“The hidden high price of colonialism”
“The hidden high price of colonialism”
Viewpoint, Commentary, The San Juan Star
Saturday, march 4, 2006
The most significant contribution of the much debated White House Task Force Report on Puerto Rico is not in making any new revelations but in reaffirming facts about our current political condition that were known from inception and fully acknowledged at the time by Luis Muñoz Marín, José Trias Monge, the top leadership of the Popular Democratic Party and their allies in Congress.
The report summarized inalienable truths contained in the historical congressional record of the early fifties while the approval of a local constitution and a cosmetic and deceitful name change for Puerto Rico were being debated. Time and time again Muñoz would testify to the fact that these changes would not change the nature of the relationship which constitutes the essence of the recently released report.
As a matter of fact, in the most politically candid of all of Muñoz admissions before the Congress, he punctuated that “if we go crazy you can always legislate” thus, clearly accepting that Congress would retain full sovereignty over Puerto Rico and that it could at anytime unilaterally change, amend or even repeal any changes being proposed including the local constitution, a fact also merely repeated by the Task Force report.
Puerto Rico has been and remains “an unincorporated territory of the United States subject to the plenary powers of the Congress under the Territory Clause. To debate otherwise is to demonstrate crass ignorance of US constitutional and statutory law and to try and adjudicate to the Congress powers that it cannot and does not possess.
Consistently, every time the nature, vulnerability, and false pretenses of the colony are revealed and as a result the possibility of statehood looms large, the inevitable reaction of the PDP is to resurrect the “boogeymen” primarily in the form of sowing the fear of taxes, takes and more taxes.
There are some in our midst and others who descend upon us with dire warnings as if we could be duped as easily as we were in the early fifties. Blinded by their arrogance they pretend Puerto Ricans do not have cable television, do not travel or live elsewhere in the nation, and are incapable of reaching their own conclusions based upon facts instead of fear and malicious misinformation.
Amongst many, we are told about New Jersey as if it was some outer galactic enclave impossible to comprehend to “mere Puerto Ricans”. We are threatened that statehood would obligate us to pay sales, property, state and countless other taxes, but they conveniently “forget” to tell us that those are the exclusive purview of local authority and not imposed or mandated by the federal government in much the same manner as under the current regime Willy Miranda Marin imposed his “Willy-tax” in Caguas.
Deceitfully, we are not told that under the current regime, particularly the middle class, has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, and that more often than not our taxes are not invested but wasted in maintaining a governmental burocracy designed expressly to uphold the economic and political interests of the colonial oligarchy. How much do we pay in local taxes that under statehood would be borne by the budgets of the federal agencies that in addition would provide us with accountable services?
Since I wrote about it last, have you tried to figure out how much you really pay the local government monopoly for your electric power in the form of hidden subsidies in addition to what you are made to believe you are paying in your individual bill? Ditto for your water, which brings me to the subject of Puerto Rico’s multitude of hidden taxes: Ranging from the blown tires and broken shock absorbers that result from poor road maintenance, the bottled water you must consume because of unacceptable quality in public utility water, the private schools even the most humble strive to send their children because of the dismal quality of public “education”, etc., etc, etc. How much do they cost us?
Long time ago I concluded that in truth all who support the current colonial regime are nothing but segregationists trying under any subterfuge to prevent the integration of the American citizens of Puerto Rico to those in the rest of the nation. They stop at nothing and reveal their true unconscionable nature by trying to put the price of taxes on our individual and collective dignity. They have not changed much since the days of the “old South” when slave owners pressed upon their charges that if they were freed no longer could they count on a roof over their heads, regular meals and perennial employment. Are taxes the low price of Puerto Rican honor and dignity?
Yet there is something even more insulting and demeaning in their arguments. Listen not only to what they say and write but to its meaning. What they are really telling us is that Puerto Ricans are incapable of doing exactly what close to three hundred million of our fellow citizens do in fifty diverse states of the union: comply with their tax obligations and yet prosper and thrive to the point that even the most disadvantaged have a poverty level less than half of what we suffer under colonialism.
Are we going to prove that in fact we are so inferior that we allow ourselves to conform to inferiority?
