Behind the Scenes at the World Cup

Anybody who has read this blog will know: I don’t get the whole thing about sports. As proof of this, I report my initial reaction to one of the first games of the FIFA World Cup, which I saw on Father’s Day at my in-law’s house:

“The problem could easily be solved—and it surprises me that no one has thought of it—if the two teams would just cooperate. Whoever happened to have the ball at the moment would be perfectly free to put it wherever they want, included in that little netted area. That done, they would give the ball quite courteously to the other team. That way, everybody would be happy, and the scores would be phenomenal—can you imagine it? You’d have games with scores of 333,633 versus 975,813—and the crowd would be delighted, because apparently the big deal is to shout “GOALLLLLLLLL!” So the entire country would get laryngitis and could stay home in bed sipping hot tea, and resting their vocal cords—a nice bit of secondary gain. So who wins? Well, we total up both scores, and if it’s larger than a set amount, both teams win!”

Guess what?

Liany, Raf’s sister and a Montessori teacher, absolutely loved it. But the rest of the family?

Well, they were acting a bit more like the crowd that—inexplicably—had gathered in the lobby of the Fine Arts Cinema, which has a little café and, more importantly, a large screen television. And it was standing room only—every chair was taken. By chance, just when we arrived there, the Argentinians scored a goal, and the crowd erupted. Given that we were there to watch an opera, it wasn’t necessarily a god sign.

“Marc,” says María, a 20-year old who works at the café, “do you ever get the feeling that it’s just too much, the world? The corporations and the news media control everything, and the little people of the world are forced to pay more and more and are being manipulated by the media into being silent and thinking they’re happy….”

Was it time to sneak in the backdoor of adulthood and tell her that every generation has felt that way, has wanted to change the world, has been idealistic, and when she was older….

No.

I had spent twenty minutes, you see, watching the goings on in the slum, or favela, of Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, which in fact is getting a little ethnic cleaning done to it while the rest of us are enjoying the World Cup. Consider this quote:

In a bid to try and make the country appear much more socially acceptable to the influx of oblivious visitors and dignitaries who will be flying to the country to watch the games, the Brazilian authorities have forcibly evicted thousands of people from their shanty towns and gunned down others on the streets indiscriminately.

It is estimated that at least 40,000 poor people have been gone (sic) missing from the militarized favelas; while kids were killed with impunity in the ghettos which were then occupied by the police, who, according to insiders, later bragged about the amount of people they murdered.  

Or consider this:

Some in the stands vented their frustration by cursing President Dilma Rousseff, whose government footed a good chunk of the tournament’s $11 billion cost. Rousseff, who’s seeking a second term in October, can at least boast that the event came off without a hitch, contrary to what many expected. “People will be in a bad mood for a few days, but the Cup won’t decide the elections,” says João Augusto de Castro Neves, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm that gives Rousseff a 70 percent chance of winning.

I consider María, sitting in front of me: she’s not sleeping well, she’s not eating well, she’s depressed and anxious and worrying about what will happen in Puerto Rico. The effect of the economic crisis is beginning to be felt: the electric company has until the end of the month to figure out a scheme to restructure its debt, and if it doesn’t? Will they start selected blackouts, as rumored? Cut payroll, as feared? Who doesn’t have a relative working for the government? She talks about her fears, and soon is in tears; I get up to get a napkin. Later, in gratitude, she’ll bring me coffee.

I consider the people of Maré, who are getting used to the police bursting into houses and shooting anybody who might be a drug dealer. The people who have been displaced in order to have the stadia for these games built. Oh, and was there a report that stray dogs had been killed because it would be unsightly for the tourists? Think I remember seeing that….

Being an adult gives you experience, so I can trot out the speech that my mother once gave, about seeing so much progress in her life. Especially in civil rights, and rights for LGBT people, we’ve made real progress, if looked at over the decades. So I tell María that, and she looks unconvinced.

I’m not convinced, either. Both of the young women who spoke with me today had the same desire: to change the world. That’s good—I felt that way too, and most days still do. Everybody should want to change the world, especially at age twenty. I did.

The difference?

I believed I could do it…. 

Anybody Out There Got Twenty Grand?

