Letter to Tina
December 4, 2008
Dear Tina,
Again, thank you for inviting us to the art donation event that, in every sense, had the taste, quality, class that I have always associated with you.
I just read the message, Sharing a Legacy, where you describe your life-long love for art. As I mentioned to you, art, specifically painting, was my “first love” and I spent the first three years of college as an art student. I am moved to write what I fear will be a long letter (not as long, I hope, as those maddening memos I sent you and Lee decades ago.)
I am enclosing a Wall Street Journal article, in case you have not seen it, that begins asking a good question: “What is a masterpiece?”
The answer, I think, is implicit in the article. The author tells us that the painting “Portrait of a Woman Holding a Booklet” was “venerated” in the 19th Century as a “Chardin masterpiece” but then “fell out of favor” when it was discovered that it was painted by a lesser-known artist. The article then tells us that the painting “Christ Carrying the Cross” was totally ignored for almost 500 years, until it was cleaned up, the signature and date were seen, and “voila – an instant masterpiece.” And the article ends telling us that what greets Vermeer’s “The Astronomer” is “silence.”
When I read this article, it brought back a lot of memories. I remember vividly when I decided to give up my art “career.” It was 1953 and I could not understand why people throwing paint at a canvas was considered “art”. I had read the 1934 Irving Stone’s novel “Lust for Life” and, like everyone else, I was convinced that if it was a Van Gogh, it was a “masterpiece”. Even more so after seeing the movie with Kirk Douglass.
But, as I am sure others have asked, exactly what makes them masterpieces? If we did not know who painted these twisting cypress trees, crazy stars in the sky, would everyone call these paintings “masterpieces?” If we did not know that Van Gogh had a pathetically tortured life, that many of these paintings are the expression of clinical pathology, if we did not have all those letters to his brother Theo describing his agony and his paintings, would we call them “masterpieces”?
Well, for years, I thought that if the experts said so, if they hung these painting in the greatest museums of the world, they must be. I would go to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan and see all those strange things – a solid white canvas with absolutely nothing on it, but, I guess, for white paint. Obviously someone “who knows” sees something I don’t see.
In September 2007, there was a big commotion in London as “Van Gogh’s final masterpiece”, the Fields, was expected to ignite one of the greatest “bidding wars” in Sostheby’s history. Art lovers and museums had been trying for years to buy this “masterpiece”. But in fact almost everything I saw written about this historic event had to do with Van Gogh and not the painting itself. It hung up on his wall while he was bleeding to death after shooting himself. Was this really his “final” painting? Art critics and Sostheby experts were quoted saying why they considered this such a “great” painting. One scholar wrote: “Here is an artist literally on the verge of taking his life and filled with tremendous despondency … We know this is a man barely holding on to his will to live yet he is able to separate his energy and focus on what he sees before him.”
Interesting. But is this what makes it a “masterpiece”?
Picasso was certainly not suicidal. He was, of course, a genius, and I don’t think, as you said, that he was “crazy.” A better word, I think, would be “diabolical.” He was a monumental egomaniac, capable of monumental meanness, especially towards women that made the mistake of loving him, and I think monumentally cynical. As the British historian, Paul Johnson, points out in his excellent book, “Art”, Picasso got very rich at a young age. If it was not cynicism, how else to explain that he used his genius, his enormous vigor and talent, to produce some of the ugliest, most grotesque things created in human history? And seeing “experts” dying to lavish their praise on these “masterpieces.”
Although I think Picasso did great damage to art, and I have no idea what so much of abstract, non-objective art is, of course there have been many great artists in the past two centuries, and there has been artistic talent in Puerto Rico, some of it demonstrated in the works you donated to the museum. (You may recall, or may not want to, a talented and, yes, somewhat “crazy” young artist I brought to El Mundo, Carlos Irizarry.)
But I have found myself irresistibly drown more and more to the paintings of previous centuries in the great European and U.S. museums. I find myself irresistibly going back in time.
Is Velasquez the greatest painter of all time? Has anyone, will anyone, ever again capture space as he did? But there is Caravaggio. Has their ever been a more creatively “revolutionary” painter? Then we go back to Rafael. Will anyone ever capture beauty as in the face of his Madonnas? Vermeer, ignored for over two centuries, today more and more revered. Is he, after all, the greatest painter of all time? Yes, there is magic in how he captured “light”. But he captured something else. He captured silence.
But no, still going back, to be exact, 1433. At the National Gallery of Art in Washington there is the Annunciation. Isn’t Jan Van Eyck the greatest artist of all time?
Wherever they are available, I always use those portable audio tours and want to know as much as I can about the paintings and the artists. But I don’t need anyone “who knows”, or anyone else, to tell me that I am standing before a masterpiece. I don’t need stories of tortured souls cutting off their ear. Except for Caravaggio, who was a violent man, the geniuses that painted these masterpieces, as far as we know, led ordinary, normal lives. We know little about Vermeer but his paintings are masterpieces even if we knew nothing about him. As the WSJ article tells us, our silence tells us.
A word on a different subject. If I heard you right (the noise and you know I am half deaf), you commented that the mistake I made was to become a “political columnist.” I was, of course, in the sense that I wrote about politics, although I was always personally more interested in economic realities. And, of course, I always wrote with a point of view. But always totally independent: beholden to no political party, ideology, no political leader. I and El Mundo were, of course, attacked as the “tool” of a political party. I like to think that if I earned the respect of people like Muñoz, Moscoso, Benítez, even Ferré, it was because they knew I was no one’s “tool.” I know that you and Lee, having gone through together the brutal demagoguery of those tough years, believed it.
Now, I hope you know something else. The art lover hidden in me, irresistibly, irrepressibly going back in time to earlier centuries.
Alex
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA
A.W. Maldonado
It was no surprise. Five months before the elections, June 1, 2008, I began a column:
“The Popular Democratic Party is headed toward a catastrophic defeat with historic consequences for Puerto Rico. “
It was evident that Acevedo was doomed by the economic crisis. Long before the March 27, 2008 federal indictments for campaign finance irregularities, the polls showed that there was no way that Acevedo could get reelected. A November , 2007 poll had him losing to Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño by no less than 37 points.
But he made a fateful decision after the indictments. Against reality, he convinced many Popular Party leaders, including the mayors that are crucial in elections, that he would pull off a “political miracle.”
Acevedo has always been a resourceful politician. Now he used the federal indictment to convince many PDP leaders that the U.S. government had immorally, undemocratically, abusively intervened in island politics to destroy him and favor Fortuño. The Puerto Rican electorate, we now know, did not believe him. But many PDP leaders, in patriotic indignation, did and rallied to his side.
Fortuño and Resident Commissioner-elect Pedro Pierluisi represent a new generation and they will bring energy in attacking Puerto Rico’s overwhelming economic and fiscal crisis. They are both intelligent and honest and there is no doubt they sincerely want to serve this island well.
But they will have to suppress two forces within their party. One consists of a number of vindictive and destructive leaders, passionately loyal to ex-governor Pedro Rosselló, that dedicated themselves to obstruct the Acevedo administration, and then to destroy Fortuño himself. Fortuño’s first test, crucial to the success of his administration, will be whether he will prevent these militants from controlling the Legislature.
The second force that Fortuño will have to suppress is the status passion within the New Progressive Party. With absolute control of the government of Puerto Rico – the governorship, the resident commissioner, the Legislature, the vast majority of the municipalities, and eventually the island Supreme Court – the NPP will have the power to launch a crusade for statehood, here and in Washington, as never before in island history.
Fortuño and Pierluisi are statehooders. They repeatedly declare that they will do nothing here nor in Congress that is not consistent with statehood. This was precisely the mentality that drove then governor Rosselló in the 1990’s to go to Congress to eliminate Section 936.
But they will face the reality that to lift Puerto Rico from the deepening economic recession they will have to do things that are inconsistent with statehood. The island economy depends on manufacturing and manufacturing depends on Puerto Rico being part of the U.S. but exempt of U.S. taxes. We know today that the elimination of Section 936 was a serious blow to manufacturing costing this island thousands of jobs.
So the fundamental question is whether Fortuño’s and Pierluisi’s extraordinary electoral victory means the end the Commonwealth Era.
Let’s define precisely just what the Commonwealth Era was. This is not just about a political status, but about an era. In most of the first half of the 20th century, it seemed nothing worked in Puerto Rico. Nothing pulled this island out of deep extreme poverty, not hundreds of million in federal funds. The politics was superficial, irrelevant. Everyone in Puerto Rico said that the fundamental cause was “colonialism.” But in fact, Puerto Rico has placed itself in an impossible dilemma. It was believed that the only way out of “colonialism” was statehood or independence. But statehood was economically, culturally, politically impossible. And the vast majority of the Puerto Ricans rejected independence.
It occurred to a number of island leaders, and Congress agreed, in the early 1950’s, to liberate Puerto Rico from this paralyzing dilemma by creating a new status, Commonwealth. It was unique, and in some ways defective, but it was a solution. And it worked. By the end of the 1950’s, Puerto Rico’s liberated energy and talent has carried out an “economic miracle” and made this island a Mecca for world-famous musicians, artists, poets, intellectuals.
The Commonwealth Era did not, of course, end the status conflict. But it did bring about a kind of truce. If someone invented a meter to gauge the ups and downs of status passion in island history, I think it would show a correlation: the higher the status passions, the more superficial island politics, the more ineffective the government.
So the question is: how high will Fortuño and Pierluisi raise the status passion meter? They say their priority is attacking Puerto Rico’s economic and fiscal crisis. But will they resist the enormous pressure to launch another statehood crusade?
And this brings us back to Acevedo’s fateful decision. Closing one’s eyes to reality is never a good idea. For a political leader the consequences can be serious. Acevedo did and led the PDP to the worst defeat in its history. The stakes were too high to depend on his promise to pull off a “miracle.” He should have given way to someone else with a better chance of at least avoid the PNP landslide: with at least a chance of winning, say, control of the Senate.
Will Fortuño and Pierluis also close their eyes to the reality that if they revert Puerto Rico to the sterility, the futility of the impossible status dilemma, all the enthusiasm and promise of their big victory will flounder in failure? The reality that this is what will happen if they bring aboutthe end of the Commonwealth Era.
A.W. Maldonado
It was no surprise. Five months before the elections, June 1, 2008, I began a column:
“The Popular Democratic Party is headed toward a catastrophic defeat with historic consequences for Puerto Rico. “
It was evident that Acevedo was doomed by the economic crisis. Long before the March 27, 2008 federal indictments for campaign finance irregularities, the polls showed that there was no way that Acevedo could get reelected. A November , 2007 poll had him losing to Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño by no less than 37 points.
But he made a fateful decision after the indictments. Against reality, he convinced many Popular Party leaders, including the mayors that are crucial in elections, that he would pull off a “political miracle.”
Acevedo has always been a resourceful politician. Now he used the federal indictment to convince many PDP leaders that the U.S. government had immorally, undemocratically, abusively intervened in island politics to destroy him and favor Fortuño. The Puerto Rican electorate, we now know, did not believe him. But many PDP leaders, in patriotic indignation, did and rallied to his side.
Fortuño and Resident Commissioner-elect Pedro Pierluisi represent a new generation and they will bring energy in attacking Puerto Rico’s overwhelming economic and fiscal crisis. They are both intelligent and honest and there is no doubt they sincerely want to serve this island well.
But they will have to suppress two forces within their party. One consists of a number of vindictive and destructive leaders, passionately loyal to ex-governor Pedro Rosselló, that dedicated themselves to obstruct the Acevedo administration, and then to destroy Fortuño himself. Fortuño’s first test, crucial to the success of his administration, will be whether he will prevent these militants from controlling the Legislature.
The second force that Fortuño will have to suppress is the status passion within the New Progressive Party. With absolute control of the government of Puerto Rico – the governorship, the resident commissioner, the Legislature, the vast majority of the municipalities, and eventually the island Supreme Court – the NPP will have the power to launch a crusade for statehood, here and in Washington, as never before in island history.
Fortuño and Pierluisi are statehooders. They repeatedly declare that they will do nothing here nor in Congress that is not consistent with statehood. This was precisely the mentality that drove then governor Rosselló in the 1990’s to go to Congress to eliminate Section 936.
But they will face the reality that to lift Puerto Rico from the deepening economic recession they will have to do things that are inconsistent with statehood. The island economy depends on manufacturing and manufacturing depends on Puerto Rico being part of the U.S. but exempt of U.S. taxes. We know today that the elimination of Section 936 was a serious blow to manufacturing costing this island thousands of jobs.
So the fundamental question is whether Fortuño’s and Pierluisi’s extraordinary electoral victory means the end the Commonwealth Era.
Let’s define precisely just what the Commonwealth Era was. This is not just about a political status, but about an era. In most of the first half of the 20th century, it seemed nothing worked in Puerto Rico. Nothing pulled this island out of deep extreme poverty, not hundreds of million in federal funds. The politics was superficial, irrelevant. Everyone in Puerto Rico said that the fundamental cause was “colonialism.” But in fact, Puerto Rico has placed itself in an impossible dilemma. It was believed that the only way out of “colonialism” was statehood or independence. But statehood was economically, culturally, politically impossible. And the vast majority of the Puerto Ricans rejected independence.
It occurred to a number of island leaders, and Congress agreed, in the early 1950’s, to liberate Puerto Rico from this paralyzing dilemma by creating a new status, Commonwealth. It was unique, and in some ways defective, but it was a solution. And it worked. By the end of the 1950’s, Puerto Rico’s liberated energy and talent has carried out an “economic miracle” and made this island a Mecca for world-famous musicians, artists, poets, intellectuals.
The Commonwealth Era did not, of course, end the status conflict. But it did bring about a kind of truce. If someone invented a meter to gauge the ups and downs of status passion in island history, I think it would show a correlation: the higher the status passions, the more superficial island politics, the more ineffective the government.
So the question is: how high will Fortuño and Pierluisi raise the status passion meter? They say their priority is attacking Puerto Rico’s economic and fiscal crisis. But will they resist the enormous pressure to launch another statehood crusade?
And this brings us back to Acevedo’s fateful decision. Closing one’s eyes to reality is never a good idea. For a political leader the consequences can be serious. Acevedo did and led the PDP to the worst defeat in its history. The stakes were too high to depend on his promise to pull off a “miracle.” He should have given way to someone else with a better chance of at least avoid the PNP landslide: with at least a chance of winning, say, control of the Senate.
Will Fortuño and Pierluis also close their eyes to the reality that if they revert Puerto Rico to the sterility, the futility of the impossible status dilemma, all the enthusiasm and promise of their big victory will flounder in failure? The reality that this is what will happen if they bring aboutthe end of the Commonwealth Era.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A SPECTACULAR SHIP COMES TO SAN JUAN
A.W. Maldonado
In the doom and gloom of the economic news, its good news that six cruise ships will visit San Juan for the first time in the coming months. One of them was the Celebrity Solstice this Tuesday. In fact, San Juan was its first port-of-call in its first voyage.
USA Today travel writer, Gene Sloan, wrote that Solstice is “the most innovative, stylish, beautiful ship in the seas.” This is the kind of reviews the 2,850 passenger, 122,000 ton ship has received when the media was invited to preview it this past weekend.
But first the good news about the cruise industry in Puerto Rico. The head of the Ports Authority, Fernando Bonilla, and Tourism Company head Terestela González Denton, announced that this past fiscal year, 2007-2008, there was an 8.9 increase in cruise passengers arriving in San Juan: a total of 1,496,853, 118,116 more than the previous year. What is impressive, they pointed out, is that this is significantly higher than the worldwide growth of 5 percent, the 2 percent increase in the U.S. , the 1.7 percent in the East Caribbean.
In addition to the Solstice, also making first visits to San Juan this winter season are the 2,044 passenger Holland American Eurodam and the 1,800 passenger Statedam, the 3,000 passenger Carnival Spendor and the Carnival Pride, the 3,600 passenger Royal Caribbean Independence of the Seas, and the Artemio of P&O Cruises.
Bonilla and González also announced that two other big ships, the 3100 passenger Caribbean Princess and the Carnival Victory have made San Juan their winter season home port.
Now, why the rave reviews for Solstice?
A group of journalists and travel writers were seated at one of the ten restaurants on this ship. Yes, ten: each one different where you will find from exotic Asian fusion to Italian to classic and modern continental cuisine. We were at the main dinning room, the spacious Grand Epernay that features a two-story tall glass wine tower.
I was curious to get the reaction of the veteran travel writer, Dr. Laurence Miller, who told me that he has made “well over 300 cruises.” What do you think, I asked? He answered with a thumbs-up gesture. Since Celebrity has the reputation for outstanding food, Miller wondered if Solstice will be able to improve on it. Everyone seemed to agree with Gene Sloan: this is a “beautiful ship.” There are, of course, differences between cruise ships: between, say, the Queen Mary II, the Crystal Symphony, the new Caribbean Princess. I must say that I have found every ship I’ve been in one way or another “beautiful.”
But the moment one walks into this ship, and looks up at the 15-story atrium and see a real, full-grown tree, up there half way up, you know this is indeed different. Or when you go up to what is called the “Lawn Club Desk” because there is a real lawn there: to be exact, over a half acre of real grass. As you walk around, there seems to be live music everywhere – from a classical string quartet, four pretty young women, to a full dance orchestra. And one keeps coming up to a work of art, some of them exquisite, or coming up to still another bar, some of them half hidden so they will surprise you.
Up on the Lawn Deck one will come across several furnaces were a number of Corning master glassblowers demonstrate how they make beautiful glass objects. This too, I must believe, is different.
