{"id":72698,"date":"2017-06-12T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72698"},"modified":"2017-06-12T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T12:21:07","slug":"puerto-rico-votes-to-join-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72698","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico votes to join Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Puerto Rico staged a referendum on whether the island protectorate should become a state, remain a territory, or become a sovereign nation. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-puertorico-debt-vote-idUSKBN19204O\">Reuters<\/a>, 97% of voters voted to become the 51st state. But only 23% of voters bothered to cast their votes.<\/p>\n<p>The main reason for the lopsided win is that Puerto Rico is sliding into bankruptcy. New conservative regulations are keeping their collective head above water, but it&#8217;s only staving off the inevitable. Puerto Ricans see statehood as a bailout &#8211; until the first April 15th rolls around and they have to start paying Federal taxes.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Puerto Rico&#8217;s former governor, Rafael Hernandez Colon, said in a statement: &#8220;A contrived plebiscite fabricated an artificial majority for statehood by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth supporters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rather than heading to the polls, some 500 Puerto Ricans marched on the streets of San Juan, waving Puerto Rico&#8217;s flag and burning the American flag while chanting in support of independence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a bogus plebiscite. Our future is independence. We need to be able to decide our own fate,&#8221; said Liliana Laboy, one of the organizers of the protest.<\/p>\n<p>Boycotters were also angry about the costly referendum at a time when over 400 schools have closed and many Puerto Ricans are struggling to make ends meet. Schools where voting took place were in poor condition, with cracked paint and bare-bones playgrounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s what we need another 3.5 million welfare recipients and 2 million Democrat voters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Puerto Rico staged a referendum on whether the island protectorate should become a state, remain a &hellip; <a title=\"Puerto Rico votes to join Union\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72698\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Puerto Rico votes to join Union<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}