On an island where the improbable happens more often than the probable, it made perfect sense: they were, after all, just across the street from Plaza las Américas (“the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean”, as it never stops telling us.) And everyone knows that Plaza has an excellent air conditioning system, with enough capacity to cool the place down to about thirty degrees in ten minutes. So why shouldn’t the 4000 members of the Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego (UTIER) just saunter over to the mall to have a little protest? They had, after all, just voted to strike.

To those who don’t know, UTIER is the union representing the workers who run the island’s power company. OK—so why are they striking? Because the legislature has voted and the governor has signed a budget that—while still 100 million dollars short—is being declared “balanced.”

Caveat—I’m swimming in two deep waters here, the first being Spanish, and the second being economics. In fact, “swimming” implies considerably more adeptness than I have: “struggling to tread water” is more like it. I can, however, use a calculator. But first, consider this statement:

La deuda del Estado Libre Asociado y sus corporaciones públicas alcanza la cifra de $71 billones de dólares, producto de décadas de decisiones que ponen primero los intereses de los acreedores. La deuda es tan grande que ya supera el tamaño de nuestra economía.*

(“The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and its public agencies’ debt has reached the sum of 71 billion dollars, the product of decades of decisions which put the interest of the creditors first. The debt is so large that it now is greater than the size of our economy.”)*

OK—so we owe “71 billion”. And how many of us are there? Here’s your answer:

La población total de la isla bajó de unos 3,7 millones en 2010 a 3,6 millones en 2013. Las mayores bajas se registraron en San Juan y en el oeste y sur de la isla.

(“The population of Puerto Rico dropped from 3.7 million in 2010 to 3.6 million in 2013. The greatest drops were registered in San Juan and the west and south of the island.”)

So the question of the hour: how much would each of us—man, woman, child, infant—have to pay to pay off the debt tomorrow?

Well, let’s make it simple: let’s say that the debt is “only” 70 billion, and that the population has further dropped to 3.5 million. So how much is it?

Twenty thousand bucks.

Guys—would you buy a bond issued by a government so heavily in debt?

Well, if you said yes, you are considerably more rosy-eyed than the three companies who make it their business to advise investors about such things, since earlier in the year, all three of them reduced out bond ratings to junk status. And so we headed off from being La Isla del Encanto and became La Isla de la Deuda—and yes, that means what you think it means.

Enter the 242,000 people who are “working” for the government—and anyone who has tried to get service from our government knows haw richly justified those quotes are. The governor has promised to not cut jobs, but asked that the public unions make concessions about fringe benefits and payment for sick leave. The unions—reputedly—said yes, but wanted the governor to include language that would reinstate the benefits, once the crisis is over. This, the governor was unwilling to do.

And so, yesterday, the water utility and the power company decided to strike. OK, what have they vowed to do? Well, borrowing a page from the legislature, they’ve resolved to act in secret, as well as at night. Oh, and they’ve vowed to close off the airport, major shopping centers, and also Old San Juan. So what happens if my aging mother-in-law suffers a fall? Will we have to medevac her out?

Oh, and what is this going to do to our economy? Well, here’s one economist:

Una paralización en los servicios públicos como energía eléctrica, el agua, el Banco Gubernamental de Fomento y corporaciones públicas que ya están en situación económica y financiera delicada, esto le puede dar el golpe de muerte a las mismas”. 

(“A paralysis in public services such as power and light, the Government Development Bank and public corporations which now are in delicate economic and financial health could be the death blow for these agencies.”)

Absolutely possible, because what did the head of UTIER advise listeners to do, this morning on WKAQ Radio? Stop paying the light and the water bills!

The announcer stopped to scratch his head.

“OK—so what happens when they come to cut the service?”

Guess what? The answer should be obvious.

“Who’s going to come to cut your service? Not us!”

See? 

_____________

* The author of the first piece cited above uses the term “71 billion” the US way. In fact, the debt is named at 71,000 million dollars (which in Spanish would be termed 71 millardos and is 1,000 times less than 71 billion.)

Bad Party, Terrible Hangover

The good news?

I did not wake up this morning with a hangover.

The bad news?

The island did.

Whatever you think of the current governor, nobody can dispute that, on at least one point in the news conference yesterday, he was right: both the major parties that rule Puerto Rico got us into this mess. And that is? Yesterday, after years of waving red flags, Standard & Poor’s degraded our credit rating to junk status.

