Underreported Point on Puerto Rico

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

So I have seen a bunch of various things like how it's "Trump's Katrina" and how many people are without water, and it's all Trump's fault and such, and it seemed like they were doing and okayish on the response, but hardly a great job. Then I read this.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/teamsters-organize-truckers-to-move-supplies-in-puerto-rico/ar-AAsEJsd?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Quote: The Teamsters union and the AFL-CIO, a federation of more than 50 unions, are working together to recruit truckers to travelto Puerto Rico and help distribute a stockpile of relief supplies

Thousands of shipping containers full of food, water, and medicines were sitting unused at Puerto Rico's Port of San Juan.

Relief workers haven't been able to distribute the goods, in part because only about 20% of Puerto Rico's truck drivers have reported back to work since Hurricane Maria swept through, according to a representative for Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.

This is a CNN article, so it's not like this is a pro-Trump slanted article, either. Only 20% of Puerto Rico's truck drivers have reported back to work. This is what, 10 days after the fact? So *thousands* of shipping containers full of supplies are sitting undistributed.

At what point do we need to stop blaming Trump for the response, and point out that either Puerto Rico's leadership failed at organizing their own people or the people just weren't interested in helping each other? It doesn't matter how much supplies the mainland ships in if nobody in Puerto Rico is willing to do their job and distribute it. Instead we have to get volunteers from 1,200-3,000 miles away (Cincinnati is 1,800 miles away) to do it.



I remember when Hurricane Ike came through and knocked out everyone's power. We had a full old tree fall across our deadend street, taking out the power lines. A day later everyone went to work, just driving off the road and through a yard to be able to get out (everyone chipped in later to pay for new grass seed and such). We had no electricity for 9 days, yet people still went to do their jobs that were a hell of a lot less important than shipping badly needed supplies so people could eat and drink.

[BmorePat87]

90% of them don't have power. 55% don't have drinking water. 70% don't have any phone service. Many of the roads can't be used.


Yea, they're probably just being lazy... they're probably not unable to report in nor immediately concerned with the safety of their families as their entire island has been turned into a 3rd world country.

But, hey, once your power was out for a week so that's the same thing right? I mean, you could still drive to Starbucks but you couldn't watch TV.

[BmorePat87]

If anything, THAT is underreported. Not that everyone is being unfair to the guy at his golf club tweeting attacks at someone who is sleeping on a cot and actually doing something on the ground.

[GMDino]

Also under-reported?  How good of a person the Mayor is.  Well I mean Trump thought she was good while she tanked him.  But I mean once she dared to criticize the government at all....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/30/trump-called-san-juans-mayor-a-weak-leader-heres-what-her-leadership-looks-like/?utm_term=.cc76fa51ddc2

Quote:When Hurricane Maria destroyed the infrastructure of Puerto Rico, it turned the mayor of its capital city into a spokeswoman for a stranded people.


Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto told the world of the "horror" she was seeing as she waded through San Juan's flooded streets. And the desperation on the island, parts of which may remain without power for months.


Until then, Cruz had not been a well-known politician outside the island.


But after she criticized Washington's response to the hurricane this week — "save us from dying," she pleaded on cable network — President Trump took direct aim at her on Twitter.


"Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan," he wrote Saturday. Democrats must have told her to say nasty things about him, he claimed.


Since the president brought it up, we present below the historical record of the leadership of Cruz, before and after the storm.

Cruz hugs a resident of a seniors home after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. (Thais Llorca/European Pressphoto Agency-EFE)


The island
Cruz has, in some ways, been a lifelong politician: class president in eighth grade; student council president in high school.

Like many Puerto Ricans, she left the island to pursue opportunities on the  mainland, earning a bachelor's in political science at Boston University and a master's in public management and policy at Carnegie Mellon.


She stayed on the mainland for many years, according to her official biography, and worked her way up to the position of human resources director at several companies, including Scotiabank and the U.S. Treasury Department.


In a 2014 interview with a small New York newspaper, Cruz described the tug of war she and other Puerto Ricans often feel between the mainland and their home island.


"I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico," she said. "So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that."


After 12 years on the mainland, Cruz returned to her island to plunge back into politics.


She became an adviser to Sila María Calderón, a San Juan mayor who later became Puerto Rico's only female governor.

With the experience she gained under Calderón, Cruz ran in 2000 for a seat in Puerto Rico's House of Representatives. She lost that race, but in 2008 she ran again and won.


"Politics is a rough game, and sometimes as females we are taught that you have to play nice," she said in a 2014 interview. 
"Sometimes you can't play nice."

A new mayor
As the race for mayorship of her home town approached in 2012, she waffled publicly on whether to become a candidate.


