I had a suspicion about why Trump is beating up on Puerto Rico

[lunatica]

Going on the premise that when he brings his particular brand of hateful and odious attention on some particular subject it's to cover something else up, I'm wondering if the reason is that FEMA is running out of money due to simply not funding it. So I went looking:

After Harvey this article was in Newsweek

TRUMP WANTS TO CUT FEMA BUDGET BEFORE THE NEXT MAJOR HURRICANE
BY MEGHAN BARTELS ON 8/30/17 AT 4:54 PM

http://www.newsweek.com/harvey-trump-fema-budget-disaster-preparedness-hurricane-657237

[snip]
...the response to the next Harvey could face even stricter financial constraints if President Donald Trump gets his budgetary wishes for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins October 1. The president's budget blueprint calls for FEMA's budget for state and local grants to be cut by $667 million, saying that these grants are unauthorized or ineffective.
[/snip]

~~~~~

Washington Post

Trump would slash disaster funding to the very agencies he’s praising for Harvey response

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-agencies-respond-to-storm-some-face-cuts-under-trump-budget-proposal/2017/08/29/0fbbd6ca-8cc8-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?utm_term=.0f24560f8ac8

[snip]
The proposed cuts would include programs run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose new administrator was praised by Trump in a tweet last weekend for “doing a great job”; the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps rebuild homes, parks, hospitals and community centers; the National Weather Service, which forecasts extreme storms; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose research and community engagement help coastal residents prepare for disaster.
[/snip]

~~~~~

From Money Magazine

President Trump's Budget Would Cut Hundreds of Millions From Disaster Relief Programs
Ian Salisbury
Aug 28, 2017

[snip]
Here's specifically what the Trump budget proposes:
$667 million from FEMA targeting grants that help state and local governments prepare for natural disasters and other emergencies like terrorist attacks. The budget would also require 25% cost matching for preparedness grants. Modeled on FEMA's existing disaster recovery grants, the provision is designed to ensure state and local governments pick up part of the tab when the federal government doles out money.
[/snip]

But he sure wants those tax cuts doesn't he? He gets to benefit while the rest of us, well not so much. He must feel that money going to FEMA would be better spent if it went to him.

[Achilleaze]

1. republicans are systematically weakening America

almost as if republicans were following a kremlin script internalized by the entity so many republicans speak of as their frikken "god-emperor" -- the notoriously ignoble Comrade Casino* (R).

* republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

[lunatica]

2. It's gotten pretty obvious hasn't it?

Only a moron would think that's good. And his minions.

[pangaia]

11. ".....almost as if republicans were following a kremlin script .."

Almost?

Surely you jest..

[Hortensis]

15. Kochs and other archconservative metamillionaires, anyone? Is it some huge secret

that most of America's conservatives, always somewhat anti-government, anti-tax in sympathies, have been turned into a right-wing extremist religious, social and economic movement? That the ultrapowerful ultrawealthy classes we should never have allowed to exist made this happen?

Eisenhower and Justice Louis Brandeis warned us of what they were observing in the 1940s and 50s, but the move to take over our democracy really only starting getting formidably organized in the 1970s as wealth increasingly accumulated, and exploded in the 1990s-to present. And now that victory is finally possibly within their reach, they're plans are currently foiled by the intense corruption and incompetence of congress and executive branch that they made happen. Also by the mindless rebellion of the trumpsters, who know something's terribly wrong but don't know who or how to fight it.

And also by the Democratic Party they failed to corrupt into the ruins we see on the right.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Louis D. Brandeis

[octoberlib]

21. They don't need to follow a Kremlin script, They're following the Koch Libertarian

script which was first put in practice in Pinochet's Chile. Change the constitution so that only a bunch of billionaire elites and corporations have any power and destroy government by deregulating and privatizing everything. The Koch's themselves hate both the Democratic and Republican parties, they 're just using the GOP as the delivery vehicle and any politician that doesn't go along gets primaried.

NPR review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean
Obscuring census data to give "conservative districts more than their fair share of representation." Preventing access to the vote. Decrying "socialized medicine." Trying to end Social Security using dishonest vocabulary like "strengthened." Lionizing Lenin. Attempting to institute voucher programs to "get out of the business of public education." Increasing corporatization of higher education. Harboring a desire, at heart, to change the Constitution itself.

