30 August 2012

A 40-Year Flying Fuck

Our International Airport, named after a 4-term governor who cemented Our colonial status with semantics, yet showed other political leaders that power is not really the end-all of politics, was privatized in a Public-Private Alliance (PPA) in July, barely a month ago.

And as it stands right now, that deal is costing Us about $1.08 billion, just up front. But that's just the tip of the reaming, as it will almost certainly cost Us almost twice that much every year for the next 40--FORTY, the Big 4-Oh--years.

You gotta hand it to The Larva and his parasitic horde: they fucked Us on land (everything they do plus the GasoDildo), fucked Us on water (both as surface and service) and By Mercury's Flapping Testicles, they are fucking Us in the air, too.

Yes, We are being given a flying fuck. Details ahead, lacking any tinge of eroticism.

The winning bid--or more correctly, the chosen bid--features Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR), a Mexican-based firm as equal partners with Holdstar Capital IV, a New York-based investment firm, operating locally as Aerostar Airport Holdings. Their bid was for $669.4 million.

Now pause a second. Over a 40 year lease, that bid basically represents "rent". Right? Right. So that means that Aerostar is paying $16.74 million (rounding up) a year to take over the Luis Muñoz Marín Airport. Seems a trifle low, given the size and transport rate of the Airport...

But wait! The deal is actually paying $494.7 million in debt amortization, with $174.7 million in rent and "entry fee". So really, the Aerostar rent payment is $4.37 million (rounding up)...a year. For an international airport servicing 14 airlines and some 4.8 million passengers and thousands of metric tons of cargo a year.

How/Where/Why are We being fucked? Look again at the deal: $494.7 million in debt amortization. This would be good fiscal policy, paying down massive debt first, if the amount of money received was truly fair compensation for the value of the Airport.

Hint: It isn't. Not. Even. Close.

How much is the LMM Airport worth? According to economist José Antonio Herrero, an analysis in July 2012 of the current revenue stream generated yearly by the Airport puts the value at $1.752 billion. So the supposed $669.4 million "winning bid" is 39% of the current revenue stream, but looked at closely, what has happened is that Aerostar has locked down an airport generating $1.75 billion a year for $4.37 million.

"But, Jenius," some of you will say, "what about Aerostar's $494.7 million in debt amortization? That's cash money Uncle Sam greenback dollar bucks We get, right?"

Wrong.  Amortization means that Aerostar assumes that amount of debt and agrees to pay it off over time. And where the fuck do you think they will get the money to pay off that debt schedule?

From an airport worth $1.75 billion a year, locked up for $4.37 million a year...for 40 fucking years.

What is going on here? The Larva's parasitic pack of parasitic thieves has cut a deal where some particularly toxic form of debt (toxic in the sense that some or many of them could be hauled into a court over it someday) is sanitized and the clean-up gang is set to really clean up for the next 40 years. 

The Larva's parasitic horde doesn't give a flying fuck about the next 40 years; they don't even give a flying fuck about next year 'cause they know next year ain't happenin' for them. No, they care about using Our resources to finance their corruption and then lining up next year, as "civilians", to collect more fraud-generated monies by the opportunistic cabals they set up.

But in the meantime, the 40-year flying fuck We are getting has just begun.


The Jenius Has Spoken.



[Update: 31 August 2012: And they slip it in...]



24 August 2012

The Last Colony...Yawn

Over at Kickstarter, a dazzling example of Web-based business development that transcends computers and broadband, a man by the name of Juan Agustín Márquez is seeking $77,000 to do a political documentary about Puerto Rico, to be titled "The Last Colony."

Now Márquez is a successful non-fiction filmmakerhttp://juan.mixform.com/, an Emmy-winner for his documentary "100,000," on Our horrible plague of abandoned dogs. He also did "Los 17," a film about 17 students , along with teachers, parents and the community, taking on the challenge of saving their public high school from closure by dramatically raising their test scores. This film and its story was a presentation at the San Juan TEDx conference in November 2011.

So Márquez has the chops to go on Kickstarter and make a decent effort at collecting the $77,000 he's budgeted for the documentary. In his favor, using Kickstarter shows self-confidence and frees him up from "strings-attached" money which normally comes from corporate sponsors, and in the case of political topics, pinheads.

It is obvious that Márquez is blazing his own path and looking to do important projects, developing his skills and occupying ever-higher plateaus in his chosen fields. Good. That's what he should do and I believe his future successes will greatly exceed his current impressive successes. But as for "The Last Colony"...

I don't care. Not a whit.

