Skip to main content

Puerto Rico's Opportunity

Some times when bad things happen it is for the best in the long run. Once when working with my tools as a union sheet metal worker, my tools were stolen. My co-worker told me it was the best thing for me because my tools were so old and outdated, basically crap. Fortunately for me, my insurance covered the cost for new tools. Two back-to-back hurricanes, Irma and Maria, decimated Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, could be a good thing in the long run. Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was crap before the hurricanes, but the wreckage gives it an opportunity to rebuild it in a stronger, more efficient way. The government owns the utilities, such as roads, electrical grid, schools, and water and sewer systems, and allowed the infrastructure to become so fragile by underfunding since 2006. The government cut spending by 12 percent, laid off one quarter of the government work force, jacked-up sales taxes ad reduced pensions. With these layoffs, there’s no one to run the sewage system, and none of the remaining workers know how to run the operation. The medical program funds are running out of money. This is the result of capitalists plundering Puerto Rico. The U.S. government has plundered this country’s resources and the wealth created by the island workers is going to fill the coffers of the U.S. capitalists since wrestling control of the island from Spain in 1898, as a result the average annual income in Puerto Rico is less than half that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S. So now that there is nothing left, Puerto Rico will start over with a new infrastructure, and will have to be rebuilt for the world is watching. The time, we must not let the vultures plunder Puerto Rico again. We must stop the greedy capitalists continue taking the pensions away the country’s workers and giving the pensions to the government’s general fund, instead of going after the wealthy/investors to pay a greater sum to keep the government going. There is a lot of work to be done and Puerto Rico should get just as much help as Texas ad Florida is getting in their clean-up and rebuilding after their hurricane damage.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's Time To Pick A Side

It’s time to pick a side. You want to have and keep unions with good wages and pensions, then it’s time to pick a side. You want to keep Social Security for yourself and family, it is time to pick a side. You want to get or keep Medicare and Obama’s Affordable Care Act, then it’s time to pick a side. It is us against the billionaires. The very rich got that way off the backs of workers, and now want to strip everything away from those workers. It’s time to pick a side. The very rich can buy countries, then make the people get on their hands and knees and grovel and beg for scrapes that usually go into the dumpster. It’s time to pick a side. Is this what we want for our family and our future? It’s time to pick a side. Get ready to fight for you and your families’ lives. There is no middle ground with these greedy people for they want it all—all the money—all the power—all the land so where does this leave us when they have all the commons, like water, land and airways? It’s time to pick...

Time for an Offense

There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...

Senator Bernie Sanders & Team

The AFL is with Senator Bernie Sanders and it is the people’s only chance to push back against Elon Musk, who wants to dismantle our government. Musk family is said to have left South Africa because they could no longer exploit The native/black Africans so he bought Trump and now he’s laying waste to America in the name of progress. With Senator Sanders’ leadership and backing of all labor unions, we could put together the whole of 99 percent of the people and beat back the 2 percent destroying we what once had and stood for while also saving Social Security, healthcare for all, elder care, child care, while working on the climate change crisis (we are running out of time, as the weather is showing us). The workers need to go big, such as a four-day work week like other countries have; universal basic income (UBI) and Medicare for all for unhoused people, which would help get them off the streets. UBI goes right back into the local economies, which supports jobs for the other working p...