We spent two nights on the ship and saw two shows in the huge Solstice Theater, built especially for European style theatrical circus shows, with acrobats flying all over the place. I sat up in the balcony and suddenly where was this acrobat dress as a ram flying by, inches away from my nose. Yes, this is different.
The media had an opportunity to meet and question the Chairman of Royal Caribbean, the parent of Celebrity, Richard Fain, the President of Royal Caribbean International, Adam Goldstein and the President of Celebrity Dan Hanrahan. Yes, they said, the company as the entire cruise industry has been hit by the world-wide economic and financial crisis. But it will weather the storm because cruising, they said, is still such a “big bargain.” Hanrahan several times compared the price of a cruise, with food, entertainment and a lot more included, to “spending $300 a night for a hotel room in San Juan.”
Fain and Hanrahan demonstrated their optimism pointing out that there are four other “Solstice class” ships on line to be inaugurated in the next four years. Asked if the economic crisis may force them to change their plans, Hanrahan answered with a firm “no.”
The “naming ceremony” (once called the “christening”) of the ship, at the home port in Ft. Lauderdale last Saturday, was also “different.” It was held inside the Solstice Theater. We were told that for the first time a scientist is Godmother: marine biologist Dr. Sharon Smith, who has spent her life around the globe studying the ocean food chain, mostly the minute zooplankton. A moving video of her life work was projected, including her battle, twice, with cancer. Then a live video was projected of a Champaign bottle sliding down a cable and crashing into the hull.
The Celebrity Solstice, arrived at San Juan at two pm Tuesday, from the outside looked pretty much like the other new big ships. But from the moment I walked inside, the word that kept coming to mind was: “spectacular.”
A.W. Maldonado
In the doom and gloom of the economic news, its good news that six cruise ships will visit San Juan for the first time in the coming months. One of them was the Celebrity Solstice this Tuesday. In fact, San Juan was its first port-of-call in its first voyage.
USA Today travel writer, Gene Sloan, wrote that Solstice is “the most innovative, stylish, beautiful ship in the seas.” This is the kind of reviews the 2,850 passenger, 122,000 ton ship has received when the media was invited to preview it this past weekend.
But first the good news about the cruise industry in Puerto Rico. The head of the Ports Authority, Fernando Bonilla, and Tourism Company head Terestela González Denton, announced that this past fiscal year, 2007-2008, there was an 8.9 increase in cruise passengers arriving in San Juan: a total of 1,496,853, 118,116 more than the previous year. What is impressive, they pointed out, is that this is significantly higher than the worldwide growth of 5 percent, the 2 percent increase in the U.S. , the 1.7 percent in the East Caribbean.
In addition to the Solstice, also making first visits to San Juan this winter season are the 2,044 passenger Holland American Eurodam and the 1,800 passenger Statedam, the 3,000 passenger Carnival Spendor and the Carnival Pride, the 3,600 passenger Royal Caribbean Independence of the Seas, and the Artemio of P&O Cruises.
Bonilla and González also announced that two other big ships, the 3100 passenger Caribbean Princess and the Carnival Victory have made San Juan their winter season home port.
Now, why the rave reviews for Solstice?
A group of journalists and travel writers were seated at one of the ten restaurants on this ship. Yes, ten: each one different where you will find from exotic Asian fusion to Italian to classic and modern continental cuisine. We were at the main dinning room, the spacious Grand Epernay that features a two-story tall glass wine tower.
I was curious to get the reaction of the veteran travel writer, Dr. Laurence Miller, who told me that he has made “well over 300 cruises.” What do you think, I asked? He answered with a thumbs-up gesture. Since Celebrity has the reputation for outstanding food, Miller wondered if Solstice will be able to improve on it. Everyone seemed to agree with Gene Sloan: this is a “beautiful ship.” There are, of course, differences between cruise ships: between, say, the Queen Mary II, the Crystal Symphony, the new Caribbean Princess. I must say that I have found every ship I’ve been in one way or another “beautiful.”
But the moment one walks into this ship, and looks up at the 15-story atrium and see a real, full-grown tree, up there half way up, you know this is indeed different. Or when you go up to what is called the “Lawn Club Desk” because there is a real lawn there: to be exact, over a half acre of real grass. As you walk around, there seems to be live music everywhere – from a classical string quartet, four pretty young women, to a full dance orchestra. And one keeps coming up to a work of art, some of them exquisite, or coming up to still another bar, some of them half hidden so they will surprise you.
Up on the Lawn Deck one will come across several furnaces were a number of Corning master glassblowers demonstrate how they make beautiful glass objects. This too, I must believe, is different.
We spent two nights on the ship and saw two shows in the huge Solstice Theater, built especially for European style theatrical circus shows, with acrobats flying all over the place. I sat up in the balcony and suddenly where was this acrobat dress as a ram flying by, inches away from my nose. Yes, this is different.
The media had an opportunity to meet and question the Chairman of Royal Caribbean, the parent of Celebrity, Richard Fain, the President of Royal Caribbean International, Adam Goldstein and the President of Celebrity Dan Hanrahan. Yes, they said, the company as the entire cruise industry has been hit by the world-wide economic and financial crisis. But it will weather the storm because cruising, they said, is still such a “big bargain.” Hanrahan several times compared the price of a cruise, with food, entertainment and a lot more included, to “spending $300 a night for a hotel room in San Juan.”
Fain and Hanrahan demonstrated their optimism pointing out that there are four other “Solstice class” ships on line to be inaugurated in the next four years. Asked if the economic crisis may force them to change their plans, Hanrahan answered with a firm “no.”
The “naming ceremony” (once called the “christening”) of the ship, at the home port in Ft. Lauderdale last Saturday, was also “different.” It was held inside the Solstice Theater. We were told that for the first time a scientist is Godmother: marine biologist Dr. Sharon Smith, who has spent her life around the globe studying the ocean food chain, mostly the minute zooplankton. A moving video of her life work was projected, including her battle, twice, with cancer. Then a live video was projected of a Champaign bottle sliding down a cable and crashing into the hull.
The Celebrity Solstice, arrived at San Juan at two pm Tuesday, from the outside looked pretty much like the other new big ships. But from the moment I walked inside, the word that kept coming to mind was: “spectacular.”
Sunday, August 31, 2008
PUERTO RICO’S SELF-INFLICTED CRISIS
For Puerto Rico’s private sector, and a number of economists, the economic recession crisis is self-inflicted. So what can Puerto Rico do about it?
This island, of course, is seriously affected by global economic forces that are beyond its power: the brutal increase in the price of oil, the banking and mortgage credit crisis. But because the severity of this island’s economic recession is self-inflicted, once the global situation changes, unlike in the past, Puerto Rico will continue sinking in recession.
There are three things, according to the private sector and economists, that this island must do. One, the political parties in power must recognize that the endless partisan warfare of the past three years, the shared government where the Governor and Legislature belonging to competing parties had led often to gridlock, has damaged the economy. The partisan gridlock has obstructed the government in attempting to respond and adjust to the global challenges.
Second, Puerto Rico needs a consistent economic development policy. The Governor and the Legislature, as a result of the partisan warfare, one day enacts a pro-growth measure and the next day annuls it with an anti-growth measure. The result is that no one on this island, or in the world, today can say if the Government of Puerto Rico is “pro-business” or “anti-business.”
Puerto Rico needs a deep tax reform, including significantly lowering Puerto Rico’s high corporate income tax – today one of the highest in the world. It needs to stop legislating politically-motivated economic benefits that, in the end, cost Puerto Rico thousands of jobs making this island less and less competitive in attracting investment.
But, third, nothing will work unless Puerto Rico greatly reduces the bureaucratic monster: the enormous dead weight of over two hundred thousand government employees that soak up the billions in tax revenue.
But there is something else.
Lets assume that come January, 2009, the political warfare that has so seriously hurt the economy comes to an end. Either the newly- elected Governor and Legislature belong to the same party. Or we have again a “shared government” but this time the parties decide to work together to confront the recession.
The newly-elected government will be faced with a gigantic deficit now calculated at nearly $1 billion that may well get bigger. The more the economy slows down the lower the tax revenue. From 2007 to 2008, corporate tax revenue declined by 21.8 percent: $437 million. Individual tax revenue went down by 9 percent: $278 million. The lower the tax revenue the greater the budget deficit and the less the government can do to spur the economy.
And caught in this vicious circle, it becomes extremely difficult to enact a deep tax reform. Puerto Rico learned decades ago, as now have most economies in the world, that paradoxically the way to increase tax revenue is precisely lowering taxes that will generate economic growth. Politically, needless to say, its easy to lower individual taxes for the middle class, but extremely difficult for high income people and corporations, precisely what will ignite economic growth.
But of all the things the newly- elected government must do, there is one that will be the most difficult. And here we get to the “something else.”
Recently the head of the Government Budget Office, Armando Velez, pointed out something critically important. Since the Governor Anibal Acevedo administration took over in 2006, it has reduced the bureaucratic monster. It has reduced the number of employees in the Executive Branch by 16,631 – from 207,536 to 190,903. This is a lot. There are 4,000 less employees in the Education Department: 3,000 public workers less in the prison system.
Yet, he said, the government payroll has continued to increase. And the reason, he said, is “collective bargaining.” Law 45 approved in 1998 by the Governor Pedro Rossello administration legalized public employees to unionize with the right to negotiate salaries and economic benefits. The Budget Office, he said, desperately cutting costs wherever possible, had to come up with $200 million more for salary increases recently negotiated, or approved under great union pressure.
This is not exactly news. Back in May, the private Center for the New Economy analyzed the 2009 budget and found precisely the same. While the number of public employees declines, and in fact, total government spending declines, the public payroll increases.
But, again, as Puerto Rico sinks deeper and deeper into recession, it is now more critical than ever to understand the implications of what the head of the Budget Office is saying. Faced with a billion dollar deficit that may get much worse, cutting employees as much as it has, the administration is in fact powerless to control salaries. And if it cannot control salaries, it effectively does not control the government budget.
There is reason to believe, I think, that after the November elections, there will be a truce in the destructive partisan warfare. But working together in itself does not guarantee good economic policy. There is no better example than Law 45. All the parties came together in support of it back in 1998, and still support it today.
And there is no better example of how Puerto Rico’s economic crisis is self-inflicted than Law 45. No one should hold their breath waiting for the political parties to amend it, much less repeal it. But this does not change the reality. To pull this island out of the deepening recession, it is simply essential that the government regain the critical power it surrendered in Law 45 – the power to control the public payroll. That is, the power to control the government budget: the power to control the bureaucratic monster.
For Puerto Rico’s private sector, and a number of economists, the economic recession crisis is self-inflicted. So what can Puerto Rico do about it?
This island, of course, is seriously affected by global economic forces that are beyond its power: the brutal increase in the price of oil, the banking and mortgage credit crisis. But because the severity of this island’s economic recession is self-inflicted, once the global situation changes, unlike in the past, Puerto Rico will continue sinking in recession.
There are three things, according to the private sector and economists, that this island must do. One, the political parties in power must recognize that the endless partisan warfare of the past three years, the shared government where the Governor and Legislature belonging to competing parties had led often to gridlock, has damaged the economy. The partisan gridlock has obstructed the government in attempting to respond and adjust to the global challenges.
Second, Puerto Rico needs a consistent economic development policy. The Governor and the Legislature, as a result of the partisan warfare, one day enacts a pro-growth measure and the next day annuls it with an anti-growth measure. The result is that no one on this island, or in the world, today can say if the Government of Puerto Rico is “pro-business” or “anti-business.”
Puerto Rico needs a deep tax reform, including significantly lowering Puerto Rico’s high corporate income tax – today one of the highest in the world. It needs to stop legislating politically-motivated economic benefits that, in the end, cost Puerto Rico thousands of jobs making this island less and less competitive in attracting investment.
But, third, nothing will work unless Puerto Rico greatly reduces the bureaucratic monster: the enormous dead weight of over two hundred thousand government employees that soak up the billions in tax revenue.
But there is something else.
Lets assume that come January, 2009, the political warfare that has so seriously hurt the economy comes to an end. Either the newly- elected Governor and Legislature belong to the same party. Or we have again a “shared government” but this time the parties decide to work together to confront the recession.
The newly-elected government will be faced with a gigantic deficit now calculated at nearly $1 billion that may well get bigger. The more the economy slows down the lower the tax revenue. From 2007 to 2008, corporate tax revenue declined by 21.8 percent: $437 million. Individual tax revenue went down by 9 percent: $278 million. The lower the tax revenue the greater the budget deficit and the less the government can do to spur the economy.
And caught in this vicious circle, it becomes extremely difficult to enact a deep tax reform. Puerto Rico learned decades ago, as now have most economies in the world, that paradoxically the way to increase tax revenue is precisely lowering taxes that will generate economic growth. Politically, needless to say, its easy to lower individual taxes for the middle class, but extremely difficult for high income people and corporations, precisely what will ignite economic growth.
But of all the things the newly- elected government must do, there is one that will be the most difficult. And here we get to the “something else.”
Recently the head of the Government Budget Office, Armando Velez, pointed out something critically important. Since the Governor Anibal Acevedo administration took over in 2006, it has reduced the bureaucratic monster. It has reduced the number of employees in the Executive Branch by 16,631 – from 207,536 to 190,903. This is a lot. There are 4,000 less employees in the Education Department: 3,000 public workers less in the prison system.
Yet, he said, the government payroll has continued to increase. And the reason, he said, is “collective bargaining.” Law 45 approved in 1998 by the Governor Pedro Rossello administration legalized public employees to unionize with the right to negotiate salaries and economic benefits. The Budget Office, he said, desperately cutting costs wherever possible, had to come up with $200 million more for salary increases recently negotiated, or approved under great union pressure.
This is not exactly news. Back in May, the private Center for the New Economy analyzed the 2009 budget and found precisely the same. While the number of public employees declines, and in fact, total government spending declines, the public payroll increases.
But, again, as Puerto Rico sinks deeper and deeper into recession, it is now more critical than ever to understand the implications of what the head of the Budget Office is saying. Faced with a billion dollar deficit that may get much worse, cutting employees as much as it has, the administration is in fact powerless to control salaries. And if it cannot control salaries, it effectively does not control the government budget.
There is reason to believe, I think, that after the November elections, there will be a truce in the destructive partisan warfare. But working together in itself does not guarantee good economic policy. There is no better example than Law 45. All the parties came together in support of it back in 1998, and still support it today.
And there is no better example of how Puerto Rico’s economic crisis is self-inflicted than Law 45. No one should hold their breath waiting for the political parties to amend it, much less repeal it. But this does not change the reality. To pull this island out of the deepening recession, it is simply essential that the government regain the critical power it surrendered in Law 45 – the power to control the public payroll. That is, the power to control the government budget: the power to control the bureaucratic monster.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
ARE THE FEDS OUT TO NAIL ACEVEDO?
Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila’s essential defense is this: I am being accused of doing what every politician does to raise money in the campaign. Why pick on me? The answer is that they, the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico, are out to nail me. The answer is political persecution: a conspiracy to destroy me so that I lose the November elections.
Lets look at this defense.
The first question that pops up is: why would the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico want to get involved in Puerto Rico’s elections? They are not running for office in Puerto Rico. In fact, if they are doing what Acevedo says they are, they are putting their own jobs and careers at risk.
Just days ago, Attorney General Michael MuKasey, in a major speech before the American Bar Association, repeatedly declared that he will not tolerate any federal prosecutor doing precisely what Acevedo accuses the prosecutors in Puerto Rico of doing. Since Mukasey has pledged that if he sees any evidence of politics playing a role in the department’s investigations and prosecutions, his response will be “swift and unambiguous,” why would any federal prosecutor in Puerto Rico or anywhere else want to test if he means it or not?
The answer, Acevedo said repeatedly last Wednesday after he was indicted for five additional counts, is that behind all of this is “hatred and vengeance.” He was referring to former Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo whose original complaint of campaign finance fraud led to the federal investigation and indictment of Acevedo. It should be recalled that before that, Acevedo accused Romero of campaign finance fraud using a sworn statement that turned out to be false. Romero retaliated trying to get Acevedo disbarred.
This, then, is Romero’s “revenge. ” But regardless of whether this has any credibility or not – that Romero, a national Democrat, has in fact that great influence in Washington, what about Acevedo’s essential legal argument that he is the target of what is called “selective prosecution.”
If you prove in court that the investigation and prosecution were not done “in good faith and in nondiscriminatory fashion,” the judge can throw the case out, whether the indictment is factually correct or not.
The latest indictment states that Acevedo used fraudulent means to accept $250,000 in campaign donations from a private firm that had multiple business relations with the government. Acevedo, the indictment says, personally and through aides assisted the firm. And to hide the donations, the indictment declares, the firm paid the money to the Governor’s public relations and advertising company for fictitious services: that is, to pay invoices that were fraudulent.
Now, it is generally believed that this is common practice in Puerto Rican politics. As the costs of campaign advertising increase, candidates find themselves accepting and hiding donations that exceed legal limits. A campaign is a desperate race and when one candidate sees the other winning because he or she is spending much more in advertising, the pressure to do the same becomes irresistible.
Acevedo denies that he did or authorized anything illegal. But his essential “selective prosecution” argument is: if this is the way we all play the game, and have for years, why single me out? Why not go after the other politicians that have done exactly the same? If this is not “bad faith, discriminatory prosecution”, what is?