At first she denied any plans to run. Once she entered the race, she strung together a series of small coalitions — including the LGBT community, students, Dominican immigrants and taxi drivers — to form a base of support.


Such allies helped her defeat a formidable opponent — a three-time incumbent, Jorge Santini.


"People don't realize they have the power," she recalled in an interview several years later. "People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now."


Puerto Rico's politics are largely defined by their relationship with the mainland and whether the island should remain a U.S. territory, gain statehood or vie for independence.

Cruz's party, the Popular Democratic Party, campaigns to maintain Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated, self-governed U.S. territory.


But in her trips to the United States since winning office, Cruz has at times advocated for more independence.


She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico — crippled by debt — be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.


"Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long," Cruz said in 2015. "And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs."


Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island's many dependencies all too apparent.


The storm
Maria flooded roads, destroyed phone lines and cut the island's lifeline of goods from the mainland.


[How the Jones Act limits Puerto Rico’s access to goods]


With limited communications and little help from the outside world in the first days after the hurricane, the mayors of Puerto Rico became the highest form of authority for many residents.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital's streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing.
 
"There is horror in the streets," she said at the time. "Sheer pain in people's eyes."


The city's hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few residents who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.


Cruz had written to scores of other mayors. "There's no answer," she said.


She felt relatively helpless — able to do only so much for her exhausted neighbors and frightened constituents.


"I know we're not going to get to everybody in time," she said. All she could do was try.


She said that on her way to talk to the reporter, a man had asked her for a favor: "To tell the world we're here."


As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. "If anyone can hear us," she told the reporter, "help."


By Thursday night, families were searching for water by the light of dwindling cellphone batteries and the moon. They passed through a tunnel beneath a city wall, and found at the exit a water tank left there by the city — a godsend.


And then they found their mayor.


Cruz hugged them as they came to her. She handed to each family a small solar-powered lantern — "a box of blessings," she called it.


"Now this is life," she told The Post.


Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs.


But if the federal government did not step up its response, she feared, "people will die."


The president
Nearly 5,000 National Guard personnel were stationed on the island before the storm, according to the White House, and the government has sent thousands more to help in the days since. But Guard personnel have struggled to get even basics such as drinking water to those in need.


A call with the White House earlier this week was encouraging, Cruz said. She told the federal government that 3,000 containers were sitting in a port, trapped behind electronic gates that would not open. Since then, more federal personnel had arrived, and the government had sent pallets of water and food.


But her city was still on the brink, Cruz said.

Cruz hands out solar lamps to residents of the San Juan neighborhood La Perla. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post)


On Thursday, in the White House driveway, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke defended the Trump administration's response to the storm.


"It is really a good-news story, in terms of our ability to reach people," the director said.


When Cruz heard that, she made good on her warning years earlier — that sometimes in politics "you can't play nice."


"People are dying in this country," Cruz said at a news conference on Friday. "I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy."


And with that, the mayor of a ruined city drew the attention and ire of the president of the United States.


"The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump," he wrote on Twitter.


The remark perplexed many experts on Puerto Rican politics.


"I don't know if Trump's comment shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it's just a cover to rally his base," said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It makes no sense. Politics in Puerto Rico are completely different than the mainland, with completely different parties."


Last year, Bonilla surveyed 1,000 residents of the island. Most had no affiliation with Republicans or Democrats, and many had little understanding of either party.


Cruz, who is widely expected to run for governor of the island, has some understanding.


She is not affiliated with either party but occasionally supported  Democratic President Barack Obama's policies. During the 2012 election campaign, she met with Obama's campaign manager to push for health-care funding and education grants for Puerto Ricans.


But that is a far cry from being a tool of Democrats, said Amilcar Barreto, a Puerto Rican political expert at Northeastern University. "Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That's just basic human necessity."

Quote:[/url][url=https://twitter.com/arelisrhdz] Follow
Arelis R. Hernández 

@arelisrhdz
“I will always speak my mind,” @CarmenYulinCruz “I don’t give a damn.”
2:31 PM - Sep 30, 2017 · Hato Rey Norte, Puerto Rico

The ‘little mayor’
On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump's tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.



"The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan," she said.



Suddenly, many others were concerned as well.


Cruz fielded calls all day long from U.S. senators and business leaders. Reporters mobbed her for interviews.


And all day long, her criticism of the relief effort did not soften. "It's like a clogged artery," she said of the federal government's bureaucratic hurdles. "The heart has stopped beating."


Asked whether there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.


"I don't have time for politics," she said. "There is a mission, and that is to save lives."


Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.


And, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.

