Puerto Rico

Permanent Protest To Free Oscar Lopez Rivera

February 9, 2016 Jose Manuel Lopez, www.todosunidosdescolonizarpr.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Media, Political Prisoner, Puerto Rico

By Jose Manuel Lopez of TodosUnidosDescolonizarPR. Bayamon,Puerto Rico - Our partner, reporter and political activist Edwin Chungo Molina is promoting an interesting campaign to force the United States (US) government to release Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera. Oscar has served 34 years in a US prison for exercising his inalienable right to use all means necessary to decolonize Puerto Rico. The US government is the criminal for ignoring 34 United Nations (UN) resolutions asking it to immediately decolonize Puerto Rico. In 1960, the UN determined democratically that colonialism is a crime against humanity because it threatens world peace.

Puerto Rico Proposes Harsh Austerity To Solve Debt Crisis

September 10, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Austerity, Debt, Puerto Rico

By Alice Ollstein in Think Progress - The government of Puerto Rico put forward an official plan on Wednesday to tackle its looming $72 billion debt crisis. In exchange for demanding some concessions from the island’s hedge fund creditors, the government is promising to pay workers less than the minimum wage, slash retirement benefits, limit collective bargaining, cut funding to universities, and shut down more K-12 schools. In a speech Wednesday, Puerto Rico’s Governor García Padilla said the hedge funds and other creditors had a moral obligation to meet them halfway, otherwise the island will run out of money next summer. “That path…will result in years of litigation and defaults and a major humanitarian crisis,” he said. “It will force us to choose between paying a creditor, a teacher, a policeman or a nurse.”

Puerto Rico Defaults On Debt Repayment

August 5, 2015 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com Educate! Colonialism, Debt, Debt Colony, Puerto Rico

By Dominic Rushe in The Guardian - Puerto Rico missed its first debt repayment on Monday, the first time the troubled US commonwealth has failed to pay its bills. The island paid just $628,000 toward a $58m debt due to creditors of its Public Finance Corporation. While the default was expected, it is likely to worsen the financial situation for the island as it struggles with debts estimated at $72bn. “This was a decision that reflects the serious concerns about the Commonwealth’s liquidity in combination with the balance of obligations to our creditors and the equally important obligations to the people of Puerto Rico,” the territory’s government development bank president, Melba Acosta Febo, said in a statement. Late last month Víctor Suárez, chief of staff for governor Alejandro García Padilla, warned that the government did not have the money for the $58m of principal and interest due on Public Finance Corporation bonds.

Hedge Funds Helped Destroy Puerto Rico’s Economy, Poor Pay Price

August 3, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Austerity, Debt, IMF, Puerto Rico, usa

By Alice Ollstein in Think Progress - Angry graffiti scrawled across the brightly colored buildings of San Juan tells the creditors of the world exactly where they can stick their plan to extract roughly $73 billion in debt from the struggling U.S. territory. “Puerto Rico comes first. To hell with the debt,” reads one wall. “Don’t play around with my retirement,” says the side of a major freeway. Down by the University of Puerto Rico, the walls and sidewalk are filled with laments — “Look into my unemployed face” — and calls to action: “Study and fight!” Depending who you ask in Puerto Rico, the debt crisis was caused by neo-colonial and imperialist policies from the U.S., the Puerto Rican government’s wasteful overspending and corruption, or the cadre of hedge funds that are currently profiting from the island’s woes.

Hedge Funds Demand Austerity In Puerto Rico

August 2, 2015 Rupert Neate, www.theguardian.com Educate! Austerity, Education, Finance and the Economy, Puerto Rico

By Rupert Neate for the Guardian -- Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes. The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default – and repay its debts – by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education. The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt “unpayable” – paving the way for bankruptcy. The funds are “distressed debt” specialists, also known as vulture funds, and several have also sought to make money out of crises in Greece and Argentina, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of Co-op Bank in the UK. The report, entitled For Puerto Rico, There is a Better Way, said Puerto Rico could save itself from default if it improves tax collection and drastically cuts back on public spending.

Hedge Funds Want Education Slashed In Puerto Rico

July 30, 2015 Mark Karlin, www.truth-out.org Educate! Austerity, Banking, Colonialism, Education, Puerto Rico

By Mark Karlin in Truth Out - According to a July 28 article in the Guardian, the financial vultures of the US are circling over Puerto Rico's skyrocketing debt, which totals more than $70 billion dollars. It is an austerity-driven death watch that by now is common practice among predatory "debt distress" consolidators: Billionaire hedge fund managers have called on Puerto Rico to lay off teachers and close schools so that the island can pay them back the billions it owes. The hedge funds called for Puerto Rico to avoid financial default - and repay its debts - by collecting more taxes, selling $4bn worth of public buildings and drastically cutting public spending, particularly on education. The group of 34 hedge funds hired former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists to come up with a solution to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis after the island’s governor declared its $72bn debt "unpayable" - paving the way for bankruptcy.