Proving “selection prosecution” in court, however, is not easy. Island attorneys point at a 1983 case in Delaware, State v. Holloway. Herman Holloway was accused of violating state income tax laws. If there was ever a defendant that seemed to be victim of “selective prosecution”, it was him. He was a liberal, often controversial Democratic member of the state legislature, an outspoken militant in favor of the Democratic candidate for president, a radical Teamster leader, and he was black. Why, he asked, didn’t the state go after so many others that violate the income tax law? The answer, he said, was obvious: because he was outspoken, controversial, Democrat and black.
The court did not agree. By necessity, prosecutors must chose which cases to prosecute, and which not. The state cannot possible investigate all suspected violations of income tax laws. To prove “selective prosecution” the defense must go into the prosecutor’s motives and judgments to come up with the “bad faith.” Furthermore, the court said, it is permissible for the state to select for prosecution a “high profile” personality precisely because of all the publicity that will serve as a deterrent to potential violators.
Now, Acevedo, needless to say, is now engaged in fighting, not a legal, but a political battle. Everything he does and says has one aim: help him win the November elections. But when he made the fateful decision that he would not resign as candidate back in March, he mixed into one his legal and political battles. It is one thing for his attorneys to attempt to convince the judge that the defense meets the legal requirements of “selective prosecution”, it is another, in this political campaign, to hammer again and again to the people of Puerto Rico that the U.S. Justice Department, indeed the U.S. Government, is persecuting him because of the “hatred and vengeance” of an aggrieved political rival.
In 1960 something incredible happened in Puerto Rico. Catholic Church bishops organized a political party to condemn Governor Luis Munoz Marin as “anti-God.” It didn’t work. Munoz was again reelected and the party disappeared. But the bitterness of the emotions tested Puerto Rico’s belief in the separation of Church and State.
There is today a similar test. It is simply not credible that the accusations are purely politically motivated: that, yes, the Feds are out to nail him. Yet Acevedo’s decision to stay and fight is also arousing bitter emotions that put to the test something as essential as the separation of Church and State, the confidence the people must have in the vital institutions of Puerto Rico’s relationship to the U.S.
Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila’s essential defense is this: I am being accused of doing what every politician does to raise money in the campaign. Why pick on me? The answer is that they, the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico, are out to nail me. The answer is political persecution: a conspiracy to destroy me so that I lose the November elections.
Lets look at this defense.
The first question that pops up is: why would the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico want to get involved in Puerto Rico’s elections? They are not running for office in Puerto Rico. In fact, if they are doing what Acevedo says they are, they are putting their own jobs and careers at risk.
Just days ago, Attorney General Michael MuKasey, in a major speech before the American Bar Association, repeatedly declared that he will not tolerate any federal prosecutor doing precisely what Acevedo accuses the prosecutors in Puerto Rico of doing. Since Mukasey has pledged that if he sees any evidence of politics playing a role in the department’s investigations and prosecutions, his response will be “swift and unambiguous,” why would any federal prosecutor in Puerto Rico or anywhere else want to test if he means it or not?
The answer, Acevedo said repeatedly last Wednesday after he was indicted for five additional counts, is that behind all of this is “hatred and vengeance.” He was referring to former Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo whose original complaint of campaign finance fraud led to the federal investigation and indictment of Acevedo. It should be recalled that before that, Acevedo accused Romero of campaign finance fraud using a sworn statement that turned out to be false. Romero retaliated trying to get Acevedo disbarred.
This, then, is Romero’s “revenge. ” But regardless of whether this has any credibility or not – that Romero, a national Democrat, has in fact that great influence in Washington, what about Acevedo’s essential legal argument that he is the target of what is called “selective prosecution.”
If you prove in court that the investigation and prosecution were not done “in good faith and in nondiscriminatory fashion,” the judge can throw the case out, whether the indictment is factually correct or not.
The latest indictment states that Acevedo used fraudulent means to accept $250,000 in campaign donations from a private firm that had multiple business relations with the government. Acevedo, the indictment says, personally and through aides assisted the firm. And to hide the donations, the indictment declares, the firm paid the money to the Governor’s public relations and advertising company for fictitious services: that is, to pay invoices that were fraudulent.
Now, it is generally believed that this is common practice in Puerto Rican politics. As the costs of campaign advertising increase, candidates find themselves accepting and hiding donations that exceed legal limits. A campaign is a desperate race and when one candidate sees the other winning because he or she is spending much more in advertising, the pressure to do the same becomes irresistible.
Acevedo denies that he did or authorized anything illegal. But his essential “selective prosecution” argument is: if this is the way we all play the game, and have for years, why single me out? Why not go after the other politicians that have done exactly the same? If this is not “bad faith, discriminatory prosecution”, what is?
Proving “selection prosecution” in court, however, is not easy. Island attorneys point at a 1983 case in Delaware, State v. Holloway. Herman Holloway was accused of violating state income tax laws. If there was ever a defendant that seemed to be victim of “selective prosecution”, it was him. He was a liberal, often controversial Democratic member of the state legislature, an outspoken militant in favor of the Democratic candidate for president, a radical Teamster leader, and he was black. Why, he asked, didn’t the state go after so many others that violate the income tax law? The answer, he said, was obvious: because he was outspoken, controversial, Democrat and black.
The court did not agree. By necessity, prosecutors must chose which cases to prosecute, and which not. The state cannot possible investigate all suspected violations of income tax laws. To prove “selective prosecution” the defense must go into the prosecutor’s motives and judgments to come up with the “bad faith.” Furthermore, the court said, it is permissible for the state to select for prosecution a “high profile” personality precisely because of all the publicity that will serve as a deterrent to potential violators.
Now, Acevedo, needless to say, is now engaged in fighting, not a legal, but a political battle. Everything he does and says has one aim: help him win the November elections. But when he made the fateful decision that he would not resign as candidate back in March, he mixed into one his legal and political battles. It is one thing for his attorneys to attempt to convince the judge that the defense meets the legal requirements of “selective prosecution”, it is another, in this political campaign, to hammer again and again to the people of Puerto Rico that the U.S. Justice Department, indeed the U.S. Government, is persecuting him because of the “hatred and vengeance” of an aggrieved political rival.
In 1960 something incredible happened in Puerto Rico. Catholic Church bishops organized a political party to condemn Governor Luis Munoz Marin as “anti-God.” It didn’t work. Munoz was again reelected and the party disappeared. But the bitterness of the emotions tested Puerto Rico’s belief in the separation of Church and State.
There is today a similar test. It is simply not credible that the accusations are purely politically motivated: that, yes, the Feds are out to nail him. Yet Acevedo’s decision to stay and fight is also arousing bitter emotions that put to the test something as essential as the separation of Church and State, the confidence the people must have in the vital institutions of Puerto Rico’s relationship to the U.S.
Monday, August 11, 2008
SOLZHENITSYN’S POWER OF WORDS
Days after this newspaper began publication, now nearly a half century ago, editor Bill Dorvillier wrote a hard editorial about a traffic accident on Munoz Rivera Avenue. Two nuns on their way to Old San Juan were hurt when their car, in heavy rain, slid off the avenue and down a bank.
The next day, a rookie reporter on assignment, I saw government workers putting up a protective rail at the site of the accident. So this is the power of the press, I said to myself with satisfaction and pride. The power of Dorvillier’s editorial.
A decade and a half later, I had a similar sensation – on a much grander, global, historic scale – when I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” This one man, a writer, had taken on the fearful colossus, the indestructible Soviet Empire. Considered in the Kremlin a “dangerous man”, in 1974 the Soviet secret police broke into his Moscow home, arrested him. But he was now too famous -- awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature-- to be sent again to a Gulag, a Soviet slave labor camp. He was sent into exile.
When the “The Gulag Archipelago” appeared in Paris in 1973 and in English in the U.S. in 1974, it had an enormous immediate impact. But no one could dream the eventual impact. Yes, there were cracks in the Soviet Empire, and between the communist giants, the USSR and China. But in critical Cold War battlegrounds, the communist fought the U.S.to a stalemate in Korea, humiliated and defeated the U.S. in Vietnam. The Soviet satellite, Castro’s Cuba, taunted the U.S. just off the Florida coast. A good part of the world map was still red – from East Germany to East Europe to Russia, China, now Indochina as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos went communist.
And many democrats in the West had a problem opposing communism. Simply put, that communism as an ideology was “morally right” and capitalism “morally wrong.” That the goal of communism was social justice, a classless society free of exploitation. That the goal of capitalism was profit, based precisely on class exploitation. Yes, Lenin and Stalin did bad things to their people. But as one prominent leftist English politician put it, they in fact “deformed” communism. And in the 1950’s, the vicious demagoguery of McCarthyism made “anti-communism” synonymous to “reactionary capitalist propaganda.”
Add to this ideological mindset the reality of the Cold War. In the nuclear age, “detent” with the Soviet Union seemed the only sane policy for the U.S. and the West. If the goal was “co-existence,” to frontally attack the very foundations of the Soviet Union seemed to many a dangerous policy.
This is precisely what Solzhenitsyn did and he was seen as “dangerous” not only in the Kremlin, but in the West. As a Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out this week, Sweden refused to give him the Nobel Prize at its embassy in Moscow. Once in exile in the U.S., President Ford initially refused to receive him in the White House.
Through the decades, of course, thousands of others had denounced the Soviet Union and communism. But what made Solzhenitsyn “dangerous” was precisely the power of his words. The three-volume “The Gulag Archipelago” is the true story of his eight years in a Gulag slave camp, a loyal communist, a World War II Red Army officer now accused of having slandered Stalin – and the true stories of hundreds of other victims. Soviet leaders and others, including European intellectuals, tried, but could not dismiss him as just another “anti-communist tool of capitalism.”
As the August 5th Washington Post editorial put it: Solzhenitsyn “with his writings and dauntless moral courage shook Soviet power as no other individual had done… Who again could doubt the rot that was at the system’s core or the sinister cynicism of its leadership?”
How essential the 476 Gulag complexes (some consisted of hundreds of camps) were to the Soviet system, from the very beginning of Lenin’s Russian Revolution until Mikhail Gorbachev began Dissolving then in 1987, is described in detail by the journalist Anne Applebaum, in her important 2003 book, “Gulag: A History.” And how devastating they were. Her extensive research leads her to the “conservative” estimate that 28.7 million people were Gulag victims, and that at the very least, 2,749,163 died.
In the 1970’s it seemed impossible but today we know that Solzhenitsyn’s words changed history. “The books impact on the moral legitimacy of the Soviet regime,” the Post writes, “was so corrosive, and so irrefutable, that it can be said to have sown the first seeds of the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse.”
In July, 1980, I had the opportunity to publish one of his long articles in the first issue of a new daily newspaper, El Reportero. A small token of gratitude in Puerto Rico to a big, great man. Two full pages of words, the first part of a series. Here again were his powerful words, as he did often in the 20 years he lived as a virtual hermit in the U.S., chastising the U.S. and the West for not understanding the irremediable evil nature of the Soviet Union and communism.
#Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow last Sunday at the age 89. In the second half of his life he decried the superficiality of Western culture as much as he had the Soviet system. And today there is indeed reason to wonder about the future of the power of words. Especially when I see children with their eyes glued endlessly to moving images on those small computer gadgets.
I wonder about the power of words to change things -- the words of a Dorvillier editorial to get a protective rail built in San Juan, the power of Solzhenitsyn’s words to change history and bring down an evil empire.
Days after this newspaper began publication, now nearly a half century ago, editor Bill Dorvillier wrote a hard editorial about a traffic accident on Munoz Rivera Avenue. Two nuns on their way to Old San Juan were hurt when their car, in heavy rain, slid off the avenue and down a bank.
The next day, a rookie reporter on assignment, I saw government workers putting up a protective rail at the site of the accident. So this is the power of the press, I said to myself with satisfaction and pride. The power of Dorvillier’s editorial.
A decade and a half later, I had a similar sensation – on a much grander, global, historic scale – when I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” This one man, a writer, had taken on the fearful colossus, the indestructible Soviet Empire. Considered in the Kremlin a “dangerous man”, in 1974 the Soviet secret police broke into his Moscow home, arrested him. But he was now too famous -- awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature-- to be sent again to a Gulag, a Soviet slave labor camp. He was sent into exile.
When the “The Gulag Archipelago” appeared in Paris in 1973 and in English in the U.S. in 1974, it had an enormous immediate impact. But no one could dream the eventual impact. Yes, there were cracks in the Soviet Empire, and between the communist giants, the USSR and China. But in critical Cold War battlegrounds, the communist fought the U.S.to a stalemate in Korea, humiliated and defeated the U.S. in Vietnam. The Soviet satellite, Castro’s Cuba, taunted the U.S. just off the Florida coast. A good part of the world map was still red – from East Germany to East Europe to Russia, China, now Indochina as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos went communist.
And many democrats in the West had a problem opposing communism. Simply put, that communism as an ideology was “morally right” and capitalism “morally wrong.” That the goal of communism was social justice, a classless society free of exploitation. That the goal of capitalism was profit, based precisely on class exploitation. Yes, Lenin and Stalin did bad things to their people. But as one prominent leftist English politician put it, they in fact “deformed” communism. And in the 1950’s, the vicious demagoguery of McCarthyism made “anti-communism” synonymous to “reactionary capitalist propaganda.”
Add to this ideological mindset the reality of the Cold War. In the nuclear age, “detent” with the Soviet Union seemed the only sane policy for the U.S. and the West. If the goal was “co-existence,” to frontally attack the very foundations of the Soviet Union seemed to many a dangerous policy.
This is precisely what Solzhenitsyn did and he was seen as “dangerous” not only in the Kremlin, but in the West. As a Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out this week, Sweden refused to give him the Nobel Prize at its embassy in Moscow. Once in exile in the U.S., President Ford initially refused to receive him in the White House.
Through the decades, of course, thousands of others had denounced the Soviet Union and communism. But what made Solzhenitsyn “dangerous” was precisely the power of his words. The three-volume “The Gulag Archipelago” is the true story of his eight years in a Gulag slave camp, a loyal communist, a World War II Red Army officer now accused of having slandered Stalin – and the true stories of hundreds of other victims. Soviet leaders and others, including European intellectuals, tried, but could not dismiss him as just another “anti-communist tool of capitalism.”
As the August 5th Washington Post editorial put it: Solzhenitsyn “with his writings and dauntless moral courage shook Soviet power as no other individual had done… Who again could doubt the rot that was at the system’s core or the sinister cynicism of its leadership?”
How essential the 476 Gulag complexes (some consisted of hundreds of camps) were to the Soviet system, from the very beginning of Lenin’s Russian Revolution until Mikhail Gorbachev began Dissolving then in 1987, is described in detail by the journalist Anne Applebaum, in her important 2003 book, “Gulag: A History.” And how devastating they were. Her extensive research leads her to the “conservative” estimate that 28.7 million people were Gulag victims, and that at the very least, 2,749,163 died.
In the 1970’s it seemed impossible but today we know that Solzhenitsyn’s words changed history. “The books impact on the moral legitimacy of the Soviet regime,” the Post writes, “was so corrosive, and so irrefutable, that it can be said to have sown the first seeds of the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse.”
In July, 1980, I had the opportunity to publish one of his long articles in the first issue of a new daily newspaper, El Reportero. A small token of gratitude in Puerto Rico to a big, great man. Two full pages of words, the first part of a series. Here again were his powerful words, as he did often in the 20 years he lived as a virtual hermit in the U.S., chastising the U.S. and the West for not understanding the irremediable evil nature of the Soviet Union and communism.
#Solzhenitsyn died in Moscow last Sunday at the age 89. In the second half of his life he decried the superficiality of Western culture as much as he had the Soviet system. And today there is indeed reason to wonder about the future of the power of words. Especially when I see children with their eyes glued endlessly to moving images on those small computer gadgets.
I wonder about the power of words to change things -- the words of a Dorvillier editorial to get a protective rail built in San Juan, the power of Solzhenitsyn’s words to change history and bring down an evil empire.
Friday, August 1, 2008
THE BRUTAL REALITY OF BOXING
Puerto Rico was stunned. The big July 27th newspaper headline was one word: “Destroyed.” The full-page photo of the boxer on his left knee, his face battered and bloodied, his puffed eyes closed, his puffed lips open. His arm, gloves, boxing shorts splattered with blood.
This could not be Miguel Cotto. Not the invincible Miguel Cotto. His face so bloated, battered and bloodied that it didn’t even look like him.
It was. But it wasn’t only that he was no longer champ, no longer unbeaten. It was that he was “destroyed” by Antonio Margarito. That the Mexican, in the graphic words of the AP report, sent “Cotto to a hospital for enough stitches to make a quilt.”
And this is the thing about boxing. You pick up the paper in the morning, turn to the sport pages, and when you see that your baseball, or basketball, or football team lost, you feel disappointment. But this huge headline and photo provoked an emotion far beyond disappointment. This is a human being. These are real wounds on his face, real blood throughout his body. But what about the damage to what you don’t see? Just how bad, how seriously, has this man been “destroyed?”
Now, talking about heartbreak in boxing, take a newspaper story published a few months ago on another Puerto Rican boxer that was as idolized as Miguel Cotto. Wilfredo Benitez was born in New York City in 1958 from a Puerto Rican boxing family. At the age of 15 he was already world-ranked. At 17, he made boxing history as the youngest ever world champion. By 1981 he made boxing history again becoming the youngest champion in three divisions.
