OKAY BY ME IN AMERICA – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:   That line, from "West Side Story," sung by a Puerto Rican immigrant to New York, still has merit.  It has been months since the hurricane struck Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is still a mess.  Why?  Well, I wouldn't ask any of the politically correct news organizations.  They run from the story.  But Fox gets it right: 

Six months after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, many leaders there are pointing the finger at Washington, but the scandal, corruption and waste that now plague the U.S. territory were around long before last summer's storm.

Decades of dysfunction, mismanagement and embarrassing abuses of power left Puerto Rico reeling well before the storm delivered a knockout blow, say observers. Enormous debt, absurd infrastructure projects and a tradition of corruption have hampered the commonwealth's ability to get off the canvas.

“There’ve been so many problems that have built up year after year,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., told Fox News. “It’s a tough situation.”

Reckless spending sprees by a revolving door of politicians have turned the commonwealth into a bloated bureaucracy that can’t pay its bills and yet enjoys the benefits of a welfare society without any of the responsibilities attached to it.

Before Maria hit in September, Puerto Rico was already navigating the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. government history at a whopping $120 billion in combined bond and pension debt.

For years, the island blew through billions of dollars in borrowed money.

Pricey and impractical infrastructure projects almost always got the go-ahead.

“Every town in Puerto Rico has a new baseball park," Emilio Pantojas-Garcia, a sociology professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, told Bloomberg News. “All these mayors were using borrowed money to build things that were underutilized."

COMMENT:  And yet, how much of this do you read in the mainstream media?  The media tries to blame Trump, cruel Trump.  The idea of blaming the vastly corrupt leadership of Puerto Rico is simply not acceptable. 

Same story during Hurricane Katrina.  The mayor of New Orleans was black, the governor of Louisiana was a woman.  The villains were BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!). 

Identity politics has a price.  We're paying it.

March 10, 2018