Economist. Real Estate. Finance. Chess Olympian. Formerly Freddie Mac, IMF. Hispanohablante. Estadista. Proud Democrat. Reluctant PNP
Puerto Rico
Joined May 2013
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As requested, a thread of threads on housing.
Thanks for all the engagement and thanks to all the new followers!
This is basically one of the dumbest takes from the anti-statehood folks.
Statehood wasn't even a majority opinion on the island until the 2010s and didn't even win a non-boycotted plebiscite until 2020.
What was Congress supposed to do? Unilaterally admit Puerto Rico?
Some Puerto Rican Monetary History.
In 1895, three years before the Spanish-American War, Spain debased Puerto Rican coins.
By 1900, the bullion value of the Puerto Rican Peso was 43 cents.
The US govt ultimately redeemed the coins at 60 cents.
There was no devaluation. In fact, retiring Puerto Rican coinage came at a loss to the US Treasury.
Yeah, useless desert where nobody lives or wants to live is a lot less valuable than East Jerusalem or the West Bank which Israel has kept and extensively settled.
Israel handed Egypt more than 23,000 sq miles of land for a peace treaty. Israel today is about 10,000 sq miles. But sure, Israel is "expansionist."
This day (Nov 11) in 1977, Menachem Begin invited Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem. He accepted and addressed the Knesset. After real negotiations, Israel gave up the entire Sinai (oil fields, settlements, strategic depth, literally everything).
An Arab state willing to sign a peace treaty with Israel got territory larger than Israel itself. Almost all others brought only decades of rejection, terrorism, and chants of "from the river to the sea."
The "Greater Israel" narrative is just nonsense inversion. The side that keeps demanding more land, more "right of return," and the elimination of Jewish sovereignty is not the one that already gave up a peninsula more than twice its size.
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Mike Fellman retweeted
mainland Americans should actually understand that the majority of Puerto Ricans consider the pro-independence movement to be an utter joke and are partially responsible for sabotaging the momentum to get PR out of commonwealth status
Mike Fellman retweeted
Declaraciones de la presidenta y CEO de LUMA, la ingeniera Janisse Quiñones y su consternación ante declaraciones públicas sobre alegadas intervenciones indebidas en el caso legal.
Mike Fellman retweeted
Unless you plan to kill a substantial amount of our population and replace it with other workers, highly unlikely. Hawaiians were a super minority in their island because they had been decimated by pandemics way before the US even thought about adding Hawaii as a state.
This is well intentioned but naive. Republicans are well aware that Puerto Rico would vote overwhelmingly Democratic and therefore will always oppose statehood for PR.
I would not be opposed such a process.
My maximalist position of a simple admission act is more a response to hostage taking tactics from the PPD.
I'm willing to compromise. Between statehood and two different flavors of independence, statehood would win easily.
People need to vote on real choices the congress will abide. Statehood, Independence, association are these with these responsabilities. The current Commonwealth is not a decolonizing option. Vote once for the three and then the two highest votes go for a final vote
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Mike Fellman retweeted
ALT William Tecumseh Sherman, a white man with a beard and scraggly hair in a blue Union army outfit
Anular el contrato por un tecnicismo detendrá la inversión.
Y seamos claros, si LUMA se va, la transición será un caos.
Mike Fellman retweeted
PR independence is a movement by and for progs outside of Puerto Rico who don’t care if the island is ruined by losing billions in federal $
The racist crap is getting really old.
Take your babbling someplace else.
So you want to push down the throats a state where almost half of the island population doesn’t want it?
Down the throats of the American peoples a state that has nothing in common with the rest of the nation?
In other words a Quebec just like Canada has?
Seems you have an ulterior interest here my friend.
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I think Congress should just pass an admission act for Puerto Rico with no referendum .
Opponents to statehood have largely tried to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic process rather than participate in it.
Enough. A majority favors statehood as expressed in various plebiscites.
Just pass an admission act.
In Israel proper, Arabs are largely integrated and are fully citizens.
This fact does not absolve Israel of its flagrant disregard for international in the occupied territories.
Just so we're clear on what “apartheid” looks like in Israel: Arab lawmakers are elected to the Knesset, take their seats in parliament, and then walk out during the national anthem to protest the very state they've been elected to serve.
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This is an insane.
In the West Bank and Gaza you have a civilian population of Arabs who don't want to be integrated into Israel. Giving them their own state is the obvious solution.
In Puerto Rico, you have a population that is already deeply integrated into the US system and overwhelmingly either wants to be fully integrated as a US State or to maintain the status quo.
But somehow the "liberatory" solution is a one state solution in I/P and Puerto Rican independence? It's an insane inversion.
I find the "forced to flee" stuff really offensive to the 3.2 million people who live in Puerto Rico.
Are there opportunities that don't exist in PR on the mainland? Of course. But millions of people still choose to make PR home.
There is at best inconclusive evidence of actual bombings of Jayuya and Utuado during the 1950 nationalist uprising.
Strafing, or machine gun fire from aircraft, is well documented.
The planes in question were PR National Guard fighters and under the control of Governor Luis Muñoz Marin.
It was 1950. No precision bombing existed and it was right after WW2.
Everyone was well aware of the mass casualties aerial bombings could cause.
But only 4 civilians were killed.
While there is some limited evidence pointing to actual bombs falling, such as claims of such in newspapers, the weight of the evidence is that aerial attacks from the PRNG was limited to machine gun fire.