foreign governments are stepping in where the US government has dropped the ball. It is not enough, and may never be enough, but we should support those efforts.

Puerto Rico will survive. Her people are more resilient and tougher than you know. The real question is the state of our national soul.

Demand Puerto Rico Emergency Oversight Hearings

Resistbot, October 2, 2017:

Mother Jones has published the internal memo detailing the White House communication plan on the emergency in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The administration focus seems to be on declaring victory and walking away.

But people are dying. Remote areas have not been contacted. Please demand emergency hearings on recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The people have no trust in an administration whose idea of assistance is a golf trophy. Please put the wellbeing of American citizens over partisan considerations. History will not be kind to people who collaborate in a slow genocide of passive-aggression.

Fund CHIP

Resistbot: October 2, 2017

Please work in a bipartisan way to re-authorize and re-fund CHIP. Nine million children depend on CHIP for health insurance. Without CHIP, children will die. This was once a policy priority that both parties could agree on. From out here, where your constituents live, the silence and lack of action on CHIP is confounding.

Help Puerto Rico

Resistbot, October 2, 2017:

The current president took time away from his busy golf schedule to insult people who are literally struggling for their lives. That he and his administration sees bigoted insults as an appropriate response to a humanitarian nightmare is reprehensible.

We are witnessing a slow genocide by passive-aggression. History will not judge us kindly if we allow this to stand. Please do not use Puerto Rico as a partisan football. Now is the time to put country over party, to dig deep and do what is necessary to save and improve the lives of our fellow Americans.

Some policy suggestions:

1. Give Puerto Rico a permanent exemption from the Jones Act.
2. Use distributed power generation, through easily installed solar panels, as a strategy to return power to remote areas. Transmission lines would take months to replace. The people don't have months.
3. Instruct the PROMESA FOMB that their earlier-negotiated agreements with creditors are not reasonable in a post-Maria world. They must be renegotiated, and Puerto Rico needs an option to exit the debt crisis. Please be creative.
4. Ensure the adequate and timely distribution of humanitarian aid.

Trump and the Great Tax Robbery

Trump Tax Plan Goals

With great fanfare, President Trump and Congressional Republicans unveiled their new tax plan with three promises:

• The plan would not cut taxes for America’s richest households.
• The plan would slash middle class taxes.
• The plan would not increase the deficit.

Broken Promises

Unfortunately, the Trump tax plan fails on all three counts, according to the Tax Policy Center (TPC). The TPC analysis, using values from previous GOP tax proposals where the Trump proposal was unclear, showed “modestly wealthy and upper-middle-class families getting hit with tax hikes, lower-income and middle-class families provided with small tax cuts, and the very rich and big businesses benefiting far and away the most.”

Using slightly different assumptions, Lily Batchelder, a former deputy director of the National Economic Council, said "In broad brush strokes, they’re doing nothing for the bottom 35%, very little and possibly raising taxes on the middle class, and they’ve specified tax cuts for the wealthy."

And The Deficit?

As for the deficit promises, those are based on the supposed accuracy of a system known as "dynamic scoring," which the GOP hopes to use to show that federal revenue remains largely unchanged after tax cuts.

The premise behind the dynamic scoring conversation was tested in recent years, when Sam Brownback and his Republican legislature put it to the test in Kansas. Brownback promised that his tax cuts would generate so much economic growth that there would not be any significant revenue loss. In practice, revenue dropped sharply, and the Kansas government was forced to institute massive cuts to popular services and engage in a huge borrowing spree.

Many of the same tax changes from the Kansas Experiment are part of Trump's plan. Congress would be well-advised to learn from the Kansas Experiment's failure. The Kansas Experiment does have its defenders, of course. Their claims have been debunked.

Who Benefits?

So, who benefits from Trump's tax proposal? Despite his denials to the contrary, it appears that Trump would reap huge benefits from his plan.

Trump's estate stands to save an estimated $1.1B based on the repeal of the estate tax.