Like Cotto, he had mega fights in Las Vegas against boxing legends, losing to Sugar Ray Lenard but beating Roberto Duran. Still in his 20’s, however, after losing a brutal 15-round fight to Thomas Hearns in 1982, his lifetime of boxing began taking its toll. It is evident and inevitable: you can’t take hundreds, thousands of blows to the head without some sort of brain damage. In 1987, something bizarre happened to Benitez after losing a fight in Buenos Aires. He accused his fight promoter of stealing his money and passport. It took a year to get the Argentine government to allow him to leave the country.
Benítez, by now having fought 62 times as a professional and many more as an amateur, with each new fight was suffering bad beatings. The newspaper story on Benitez described a fight in Quebec: “For eight rounds, the Canadian Mathew Hilton gave Benítez a terrible beating. Finally, in the ninth round, Hilton cornered him against the ropes and plummeted him with combinations to the head. Just before the round ended, a devastating left hook yanked Benítez’s head to the back. As he sank to the canvas his head moved from side to side like the ‘doll bobblehead’.”
Now virtually destitute, living in the Saint Just barrio in Trujillo Alto, Benitez gets a $200 a month pension from the World Boxing Council. The newspaper story describes the skeleton of what was once a gym: the rusty frame of what was once the boxing ring, a punching bag lying dead on the floor. When Benítez tried to walk, he lost his balance, reminiscent of that “dance of death” in that terrible knockout in Quebec.
It was useless to try to interview Benítez. He kept asking “how old am I?” Next to him was his 81-year-old mother, Clara. Some 15 times in less than an hour, staring at his mother, Benitez asked: “Are you my mother?”
Some professional boxers survive without terrible brain damage. According to scientific reports, some 20 percent don’t. According to the American Medical Association, four out of five boxers suffer some degree of noticeable brain damage, like dementia, loss of memory, or worse.
As the heartbreaking attempt to interview Benitez shows, he is one that didn’t survive. As other great champions like Muhammad Ali. Is there anything sadder than to see him today, his once great hands shaking uncontrollably, this once great communicator now trying desperately to mumble words?
Now, also heartbreaking was the newspaper story after the Cotto fight describing the crying of his three children, at ringside, as they witnessed the pounding of their father’s profusely bleeding face. Cotto’s wife, Melissa, confessed that, as all Puerto Rico, she never dreamed this could happen.
There is a reason why Puerto Rico loves boxing perhaps more than any other sport. From Sixto Escobar in 1934 to Miguel Cotto, Puerto Rico has had no less than 55 world champions. This small island ranks third in the world in producing champions.
But as hard as it is today to believe, some day Puerto Rico will follow other parts of the world that see professional boxing for what it is, a form of entertainment too brutal, too destructive, to have a place in a civilized, humane society. Some day it will be banned, and one hopes before it does to other young men what it did to Wilfredo Benítez.
And to what it did to another boxer a week before the Cotto-Margarito fight. In San Antonio, for ten rounds, Mexican welterweight Oscar Diaz was also destroyed. He collapsed. Unconscious and unresponsive, he was rushed to a hospital for surgery for bleeding on the brain. As of this writing, he was in a coma.
Loving the sport and loving the champions as much as Puerto Ricans do, does not erase the reality of professional boxing. It is a brutal, inexcusably inhumane sport.
Puerto Rico was stunned. The big July 27th newspaper headline was one word: “Destroyed.” The full-page photo of the boxer on his left knee, his face battered and bloodied, his puffed eyes closed, his puffed lips open. His arm, gloves, boxing shorts splattered with blood.
This could not be Miguel Cotto. Not the invincible Miguel Cotto. His face so bloated, battered and bloodied that it didn’t even look like him.
It was. But it wasn’t only that he was no longer champ, no longer unbeaten. It was that he was “destroyed” by Antonio Margarito. That the Mexican, in the graphic words of the AP report, sent “Cotto to a hospital for enough stitches to make a quilt.”
And this is the thing about boxing. You pick up the paper in the morning, turn to the sport pages, and when you see that your baseball, or basketball, or football team lost, you feel disappointment. But this huge headline and photo provoked an emotion far beyond disappointment. This is a human being. These are real wounds on his face, real blood throughout his body. But what about the damage to what you don’t see? Just how bad, how seriously, has this man been “destroyed?”
Now, talking about heartbreak in boxing, take a newspaper story published a few months ago on another Puerto Rican boxer that was as idolized as Miguel Cotto. Wilfredo Benitez was born in New York City in 1958 from a Puerto Rican boxing family. At the age of 15 he was already world-ranked. At 17, he made boxing history as the youngest ever world champion. By 1981 he made boxing history again becoming the youngest champion in three divisions.
Like Cotto, he had mega fights in Las Vegas against boxing legends, losing to Sugar Ray Lenard but beating Roberto Duran. Still in his 20’s, however, after losing a brutal 15-round fight to Thomas Hearns in 1982, his lifetime of boxing began taking its toll. It is evident and inevitable: you can’t take hundreds, thousands of blows to the head without some sort of brain damage. In 1987, something bizarre happened to Benitez after losing a fight in Buenos Aires. He accused his fight promoter of stealing his money and passport. It took a year to get the Argentine government to allow him to leave the country.
Benítez, by now having fought 62 times as a professional and many more as an amateur, with each new fight was suffering bad beatings. The newspaper story on Benitez described a fight in Quebec: “For eight rounds, the Canadian Mathew Hilton gave Benítez a terrible beating. Finally, in the ninth round, Hilton cornered him against the ropes and plummeted him with combinations to the head. Just before the round ended, a devastating left hook yanked Benítez’s head to the back. As he sank to the canvas his head moved from side to side like the ‘doll bobblehead’.”
Now virtually destitute, living in the Saint Just barrio in Trujillo Alto, Benitez gets a $200 a month pension from the World Boxing Council. The newspaper story describes the skeleton of what was once a gym: the rusty frame of what was once the boxing ring, a punching bag lying dead on the floor. When Benítez tried to walk, he lost his balance, reminiscent of that “dance of death” in that terrible knockout in Quebec.
It was useless to try to interview Benítez. He kept asking “how old am I?” Next to him was his 81-year-old mother, Clara. Some 15 times in less than an hour, staring at his mother, Benitez asked: “Are you my mother?”
Some professional boxers survive without terrible brain damage. According to scientific reports, some 20 percent don’t. According to the American Medical Association, four out of five boxers suffer some degree of noticeable brain damage, like dementia, loss of memory, or worse.
As the heartbreaking attempt to interview Benitez shows, he is one that didn’t survive. As other great champions like Muhammad Ali. Is there anything sadder than to see him today, his once great hands shaking uncontrollably, this once great communicator now trying desperately to mumble words?
Now, also heartbreaking was the newspaper story after the Cotto fight describing the crying of his three children, at ringside, as they witnessed the pounding of their father’s profusely bleeding face. Cotto’s wife, Melissa, confessed that, as all Puerto Rico, she never dreamed this could happen.
There is a reason why Puerto Rico loves boxing perhaps more than any other sport. From Sixto Escobar in 1934 to Miguel Cotto, Puerto Rico has had no less than 55 world champions. This small island ranks third in the world in producing champions.
But as hard as it is today to believe, some day Puerto Rico will follow other parts of the world that see professional boxing for what it is, a form of entertainment too brutal, too destructive, to have a place in a civilized, humane society. Some day it will be banned, and one hopes before it does to other young men what it did to Wilfredo Benítez.
And to what it did to another boxer a week before the Cotto-Margarito fight. In San Antonio, for ten rounds, Mexican welterweight Oscar Diaz was also destroyed. He collapsed. Unconscious and unresponsive, he was rushed to a hospital for surgery for bleeding on the brain. As of this writing, he was in a coma.
Loving the sport and loving the champions as much as Puerto Ricans do, does not erase the reality of professional boxing. It is a brutal, inexcusably inhumane sport.
THE GREATEST BASEBALL PLAYER
Last week’s All Star game was a spectacular celebration of baseball with the 49 Hall of Famers on the field before the game. Held at Yankee Stadium – the 85-year old “baseball cathedral” in its last season – it was also a celebration of Yankee greatness.
But what came to mind, however, was another ball park, a little, dinky park, hard to get to, hardly fitting between streets and avenues in the middle of a borough some people were ashamed to call home. It didn’t even merit the name “stadium”. It was called Ebbetts Field. And the men who played there were called “bums.” Not meant to insult them, but to describe them. Everyone knew that when the sport sections of the New York newspapers used the word “bums” they were referring to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
I never knew why my father was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. He was anything but a masochist. We lived in the Bronx, a sea, of course, of New York Yankee fanaticism. And now and then, not often, he would take me in that endless subway train ride, then that long, long walk, to Ebbett Field, where, except in rare occasions, we saw why they were called “bums.”
So I was a Dodger fan in the early 40’s and the sea of Yankee arrogance was hard to take. I could not deny, of course, that the Yankee won and seemed to be every year in the World Series. But it occurred to me to argue that the real reason was that the Yankees were simply “lucky.” And to prove it I would cut newspaper stories showing how the Yankees won with bloop singles and ground balls with “eyes” that got through the infield, while the losing team tore the ball with line drives hit right at the fielders, or just inches foul.
Then, after the war, something happened.
It is hard today to imagine how big this was. At the start of the 1947 season, at first base in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, there was a black man. Today it will seem an exaggeration to compare this to an African-American running for President. But it was big. Jackie Robinson was the first black man permitted to play in the Mayor Leagues in the 20th Century.
Everyone today recognizes that Robinson is one of the great figures in American history. In 1997, the 50th anniversary of that April afternoon in 1947, President Bill Clinton on down led celebrations of that historic event in every ball park.
But for this lonely Dodger fan beleaguered in the Bronx, Robinson did something else. No one could know it that afternoon, but the moment Robinson began to play, the Dodgers were no longer “bums.” By the end of that year, everyone knew it. The Dodgers won the pennant. And Robinson had survived the racism, the death threats and the indignity of racial segregation in some of the cities where he played, to become the first ever Rookie of the Year.
But there was still the Yankees. If it was true, as I passionately argued, that the Yankees were “lucky”, the Dodgers seemed cursed. Who could forget the 1941 World Series when the Dodgers seemed to have won game four as the last Yankee batter struck out, but the ball went through the Dodger catcher? The Yankees went on to win the game and the series.
#Now, after Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers became an overpowering team that won the pennant in 1949, 1952, 1953. But they lost the series each time to the Yankees. Again in 1955 they seemed destined to lose still again, losing the first two games. Then a pitcher named Jonny Podres somehow handcuffed the Yankees twice. The Dodgers finally won a series. The New York Daily News front page was a giant caricature of a bum with a wide toothless smile. It was now official: bums no more.
Of the millions of words written about the Brooklyn Dodgers through the years, the word that keeps popping up is “heartbreak.” In 1956, the Dodgers again played the Yankees in the series and again lost. But the biggest heartbreak was about to happen. The Dodgers had become too big for the little, dinky ball park, but the team owners got into a nasty fight with the City of New York over a new stadium.
In dramatic contrast to the spectacular All Star game, the Hall of Fame celebration at Yankee Stadium this past Tuesday, on September 24, 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game in Ebbetts Field. There are today old Dodger fans – Larry King confessed to being one not too long ago – who still cannot believe that it happened. The fans lost their team – the Brooklyn Dodgers ceased to exist, and a few years later, so did Ebbetts Field.
Decades later I would still argue that the Yankees were indeed “lucky” – I had after all all those newspaper clippings – but I now know that “luck”, chance, is simply an integral part of the game, more so, I think, than football or basketball. Listen to any baseball player and more often than not he will use the world “luck.
After the All Star game, the front page of the same New York Daily News was a huge close up photo of “King George:” the aging, frail Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner. No use denying that the Yankees have been baseball’s royalty with great players from Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio.
But the greatest player was not a Yankee. Defining “great” as we do in science, politics, art – that is, in terms of positive impact – the greatest player in baseball history was Jackie Robinson. No baseball player had a greater positive impact on the game, on the nation, on the “bums.” That is one thing no one can take away from a Brooklyn Dodger fan.
Last week’s All Star game was a spectacular celebration of baseball with the 49 Hall of Famers on the field before the game. Held at Yankee Stadium – the 85-year old “baseball cathedral” in its last season – it was also a celebration of Yankee greatness.
But what came to mind, however, was another ball park, a little, dinky park, hard to get to, hardly fitting between streets and avenues in the middle of a borough some people were ashamed to call home. It didn’t even merit the name “stadium”. It was called Ebbetts Field. And the men who played there were called “bums.” Not meant to insult them, but to describe them. Everyone knew that when the sport sections of the New York newspapers used the word “bums” they were referring to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
I never knew why my father was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. He was anything but a masochist. We lived in the Bronx, a sea, of course, of New York Yankee fanaticism. And now and then, not often, he would take me in that endless subway train ride, then that long, long walk, to Ebbett Field, where, except in rare occasions, we saw why they were called “bums.”
So I was a Dodger fan in the early 40’s and the sea of Yankee arrogance was hard to take. I could not deny, of course, that the Yankee won and seemed to be every year in the World Series. But it occurred to me to argue that the real reason was that the Yankees were simply “lucky.” And to prove it I would cut newspaper stories showing how the Yankees won with bloop singles and ground balls with “eyes” that got through the infield, while the losing team tore the ball with line drives hit right at the fielders, or just inches foul.
Then, after the war, something happened.
It is hard today to imagine how big this was. At the start of the 1947 season, at first base in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, there was a black man. Today it will seem an exaggeration to compare this to an African-American running for President. But it was big. Jackie Robinson was the first black man permitted to play in the Mayor Leagues in the 20th Century.
Everyone today recognizes that Robinson is one of the great figures in American history. In 1997, the 50th anniversary of that April afternoon in 1947, President Bill Clinton on down led celebrations of that historic event in every ball park.
But for this lonely Dodger fan beleaguered in the Bronx, Robinson did something else. No one could know it that afternoon, but the moment Robinson began to play, the Dodgers were no longer “bums.” By the end of that year, everyone knew it. The Dodgers won the pennant. And Robinson had survived the racism, the death threats and the indignity of racial segregation in some of the cities where he played, to become the first ever Rookie of the Year.
But there was still the Yankees. If it was true, as I passionately argued, that the Yankees were “lucky”, the Dodgers seemed cursed. Who could forget the 1941 World Series when the Dodgers seemed to have won game four as the last Yankee batter struck out, but the ball went through the Dodger catcher? The Yankees went on to win the game and the series.
#Now, after Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers became an overpowering team that won the pennant in 1949, 1952, 1953. But they lost the series each time to the Yankees. Again in 1955 they seemed destined to lose still again, losing the first two games. Then a pitcher named Jonny Podres somehow handcuffed the Yankees twice. The Dodgers finally won a series. The New York Daily News front page was a giant caricature of a bum with a wide toothless smile. It was now official: bums no more.
Of the millions of words written about the Brooklyn Dodgers through the years, the word that keeps popping up is “heartbreak.” In 1956, the Dodgers again played the Yankees in the series and again lost. But the biggest heartbreak was about to happen. The Dodgers had become too big for the little, dinky ball park, but the team owners got into a nasty fight with the City of New York over a new stadium.
In dramatic contrast to the spectacular All Star game, the Hall of Fame celebration at Yankee Stadium this past Tuesday, on September 24, 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game in Ebbetts Field. There are today old Dodger fans – Larry King confessed to being one not too long ago – who still cannot believe that it happened. The fans lost their team – the Brooklyn Dodgers ceased to exist, and a few years later, so did Ebbetts Field.
Decades later I would still argue that the Yankees were indeed “lucky” – I had after all all those newspaper clippings – but I now know that “luck”, chance, is simply an integral part of the game, more so, I think, than football or basketball. Listen to any baseball player and more often than not he will use the world “luck.
After the All Star game, the front page of the same New York Daily News was a huge close up photo of “King George:” the aging, frail Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner. No use denying that the Yankees have been baseball’s royalty with great players from Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio.
But the greatest player was not a Yankee. Defining “great” as we do in science, politics, art – that is, in terms of positive impact – the greatest player in baseball history was Jackie Robinson. No baseball player had a greater positive impact on the game, on the nation, on the “bums.” That is one thing no one can take away from a Brooklyn Dodger fan.
THE FEAR MONGERS STRIKE AGAIN?
At high noon on January 20th, the life of the man who takes the oath of office will have what can be called an “existential transformation.” From that moment and for the next four years, he will carry an inescapable, constitutional and profoundly personal responsibility: prevent another horrific terrorist attack in the United States.
Whoever becomes president, in varying degrees, for years has found fault, criticized, attacked how President Bush and his administration have conducted the “war on terror” since the 9/11 terrorist attack. For the man taking the oath of office, all that is over.
The 9/11 attack was an “existential” event because it changed not only America and Americans, but fundamentally what it means to be president. It is to live every minute of every day with a responsibility awesome beyond words: asking himself he has done everything in his power to prevent another terrorist attack that may kill, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Going to bed every night not knowing, as Hillary Clinton warned in her campaign, if the phone will ring at 3 in the morning.
But isn’t this kind of talk precisely what so many Democrats and so many in the media have been denouncing for years? Isn’t this “fear mongering?” Isn’t this the “despicable” tactic of Bush and the Republican Party of using 9/11 to creating fear in the American people in order to justify the Iraq war? Isn’t this the tactic of using “the war on terror” as excuse to undermine fundamental political rights? And isn’t this the Republicans tactic to defeat Barrack Obama in November?
