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‘Another hurricane?’ How climate disasters can give us compassion fatigue

by LPRKirbygpyva Posted on August 28, 2019

Hurricane season is just getting started, and some U.S. politicians (cough cough TRUMP cough cough) already seem to be suffering from climate-related compassion fatigue.

In response to the news that then-Tropical Storm Dorian (now a Category 1 hurricane) was on its way toward Puerto Rico, President Trump seemed to blame the U.S. territory — or at least the weather gods — for the island’s repeated weather-related woes.

“Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico. Will it ever end?” Trump tweeted on Monday. He went on to lament a falsely inflated federal price tag associated with recovery from Hurricane Maria, which hit the island as a Category 4 storm in 2017. “Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all-time record of its kind for ‘anywhere.’” (Just to set the record straight, Congress has allocated only about $42 billion to Maria recovery — and only about $14 billion of the money has reached the island so far.)

Hurricane Dorian, which is expected to hit the island on Wednesday, is also giving Puerto Ricans a sense déjà vu. But in contrast to the mainland’s mild attitude of annoyance at the repeat event, the idea of another storm hitting the island is ramping up local concerns. Puerto Rico’s newly minted governor Wanda Vazquez declared a state of emergency as the island is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Maria. “Puerto Ricans on the island have a serious case of PTSD,” Timmy Boyle, the spokesman for environmental justice group ACASE, told Grist. “Right now, there are long lines in gas stations and empty shelves at supermarkets, especially with water.”

Hurricane Maria was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, that killed almost 3,000 people. Some residents are still living under blue tarps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pulling a whopping $271 million in funding from FEMA disaster relief to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers on the southern border

The scientific consensus is that climate change will contribute to more frequent extreme weather events — be they hurricanes in the Caribbean, heatwaves in Europe, or flooding in Bangladesh. On a global scale, these events showcase how climate change is becoming an ever-increasing problem. Serialized emergencies increase a place’s vulnerability to climate change by inflicting new stress before infrastructure or morale have fully recovered from the last tragedy. Yet those outside affected zones can start to unconsciously dismiss repeated disasters as simply “the new normal.”

Compassion fatigue is a phenomenon wherein people withdraw after long periods of taking on others’ emotional burdens. As a person becomes overexposed to bad news, they can become more indifferent toward that type of suffering. And according to some experts, the opposite effect — heightened climate anxiety — can be just as paralyzing. In a 2017 Atlantic article, journalist Julie Beck argued that climate anxiety can cause people to turn inward, focusing on their own emotional state versus the plight of others.

“We make the assumption that if people are aware of how urgent and frightening and scary these issues are, then people will automatically translate that into ‘Oh my gosh, what kind of actions can I take?’” Renee Lertzman, a psychologist who studies climate-change communication told Beck. “That’s just simply not the case.”

That lack of empathy, whether it’s a result of compassion fatigue, crippling climate anxiety, or just being kind of a jerk, is bad enough when it’s coming from your fellow Americans. But as Puerto Ricans know, it’s worse when it’s directed at you from the commander in chief. “Trump shows no compassion for us,” said Jessica Montero Negrón, a community leader in the rural municipality of Utuado, speaking in her native Spanish. “People here are really scared.”

The solution, at least for locals, is to err on the side of being safe rather than sorry and fight harder for resources when it comes to future storms. On CNN, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz — who has a history of sparring with Trump — said, “It seems like some people have learned the lessons of the past or are willing to say that they didn’t do right by us the first time and they are trying to do their best. That is not the case with the president of the United States.”

“We are not going to be concerned by, frankly, his behavior, his lack of understanding, and it is ludicrous. So get out of the way, President Trump, and let people who can do the job get the job done.”

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‘Another hurricane?’ How climate disasters can give us compassion fatigue

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Hillary Clinton Wins the Puerto Rico Democratic Primary

by CassandGrassi Posted on June 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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With two days to go before Hillary Clinton likely secures the 2,383 delegates she needs to win the Democratic presidential nomination, voters in Puerto Rico handed Clinton a victory on Sunday. When the race was called by the major networks, Clinton was winning 64 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 34 percent, and a likely majority of the territory’s 60 pledged delegates.

On Tuesday, Democratic voters will go to the polls in six states, including delegate-rich California and New Jersey. Barring overwhelming victories for Sanders, the contests will ensure that Clinton wins both a majority of pledged delegates and a majority of overall delegates, assuming her support does not erode significantly among party-insider superdelegates.

But even if its vote won’t change the outcome of the race, Puerto Rico was in the relatively rare position of playing more than a bit role in this year’s election because of its colossal debt crisis. Candidates from both parties weighed in on whether the US government should allow the island to restructure debts under US bankruptcy laws. Puerto Rico’s government, which owes more than $72 billion, has already defaulted three times on various debt payments.