Based on a New York Times analysis of Trump's 2005 tax return (the most recent one available in the public record), Trump would have saved an estimated $43M on that year's return under the new rules.

Health Care in Puerto Rico

The health care cost crisis will hit Puerto Rico especially hard. Half of the population is covered by Medicaid, which is funded partly by the state and partly by a federal government that is seeking to cut those expenses.

On a more insidious note, Puerto Rico's status as a territory results in a much reduced level of support for Medicaid.

• Emigration from the island is leaving an increasingly elderly and poor population, which increases the percentage of the remaining citizens covered by Medicaid. Roughly half of the island's residents rely on Medicaid.
• The matching rate for Puerto Rico stands at 55%. For states with similar income levels (eg Mississippi), the matching rate is 76%. (Note that Puerto Rico's poverty rate in 2015 was 46%. By comparison, Mississippi, the poorest state, had a poverty rate of 22%.)
• Federal funds for matching in territories (unlike states) are capped. Since Puerto Rico is large and has a large Medicaid population, only $329M was matched in 2015, which amounted to an effective 14% matching rate.
• A bump in funding for Puerto Rico's Medicaid funding was included in the Affordable Care Act. The provision providing that funding runs out of money this year (2017). The result is that half of Puerto Rico's current Medicaid population may find themselves uninsured.

Health issues related to Hurricanes Irma and Maria are likely to increase rather than decrease health cost obligations. The PROMESA Fiscal Oversight Management Board (FOMB) is demanding a 6% reduction in health care spending. There is no way to get to that spending level aside from spending cuts that will come at a horrific human cost.

Puerto Rico would benefit from calls by Senator Sanders and others to expand Medicare eligibility to all Americans, as long as those reforms also apply to citizens living in US territories. But changes are needed now.

Calls To Action

Please contact your Senators and Representatives to demand that:

• Puerto Rico's health care reimbursements be brought into line with the rest of the country.
• The PROMESA Fiscal Oversight Management Board (FOMB) be instructed to look for a fairer reimbursement system to close the budget gap rather than looking to program cuts.
• Any health care reform to expand Medicare coverage MUST include Puerto Rico.

Trump and the Foreign Emoluments Clause

From the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has been bedeviled by questions surrounding the legality of money received from governments or foreign actors during his term of office. There are two relevant clauses in the Constitution:

• Article 2, Section 1, Clause 7 specifies that the President may not receive money from any state or federal government aside from his salary.
• Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 specifies that no members of government may be compensated by a foreign state without the approval of Congress.

On October 18, Trump’s lawyers will be defending him against a claim of violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

Congressional Democrats have sued Trump for a failure to allow Congress to weigh in on foreign payments and implications under the Foreign Emoluments Clause.

Puerto Rico Needs a Distributed Energy Grid

Business interests are already gearing up to bid on rebuilding the Puerto Rican energy grid. But that rebuilding is likely to be patterned on a model leading to a profitable privatization of the public energy utility rather than the best interests of the Puerto Rican people.

Please read the below articles. If you agree with me, please contact your Senators and Representatives. Here are some proposed talking points:

• Thank you for your support of Puerto Rico and her citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
• The Puerto Rican energy grid has been destroyed because it was designed to fail. It depends on long-distance transmission lines across mountains in a climate with frequent hurricanes.
• Business interests are able to extract ever more money from the Puerto Rican people to pay for the inevitable major repairs.
• PROMESA (the board that enforces austerity on Puerto Rico as part of the debt crisis resolution) is likely to listen to those interests over the long-term interests of the Puerto Rican people.
• Fortunately, there is a cheaper and more reliable alternative. Energy literally falls from the sky in Puerto Rico, both in the form of abundant sunshine and consistent winds generated by the mountainous terrain. A distributed generation model with battery backup and limited dependence on interconnects is the right way to go.
• Since US citizens in Puerto Rico do not have a votein Congress, we rely on you and other legislators of good conscience to protect their interests.