Lets look at two reports in the July 14th issue of Time magazine that ask a relevant question: is Osama bin Laden still a real threat to the U.S.? We know he is alive somewhere in the Pakistani-Afghanistan frontier and there are reports that he may have a serious kidney disease. According to Time, the answer is clear. “Bin Laden remains determined to kill large numbers of Westerners and disrupt the global economy.”
“Since 9/11,” the reports continue, “al Qaeda and its affiliates have bombed Western-owned hotels around the Muslim world, attacked a number of Jewish targets and conducted suicide operations against oil facilities in the Middle East: we can expect more of the same in the future. Al Qaeda has also used new tactics and weapons – like the surface-to-air missile that brought down an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002. And it retains a long standing desire to acquire a radiological bomb. But al-Qaeda’s most dangerous weapon has always been unpredictability. That’s why it is dangerous to dismiss bin Laden as a spent force.”
Now, again, all this is pretty much what the Bush administration have been saying, and that often is dismissed, in the words of a recent newspaper editorial, as “the White House indulging in…its signature fear mongering.”
But if bin Laden is still alive and at large in November, something similar to the Time reports is likely to be what the president-elect will be told in intelligence briefings. No American president will again underestimate bin Laden. The American government ignored his 1996 “declaration of war against the U.S, ” then minimized his deliberate acts of war against the U.S. – the 1998 deadly attack on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack of an American war ship.
Precisely because “al Qaeda’s most dangerous weapon is unpredictability,” the president must make decisions and act on the assumption that al Qaeda, or any other of a number of terrorist groups, is preparing and waiting for the opening to again attack the U.S.
It is this assumption that changes the nature of the American presidency. There is the famous aphorism by Samuel Johnson in the 18th century: “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.” Nothing focuses the mind of a person, or a nation, than the reality of imminent destruction. Priority – not what is important, but what is most important – becomes evident. This is what happened, of course, after the shock of the 9/11 attack. What everyone believed to be the inevitability of another attack concentrated the minds of the President, of everyone in his government, and for a time, virtually every American.
The excellent book “Decision and War” by former Pentagon official Douglass J. Feith describes that the terrible fear after 9/11 was not only that new terrorist attacks would take many more lives and cause more physical destruction, but that it would destroy what Americans have most cherished throughout the nation’s history – the “American way of life,” beginning of course with individual freedoms.
So back to January 20th. If the man taking the oath is Barack Obama, he made “ending the war in Iraq” the essential campaign promise that won him the nomination. After he began to indicate that he may “refine” his position as to when and how, he felt he had to emphatically reaffirm that he has not changed. That as President, the first question he will ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff is how soon can we withdraw the troops out of Iraq.
But there is a prior question: are we doing everything in our power to prevent the next terrorist attack? The details of when and how to “withdraw” from Iraq, generating so much heat during the campaign, will depend on the answer. The new president will have no choice but to assume that if he doesn’t prevent it, there will be another terrorist attack that may involve a nuclear weapon, or other weapon of mass destruction, with unimaginable consequences.
Does this sound like “the fear mongers strike again?” It is in fact the existential reality facing the President and the American people.
At high noon on January 20th, the life of the man who takes the oath of office will have what can be called an “existential transformation.” From that moment and for the next four years, he will carry an inescapable, constitutional and profoundly personal responsibility: prevent another horrific terrorist attack in the United States.
Whoever becomes president, in varying degrees, for years has found fault, criticized, attacked how President Bush and his administration have conducted the “war on terror” since the 9/11 terrorist attack. For the man taking the oath of office, all that is over.
The 9/11 attack was an “existential” event because it changed not only America and Americans, but fundamentally what it means to be president. It is to live every minute of every day with a responsibility awesome beyond words: asking himself he has done everything in his power to prevent another terrorist attack that may kill, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Going to bed every night not knowing, as Hillary Clinton warned in her campaign, if the phone will ring at 3 in the morning.
But isn’t this kind of talk precisely what so many Democrats and so many in the media have been denouncing for years? Isn’t this “fear mongering?” Isn’t this the “despicable” tactic of Bush and the Republican Party of using 9/11 to creating fear in the American people in order to justify the Iraq war? Isn’t this the tactic of using “the war on terror” as excuse to undermine fundamental political rights? And isn’t this the Republicans tactic to defeat Barrack Obama in November?
Lets look at two reports in the July 14th issue of Time magazine that ask a relevant question: is Osama bin Laden still a real threat to the U.S.? We know he is alive somewhere in the Pakistani-Afghanistan frontier and there are reports that he may have a serious kidney disease. According to Time, the answer is clear. “Bin Laden remains determined to kill large numbers of Westerners and disrupt the global economy.”
“Since 9/11,” the reports continue, “al Qaeda and its affiliates have bombed Western-owned hotels around the Muslim world, attacked a number of Jewish targets and conducted suicide operations against oil facilities in the Middle East: we can expect more of the same in the future. Al Qaeda has also used new tactics and weapons – like the surface-to-air missile that brought down an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002. And it retains a long standing desire to acquire a radiological bomb. But al-Qaeda’s most dangerous weapon has always been unpredictability. That’s why it is dangerous to dismiss bin Laden as a spent force.”
Now, again, all this is pretty much what the Bush administration have been saying, and that often is dismissed, in the words of a recent newspaper editorial, as “the White House indulging in…its signature fear mongering.”
But if bin Laden is still alive and at large in November, something similar to the Time reports is likely to be what the president-elect will be told in intelligence briefings. No American president will again underestimate bin Laden. The American government ignored his 1996 “declaration of war against the U.S, ” then minimized his deliberate acts of war against the U.S. – the 1998 deadly attack on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack of an American war ship.
Precisely because “al Qaeda’s most dangerous weapon is unpredictability,” the president must make decisions and act on the assumption that al Qaeda, or any other of a number of terrorist groups, is preparing and waiting for the opening to again attack the U.S.
It is this assumption that changes the nature of the American presidency. There is the famous aphorism by Samuel Johnson in the 18th century: “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.” Nothing focuses the mind of a person, or a nation, than the reality of imminent destruction. Priority – not what is important, but what is most important – becomes evident. This is what happened, of course, after the shock of the 9/11 attack. What everyone believed to be the inevitability of another attack concentrated the minds of the President, of everyone in his government, and for a time, virtually every American.
The excellent book “Decision and War” by former Pentagon official Douglass J. Feith describes that the terrible fear after 9/11 was not only that new terrorist attacks would take many more lives and cause more physical destruction, but that it would destroy what Americans have most cherished throughout the nation’s history – the “American way of life,” beginning of course with individual freedoms.
So back to January 20th. If the man taking the oath is Barack Obama, he made “ending the war in Iraq” the essential campaign promise that won him the nomination. After he began to indicate that he may “refine” his position as to when and how, he felt he had to emphatically reaffirm that he has not changed. That as President, the first question he will ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff is how soon can we withdraw the troops out of Iraq.
But there is a prior question: are we doing everything in our power to prevent the next terrorist attack? The details of when and how to “withdraw” from Iraq, generating so much heat during the campaign, will depend on the answer. The new president will have no choice but to assume that if he doesn’t prevent it, there will be another terrorist attack that may involve a nuclear weapon, or other weapon of mass destruction, with unimaginable consequences.
Does this sound like “the fear mongers strike again?” It is in fact the existential reality facing the President and the American people.
CAN THE ISLAND PULL OUT OF THE RECESSION?
Ramon Cantero Frau, former head of the Economic Development Administration, this past week painted a grim picture of the island economy, focused on two statistics.
One, the banking crisis. From late 2004 to the present, the market value of Puerto Rican bank stocks has declined by $19.4 billion. Assuming that 40 per cent is owned by local residents and corporations, Puerto Ricans have lost $7.7 billion.
Two, the energy crisis. Puerto Rico consumes some 70 million barrels of oil a year. The increase in the price of oil since 2005 up to now has cost Puerto Rico $9.9 million. This is real money: “money that has not created roads, schools, housing, hospitals. It is money that has evaporated from the pockets of the Puerto Ricans.”
This is a massive decrease of wealth in Puerto Rico. In the past, Cantero writes, Puerto Rico has overcome serious economic crisis. But they were basically one dimensional and the solutions consisted in one form or another of fiscal stimulation.
Today’s crisis, he writes, is different. It is multi dimensional and extremely complicated. Short term there is little Puerto Rico can do about the world-wide banking credit crisis or about the world-wide energy crisis. Long term, he writes, Puerto Rico must recognize that the magnitude of the crisis “transcends political parties. This is the first time that we have to establish national consensus to resolve the economic crisis.”
How bad is the recession? As island economist Mohinder S. Bhatia puts it: “The overall picture of the economy is not pretty.” The Gross Domestic Product declined by 2.1 per cent in fiscal year 2008. It would be worse if not for the $1.2 billion in U.S. economic stimulus money sent to nearly one million Puerto Rico a few weeks ago. Bhatia also points out that although unemployment is up to 11.4 percent, this is still far below the 1975 recession, 26 percent, or the 1983 recession, 25 percent.
But the fundamental question is whether Puerto Rico, this time, can pull out of the recession. The point of Cantero’s article is that there must be a political “national consensus”: a recognition that this crisis is so serious, so deep and so complex, that Puerto Rico must transcend partisan politics. This, of course, is what numerous other private sector leaders and organizations have been pleading for months – with the one important achievement being last month’s bipartisan approval of a wide-ranging investment incentive law.
And this brings us to what happens in November of this year. Whoever wins, needless to say, will be faced with the economic crisis. And the newly-elected government will have to make a fundamental, and crucial decision: in fact, a decision that in island history all governors and parties have had to make. What will be the priority – the economy or political status?
#At this point the opinion polls say not only that Luis Fortuno and the New Progressive Party will win, but that they will sweep the entire government. The NPP has always called itself an “ideological party”, that its reason- to-be is statehood. And we see once again that the NPP cannot wait for next year to “eliminate” Commonwealth status. The NPP Legislature passed a bill that would allow the next Governor to change the official name of the government from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the Government of Puerto Rico. Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila vetoed the bill pointing out that “Commonwealth” is the government’s constitutional name.
This sounds like, and in fact is, superficial ideological politics. But if the he polls are right and Fortuno and the NPP control the entire government, the executive, the Legislature, and soon after, ideologically the Supreme Court, there is no question that there will be another statehood crusade on this island and in the U.S.
Puerto Rico has seen the economic effect of past crusades. Carlos Romero Barcelo went to Congress to give up Puerto Rico’s vital exemption in federal minimum wages. Pedro Rossello lobbied Congress to eliminate of Section 936. In both cases because both were seen as “obstacles to statehood.”
Statehooders have always argued that statehood will boost the island economy. The problem is that economic reality tells us that they are dead wrong. We see precisely today the negative effect of the latest increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.85 to $6.55 an hour. And we have seen the decline in new industrial promotion, and the loss of over 40,000 manufacturing jobs, since the repeal of 936 in the late 1990’s.
There is no mystery here. A big NPP victory here, and in the U.S., if the Democrats win the presidency and control of Congress, will produce the perception that Puerto Rico is finally on the road to statehood. Democrats, believing that Puerto Rico would give them seven more members of the House and two Senators, have been increasingly statehood-friendly. Yes, Fortuno is a national Republican, but resident commissioner candidate Pedro Pierluisi is an Obama Democrat.
Perception, of course, is not reality. The reality is that in the end, statehood is economically impossible. But the perception of the inevitability of statehood will have an effect on the island economy far worse than the loss of minimum wage flexibility and the loss of 936.
The obsession to eliminate Commonwealth will undermine the foundation of the island economy. The perception will be that Puerto Rico will soon lose federal tax exemption, triple Puerto Rico bond exemption, and other vital benefits.
Can Puerto Rico pull out of the recession? It is evident that It will depend to a great extend on world conditions. But it will also depend on how the newly-elected government answers the essential question of priorities: the economy or status? #One thing we know. As bad as Cantero’s statistics paint the economy today, a new statehood crusade will make it worse.
Ramon Cantero Frau, former head of the Economic Development Administration, this past week painted a grim picture of the island economy, focused on two statistics.
One, the banking crisis. From late 2004 to the present, the market value of Puerto Rican bank stocks has declined by $19.4 billion. Assuming that 40 per cent is owned by local residents and corporations, Puerto Ricans have lost $7.7 billion.
Two, the energy crisis. Puerto Rico consumes some 70 million barrels of oil a year. The increase in the price of oil since 2005 up to now has cost Puerto Rico $9.9 million. This is real money: “money that has not created roads, schools, housing, hospitals. It is money that has evaporated from the pockets of the Puerto Ricans.”
This is a massive decrease of wealth in Puerto Rico. In the past, Cantero writes, Puerto Rico has overcome serious economic crisis. But they were basically one dimensional and the solutions consisted in one form or another of fiscal stimulation.
Today’s crisis, he writes, is different. It is multi dimensional and extremely complicated. Short term there is little Puerto Rico can do about the world-wide banking credit crisis or about the world-wide energy crisis. Long term, he writes, Puerto Rico must recognize that the magnitude of the crisis “transcends political parties. This is the first time that we have to establish national consensus to resolve the economic crisis.”
How bad is the recession? As island economist Mohinder S. Bhatia puts it: “The overall picture of the economy is not pretty.” The Gross Domestic Product declined by 2.1 per cent in fiscal year 2008. It would be worse if not for the $1.2 billion in U.S. economic stimulus money sent to nearly one million Puerto Rico a few weeks ago. Bhatia also points out that although unemployment is up to 11.4 percent, this is still far below the 1975 recession, 26 percent, or the 1983 recession, 25 percent.
But the fundamental question is whether Puerto Rico, this time, can pull out of the recession. The point of Cantero’s article is that there must be a political “national consensus”: a recognition that this crisis is so serious, so deep and so complex, that Puerto Rico must transcend partisan politics. This, of course, is what numerous other private sector leaders and organizations have been pleading for months – with the one important achievement being last month’s bipartisan approval of a wide-ranging investment incentive law.
And this brings us to what happens in November of this year. Whoever wins, needless to say, will be faced with the economic crisis. And the newly-elected government will have to make a fundamental, and crucial decision: in fact, a decision that in island history all governors and parties have had to make. What will be the priority – the economy or political status?
#At this point the opinion polls say not only that Luis Fortuno and the New Progressive Party will win, but that they will sweep the entire government. The NPP has always called itself an “ideological party”, that its reason- to-be is statehood. And we see once again that the NPP cannot wait for next year to “eliminate” Commonwealth status. The NPP Legislature passed a bill that would allow the next Governor to change the official name of the government from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the Government of Puerto Rico. Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila vetoed the bill pointing out that “Commonwealth” is the government’s constitutional name.
This sounds like, and in fact is, superficial ideological politics. But if the he polls are right and Fortuno and the NPP control the entire government, the executive, the Legislature, and soon after, ideologically the Supreme Court, there is no question that there will be another statehood crusade on this island and in the U.S.
Puerto Rico has seen the economic effect of past crusades. Carlos Romero Barcelo went to Congress to give up Puerto Rico’s vital exemption in federal minimum wages. Pedro Rossello lobbied Congress to eliminate of Section 936. In both cases because both were seen as “obstacles to statehood.”
Statehooders have always argued that statehood will boost the island economy. The problem is that economic reality tells us that they are dead wrong. We see precisely today the negative effect of the latest increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.85 to $6.55 an hour. And we have seen the decline in new industrial promotion, and the loss of over 40,000 manufacturing jobs, since the repeal of 936 in the late 1990’s.
There is no mystery here. A big NPP victory here, and in the U.S., if the Democrats win the presidency and control of Congress, will produce the perception that Puerto Rico is finally on the road to statehood. Democrats, believing that Puerto Rico would give them seven more members of the House and two Senators, have been increasingly statehood-friendly. Yes, Fortuno is a national Republican, but resident commissioner candidate Pedro Pierluisi is an Obama Democrat.
Perception, of course, is not reality. The reality is that in the end, statehood is economically impossible. But the perception of the inevitability of statehood will have an effect on the island economy far worse than the loss of minimum wage flexibility and the loss of 936.
The obsession to eliminate Commonwealth will undermine the foundation of the island economy. The perception will be that Puerto Rico will soon lose federal tax exemption, triple Puerto Rico bond exemption, and other vital benefits.
Can Puerto Rico pull out of the recession? It is evident that It will depend to a great extend on world conditions. But it will also depend on how the newly-elected government answers the essential question of priorities: the economy or status? #One thing we know. As bad as Cantero’s statistics paint the economy today, a new statehood crusade will make it worse.
THE HIDDEN DISPLAY IN A GREAT MUSEUM
When I visited the American Museum of National History, which is every time I went to New York City, I never saw it. This past week, I took the museum tour and the guide mentioned that over in the biodiversity section, there was an “interesting” world population display.
After the tour, which incidentally was excellent and no one should miss, I looked for the display. I could not find it. After several attempts, I asked a museum employee who had to think, and finally pointed at the direction. I still had trouble finding it, and in fact walked by it several times, and finally I saw it, almost by chance.
It was easy to miss. You could almost say that it was hidden. The “display” was really a relatively small screen up on a wall in a deserted corner. It consisted of a short video that depicted world population growth since year one. There was a map of the world totally blank. And as the number of years increased, white dots appeared – each representing a million people. The dots began to appear in Southern Asia, then in Europe, then in the East Coast of North America, then in South America.
As the years, decades, centuries moved on, you could see the entire world being covered by the white dots.
