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Will Puerto Rico be the 51st State on the way to 57?

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Puerto Rico Democracy Act – Legislation Biased in Favor of Statehood

Posted By Brian Darling On April 27, 2010

According to Majority Leader [1] Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House will vote on H.R. 2499 [2], the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, later this week. The legislation provides Puerto Rico a two stage voting process and makes some non-resident Puerto Ricans eligible to vote on Puerto Rican statehood. This legislation has rigged the process in favor of making Puerto Rico the 51st state and is not a fair way to force statehood on a Commonwealth whose people may not want it. Furthermore, this may be an expensive proposition for the American people who are already on the hook for approximately $12.9 trillion [3] in national debt.

This bill attempts to rig the voting process and denies the American people a real say on the issue of whether they want to allow Puerto Rico to be granted statehood. The fact of the matter is that Puerto Ricans have rejected statehood numerous times and this bill seems to have been written in a way to fast track statehood without a majority of Puerto Ricans favoring the idea. Furthermore, the people of the United States should be allowed a vote on whether they want to admit Puerto Rico as a new state. If the people of Puerto Rico can vote, the people of the United States should have a vote.

The legislation contains many questionable provisions. First, the legislation sets up a voting process rigged for success. The legislation sets up a preliminary vote and the voters are given two options. If a majority of Puerto Ricans vote in favor of changing the status of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to “a different political status,” then a second vote would be scheduled to poll voters on the following three options:

1. “Independence: Puerto Rico should become fully independent from the United States;”
2. “Sovereignty in Association with the United States: Puerto Rico and the United States should form a political association between sovereign nations that will not be subject to the Territorial Clause of the United States Constitution;” and,
3. “Statehood: Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State of the Union.”

Clearly, a plurality of the people of Puerto Rico could vote for “Statehood” without a majority of the people voting ever supporting the idea. The people of Puerto Rico have rejected statehood three times and it seems that this vote is set up to allow a simply plurality of the people to carry the day.

Another odd provision allows non-resident Puerto Ricans to vote on statehood for the Commonwealth. The bill states that “all United States citizens born in Puerto Rico who comply, to the satisfaction of the Puerto Rico State Elections Commission, with all Commission requirements (other than the residency requirement) applicable to eligibility to vote in a general election in Puerto Rico.” Residency requirements may be waived, because Puerto Ricans living in the states would naturally favor statehood for the Commonwealth.

This provision allows non-resident Puerto Ricans to undermine the will of the residents of the Commonwealth. According to the U.S. Census [4], there are more Puerto Ricans residing in the 50 states, than in the proposed 51st state. The estimates as part of the American Community Survey estimates that out of the 301 million people in the United States, 4.13 million are of Puerto Rican descent. The Census [5] also estimates that the population of Puerto Rico is a mere 3.97 million. This would allow for the will of the residents of the Commonwealth to be overridden by people who have chosen to move one of the 50 states.

The Congressional Budget Office [6] (CBO) put out a report dated July 28, 2009 on H.R. 2499. The CBO report estimated that there would be no score for this bill, because it only authorizes a vote, but if Puerto Rico was granted statehood the cost would be massive. My boss, Edwin Feulner wrote in 1997 piece titled Do We Need a 51st State? [7] “in an era of government downsizing and balanced budgets, it would increase entitlement spending (welfare, Medicare, Social Security) by an estimated $3 billion per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” Those arguments still hold water today. The Lexington Institute [8] argues that “Puerto Rico, which received $18 billion in direct federal expenditures in FY 2008, has a population with a median national income of $17,741, nearly a third below that for the United States. While eligibility for many major federal social programs is the same in both jurisdictions, others, like the Food Stamp Program, include different eligibility requirements. This would likely result in increased federal expenditures should statehood be achieved, but a lack of comparable data makes cost projections for such changes difficult.” It is clear that the cost of statehood to the taxpayers will be high.

