Saturday, April 16, 2016

1975 GOP to New York City “Drop Dead” 2016 GOP to Puerto Rico “Drop Dead”



On Thursday April 14 Donald Trump spoke at the New York State Republican Gala.  The GOP candidate for President gave the best speech of his 2016 campaign recalling Republican President Gerald Ford and the GOP’s stance on a financially ailing New York City in 1975, “Drop Dead.”  From Bloomberg:


Excerpt:


Donald Trump Basks in Glow of New York Republicans


The brash billionaire was clearly enjoying himself at a GOP fundraiser just a mile south of his eponymous Trump Tower….


“It's great to be back in New York,” Trump told the audience of 800 guests at the $1,000-a-plate New York State Republican Gala at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan…


His 23-minute speech was packed with stories about his real estate ventures and what he described as his magic touch for succeeding where others had failed to rehabilitate a struggling city. He began in the mid-1970s, when the Grand Hyatt was built during a fiscal crisis.


“The city was dead,” Trump said, recalling the front page of the Daily News in 1975 that turned President Gerald Ford's refusal to send aid into an outrage: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD…”


Gerald Ford the hapless Republican President came to office after Republican President Richard Nixon resigned rather than be impeached and prosecuted for massive corruption in the Executive Office. 


Ford, a 25 year veteran Republican congressman from Michigan, became America’s first unelected President.  Ford was first appointed to the Vice Presidency vacated by Nixon’s Veep Spiro Agnew who had resigned in disgrace after facing charges of accepting bribes and evading taxes.  Ford’s first action as President was to pardon Richard Nixon ensuring he would never be prosecuted for his crimes.



In 1975 New York City was on the verge of financial collapse after years of war in Vietnam (1955-1975) and congressional and presidential impotence.   From President Profiles:


Excerpt:


Adding to the controversies over both congressional and presidential impotence was the question about the looming financial default of New York City.


For eight months, the nation's most populous city, paying the price for attempting to cope with overwhelming economic and social forces, without budgetary discipline, stood at the brink of economic collapse.  Only in later months did it become apparent that the New York predicament merely epitomized the problems faced by the nation's older urban centers…


… with default virtually a certainty, those with traditionally rural biases against big-city evils found satisfaction that, at last, the "chickens had come home to roost" because of "misguided liberalism…"


Ford's position was never a mystery. Yet, when he delivered a stern rebuke to the city on 29 October 1975, promising to veto any "bailout" of the nation's premier city, the finality of his statement came as a draconian blow.


That was 41 years ago, I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.  Now in 2016 the GOP is saying to Puerto Rico “Drop Dead.”  From New York Daily News:


Excerpt:


GOP to Puerto Rico's nearly bankrupt government: 'Drop dead'


Republican leaders in Congress told Puerto Rico’s nearly bankrupt government to drop dead on Tuesday.


Despite feverish efforts by the White House and congressional Democrats to insert a provision into the federal spending bill that would allow the Caribbean island territory to tackle its massive $72 billion debt through bankruptcy restructuring, top Republicans in the Senate scuttled it at the last minute.


“The hedge funds won, they got their way in Congress,” said Richard Ravitch, New York’s former lieutenant governor…


Puerto Rico governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla should tell Congress, bondholders and hedge funds: "Puerto Rico can't pay what it doesn't have."


Last week, it appeared that confrontation could be avoided. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed optimism that a bipartisan compromise to aid Puerto Rico could be reached…


On Monday, Schumer and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) huddled late into the night with three top GOP leaders — Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee; and Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Energy Committee — and their top aides to find common ground.


But Grassley was adamant, according to two participants in the meeting, that he didn’t want to extend municipal bankruptcy laws to Puerto Rico, a right the 50 states already have….


“The bottom line is that neither Chapter 9 (normal municipal bankruptcy) nor Super Chapter 9 (the territorial alternative) do anything to help Puerto Rico’s spending problems, which are the crux of the issue,” Foy said. 



Why are the Republicans digging in their heels and refusing to bail out Puerto Rico?  From HedgeClippers:


Excerpt:


#HEDGEPAPERS NO. 26 – PUERTO RICO: PAIN AND PROFIT


As 2015 came to an end, there was much speculation about the January 1st deadline for Puerto Rico to pay its creditors…


To pay back its creditors, Puerto Rico has resorted to extreme measures including delaying tax refunds to its citizens,[4] increasing sales tax by more than 50%,[5] and instituting massive cuts to education, healthcare, and social services.


Unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico’s most disenfranchised populations (including Medicaid and Medicare enrollees, incarcerated people, and families with special needs children) are shouldering the burden of those measures.


The crisis is driving more Puerto Ricans off the island and onto the mainland, fueling an ongoing “population swap”[6] in which unemployed, young Puerto Ricans leave the island in search of work, while hundreds of wealthy Americans move onto to the island because the “Millionaire’s Law”[7]and other policies have turned it into a “fiscal paradise” for the wealthy….[8]


Meanwhile, wealthy financiers are flocking to the island to take advantage of tax exemptions and cuts on corporate taxes, personal income, and capital gains.[11]


At a recent investment conference, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson predicted Puerto Rico would become the “Singapore of the Caribbean”[12] –that is, an extremely wealthy tax haven.


This report details how, in order to pay back its creditors, the Puerto Rican government has implemented a severe austerity budget that is is creating a humanitarian crisis on the island and threatening Puerto Ricans’ access to basic services including healthcare, education, and even electricity.


Meanwhile, the hedge funds that reportedly own nearly 50% of Puerto Rico’s debt continue using vulture tactics to win as big a payday as possible at the expense of Puerto Ricans….[13]


Bingo, the GOP is telling Puerto Rico to “Drop Dead” so their hedge fund vultures can pick their bones clean and set up shop in a “fiscal paradise.”  So is Puerto Rico’s Governor going to take the advice of Richard Ravitch and tell the hedge funds who own nearly 50% of their debt "Puerto Rico can't pay what it doesn't have?" I guess so.