This is a great museum that seems to get better every time I visit. But it’s more than an entertainment, even an educational experience. It can be a philosophical, metaphysical experience. In the huge Rose Planetarium, faced with the incomprehensible vastness of what we call the universe, composed, we are told, of the space travelled by light since the Big Band 13 billion years ago, and the billions of galaxies within, you can inverse the effect: not how big the universe is, but how small our planet is.
And the absolute wonder of life on this planet – the incredible diversity of life so dramatically displayed in the huge biodiversity area. And, of course, the miracle of human life: the wonder of human evolution, the tiny rat-like mammals that somehow survived the dinosaur era. Talk about the understanding the vastness of our universe, how about understanding these gigantic creatures, some of them incredibly vicious, ruling this planet for some 250 million years? We, humans, have been around some 100,000 years. Literally the blink of an eye.
Now, as I looked up at the population video, I said to myself: with all the truly wondrous things in this museum, is there anything more important than this? Is there anything more important on this planet than the amazing growth in human population?
The private organization, The Population Reference Bureau, has just published the latest data on world population. In 2007, it was 6.6 billion. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was 1.6 billion.
Almost all of this phenomenal growth is taking place in what is called “the developing world” – the poorest countries that are least able to cope with exploding population. There are 80 million more people every year in these countries, compared to 1.6 million more in the developed world.
To highlight the great and growing divide between the developed and “less developed” world the PRB compares the U.S., Germany and Ethiopia. The U.S. population is 302 million: Germany 82 million: Ethiopia 77 million. Life expectancy: U.S. 78 years, Germany 79 years, Ethiopia 49 years. Infant mortality per 1,000 births: U.S. 6.5 years, Germany 3.8 years, Ethiopia 77. Children under five underweight: U.S. 1 percent: Germany zero: Ethiopia 35 percent.
Every year almost 6 million children die of malnutrition, almost all in the developing world: 16,000 a day. That’s more than the total population, the PRB reports, of Denmark.
Back to the Museum of National History. There is a fundamental message that it communicates. We, the human race, are doing great damage to this planet. Humans burn fossil fuels for energy, cut down forests, contributing to climate change that is expected to produce rising temperature, more extreme weather, facilitate the spread of infectious diseases. One of the many other videos in the museum is by the famous actress, Meryl Streep, describing how humans are producing one of the greatest periods of species extinction in the planet’s history.
Add to this that the great divide between the developed and developing world can only get deepen as the population explodes in the poor countries. And this, needless to say, has enormous political, economic, social and security consequences.
On a world map, Puerto Rico, when it appears, is little more than a dot. But we know something about the consequences of rapid population growth. At the beginning of the 20th century, this island with it limited land and resources, was already overpopulated with one million people. Improved sanitation and health services produced a population explosion. Today there are some 4 million people on this island, and another 4 million on the U.S. mainland.
It was not easy for a small number of Puerto Ricans back in early century to convince anyone that the fundamental cause of Puerto Rico’s tragic social and economic ills – not, of course, the only, but the fundamental cause – was the population explosion.
Now, at the museum, it seemed to me that precisely this was dramatically symbolized by the fact that the world population “display” was easy to miss, practically hidden away. Yet if any of the great number of people walking around feel anything like the metaphysical experience at the wonder of human life on this planet, and think about the consequences of how it is multiplying, there is no more important display in this great museum .
When I visited the American Museum of National History, which is every time I went to New York City, I never saw it. This past week, I took the museum tour and the guide mentioned that over in the biodiversity section, there was an “interesting” world population display.
After the tour, which incidentally was excellent and no one should miss, I looked for the display. I could not find it. After several attempts, I asked a museum employee who had to think, and finally pointed at the direction. I still had trouble finding it, and in fact walked by it several times, and finally I saw it, almost by chance.
It was easy to miss. You could almost say that it was hidden. The “display” was really a relatively small screen up on a wall in a deserted corner. It consisted of a short video that depicted world population growth since year one. There was a map of the world totally blank. And as the number of years increased, white dots appeared – each representing a million people. The dots began to appear in Southern Asia, then in Europe, then in the East Coast of North America, then in South America.
As the years, decades, centuries moved on, you could see the entire world being covered by the white dots.
This is a great museum that seems to get better every time I visit. But it’s more than an entertainment, even an educational experience. It can be a philosophical, metaphysical experience. In the huge Rose Planetarium, faced with the incomprehensible vastness of what we call the universe, composed, we are told, of the space travelled by light since the Big Band 13 billion years ago, and the billions of galaxies within, you can inverse the effect: not how big the universe is, but how small our planet is.
And the absolute wonder of life on this planet – the incredible diversity of life so dramatically displayed in the huge biodiversity area. And, of course, the miracle of human life: the wonder of human evolution, the tiny rat-like mammals that somehow survived the dinosaur era. Talk about the understanding the vastness of our universe, how about understanding these gigantic creatures, some of them incredibly vicious, ruling this planet for some 250 million years? We, humans, have been around some 100,000 years. Literally the blink of an eye.
Now, as I looked up at the population video, I said to myself: with all the truly wondrous things in this museum, is there anything more important than this? Is there anything more important on this planet than the amazing growth in human population?
The private organization, The Population Reference Bureau, has just published the latest data on world population. In 2007, it was 6.6 billion. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was 1.6 billion.
Almost all of this phenomenal growth is taking place in what is called “the developing world” – the poorest countries that are least able to cope with exploding population. There are 80 million more people every year in these countries, compared to 1.6 million more in the developed world.
To highlight the great and growing divide between the developed and “less developed” world the PRB compares the U.S., Germany and Ethiopia. The U.S. population is 302 million: Germany 82 million: Ethiopia 77 million. Life expectancy: U.S. 78 years, Germany 79 years, Ethiopia 49 years. Infant mortality per 1,000 births: U.S. 6.5 years, Germany 3.8 years, Ethiopia 77. Children under five underweight: U.S. 1 percent: Germany zero: Ethiopia 35 percent.
Every year almost 6 million children die of malnutrition, almost all in the developing world: 16,000 a day. That’s more than the total population, the PRB reports, of Denmark.
Back to the Museum of National History. There is a fundamental message that it communicates. We, the human race, are doing great damage to this planet. Humans burn fossil fuels for energy, cut down forests, contributing to climate change that is expected to produce rising temperature, more extreme weather, facilitate the spread of infectious diseases. One of the many other videos in the museum is by the famous actress, Meryl Streep, describing how humans are producing one of the greatest periods of species extinction in the planet’s history.
Add to this that the great divide between the developed and developing world can only get deepen as the population explodes in the poor countries. And this, needless to say, has enormous political, economic, social and security consequences.
On a world map, Puerto Rico, when it appears, is little more than a dot. But we know something about the consequences of rapid population growth. At the beginning of the 20th century, this island with it limited land and resources, was already overpopulated with one million people. Improved sanitation and health services produced a population explosion. Today there are some 4 million people on this island, and another 4 million on the U.S. mainland.
It was not easy for a small number of Puerto Ricans back in early century to convince anyone that the fundamental cause of Puerto Rico’s tragic social and economic ills – not, of course, the only, but the fundamental cause – was the population explosion.
Now, at the museum, it seemed to me that precisely this was dramatically symbolized by the fact that the world population “display” was easy to miss, practically hidden away. Yet if any of the great number of people walking around feel anything like the metaphysical experience at the wonder of human life on this planet, and think about the consequences of how it is multiplying, there is no more important display in this great museum .
PUERTO RICO’S PERPETUAL “SCANDAL”
Puerto Ricans have a low opinion of the Legislature and with the sensational news stories published recently on the salaries and other benefits legislators give themselves, it can only getter lower.
The basic salary of the 53 representatives and 28 senators is $73,775. The vice presidents, floor leaders and chairman of the treasury and government committees get $84,841. The House Speaker and Senate President get $110,663.
Legislators also get a per diem for attending the sessions and committee hearings of $150 a day, or $162 if they live outside the metropolitan area. This, needless to say, adds up. One representative received $163,644 in per diem from the beginning of this term in 2005 up to April of this year. There are 25 others that received over $130,000. On the Senate side one Senator received $175,285. All but three of the 28 received over $100,000.
There is more. Legislators have a choice: either a car plus gas, or a monthly transportation stipend of $1,300 a month, or $1,400 if they live more than 50 kilometers from the Capitol building. This too adds up. Sixteen Senators that chose the stipend have received over $50,000 during this term, 13 of them $58,400.
If you add the three – salary, per diem, and stipend, one Senator has received in this term $516,488. One representative $414,307. If you add up, say, all the per diem payments to all the legislators in this term, you get $10 million.
Now, these are public statistics available to anyone that wants them and it’s hardly surprising that the Puerto Rico Legislature is extraordinarily generous with itself. Decades ago, then Puerto Rico Controller Ieana Carlo Colon issued a stinging report pointing out that the legislators gave themselves economic benefits far beyond any Legislature in the 50 states: some benefits beyond what members of the U.S. Congress get.
In view of the fact that Puerto Rico is twice as poor as the poorest state, this is “scandalous.” But the Legislature was unmoved. In 1998, in fact, it legislated for itself, and then Governor Pedro Rosselló approved, automatic cost of living salary and per diem increases that would go into effect with each new term.
This past week it seemed that the legislators worried. While Puerto Ricans are suffering badly from the economic crisis, it would certainly not look good that the Legislature would increase the basic salary to $90,743, the salary of House and Senate presidents up to $136,115, and also increase the per diem. As one legislator put, it would not look good that a committee chairman would make more than the Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. So the Legislature decided to “freeze” – not eliminate – the automatic 2009 salary and per diem increases.
Now, there is a reason why, I think, the “scandal” of the Legislature has lasted so long. And it is precisely because Puerto Ricans have such a low opinion of the Legislature. And this is because they have such a low opinion of political parties and of politics itself. They see the Legislature as nothing more than a poisonous partisan snake pit.
This, in fact, is not entirely true. There are men and women in the Legislature that work hard trying to come up with legislation on some very hard social and economic ills on this island. They have a right to feel strongly that they earn every penny.
#But there is no question today as in the past that it is vital for this island to raise the quality of the Legislature. And the question is: how?
Puerto Ricans have a low opinion of the Legislature and with the sensational news stories published recently on the salaries and other benefits legislators give themselves, it can only getter lower.
The basic salary of the 53 representatives and 28 senators is $73,775. The vice presidents, floor leaders and chairman of the treasury and government committees get $84,841. The House Speaker and Senate President get $110,663.
Legislators also get a per diem for attending the sessions and committee hearings of $150 a day, or $162 if they live outside the metropolitan area. This, needless to say, adds up. One representative received $163,644 in per diem from the beginning of this term in 2005 up to April of this year. There are 25 others that received over $130,000. On the Senate side one Senator received $175,285. All but three of the 28 received over $100,000.
There is more. Legislators have a choice: either a car plus gas, or a monthly transportation stipend of $1,300 a month, or $1,400 if they live more than 50 kilometers from the Capitol building. This too adds up. Sixteen Senators that chose the stipend have received over $50,000 during this term, 13 of them $58,400.
If you add the three – salary, per diem, and stipend, one Senator has received in this term $516,488. One representative $414,307. If you add up, say, all the per diem payments to all the legislators in this term, you get $10 million.
Now, these are public statistics available to anyone that wants them and it’s hardly surprising that the Puerto Rico Legislature is extraordinarily generous with itself. Decades ago, then Puerto Rico Controller Ieana Carlo Colon issued a stinging report pointing out that the legislators gave themselves economic benefits far beyond any Legislature in the 50 states: some benefits beyond what members of the U.S. Congress get.
In view of the fact that Puerto Rico is twice as poor as the poorest state, this is “scandalous.” But the Legislature was unmoved. In 1998, in fact, it legislated for itself, and then Governor Pedro Rosselló approved, automatic cost of living salary and per diem increases that would go into effect with each new term.
This past week it seemed that the legislators worried. While Puerto Ricans are suffering badly from the economic crisis, it would certainly not look good that the Legislature would increase the basic salary to $90,743, the salary of House and Senate presidents up to $136,115, and also increase the per diem. As one legislator put, it would not look good that a committee chairman would make more than the Chief Justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. So the Legislature decided to “freeze” – not eliminate – the automatic 2009 salary and per diem increases.
Now, there is a reason why, I think, the “scandal” of the Legislature has lasted so long. And it is precisely because Puerto Ricans have such a low opinion of the Legislature. And this is because they have such a low opinion of political parties and of politics itself. They see the Legislature as nothing more than a poisonous partisan snake pit.
This, in fact, is not entirely true. There are men and women in the Legislature that work hard trying to come up with legislation on some very hard social and economic ills on this island. They have a right to feel strongly that they earn every penny.
#But there is no question today as in the past that it is vital for this island to raise the quality of the Legislature. And the question is: how?
THE MYSTERY OF BARACK OBAMA
A few days ago, over lunch with an old friend in Washington, D.C., we were both in awe that we may well be in the middle of a momentous moment in American history – the election of Barack Obama, an African-American, as President of the United States.
Lou Nunez, as much as anyone, knows from personal experience what this means. He has spent his life in the civil rights fight, organizing several of the most important Puerto Rican advocacy civic organizations, including the Puerto Rico Coalition. In the 1980’s he was named by the U.S. President the executive director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Obama, as everyone knows, has unusual talent in saying exactly the right things and even greater talent in saying it with moving eloquence. Still, I said, when I get down to some specific issues of great importance, I disagreed with him. For instance, his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and now his opposition to the U.S.-Columbian Free Trade agreement.
But as I said this, we began to ask each other: but is Obama “really” against them? Listening to him during his brilliant primaries campaign against Hillary Clinton, there was no question that he was. He hammered away at NAFTA promising that if Mexico and Canada refused to renegotiate major changes, he will do so unilaterally. Nothing could be more specific that that.
But the question goes far beyond his position on NAFTA. Several days later, a Washington Post headline read: “Obama Still Faces a Big Task in Telling People Who He Is.” The subhead reads: “Having proved he could overcome the Clinton machine, Obama must prove he can overcome questions about who he is and what he believes.”
But it is obvious that he has had an extraordinary opportunity to do so. The enormous significance of an African-American candidate, his personal charisma, the seemingly endless primaries marathon, overtaking the seemingly unbeatable Hillary, was high drama made to perfection for the voracious appetite of cable TV news.
For a year and a half he received virtual permanent, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, media coverage. After literally hundreds of thousands of stories, endless interviews, endless primaries debates, his two best-selling memoirs, is there anything about Barrack Obama that has not been written, dissected, analyzed hundreds of times?
Why, then, is there any mystery about him? Since most polls say that he is on his way to winning, is this then the one thing that can stop him? The idea that as much as Americans like him, indeed, as much as they may want to see him President, they still don’t know who he is.
But back to the conversation with Nunez. The nostalgia of how things have changed in our lifetime. I recalled my first visit to Washington in the early 1950’s. My friend Martin Fischer and I decided to spend a week there to see the monuments. I recall mentioning this to a friendly woman where I had a summer job. She looked at me with a worried face. Where will you stay, she asked. At the “Y” I said. You should have no problem, she said relieved.
What problem, I asked. She was uncomfortable in telling me that a Puerto Rican can have “problems” in Washington. Washington, after all, she said, is a “segregated city.” As it turned out, the only “problem” we had was the one all tourists have walking from monument to monument in the middle of summer: absolute heat exhaustion. But I will not forget the look on her face, reflecting the century of racial segregation in the Sothern states after the Civil War, in some ways as cruel, and at times even more devastating than the centuries of slavery.
Symbolically, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of an African-American man and woman in the White House, in what just years ago was a “segregated city” where blacks were not allowed into “white only bathrooms.”
But it is also hard to exaggerate how important it is to the U.S., and to the world, that there be no mystery. That Americans feel comfortable that Obama has answered the questions the Washington Post headline asks: who is he and what does he believe?
A few days ago, over lunch with an old friend in Washington, D.C., we were both in awe that we may well be in the middle of a momentous moment in American history – the election of Barack Obama, an African-American, as President of the United States.
Lou Nunez, as much as anyone, knows from personal experience what this means. He has spent his life in the civil rights fight, organizing several of the most important Puerto Rican advocacy civic organizations, including the Puerto Rico Coalition. In the 1980’s he was named by the U.S. President the executive director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Obama, as everyone knows, has unusual talent in saying exactly the right things and even greater talent in saying it with moving eloquence. Still, I said, when I get down to some specific issues of great importance, I disagreed with him. For instance, his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and now his opposition to the U.S.-Columbian Free Trade agreement.
But as I said this, we began to ask each other: but is Obama “really” against them? Listening to him during his brilliant primaries campaign against Hillary Clinton, there was no question that he was. He hammered away at NAFTA promising that if Mexico and Canada refused to renegotiate major changes, he will do so unilaterally. Nothing could be more specific that that.
But the question goes far beyond his position on NAFTA. Several days later, a Washington Post headline read: “Obama Still Faces a Big Task in Telling People Who He Is.” The subhead reads: “Having proved he could overcome the Clinton machine, Obama must prove he can overcome questions about who he is and what he believes.”
But it is obvious that he has had an extraordinary opportunity to do so. The enormous significance of an African-American candidate, his personal charisma, the seemingly endless primaries marathon, overtaking the seemingly unbeatable Hillary, was high drama made to perfection for the voracious appetite of cable TV news.
For a year and a half he received virtual permanent, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, media coverage. After literally hundreds of thousands of stories, endless interviews, endless primaries debates, his two best-selling memoirs, is there anything about Barrack Obama that has not been written, dissected, analyzed hundreds of times?
