[4Freedom]

Your post brings an interesting and valid perspective to Puerto Rico's status issue, Rector Seal.

Unlike Willie, you've actually been to the island and visit it often. You've seen and heard what goes on there first-hand. It also sounds like you are a bonafide Conservative, Capitalist and not a Liberal RINO.

In my experience, for every one person that loves Puerto Rico and wants to stay there, 5 people I talk to want to leave.

Puerto Rico has become a very dangerous place to live and work. The people that live there are just as afraid to be out after dark as the tourists. The island is extremely dangerous for those residents that can't afford to live in guarded, gated communities surrounded by their wrought iron bars, Rottweilers, German Shepperds, Dobermans, Great Danes, Bull Dogs, Pit Bulls and Giant Mastiffs. The residents of Puerto Rico voluntarily live in concentration camps. They're their own jailers.

A motorist in Puerto Rico is twice as likely to be killed by a drunk or drugged driver in a traffic accident as anywhere else in the United States. Puerto Rico's super-highways are a killing field. Over 14,000 police officers and traffic laws/speed limits still aren't enforced.

The murder rate and the HIV/AIDS & Hepatitis C infection rates are the highest in the country or nearly so.

Most of the beaches are polluted and really unsafe for swimming, although the government won't tell you that. They hide that information.

The residents of Puerto Rico fail to report a lot of crime, because they fear the police are in on it. The federal government has busted more police officers, judges, lawyers and government officials in a single sting operation in Puerto Rico than anywhere in the USA.

In my experience, the entire island's politics are Left of center. It's just that two of their parties are way-way Left.

Their so-called Republican Party led the charge to throw the Navy off Vieques and to socialize their medicine.

I bear no hatred for the residents of Puerto Rico, I'm just stating the facts and setting the record straight.

Now that our military is leaving the island, there's no reason for our government to squander $10's of billions of the U.S. Taxpayer's hard-earned dollars in Puerto Rico every year.

No reason, except to buy the votes of the stateside Puerto Rican voters. And that's not a good reason.

[rector seal]

You misunderstood me. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico and met my husband while I was visiting in Texas. Most, if not all, the squalor you accurately describe in Puerto Rico is due to the United States putting three fourths of our population on welfare. If you visit any of the high crime areas in the United States you will find that these areas have a large proportion of people in welfare.

I do not know anything about your background. Did you live in Puerto Rico at any time? I feel sorry for Americans living in Puerto Rico. The shock of the contrast between life in the USA and life in Puerto Rico prevents many Americans from enjoying the natural beauty of the island and as a result they can not befriend Puerto Ricans or appreciate any virtue in any of us.

Some Americans fall in love with my island and are able to see past the squalor. They can see the tragic history of Puerto Rico; a colony of Spain and, since 1898, a colony of the United States. Americans, generous to a fault, dumped billions of dollars in Puerto Rico. I would have preferred Americans making the effort to make Puerto Ricans understand the constitutional republic the United States was. But you may have noticed that the public schools no longer teach American children about our constitutional republic. If Americans can not teach the constitution to their own children, it would be far fetched to expect them to teach it to Puerto Rican children.

I was blessed that my Puerto Rican parents took the time to teach me about the value of the American constitution. I in turn teach my nine year old homeschooled child about the glory of the American original system of government.