The Trump administration lined up unprecedented bureaucratic obstacles that delayed approximately $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico, according to an inspector general report that could be released publicly as soon as Thursday.
All the more reason to expedite statehood for North Puerto Rico and South Puerto Rico.
Despicable. Sadistic bastard. And Iām sure there are hundreds of situations exactly like this waiting to come to light.
Damn right. Why do we have all these citizens without representation? I think we fought a revolution over that once.
The refusals for cooperation in the probe
What TPM does not mention is that the hurricanes occurred in 2017 and this investigation began in 2019.
It was completed this week. Not only did it take two years to complete because of Republican obstruction, it did not even begin until the Democrats demanded it after taking the House back in 2018.
Grass is green. Sky is blue.
We already knew that. Why didnāt you?
Still, just as with the official US government stamp of authenticity on the collusion connection between the Trump campaign and Russia (another thing we already knew), now the maliciousness directed at Puerto Rico is a matter of official public record. That alone can lead to (dare I say?) consequences.
Quelle surpriseā¦ 
OT
Science IS real.
Puerto Ricans sorta look Mexican, so this is understandable.
There will be more of this ātoo late to do shitā crap about the Trump admin for several years. Itās obvious he was running the Federal Government like a proprietorship but itās too late to do anything about it.
Folks like Carson need to be sanctioned for refusing to testify: it needs to clear weāre no longer under the Drumpf administration, in which his government acted as if it were a law unto itself.
That said, this seems like another in what Iād bet will be a flood of abuse of power findings coming out about that administration.
I read this in WaPo this morning. And @cervantes is right, it took this long to get an investigation started, well because Republicans donāt care.
The WaPo article it mentioned Mick Mulvaney as OMB director, but then since 2017 the Trump maladministration played musical chairs with agency heads, āacting headsā, some people left, some people got moved around, and who knows which person ordered what. That was the beauty of the Trumpy form of good governance, no one can pin down who started what, or who was had legal authority to do what.
But Carson refusing to be interviewed doesnāt surprise me, did he even know what the hell was going on in HUD, or was he too busy picking out new furniture?
Trump predicted it in 2016:
āWeāre going to win. Weāre going to win so much. Weāre going to win at trade, weāre going to win at the border. Weāre going to win so much, youāre going to be so sick and tired of winning, youāre going to come to me and go āPlease, please, we canāt win any more.ā Youāve heard this one. Youāll say āPlease, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we donāt want to win any more. Itās too much. Itās not fair to everybody else.ā And Iām going to say āIām sorry, but weāre going to keep winning, winning, winning, Weāre going to make America great again.ā
The relief response to Puerto Rico was a shameful cluster fuck. Corporations hired their own security contractors and took care of their own facilities while the admin hired unknown incompetents with connections. Some US agency employees took the opportunity to be reassigned for disaster deployment and joyrode the beaches in jeeps loaded on rum. People with good intentions met resistance and indifference. It was an incredible money grab for many of the contractors.
Is there a lawsuit out there? As a territory, it appears there are other situations where Puerto Rico or individuals have sued the US Government for unequal treatment.
Maybe the mayor of San Juan can sue and include Trump and Carson. The depositions would be priceless.
Any legal minds out there who can comment?
Also, they canāt vote for him so sending that money would have been entirely wasted.
/s
No surprise at all
"Christ, what an asshole." ā Lucy von Pelt
Former Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson and another former HUD official apparently refused to be interviewed during the investigation, the Post said.
Time for a Congressional investigation and subpoena their asses.
Too bad Jim Nabors is gone.
His famous 'Suprise, Suprise, Suprise!!! [sic] is entirely appropriate here.
I donāt know why we invest in all these watchdog reports to tell us what we already know.
What a surprise that the Americans of Puerto Rico are too brown for Trump and the white supremacist fascists.