Texans Tell Puerto Rico "Money For Me, But Not For Thee"
A few days ago the Washington Post had a classic article about how some of those Texans who had received government help in the aftermath by Hurricane Harvey were not all that keen about sending help to their fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico. The article was full of shockingly soft and, at times, even hard racism.
Said one Texan whose house flooded, “It’s [Hurricane Maria] a problem, but they need to handle it. It shouldn’t be up to us, really. I don’t think so. They’re sitting back, they’re taking the money, they’re taking a little under the table. He’s [Trump] trying to wake them up: Do your job. Be responsible.” Of course, that never happened in Texas. And this came from a man who had just received a $14,000 check from FEMA. He sat back and took the money.
Another Texas woman who thought she had purchased flood insurance when she bought her house just a year ago but found out that she was not covered said, “Do other people think that other people should pay for me to fix my house? Because it’s not their fault that I flooded.” Of course, she too will receive some FEMA money and will gladly take it. When asked about the response in Puerto Rico, she said that she worried that the when the government hands out money to help people rebuild, it just encourages corruption and people take more than they need. But what about simply restoring power and the availability of clean drinking water? She replied, “Guess what? There’s a big chunk of the population that lives without electricity all the time…They don’t live deprived, because it’s a beautiful environment. The weather is nice, the climate is good most of the time, so it’s different from here . . . It works there because of the climate. It wouldn’t work here.” Yes, there’s no reason to have power or water when the climate is so nice.
She ended by saying that the government should encourage people to leave the island because it is in the path of hurricanes. The lack of self-awareness is striking. Her neighbor objected to the relocation idea saying, “They should stay where they are and fix their own country up”, pretty much summing up his ignorance and bias in one short phrase. He added the Puerto Ricans’ “lack of responsibility is not an emergency on my part.”
Perhaps someone should point out to these Texans, who are of course all Trumpsters, that the city of Houston authorized developments INSIDE A RESERVOIR! Of course, that’s not a lack of responsibility; that’s called progress in Texas. In addition, Houston, along with New Orleans, are the two cities with the most repetitive flooding disasters requiring government help over the last two decades. Much of that has to do with specific land-use policies and the global warming that their party denies.
And now, those same leaders who are far more responsible than their counterparts in Puerto Rico, are proposing to approve the development of 800 new homes ENTIRELY WITHIN A FLOODPLAIN. According to the developer, it will be a “a community that provides a unique sense of arrival and lifestyle not currently available in Houston.” That is until it floods.
