Puerto Rico protest (photo: Aurora Muriente Pastrana/The Nation)
This week on CounterSpin: Puerto Rico’s debt has been described as $34,000 for every man, woman and child; a common sort of trope, but one that tends to endorse a narrative—”everyone played now everyone’s gotta pay”—that doesn’t match the reality of how Puerto Rico came to be in its present state, or how “shared” the “sacrifice” is set to be as things move forward. Ed Morales has been reporting on Puerto Rico for The Nation, he’s a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and author of Living in Spanglish and Latinx, forthcoming from Verso. We’ll talk to him about Puerto Rico’s past, present and future.
Transcript: ‘Puerto Rico is Emblematic of the Excesses of These Financial Systems’
(cc photo: John Flores)
Also on the show: Media didn’t much like the healthcare bill House Republicans pushed through that would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance in order to serve tax breaks to the country’s wealthiest. Doctors didn’t like it, or hospitals, or the AARP or patient advocates. So what happened, and what does it mean for activism? We’ll talk with Margarida Jorge, co-executive director of Health Care for America Now.
Transcript: ‘Many More People Would Die if Republicans Are Successful’
First, we take a quick look back at recent press—specifically at threats to a free press.
The situation in Puerto Rico must be put there with the situation in Flint as two of the most shameful situations this country has seen in some 70 years. The fact that Obama did not rectify these situations – outside of visiting Flint to take a sip of its water – and then handed everything to Trump and the GOP who we KNOW will do nothing – this is a national disgrace of the highest order.
“Most prosperous country on earth” my 6utt.
Obama is a model Neo-Liberal. He said it himself, a moderate Republican of the 1980s.
As the average American diet is so refined as to be 50% fat and 95% void of the essential nutrition needed for the body to stay alive, as this causes 95% of illness, the only solution is for free healthcare to be given only to those able to pass a blood test showing that they eat an unrefined nutritious 10% fat diet.