Terrible golpe al país shouts the The New Day’s headline in a special 15-page extra to today’s regular printed edition. Conscientious blogger that I am, I read all 15 pages, which told me basically what I knew, as well as some things I didn’t.

The gist of it is that for forty years, the public has allowed our political leaders to engage in politicking, instead of providing services, making fiscally responsible decisions, and running efficient governments. And how did they do that? By doing on a collective basis what many of us do on a personal level: living on credit.

There’s nothing too sexy about economics—nothing as sexy as building a great whacking (thanks, Franny!) stadium or investing a billion dollars in “special communities,” which today remain just as special as they were when the program began. (The program identified poor communities and tried to invest funds for improvements to infrastructure and social services…)

OK—so how bad is it? Some facts lifted from the special edition of today, as well as a New York Times article on the topic:

•       Our debt is almost 70 billion dollars
•       Each person—man woman and child—would have to pay $10, 635 dollars up front to clear this debt. That’s ten times the average per state
•       As a result of this decision, we’re going to have to pay about 940 million bucks, since we promised we would if our rating was sunk to junk status
•       We had been planning to go ask the market to buy bonds that would give us an additional 1 to 2 billion next month
•       Puerto Rico is the third largest issuer of municipal bonds, after California and New York
•       Many of these bonds are collected in mutual funds, which are attractive: you don’t have to pay taxes on the interest you collect on them. Therefore, a lot of mutual funds in the US hold Puerto Rico bonds. However, a lot of the bonds are held by the Puerto Rican middle and upper classes, especially retirees; some 1.5 billion dollars of Puerto Rico debt is held on the island

Now, how’s the economy doing?

•        In December of 2013, the rate of unemployment was (officially) 15.4%
•       Largest employer in Puerto Rico is…the government of Puerto Rico: 27.8% of the work force works for the government. Estimates for the average state public sector range from 10% to 15%
•       Manufacturing accounts for only 9% of the non-farming Gross National Product
•       25% of the commonwealth budget comes in federal funds
•       The population of Puerto Rico is 3.67 million: in 2013, the government estimated that 1.3 million people were working. That means that one in three Puerto Ricans is working

OK—so what was the response on the island? Well, the editorial in The New Day called for…unity. Now is not the time, it said, for finger pointing. The governor, as well, said that now is the time for all Puerto Ricans to come together and figure out what to do with this mess.

Though there were some who couldn’t resist, of course. The governor himself couldn’t resist suggesting that his government, though young, had acted like adults, but that it was time for the local Supreme Court to “put on the toga of adulthood.” Why the jab? Because the Supreme Court had put the reform of the teacher retirement system on hold until the lawsuit brought by the unions had been resolved.

And the President of the Senate came out and said that the current government had been firm and financially responsible; nowhere else in the states had a government acted as Puerto Rico had to correct their problems. Puerto Rico didn’t deserve this betrayal.

The teachers, too, pointed out that since we got degraded to junk status, it was clearly proof that a reform of the retirement system wasn’t needed in the first place.

Yes, you say, but beyond calls for unity—however successfully heeded—what does the government propose to do?

It would be premature, said the governor—donning the mantle of a serious and wise leader—to discuss any specific measure until they had been carefully and thoroughly scrutinized and examined in order to assure that the measures taken will have the maximal impact on the economy while minimizing any adverse effects on the private lives of the people of Puerto Rico, who working together, hand in hand, making ties that extend beyond petty politicking, can go forward confidently towards a better future.

All right—I made that up. That’s what I would have said. The governor doesn’t know what he’s gonna do—so he fell back on rhetoric.

Nor does the average person know what this means: according to The New Day, even business people didn’t really understand what all this meant. The reality is that almost 90% of the students I have taught over the last 20 years have tuned out politics. And now that the crisis is here? Many people are confused.

And the worst of it? However bad the hangover, it was never a very good party anyway….   

The Teachers Mutiny

T’was the week before Christmas and…

“…we had a coup d’état,” in the words of Jaime.

Who should know, being a lawyer and an astute observer. So what happened? Well, the governor of the island called a special session of the legislature to pass a “reform” of the teachers’ retirement system, which currently has almost 40,000 pensioners. This follows a move in April to reform the government workers retirement system, which caused protests across the island.

It’s not the chickens but rather the eagles come home to roost; since 1952, governments have had two or three essential strategies to reduce unemployment. The first was legitimate—manufacturing, especially pharmaceuticals. That Valium you mother chugged down to tide her through your terrible twos? Thanks, Puerto Rico!

