Tuesday, February 07, 2006
How The Mighty Have Fallen
Day One of the pro-statehood efforts of various Puerto Rican politicians was oddly sad. In 1998, Statehooders would pack the largest hearing room in the U.S. Senate to standing-room only levels. Yesterday, they had a hard time drawing a crowd at their events I attended.
No longer was there an army of K Street lobbyists and Federal Affairs staff ready to do the bidding of Pedro Rossello. Instead, a few die-hards mingled with some familiar faces from 1998 in honor of Rossello's new book on statehood. This book is unavailable from Amazon.com, but some people I asked claimed to have seen a copy while others declared it a such a best seller that it is now unavailable anywhere.
Rossello outlined his book's thesis at George Washington University last night. Prior to 1898, the United States readily granted statehood to anyone. No territory (except Hawaii) obtained by the United States since 1898 has been given statehood, which proves the United States has become an empire and is irrationally discriminating against Puerto Rico.
Rossello managed to omit mention of any of the three referendums in which the voters of Puerto Rico have rejected statehood. The only election that seems to count for him is one in which statehood wins.
Rossello's playing of the discrimination card is a clever sleight of hand. But the key year in American history for advocates of Puerto Rico statehood is not 1898, but 1933. Prior to 1933, American citizenship meant pretty much the right to vote for candidates, period. After 1933 and the "New Deal", U.S. citizenship now meant access to economic benefits paid for by others.
The Statehooders' slogan, "statehood is for the poor" would have been meaningless in 1898 but is a powerful incentive today, precisely because U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico means lots of money rolling in from Washington D.C. to San Juan.
This money may or may not solve any problems, but it will provide endless opportunities for the graft and corruption which seems endemic to any major public works project/disaster relief program/AIDS treatment center on the island of Puerto Rico.
It seemed like the big question I always get from Statehood advocates is "who is paying you to oppose us?" It is as though they have no comprehension that anyone anywhere is involved in a political effort for reasons other than enhancing one's net worth.
The government of Puerto Rico employs one third of the island's population. This means that most of the island's families include someone whose income for the next four years will be decided by the election results. That is not the case in the United States. Accordingly, politics is a high intensity blood sport in Puerto Rico while politics is often a matter of indifference to many here.
The Rossello regime cleverly decided to exploit this difference by literally trying to buy statehood in 1997-98. How much money they actually spent remains unclear even today, but it was a fortune.
The problem with buying friends is that when the money runs out, so too do the friends (see Luke 15:1 for another example). This week, Rossello's powerful speeches and Romero-Barcelo's practiced oratory echoed off walls in half-filled rooms, instead of rapt audiences of thousands.
Ironically, even as Rossello was shaking hands and posing for pictues with people yesterday, a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, was discussing an effort to remove a federal judge from a case involving possible statehooder corruption:
Department of Justice attorney Kathleen Felton argued Monday that Judge Juan Perez-Gimenez is illegally delaying the trial of two men accused of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars for their part in securing a $305 million contract to build an aqueduct to bring water to the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan.
|posted by Jim on 6:08 PM|
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