The Federal Governments response to the natural disaster in Puerto Rico was pitiful and Trump giving himself an A+ for what happened after the hurricane was just a vile, grotesque thing to watch.

How Trump favored Texas over Puerto Rico

A POLITICO investigation shows a persistent double standard in the president’s handling of relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria.

By DANNY VINIK - 03/27/2018

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — As Hurricane Maria unleashed its fury on Puerto Rico in mid-September, knocking out the island’s electrical system and damaging hundreds of thousands of homes, disaster recovery experts expected that only one man could handle the enormity of the task ahead: Mike Byrne.

But Byrne, a widely acknowledged star of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, remained in Houston, which had been ravaged by Hurricane Harvey less than a month earlier.

Today, disaster recovery experts still express shock that FEMA kept Byrne in an already-stabilizing Texas and didn’t send him to Puerto Rico for three more weeks. But now, the decision strikes many as emblematic of a double standard within the Trump administration. A POLITICO review of public documents, newly obtained FEMA records and interviews with more than 50 people involved with disaster response indicates that the Trump administration — and the president himself — responded far more aggressively to Texas than to Puerto Rico.

“We have the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. We go anywhere, anytime we want in the world,” bemoaned retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led the military’s relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. “And [in Puerto Rico] we didn’t use those assets the way they should have been used.”

• Within six days of Hurricane Harvey, U.S. Northern Command had deployed 73 helicopters over Houston, which are critical for saving victims and delivering emergency supplies. It took at least three weeks after Maria before it had more than 70 helicopters flying above Puerto Rico.

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• Nine days after the respective hurricanes, FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims.

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• During the first nine days after Harvey, FEMA provided 5.1 million meals, 4.5 million liters of water and over 20,000 tarps to Houston; but in the same period, it delivered just 1.6 million meals, 2.8 million liters of water and roughly 5,000 tarps to Puerto Rico.

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• Nine days after Harvey, the federal government had 30,000 personnel in the Houston region, compared with 10,000 at the same point after Maria.

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• It took just 10 days for FEMA to approve permanent disaster work for Texas, compared with 43 days for Puerto Rico.

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• Seventy-eight days after each hurricane, FEMA had approved 39 percent of federal applications for relief from victims of Harvey, versus 28 percent for Maria.

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The U.S. Betrayal of Puerto Rico by the Numbers

To watch the U.S. government’s varying responses to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria last year was to compare in real time its separate and unequal view of people in Texas and Puerto Rico. While Texan members of Congress successfully fought for emergency aid in the weeks following the storm, those in San Juan got a slow-moving commander-in-chief who quarreled with local politicians and lobbed paper towels at survivors as if he were launching T-shirts into a cheering crowd at a sports arena.

Even months after the storm, many Puerto Ricans are without power and other basics.

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Trump administration officials at FEMA and elsewhere gave Politico a few explanations for this. Namely: Maria was a more severe storm, and existing infrastructure problems on Puerto Rico made transportation and communication more difficult amid devastation. They even cautioned comparing the responses at all—shocker!—given underlying differences in local politics and development.

But even more damningly, the federal spigot for permanent infrastructure repairs has yet to even open in Puerto Rico. That’s largely because local officials felt pressured to accept an untested funding formula for relief aid that puts their cash-strapped island on the hook for any costs that overrun its estimates. That’s not the case in Texas. And what’s more, Puerto Rico still faces a crushing level of debt that the federal government refuses to cancel.

“There is no doubt that Puerto Rico gets treated differently to a state,” Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló told Politico in an interview. “And there is no doubt that it has been true for the disaster response as well.”

Bwaaaaaaahadehaha.

From Splinter ..... a heavily left leaning propaganda outlet.

Splinters liberal a-go-go

Take that disingenuous data to the bank only if you are a worker drones from the hive and/or a total idiot.

I think it was George Orwell's 1984 ...... no, that was Groupthink ..... but it amounts to the same thing really.

You have conservative pundits on the mind apparently.   [deleted]

Take that disingenuous data to the bank only if you are a worker drones from the hive and/or a total idiot.

Some folk really need to unstitch themselves from the Trump human centipede.