The other modes were a little less kosher….

“He shipped ‘em all off to New York!” sputtered Mr. Fernández, when someone suggested that Luis Muñoz Marín—a close relative of the devil, in the eyes of Mr. Fernández—had reduced unemployment.

The other solution? Put everybody on the government payroll, give them one task to do, and pay them substantially less than the private sector. So you had an enormous government; if memory serves... well wait. Here’s a graphic:

So everybody knew for years that we were heading for disaster. And thus the last governor passed legislation that slashed 30,000 government jobs. Last April, the present governor took the machete to the government retirement system and raised taxes. And now, it’s the teachers’ turn.

There are two reasons for this. First, the system is broke; here’s what the president of the Senate, Eduardo Bhatia, had to say:

To have a retirement system you have to square the end of the month and it is broken. For every dollar you have to give a person who retires today there are 17 cents in the piggy bank. The question is where the other 83 cents go, and that is the decision we have to make as a country. Are there additional 83 cents in the General Fund? No, not there,’ said the Senate leader.

Put it another way—the norm is to have a plan 80% funded, we are only at 17%.

The other factor at play? A little company called Moody’s, which has our credit rating one notch above junk, and is watching Puerto Rico closely.

Well, “watching” may be generous. Moody’s, in fact, has Puerto Rico quite securely by part of a gentleman’s most prized anatomical possessions. And Cate Long, writing for Reuters states it openly: she wrote, “Moody’s identified this reform as one of the factors that will compose its review of Puerto Rico.”

So what happened? The governor sent legislation to one of the two teachers’ unions on the island, and they erupted. And as you can see in the video below, they not only protested but broke the doors to the Senate and charged in. So soon, the entire island was glued to their televisions, watching as hundreds of chanting teachers gathered in the capitol.

Damage? $55,000. One part of which may have been a senator’s chair, on which, according to The New Day, a child was permitted or possibly urged to urinate. Oh, and a security official got bitten, though the attacker didn’t draw blood.

And what did the Senate do? Well, they got the hell out of Dodge City, which in this case meant retreating into an adjacent room, the Hall for Illustrious Ladies. They continued the debate until seven PM, when they adjourned.

To make a sorry situation worse, the teachers do not receive Social Security, and so their pension is the only thing they have.

The reaction from the guv? He came out and called it “reproachable,” which seems a bit mild, given the damage done and the precedent it sets.

You can argue—the teachers should have seen it coming; it was clear that the system was unsustainable. It’s also true that we have a very expensive government, and that our legislators make a killing, both when they’re in office and when they come back as “advisers.” Nor does it help that—according to Mr. Fernández—the Department of Education has the highest proportion of non-docent versus docent personnel in the country.

The saddest thing? According to an analysis by Joanisabel González in the print edition of El Nuevo Día, “Lo increíble es que Puerto Rico entrará en esta nueva parte del ciclo sin garantías de que escapará a la degradación crediticia”.

Simple translation! Even if we do this—and the House has in the last hour just passed the legislation—it may not be enough.

As our Governors Fiddled

Ouch—I’ll give it to you first in Spanish, and then in English:

“Esto es de lo peor que he visto”, comentó Zamansky, quien ha visto todo tipo de casos, incluyendo el sonado caso de Bernard Madoff.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Zamansky commented, who has seen all kinds of cases, including the famous case of Bernard Madoff.

And what is Jake Zamansky, a security and investment fraud attorney, talking about? Well, the case of the Puerto Rican branch of UBS, which has been selling Puerto Rican bonds to its clients for years now.

And what’s wrong with that? Aren’t bonds supposed to be a safe investment?

It seems not—especially in the case of Puerto Rico, whose credit rating is one step above junk bond rating, and whose government is seriously broke. How seriously broke? Well, how serious is 70 billion bucks? Our pension program is 37.3 billion underfunded.

“Of course,” said my friend Tony, “that’s just a guess-timate. Because you know what? There’s no actuarial work or studies done on the plan….”

My years with Mr. Fernández have taught me about actuaries; they’re statisticians who predict how much money a plan will need based on the number of people in the plan, the age, expected life span, etc. And if you don’t have that info? You’re operating completely in the dark.

