Puerto Rico News

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Daily Sun/Miguel Rios: PDP Rep. Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto

Puerto Rico Daily Sun - November 11, 2009: Popular Democratic Party lawmakers criticized Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz Tuesday for publicly calling PDP Sen. Sila Mari González a prostitute as he compared her to Mary Magdalene.

Rivera Schatz said he was standing by his remarks, arguing that he merely used the comparison to talk about the ability to forgive, but PDP Rep. Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto said the Senate leader knew what he was doing.

“He is now trying to confuse the meaning of his words but he knew exactly what he was saying,” Cruz Soto said.

During a morning news conference, Rivera Schatz was asked about remarks that González told a radio station to the effect that she would be willing to testify against NPP Sen. Héctor Martínez if she were asked.

González, who used to date Martínez, signed a sworn statement a few years ago linking him to a drug trafficker. On Tuesday, she said she was not surprised by reports that Martínez is the target of a federal probe for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for legislation that benefited private insurance companies.

Rivera Schatz said that “Sila Mari reminds me of Mary Magdalene,” referring to a reformed prostitute mentioned in the Bible. “If in the Bible, Mary Magdalene was forgiven, one should forgive everyone,” he said.

[Open link for full story and related stories. See earlier posting on Topix of Rivera Schatz's press conference.]

Sounding like a criminal defense lawyer and at times shielding his colleague from reporters’ questions, Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz denied unequivocally Tuesday that his fellow New Progressive Party Sen. Héctor J. Martínez accepted bribes during the past administration to approve legislation concerning public safety.

Rivera Schatz and Martínez had called a press conference on Tuesday morning to deny published reports of the existence of a federal grand jury investigation, but the briefing ended abruptly in the midst of the Senate president’s attack on a female newspaper reporter’s integrity.

Rivera Schatz announced he had sent a letter to acting U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez asking her to deviate from the usual practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of a grand jury investigation and to publicly say whether such a criminal query is being conducted on Martínez.

The Senate president said that Martínez, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, continues to have his trust and has his “total and absolute support.”

He had previously stated that Rodríguez deserves his “total support” and “those investigations deserve absolute credibility.”

Gov. Fortuño declined to pass judgment, saying, “I don’t comment on rumors.”

Meanwhile, Rivera Schatz said that Popular Democratic Party Sen. Sila Mari González, who used to date Martínez, reminded him of Mary Magdalene and needed forgiveness. González had said earlier that reports of the federal investigation did not surprise her. Rivera Schatz said that the reporter from El Vocero newspaper who wrote the article about the grand jury reportedly subpoenaing Senate documents deserves his “total respect”— unlike other journalists — but that he would not remove Martínez from his Senate committee chairmanships based solely on news reports.

[Open link for full story and related stories.]

Let‘s look at our social panorama for a moment, but a bit more focused this time on its human terms.

In that sense, these are times for despondency.

We watch with sadness as every week more and more public sector workers pack up their meager desk belongings and go home to a sad Thanksgiving Day. Most likely also, to an even more uncertain New Year. Just last week, Puerto Rico‘s government eliminated another 2,000 civil service jobs.

Rampant joblessness, continued home foreclosures, excessive consumer interest rates, decimated social services, and plain old gouging are tearing at the fabric of the working and middle classes.

The jobless rate on the island is more than 16 percent, a record high in recent times and our economy suffers its deepest economic slump in decades.

The mass layoffs, along with some 12,000 planned for early next year, are casting workers out into an economy starved for jobs. Bankruptcies have soared, many businesses have closed and there is a growing waiting list for public housing.

Here, just like in the mainland, to make up for shortfalls, political leaders are reaching deeper into the pockets of the those still employed, raising user fees on almost any service imaginable, jacking up fines for traffic violations, and allowing tuition hikes that make public colleges and universities increasingly unaffordable.

Parking meters are everywhere.

[Open link for full editorial.]