Arturo J. Guzmán
Viewpoint, Commentary, The San Juan Star
Saturday, march 4, 2006
The most significant contribution of the much debated White House Task Force Report on Puerto Rico is not in making any new revelations but in reaffirming facts about our current political condition that were known from inception and fully acknowledged at the time by Luis Muñoz Marín, José Trias Monge, the top leadership of the Popular Democratic Party and their allies in Congress.
The report summarized inalienable truths contained in the historical congressional record of the early fifties while the approval of a local constitution and a cosmetic and deceitful name change for Puerto Rico were being debated. Time and time again Muñoz would testify to the fact that these changes would not change the nature of the relationship which constitutes the essence of the recently released report.
As a matter of fact, in the most politically candid of all of Muñoz admissions before the Congress, he punctuated that “if we go crazy you can always legislate” thus, clearly accepting that Congress would retain full sovereignty over Puerto Rico and that it could at anytime unilaterally change, amend or even repeal any changes being proposed including the local constitution, a fact also merely repeated by the Task Force report.
Puerto Rico has been and remains “an unincorporated territory of the United States subject to the plenary powers of the Congress under the Territory Clause. To debate otherwise is to demonstrate crass ignorance of US constitutional and statutory law and to try and adjudicate to the Congress powers that it cannot and does not possess.
Consistently, every time the nature, vulnerability, and false pretenses of the colony are revealed and as a result the possibility of statehood looms large, the inevitable reaction of the PDP is to resurrect the “boogeymen” primarily in the form of sowing the fear of taxes, takes and more taxes.
There are some in our midst and others who descend upon us with dire warnings as if we could be duped as easily as we were in the early fifties. Blinded by their arrogance they pretend Puerto Ricans do not have cable television, do not travel or live elsewhere in the nation, and are incapable of reaching their own conclusions based upon facts instead of fear and malicious misinformation.
Amongst many, we are told about New Jersey as if it was some outer galactic enclave impossible to comprehend to “mere Puerto Ricans”. We are threatened that statehood would obligate us to pay sales, property, state and countless other taxes, but they conveniently “forget” to tell us that those are the exclusive purview of local authority and not imposed or mandated by the federal government in much the same manner as under the current regime Willy Miranda Marin imposed his “Willy-tax” in Caguas.
Deceitfully, we are not told that under the current regime, particularly the middle class, has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, and that more often than not our taxes are not invested but wasted in maintaining a governmental burocracy designed expressly to uphold the economic and political interests of the colonial oligarchy. How much do we pay in local taxes that under statehood would be borne by the budgets of the federal agencies that in addition would provide us with accountable services?
Since I wrote about it last, have you tried to figure out how much you really pay the local government monopoly for your electric power in the form of hidden subsidies in addition to what you are made to believe you are paying in your individual bill? Ditto for your water, which brings me to the subject of Puerto Rico’s multitude of hidden taxes: Ranging from the blown tires and broken shock absorbers that result from poor road maintenance, the bottled water you must consume because of unacceptable quality in public utility water, the private schools even the most humble strive to send their children because of the dismal quality of public “education”, etc., etc, etc. How much do they cost us?
Long time ago I concluded that in truth all who support the current colonial regime are nothing but segregationists trying under any subterfuge to prevent the integration of the American citizens of Puerto Rico to those in the rest of the nation. They stop at nothing and reveal their true unconscionable nature by trying to put the price of taxes on our individual and collective dignity. They have not changed much since the days of the “old South” when slave owners pressed upon their charges that if they were freed no longer could they count on a roof over their heads, regular meals and perennial employment. Are taxes the low price of Puerto Rican honor and dignity?
Yet there is something even more insulting and demeaning in their arguments. Listen not only to what they say and write but to its meaning. What they are really telling us is that Puerto Ricans are incapable of doing exactly what close to three hundred million of our fellow citizens do in fifty diverse states of the union: comply with their tax obligations and yet prosper and thrive to the point that even the most disadvantaged have a poverty level less than half of what we suffer under colonialism.
Are we going to prove that in fact we are so inferior that we allow ourselves to conform to inferiority?
Arturo J. Guzmán
posted by Antonio Velázquez @ 3:16 p. m.
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