This caused the governor, last month, to scurry up to New York to tell Moody’s and the other credit rating houses that all was well on the island, and that he / they had raised taxes and had a solid, solid plan to deal with the mess.

Did they? Well, it’s true that they had raised taxes—but what had they not done? The one thing that would really bring howls: cut the size of the government.

They did, however, take on the retirement system, and high time, since one of the senators…well, let him speak for himself:

"No retirement system in the world is as broken as ours," Senate President Eduardo Bhatia said on Thursday, before the overhaul legislation was approved by both houses of the Caribbean island's legislature.

The overhaul was bitterly protested, and went to the local Supreme Court, which upheld it. So now the protests have died down, but it’s anybody’s guess when the money will run out….

Now then, into this gloomy picture—oh, and I have told you the unemployment rate is about 15% and the per capita household income is half that of the poorest state, haven’t I?—steps UBS, which is one of the three biggest brokerage houses on the island.

And because of a unique feature in the law, Puerto Rico bonds happen to be rather attractive, at least potentially. Why? Here’s Bloomberg—and who should know but they?—on the subject:

Interest on debt issued by Puerto Rican governments is typically tax-free across the U.S., and yields on some issues topped 10 percent in recent weeks amid doubt about whether investors will be repaid. The bonds’ high yields and tax-exempt status make them popular with retail investors, according to the statement.

Nice, hunh?

Not so nice, said the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Secretary William F. Gavin in the same Bloomberg article:

“Puerto Rico is currently on the verge of insolvency and many of its obligations are at or near junk rating,” according to the statement. “The risks associated with its municipal debt obligation are disproportionally high.”

‘Well,’ you are perhaps thinking, ‘let the rich suffer. I, for one, only have the shirt on my back, the roof over my head, and the rice and beans in my stomach. So, however bad the losses in the bond market may have been, it’s hardly my problem….’

Wish that were true. But first, you should know that the losses were 2.2 billion in the month of September alone. Nor is it just the wealthy affected.

In fact, here’s Zamansky again:

“He atendido por lo menos a 150 personas y escucho, esencialmente, lo mismo. Son retirados, personas que son inversionistas conservadores y que se le dijo que invirtieran todo o una gran parte de su dinero en estos fondos cerrados y en bonos de Puerto Rico”, sostuvo el abogado. “A más de la mitad de estas personas se les instó a que tomaran prestado”.

“I’ve taken care of at least 150 people and have heard, essentially, the same tyhing. They are retired, people who are conservative investors and were told to invest all or a great part of their money in these closed funds and bonds of Puerto Rico,” he stated. “And more than half of these people were told to take out a loan to do so.”

The problem? Was UBS informing these people of the risks of investing in Puerto Rico? No bond is guaranteed if the government goes broke. And the advisability of offering or urging a line of credit or a loan to investors?

The Government Will Decide Whether to Sue UBS—reads the headline in The New Day, our local paper.

In the meantime, Zamansky and other lawyers are sitting in hotels, interviewing hundreds of mostly middle class retirees, many of whom have suffered significant losses. How significant? Some people are so old that they’re in nursing homes, and now the families are having to take them out of them: there’s no money left.

The handwriting has been on the wall for a long time, of course. A few years back, a Reuter’s blog came out and said it bluntly: Puerto Rico is America’s Greece. If our folly and foolishness had hurt the rich, I might cheer. But the idea of hard-working, prudent, conservative people losing their life savings?

…heart breaking.

Tropical Winds

Well, the opportunities down here in the tropics are blossoming like cherry trees.

While our northern friends may be worrying themselves about Syria, the IRS / PRISM / HSA affairs, climate change and the Iraq / Afghanistan debacles, we have other things on our mind.

First off—did the mucama / bedchamber maid kill Georgina Ortiz Ortiz? Well, she’s being tried in the murder of 17 August 2010, but nasty tongues are saying otherwise. The couple had stopped having marital intimacy, they communicated through others on the Internet, and Georgina had declared that she wanted to divorce herself from her husband. Worse, according to those savage tongues, Georgina was having an affair with her 48 year-old personal trainer.

People are interested in all this because, well, it’s interesting. Oh, and Georgina’s husband Carlos Irizarry Yunqué, whom the aforementioned evil tongues suspect of actually committing the crime, is a retired Supreme Court judge, now on the faculty of one of the best law schools on the island.

