Paul Ryan and Neoliberal Dems Send Technocrats to Slam Economic Austerity Brick on Puerto Rico

(The Great Deficit Monster rears it’s ugly head again, this time in the wake of the speculator’s feeding frenzy in Puerto Rico. 3.5 million people now to be ruled by unelected technocrats who worship at the altar of neoliberal free market ideology. Disaster capitalism at work once again. Enter the billionaires and their surrogates to pick clean the bones of Puerto Rico. Very telling how the dems cross the aisle to vote for certain things when there’s gold to be made in them there hills. The decisions of these technocrats will supersede existing laws and regulations. They can essentially remake Puerto Rico into a 3rd world tin-pot dictatorship.)

by John Nichols, the Nation (title is mine)

… Last week, as members of Congress rushed to finish their business before jetting off for the July 4 break, the Senate joined the House in voting for the “Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act” or “PROMESA.” Sponsored by Congressman Sean Duffy, R-Wisconsin, with encouragement from House Speaker Paul Ryan, this assault on basic democratic and constitutional premises won the support of Republicans and most Democrats. It is now the law. But it is bad law.

Ryan and Duffy, both proponents of crude austerity schemes that blame the victims of speculators for the harm done to communities, states and nations, refused to accept reasonable proposals for addressing a debt crisis that has hobbled Puerto Rico. The debt crisis is real, as have been the crises faced by many American communities and states. A long and severe economic downturn, speculation and policy missteps have combined to create a circumstance that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says has “already harmed the health, safety and welfare of the 3.5 million Americans living in Puerto Rico.” Yet, rather than respond with an eye toward renewing and strengthening the economy of the commonwealth, Ryan and congressional Republicans came up with austerity schemes to punish the vast majority of Puerto Ricans. And, with the assistance of key Democrats in the House and now the Senate, those schemes have been approved and signed into law by a president who has observed with considerable understatement that this emergency “solution” is “not perfect.”

Congress could have taken steps that would have allowed the economically hard-hit island “commonwealth” to restructure debts as America states do—and as Obama had proposed. But Ryan and his compatriots refused to extend standard bankruptcy protections to Puerto Rico, and instead demanded the establishment of an unelected “Financial Oversight and Management Board ” that is now empowered “to assist the Government of Puerto Rico, including instrumentalities, in managing its public finances, and for other purposes.”…

… The PROMESA legislation, as drafted by Duffy, actually announces that “The provisions of this Act shall prevail over any general or specific provisions of territory law, State law, or regulation that is inconsistent with this Act.”

[read more here]