Puerto Rico Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Progressive Radio Network

The Mark Riley Show – 09.09.15

– Kim Davis is freed from jail in Kentucky gay marriage dispute. Whether this woman stayed in jail wasn’t the issue. Now that she’s out, she needs to stay out of the business of issuing marriages unless she’s prepared to follow the law.

– Oregon judge who refused to perform same sex marriages hung portrait of Hitler in courthouse and bullied veterans: documents. How do people like this get jobs, for God’s sake? Any of these three allegations, if true, should disqualify him.

– As New Mexico scandals grow, Democrats hope to tarnish governor. My experience says that the benefits of scandal to the opposition is limited, and means if the show ever winds up on the other foot, there will be no quarter given.

– Mayor de Blasio says homeless problem is decades old. Well, DUH! Maybe this was reaction to criticism from Giuliani, but why react?

Brandon Klein – Pesticides Blamed for Bee Declines Widespread in US Waterways

The most comprehensive survey to date of pollution in the US from a controversial group of pesticides has found the chemicals are widespread in streams and rivers. Though not considered a human health threat, the findings underscore the environmental ubiquity and potential for ecological harm of neonicotinoids. While neonicotinoids have been blamed for fuelling declines of bees, researchers say their …

This Can’t Be Happening – 08.05.15

Today on “This Can’t Be Happening!” journalist Alfredo Lopez talks with colleague and host Dave Lindorff about two stories that intimately concern him. The first is a fierce attack by anti-abortion forces, most likely by hired experts located in Russia or China, on a progressive web-hosting service Lopez helped found, MayFirst.org. Lopez then talks about the debt crisis in Puerto Rico, arguably as bad or worse than the crisis in Greece, but far harder to combat because of the island’s colonial status under US domination.

Sherwood Ross – The Water Crisis is Here

From Brazil to India and from California to Detroit, taps are running dry, as the water crisis goes global. Detroit grabbed headlines when the city cancelled the water and sewerage service for more than 50,000 residents for lack of payment. But Detroit’s trials are not unique. “Caught between unaffordable rising water rates and the imposition of European-wide austerity measures, thousands …

Pete Dolack – Speculators Circling Puerto Rico Latest Mode of Colonialism

Puerto Rico’s governor may have said the commonwealth’s debt is unpayable, but that doesn’t mean Puerto Ricans aren’t going to pay for it. Vulture capitalists are circling the island, ready to extract still more wealth from the impoverished island. You already know the drill: Capital is sucked out by corporate interests that pay little in taxes, budget deficits grow and …

Sarah Lazare – New report commissioned by bondholders and hedge fund managers calls for sweeping austerity measures

Hedge fund managers and bondholders are pressing the government of Puerto Rico to drive through a series of punishing austerity measures, including dramatic cuts to public education and workers’ rights protections, to “solve” the crisis of debt and poverty gripping the Caribbean island. A group representing $5.2 billion of debt held by 38 investment managers paid three former economists for …

Leid Stories – 07.22.15

Puerto Rico’s Crisis: Debt Peonage and 21st-Century U.S. Colonialism

Dr. Victor M. Rodriguez, professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University of Long Beach, explains Puerto Rico’s current $73-billion debt crisis in the context of the island’s political status as a U.S. colony and the suitability of its continued indebtedness to U.S. and international financial interests, and governance by leaders in collusion with both.

Born in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez’s area of expertise is the racialization of Latino identity and its impact on political behavior. At CSULB he teaches courses emphasizing issues in social inequality: Wealth and Poverty in Latino Communities, Chicano/Latino Politics, and on Identity Assimilation in Chicano and Latino Life, The Ethnic Experience, and Latino Population in the United States. He is the author of Latino Politics: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience in the United States (2012).

Leid Stories – 07.15.15

Puerto Rico: The Making and Breaking of An ‘Emerging Market’

On June 29, Governor Alejandro García Padilla of Puerto Rico declared that the U.S. commonwealth’s $72.6-billion debt is “not payable.” His announcement confirmed creditors’ and bondholders’ worst fears and set in motion a mad scramble in the financial and political worlds to find a workable solution. Nothing yet, but it is certain that any solution will involve severe austerity measures the people of Puerto Rico will have to endure.

For decades Puerto Rico’s star was shining bright in the constellation of emerging markets. Mauro F. Guillén, co-author of Emerging Markets Rule: Growth Strategies of the New Global Giants, explains the making and breaking of Puerto Rico as an emerging market.

Guillén is the director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and holds the Dr. Felix Zandman Endowed Professorship in International Management at The Wharton School. He also holds a secondary appointment as a professor of sociology in at the University of Pennsylvania.

His most recent books are Global Turning Points (2012) and Emerging Markets Rule (2012).

Banks Closed in Greece, China Stock Market Effectively Shuttered, Commodities Plunging: Is the 2008 Crisis Back With a Vengeance? By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

It’s starting to feel like we never actually emerged from the 2008 crisis: the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve simply threw $13 trillion at the crisis and walked away, hoping that an endless zero-interest-rate-policy (Zirp) would patch over the cracks in the global financial system. What we seem to have now is an endless series of rolling crises instead of one …

Leid Stories – 07.08.15

Bleeding to Debt: As With Detroit, So With Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico is in a “death spiral,” Gov. Alejandro García Padilla has declared, unable to pay off an estimated $72 billion in debts. Padilla’s plea to creditors for concessions and more time on overdue notes isn’t playing well with bondholders, and Puerto Ricans have had it with government cutbacks and runaway increases in the cost of living to service the debt.

Padilla sees a way out—declaring bankruptcy. The problem is, by law only U.S. municipalities and states can seek bankruptcy protection from the courts, and Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory; it must first seek special dispensation from Congress.

Padilla has hired former federal judge Stephen Rhodes as a consultant on restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt. For many, it’s a troubling sign. Rhodes, now in private practice, was the judge who presided over Detroit’s contentious $18-billion bankruptcy, sanctioning wholesale plunder of the once-prosperous city.

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan African News Wire and our correspondent on Detroit’s bankruptcy, says Padilla’s hiring of Rhodes is an indication that the Detroit bankruptcy model is about to be applied to Puerto Rico.