President Nero

Trump golfs while Puerto Rico collapses.

   The president of the United States relaxed at his New Jersey golf course while 3.4 million American citizens on the island of Puerto Rico struggled to survive the devastation wrought by two hurricanes.
   He did, however, take some time out to blame the victims and attack the mayor of San Juan for a "lack of leadership" in trying to arrange recovery efforts.
   On Sunday morning, the MSNBC television outlet showed side by side pictures of the president on his golf course, and images of the devastation in the island's largest city.
   As for the president's criticism, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said, "Bring it on," and added, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," a classic line from the movie, "Gone With the Wind."
   And despite the president's claims that support operations are going "really well," Mayor Cruz said, "Damn it, this is not a good news story."
   The islanders need help, she repeated. "We are dying here," she said, and the federal government doesn't seem to care.

   Meanwhile, there have been almost no news stories about Red Cross involvement in rescue efforts, to the point that it would seem that organization had been disinvited from joining.
   Published lists of aid organizations sending help to the battered island do not include the Red Cross. The group has been widely criticized for temporarily suspending its registration system for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Earlier,  an investigation by ProPublica and NPR News reported that of the nearly $500 million raised to help Haiti after a major earthquake there in 2010, little of that money actually went to help rebuild.
   The Red Cross claimed that all the money went to help 4.5 millions "get back on their feet," according to the ProPublica-NPR report. That would be "100 percent of the urban area" at the time, said a Haitian official. "The would mean the American Red Cross would have served entire cities."
   In one instance, the report noted, the Red Cross claimed to have helped more people than actually lived there.
   Typically, the Red Cross takes a cut of the money it raises for administrative costs, and gives some of the rest to other organizations which also take a slice of the funding.
   The investigative report noted that such costs can eat up a third of the money that was supposed to help Haitians.
   Here's link to the NPR story: http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief.

   Meanwhile, the president spent much of the first few days after Hurricane Irma battered Puerto Rico attacking the National Football League and its players who protested police mistreatment of minority groups, rather than focusing on the damage in the U.S. territory.
   One wonders about his priorities.