You can only build so many big, beautiful walls to keep out unwanted Spanish-speaker from the world's 'greatest country.' Even the xenophobic bigot knows that you can't keep every one of those Hispanics out of the US, only those who lack documentation. Puerto Rico, regardless of what the Fox demographic might surmise, is a U.S. territory and its residents do NOT need a passport to enter or leave this country. They can come and go as they wish. And they may just be making their way here, in no time.
Puerto Rico is at risk of defaulting on their 'massive' debt, and who's to blame? Greedy multi-national corporations and the territorial status of the island.
Millions of Puerto Ricans are suffering from the island's confluence of corporate greed and bureaucratic mismanagement. Last Week Tonight exposed the precarious circumstances created by Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory, rather than a fully incorporated state, and highlighted the importance of helping Puerto Rico restructure its debt.
The Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo made an appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend to help the Giggling Couch Tumors™ put fear into the hearts of their audience; the same people who really think that reverse racism against White people is a real problem.
By the style of Bartiromo's intro, one can predict where this fiasco of a segment is heading:
CLAYTON MORRIS: Maria Bartiromo says their crisis can affect us here. at home.
Maria provides her version of the debt crisis, knowingly omitting the whole part about the territorial status, the lack of voting rights for its citizens, the insane corporate greed: you know, all the facts. She asserts that they are in this quandary because they've made too many promises, sort of like IOU's, and they simply can't pay them back on schedule. Even more panic-inducing is P.R.'s 11% unemployment rate and high 12% sales tax rate.
BARTIROMO: The implication for the U.S., I mean, if we do not see an aid to Puerto Rico, of some sort, many people in Puerto Rico will clearly come HERE to the Mainland.
TUCKER CARLSON: *gasping* UUUhhhhh!
BARTIROMO: and then you have all of THESE NEW people, new demands for jobs for services, which of course we are already strained.
CARLSON: smugly Welfare strained.
BARTIROMO: *repeating* Welfare strained.
KOOIMAN: So what can we learn from this?
The weekend blonde didn't say what should we learn, but what can we learn from Puerto Rico's unfortunate status. The financial 'expert' says that we should be weary of racking up enormous debt and stop with the high taxes already!
As usual, irony completely escapes Maria. The irony is, of course, the cost of several trillion dollars worth of debt from foreign wars for which the Bush Crime Family never budgeted, compounded by the subprime mortgage crisis which caused a financial meltdown that was infinitely more dire and massive. She never mentions that in her cause and effect soliloquy, and never will.
Maria showed us why she still has her own show on Sunday Morning GOP-TV. In what appears to be a full-circle, reasoned explanation, she packaged this totally unique Puerto Rican crisis into a GOP talking point: a reassuring disavowal of ever raising (high tax bracket) income taxes. See? Puerto Rico raised taxes, they can't pay all that debt, therefore, taxes are bad. Maria may just get a little bonus from Ailes for that neat trick.
It really makes no difference to the viewer that she selected one of the remedies they've chosen to try to avert the crisis and blamed the crisis on high taxes. It would make heads explode if she were to tell the truth and list the actual culprits: the corporations and their well-funded lobbyists who exploit the U.S. territory.
However, no one is worse than the heartless creeps of the Republican-controlled Congress. That is because, not only can they continue to deny these Americans Citizens of Puerto Rico any state's rights, especially the coveted voting rights. but they can fundraise off the ad campaign that could be called the Puerto-Ricans-are-coming-blitzkrieg. Sickening.
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