Posted on 03/01/2003 12:35:15 PM PST by 4Freedom
Popular Democratic Party Sen. Juan Cancel Alegria said Friday Navy Adm. Robert J. Natter's decision to close the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads is illegal, citing the National Defense Authorization Act of 2001.
He also called on U.S. government officials to investigate the legality of the matter.
"Section 1504 of the Act is clear to the effect that the termination of training and related closures are specifically and exclusively limited to Vieques Naval Training Range. No authorization was granted to affect the rest of the AFWTF," Cancel Alegria said in a letter to several U.S. officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Thomas Ridge and Hansford T. Johnson, acting secretary of the Navy.
"What is more, Adm. Natter's actions constitute a 'realignment' under 10 USC 2687, and, as such, expressly prohibited," he said.
Cancel Alegria's district includes Ceiba, where Roosevelt Roads is located.
According to the lawmaker, Natter issued an order about two or three weeks ago, for the demobilization and disestablishment" of the training facility "on or about March 9, 2003."
The lawmaker showed reporters a copy of several documents allegedly from Natter, ordering the demobilization.
"It is not economically and operationally feasible to continue battle group training in the Puerto Rico operating area...Directed to cease AFWTF operational and training support after the last scheduled event (on or about 9 Mar 03)," states one document.
Cancel Alegria said his office received the documents from union employees at the base.
Roosevelt Roads spokesman Oscar Seara said the training facility had been ordered "dismantled," but referred the STAR to Natter's office at the U.S. Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, Va. However, officials there could not immediately be reached for comment.
Cancel Alegria says the decision to close the training facility also leaves the Navy fleet "without adequate training facilities because the fleet will not have equivalent or comparable training facilities available immediately or within a short period of time after the AFTWF is closed."
"It is uncontested that the AFWTF offers to the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet unique characteristics which would be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate elsewhere," he said.
"For years, the AFWTF has been regarded as the 'premier training range for ensuring combat readiness of Atlantic Fleet Forces.' Now, suddenly and unexpectedly, the U.S. Navy no longer needs the AFWTF," he said.
The only thing more surprising than what "a raging sweet deal" Puerto Rico has is how secret it's been kept from the U.S. Taxpayers!
My theory is that the political families that have engineered the massive give-a-way of U.S. Taxpayer's dollars to Puerto Rico also engineered their families and cronies to enrich themselves at our expense.
And for such a tiny island, Puerto Rico makes some hefty contributions to the political campaigns of both parties stateside.
There's just an absolute ton of U.S. Taxpayer's dollars to steal down there.
For instance, Puerto Rico's former Secretary of Education, Victor Fajardo had diverted $2 million federal dollars from the Dept. of Education to the Hispanic organization LULAC for air fair and convention costs.
He also got caught with $390,000 in his personal safe. Who knows how much he spent before he was caught.
They steal our money from federal programs like crazy down there.
Almost no mention of all of the corruption uncovered down there is ever made in the stateside press.
No mercenary army on the face of the earth is worth the $100s of billions of dollars we've given Puerto Rico over the last 100 years.
Are you implying that Puerto Rico didn't have a dog in that fight that was WWII? Have any of the Puerto Ricans you've talked to made it sound like they or their kinsmen were dragged off to that war?
Do you doubt for one minute that the Nazis would have been heaving Puerto Ricans into the ovens ahead of just about any of the rest of the inhabitants of the caribbean islands?
Your father, my father and a whole lot of others should be thanking God that there was a United States of America to give them a uniform, a weapon, training and support enough to defeat the Nazis.
The United States is owed by the rest of the free countries and free peoples of the world. Not the other way around.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and whole lot of countries around the globe owe a debt to the United States that they can never repay.
I wonder why they called them World Wars? Somebody better tell the historians.
There's about 1 million families living in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Taxpayers give each family what amounts to a check for around $10,000 each year.
Add to that thousands and thousands of federal jobs.
Add to that companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Bayer, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Amgen, Baxter, Biovail, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, MOVA, OMJ, Parke-Davis, Pfizer, Roche, Searle, Wyeth-Ayerst Lederle, Inc., taking thousands of manufacturing jobs to Puerto Rico, because our Congress passed a special Section 936, tax scheme that allows these companies to pay as much as $350,000 less in federal taxes each year for every employee they have in Puerto Rico!
I only mentioned a handful of the companies that are dodging federal income tax by taking our jobs to Puerto Rico. It amounts to billions more in lost taxes every year.
What I've noticed though is a troubling unintended consequence of giving veterans a hiring preference among those seeking federal employment. IMO, that benefit is being way over-sold everywhere in the United States and especially in Puerto Rico.
There are a lot of young men signing up for the education, training and federal hiring preference as opposed to any great desire to defend the United States in time of conflict.
In Puerto Rico, don't even bother to apply for a U.S. Post Office job unless you have served in the U.S. military and the same goes for the new TSA, unless you're female.
Young guys that wouldn't otherwise join the service are going in for the jobs they can get when they get out.
You won't find many 'Reservists' re-uping in Puerto Rico or anywhere else, when a conflict appears imminent.
This view that all of the conflicts the United States has ever been dragged into, including WWI and WWII, are "America's Wars" is becomng entirely too commonplace and insidious, IMO.
There are less than 4 million people living in Puerto Rico, now. They all wouldn't leave under any circumstances.
Anyone born in Puerto Rico is a 'statuatory' U.S. citizen. They received their U.S. citizenship by an 'Act of Congress' and their citizenship could be taken away by an 'Act of Congress'.
If the United States cut Puerto Rico loose and in the future could keep its $18.8 billion U.S. Taxpayer's dollars plus each year, bring home all of those thousands of federal jobs and those additional thousands of manufacturing jobs, the country wouldn't even notice an influx of 1 or 2 million additional, future, U.S. Tax-paying citizens from Puerto Rico.
Heck, that many illegal aliens cross our borders every year from all over the world.
Let all of those billions of U.S. Taxpayer's dollars be used to build roads, schools, bridges, dams and URBAN TRAINS, here in the USA.
Maybe those additional, U.S. Taxpaying, Puerto Rican-Americans would help us in our struggle to get our government to secure our borders with the U.S. military. ;^)
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