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San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz to Trump: You Can’t Handle the Truth

Rogue Valley

Rogue Valley

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San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz to Trump: You Can’t Handle the Truth

by Suzanne Gamboa
November 1, 2017

171101-puerto-rico-carmen-yulin-cruz-sg-1352_84ddabb40a7f59543f187e6e7871c342.nbcnews-ux-600-480.jpg

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz at a news conference at the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington D.C.

Denied her chance to testify before Congress Wednesday, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest city used a Capitol hallway to heap criticism on President Donald Trump, saying he "can't handle the truth." Six weeks since the monstrous hurricane hit the island, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said the island remains in a “life or death” situation. “The Trump administration can’t handle the truth,” she said, adding that “survival cannot be our new way of life.” Cruz was supposed to testify Wednesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, but the hearing was abruptly canceled. Cruz got news of the cancellation after she had already headed to Washington. “I am here to say what I was going to say at that hearing, that they seemed not to want to hear,” she said. “Mr. Trump, do your job. Lives are at stake. This is not about politics. This is not about your ego. This is about the people of Puerto Rico and the people of the U.S. VI (Virgin Islands).”

Ticking off a list of demands, Cruz said the administration needs to treat Puerto Rico with dignity and suspend the Jones Act for four years. The law restricts shipping to the island to U.S. ships with U.S. crews. Puerto Rico needs a comprehensive “reform” and “restoration” plan that “touches on energy and education and health care, but it can’t be a plan that takes us back to the 1950s,” she said. “No longer will we be able to hide inequality and poverty behind palm trees and piña coladas,” she said. Cruz said since DHS has been "running interference" with FEMA, there has been improvement for the city. She said she has spoken a couple of times with DHS Secretary Elaine Duke. But the need is high, she said.
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Amen. You can bet a Trump/Pence red state such as Indiana would not be without power for two months.

Related: Neither states nor nations, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands face rocky storm recovery
 
Rogue Valley said:
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz to Trump: You Can’t Handle the Truth



Amen. You can bet a Trump/Pence red state such as Indiana would not be without power for two months.

Related: Neither states nor nations, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands face rocky storm recovery
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List of 'demands'? What does suspending the Jones Act for 4 years have to do with getting power back? And what does education reform have to do with getting power back?

Why is it this administrations fault they are so behind in everything? Why weren't the demanding better education and healthcare anytime within the last few years? And just what is Trump personally supposed to do about the power? They had 1000 people there working on it last week, that are now gone, because of why? Nothing to do with Trump.

I feel for the people there, but help us help you.

These are questions I'd ask the demanding mayor.
 
Harshaw said:
I asked you before, and you did not answer: what, specifically, should they be doing that they are not doing?
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I'd like to know that too.
 
Harshaw said:
I asked you before, and you did not answer: what, specifically, should they be doing that they are not doing?
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More man power and more supplies
 
Floridafan said:
More man power and more supplies
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That's hardly specific. But hey, how much manpower is there now, how many supplies have been delivered, and specifically how much more of each is needed?
 
Harshaw said:
I asked you before, and you did not answer: what, specifically, should they be doing that they are not doing?
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Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
 
GDViking said:
Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
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That's bs. There were 1000 people there already working from that contract.
 
Air dropping water into towns that cannot be reached because the Corp of engineers presence if far too small to get the roads cleared would be another...
 
GDViking said:
Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
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Look, I'm not interested in the vague. The charge is that the Trump admin is purposely allowing the chaos to continue. Map the correct plan that, presumably, would have been implemented in Indiana, as the OP says, but isn't in Puerto Rico. Like I said: specifics. Details.
 
GDViking said:
Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
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Who exactly negotiated for that company again? I've yet to see an actual answer to this.

As for the corp of engineers...

Army Corps of Engineers: Not all Puerto Rico officials are accepting FEMA's help

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Donald E. Jackson told Senate lawmakers on Tuesday that some Puerto Rico officials have refused to cooperate with the military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency during ongoing recovery efforts.
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FEMA: Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild Puerto Rico’s infrastructure

“We’re not going to rebuild the power grid overnight, but the US Army Corps of Engineers has just been mission-assigned, in the last 24 hours, to do just that,” Deputy Director Daniel Kaniewski told CNN. “In addition to generators and fuel, we have assigned the US Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild” the US commonwealth’s infrastructure.
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Got any more suggestions?
 
Harshaw said:
I asked you before, and you did not answer: what, specifically, should they be doing that they are not doing?
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Not giving out a $300 million contract to a Trump-cabinet connected 2-man shell company would be a good place to start.
 
GDViking said:
Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
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Actually there were over 1k people working on it but "The Resistance" demanded that they leave.
 
Maybe air dropping fuel and generators to areas that do not have power.

I'm pretty sure we have this technology the problem is that even though Puerto Rico residents are American citizens they can't vote, so politicians have very little incentive to help them.

If this was Houston all this would have been done.
 
Harshaw said:
That's hardly specific. But hey, how much manpower is there now, how many supplies have been delivered, and specifically how much more of each is needed?
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According to both the Governor and mayor, far from enough
 
GDViking said:
Corp of engineers clearing roads and not giving a no bid contract to a company with no equipment and no employees to rebuild the electrical grid would be a start...
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Last I heard, they already had 250 people working in PR. I think they are more or less like a General Contractor. They are not going to have a staff of hundreds of full time employees sitting around, waiting for a disaster so they can get to work.
 
Just another stunt in a long of line stunts from San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz.

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is in the process of canceling a contract it awarded to Whitefish Energy.
This is going to add about a 10 week delay to the already big challenge of installing a new power grid.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority has a 9 billion debt...... That is a major part of the problem.
The power grid in Puerto Rico has been allowed to fall apart and then 2 hurricanes destroyed the parts that
were working. And now according to the truly goofy mayor all of this is Presidents Trumps fault.


President Trump just signed an emergency aid bill for 36.5 billion.

"President Donald Trump signed a $36.5 billion emergency aid measure on Thursday to refill disaster accounts, provide a cash infusion to Puerto Rico and bail out the federal flood insurance program."
 
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Rogue Valley said:
Not giving out a $300 million contract to a Trump-cabinet connected 2-man shell company would be a good place to start.
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The government of Puerto Rico wants the U.S. government to do it for free. And that's fine but its going to be slow going and the people of P.R. are just going to have to accept that you get what you pay for. They had a private organization doing the work and that private organization had over a thousand employees doing the job. That private organization pulled out of PR. So there ya go.
 
Rogue Valley said:
Not giving out a $300 million contract to a Trump-cabinet connected 2-man shell company would be a good place to start.
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That is not an answer. I think it's pretty clear you don't have the faintest idea how to answer.
 
Floridafan said:
According to both the Governor and mayor, far from enough
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Not an answer. What is there now, and what more is needed? Specifically?
 
Rogue Valley said:
Not giving out a $300 million contract to a Trump-cabinet connected 2-man shell company would be a good place to start.
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And how would that get power back on?
 
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