[NATI BENGALS]

He should talk more smack on twitter and drag the people living in hell through more shit. Such a good leader. Little media fight with the mayor down there showed he is a real big shot. Made me proud to call him my prez.

Maybe tomorrow he will talk shit to some homeless orphans about how stupid and poor they are.

On a side note. Wtf are unions doing helping people out. Thought they were evil incarnate?

[samhain]

(10-01-2017, 12:35 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: He should talk more smack on twitter and drag the people living in hell through more shit. Such a good leader. Little media fight with the mayor down there showed he is a real big shot. Made me proud to call him my prez.

Maybe tomorrow he will talk shit to some homeless orphans about how stupid and poor they are.

On a side note. Wtf are unions doing helping people out. Thought they were evil incarnate?

What do you think the over-under is on him actually dropping an N-bomb before his term is over?  He likes to play to his base, and you know his supporters would absolutely devour it.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(10-01-2017, 12:08 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: 90% of them don't have power. 55% don't have drinking water. 70% don't have any phone service. Many of the roads can't be used.


Yea, they're probably just being lazy... they're probably not unable to report in nor  immediately concerned with the safety of their families as their entire island has been turned into a 3rd world country.

But, hey, once your power was out for a week so that's the same thing right? I mean, you could still drive to Starbucks but you couldn't watch TV.

Everyone is worried about their families during a disaster. That doesn't mean you should refuse to do your job to help others.

Otherwise the National Guard would never be able to help anyone. Or the police. Or the coast guard, etc, etc. They all have families, and they are probably worried about them too. It doesn't mean you ignore everything else.

Has there ever been a highly efficient relief effort where the local populace didn't help? You think the people of Austin just said "nah, I am worried more about me, F everyone else, I will just wait for everyone else to help me and ***** loudly when they don't do it quick enough" and that's why it went so well?

It isn't like they didn't know the hurricane was coming, yet they apparently made no plans to be able to distribute badly needed supplies that are just sitting there? You say how many people don't have water like it is an excuse for them to not show up. They and many others would have water if they showed up to do their job.

A C-130 can only land in so many places, and it only carries as much or less than a semi anyway. No relief effort will go well if the local populace isn't interested in helping themselves as well.

That's how you see the difference between the Haiti earthquake aftermath, and the tsunami aftermath that caused the Fukushima meltdown. Both had governments pouring money and supplies into it, but only one had the populace actively helping and working together to make things better.

[Belsnickel]

(10-01-2017, 01:38 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Everyone is worried about their families during a disaster. That doesn't mean you should refuse to do your job to help others.

Otherwise the National Guard would never be able to help anyone. Or the police. Or the coast guard, etc, etc. They all have families, and they are probably worried about them too. It doesn't mean you ignore everything else.

Has there ever been a highly efficient relief effort where the local populace didn't help? You think the people of Austin just said "nah, I am worried more about me, F everyone else, I will just wait for everyone else to help me and ***** loudly when they don't do it quick enough" and that's why it went so well?

It isn't like they didn't know the hurricane was coming, yet they apparently made no plans to be able to distribute badly needed supplies that are just sitting there? You say how many people don't have water like it is an excuse for them to not show up. They and many others would have water if they showed up to do their job.

A C-130 can only land in so many places, and it only carries as much or less than a semi anyway. No relief effort will go well if the local populace isn't interested in helping themselves as well.

That's how you see the difference between the Haiti earthquake aftermath, and the tsunami aftermath that caused the Fukushima meltdown. Both had governments pouring money and supplies into it, but only one had the populace actively helping and working together to make things better.

Not to get too into the social sciences on this, but the response of 20% returning back to work is honestly pretty good considering the situation. What you have to think about when you see reports like this is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In general, for people to go out and help others, they are going to need to have the first two levels of those needs met. That's just the general way human nature exhibits itself. If you have people that don't have their physiological and safety needs met, they aren't going to be thinking of much else. This is exactly what happens during a disaster. This is why we see looting when things happen, this is why we see shitty behavior from people when those of us on the outside are wondering why they aren't working together.

Now, again, this is just the general way things work. There are segments of the population that have a stronger drive to help others. But this is why we haven't seen the truckers come back. It's not a lack of leadership or planning, it's the fact that those truckers likely have no home, food, or water for them or their family. That is just human nature to take care of that, first.

[Vlad]

(10-01-2017, 07:22 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Not to get too into the social sciences on this, but the response of 20% returning back to work is honestly pretty good considering the situation. What you have to think about when you see reports like this is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In general, for people to go out and help others, they are going to need to have the first two levels of those needs met. That's just the general way human nature exhibits itself. If you have people that don't have their physiological and safety needs met, they aren't going to be thinking of much else. This is exactly what happens during a disaster. This is why we see looting when things happen, this is why we see shitty behavior from people when those of us on the outside are wondering why they aren't working together.