The GOP is pulling every dirty trick in the book to deny the American people the right to choose their presidential candidates.  They are trying to shoe horn in Ted Cruz with parlor tricks designed to steal delegates from Donald Trump.


Cruz, the unnatural born American citizen has judge shopped around and found a New Jersey Judge to declare him a “natural born American citizen” eligible to be President of the United States.  The case will go to the Supreme Court for final determination.  From WEBCommentary:


Excerpt:


Judge Masin Cannot Make Ted Cruz a Natural Born US Citizen


"A New Jersey judge has declared Sen. Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to be president of the United States….


Judge Masin relied on a 1898 Supreme Court Wong Kim Ark, in which the Fourteenth Amendment and English common law resulted in a determination that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."


However, the Constitution distinguishes between United States citizens and natural born United States citizens.


Law professor Victor Williams and others challenged Cruz’s certificate of eligibility to be on the New Jersey ballot.


They argued that Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate on public record "incontrovertibly proves, that he was, and is, a natural-born Canadian” and that "[i]t simply a physical impossibility for him to be both a natural-born Canadian and a natural-born American.”


Cruz's lawyers argued that it is “inconceivable that the Framers intended to exclude a U.S. citizen at birth from holding the office of president, simply because of where he or she happened to be born."


What IS inconceivable is that the Framers would have considered Cruz to be a natural born United Statesw citizen. They would not have considered him a United States citizen….


Politicians often try to be all things, but Cruz is not both a natural born and naturalized United States citizen and the Canadian citizenship which he did not renounce until after becoming the first Canadian elected to the United States citizen is the kind of problem the "natural born Citizen" requirement was included to avoid.


Judge Masin noted "that the parliamentary legislation recognized in Blackstone and presumably known to the founders that declared children born abroad to English-subject fathers to be natural born subjects did not provide that the children born abroad whose mother was the sole English subject parent were 'natural-born.'"


Judge Masin conceded that "an originalist interpretation 'would almost certainly' see the father-only distinction as one that the Supreme Court would today uphold."


Nevertheless, he opined: "such an outcome seems to be at complete odds with contemporary understandings of equal protection as it is hard to discern any rational basis that would favor the child of father over child of the mother…


That analysis is fundamentally flawed.


Judge Masin did not note it in his opinion, but It was not until 1934 that mothers were empowered to transmit United States citizen to their children." The "contemporary understandings of equal protection" relied upon by Judge Masin are not relevant to what "natural born Citizen" as used in the Constitution means.


No evidence is cited for the proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to change the understanding of what "natural born Citizen" as used in the Constitution meant, because the Fourteenth Amendment was NOT intended to amend the Constitution's"natural born Citizen requirement." 


Accordingly, the Fourteenth Amendment should not be misused based on "contemporary understandings of equal protection."


Ha ha what a laugh.  The Fourteenth Amendment that states that a child born in the United States, even if the parents aren’t citizens, is a natural born citizen has been attacked by the GOP for years.  They have called these natural born citizens “anchor babies.”  From NPR:



Excerpt:


The amendment, ratified more than 140 years ago, grants automatic citizenship to nearly any child born in the U.S.


Critics say it's an irresistible lure to illegal immigrants — and needs to be revised. Recently, it's been getting a lot of play on the cable news shows…


"People come here to have babies," Graham said. "They come here to drop a child — it's called drop and leave. To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to an emergency room, have a child and that child is automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case — that attracts people here for all the wrong reasons."


Graham has been joined by other leading Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in calling for Senate hearings on whether changes to the 14th Amendment are needed….


Many refer to these children of illegal immigrants as "anchor babies."


But now they claim that unnatural born Ted Cruz is a natural born American because the Fourteenth Amendment changed the meaning of “natural born.”  What a joke.


At the Republican Gala in New York where Donald Trump reminded New Yorkers that it was  Republican President Gerald Ford and the GOP who told New York City to “drop dead” in 1975,  Ted Cruz also gave a speech.


Excerpt:


Cruz got little reaction when he opened his speech by saying, “I will tell you I haven’t built any buildings in New York City, but I have spent my entire life defending the Constitution of the United States.”


Several minutes into Cruz's speech, many in the audience were flat-out ignoring him, conversing loudly at their tables.


Trump is almost certain to crush his rivals in the New York primary on Tuesday….  He’s polling at higher than 50 percent with GOP voters here, more than 30 points ahead of Kasich, who’s at 22 percent in the RealClearPolitics rolling average of polls, and Cruz, who’s at 18 percent.


But instead of coasting to the nomination on his victories in primaries and caucuses, Trump is scrambling to build a competitive delegate-hunting machine by spending money and hiring fresh national political talent.


Meanwhile, Cruz continues to shoehorn his most loyal supporters into delegate slots, trying to increase the odds of a contested convention, his only realistic chance of winning the nomination.


In 1975 the GOP said to New York “Drop Dead” but Donald Trump took on the GOP and rebuilt New York into a prosperous thriving city that is the envy of the world.  In 2016 the GOP is telling the Puerto Rican people “Drop Dead.”  The GOP will do anything to stop Donald Trump from rebuilding America. 


Donald Trump has won millions more votes cast by the American people than Cruz and Kasich combined.  The GOP is trying to deny Trump the candidacy based on delegate votes.  Delegate votes are cast by party insiders to overturn the will of the voters. 


If Trump is denied the nomination at the Republican convention in Cleveland, he will run as a third party candidate.  Then finally the American people can tell the GOP “Drop Dead.”


  
By Patricia Baeten

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