The continuing corruption of Puerto Rico

Outed, once again, because of focus on Hurricane Florence, about to strike the east coast of the United States near the Carolinas this week.

Whilst on Twitter, I came across the Tweet below which contains important information, attributions and series of photographs. This should make you sick on any number of levels. The human level, the compassion level, the corruption level and the incompetence of Puerto Rico.

I last wrote about Puerto Rico’s corruption involving its Leftist Demorat Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto — who lied baldly to Geraldo Rivera, on October 3rd of 2017. Soto continually claimed that she was getting no help from President Trump. We know that was a lie as documented in my post.

More information has been revealed. First, the Tweet that captured my attention.

Then there was this video from David Begnaud himself:

Here are the enlarged photos of millions of water bottles still stagnating, falling apart, on the aforementioned Puerto Rico runway.

This is, of course, a humanitarian disaster of incredible proportions. It is also a massive, rampant and continuing waste of US taxpayer dollars — money coming from your pocket — so that certain people in Puerto Rico, for political purposes or rank, naked corruption, can point their fingers in damnation at the people who tried to help.

Let’s be blunt. FEMA is not, I repeat: NOT a first responder. They only assist in the aftermath. Local agencies and authorities are responsible for themselves and for coordination with FEMA if an event can be anticipated. Once supplies have been provided, it is up to the local agencies to take the ball and run, with FEMA and other outlets as assistance.

The Puerto Rican situation wasn’t because of a DC dropped ball. It was because of localized ignorance, apathy, corruption or a host of political motivations to include the various island unions that were supposed to be tasked with the movement of aid.

Stop with the “poor Puerto Rico” crap.

BZ

 

Leftist Puerto Rico mayor lies to America

The American Media Maggots create false memes and stories with regard to Trump and Puerto Rico because they so want it to be true.

Anything to denigrate President Donald Trump.

The Promoted Leftist Meme of the Week is that President Trump hates Puerto Rico and is doing his best to ensure these brown non-Americans receive little if any aid.

I swear to God, I’ll wager you could actually pass that line to the bulk of Leftists, Antifa, American Media Maggots and even a few Demorats. They’d actually bite.

The Leftist Demorat Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto lied directly to Geraldo Rivera’s face, he himself no massive supporter of the right.

“The mayor’s wrong about that.” Hold the thought. Because here is what the mayor of San Juan alleged, from the GatewayPundit.com:

San Juan Mayor to Liberal Media: We Are Getting No Help From Trump – As She Stands In Front of Pallets of Aid

by Jim Hoft

Just four days ago San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto praised FEMA for the work on the island.

Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Irma and then Hurricane Maria a categaory 5 monster hurricane two weeks later.

Mayor Caren Yuliz Cruz Soto went on a tirade against President Trump on Friday.

San Juan Mayor: “I’m mad as hell because my people’s lives are at stake… We are dying, and you (Trump) are killing us with inefficiency”

The San Juan mayor accused FEMA and President Trump of offering her no help.
She said this in front of a pallet of US aid.

In the video below where she criticizes Trump, Mayor Soto is standing in front of pallet after pallet of water and supplies. In a warehouse. Full of supplies.

MSNBC lovingly picked up that ball and ran with it.

After the American Media Maggots piled on to that story, counter-stories began to emerge, many more in number.

There are more videos which, naturally, you won’t see covered by the AMM, such as this one.

Above, a stand-down was orchestrated by anti-Trump forces using disgruntled Puerto Rican truck drivers as tools of obstruction. Tools of the Left. This is what happened, from GatewayPundit.com:

SMOKING GUN: San Juan Teamsters Didn’t Show Up for Work to Distribute Relief Supplies – US Aid ROTTING at Ports

by Jim Hoft

The liberal media is pounding President Trum over the suffering in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

The San Juan Mayor slammed President Trump for ignoring the suffering people of Puerto Rico.

Now we know why the people have no aid.
The Teamsters Union drivers did not show up to work.
Only 20% of drivers arrived at the ports to distribute the relief supplies.

Conservative Treehouse reported:

Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment:

…They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed.

“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government”.. (link)

More… here.

The union is reportedly not allowing drivers to remove goods from the Port of San Juan.

Imagine. The Port of San Juan was the problem. But wait; there’s more. Additional people chirped up. From DailyCaller.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Fellow Puerto Rico Mayor Rips San Juan Mayor — ‘She’s Not Participating In Any Meetings’

by Alex Pfeiffer and Peter Hasson

The mayor of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico cast serious doubt Saturday on the claims made by San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has repeatedly attacked President Trump and accused him of abandoning Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Guaynabo’s mayor, Angel Perez, said in an interview with The Daily Caller that his experience with the federal government has been different from Cruz’s, in part because — unlike Cruz — he has been participating in meetings with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other federal agencies.