Why, then, is there any mystery about him? Since most polls say that he is on his way to winning, is this then the one thing that can stop him? The idea that as much as Americans like him, indeed, as much as they may want to see him President, they still don’t know who he is.
But back to the conversation with Nunez. The nostalgia of how things have changed in our lifetime. I recalled my first visit to Washington in the early 1950’s. My friend Martin Fischer and I decided to spend a week there to see the monuments. I recall mentioning this to a friendly woman where I had a summer job. She looked at me with a worried face. Where will you stay, she asked. At the “Y” I said. You should have no problem, she said relieved.
What problem, I asked. She was uncomfortable in telling me that a Puerto Rican can have “problems” in Washington. Washington, after all, she said, is a “segregated city.” As it turned out, the only “problem” we had was the one all tourists have walking from monument to monument in the middle of summer: absolute heat exhaustion. But I will not forget the look on her face, reflecting the century of racial segregation in the Sothern states after the Civil War, in some ways as cruel, and at times even more devastating than the centuries of slavery.
Symbolically, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of an African-American man and woman in the White House, in what just years ago was a “segregated city” where blacks were not allowed into “white only bathrooms.”
But it is also hard to exaggerate how important it is to the U.S., and to the world, that there be no mystery. That Americans feel comfortable that Obama has answered the questions the Washington Post headline asks: who is he and what does he believe?
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
WHO CONTROLS THE GOVERNMENT BUDGET?
Back in 1998, a few of the voices in the wilderness that dared to oppose the unionization of public employees warned that it would take away from the Governor and the Legislature a big part of the power to control the government budget.
The argument was that once the employees in government agencies had the right to collective bargaining to negotiate salary raises, economic benefits and many other working conditions, the agencies would effectively lose control over their budgets.
This past week, Sergio Marxuach of the Center for the New Economy, summarized the proposed budget for fiscal 2009. There is something interesting in the numbers. Contrary to popular opinion, the total budget and the total number of public employees are going down. The fiscal 2006 budget was $26.518 billion: the proposed 2009 budget is $26.331. This is a reduction of $186. The number of public workers was 224,021 in 2006: it will go down to 213,741 in 2009: a significant reduction of 10,280.
But at the same time the general fund payroll is going up. It was $5,257 billion in 2006 and will go up to $5,528 in 2009. This is a hefty increase of $271 million, or 5.16 percent.
Everyone, of course, is in favor of better salaries for teachers, policemen, health care workers. But the issue -- rather critical precisely in Puerto Rico – is who determines government salaries: who determines when to increase them, how much, in what time frame. In a government that is so deficient in providing many vital services for lack of funds, who makes the critical decisions as to spending priorities?
Setting priorities, especially in determining salaries, requires balancing two things: “justice” to the public employees, and “justice” to the people of Puerto Rico. Yes, the highest possible salaries for the employees, but not sacrificing vital services. Yes, raise the salaries, but insure that in return you get greater efficiency and quality of service for the people of Puerto Rico that pays for those increases.
The effect of Law 45, the 1998 law that authorized public employees to unionize and engage in collective bargaining, is to tilt the balance increasingly, relentlessly, in favor of unions in detriment to the people.
A good example is the gigantic Education Department. Everyone knows that as vital as public education is, and the great effort of many thousands of teachers and others, the quality of public education is tragically low, due in large part to the enormous lack of funds in the Education Department. Education Secretary Rafael Aragunde testified in the Legislature this past week that the department will close this fiscal year with a $53.3 million deficit.
To cite one example, an important administrative matter that came up in the public hearings. Legislators asked about the massive theft of student records, used for identity fraud: no less than 9,3535 files stolen in 39 schools in the past two years. Aragunde said that he simply does not have the money, $3 million, to digitize the files.
But the overriding challenge facing Aragunde and every Education Secretary before him is much bigger: in one word, payroll. Even a small salary increase has a huge budget effect. The Department has 72,000 employees. Of the proposed $2.46 billion general fund budget for fiscal 2009, no less than $2.08 billion is for payroll.
Last January, the Teachers Federation decided to strike for big salary increases that the Department could not remotely pay. The Federation ignored the fact that as a Law 45 union, it is specifically prohibited from going on strike. Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá responded by decertifying the union. In the end, however, the teachers got a big raise. The Governor signed an executive order giving them a $250 a month increase: $100 now and $150 in July. Meanwhile, non-teaching employees will also get a $100 monthly increase in July, the result of their own collective bargaining. So as Aragunde told the legislators, as he struggles with the department’s budget shortfalls, he must come up with $200 million to pay for these pay raises.
Multiply many times the enormous pressure the Law 45 unions apply on the government. In the past three years, the Acevedo administration has negotiated some 80 collective bargaining agreements. This explains why while the Governor has reduced public spending and the public workforce, the percent of the total general budget for payroll goes up from 54.87 in 2006, to 58.27 percent in 2009.
This is the point. It will continue to rise, regardless of the economic situation in Puerto Rico, regardless of the deepening budget crisis, regardless of what else has to be sacrificed in vital services, regardless of what the Governor and the Legislature believe is best for all the people of Puerto Rico.
What we are seeing today, and will continue to see in the future, is precisely what those few voices in the wilderness tried to communicate back in 1998: those elected and appointed to determine payroll policies, to set critical spending priorities, have lost a large part of the control over the budget.
And in so doing, they have lost a vital part of the power to govern.
The argument was that once the employees in government agencies had the right to collective bargaining to negotiate salary raises, economic benefits and many other working conditions, the agencies would effectively lose control over their budgets.
This past week, Sergio Marxuach of the Center for the New Economy, summarized the proposed budget for fiscal 2009. There is something interesting in the numbers. Contrary to popular opinion, the total budget and the total number of public employees are going down. The fiscal 2006 budget was $26.518 billion: the proposed 2009 budget is $26.331. This is a reduction of $186. The number of public workers was 224,021 in 2006: it will go down to 213,741 in 2009: a significant reduction of 10,280.
But at the same time the general fund payroll is going up. It was $5,257 billion in 2006 and will go up to $5,528 in 2009. This is a hefty increase of $271 million, or 5.16 percent.
Everyone, of course, is in favor of better salaries for teachers, policemen, health care workers. But the issue -- rather critical precisely in Puerto Rico – is who determines government salaries: who determines when to increase them, how much, in what time frame. In a government that is so deficient in providing many vital services for lack of funds, who makes the critical decisions as to spending priorities?
Setting priorities, especially in determining salaries, requires balancing two things: “justice” to the public employees, and “justice” to the people of Puerto Rico. Yes, the highest possible salaries for the employees, but not sacrificing vital services. Yes, raise the salaries, but insure that in return you get greater efficiency and quality of service for the people of Puerto Rico that pays for those increases.
The effect of Law 45, the 1998 law that authorized public employees to unionize and engage in collective bargaining, is to tilt the balance increasingly, relentlessly, in favor of unions in detriment to the people.
A good example is the gigantic Education Department. Everyone knows that as vital as public education is, and the great effort of many thousands of teachers and others, the quality of public education is tragically low, due in large part to the enormous lack of funds in the Education Department. Education Secretary Rafael Aragunde testified in the Legislature this past week that the department will close this fiscal year with a $53.3 million deficit.
To cite one example, an important administrative matter that came up in the public hearings. Legislators asked about the massive theft of student records, used for identity fraud: no less than 9,3535 files stolen in 39 schools in the past two years. Aragunde said that he simply does not have the money, $3 million, to digitize the files.
But the overriding challenge facing Aragunde and every Education Secretary before him is much bigger: in one word, payroll. Even a small salary increase has a huge budget effect. The Department has 72,000 employees. Of the proposed $2.46 billion general fund budget for fiscal 2009, no less than $2.08 billion is for payroll.
Last January, the Teachers Federation decided to strike for big salary increases that the Department could not remotely pay. The Federation ignored the fact that as a Law 45 union, it is specifically prohibited from going on strike. Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá responded by decertifying the union. In the end, however, the teachers got a big raise. The Governor signed an executive order giving them a $250 a month increase: $100 now and $150 in July. Meanwhile, non-teaching employees will also get a $100 monthly increase in July, the result of their own collective bargaining. So as Aragunde told the legislators, as he struggles with the department’s budget shortfalls, he must come up with $200 million to pay for these pay raises.
Multiply many times the enormous pressure the Law 45 unions apply on the government. In the past three years, the Acevedo administration has negotiated some 80 collective bargaining agreements. This explains why while the Governor has reduced public spending and the public workforce, the percent of the total general budget for payroll goes up from 54.87 in 2006, to 58.27 percent in 2009.
This is the point. It will continue to rise, regardless of the economic situation in Puerto Rico, regardless of the deepening budget crisis, regardless of what else has to be sacrificed in vital services, regardless of what the Governor and the Legislature believe is best for all the people of Puerto Rico.
What we are seeing today, and will continue to see in the future, is precisely what those few voices in the wilderness tried to communicate back in 1998: those elected and appointed to determine payroll policies, to set critical spending priorities, have lost a large part of the control over the budget.
And in so doing, they have lost a vital part of the power to govern.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
PUERTO RICO AND THE UNITED STATES
When it seemed that the Democratic Party presidential primary here would be important, island political leaders were delighted that it would focus the attention of the American people on Puerto Rico. But is this such a good idea?
Take the May 6th front page of the Wall Street Journal. Although readers know that there is more to the WSJ than business news, it was still surprising to see a sports story from Salinas, Puerto Rico about a boxer with the interesting name of McJoe Arroyo. One quickly discovers, however, that there is more to the story.
The reporter, Barry Newman, describes what he calls an “oddity” in Puerto Rico. Everywhere on this island, he writes, the American and Puerto Rican flag fly side by side – except in one place: the Albergue Olympico in Salinas. There the Puerto Rican flag flies alone.
Why? Because in what the story describes as Puerto Rico’s “half-in-half-out status as a Commonwealth of the U.S.,” the island will participate in the Beijing Olympics, as it has since 1948 as an “entity”, that is, the same as an independent nation.
Arroyo, the report declares, has a chance to win the bantamweight medal, joining the other six Puerto Rican boxers that have won medals. Just how “ferocious” is Puerto Rico’s patriotic pride in the Olympics is dramatized by the fact that the only Puerto Rican to win a gold medal was the tennis star, Gigi Fernández. But although she actually won two gold medals, “she doesn’t rate a footnote” in the new Olympic Museum. Why? Because she competed under the U.S. flag.
“We don’t like our people playing on the U.S. team,” the WSJ reporter quotes a pro-independence man attending a basketball game in Caguas. “That is offensive,” someone else says. The greatest moment in island sports, they told the reporter, was when Puerto Rico’s Olympic basketball team beat the U.S. “dream team” in 2004: as great as Roberto Clemente getting his 3,000th hit.
In 1996, the report continues, the International Olympic Committee ruled that from now on only independent nations members of the U.N. can send new teams. So, if Puerto Rico became a state, the IOC would no more accept Puerto Rico than it would the state of Alaska. This obviously is not what pro-statehood leaders want to hear, since many continue to insist that as a state Puerto Rico would retain its Olympic standing.
But the effect of having the American people focus on Puerto Rico, I think, could be deeper than Puerto Rico’s participation in the Olympics, or in the Miss Universe contest where the island has had no less than five winners. It could unveil the very nature of the relation between Puerto Rico and the U.S.
In the past century, island leaders favoring independence or statehood have insisted that the essential nature of the relationship is unjust, abusive, “colonial.” Now the pro-Commonwealth party, after the federal grand jury indictment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, is saying pretty much the same: that Puerto Rico is victim of U.S. “political persecution.”
So the question: is the fundamental nature of the relation to the U.S., in fact, abusive?
Lets go back to the WSJ report. It did not mention that while the reporter observed Arroyo training, the government of Puerto Rico was feverishly working to distribute to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans the $1.282 billion it has received from the U.S. government for economic stimulus. Certainly it would seemed “odd” to readers in the U.S. that Puerto Rico, exempt of federal income taxes, would be receiving this so-called “tax rebate.”
Puerto Rico gets another $13 billion a year from the U.S. government, about half of it grants to the government and individuals. Just one program, food stamps, brings about $1.5 billion a year directly to the recipients. It may also seem odd that every now and then students at the public university, that receive Pell grants from the U.S. government that more than covers their tuition costs, feel motivated to protest the U.S. “abuse” of Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rican leaders that believe that the relationship with the U.S. is in its nature “abusive”, “colonial,” want the American media and the American people to see this island and its people as a “victim” of American power.
But if one believes, as I do, that with all the well-known juridical defects, the relationship is highly beneficial to Puerto Rico, it is important to know exactly what is being communicated to the American people. Not a story of “abuse” but a story of “privilege.”
Why should Puerto Rico have what no state of the union can have -- its own Olympic team under its own flag? Why should an island exempt of federal income taxes get $1.282 billion in “tax rebates?”
The question that I suspect the editors of the Wall Street Journal found in the McJoe Arroyo story of interest to the American people is: if Puerto Ricans so passionately fly only the Puerto Rican flag at its Olympic compound, why will it send no less than 63 delegates to the Democratic convention to select the presidential candidate?
The deeper point in all this is that the more the American people focuses not on the rhetoric, but on the reality of the relationship with Puerto Rico, the more it will ask itself: “Hey, how did the Puerto Ricans get what sure seems to be such a sweet deal for themselves?”
When it seemed that the Democratic Party presidential primary here would be important, island political leaders were delighted that it would focus the attention of the American people on Puerto Rico. But is this such a good idea?
Take the May 6th front page of the Wall Street Journal. Although readers know that there is more to the WSJ than business news, it was still surprising to see a sports story from Salinas, Puerto Rico about a boxer with the interesting name of McJoe Arroyo. One quickly discovers, however, that there is more to the story.
The reporter, Barry Newman, describes what he calls an “oddity” in Puerto Rico. Everywhere on this island, he writes, the American and Puerto Rican flag fly side by side – except in one place: the Albergue Olympico in Salinas. There the Puerto Rican flag flies alone.
Why? Because in what the story describes as Puerto Rico’s “half-in-half-out status as a Commonwealth of the U.S.,” the island will participate in the Beijing Olympics, as it has since 1948 as an “entity”, that is, the same as an independent nation.
Arroyo, the report declares, has a chance to win the bantamweight medal, joining the other six Puerto Rican boxers that have won medals. Just how “ferocious” is Puerto Rico’s patriotic pride in the Olympics is dramatized by the fact that the only Puerto Rican to win a gold medal was the tennis star, Gigi Fernández. But although she actually won two gold medals, “she doesn’t rate a footnote” in the new Olympic Museum. Why? Because she competed under the U.S. flag.
“We don’t like our people playing on the U.S. team,” the WSJ reporter quotes a pro-independence man attending a basketball game in Caguas. “That is offensive,” someone else says. The greatest moment in island sports, they told the reporter, was when Puerto Rico’s Olympic basketball team beat the U.S. “dream team” in 2004: as great as Roberto Clemente getting his 3,000th hit.
In 1996, the report continues, the International Olympic Committee ruled that from now on only independent nations members of the U.N. can send new teams. So, if Puerto Rico became a state, the IOC would no more accept Puerto Rico than it would the state of Alaska. This obviously is not what pro-statehood leaders want to hear, since many continue to insist that as a state Puerto Rico would retain its Olympic standing.
But the effect of having the American people focus on Puerto Rico, I think, could be deeper than Puerto Rico’s participation in the Olympics, or in the Miss Universe contest where the island has had no less than five winners. It could unveil the very nature of the relation between Puerto Rico and the U.S.
In the past century, island leaders favoring independence or statehood have insisted that the essential nature of the relationship is unjust, abusive, “colonial.” Now the pro-Commonwealth party, after the federal grand jury indictment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, is saying pretty much the same: that Puerto Rico is victim of U.S. “political persecution.”
So the question: is the fundamental nature of the relation to the U.S., in fact, abusive?
Lets go back to the WSJ report. It did not mention that while the reporter observed Arroyo training, the government of Puerto Rico was feverishly working to distribute to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans the $1.282 billion it has received from the U.S. government for economic stimulus. Certainly it would seemed “odd” to readers in the U.S. that Puerto Rico, exempt of federal income taxes, would be receiving this so-called “tax rebate.”
Puerto Rico gets another $13 billion a year from the U.S. government, about half of it grants to the government and individuals. Just one program, food stamps, brings about $1.5 billion a year directly to the recipients. It may also seem odd that every now and then students at the public university, that receive Pell grants from the U.S. government that more than covers their tuition costs, feel motivated to protest the U.S. “abuse” of Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rican leaders that believe that the relationship with the U.S. is in its nature “abusive”, “colonial,” want the American media and the American people to see this island and its people as a “victim” of American power.
But if one believes, as I do, that with all the well-known juridical defects, the relationship is highly beneficial to Puerto Rico, it is important to know exactly what is being communicated to the American people. Not a story of “abuse” but a story of “privilege.”
Why should Puerto Rico have what no state of the union can have -- its own Olympic team under its own flag? Why should an island exempt of federal income taxes get $1.282 billion in “tax rebates?”
The question that I suspect the editors of the Wall Street Journal found in the McJoe Arroyo story of interest to the American people is: if Puerto Ricans so passionately fly only the Puerto Rican flag at its Olympic compound, why will it send no less than 63 delegates to the Democratic convention to select the presidential candidate?
The deeper point in all this is that the more the American people focuses not on the rhetoric, but on the reality of the relationship with Puerto Rico, the more it will ask itself: “Hey, how did the Puerto Ricans get what sure seems to be such a sweet deal for themselves?”