Hope he makes it happen, which means I hope he gets enough pledged money by September 22nd to go out and do the documentary he wants to do. But I won't give him a dollar and when--I firmly believe when--he finishes it, I won't care to see it.

To Me, the bottom line about the documentary topic--and rest assured, We are a colony--is that it's importance is disconnected between reality and opinion. In reality, Our status is important: it underlies the fundamental positions We can have as a nation on the geopolitical stage. But in Our minds, in Puerto Rico and the U.S. of part of A.--Our status is unimportant, merely an ugly tool used by pandering thieves to whack other idiots over the head with.

And since reality is ultimately created by Our minds, Our status is thus--yawn--unimportant.

Because We and "They" don't care about it.

We don't care 'cause We got dollars and welfare and a false sense of security and Wal-mart and Burger King and flat-screen TVs and don't need passports to "know" Disney and the Bronx and...whatever.

And "They" don't care because they make dollars off of Us by making an island client use only their shipping and buy primarily their products from their stores and their companies while employing Us at lower wages and keeping Us from dealing with anyone else...whatever.

Can We change that? Hell yeah. We could have--We can--anytime since the Jones Act of 1917, that made Us conditional U.S. of part of A. citizens (Congress can revoke Ours, but not "Theirs") and locked Us into economic straitjackets in exchange for Our men being sent to the front lines in World War I and every war since.

We could have changed that before We "negotiated" a status with all the trappings of a colony but the name, stretching the term "commonwealth" (that Massachusetts uses) to disguise "colony," a bit like saying "politician" to disguise "crook."

We could have changed it with any referendum--including the one coming up in November--by insisting that it be binding, bringing "Them" and Us to the table as equals. We could have changed it by voting overwhelmingly for one "solution" or another, understanding that the current status is a colony, statehood is ONLY up to "Them" and that independence is not suicide, as too many of Us stupidly believe.

We could have changed it simply by having the courage, dignity and vision to say to "Them": Enough. This is Our time to take the world stage on Our own terms. And if they balked, We could have changed that by simply having the courage, dignity and vision to assert a simple: You can't stop Me.

We could have, We can, but We haven't and We won't. The status will remain a faux issue in the hands of microcephalic and immoral dirtbags that so many of Us cheer on because they are "My side", failing to grasp that the vermin are only out for themselves.

A documentary to make Our status "part of the national conversation"? Noble goal, but ultimately out of the reach of anyone, be it Márquez, Fellini, Welles or Kurosawa. It's not a matter of talent: it's a matter of indifference. Unless a documentary shows a hideous injustice of torn and mutilated bodies, broken buildings and abject despair, it won't evince the emotional reaction needed to launch a truly meaningful discussion.


Our status doesn't have the torn and mutilated bodies of a genocide or war zone...but it has murder victims in the thousands. Our status doesn't have broken buildings from bombs and bullets, but it has broken buildings housing poverty unlike any in the U.S. of part of A. And in Our status, the faces of abject despair are not the beaming slack-jawed bovine squeals of party supporters waving a blue, red, green or some other colored flag en masse like crazed monkeys, but the scattered thoughtful miens of Our folks who know We are trapped and don't have the collective will to escape.

So good luck, Mr. Márquez. You won't need it to make the documentary; you'll need it--and much much more--to achieve your ultimate goal.

Yawn.



The Jenius Has Spoken.



21 August 2012

Do You Feel Lucky?

The title is best-known as a line from "Dirty Harry," that quintessential 70s flick featuring a less-wrinkled Clint Eastwood, gritted teeth and such. He utters it as he--the San Francisco rogue cop who's a loose cannon no one can control and stays on the force because he's so awesomely copperific...yadayadayada--points a .44 Magnum at some low-life's face, letting the perp know that although bullets were fired from said gun, there might or might not be another one ready to fire.

Of course, the punk don't feel lucky, man, and Harry don't get to blow the low-life to Pasadena or El Segundo, depending on which way the wind is blowing. And We all know the punk was right: it's too big a gamble on mere luck when your life is at stake.

But.

Take murder in Puerto Rico. (No, I will not do the Henny Youngman line...please.) As of June 2012, there were approximately 2,280 unsolved murders committed in the past 4 years alone. That averages out to about 570 a year...on an Island averaging almost 1,000 murders annually over the same time period.

First conclusion? That roughly 58% of Our murders are going unsolved.

Second conclusion? There's a lot of punks who are feeling increasingly lucky.

Now I'm not saying the solution is to put .44 Magnums in the faces of every perp or suspect around. No, We should do that to every craven parasitic politician We have until they get it through their nanoparticle brains that the crime wave is literally killing Us.