You mean cooperation could mean the difference between success and failure? Mayor Soto had to actually do something to further aid? There were meetings? Meetings she really had to attend?

Cruz has repeatedly accused Trump and the federal government of abandoning Puerto Rico. She demanded in a press conference on Friday that Trump do more to help the island, adding that “we are going to see is something close to a genocide” if more is not done.

Mayor Perez told TheDC that the story Cruz is telling the media doesn’t mesh with what he has seen from the federal government.

“My experience is different. I have been participating in different meetings at the headquarters of FEMA and our government and the help is coming in and right now my experience is different from hers. I’m receiving help from the government, we are receiving assistance from FEMA, I got people over here helping us with applications for the people that have damage in their houses. And we have here in Guaynabo, we have thousands of people that lost partially or totally their houses,” said Perez, who is a member of Puerto Rico’s New Progressive Party.

Things then went from bad to worse when this story came out, via GotNews.com:

BREAKING: Puerto Rican Cop Says San Juan Mayor Is Sabotaging Hurricane Response For Political Reasons

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz is deliberately withholding food and supplies from her hurricane-ravaged city as part of a publicity stunt, according to a bombshell video currently circulating across the internet.

The video features a panicked female voice who identifies herself as a police officer from Guaynabo, a suburb of San Juan, calling into a New York City Hispanic language radio station. The caller accuses Cruz, San Juan’s anti-Trump mayor with a penchant for supporting and befriending convicted terrorists, of staggering negligence and dereliction of duty in the wake of Hurricane Maria:

What? Political motivations by a Leftist-leaning mayor? How odd; I don’t seem to recall that having occurred before.

These allegations appear to confirm President Trump’s earlier criticisms of Yulin. The President has made clear that he thinks her response to the hurricane has been a disaster, and that her frequent, televised jabs at him are politically motivated.

Moreover, this police officer’s account corroborates Trump’s claim that the federal government’s response to the hurricane so far has been timely and impressive, and it is the various levels of Puerto Rican government that deserve the blame.

“If the US government doesn’t get involved, they will finish us,” the Puerto Rican cop pleads. “We’re going to end up worse than Cuba, Africa, or worse than Haiti.”

Even the HuffingtonPost.com started to come around.

U.S. MILITARY ON PUERTO RICO: “THE PROBLEM IS DISTRIBUTION” AND HERE’S WHY

by Penelope Jean Hayes

“It’s picture perfect devastation. The hurricane came through the middle of the island. 100% of the island is without power. As a Puerto Rican it troubles me to hear the misinformation about the crux of the issue.”

Speaking today exclusively and live from Puerto Rico, is Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts in the U.S. commonwealth with a population of more than 3 million. Since the ‘apocalyptic’ Cat 4 storm tore into the spine of Puerto Rico on September 20, Col. Valle has been both duty and blood bound to help.

Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground. “I have family here. My parents’ home is here. My uncles, aunts, cousins, are all here. As a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the problem has nothing to do with the U.S. military, FEMA, or the DoD.”

Oh no. More corroboration that Mayor Soto is a partisan, lying hack for Leftists who is willing to jeopardize her own residents.

“The aid is getting to Puerto Rico. The problem is distribution. The federal government has sent us a lot of help; moving those supplies, in particular, fuel, is the issue right now,” says Col. Valle. Until power can be restored, generators are critical for hospitals and shelter facilities and more. But, and it’s a big but, they can’t get the fuel to run the generators.

They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed.

“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government,” says Col. Valle.

Again, very odd. Isn’t that what other people are saying? And what the American Media Maggots are not saying?

Then this from FoxNews.com from a Puerto Rican CEO who says, well, the government of Puerto Rico is rotten and incompetent. That’s never good in an emergency.

Puerto Rican CEO: Local government ‘corrupt’ and ‘totally inexperienced’ in Maria cleanup

The head of an international engineering firm in Puerto Rico said in an editorial Saturday that when the time came to send 50 of his engineers to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, he bypassed local officials and went straight to FEMA.

The reason, said Jorge Rodriguez, the CEO of PACIV, in an editorial in the New York Post, is that “for the last 30 years, the Puerto Rican government has been completely inept at handling regular societal needs, so I just don’t see it functioning in a crisis like this one.”

“Even before the hurricane hit, water and power systems were already broken. And our $118 billion debt crisis is a result of government corruption and mismanagement.”

Puerto Ricans elected a new governor last November but, Rodriguez charged, he was inexperienced and had never been responsible for a budget.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello cannot exactly count on those around him either, Rodriguez asserted.

