Tuesday, September 26th, 2017
Stephan: Right now from Houston to Louisiana, Florida, the American Virgin Islands and, now, Puerto Rico have been devastated by extreme weather. Millions discommoded. What do you hear of it? Do you have any idea what is going on in Houston now? It is not easy to find out.
To my mind particularly in Puerto Rico I see gross failure of the federal government in dealing with these events, and I read that as a sign of a negative trend. If you realize this is a trend, and we are going to see more and more of this, commonsense should tell you that time, effort, and money spent preparing is directly correlated with minimal misery and death. But I see little sign of any of that.
Even worse in many ways the devastation in Puerto Rico has brought into focus what this report says, "As of March 2017, only 47 percent of Americans believed that a person born to Puerto Rican parents was an American citizen,
according to a Suffolk poll. By contrast, a whopping 30 percent believed that they would be a citizen of Puerto Rico, with the rest of the people surveyed either not knowing or claiming to be unsure."
Everything that is going on gets back to the American voter. That's the thing about democracies.
If a poll from early 2017 is to be believed, there are millions of Americans who don’t realize that when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, it directly impacted American citizens.
As of March 2017, only 47 percent of Americans believed that a person born to Puerto Rican parents was an American citizen, according to a Suffolk poll. By contrast, a whopping 30 percent believed that they would be a citizen of Puerto Rico, with the rest of the people surveyed either not knowing or claiming to be unsure.
The same findings were apparent in an Economic/YouGov poll taken less than one year earlier. As of May 2016, 43 percent of respondents believed that children of Puerto Rican parents in Puerto Rico would be American citizens, while 41 percent said they would be Puerto Rican citizens.
Although Americans’ ignorance of Puerto Ricans’ citizenship may be embarrassing, the matter is not free of complications. A pair of recent Supreme Court cases illustrated this point — Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, in which the court ruled that it would count as Double Jeopardy for one person to be charged with the same crime in both the United States and Puerto Rico, and