Like with every growing trend for an erstwhile forbidden behavior, the more unsolved murders (or rapes or robberies or fraud and corruption processes) We experience, the easier it becomes for others to do the same and up the ante. It's a feedback loop to Hell.

In terms of murders, as the numbers rose to surpass 1,100 in 2011 and will match that in 2012, what We are seeing is the shredding of Our society by bullet-flinging animals and the largely abusive, corruption-riddled police force that can't stop them. Can't or won't, out of personal gain, indifference or following orders.

(Yes, I said following orders. There's a really good chance that the crimes We see hitting Our communities are aided and abetted for personal and political gains. Thus, there could be orders to "let it happen". Counter-intuitive? Think this: We have a Republican (non)governor intent on making a name for himself as a "conservative's conservative" and the deepest federal funding pockets he can readily access are for fighting "the drug war." Think about it, although certainly rampant incompetence could easily lead to the exact same result as what We have now.)

Given that there have been thousands of murders in the past 4 years, do you feel lucky? That you haven't been targeted, or that you have and escaped? Is this feeling of "being lucky" something new, from the last couple of years, or--sorry--something you'll have in mind from this point on?

On the other hand, Brethren Mine, when faced with a situation where murder is an option--and you know you can imagine those easily nowadays--is said potential murder an act that scares the bejeezus out of you with the threat of capture and punishment? Or does your mind wander to the "easy" paths of getting away with it? And does that surprise you...enough?

Because when to comes to this rampant and growing crime environment We wallow in, it boils down to that simple question: Do you feel lucky?

Because everything you do after pondering it will depend on your answer. You know it will.



The Jenius Has Spoken.


14 August 2012

Bail Reform? No Way

On Sunday, My Brethren will vote on whether the current bail system should be reformed. The current system--under Constitutional protection--grants bail to every accused person, regardless of what crime they have been charged with. The suggested reform would eliminate bail on certain charges and leave it to a judge to determine whether bail should be allowed in other cases.

(There's another referendum vote going on this Sunday as well, concerning the swampy cesspool of shitheads We call the legislature. Since that vote will be non-binding, it's merely a political hack's desperate attempt to curry favor with My Brethren, and by political hack I mean the (non)governor, Luis "The Larva" Fortuño...long may he slime.)

Now the standard in the U.S. of part of A. is that bail can be optional. Supporters of this bail reform point to that as a reason for Us to do the same. Well, the U.S. of part of A. also has folks going into schools and gunning people down; should We do that, too?

And no, My argument is not specious. Just because something is "done in the U.S. of part of A." doesn't make it automatically the standard. In this case--as in many others--it specifically makes it "the standard We should avoid." Simple reason: the U.S. of part of A. has the largest prison population in the world AND the highest per capita of its population in prison. 


Nifty, huh? World leader and all that shit!

Bail is not an isolated process: it is part of the judicial system. What does it say about a judicial system that consistently and systematically seeks to put more and more people in jail? Is this a judicial system or is it a dominance system?

If it is a judicial system and the results are the largest prison population in history, what does it say about the society that harbors and uses it? Conclusion: that the society cares nothing about justice and cares only about punishment. That means it is a despotic society seeking to impose dominance on certain elements within it. Therefore, what the U.S of part of A. has is not a judicial system: it has a dominance system.

And the evidence bears this out. Clearly and unequivocally.


Blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to end up in jail than Whites, despite the fact that the overall crime rate amongst races in the U.S. of part of A. is similar...and has been for several decades.

Here are some numbers:

--Hispanics: 16.3% of the 2010 national population; 20.6% of the prison population.

--Blacks: including Hispanic Blacks, 13.6% of the national population; 39.4% of the prison population.

--Arrests: According to a Department of Justice statistics report (later removed), "...77.2 percent of all persons arrested were White or Hispanic, 20.3 percent of people arrested for offending were Black or Black and Hispanic; and the remaining 2.4 percent were of other races."

So, in terms of arrests: 77.2% are White/Hispanic, with 20.3% being Black/Hispanic. The estimated percentage of Whites arrested on all charges is 53.4%, and although Hispanics and Blacks only make up 29.9% of the total population, they account for 61% of the total prison population. 

Whites make up about 53.4% of all arrests, yet make up less than 34% of the prison population. (Other races are arrested/incarcerated, too.)

How is this disparity achieved? By converting the judicial system into a dominance system. It begins with bail and ends with sentencing.