Note: Former Puerto Rico Gov. Acevedo Vilá brought this NYT's report to our attention in his interview published in today's Puerto Rico Daily Sun. -- See posting on Topix of this interview. -- Though this is a June 4, 2009, story, it is worth repeating today on Topix. Puerto Rico Gov. Fortuño is pushing ahead gung-ho with PPPs in Puerto Rico. -- Can we say: "Look Ma! Everybody is out of step except Fortuño?" Open link and read full story. Learn all the facts.

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It was hailed as a win-win for Main Street and Wall Street — a way for states and cities, along with financiers, to make some money.

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times -- A $2.5 billion plan to privatize Midway Airport in Chicago collapsed in April after investors were unable to obtain debt financing.

But now privatization, the selling of public airports, bridges, roads and the like to private investors, looks like a boom that wasn’t. Deals are collapsing. Airy hopes of quick profits are vanishing. And what was celebrated as a new wave in finance is, for the moment, barely making a ripple.

What happened? The financial crisis, for starters. The easy money that Wall Street was counting on to finance its purchases has largely disappeared. Then the Obama administration unintentionally damped interest with its $787 billion economic stimulus package, a windfall that local governments are now racing to spend.

Bankers concede they got a bit ahead of themselves. When times were good, investment banks and private investment funds raised billions of dollars in hopes of buying infrastructure. But many state and local governments resisted selling because of money, politics or both.

Some deals turned out to be less lucrative than these would-be sellers had hoped. Government officials also began questioning whether taxpayers would be better off if infrastructure were in private hands. After Chicago sold its parking system to a private operator, for instance, drivers had to feed meters with as many as 28 quarters to park for two hours.

“We will see a few transactions,” said Fred Pollock, a vice president at Morgan Stanley Infrastructure, a private equity fund. “But we know what we won’t see — a tidal wave of projects.”

Public private partnerships for development is nothing new in Puerto Rico, but Gov. Fortuño’s dogmatic focus on this form of financing as the keystone for island economic activity is an invitation to “chaos,” former Gov. Acevedo Vilá says in his new book “That’s how it was. Now what?”

“[PPP] legislation approved in 2009 takes away from government agencies the power and capacity to decide when partnership is convenient. Under this legislation, a super agency with a super board of directors — under the leadership of the Government Development Bank — will be the ones who decide what will be privatized and, worse yet, under what conditions these contracts will be granted. This is an invitation to chaos because it takes agencies that really have the ministerial responsibility of providing services to citizens out of the equation,” Acevedo Vilá says in his book.

A similar super board headed Superaqueduct project bidding and the subsequent high-level corruption that lead to the convictions of former Gov. Pedro Rosselló’s former campaign manager René Vázquez Botet and former New Progressive Party general secretary Marcos Morell Corrada of soliciting $2.4 million in bribes from four contractors, Acevedo Vilá noted. “PPP is a form of financing to get something built, not an economic development model,” Acevedo Vilá said during an interview with the Daily Sun, adding his administration promoted PPPs to build facilities for the 2010 PanAmerican Games and the Sheraton Hotel at the Convention Center district.

“This financing model is going belly up in the United States because banks have no money, and this is when we decide to jump on PPPs as our salvation?” Acevedo Vilá asked. “The weakness … of the financial sector puts in serious doubt the strategy of depending on PPPs.”

[Open link for full commentary. Great news the Puerto Rico Daily Sun is now online. Read all about Puerto Rico in English by outstanding Daily Sun journalists.]

The Capital - Annapolis - November 8, 2009:As a native of Puerto Rico, Antonio Amador has seen police officers cross the line before.

He thought he had left that behind when he moved to the United States in January so his two daughters could attend good schools. Amador admires America and the fact that its institutions serve the people.

But after the experience he had with Anne Arundel County police two weeks ago, he's not so sure.

" 'I guess police are the same anywhere' - that's what I said," Amador recalled last week.

Police would not comment on the facts, but what Amador described is a blatant violation of free speech rights and the county Police Department's own rules.

Amador, a 41-year-old photographer and graphic designer who lives in Severn, was awakened by his power flickering off and on about 4:30 a.m. Oct. 24. A while later, he saw police car lights outside, grabbed a point-and-shoot camera (not his professional gear) and went outside. The disturbance turned out to be a car that crashed into a utility pole, killing the 20-year-old driver.