Clinton and Sanders have different opinions on legislation that would help Puerto Rico restructure its debt but would also create a financial review board with oversight of the island’s finances, harking back to the island’s colonial roots. Clinton said she had “serious concerns” about the review board but urged swift passage. Sanders, on the other hand, said the bill would prioritize creditors over Puerto Rico’s residents and encouraged other Democrats not to support it.

Puerto Ricans are American citizens who can vote in primaries but not in the general election while they live on the island. However, if they move to the mainland United States, they can vote in the general election. That’s made Puerto Ricans a key voting bloc in places like Florida and New York and forced the presidential candidates to devote more attention than usual to the island and its struggles.

On Saturday, the US Virgin Islands also held its Democratic caucuses, and Hillary Clinton easily won the 12 delegates that were at stake.

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Hillary Clinton Wins the Puerto Rico Democratic Primary

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Marco Rubio Turns His Back on Puerto Rico, at His Own Peril

by Tabatha0432 Posted on January 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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In early September, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio campaigned in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, on the same day—a nod to the island’s importance in the November presidential election, thanks to a surging population of Puerto Ricans in Florida, the mother of all swing states. But the two candidates came bearing very different visions for how the island territory should cope with its severe debt crisis. At a roundtable event, Clinton backed bankruptcy reforms that would spare the island from the worst ravages of austerity at the cost of profits for its Wall Street creditors. “You can’t fix your economy through austerity,” she said. At his own rally across the city, Rubio took Wall Street’s side. The Associated Press reported that Rubio, speaking in Spanish, “railed against giving Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection.”

Rubio wasn’t always a vocal opponent of bankruptcy protections for Puerto Rico. And his current stance is one that, should he become the Republican nominee, would be hard to explain to the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican voters in Florida.

Puerto Rico is currently embroiled in dire financial troubles. The island is $72 billion in debt. In August, Puerto Rico began missing payments to its lenders. Last week, it defaulted on $174 million in payments to creditors. Meanwhile, the island’s economy is floundering, with unemployment at 12 percent. The governor, Democrat Alejandro García Padilla, has repeatedly requested that Congress grant cities and public utilities in Puerto Rico access to Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which would give them the same tools to restructure debt that are available in the 50 states.

Like residents of the District of Columbia, Puerto Ricans lack full congressional representation. The island’s lone representative in Congress is Pedro Pierluisi, who is not allowed a vote on the final passage of legislation even though, as he likes to point out, he represents more people than any other member of the House of Representatives. Since the island doesn’t send anyone to the Senate, Pierluisi has to court friends on the other side of the Capitol to push for Puerto Rico’s interests. “My natural allies in the Senate are the senators who have a significant Puerto Rican presence in their states,” Pierluisi says, ticking off New York’s Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Florida’s Bill Nelson and Rubio as his usual Senate partners.

Typically, Rubio has backed Pierluisi’s proposals, he says. In 2013, for example, Rubio introduced in the Senate Pierluisi’s bill to allow Puerto Rico to receive funds to implement electronic medical records.

But that alliance crumbled when Pierluisi asked for help with the island’s debt crisis. “He has supported us on other areas,” Pierluisi says of Rubio. “But not on Chapter 9.”

Democrats approached Rubio’s office earlier this year about co-sponsoring a Chapter 9 bill in the Senate, and they were initially hopeful that he’d sign on when his office didn’t offer any policy objections, according to a Democratic aide in the Senate. But as the process dragged on, Rubio backed away without offering any alternatives or trying to find a compromise. “They ultimately didn’t have substantive issues with what we were talking about but couldn’t commit,” the aide said.

Last month, the New York Times detailed how Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut had initially tried to woo Rubio to join the Democrats’ bill, only for Rubio to back away just three weeks after a fundraiser with a hedge fund founder who had a stake in Puerto Rico’s debt. In November, Fusion reported that six hedge fund executives who hold Puerto Rican debt have donated to Rubio’s presidential campaign.

While perhaps good for his presidential fundraising, Rubio’s decision to back away from bankruptcy protections for the island could haunt him. The same economic turmoil that created the conflict between the island’s government and Wall Street has also spurred the biggest migration of Puerto Ricans to the US mainland since the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, Puerto Ricans headed mainly for New York and New Jersey. This time, about a third of Puerto Ricans coming to the mainland are landing in Florida, an important swing state in this year’s presidential race.

Today, there are more Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland (5.1 million) than in Puerto Rico (3.5 million). As the US economy rebounded from the Great Recession but the island’s economy remained stagnant, migration to the mainland accelerated. Today, there are about 1 million Puerto Ricans in Florida—likely at least 100,000 more than in 2012, although exact figures are hard to come by. That increase is greater than President Barack Obama’s 73,000-vote margin of victory in Florida in 2012.

