For people who follow this blog in Puerto Rico, they know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, a little recap is in order.
In the 2008 campaign for Colonial overseer...I mean, Governor of PR., Luis Fortuño promised that if elected, only one man would have lost his job in PR's horrible economic climate, that of former Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila. After winning the elections and becoming Governor, Fortuño, following the advice of the real power here, the rich, decided that the most easy place to balance the over-bloated budget was to fire up to 30,000 public employees. The first 10,000 will get their walking papers today, begining what probabaly will be a further unstabilizing of the unraveling fabric of our society, already frayed by drug violence, apathy and high unemployment.
Meanwhile, the contracts for lobbyists, advisors, lawyers and representatives, not only do they continue but got even higher and fatter. Some goverment executives even got higher bonuses and salaries, while those fired have to invent something, in this bleak future our "leaders" have dreamed for us, a future in which the privileged ride on the back of the poor and downtrodden, feeding them scraps while we work for them as slaves.
And what are the people planinning to do? What are you planning to do? And me? I will continue to spread the word and spreak out against these and other abuses. I will protest and I will shout from the top of my lungs until my voice is hoarse. I hope the tolerance level of the people here in PR is reaching it's limit. Silence, in this and other matters is tartamount to complicity. Speak out, or else, it will be too late!
Protest now! If you wait until later, you probably won't have the liberty to do so.
Little heavy and serious tone for a Friday. Yes, I know. But this is serious. Levity will have to wait for a while.
Max out!
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1 comment:
“Vota por Fortuño y Fortuño te bota a tí.” That was the PPD’s slogan during the elections; a play on words stating quite bluntly that if you vote for Fortuño, he will fire you.
At the time, the PNP pundits bent over backwards stating that that was completely untrue; a vote for Millhouse, er… Fortuño is a vote for a secure future: He (note the capitalized “H”; fully appropriate for a "Him") will not only not fire anyone (except Vilá), but he will not raise taxes at all not will he even consider a cellphone use tax.
He wins the election (mainly because there is a lot of sheep living on the island, but also because he is not either Roselló or Vilá) and promptly announces that “the crisis is much worse that what my highly-paid and well-connected advisors told me” and that he would fire 30,000 people… after they refuse to “voluntarily” resign.
Oh, but good news: he won’t raise taxes or even consider a celphone per-minute use tax, even if a single 1/100th of a cent per minute will raise approximately $50,000 per day…
And when someone brings up a false advertising complaint to DACO (our local consumer rights agency) over his statements that he would not fire anyone, the first words, THE VERY FIRST WORDS, out of Millhouse’s mouth are (I swear to God): “Those people didn’t vote for me.”
Well, isn’t that just frakkin’ convenient that the 30,000 people he’s firing just happen to have voted for the other guy. What a frakkin’ psychic; he can read 30,000 minds at once.
Now, he has also stated that the firings will be on a last-in, first-out basis, so all the people who were hired during the *previous* administration… with a ban on new hires to boot. The most experienced employees, with 20+ years experience, will get their weekly hours reduced… so let’s do the math:
A) 30,000 fewer employees
B) no new hires coming in
C) more senior employees doing the work normally done by the junior employees
D) the most senior employees will be there less, supervising… less
What does that leave us with? A vastly less efficient bureaucracy… with no new equipment to improve efficiency.
Thank, you Millhouse; you have single-handedly sunk the island in a morass of paperwork and even longer lines at government agencies.
Oh, and BTW, I do know a few people getting fired from their government jobs who did vote for Millhouse. Maybe he should pay them the $10,000 fine out of the 90% of his governor’s salary that he did not cut…
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