Amador took a few pictures, chatted with a neighbor and decided to take more pictures after a truck blocking his view was moved.

"I snapped one, and by the second shot I hear this scream coming from my side: 'Hey, hey! Delete the pictures. Delete the pictures!' " he said.

[Open link for full story and The Capital readers' comments.]

George Geiser, 29, was in a 1997 Isuzu Trooper with friends Shane Michael Ward, 22, and Sean Michael O'Toole, 30, early Saturday morning, when he pushed himself out a window and tried to climb onto the roof, police told Primera Hora.

House Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. defended Wednesday the decision of some Filipino congressmen to watch the November 14 fight between People's Champ Manny Pacquiao and Puerto Rican pugilist Miguel Cotto in Las Vegas, Nevada.

CBPuerto Rico-Car Surfing,0115 US tourist dies 'car surfing' in Puerto Rico Eds: APNewsNow.

From The New York Times Governor's order opens Puerto Rico's northeast coast for resort development Despite objections from environmentalists and a gaggle of celebrities, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno effectively lifted a ban on large-scale development of 3,240 acres of public and private land on the island's northeast coastline.

Just in case you were wondering where some of your elected officials were posturing post-election, many are heading to Puerto Rico today for the annual Somos conference.

With nominations in five categories including album of the year, the Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Calle 13 is a favourite to win a Latin Grammy in Las Vegas - which might have producers of the international awards ceremony on edge.

What has Governor Fortuño accomplished since becoming governor almost a year ago?" Right after taking office in January 2009, he had an excellent photo opt by announcing that almost fifty percent of our buses are out of service in the repair shop. We loved him for spotting this problem. However, he never came up with a solution. Most of the buses are still out of service and bus service is worse now then when he took office. What has he done about providing better bus service? Is it more urgent for him to serve corporate interests rather than the people depended on good bus service?

More recently, he discovered that the Capeco blast gave him a chance for reaping some different kinds of photo opts. He is photographed driving a work vehicle at the site of the fire though he usually drives around in a chaufferued, luxury car. Boy! Did this shot driving the work vehicle proved that Fortuño is a hands-on governor at the scene of a major tragedy!

He usually likes a photo opt showing him with a shovel in his hand at a new construction site. This work vehicle is better than a shovel for a photo opt! In all his press conferences at the Capeco scene, he is with his government's officials and not with the firemen and other workers who were actually putting out the fire. He must have thought about this lack of firemen and other workers in his press conferences' photo opts. Finally, he ran an expensive full-page ad at taxpayers' expense to provide one more photo opt to correct his ignoring the firemen. In this ad, he is photographed shaking the hand of one lone fireman. Is this a true fireman or a model? Any good public relations advisor would have suggested that Fortuño show a larger photo with him surrounded by several firemen and other workers, who worked on controlling the fire, hugging him. Why one lone fireman and such a tiny photo? We wonder if a lot of these firemen -- the true heroes -- would have participated in a group photo opt with him. The media said that some of these firemen and workers, who put in twelve hours a day fighting the fire, had received their layoff notices from the Fortuño Administration.

The use of the federal stimulus funds is Fortuño's latest opportunity for photo opts. Republican Fortuño should thank the Democrats in the U.S. Congress for these stimulus funds that are helping Puerto Rico and making him

[Continue in Extended Entry section.]

Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean and North American influences meld in Puerto Rico, a self-governing commonwealth that belongs to the United States.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Puerto Rico's governor on Friday canceled the designation of a portion of the island's northeastern coastline as a nature reserve, opening the door to large-scale development along a white-sand beach where proposals for hotel resorts have sparked bitter protests.

BY JOSE ALVARADO VEGA - Of the Daily Sun Staff - jalvarado@prdailysun.net

The Fiscal Reconstruction and Stabilization Board announced Tuesday that the layoffs. of some 7,191 public employees scheduled to take effect on Friday will be postponed until January, given recent court rulings determining that the notification of these fiscal emergency Law 7 layoffs did not follow due process.