Here are two current articles containing information about what I'm talking about:

• Wired: Puerto Rican Grid Needs Overhaul
• Washington Post: Power Failures Spur New Interest in Renewable Energy

For more information about PROMESA (which is also worth a letter to your reps): PROMESA

Puerto Rico Needs a Permanent Exemption from the Jones Act

Resistbot, September 29. Please contact your elected representatives to push for a permanent Jones Act waiver for Puerto Rico and to ask them to support Senator McCain's move to repeal it entirely.

"Thank you for your assistance in persuading a reluctant president to issue a 10 day waiver of the Jones Act. This effort has literally saved the lives of American citizens. Given the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Maria, a 10 day waiver is not nearly enough. The application of the Jones Act to Puerto Rico may be the most prominent and impactful remnant of the US's foray into colonialism. The cost of the Jones Act to the Puerto Rican economy is almost entirely responsible for the debt that was the current president's primary focus in the aftermath of Maria. Please seek a permanent waiver of the Jones Act for Puerto Rico like the one granted to the Virgin Islands. And please join Senator McCain's effort to overturn the Jones Act entirely."

Vox article explaining the impact of the Jones Act on the Puerto Rican economy.
Reuters article on the Jones Act Repeal Effort

Trump Concentrates on Money Grab

Resistbot from September 27:

The current President's tax proposal amounts to a level of self dealing we have not seen in this country since at least Teapot Dome. The New York Times reports that he could save $1.1 billion under the proposal. The GOP Congress has enabled him to continue to flagrantly flout the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, and is now engaged in helping him avoid his tax obligations. The tax proposal seems almost singularly targeted at reducing his own tax bill. The so-called Kansas Experiment demonstrated conclusively that massive tax cuts for the rich do not result in revenue replacement through economic growth. Please oppose the current president's kleptocracy in all its forms, including his attempt to turn his time in office into a massive tax windfall.

Trump Could Save More than $1 Billion Under His New Tax Plan

Death Toll in Puerto Rico Undercounted

Maria's Death Toll in Puerto Rico Undercounted
Hope Fading Fast in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico Needs More Troops, Equipment

Resistbot, September 28:

Please ensure that General Buchanan has sufficient authority and resources to lead the joint task force in the Hurricane Maria recovery. In particular, the resources of the Northern Command should be put at his disposal. The Northern Command has the material and training to overcome the logistical challenges that have stymied the relief effort.

Puerto Rico Needs More Troops, Equipment
Trump's Time at His Golf Club Hurt the Maria Response
Additional Military Assets Being Sent

Mnuchin Removes Proof that Tax Policy Won't Work

Treasury Removes Paper at Odds With Mnuchin’s Take on Corporate-Tax Cut’s Winners

Trump Turns Racism Against Puerto Rico

Resistbot from September 26:

Once again, the current president has demonstrated just how deeply entrenched his racism is. After a weekend of going after professional athletes engaged in peaceful protest, he turned his Twitter account on Puerto Rico to express concern for the well being of Wall Street investors.

No concern for the 60% of the island still without potable water. No concern for the critical fuel shortages that are leading hospitals to close their doors. No concern for the overwhelmed first responders on the island. Instead, the self-professed "smart guy" and serial bankruptcy artist is throwing his sympathy to the Wall Street investment crowd. Please work to support the following, since it is clear that the current president has zero interest in helping brown people who speak with an accent.

1. The USNS Comfort should be dispatched immediately to help supplement the desperately overwhelmed hospital services on the island.
2. Debt relief must be implemented to provide a way out of the crisis. Leader Ryan and President Obama were able to put together a bipartisan package in the past. The current situation calls for additional action.
3. The governor is requesting additional military logistical and policing assistance in the Tuesday Washington Post. Please heed his call rather than pointing out who was already sent.
4. Secure adequate funding for the disaster relief bills for this year's hurricane season.
5. Temporarily waive the Jones act to allow direct delivery of aid rather than delaying it for transshipping.

This was not a problem for hurricanes on the mainland. It should not be a problem for Puerto Rico.

