Congratulations On Your $1,000 Donation To Puerto Rican Relief (At Gunpoint)

True confessions time: Until today, I was under the impression that the American response to the hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico had been a little, shall we say, stingy. How could you blame me for feeling this way? The media has continually told me about our stingy response. Hell, it's been worse than stingy; it's been trashy. Fully ten percent of the food aid to PR consisted of candy or snacks that you CANNOT FIND at Whole Foods! The idea that you would hurriedly box up a bunch of aid to starving people and have THE NERVE to let a full tenth of it be the kind of food that rich people in Los Angeles wouldn't buy... We might as well have dropped Fat Man (the bomb, not the self-congratulatory automotive journalist) on the place and let it vaporize in the nook-u-lar flame.

Well, it's time for you to feel better. I just sent a thousand dollars to Puerto Rico. So did you. In fact, I've been sending about $250 a year to Puerto Rico since I was a teenager, give or take a few bucks. And there's more to come.

The determinedly iconoclastic Kakistocracy Blog tells me that Puerto Rico has received nearly seventy billion dollars from the USG in the past year for relief. There are only about 85 million homes in America that pay any income tax whatsoever, so that means that each of those households pitched in a little south of a G for hurricane relief.

But wait, there's more. Puerto Rico runs a net deficit with the United States of approximately $18 billion dollars a year, which is also paid for by me and probably you. (Our demographics are very elite here at RG.) That's maybe $200 per taxpayer "unit" so that brings us to up a nice round thousand-plus bucks in 2018.

But wait, there's even more. Puerto Rico has run up a deficit of $120 billion. The rate at which it has run up is increasing because of --- wait for it ---

--- are you still waiting ---

the financial catastrophe of unfettered immigration to the United States.

So. Our open border with Puerto Rico depresses wages in New York and hurts the economy. But it also hurts the economy of Puerto Rico. There is now a deficit to make up. The deficit will be made up by you, the American taxpayer. You are subsidizing mass immigration; you pay the federal assistance in New York for incoming Puerto Ricans and you pay to clean up the mess they left behind.

Now, this has not been an entirely disastrous proposition. This triangle trade of people - to - tax money - to - sugary snacks brought us a fellow named, oh, let's call him Robert. Robert spent most of his American experience in prison and/or committing elaborate organized crime. But before he died of unspecified causes in middle age he managed to father a very pretty girl. Twenty-eight years after that blessed event, this slightly Latina, thoroughly exotic girl became my absolute most favorite woman in history up to that point. Our time together was short but I don't mind paying back taxes on it. The juice was worth the squeeze.

Puerto Rico also sent us another person, not so pretty as mine but not entirely without charm: the Imperial Yass Kween herself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She campaigns on a platform of open borders and limitless immigration. She is one of what the eerily perceptive writer of "Up In The Valley" calls the Abolitionists. Their vision is of a human tide swamping the United States. There will be a tab for this party. You'll pick up the tab for what the tide does here, the aid and the crime and the Kates and Mollies. But you will also pick up the tab back in the home territory, or the home country. You pay twice, but what do you receive? Ask a farmer in South Africa, perhaps, or ask a fellow who was unlucky enough to be wearing glasses when the Khmer Rouge came to town. The price of submission is more of it, and there is never an end. What is the Arabic word for submission, anyway?