The situation in Iowa remains horrifying. More than a third
of the population has been without clean water for three weeks, and
waterborne diseases appear to be spreading. Only a sixth of the
population has electricity. The health care system is a shambles, and
sheer hunger may be a problem in some remote areas.
Fortunately,
the federal government is going all out to aid its citizens in
distress. The president is making disaster relief a top priority, while
praising the often heroic efforts of Iowa residents to help themselves.
And generous aid, he promises, will continue as long as it’s needed.
O.K.,
I lied. The dire situation I just described is in Puerto Rico, not Iowa
(which happens to have just about the same number of U.S. citizens).
And my upbeat portrayal of the federal response — which is how things
might have played out if this nightmare were, in fact, in Iowa — is the
opposite of the truth. What we’re actually witnessing, in effect, is the
betrayal and abandonment of three and a half million of our own people.
It’s
hard to make an accurate assessment of the initial emergency response
to Hurricane Maria, although there are a number of indications that it
was woefully inadequate, falling far short of the response to natural
disasters in other parts of the United States. What is clear, however,
is that recovery has been painfully slow, and that life is actually
getting worse for many residents as the cumulative effects of shortages
of power, water and food take their toll.
And
the Trump administration seems increasingly to see this tragedy as a
public relations issue, something to be spun — partly by blaming the
victims — rather than as an urgent problem to be solved.
Continue reading the main story
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Continue reading the main story
From
the beginning, Donald Trump — who literally seems to think that he
deserves praise for throwing a few rolls of paper towels into a crowd —
has suggested that Puerto Rico is responsible for its own disaster, and
he has systematically denigrated the efforts of its people to take care
of one another.
Early
this week, for example, he tweeted out a video showing a positive view
of recovery efforts very much at odds with most independent reporting,
and featuring remarkably few Puerto Ricans. And as The Washington Post
notes, there’s a very telling piece of editing: One segment showed
Forest Service workers clearing a road, but it cut off just before the
official being interviewed praised local efforts: “The citizens of
Puerto Rico were doing an outstanding job coming out and clearing roads
to help get the aid that’s needed.”
Puerto Ricans behaving well, it seems, doesn’t fit the official story line.
Meanwhile, it took almost three weeks after Maria struck before Trump asked Congress to provide financial aid
— and his request was for loans, not grants, which is mind-boggling
when you bear in mind that the territory is effectively bankrupt.
And then came Thursday morning, when Trump once again blamed Puerto Rico for its own disaster and appeared to threaten to cut off aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the military.
Just
to be clear: Puerto Rico was in severe financial and economic
difficulty even before the hurricane, and some of that reflected
mismanagement. But much of it reflected changes in the global economy —
for example, growing competition
from Latin American nations — reinforced by policies imposed by
Washington, like the end of a crucial tax break and the enforcement of
the Jones Act, which forces it to rely on expensive U.S. shipping.
And
Puerto Rico is hardly the only U.S. region suffering difficulties in
the face of global economic change — and such regions can normally count
on federal support to help limit the hardship. What do you think West
Virginia would look like if Medicare and Medicaid
didn’t cover 44 percent of the population? Aside from the thousands
facing financial ruin and/or premature death, what would happen to employment in health and social assistance, which provides jobs to 16 percent of the state’s work force, which is vastly more than coal mining?
Anyway,
all of this should be irrelevant. The simple fact is that millions of
our fellow citizens are facing catastrophe. How can we be abandoning
them in their time of need?
Much
of the answer, no doubt, is the usual four-letter word: race. Puerto
Ricans would doubtless be getting better treatment if they were all of,
say, Norwegian descent.
But let’s be fair: Trump is also working as you read this to destroy health care
for millions of other Americans, many of them working-class
non-Hispanic whites — the very people who voted for him so
overwhelmingly. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him an equal-opportunity
monster — he clearly has a special animus toward minorities — but his
self-centeredness and complete lack of empathy extend quite widely.
Whatever
the precise mix of motives, what’s happening in Puerto Rico is utterly
shameful. And everyone who enables the regime perpetuating this shame
shares part of the guilt.
Read my blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, and follow me on Twitter, @PaulKrugman. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
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