“His entire administration is totally inexperienced and they have no clue how to handle a crisis of this magnitude,” said Rodriguez, who has a graduate business degree from Harvard Business School and was named a “Most Distinguished Graduate” by the University of Puerto Rico.

Translation: in many ways this is a self-inflicted wound. And we wonder why Puerto Rico went bankrupt? The clouds are parting, yes?

The Department of Defense also wrote:

DoD Accelerates Hurricane Relief, Response Efforts in Puerto Rico

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2017 — The Defense Department is accelerating relief operations and the deployment of additional response capacity to Puerto Rico to meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency‘s need for a comprehensive commodities distribution network able to reach isolated communities and provide sustained medical support for the island’s residents, Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement this morning.

I wonder who would motivate that? President Trump perhaps?

Bloomberg.com also covered the issue.

No, Trump Didn’t Botch the Puerto Rico Crisis

A Q&A with former Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix on smart preparations the White House and Pentagon made for the looming storm.

by Tobin Harshaw

“Send in the cavalry.”

That was the advice retired Army General Russel Honore gave President Donald Trump this week about responding to the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. And Honore’s opinion was well informed: In 2005, President George W. Bush sent him to bail out New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina’s 30-foot storm surge overran its levees. And by Honore’s judgment, Trump has fallen short: “This is a hit on White House decision making,” he told Bloomberg News.

“The logistics chain is broken and only the U.S. military can stand it up,” insisted Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “And it is truly my hope that at some point in the next few hours the generals that are down there now, someone with … two stars, or three stars on their shoulder, will be able to be the ultimate decision maker until we get basic logistics.”

TH: So, it seems like everybody has blasted Trump administration’s response to the Puerto Rico crisis. Has that criticism been fair?

JH: No, I don’t think so. First of all, there was a fair amount of anticipatory action that is not being recognized. Amphibious ships including the light amphibious carriers Kearsarge and Wasp and the amphibious landing ship dock Oak Hill were at sea and dispatched to Puerto Rico ahead of the hurricane’s impact.

Oh wait. You mean to say the Trump administration was planning ahead of Hurricane Maria, as he was ahead with Hurricane Harvey?

Then there was this terrible video. Why terrible? Because President Trump told the truth.

34 people dead in Puerto Rico via Hurricane Maria vs the final death toll via Hurricane Katrina, which was at 1,836, primarily from Louisiana (1,577) and Mississippi (238). More than half of these victims were senior citizens.

Are you beginning to see a running theme here? Let’s be honest: Demorat/Leftist Mayor Soto disliked President Trump way before the storm. Soto wants independence for Puerto Rico. I say: they should get it. You want to cut the cord? I am all for that, including the cord cutting of cash.

Now, from the WashingtonTimes.com, this headline (October 12th, 2017):

San Juan mayor accuses Trump of ‘genocide’ after hurricane

by Stephen Dinan

The House overcame a conservative rebellion Thursday to pass a new round of disaster relief, saying the $36.5 billion is needed to replenish funds that are quickly depleting in the wake of hurricanes that have battered Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The overwhelming 353-69 vote came even as President Trump suggested federal emergency workers cannot remain in Puerto Rico “forever” — and Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, accused Mr. Trump of “genocide” for what she said was an antipathy toward her island territory.

“I ask every American that has love, and not hate in their hearts, to stand with Puerto Rico and let this President know we WILL NOT BE LEFT TO DIE,” the mayor said in a statement she sent to Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, and asked him to publicize on Capitol Hill.

“I ask the United Nations, UNICEF and the world to stand with the people of Puerto Rico and stop the genocide that will result from the lack of appropriate action of a President that just does not get it because he has been incapable of looking in our eyes and seeing the pride that burns fiercely in our hearts and souls,” the mayor continued.

Then there is this, the newest, from October 16th, in which Puerto Rico Secretary of State Luis G. Rivera Marin discovers American aid purposely pitched into a dumpster.

Politics, anyone? Bueller? At the expense of Puerto Ricans in desperate need?

Damn. Don’t you hate it when money cannot go on indefinitely? Particularly to a spendthrift, corrupt and unaccountable entity like Puerto Rico? Hey PR, where did our earlier American Taxpayer cash go? Crickets?

Note to American Media Maggots: as the X-Files used to say, “the truth is out there.” You just have to want to find it and every once in awhile jump on the internet. Check a few sources. Contrast and compare. You know. Do your jobs.

Dammit, sorry. That’s too much to expect. You’ve gotta keep your phony-baloney jobs. Despite the fact that your bosses are firing you at a record pace, your once-credible foundations are crumbling, you’re bleeding readers and hemorrhaging dollars.

If an ancient fat guy with a shameless radio contract and a blog can do it, I bet you could too, AMM.

If you tried.

Two words.

Fake. News.

BZ