If you're not happy with the truth being brought to you by the two sources I linked earlier then, by all means, go straight to the GAO report that highlighted how much the Federal response was ANYTHING OTHER than a A+, unsung success that our buffoonish, Narcissist in Chief calmed it to be.

If the GAO pdf is too confusing here's a couple of links to summaries of the reports findings.

Federal report criticizes FEMA's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico —  A federal report has found that problems including staff shortages and lack of trained personnel slowed the U.S. government response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico . The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Tuesday that 54 percent of federal emergency personnel were not qualified for their positions in October 2017, a month after the Category 4 hurricane the U.S. territory

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Watchdog Slams FEMA for Puerto Rico Hurricane Response

The federal government’s chief watchdog slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the hurricane that killed thousands of people in Puerto Rico last year, saying it was unprepared and failed to deploy enough qualified staff.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s report issued Tuesday said FEMA struggled with a record year for disasters on the mainland and Puerto Rico. Overall, the agency failed to adequately house disaster victims, distribute financial assistance in a timely fashion or do enough to prevent fraud.

For instance, scammers implemented “a well-organized and coordinated identity theft fraud scheme” in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and California that hadn’t shown up following previous disasters, according to the report.

The report’s criticism was especially pointed when it came to Hurricane Maria’s strike on Puerto Rico last September.

“They were not prepared to respond to an event like that,” said Chris Currie, the lead author of the report. “They were having a lot of trouble getting people there. And not just people, but qualified people.”

A report by George Washington University commissioned by Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello and released last week found that 2,975 people on the island died as a result of the storm. Other estimates have ranged as high as 5,000, but Rossello said the GWU figures would be used as the official tally.

President Donald Trump said last week that his administration “did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico” after Maria devastated the island.

The GAO report acknowledged factors outside of FEMA’s control that contributed to the poor response, including the island’s distance 1,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, its outdated infrastructure and the “limited local preparedness for a major hurricane.”

But the response was also hindered by FEMA’s lack of adequately trained staff -- including those who speak Spanish -- the report found.

“FEMA did not have enough bilingual employees to communicate with local residents or translate documents,” the GAO wrote, which “resulted in further delays while staff were reshuffled from other disasters to Puerto Rico.”

Even the fitness of those personnel was a problem. According to FEMA’s leadership, some of the personnel sent to the island weren’t physically able to handle the extreme environment.

The report described an agency stretched beyond its resources by an unprecedented sequence of storms and wildfires. Its staffing was down by about a third before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas -- which was followed in rapid succession by Hurricane Irma striking Florida and then Maria.

At the height of the deployments, in October, more than half of FEMA staff were serving in a capacity for which they weren’t designated as “qualified.”

“By the time Maria hit Puerto Rico, they were down to the bottom of the barrel,” Currie said on a call with reporters.

The ripple effect eventually reached California. FEMA encountered initial delays in deploying personnel to the wildfires there last year because a majority of its workforce was already dispatched to support hurricane recovery efforts, according to the report.

It could take years for FEMA to dole out funding for long-term projects to rebuild storm-damaged infrastructure and other facilities. That is on top of $1.5 billion FEMA had obligated in public assistance grants to three states and two territories recovering from Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Administrative challenges in awarding those public assistance grants were tied to delays in removing debris, though the GAO highlighted bright spots where local and federal officials collaborated to overcome the problems. For instance, in Texas, officials arranged to have military personnel help move debris when they encountered problems.

I guess you are okay with this line of off topic discussion on your thread eh?   Okay ....

I do read books all the time.

I'm sure you do but i wasn't talking about Nora Roberts novels.   I thinking more in terms of classics like 1984.   Although there isn't really any need to read that book today since we are actually watching much of it happen real time.

Maybe Florence will take a hard left and head north....to DC

The Trump Administration has taken $ 39 million from FEMA and the Coast Guard to fund ICE detention centers for more incarcerations of immigrant children and families.

These are the two entities most crucial in disasters like the one facing the Carolinas!

How many more lives will be ruined or lost because of Donald Trump?

Abolish the unconstitutional fema. That is a 10th Amendment issue