But don't do it openly. Give it a catchy name, like "The War on Drugs." Since 1980, the prison population has quadrupled, primarily linked to the possession and use of drugs (not trafficking, which accounts for less than 29% of all sentencing.) And who amongst the racial groups have been slammed into jail more often than not, despite the fact that--again--the arrests rates amongst the races are almost the same?

You got it.

(For you statehooders: Blacks/Hispanics go to jail far more often than Whites, although the arrest rate for drug possession/use is virtually equal amongst all three races.)

The first step to making the dominance system work is to deny a person accused of a crime (real or imaginary) the chance to properly defend themselves. That means sending them to jail, under control of the penal system, where their actions and reputation are severely curtailed. And the easiest way to do that is by denying bail.

Any "reform" that seeks to curtail a right is a process aimed at eliminating as much of that right as possible. Think about it and you will see how that path has led to the current fascism-trumping-rights system We see in the U.S. of part of A. Under the pretense of "security" or "public good", human hyenas skulk. Their goal is not "security" or "public good": it is "their security" and "their good at your expense."

The only rational, reasonable and responsible vote possible this Sunday is "No" to the so-called bail reform. The Larva's witless gambit is another step in the wrong direction. It makes Us put Our faith on a judicial system made up of a police force so corrupt it could not even police itself and on a legal bureaucracy so corrupt and inept it too has been targeted for investigation by outsiders. 

Furthermore, it makes Us put Our faith on a political system so disgustingly vile, so nauseatingly corrupt and so horrendously stupid, that doing so would be clear grounds for arrest. And incarceration...without bail.




The Jenius Has Spoken.

[Update: 17 August 2012: From The Miami Herald.com, a post titled "Puerto Rico: Visions of a Police State." Of course it supports My point: I'm right.]

01 August 2012

The Larva = Rampant Idiocy Plus

An """advisor""" to Our outhouse of representatives tweets that Obama should "take (Michelle) to your homeland, Kenya" because that's where he was "borned." She defends herself from charges of making a racist comment by later tweeting that her "most beloved nieces are black" and that she is "anti-Obama" and as such she fights him "with all my heart and passion, as a descendant of Germans!"

As a fellow boricua descendant of Germans, shut the fuck up, Fotze.

When asked about the controversy, numbnuts nongovernor Luis "The Larva" Fortuño said he didn't know anything about it. Despite it involving a leading advisor to the president of the outhouse, a key advisor to the party he ostensibly is the leader of and amidst a media storm emerging from media he claims to "dominate."

On another front, a contractor is fired from building a vocational school. The contractor claims he was dismissed because he refused to raise campaign funds for The Larva's flight from La Fortaleza. The Larva the goes on TV--on a show with the intellectual, moral and ethical values of a thieving crack whore on crocodil who spits on blind orphans--and claims that the firing was forced by the bond company.

The president of the bond company, United Surety & Indemnity Corporation, states that what The Larva said is categorically false, adding that "(W)e never get involved in the process of declaring a contractor as non-compliant; we can't do it, we don't want to and we aren't interested in doing so."

Now there's idiocy and then there's rampant idiocy. The advisor, it of the racist ilk, is an idiot. To expose your idiocy and racism in a public forum--and Twitter is not just "your followers," moron--is idiotic; to do so as a public employee is doubly so. To continue to expose your lack of intellectual and moral acumen is rampant idiocy. And to actively state your position that you want your country to become a part of another and not know how to conjugate a simple verb in their language is simply too much to be borne(d). That level of idiocy is called "statehooder".

That The Larva claimed to know nothing about the tweet controversy is idiotic. To do so in the midst of an election run-up period is doubly so, compounded by his cowardly non-reaction to the racist and erroneous statement made by the idiotic advisor. To then enter another fray, on what amounts to a gossip show run by a moral and mental defective of less social value than dog poop, indicates that the charges leveled against you have some truth to them, which makes the action rampant idiocy. But then to lie like a thieving bitch and make the situation worse, well, that level of idiocy is called "statehooder."

In this battle to the bottom between rampant idiots, The Larva is the clear and biggest loser, slamming into rock bottom way ahead of the barbarian (more accurate description than you know). A racist advisor, a stupid parasite in Our government, is bad; that the so-called "leader" of her party and her government makes 3 idiotic moves to her 2...well, that's clearly worse.

So Let's write "The Larva: R.I.P."

Yeah, I know: I was about to cheer wildly, too, but I momentarily forgot I meant it as "The Larva: Rampant Idiocy Plus."

But there's hope We can soon see what made Us want to cheer so much...



The Jenius Has Spoken.