Now, again, this is just the general way things work. There are segments of the population that have a stronger drive to help others. But this is why we haven't seen the truckers come back. It's not a lack of leadership or planning, it's the fact that those truckers likely have no home, food, or water for them or their family. That is just human nature to take care of that, first.

Good post.
So Puerto Rico is not Trumps Katrina after all. Thanks for making me aware of that.

About the looting though. The Japanese don't loot. After the tsunami and earthquake the Japanese instead of looting come together as a community to see what they could do to help.

I suppose there is a "study" done by some academic elitist to explain away why some cultures are more inclined to loot than others, after all, as humans we're all the same.
Unless we're talking diversity, then we're all different. It depends on what the liberal agenda of the day is.






I'm sure there is a

[Belsnickel]

(10-01-2017, 09:03 AM)Vlad Wrote: Good post.
So Puerto Rico is not Trumps Katrina after all. Thanks for making me aware of that.

About the looting though. The Japanese don't loot. After the tsunami and earthquake the Japanese instead of looting come together as a community to see what they could do to help.

I suppose there is a "study" done by some academic elitist to explain away why some cultures are more inclined to loot than others, after all, as humans we're all the same.
Unless we're talking diversity, then we're all different. It depends on what the liberal agenda of the day is.

Plenty, actually. The reason I use words like "generally" when discussing the hierarchy is because there are a number of different factors to explain behavior. Modern researchers approach these things with what is called the biopsychosocial approach. This looks at biological, psychological, and sociological factors to explain behavior. You bring up Japan, which is a prime example of the sociological differences between the US and many other western nations. Cultures like that of Japan are much more collectivist in nature and so their society is more geared towards the group rather than the individual. This is in stark contrast to countries like the US where individualist culture rules the day.

So, while psychologically we can look to Maslow's hierarchy in a disaster to explain individualistic behavior, sociologically a collectivist culture like that in Japan can potentially override that. Or, the sociological impact of that collectivist culture could have caused the learned behavior that produces the psychological effect of Maslow's hierarchy be skewed. We can't forget that often times these psychological studies were very Euro-centric, and apart from the Nordic countries those cultures tend to be very individualistic.

Edit: now this has gotten me thinking about the different expressions of the hierarchy of needs in collectivist versus individualistic cultures. I often think of the hierarchy in individualistic terms because that is the culture I grew up in, but the hierarchy would be expressed differently in a collectivist culture. For example, the base layer of physiological needs: food, water, shelter. For an individualistic culture like the US, the drive would be to find those for yourself. For a collectivist culture, the drive would be to insure those needs are met for your community. So the drive is still the same, but how it is expressed would be different. For an individualistic culture, base needs would have to be met before they started looking towards the community when you look at a general situation.

Thanks for making me look deeper into this. Definitely some interesting things to think about.

[BmorePat87]

(10-01-2017, 01:38 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Everyone is worried about their families during a disaster. That doesn't mean you should refuse to do your job to help others.

Otherwise the National Guard would never be able to help anyone. Or the police. Or the coast guard, etc, etc. They all have families, and they are probably worried about them too. It doesn't mean you ignore everything else.

Has there ever been a highly efficient relief effort where the local populace didn't help? You think the people of Austin just said "nah, I am worried more about me, F everyone else, I will just wait for everyone else to help me and ***** loudly when they don't do it quick enough" and that's why it went so well?

It isn't like they didn't know the hurricane was coming, yet they apparently made no plans to be able to distribute badly needed supplies that are just sitting there? You say how many people don't have water like it is an excuse for them to not show up. They and many others would have water if they showed up to do their job.

A C-130 can only land in so many places, and it only carries as much or less than a semi anyway. No relief effort will go well if the local populace isn't interested in helping themselves as well.

That's how you see the difference between the Haiti earthquake aftermath, and the tsunami aftermath that caused the Fukushima meltdown. Both had governments pouring money and supplies into it, but only one had the populace actively helping and working together to make things better.

I'd love to live in a fantasy world where Puerto Rican's are lazy and don't care and Trump is a competent leader, but we don't. Most Puerto Rican's are in conditions where they can't even function. With roads impassable and communication cut off to 70% of people, they likely cannot report to work nor can they communicate to their bosses that they need rescue or help getting to work. If only 30% can even communicate with the outside world and 20% are reporting back, that's actually sounds pretty good.

