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Lights Slowly Come On for Puerto Ricans in Rural Areas (csmonitor.com)
Almost a year after two hurricanes ravaged the US territory, repair crews are working to energize the more than 950 homes and businesses that remain without power in hard-to-reach areas. Puerto Ricans remain fearful that their newly returned normality could be short lived. An anonymous reader shares a report: Lights are slowly coming on for the more than 950 homes and businesses across Puerto Rico that remain without power in hard-to-reach areas. Repair crews sometimes have to dig holes by hand and scale down steep mountainsides to reach damaged light posts. Electrical poles have to be ferried in one-by-one via helicopter. It is slow work, and it has stretched nearly two months past the date when officials had promised that everyone in Puerto Rico would be energized. And even as TVs glow into the night and people like delivery man Steven Vilella once again savor favorite foods like shrimp and Rocky Road ice cream, many fear their newly returned normality could be short-lived. Turmoil at the island's power company and recent winds and rains that knocked out electricity to tens of thousands of people at the start of the new hurricane season have them worried.
Puerto Rico was failed by the USA -- no reason for them to seek closer ties to Washington as a state. Frankly, independence and membership in CARICOM might be a better solution, with a visa reciprocity agreement with the USA (they owe PR one, actually more than one).
Puerto Rico should become a state. Write in a Texas-style escape clause if you want to placate your folks who dream fantasies of an island-nation empire.
Puerto Rico is an enormously productive place - with wonderful people who are technologically capable, and an amazing history of overcoming strife.
But right now, it is also once again a place of unprecedented cruelty imposed on it, mostly due to political demands.
Statehood would mean senators, congressmen, shared defense (you already have many, many of your people in our armies), and yes, disaster relief with less wiggle room than our Republicans tend to always take in large disasters.
Also, breaking that '50' magic number would also help places like Washington DC escape from a similar turmoil.
You're more populous than most states, for goodness sake:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh, and you'll help us vote against Trump more effectively this way.
Ryan Fenton
They are the richest island in the Caribbean.“
Only the richest Port.