Why do I feel like we’re all going to be paying for this giant bailout, and none of it is “green energy.”
How Free Electricity Helped Dig $9 Billion Hole in Puerto Rico
To understand how Puerto Rico’s power authority has piled up $9 billion in debt, one need only visit this bustling city on the northwest coast.
Twenty years ago, it was just another town with dwindling finances. Then, it went on a development spree, thanks to a generous —some might say ill-considered — gift from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
Today, Aguadilla has 19 city-owned restaurants and a city-owned hotel, a water park billed as biggest in the Caribbean, a minor-league baseball stadium bathed in floodlights and a waterfront studded with dancing fountains and glimmering streetlights.
Most striking is the ice-skating rink. Unusual in a region where the temperature rarely drops below 70 degrees, the rink is complete with a disco ball and laser lights.
Signs warn skaters not to wear shorts.
“Imagine how much it costs to have an ice-skating rink in the tropics,” said Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the Center for a New Economy, a nonpartisan research group in San Juan.
“If the towns don’t get free energy, they’re going to have to pay for it by increasing their property taxes or something, so the people will end up paying,” said Eduardo Bhatia, the president of the Puerto Rico Senate. Residents of the island are already upset about a recent sales tax increase to 11 percent, from 7 percent, and a property tax increase now would cause an outcry. The last assessment was in 1958.
Enter, the United States.
ht/ js
Puerto Rico is responsible for Globull Warming!!!
Don’t you mean ‘climate change’? 😉
Why do they keep saying it’s ‘FREE’ energy? IT’S NOT FREE!!!!
Everyone please stand for the Puerto Rico National Anthem:
“I’ll take Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten Island, too….”
😛
Isn’t it something like ‘climate chaos’ now, or something?
The author obviously went to Bernie’s school of economic fantasy.
You can’t raise the water level in a pool by taking it out of the deep end and dumping it in the shallow end. Especially if you spill most of it in the process.
Can’t we just give PR back to Spain? Or grant them independence?
…as Dame Margaret Thatcher was so correct in saying …. “Socialism is a wonderful system …. until you run out of other people’s money”
Anytime it’s “free”, “environmental”, “Global” or “Climate” it’s target-rich for scammers!
Bullshit Bingo anyone?
Lucky Puerto Rico is not too big to fail …
Give it back to Spain.
100+ years of occupation is enough.
It simply isn’t worth the trouble … or the expense.
“BWAAHAHAHAHAAA….!!!”
— Spain