The TRUE Story about Puerto Rico: Today's News for September 29th

CNN:

Trump White House feels heat on Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico and Washington seem farther than 1,500 miles apart right now -- in fact they're experiencing a different version of reality.

Nine days after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, emerging video and news reports of a heartrending humanitarian crisis are jarring with the Trump administration's upbeat assessment of the relief effort.

And as the islanders' plight is revealed, the White House risks becoming increasingly exposed politically at a time when it is already being pummeled by a tide of scandal and defeats, including the controversy over Cabinet members using private jets and the latest failed bid to repeal Obamacare.

Huh? How does Obamacare belong in an article about hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico? CNN was doing really good until they took the side trip into Leftist complaint mode.

Continuing...

The dire situation, and the reluctance of President Donald Trump to publicly embrace complications in the relief effort, are also raising questions about why the response to Maria seems more sluggish than the government efforts following monster storms that hit Florida and Texas over the last month. 

Indeed, these are good questions.

However, there is another side to the story:

Fox News:

Trump admin pushes back against accusations of slow response to Puerto Rico crisis

President Donald Trump on Thursday declared relief efforts for Puerto Rico are succeeding, nine days after Hurricane Maria hit -- despite critics' claims that people on the island have been waiting too long for aid.

The president cleared the way Thursday for more supplies and tweeted that relief was indeed getting through.

Trump issued a 10-day waiver of federal restrictions on foreign shipments of cargo to the island. And, House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account would get a $6.7 billion boost by the end of the week.

The waiver of the Jones Act, which was done for the hurricane damage in Texas and Florida immediately, but on which Trump dragged his feet with Puerto Rico until yesterday, is the biggest part of this story. Kudos to Fox for at least getting to it early in their report, whereas CNN didn't even mention it until the 34th paragraph in their story. CNN covered a Trump-condemning tweet by a Democratic senator in the 15th paragraph.

Frankly, CNN has no editorial control of their news stories, allowing their reporters to turn them into opinion pieces, instead of just reporting the facts.

That said, Fox could have reported this problem sooner and with a bit more urgency. Ignoring the blatant hypocrisy of the Trump administration in this obvious situation shows their own political bias.

Maybe the waiver of the Jones Act isn't "sexy", but is the devastation in Puerto Rico related to the foot-dragging enough to keep viewers interested? You can make an interesting story out of this, if you try.

In another news story...

Mother Jones:

A New Study Shows Just How Many Americans Were Blocked From Voting 

in Wisconsin Last Year

Rebecca Brinkman moved to Baraboo, Wisconsin, an hour north of Madison, from Ohio in the spring of 2016 for a job as a zookeeper. She worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day before rushing to her polling place.

In addition to her Ohio driver’s license, she brought a manila envelope stuffed with documents to confirm her identity, including her credit card, her Social Security card, her rental lease, and a paycheck. “I was very well organized,” she told me. But November 2016 was Wisconsin’s first major election with a strict voter ID law in effect, which required voters to present one of a handful of categories of government-issued photo ID. Brinkman couldn’t get a Wisconsin driver’s license in time because her birth certificate was in Ohio.

Why is the birth certificate an issue? Because of  tens of millions of illegal immigrants in this country. If you cannot prove you are in this country legally, then you have to be able to prove you were born here. That is the law, and some states (like Wisconsin) choose to actually enforce it.

Back to the story:

A comprehensive study released today suggests how many missing votes can be attributed to the new law. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveyed registered voters who didn’t cast a 2016 ballot in the state’s two biggest counties—Milwaukee and Dane, which is home to Madison. More than 1 out of 10 nonvoters (11.2 percent) said they lacked acceptable voter ID and cited the law as a reason why they didn’t vote; 6.4 percent of respondents said the voter ID law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote.

The study’s lead author, University of Wisconsin political scientist Kenneth Mayer, says between roughly 9,000 and 23,000 registered voters in the reliably Democratic counties were deterred from voting by the ID law. Extrapolating statewide, he says the data suggests as many as 45,000 voters sat out the election, though he cautioned that it was difficult to produce an estimate from just two counties. 

Let us ignore the sheer tenuousness of the conclusion for a moment, and assume it is right. And let us assume that a big majority of these voters would have voted for Hillary Clinton, and given the state to her instead of Trump. Clinton still would have lost the election, as Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes would not have made a difference, and Trump still would have won the electoral college by a count of 296-242.

Overlooking the pointlessness of this one specific state example, let's consider what it might say in a broader context.

Here is what the details of this survey showed about the law deterring and preventing votes:

There is a conclusion to be drawn here, but it isn't necessarily the "racist" conclusion. 

That is a fairly large percentage of white voters affected by this voter ID law. While it may affect black voters in larger percentages, there is clearly something else about this voter ID law affecting ALL people. The larger black percentages are due to a problem not covered in this survey.

Income levels usually correlate to intelligence (not perfectly, but a better statistical correlation than most), and we can see a lot of the impact of the voter ID law is felt among the less intelligent elements of society. A fair extrapolation can be made that the harder you make voter ID compliance, the fewer stupid votes you get.

While this is a worthy goal in itself (do we really want stupid people deciding elections?), it is still wrong. People who meet the qualifications of being able to vote in this country should be allowed to do so, whether we like it or not.

But the story continues:

The new study also suggests that the number of voters disenfranchised by the law is far greater than the number of fraud cases that it was designed to stop. In 2014, during a federal trial where Wisconsin failed to present a single case of voter impersonation that the law would have prevented, a federal judge found that 300,000 voters lacked the strict forms of ID required by the state.

“The number of people who were deterred from voting is many thousands of times greater than the number of cases of voter impersonation that are prevented by this law,” Mayer says.

Here is the problem with this statement: The study includes LEGAL voters DETERRED from voting. How many ILLEGAL voters were DETERRED from voting by the voter ID law? The study doesn't show that, so there is no basis for statistical comparison.

You cannot use prosecutions as your basis for having a law in place.

Until we fix the illegal immigrant problem, voter ID laws are a necessary evil. If anything, this should encourage our government to make every effort to fix illegal immigration as soon as possible.