In a press release sent out Tuesday evening, Board Chairman Carlos García attributed the decision to the courts' invalidation of these layoffs due "mostly to technicalities" involving the fact that while employees were duly notified of the layoffs, the labor unions representing them were not.

He said did not say from which agencies are the 7,191. employees whose layoffs will be postponed, but noted that these employees will be notified of the change before Friday.

While Garcia said that the court rulings apply to the particular cases decided, affected agencies will be instructed to make the notifications follow the "strictest interpretation in terms of the technicalities required to notify the union. He said this is being done so that "there is no doubt that the strictest of measures are being taken to safeguard the rights of all employees to be laid off."

These layoffs -- among the 16,970 in the second round of layoffs announced on Sept. 25 -- will take effect next Jan. 8, raising the number of layoffs on this date from the original 4,556 to 11,747. This means that just 2,774 public employees will be laid off on Friday, according to figures García provided in the press release.

"In other words, we do not expect that this re-notification process will substantially affect the number of layoffs, but just extent by 60 days the date they are effective," said García, who nonetheless noted that these estimates could vary according to pending challenges and to exclusions of workers for "critical services, among others." He said he did not expect these to be significant.

The board, known as ]REF by its Spanish initials, is charged with implementing Law 7 austerity measures and includes members of Gov. Fortuño's fiscal cabinet, including Treasury and Office of Management and Budget chiefs.

[Continue in Extended Entry section.]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico a ' The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for an American man who was reported missing as he sailed from Puerto Rico to Florida.

Nov. 3, 2009: Puerto Rican singer Aldo Matta was among the suspects rounded up by federal authorities Tuesday morning in connection with a purported $14 million mortgage fraud scheme allegedly masterminded by local developer Joseph McCloskey Díaz.

McCloskey and Matta, who was picked up by federal agents in Juncos, were among 10 people indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy, mortgage fraud and money laundering counts in connection with the scheme centered on luxury residences in the exclusive Palmas del Mar area of Humacao.

Authorities had taken custody of nine of the 10 suspects by Tuesday morning.

The alleged scheme involved fraudulently inflating the value of homes during the appraisal process through a conspiracy between the buyers and seller McCloskey. They would then split the inflated portion of the appraised value between each other.

“Matta was one of the buyers in this scheme,” FBI spokesman Harry Rodríguez said.

The singer bought three properties for $4.2 million during a six-month period and got a $600,000 kickback from the developer, federal authorities allege.

Among the other suspects is Nahir Dominicci, the sister of TV reporter Carmen Dominicci, who allegedly served as a buyer and recruited other buyers in the scheme.

Federal authorities said the mastermind was McCloskey, the developer of the 12 luxury homes involved in the scheme in The Castles and Sunrise II developments at Palmas del Mar.

McCloskey, a prominent Puerto Rico developer and president of Swiss Chalet Inc., recently built the massive Gallery Plaza complex in the Condado with millions of dollars in Law 212 tax incentives from the local government. He also owns the neighboring DoubleTree Hotel.

The other suspects were identified as Angel Millán, Esteban Llanos, Jesús Suárez, Harold Mestey, Lorny Seda, Sarahid Gómez and Yhanira Alberti.

“These people were dedicated to a fraud scheme that took place between 2004 and 2006 where they stole $14 million,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Luis Fraticelli said.

U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez said the scheme was built on McCloskey inflating the prices of the homes and then kicking back cash to the buyers who had taken bank loans to buy the homes.

[Upfront Yankee urges you to open link and read full story. It is loaded with newsworthy facts.]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A developer and nine other people, including a former salsa singer, have been charged in an alleged $14 million mortgage fraud in Puerto Rico, federal officials said Tuesday.

The suspects are accused of a scheme in which buyers allegedly took out loans using fake documents overstating the value of a dozen Spanish-style mansions in the ritzy Palmas del Mar coastal resort community in Humacao, in southeastern Puerto Rico.

A federal indictment charges developer Joseph McCloskey Diaz split the difference with the buyers, the loans went unpaid and the properties passed into foreclosure.