The Puerto Rican vote in Florida is mostly Democratic, although there are opportunities for Republicans to make inroads into the community. Obama won 77 percent of the Puerto Rican vote in Florida in 2008 and 84 percent in 2012. But it wasn’t too long ago that Jeb Bush won the backing of a majority of Puerto Ricans in his 2002 gubernatorial race, by diligently courting their votes. (Bush, incidentally, supports both Puerto Rican statehood and bankruptcy protections.) In 2010, Rubio significantly outperformed both John McCain’s 2008 campaign and Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign among Puerto Rican voters. If he is the nominee in November, Rubio will have a built-in advantage with Puerto Ricans due to “the Hispanic heritage he brings, the ability to speak the language, and the fact that he’s from Florida,” says Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Florida.

The newest arrivals from Puerto Rico represent an even bigger opportunity for Republicans. Unlike those who have lived in Florida for years and have forged a connection with the Democratic Party, newcomers don’t strongly identify with either party. (On the island, political divisions are centered on disagreements over Puerto Rico’s status as a territory rather than the left-right breakdown that defines the parties on the mainland.) What they do feel is a connection to the island, its economic distress, and the livelihoods of their family members who remain there.

“In Puerto Rico they can’t vote, but we can here,” says Betsy Franceschini, a Hispanic outreach director in Florida for the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, an arm of the island government that works as a liaison to the federal and state governments. “We want to make sure that whatever candidate we support will stand by our community and stand by during this crisis.”

“We will not forget,” Franceschini adds, “especially in November.”

Maurice Ferré, a former Democratic mayor of Miami who was born in Puerto Rico, believes that US policy toward the island will be more important in the 2016 elections than ever before. “Everyone has family in Puerto Rico, and they’re all being affected by this,” he says. “Pensions are now in doubt, health services are now in question…They’re cutting the police, they’re cutting education.”

Thanks to Florida’s presence among the handful of key swing states that candidates will have to jockey over this fall, small issues like this can take on an outsize importance—even deciding the outcome of the election.

“When you have a state as close as Florida potentially could be, and a lot of people anticipate to be, every segment of the electorate has an overmagnified sense of importance,” says Amandi, the pollster. “If anything, the newer arrivals from Puerto Rico that don’t have as much of a cultural history with either of the two parties here, you might say, are more important because they are potentially up for grabs. And some of these single issues, especially as it relates to the island, could very well be a litmus test issue.” Amandi estimates these recent arrivals in Florida, from the latest migration wave over the past decade, could number around 200,000.

So do the math: In Florida, that means potentially as many as 200,000 up-for-grab voters in a state that could, in a close election, be decided by a few thousand votes.

“The Republicans cannot afford to ignore the Puerto Rican electorate because if they do, they will lose Florida,” says Amandi, noting that the GOP nominee doesn’t need to win a majority of Puerto Ricans, but rather needs to surpass McCain and Romney’s poor showings—as Rubio did in 2010. This time around, Amandi says, Rubio is “going to have to explain to Puerto Rican voters why he is against bankruptcy protections.”

Puerto Rican leaders are already showing their anger at Rubio’s decision to back away from bankruptcy. During a December trip to Washington to lobby for bankruptcy protection, the island’s governor warned that Puerto Ricans in Florida would remember Rubio’s decision not to support bankruptcy come November. “They will be here on Election Day,” he said.

Excerpt from – 

Marco Rubio Turns His Back on Puerto Rico, at His Own Peril

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Puerto Rico Is Doomed, and It’s Our Fault

by BrentLeschen Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

Greece may have overcome a major hurdle in fixing its economy this week, but Puerto Rico faces a more complicated obstacle to managing its crippling debt: its murky status as a US territory.

“If Puerto Rico were a state, there wouldn’t be any question about it,” Jeffrey Farrow, a former adviser on Puerto Rico policy to President Bill Clinton, said of the island’s mounting debt crisis. “If it were a nation, it wouldn’t have to worry about US federal rules, and then it could try to develop its own economy.”

But Puerto Rico is neither a state nor a country. It’s technically a commonwealth, a status given to it in 1950 by the US government, which allowed it to draft a constitution and elect its own officials. But even its commonwealth status is unique. Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky are all commonwealths, but they have the full power of states. That’s not the case for this island of 3.6 million, which is, essentially, a colony, subject to the full control of the US Congress. The nature of its relationship with the federal government has left it with few options as it grapples with $72 billion in outstanding obligations that its governor, Alejandro García Padilla, says is “not payable.”

Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative in US Congress, called for Puerto Rican statehood in a recent New York Times op-ed. “Puerto Rico is not a sovereign country in a monetary union with the United States. From a constitutional perspective, Puerto Rico belongs to the United States,” he wrote. “It is disheartening to see many self-styled progressives, who otherwise speak eloquently about the importance of voting rights, go silent on this subject when it comes to Puerto Rico.”

The island’s high unemployment, poverty, and low household income, Pierluisi argued, result partly from poor local policy decisions, but the inequity it faces under federal law is a much bigger factor. Even though they are legally American citizens by birth, Puerto Ricans on the island can’t vote for president and have no voting representative in Congress. They pay Medicare taxes but Medicaid funding is capped for them. They are not covered by many provisions of the Affordable Care Act and are not eligible to claim the earned-income tax credit. Excessive borrowing, Pierluisi wrote, is in many ways due to these realities.

“It is little wonder, then, that Puerto Rico is in recession, has excessive debt and is bleeding population,” he wrote.

Pierluisi introduced a bill in February that would allow Puerto Rico’s cities and state-owned businesses to seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in the same way that some US cities that have done, most recently Detroit. The bill has no co-sponsors and is stuck in a House subcommittee. The chair of the committee, Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), has said that “Puerto Rico must make serious, timely, and demonstrable steps towards righting its fiscal ship before anything moves legislatively.” Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) plan to introduce similar legislation for debt relief, according to Politico, but it’s unclear when that might happen.

The crisis pits Puerto Rico’s creditors—including hedge funds, large US banks, and smaller investors—against the island’s public workers, with each side trying to avoid absorbing the inevitable losses. A July 14 report from the Puerto Rican investigative journalism outlet Centro de Periodismo—reprinted in English via Latino Rebels—suggests that since 2013, hedge funds have been particularly active in trying to manipulate the debt crisis to their advantage.

The report points out that hedge funds, some of which were also involved in both the Greek fiasco and an ongoing debt crisis in Argentina, have been lobbying Puerto Rican officials in an effort to reduce their losses as much as possible. The hedge funds have reached out to various past and current government officials—including former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño, former Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock, and Pedro Pierluisi, the island’s non-voting representative in Congress—in hopes of preventing wide-scale restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt.

The issue has worked its way into the presidential campaign, with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Jeb Bush all voicing support for Puerto Rico to have the same bankruptcy options as US states. “We’re not talking about a bailout,” Clinton said in a statement last week. “We’re talking about a fair shot at success.” Sanders issued a statement the same day, saying, “We also should recognize that the reason Puerto Rico has such unsustainable debt has everything to do with the policies of austerity and the greed of large financial institutions.”

Bush is the only Republican to touch the issue so far in the campaign, saying, “Puerto Rico should be given the same rights as the states.”

About 5 million Puerto Ricans live in the 50 US states and can vote in national elections. Maurice Ferré, a Puerto Rican who served six terms as the mayor of Miami, said there are 4,000 to 5,000 Puerto Ricans moving to Florida every month, and noted that they are a pivotal voting bloc in Florida.

McClintock, Puerto Rico’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and president of its Senate from 2005 to 2008, agreed. “Puerto Ricans are the swing voters in the swing region of a swing state,” McClintock said. “So, come March of next year, the presidential primaries in Florida will be very important in terms of what is done with Puerto Rico in the future.”

But McClintock said there are things Congress could do right now to help Puerto Rico. It could change the repayment terms on money paid by the island to the US government for various project overruns, and adjust the way Puerto Ricans are treated under federal programs like Medicare. Or the government could steer more federal procurement dollars toward the island’s struggling economy.

“That’s not a bailout,” McClintock says. “It’s simply giving more federal procurement to Puerto Rico.” But that’s difficult to achieve, he says, without voting members of Congress.

McClintock and Fortuño, among others, have said that much of the island’s debt is payable. Fortuño, who lost his seat to Garcia Padilla in the 2012 election, told Mother Jones that he had “no idea” why the new governor would claim the island’s debts are unpayable. “From a strictly financial point of view, the information is incorrect,” he said, “and the message it sends to the marketplace is terrible.”

Without any intervention, Puerto Rico could default on some of its debts and cause massive turmoil in the US municipal bond market, which affects retirement funds, pensions, and other investments. It could also spur lawsuits against the Puerto Rican and US governments that could take years to work out.

Farrow, the former Clinton adviser, says the governor’s calls for debt relief could help propel legislative relief or Congress could enact other short-term policy fixes, but neither will offer a permanent fix of the underlying problem.

“Puerto Rico can be a state or a nation and can develop a successful economy under either one,” he says, “but right now its current political status makes no sense.”

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Puerto Rico Is Doomed, and It’s Our Fault

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