The police suspect the maid, who is in fact on trial this week. And it’s true—well, it’s supposed to be true—that she had told the security guard, as she passed him, “I’m gonna kill that bitch,” using the word perra. Unfortunately, Georgina has a little dog, and yes, it’s female. So who knows what she meant?

Oh, and the security guard certainly has a shifting memory. The murder took place at three in the afternoon, and the security guard testified yesterday that the judge was absent and came back at around 5PM. The problem? On the day of the murder, the security guard said the judge came home at 3PM.

Then there’s more confusion—a neighbor who was first on the scene (well, second, after the killer) states that the scene was altered: one of the knives had been moved, the hilt cleaned, and the knife placed in the right hand. The neighbor testified that the judge was muy mal and kept asking why his wife had wanted to kill herself.

OK—and the mucama? Well, she’s a Dominican by the name of Aida de los Santos; early reports mention that she’s undocumented, later reports don’t. But it’s significant that she’s Dominican because, yes, there is some prejudice against Dominicans. And her story turns a bit bizarre—a story in First Hour / Primera Hora reveals that while in custody in the Witness and Victims shelter, she either tried to hang herself, or someone slipped a rope around her neck and pulled it tight. De los Santos’ family says it was a murder attempt, the shelter says it was suicide. De los Santos, at any rate, woke up in a hospital bed the next day after guards at the shelter used their cellular phone to call the ambulance; the phones at the shelter weren’t working that night.

There is some evidence against de los Santos. Her granddaughter testified that de los Santos had given her three bracelets, worth $1,400, with the initials “G” and “C,” presumably standing for Georgina and Carlos. The granddaughter was to go find someone to remove the monograms, and then sell the bracelets, to finance a trip back to a new life in the Dominican Republic. There are rumors as well about a bloodstained fingerprint on the hilt of the knife—if it is de los Santos’ print, it would be hard evidence against her.

Then there is the age of the ex-judge: he was 88 at the time of the murder. Could a man of that age kill a woman strong enough to have a personal trainer? If he were in a rage, and if he surprised the victim, could he do it?

Stay tuned, readers. More later, as we say down here.

Then there’s the interesting news that the AMA, of Mass Transit Authority, has been a bit relaxed about checking the driver’s licenses of the bus drivers, 12 of whom have been found to be without valid licenses. So that means that 12 buses are idled, which is major anguish, since it can take up to an hour to catch a bus, which may well pass you by, if the bus is full or the driver thinks it’s full (there’s always room at the back) or if, for some reason, he is simply disinclined to stop.

“So why don’t they hire temporary drivers?” I said to my friend Tony.

“They’re broke,” he said, “They’re five or fifty million (can’t remember which) in the red.”

So I had to tell Tony the reason—half of the time, riders ride for free! Eight years ago, when the Urban Train started, all of the buses got refitted with new meters that would read the little cards that the train reads. And the train, in private hands, has been duly maintaining the readers. The Mass Transit Authority, on the other hand, a government agency….

“Well, now you can tell them,” I said, after he commented that the new head of the AMA can’t figure out why the train’s ridership is up and the AMA’s ridership is consistently sinking, essentially at the rate the meters break down.

“Or we could wait until the last meter breaks and ridership is at 0 and all the buses are totally crowded and the director is completely nuts,” he said.

We agreed, his was the better idea.

Oh, and did I mention that according to The New Day, our local paper, if we get downgraded by Moody’s and the like 100,000 jobs will be lost, investors will lose 4.6 billion dollars, our sales tax will hit 18.5%, and the economy will shrink by 5%?

Oh, and we have until June 25 to do something about it.

The governor is proposing, in this dire situation, lowering the sales tax. What’s the scoop, you ask? Well, the governor proposes taxing business to business; here’s how it works. At the moment, the government doesn’t charge a tax on Sony when it sells televisions to Wal-Mart; under the governor’s plan, it would. Now those good people at Wal-Mart could suck it up and absorb the bite, or they could turn around and sock it to the customer.

Well, in this situation, you’d expect urgent meeting, crisis management, guys in suits looking worried-but-calm going into and out of marble-walled capitol offices, right?

What—are you crazy?

The governor and most of the legislature are busy this weekend.

What are they doing?

You really wanna know?

Not sure…YES, tell me!

Attending the Puerto Rico Day Parade in New York City!