This unsettling list could be 2017 Bingo. In fact, it's from half a century earlier, when economist James Buchanan — an early herald of libertarianism — began to cultivate a group of like-minded thinkers with the goal of changing government. This ideology eventually reached the billionaire Charles Koch; the rest is, well, 2017 Bingo.

This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. It's grim going; this isn't the first time Nancy MacLean has investigated the dark side of the American conservative movement (she also wrote Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan), but it's the one that feels like it was written with a clock ticking down.

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/18/531929217/democracy-in-chains-traces-the-rise-of-american-libertarianism

[malaise]

3. Yep - but he also gets to buy on the cheap

as people leave in droves. It's always about him

[lunatica]

4. It's gotten quite easy to see what motivates him

Everyone's wondering why he's being so insensitive to Puerto Rico, but, as Rachel always says, if you pay attention to what he does and not to what he says you begin to see the pattern. So now when he says something disparaging we can take it as a compass pointing in the opposite direction of where he wants us to look.

That and the sure knowledge we've acquired that his single searing motivation is himself. I even think his family comes second to him. And I think they know it so they scramble to keep up with him so the money he gets showers down on them too. I doubt they love him any more than he loves them. He's their free ticket to wealth.

[lame54]

5. To repugs in charge all money is theirs...

And they begrudge ANY of it being given away

[Cryptoad]

6. could part of it be that they have no vote in the EC?

plus he doesn't see them as "Real Americans"

[lunatica]

7. It shows he hates brown skin more than any other color

So in his eyes they're just a bunch of lazy rapists and freeloaders who will take all our jobs away if he lets them.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. This.

Everyone SHOULD know his behavior would be different if PR was inhabited by mostly light-skinned people.

Trump is sticking to the "FOX News formula" that got him elected:
1. Christianity is the best.
2. White people are the best.
3. The USA is the best.
4. Media that questions any of the above is unacceptable.

[Chakaconcarne]

8. Post Harvey. didn't congress decide these cuts would not occur?

These are articles are over a month old.

[lunatica]

10. I posted the dates of the articles which were post Harvey but

pre-Maria.

My point is that Trump has a wish list which is to defund as much as he can, and it would have been relatively easy for him to get his way, but then came along Maria and Puerto Rico and he simply can't let go of his wish list so he's attaching Puerto Rico. He probably figures no one will care anyway because they're brown and speak Spanish. Remember he's missing the empathy and sympathy genes.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. He needs wall money. nt

[brooklynite]

13. Your premise is completely wrong...

Going on the premise that when he brings his particular brand of hateful and odious attention on some particular subject it's to cover something else up

This exhibits strategic thinking. Trump shows no such inclination. Everything is spur of the moment impulse.

[unblock]

17. he is systematic in terms of the white nationalist agenda.

he is certainly impulsive and scattered in terms of policy, but in terms of praising whites, christians, men, etc., and insulting or attacking or turning his back on non-whites, women, muslims, etc., he's remarkably consistent and methodical.

insulting puerto rico and its elected officials, and being late and skimpy with aid is entirely consistent with this.

the strategy isn't legislative, he's trying to change the social order to put white christian men in a more explicitly dominant position and relegate all others to second class citizen (or worse) status.

[brooklynite]

18. None of which has anything to do with "covering up something else"

[unblock]

19. i agree. that premise is wrong, imho. when he brings his hate, that *is* his agenda.

he's not covering up for anything else, he's using anything he can to promote his perverse view of the proper social order, with white christian men on top.

[watoos]

14. Honestly

I think this is what Republicans want. We are giving Trump too much credit for being able to add 1+1.
IMO, the reason that Trump is shafting Puerto Rico is because, yes, they are brown people, but also because PR voted bigly for Marco Rubio in the primary. I bet that really bugs Trump.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

16. Watched Frontline last night about the EPA. It was sickening

He is bolsteted by the most greedy, ignorent, shortsighted group of opportunists starting with Scot Pruit. The money men are despicable and filled with rage. They almost appear to sincerely believe climate change is a liberal hoax created by environmentalists. All evidence to the contrary explains the insanity.

[bigbrother05]

20. All those displaced folks should be willing to work for subminimum wage in his hotels

The ones that move to the mainland will take any job available and then when he picks up the prime PR locations at disaster prices, they'll come home to work for even less in his resorts.