Finally, work in a bipartisan way to send messages of support to the Puerto Rican people. God knows that brown people with an accent will get zero support from the Twitter account of the current president.

Graham-Cassidy Heartless and Soulless

Resistbot message, September 25

The current changes to Graham Cassidy only make a horrific bill worse. The Republicans aren't even trying to pretend that this is about anything other than making their big donors happy. All the protections and features the GOP promised us have been stripped out, leaving us with a heartless, soulless alternative. And, in Florida, our Republican Senator does his best to insult and hide from his constituents. His excuse? That people might be angry with him? Yes, people are angry that he has failed to live up to his promises to support an inclusive and transparent process. He lied when he promised to support affordable insurance for people with preexisting conditions. I hope our junior Senator re-thinks his position and proves me wrong.

Adequate Hurricane Funding Needed

Resistbot message for September 25:

Please ensure that adequate funding and resources are provided to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria. Florida and Texas have also been impacted, but they are unlikely to disappear from the national limelight.

The islands have been devastated and cannot recover without massive amounts of aid. Since they are inaccessible, they tend to be forgotten on reputable news sources, let alone Fox and Friends. Since that show seems to drive the current administration's priorities, we need our Congressional representatives to keep this issue alive.

We're already looking at a vast humanitarian disaster. Please don't let inattention make it worse.

Please Support BiPartisan Approach on Health Care

Resistbot, September 19

The Graham-Cassidy bill would cost Florida $17.8B in Medicaid funding. It would remove preexisting conditions protections. It is a recipe to cost millions their access to health care. Rather than crippling one sixth of the nation's economy in what amounts to political dick-measuring, please support the bipartisan efforts of Senators Alexander and Murray.

Scientific Reality and the Budget

Resistbot: September 17, 2017

Climate change is a reality, it is caused by humans, and it has a disproportionate effect on Florida. Please oppose any budget cuts to FEMA, the Coast Guard, infrastructure grants, the EPA, and climate and clean energy research and planning.

Graham-Cassidy Removes Protections

Resistbot, September 17, 2017

The Graham-Cassidy bill would allow insurers to increase premiums by arbitrary amounts AFTER an existing customer becomes ill. Effectively, insurance would become meaningless. You pay in your premiums, then your policy gets yanked away by unaffordable increases just when you need it. Please oppose Graham-Cassidy and support the Alexander-Murray bipartisan process.

Graham-Cassidy the Worst Flavor of Republicare

Resistbot, September 15, 2017:

The Graham-Cassidy version of Republicare is even more punishing than previous plans put forward by the GOP Congressional majority. The funding plan would result in millions losing coverage. And the complex funding formula for its system of block grants would favor states with lower populations. There is no good justification for skewing funding that way, other than to try to buy off Senators from smaller states which arel already disproportionately represented in the Senate. The people deserve a medical care bill that focuses on delivering health care to people rather than trying to buy enough votes to pass the Senate. Please join in the bipartisan effort led by Senators Alexander and Murray to fix the system rather than undermining it for perceived partisan advantage.

Support the Dreamers through the Dream Act (S 1615 or HR 3591)

Resistbot, September 3, 2017:

Please cosponsor the Dream Act, to grant legal status to people brought to the US as children. America is a richer place thanks to the contributions of immigrants. I believe with all my heart that the opposition to the Dream Act is largely fueled by the ugliest of racist sentiments. Even Puerto Ricans locally, who are US citizens, have seen a sharp increase in racist and threatening comments from people who explicitly reference the current president's immigration policies. Hispanic people in your district see the passage of the so-called Kate's Law as part of the symbolic drumbeat that is making their daily life harder. Please send a clear message that you do not stand with the bigots.

Resistbot, August 25, 2017:

Please support the young people currently protected by DACA. These are good people, who would be valuable citizens. Give them a path to citizenship.

ICE to Destroy Evidence of Abuses

Resistbot, August 29, 2017:

ICE is planning to destroy records relating to the conditions of people in detention. This is beyond immoral. Democracy and justice require transparency. Demand that ICE preserve these records.