Posted on 05/30/2018 10:11:46 AM PDT by Blogger
A new Harvard study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath,...The Harvard findings indicate that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts...
You may recall that President Trump boasted about the low number of fatalities during his visit (the one where he tossed rolls of paper towels at American victims as if he were shooting a basketball). CNN reported at the time:
“Every death is a horror,” Trump said, “but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous — hundreds and hundreds of people that died — and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering … no one has ever seen anything like this.”
“What is your death count?” he asked as he turned to Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. “17?” “16,” Rosselló answered.
“16 people certified,” Trump said. “Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people and all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud. Everybody watching can really be very proud of what’s taken place in Puerto Rico.”
One wonders how proud Trump is now and whether he realizes a natural disaster — in which he showed far less interest than Houston’s Hurricane Harvey — on his watch had nearly three times as many fatalities as Katrina. Further study is warranted to determine how many of those who died were victims of government negligence in the weeks and even months following Hurricane Maria.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Snowflakes are already melting on Facebook. They think this is their issue.
is there anything- anything at all- that trump isn’t responsible for?
Well yeah. Trump hit squads were out in force after the storm to take out pesky Puerto Ricans. Next will be filling up the FEMA camps with AAs and glbtpqxyz folks. Yes, I have seen postings and proclamations to that effect. Snowflakery.
No, Trump is not responsible for the 3rd world Democratic cesspool that is Puerto Rico. Maybe blame in for not declaring martial law and arresting the Mayor and others that held up recovery. Besides, seems like most Puerto Ricans are simply waiting for stuff, handouts, rather than get off their butts and do something. Can’t fix stupid.
Blah blah blah.
A Harvard study ...
Oh gee, and as soon as temperatures got over a certain level over last weekend in Toronto, they issued a heat advisory. Ones like Rubin and the rest of her drive by colleagues are so predictable concerning stuff like this. I guess (even more predictable) the very incompetent and corrupt mayor of San Juan and the rest of her friends there get a pass as well.
“is there anything- anything at all- that trump isn’t responsible for?”
Per the liberals he is not responsible for anything good.
Yeah, it’s all Trump’s fault that the PR grid was a mess even before Maria hit:
- snip -
Maria’s fury would have battered any grid, but the scope of the damage, the sluggish pace of repairs and the suffering from weeks without power have almost as much to do with mismanagement as they do with wind and rain. Last year Synapse Energy, a consultancy based in Massachusetts, carried out the first-ever audit of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and found that the power lines were “cracking, corroding and collapsing”. The utility had been operating for decades without regulation or oversight. Imprudent spending was accelerating a decade-old debt crisis. “The results are grim,” the authors wrote. “PREPA’s system appears to be running on fumes.”
The story of PREPA is the story of Puerto Rico. The utility, created by a New Deal governor in 1941, powered rapid industrialisation in the 1970s as American pharmaceutical and other firms flocked to the island to take advantage of federal tax benefits. By offering stable, well-paid jobs to electrical workers, PREPA helped create a Puerto Rican middle class, says José Caraballo Cueto, an economist at the University of Puerto Rico. The boom was short-lived. When the federal government peeled back the tax perks in 1996, factories started leaving and PREPA began losing customers.
Declining revenues were exacerbated by political patronage, corruption and inefficiency. Municipalities and government agencies do not pay for electricity in Puerto Rico. Successive governments spent tens of millions of dollars evaluating solar and natural-gas projects in order to wean PREPA off its dependence on oil, but did next to nothing. Less than 3% of the island’s energy came from renewables.
PREPA is responsible for $9bn of Puerto Rico’s $73bn of debt. As PREPA and other agencies borrowed billions of dollars from international creditors (and from each other, a practice some have compared to a Ponzi scheme), the utility started skimping on maintenance. In 2014 an austerity law prompted hundreds of experienced employees to retire and claim their pensions before cuts took effect. They were never replaced. The result, according to Synapse’s report, was generator failures, blackout rates four times higher than other American utilities, rising consumer costs, environmental violations and an increasing numbers of worker injuries and fatalities. A three-day blackout in 2016 caused by a fire at the Aguirre plant foreshadowed the darkness and economic standstill Hurricane Maria would bring. “We took the risk and we are paying the price,” says Mr Torres, peering at his poster.
- snip -
Just like Katrina, they blame government negligence on the part of the federal but not local government—if the federal government happens to have a Republican commander in chief.
How is that Trump's fault?
Jennifer Rubin = Bobby Peru's twin sister
so.....if an 87-year old who was in an area that had lost electricity dies three months later, they are counting that as a Trump-caused fatality.
And Trump is responsible for turning Deep State RINOS like Jennifer Rubin into bitter elites, and giving them incurable TDS!
Jebbifer wants to make Puerto Rico into Trump’s Katrina.
Bush League Republicans will use whatever it takes to get rid of the threat to the Cheap Labor Express and their 30 year investment in changing the demographics of the country against the will of the citizens.
There they go again...
The Washington Post has gone full PRAVDA:
Lying, over-hyping, ignoring obvious facts, snark...
Well, that IS the Russian way.
There they go again...
The Washington Post has gone full PRAVDA:
Lying, over-hyping, ignoring obvious facts, snark...
Well, that IS the Russian way.
Stay sexy, Jen.
I’ll rely on an actual count of humans by humans before Harvard study.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.