Newsletter – Culture Of Deception

July 18, 2015 Margaret Fowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Austerity, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Climate Change, FERC, Greece, Indigenous Rights, Propaganda, Puerto Rico, TISA, TPP, TTIP

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "The Climate Deception Dossiers," proves that the corporations which profit from the burning of fossil fuels knew about global warming decades ago, knew their industries contributed to it and responded by funding propaganda to deny global warming and pushing policies that increased their profits at the expense of a livable future. In "We are all Greeks Now," Chris Hedges connects corporate capitalism to the many crises we face. He writes, "Corporate profit is God. It does not matter who suffers." When profit is worshiped, truth is sacrificed and all manner of deception is justified."

Puerto Rican Plan To Make Workers Pay For The Island’s Debt Crisis

July 16, 2015 Rafael Azul, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Austerity, Debt, Puerto Rico, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Rafael Azul in Global Research - Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the US House of Representatives, Pedro Pierluisi of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is sponsoring a bill to grant Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection while it negotiates with its creditors and restructures its economy. The bill envisions a bankruptcy process for the island similar to that imposed on the city of Detroit in 2013. The House Judiciary Committee has sidelined Pierluisi’s bill. A statement issued jointly by the chairman of the committee, Bob Goodlate, and committee member Tom Marino, both Republicans, declared the general consensus on the committee to be that providing “Puerto Rico’s municipalities access to Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code would not by itself solve Puerto Rico’s problems, which are associated with underlying structural problems.”

How Washington Helped Create Puerto Rico’s Staggering Debt Crisis

July 15, 2015 Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Austerity, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Puerto Rico

By Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson in The Washington Post - The sprawling pharmaceutical plants nestled in the hills of this town west of San Juan are testament to the unusual nature of this island’s struggling economy. The factories once employed a small army of highly trained workers that would be the envy of many other places in the United States. But those jobs — for engineers, chemists and others skilled in precision manufacturing — have been rapidly disappearing for largely the same reason they came here in the first place: policy decisions made in Washington. A generous series of tax breaks enacted by Congress shielded the profits of U.S. corporations operating here and helped transform Puerto Rico from a largely agrarian society to a manufacturing powerhouse. But what Washington gave, it also took away.

National Science Foundation Researcher Fired For Political Activism

September 13, 2014 Mark Strauss, www.io9.com Educate! Education, Freedom of Speech, Puerto Rico

Valerie Barr, a professor of computer science at Union College, decided last summer to take a leave of absence to join the National Science Foundation and help improve science education among undergraduates. But when a background check revealed her involvement in left-wing groups 30 years ago, she was told to leave. News of Barr's dismissal comes three months after a respected policy analyst was fired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory following complaints about an anti-nuclear article that he had written. And, now according to a report in ScienceInsider, Valerie Barr's colleagues worry that her experience will have a chilling effect on efforts to recruit other scientists under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA)—which allows academics to temporarily work for NSF without quitting their existing jobs.

Puerto Rico Unions Threaten Strike Against Austerity Budget

June 14, 2014 Yana Kunichoff, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Austerity, Puerto Rico, Strike, Unions

Public union workers from a handful of unions across Puerto Rico have spent the last week blocking ports, shutting down thoroughfares and slowing public transit. But that may be just the beginning: In the coming week, workers are expected to vote on whether to hold a general strike across the country. The unions are standing against the austerity budget proposed this spring by members of the U.S. commonwealth’s General Assembly to deal with the country’s recent bond downgrade and looming payment of its debts to bondholders. The Fiscal Sustainability Act of the Government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as the budget is called, would allow the government to bring in “emergency powers” to deal with the crisis. Under this authority, it could renegotiate all public employees’ contracts, liquidate unused sick days, and freeze salaries—thereby gutting workers’ collective bargaining powers. Privatizing the commonwealth’s electrical company, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, has also been placed on the table as an option for stanching the crisis; the emergency measures would also include closing 100 public schools. The budget must be passed on June 30 to coincide with the beginning of the 2015 fiscal year on July 1. And as that deadline nears, unions across the island have been escalating their protests.

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