"Our Little Brown Brothers" redux?

        Hurricane Maria dumped 25 inches of rain in 24 hours on Puerto Rico. The rain was driven by 155 mile per hour winds (not 200 plus as POTUS stated!)  Only about half of the homes in Puerto Rico have (had?) wind damage insurance. It is also true that Puerto Rico has (had) a larger number of homes which were owned outright, than the continental US percentage,  thus no mortgage lender requirement for homeowners insurance. This, while a statistic we rarely consider, is significant.

         First, Home insurance costs are spiraling, not just in Puerto Rico but in the US as well. It seems that while major financial players (many of which, like 2008 bailout beneficiary AIG, have huge insurance components) spend money lobbying conservative Climate Change denying legislators for fewer regulatory restrictions, they actually also buy into global warming and the OMB's 2015 predictions of more and larger disasters like the ones covered in this monograph? For those of you doubters out there, consider that insurers live and die by actuarial analysis of best data, not moronic, science bashing, conspiracy theory.

       For one such example in my home state of Florida, reflect that no insurers will insure any manufactured housing for wind damage, and many have left the state altogether in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, stranding homeowners who are forced to use the state's alternative.     

        Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is the common name for nonprofit, government-based property insurance programs in Louisiana and Florida. The program began in 2002 as a last-resort option for insuring individuals who cannot obtain coverage through a private insurer  due to their risk level. Despite the name, "Citizen's" is primarily a government-based initiative to reduce the number of uninsured homeowners. Understand, this means that even insured homes damaged in a hurricane can cost the Federal and state governments, Mr. Trump! After its launch, it became the largest insurer in Florida.

        For an example of how good this isn't consider  the numbers game run on Al Jacobs, a Miami Beach retiree who was forced to buy insurance with Citizens after all other insurers declined to cover his waterfront home. (Note, this isn't a manufactured or trailer home, but a large  stucco "built to code"  house and  Al Jacobs isn't a blue collar retiree scraping by on Social Security. Jacobs, who is  70, pays about $5,000 for windstorm insurance and $2,000 for flood insurance each year. This of course is an "add-on"  to the typical "house and contents" coverage, which can easily run to thousands annually, as well.  On top of that, his deductible for windstorm coverage is $12,000, meaning if a storm hit he’d have to spend nearly $20,000 in a single year before his insurance kicked in to pay for damage. Jacobs, who saw his insurance premiums double this year, said it may be time to get rid of insurance and go “naked,” meaning play "hurricane roulette." Doing so would put this guy in exactly the same position as half of the homeowners in Puerto Rico!

        Meanwhile the Cheeto in Chief bitches, seemingly, that Puerto Rico somehow apparently was responsible for the storm itself, even though there was already about $1 billion in Irma damage before Maria struck the death blow!  

        “You’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico,” Trump said, during a briefing at the Muñiz Air National Guard Base. Such a statement deserves critical analysis, as, in fact do many peripheral statements he has made recently. First things first, however. Just how costly has the havoc caused in Puerto Rico by Maria been, compared to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma?  

       Puerto Rico has a total area of  3,500 square miles, more or less, but unlike Houston, which was built, like New Orleans, in the flood plains of streams which will flood periodically and the residents know it,  is a mixed area of hills, mountains and low lying coastal regions.

         All 3.4 millions in  Puerto Rico were without power in the wake of Maria, most still are. As of now, barely half have drinkable fresh water. In Houston, FEMA and others rushed aid into the region, almost before the rain stopped. Here in Florida, Irma, put 16 million in the dark, but none are that way now, most having had power restored within a two day period. Estimates are more like 6 months to restore all power in Puerto Rico. We (central Florida)  had at most 16 inches of rain in 24 hours, 3/4 that of Maria's drenching of Puerto Rico, already saturated by Irma's very near miss, 10 days earlier, with its accompanying 15 to 20 inches of rain. Understand - that's 45 inches of rain!

       So, let's do a fair analysis of the "budget out of whack" statement. Best guess estimates are that Harvey will cost (estimating just the federal share) upwards of the neighborhood of  $30 billion, with the entire cost running to far over $150. The best guess for Irma is relatively close to the same figure. I can count on no fingers of either hand the number of lamentations re:"budgetary state of whack", made by Trump over these figures. Get this point: Trump is bitching about roughly  $8 billion (to date) in Federal spending to Puerto Rico while omitting any mention of the more than $50 billion or so spent, or to be spent (and these are  conservative numbers) in the Continental US.  Apparently, however,  Puerto Ricans, being brown people and children of a lesser God, ergo not of that  percentage of Americans  to whom Trump so shamelessly caters, can be held to a different standard. The tone of almost anything he has said in the wake of this disaster has been indicative of the fact that he truly either doesn't know or worse, doesn't care that Puerto Ricans are Americans at birth as were most of us.

        For a US President to lament the fact that we are responsible for Puerto Rico while blaming the residents  in some fashion, is ludicrous, considering the fact that it was  William  McKinley who decided to "annex" the island following the Spanish American war. There was no plebiscite of locals, we just took it. (It is noteworthy that he did the same with the Philippines, and we know how that worked out - $400 million, 7,000 US casualties and 220,000 Filipino dead later.)  Reading the platitudes and outright bullshit from the POTUS is reminiscent of McKinley's statement that it was "Our duty to our little brown brothers to Christianize them and ..." (don't forget , kill them if they don't want what we are selling!)  Coupled with the early 1900's Jones Act provisions, only just waived for "a whopping" ten days,  crippling incentives for other nation's flagged carriers to import aid, it paints a poor picture, indeed of the man's real concern for the island. The thought running throughout my mind in the background as I scribble  this essay is the conjecture of what Trump's attitude would be if Puerto Rico were a state. I believe his racism would make him incapable of any different reaction.  

       In typically stream of semi-conscious ranting, Trump then   said, however,  that he "Loved the people of Puerto Rico, and that he would help, that he would stand by them in their rebuilding process."

        The truly revelatory fragment of Trump's otherwise rambling, superlative  adjective stuffed drivel was this telling tidbit: "Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with."

        And, at last,  there you have the true gist of the man's focus, "F**k the Puerto Ricans, it's Wall Street and the banks we should be worried about!"