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
THE MISSING QUESTION AT THE PDP ASSEMBLY
Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá gave the political performance of his life. The theme was “March 24, 2008”, the day he was indicted by a federal grand jury. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to December 7, 1941, and he did not use the phrase “a date which will live in infamy,” but he came close.
To say that the April 27th Popular Party assembly was “orchestrated” is to put it mildly. He punctuated his speech with many of the familiar PDP campaign battle cries – “Sin Miedo! – Without Fear!” – at regular intervals his voice raising in indignation, shouting and beating the air with his fist, at that precise moment his words drowned by the loud music of familiar PDP campaign songs, throwing the thousands of PDP flag-waving militants in front of him into a frenzy.
The message is that Puerto Rico has been “attacked” – not exactly like the U.S. at Pearl Harbor or on 9/11, but yes, “attacked.” Bringing up past battles – the “bombing of Vieques” by the U.S. Navy, the police killing of two independentistas at Cerro Maravilla, the FBI killing of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda, letting him “bleed to death” – Acevedo cried at the top of his voice that after “March 24th”, Puerto Rico must decide whether it will drop to its knees and surrender, or whether it will fight back.
With a deafening roar, an enormous out pouring of patriotic emotion, the thousands of PDP militants demanded that Acevedo lead this battle to defend Puerto Rico – its dignity, its honor, its identity – indeed, its very survival as a people.
It was indeed a great performance. Acevedo achieved his goal. At the end, he had even the PDP mayors that a day before asked him to step down, now joining the frenzy to have him remain as candidate. And he made “March 24th” a symbol of the excessive use of U.S. power in Puerto Rico: another battle over political status. This should surprise no one. This is what island political leaders always do. Whatever is wrong in Puerto Rico, there is always one cause. When an independentista or, lately, a statehooder is convicted by a federal grand jury, there is always one cry: “colonialism!”
Acevedo was careful not to use the word. But no one at the assembly, or watching it on TV, had any doubt that this is precisely what he was talking about. Since Commonwealth status was created in 1952, he said, Puerto Rico has been losing its autonomy. So, he cried out, “March 24th” forces Puerto Rico to finally “resolve the status issue:” to fight as never before for greater self-government. The first thing he will do after he and the PDP win the November elections will be to legislate a “constitutional assembly”.
But there was something missing.
What happened on March 24th was that a federal grand jury made up of Puerto Ricans accused Acevedo and 12 others of 27 counts of violation of federal and local campaign finance laws. What was missing in Acevedo’s speech, and certainly at the PPD assembly, was any indication that anyone seemed to care whether the indictments are true or not. It did not matter. It was enough for him to say, as he did in the beginning, that everyone in Puerto Rico knows that they are “politically motivated.”
Of course, the indictment of a Governor of Puerto Rico months before the November elections has a big political impact. But political impact and “political motivation” are not the same. The fact that an indictment will necessarily hurt a political leader is not proof that that was the purpose. If the U.S. Justice Department, or the Puerto Rico Justice Department, were guided by the political impact of its actions, they will never investigate or indict a political leader.
#And clearly the justice departments have a special responsibility to investigate precisely political leaders that may have violated the law. In the case of the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico, for years they relentlessly investigated and the federal courts convicted scores of pro-statehood, New Progressive Party leaders, Acevedo’s political opponents, many of them ending up in prison.
Since the consensus in Puerto Rico, backed by the opinion polls, was that there was no way Acevedo could win in November due to the economic crisis, the “political” decision would have been to dodge the political firestorm sitting on the indictments until after he lost the elections. The decision to seek indictment in March, and not wait, certainly seems to confirm what the prosecutors say – that today, as yesterday, they are driven not by politics but by the facts, the evidence.
Now Acevedo, in this masterfully orchestrated assembly, hopes to turn what appeared to be a sure defeat into another “miracle victory.” It won’t be easy. To do so, he will have to do something that historically has been difficult in the mass of the Puerto Rican people: that nationalistic, patriotic fervor trumps economic reality on election day.
One more point. Anyone that knew Luis Muñoz Marín knows that it is not a good idea to speculate on how Muñoz would have reacted to this or that. Muñoz was complex and the chances of error are big. But Acevedo mentioned him a lot, quoting from one of his books. And I have to think that if Muñoz had read the 55-page indictment, the question he would have asked, indeed demanded answered, is: is this true or not?
And I have to think that had he been at the assembly, he would have been struck that this was precisely the question that the party he created, the once great party that transformed Puerto Rico, was determined not to ask.
Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá gave the political performance of his life. The theme was “March 24, 2008”, the day he was indicted by a federal grand jury. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to December 7, 1941, and he did not use the phrase “a date which will live in infamy,” but he came close.
To say that the April 27th Popular Party assembly was “orchestrated” is to put it mildly. He punctuated his speech with many of the familiar PDP campaign battle cries – “Sin Miedo! – Without Fear!” – at regular intervals his voice raising in indignation, shouting and beating the air with his fist, at that precise moment his words drowned by the loud music of familiar PDP campaign songs, throwing the thousands of PDP flag-waving militants in front of him into a frenzy.
The message is that Puerto Rico has been “attacked” – not exactly like the U.S. at Pearl Harbor or on 9/11, but yes, “attacked.” Bringing up past battles – the “bombing of Vieques” by the U.S. Navy, the police killing of two independentistas at Cerro Maravilla, the FBI killing of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda, letting him “bleed to death” – Acevedo cried at the top of his voice that after “March 24th”, Puerto Rico must decide whether it will drop to its knees and surrender, or whether it will fight back.
With a deafening roar, an enormous out pouring of patriotic emotion, the thousands of PDP militants demanded that Acevedo lead this battle to defend Puerto Rico – its dignity, its honor, its identity – indeed, its very survival as a people.
It was indeed a great performance. Acevedo achieved his goal. At the end, he had even the PDP mayors that a day before asked him to step down, now joining the frenzy to have him remain as candidate. And he made “March 24th” a symbol of the excessive use of U.S. power in Puerto Rico: another battle over political status. This should surprise no one. This is what island political leaders always do. Whatever is wrong in Puerto Rico, there is always one cause. When an independentista or, lately, a statehooder is convicted by a federal grand jury, there is always one cry: “colonialism!”
Acevedo was careful not to use the word. But no one at the assembly, or watching it on TV, had any doubt that this is precisely what he was talking about. Since Commonwealth status was created in 1952, he said, Puerto Rico has been losing its autonomy. So, he cried out, “March 24th” forces Puerto Rico to finally “resolve the status issue:” to fight as never before for greater self-government. The first thing he will do after he and the PDP win the November elections will be to legislate a “constitutional assembly”.
But there was something missing.
What happened on March 24th was that a federal grand jury made up of Puerto Ricans accused Acevedo and 12 others of 27 counts of violation of federal and local campaign finance laws. What was missing in Acevedo’s speech, and certainly at the PPD assembly, was any indication that anyone seemed to care whether the indictments are true or not. It did not matter. It was enough for him to say, as he did in the beginning, that everyone in Puerto Rico knows that they are “politically motivated.”
Of course, the indictment of a Governor of Puerto Rico months before the November elections has a big political impact. But political impact and “political motivation” are not the same. The fact that an indictment will necessarily hurt a political leader is not proof that that was the purpose. If the U.S. Justice Department, or the Puerto Rico Justice Department, were guided by the political impact of its actions, they will never investigate or indict a political leader.
#And clearly the justice departments have a special responsibility to investigate precisely political leaders that may have violated the law. In the case of the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico, for years they relentlessly investigated and the federal courts convicted scores of pro-statehood, New Progressive Party leaders, Acevedo’s political opponents, many of them ending up in prison.
Since the consensus in Puerto Rico, backed by the opinion polls, was that there was no way Acevedo could win in November due to the economic crisis, the “political” decision would have been to dodge the political firestorm sitting on the indictments until after he lost the elections. The decision to seek indictment in March, and not wait, certainly seems to confirm what the prosecutors say – that today, as yesterday, they are driven not by politics but by the facts, the evidence.
Now Acevedo, in this masterfully orchestrated assembly, hopes to turn what appeared to be a sure defeat into another “miracle victory.” It won’t be easy. To do so, he will have to do something that historically has been difficult in the mass of the Puerto Rican people: that nationalistic, patriotic fervor trumps economic reality on election day.
One more point. Anyone that knew Luis Muñoz Marín knows that it is not a good idea to speculate on how Muñoz would have reacted to this or that. Muñoz was complex and the chances of error are big. But Acevedo mentioned him a lot, quoting from one of his books. And I have to think that if Muñoz had read the 55-page indictment, the question he would have asked, indeed demanded answered, is: is this true or not?
And I have to think that had he been at the assembly, he would have been struck that this was precisely the question that the party he created, the once great party that transformed Puerto Rico, was determined not to ask.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
the million dollar question
ASKING A BILLION DOLLAR QUESTION
In a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Colombia’s export minister, Luis Plata, said:
“We started going to Ireland several years ago because we were looking at countries around the world that had been successful in attracting foreign direct investment. What we found was that Ireland has lowered its corporate taxes from 40 to 12.5 percent” and as a result “was attracting investment, had lowered tax evasion and had increased tax collection. We went back to Columbia and said: ‘why don’t we just bring (our corporate rate) from 39 to 12.5 percent.”
There was, in fact, no mystery how Ireland had risen from the poorest to almost the richest country in Western Europe. It did, of course, a lot of things, but the most important, as Plata and many others discovered, was lowering corporate taxes.
Now, there was a time when Colombians could have made a much shorter trip to find an “economic development model.” They would have come to Puerto Rico. In the 1960’s, linked to Columbia, Costa Rica and Venezuela as the “Latin American democratic left,” Puerto Rico’s “economic miracle” was seen as a model for President Kennedy’s and Teodoro Moscoso’s Alliance for Progress.
But since then something odd happened on this island: we became, in fact, a “model” for economic stagnation. In a column published earlier this month, Miguel Ferrer, head of UBS Puerto Rico, points to a report in the magazine Business Week that for the first time since 1885, Great Britain will surpass this year the U.S. in per capita income. Again, no mystery: one primary reason is that GB has lowered its corporate taxes from 38 to an average of 27.1 percent.
Yet, Ferrer writes, “in this same period, Puerto Rico increased the corporate tax rate and the tax load on citizens. Today we have the highest maximum corporate tax rate in the world, 42.5 percent. And the personal tax rate is also high. What have we achieved with this tax policy? We have a fatigued system that does not stimulate investment or productivity. If we continue at our present rate, the 2000 decade, that began with so much hope, will be the decade of less growth in Puerto Rico since 1950. Up to now, the real (annual) growth in the past eight years has been one percent. At this rate we do not have the capacity to attend to our needs as a people, much less to our dreams.”
So how to explain this policy? Why make Puerto Rico less, nor more, competitive -- in relation to Ireland, a country that has already lured from this island part of the crucial pharmaceutical and biochemical industries?
On March 17, 2008, the government of Puerto Rico got what it considered “good news” – Standard & Poor’s did not lower Puerto Rico’s credit rating. Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vilá had submitted to the Legislature a proposed fiscal 2009 budget with a structural $1 billion deficit. This is almost twice the current deficit of $556 million.
But S&B pointed out that when it last lowered the Commonwealth government rating to from BBB to BBB- in May 2007, it anticipated the big deficit in the new budget. The report notes with approval that the Acevedo administration is holding down spending: the new budget is the third consecutive below the fiscal 2006 level. The problem is less revenue: $464 million lower than this year. And this, of course, is a result of the deepening economic recession.
Since the Governor has proposed greatly reducing the sales tax, his administration was also pleased that S&P cites the new tax as a big reason for the recession. And, of course, it is due to the skyrocketing cost of energy and the recession in the U.S.
Needless to say, there is nothing Puerto Rico can do about the price of oil or about the U.S. recession. Many in the private sector insist that Puerto Rico must cut its huge government bureaucracy. But the S&P report warns that because public spending plays such a “dominant” role in the economy, further reductions may well make the recession worse.
So what can Puerto Rico do? There is one thing Puerto Rico can do, Ferrer and others are saying, and it will work. It will, they are convinced, begin quickly to pull Puerto Rico out of the crisis. If Puerto Rico does what Ireland and many other countries have done, lower substantially its corporate and individual tax rates, the result will be the same: it will attract new investment, reduce tax evasion and increase tax revenue.
Ferrer is proposing a gradual, three-years reduction down to a maximum rate of 25 percent for corporations and individuals. This, he says, will give the economy time to grow avoiding any immediate reduction in tax revenue.
The Wall Street Journal story on Colombia states than when Luis Plata returned from Ireland he had a hard time convincing his government to lower taxes and was only partially successful. As the newspaper put it: “Bean counters in every treasury in Latin America have tax-cut phobia in their DNA.”
The same in Puerto Rico. In fact, this island ignited its “economic miracle” precisely when, in the late 1940’s, it overcome its own “tax-cut phobia” to offer specific investment incentives. So now the billion-dollar question Ferrer and the others in the private sector are asking is: if we know that having one of the highest tax rates in the world is killing us with a prolonged economic stagnation, if we have seen Ireland and many other countries ignite their economies by cutting their taxes, why on earth don’t we do it?
In a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Colombia’s export minister, Luis Plata, said:
“We started going to Ireland several years ago because we were looking at countries around the world that had been successful in attracting foreign direct investment. What we found was that Ireland has lowered its corporate taxes from 40 to 12.5 percent” and as a result “was attracting investment, had lowered tax evasion and had increased tax collection. We went back to Columbia and said: ‘why don’t we just bring (our corporate rate) from 39 to 12.5 percent.”
There was, in fact, no mystery how Ireland had risen from the poorest to almost the richest country in Western Europe. It did, of course, a lot of things, but the most important, as Plata and many others discovered, was lowering corporate taxes.
Now, there was a time when Colombians could have made a much shorter trip to find an “economic development model.” They would have come to Puerto Rico. In the 1960’s, linked to Columbia, Costa Rica and Venezuela as the “Latin American democratic left,” Puerto Rico’s “economic miracle” was seen as a model for President Kennedy’s and Teodoro Moscoso’s Alliance for Progress.
But since then something odd happened on this island: we became, in fact, a “model” for economic stagnation. In a column published earlier this month, Miguel Ferrer, head of UBS Puerto Rico, points to a report in the magazine Business Week that for the first time since 1885, Great Britain will surpass this year the U.S. in per capita income. Again, no mystery: one primary reason is that GB has lowered its corporate taxes from 38 to an average of 27.1 percent.
Yet, Ferrer writes, “in this same period, Puerto Rico increased the corporate tax rate and the tax load on citizens. Today we have the highest maximum corporate tax rate in the world, 42.5 percent. And the personal tax rate is also high. What have we achieved with this tax policy? We have a fatigued system that does not stimulate investment or productivity. If we continue at our present rate, the 2000 decade, that began with so much hope, will be the decade of less growth in Puerto Rico since 1950. Up to now, the real (annual) growth in the past eight years has been one percent. At this rate we do not have the capacity to attend to our needs as a people, much less to our dreams.”
So how to explain this policy? Why make Puerto Rico less, nor more, competitive -- in relation to Ireland, a country that has already lured from this island part of the crucial pharmaceutical and biochemical industries?
On March 17, 2008, the government of Puerto Rico got what it considered “good news” – Standard & Poor’s did not lower Puerto Rico’s credit rating. Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vilá had submitted to the Legislature a proposed fiscal 2009 budget with a structural $1 billion deficit. This is almost twice the current deficit of $556 million.
But S&B pointed out that when it last lowered the Commonwealth government rating to from BBB to BBB- in May 2007, it anticipated the big deficit in the new budget. The report notes with approval that the Acevedo administration is holding down spending: the new budget is the third consecutive below the fiscal 2006 level. The problem is less revenue: $464 million lower than this year. And this, of course, is a result of the deepening economic recession.
Since the Governor has proposed greatly reducing the sales tax, his administration was also pleased that S&P cites the new tax as a big reason for the recession. And, of course, it is due to the skyrocketing cost of energy and the recession in the U.S.
Needless to say, there is nothing Puerto Rico can do about the price of oil or about the U.S. recession. Many in the private sector insist that Puerto Rico must cut its huge government bureaucracy. But the S&P report warns that because public spending plays such a “dominant” role in the economy, further reductions may well make the recession worse.
So what can Puerto Rico do? There is one thing Puerto Rico can do, Ferrer and others are saying, and it will work. It will, they are convinced, begin quickly to pull Puerto Rico out of the crisis. If Puerto Rico does what Ireland and many other countries have done, lower substantially its corporate and individual tax rates, the result will be the same: it will attract new investment, reduce tax evasion and increase tax revenue.
Ferrer is proposing a gradual, three-years reduction down to a maximum rate of 25 percent for corporations and individuals. This, he says, will give the economy time to grow avoiding any immediate reduction in tax revenue.
The Wall Street Journal story on Colombia states than when Luis Plata returned from Ireland he had a hard time convincing his government to lower taxes and was only partially successful. As the newspaper put it: “Bean counters in every treasury in Latin America have tax-cut phobia in their DNA.”
The same in Puerto Rico. In fact, this island ignited its “economic miracle” precisely when, in the late 1940’s, it overcome its own “tax-cut phobia” to offer specific investment incentives. So now the billion-dollar question Ferrer and the others in the private sector are asking is: if we know that having one of the highest tax rates in the world is killing us with a prolonged economic stagnation, if we have seen Ireland and many other countries ignite their economies by cutting their taxes, why on earth don’t we do it?
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