But let's go with them not caring. It makes the dude sitting easy in his country club look like the hero even if he ignored them for a week while telling about football

[StLucieBengal]

The worst part of this is that now democrats will be pushing for statehood for PR.

That's a nice vacation spot but man those people would be a serious drain. I have yet to meet a PR native who wants to return for more than a short vacation.

[GMDino]

(10-01-2017, 11:37 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: The worst part of this is that now democrats will be pushing for statehood for PR.  

That's a nice vacation spot but man those people would be a serious drain.   I have yet to meet a PR native who wants to return for more than a short vacation.

Can I i introduce you to the Mayor then?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

I say this a bit tongue in cheek. I dated a Puerto Rican woman for some time and even if I hadn't I'd want people who suffered from these hurricanes to get help. That being said it's ironic to me that people like Lin Manual Miranda are complaining about the US not helping enough (although we know reports on this subject are often contradictory) when he celebrated and lauded the release of a convicted terrorist whose agenda was an independent Puerto Rico, with no ties to the United States.


Trump's going to hell!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/30/us/lin-manuel-miranda-trump-hurricane.html?mcubz=0

Sobbing with gratitude here in London.
OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA IS COMING HOME.
THANK YOU, @POTUS. (from Miranda's twitter)

http://www.newsweek.com/oscar-lopez-rivera-terrorist-some-hero-others-621949

[StLucieBengal]

(10-01-2017, 11:55 AM)GMDino Wrote: Can I i introduce you to the Mayor then?

The mayor who hasn't attended one FEMA meeting? Seems she is basically holding the people hostage in order to make a political stunt on Trump.

[GMDino]

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/353137-not-enough-troops-equipment-in-puerto-rico-says-general-in-charge-of-relief

Quote:The Defense Department has not sent enough troops and vehicles to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico but will soon send more, according to the three-star general newly in charge of coordinating the military response.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeff Buchanan said Friday morning that the Pentagon has 10,000 people helping with the response after Hurricanes Irma and Maria ripped through Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands earlier this month.

“We're certainly bringing in more [troops]," Buchanan said on CNN’s “New Day.”

"For example, on the military side, we're bringing in both Air Force, Navy and Army medical capabilities in addition to aircraft, more helicopters. ... [But] it's not enough, and we're bringing more in.”


The Pentagon has already allocated more than 4,000 troops to help in rescue and restoration efforts to the U.S. territories, but it wasn’t until Thursday, eight days after Maria slammed the Caribbean, that U.S. Northern Command sent Buchanan.

The head of North Command's Joint Force Land Component Command is now serving as the Defense Department’s primary liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Tom Bossert, the President Trump’s homeland security adviser, has defended the wait time in between the end of the storm and appointing Buchanan.

“It didn’t require a three-star general eight days ago,” Bossert said of the government response.

When asked whether it was a mistake to not have Buchanan on the ground in Puerto Rico earlier, Bossert replied, “No, not at all.”

“In fact, that doesn’t affect the way that we stage equipment and the way we area command and field operational command. This is textbook and it’s been done well,” Bossert told reporters Thursday at the daily White House press briefing.

The Pentagon has been steadily increasing its help to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands after both were slammed by the two Category 5 storms. The hurricanes knocked out power across Puerto Rico, leaving nearly half of its more than 3.4 million residents without drinking water.

Puerto Ricans and lawmakers, however, are frustrated with the federal government's response. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Friday on CNN that Trump should put the U.S. military in charge of handling and delivering aid to Puerto Rico. He asserted that only the Pentagon could repair the logistical issues preventing aid from reaching island residents.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Friday urged Trump to ramp up the federal assistance, ripping acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke for referring to the government’s response as a “good news story.”

“Damnit, this is not a good news story,” Cruz said. “This is a people-are-dying story.”

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

No opinions, only the thoughts of others. Quality contributions!

[Bengalzona]

(10-01-2017, 09:03 AM)Vlad Wrote: About the looting though. The Japanese don't loot. After the tsunami and earthquake the Japanese instead of looting come together as a community to see what they could do to help.

Yup. Those darn liberal and communal Japanese!

[Bengalzona]

Puerto Rico: Where you can be taxed and drafted into the Army (if the drafted is reinstated), but you cannot vote for the President or a Congressional representative.

I seem to recall a group of people getting upset about this kind of crap about 240 years ago.

Oh well. Maybe after this hurricane business is over, we can just tuck them back under the mat and forget about them again.

[6andcounting]

(10-01-2017, 05:41 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: The mayor who hasn't attended one FEMA meeting?   Seems she is basically holding the people hostage in order to make a political stunt on Trump.

She can't get there. And she doesn't have phone service. The lights are off.