The Puerto Rico Democracy Act has some serious flaws. The votes seem to be set up in a way that favors statehood. The two provisions that allow a plurality of Puerto Ricans to vote for statehood to be ratified and the allowing of non-resident Puerto Ricans to vote in the plebiscite is of deep concern to those who favor a fair vote and referendum on statehood. A vote by members of Congress is not enough to indicate consent of the American people for Puerto Rican statehood. If the Obamacare vote and secretive procedure is instructive, many Members of Congress are willing to defy the will of their own constituents.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/04/27/puerto-rico-democracy-act-%E2%80%93-legislation-biased-in-favor-of-statehood/print/
 

Steve

Well-known member
while I am not in favor of any manipulation of the statehood process, we as a country have missed opportunities in the past...

Cuba, Philippines..

both once ceded to the US only to later become thorns in our side..

maybe we should not give up what we fought so hard for and paid for in the blood of our soldiers and threw in a boat load of cash to boot...

but then who needs to remember history....

"Under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba, with the island to be occupied by the United States."

imagine how much trouble that would have saved US had someone looked out for the territory and people we had fought to free...
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
Pee Eye was alright until Marcos was removed from power. The only President they have elected since then that was worth a pinch of cold dog poo was Fidel Ramos.

Natural disasters, political corruption, pollution, and the devalued peso have left the country in economic ruins, not to mention those pesky Abu Saayaf and their kidnappings way down south.

The only resource they have anymore are their women. Period.
 

Steve

Well-known member
loomixguy said:
Pee Eye was alright until Marcos was removed from power. The only President they have elected since then that was worth a pinch of cold dog poo was Fidel Ramos.

Natural disasters, political corruption, pollution, and the devalued peso have left the country in economic ruins, not to mention those pesky Abu Saayaf and their kidnappings way down south.

The only resource they have anymore are their women. Period.

your view is a bit narrow on the issue...
Though sometimes overlooked, natural gas might be the most abundant hydrocarbon resource in the Philippines. Most reserves in the Philippines contain natural gas, not oil. Estimates by the USGS and others indicate that about 60% -70% of the region's hydrocarbon resources are gas. Meanwhile, natural gas usage in the region is projected to grow by 5% per year over the next two decades, faster than any other fuel, reaching as much as 20 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) per year. Gas consumption could increase even faster if additional infrastructure is built. Proposals have been made to link the gas producing and consuming regions of the Pacific Rim region of Asia by pipeline, with the
Philippines geographically central to these regions.

seems China is looking into it while we ignore the possibilities...
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
Steve said:
seems China is looking into it while we ignore the possibilities...

It still could be a win for us with China getting their hands in the cookie jar. Less polution globally.

China has also taken a leading role in nuke power while we sat back and regulated it out of existence here in the U.S. Obama came in with an anti-nuke roar. Now he has changed positiosn somewhat. Where does he really stand? The position could be different next week. In the meantime, China is laughing all the way to the bank with nukes and cleaning up their environmental future.

We're still contemplating where we want to go with no real vision. China does not seem to have such problems.
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
Bing will be more than happy to let his big yellow brother run the natural gas show. The Chinaman has no regard for limiting pollution, or being environmentally friendly in any way. When they are done in Pee Eye, there won't be much left. The seafood caught in Manila Bay has been unfit to eat for 20 years, "red tide", they call it. The horrorrific mudslides that come after typhoons is the result of logging on mountains and leaving not even a blade of grass to hold the fragile soil in place. Hydroelectric plants shut down and brownouts all over the place because Cory Aquino sent all the Americans who worked and maintained the plants home, because the "Filipinos could do it better"....which they could not, in any way, shape, or form....and because the Kanos were sent away, electricity was scarce.

I was right next to Mt. Pinatuo about 5 months after it blew...at least they took the volcanic ash and made cinderblocks and cement with it. A company from Germany and one from South Korea were doing this. I saw houses buried by ash so covered you could barely see the top of the roofs, and ash windrowed off the highways just like snow, and going on for miles and miles.

Who knows? Maybe they will find Marcos' gold while monkeying around the gas fields.
 

TSR

Well-known member
That's one of the problems with nuclear power that no one has mentioned, the amount of radioactive waste it produces and which state is going to welcome its storage. Seems like that has been an issue in the past in America.
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
TSR said:
That's one of the problems with nuclear power that no one has mentioned, the amount of radioactive waste it produces and which state is going to welcome its storage. Seems like that has been an issue in the past in America.

What about granite buildings? They are acceptable? What about people living near cemeteries with granite tombstones?

Check out the rad dose people working in granite buidlings receive.
 
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