19 Noviembre 2010
El nuevo Dia
3:48 p.m.
Héctor Morales reta a Acevedo Vilá
El secretario general del PNP acusó al ex gobernador de “robar” la esperanza a Puerto Rico y lo invitó a un debate público
Por Inter News Service
El secretario general del Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), Héctor Morales, acusó hoy al ex gobernador Aníbal Acevedo Vilá de “robar” la esperanza al país y lo retó a un debate en un foro público.
Morales exigió al ex presidente del Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) “a dar cara al pueblo por el desmadre administrativo en el que dejó sumida la isla y por robarle la esperanza al pueblo de Puerto Rico”.
El político oficialista reaccionó así a las declaraciones del ex mandatario, quien se mostró “preocupado” por la situación del país.
“Si yo hubiera dejado un déficit certificado de más de tres mil millones, seguro que estuviera preocupado. Si yo hubiera dejado de pagar la luz, el agua, la renta y el teléfono en el verano,
seguro que estuviera preocupado. Si yo hubiera tenido 960 millones en cheques sin fondos sin enviar, seguro que estuviera preocupado”, dijo el secretario general del PNP.
El secretario general del PNP lanzó un desafío a Acevedo Vila y lo invitó a conversar en un foro público sobre la situación de la isla.
“Cuando quiera dar cara y salir detrás de la cortina de las redes sociales donde escribe lo invito a sentarnos en alguna emisora radial o algún foro público para darle unas clases de cómo enderezar el desmadre que ocho años de administración del Partido Popular nos dejó”, dijo Morales.
“Lo invito a que se siente allí y que desmienta que su administración fue a los Tribunales a imponerle el IVU más alto posible al pueblo y luego lo hipotecó con préstamos. Lo reto a que busque una firma de contabilidad seria que desmienta el informe que confirma el déficit fiscal que nos dejó”, agregó el político.
Además, retó a Acevedo Vilá “a que desmienta que dejó el gobierno con el crédito en el piso y lo reto a que desmienta que le quitó la Tarjeta de Salud a 400 mil puertorriqueños. Que confiese cómo le robó la esperanza al pueblo”.
Atrás
domingo, 21 de noviembre de 2010
martes, 11 de mayo de 2010
42 years later, Jose Feliciano to sing anthem
Posted: 3:27 p.m. May 9, 2010
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100509/SPORTS02/100509022/42-years-later-Jose-Feliciano-to-sing-anthem&template=fullarticle
42 years later, Jose Feliciano to sing anthem
BY GENE MYERS
FREE PRESS SPORTS EDITOR
Before Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston and even Roseanne Barr, there were Ernie Harwell and Jose Feliciano.
Quantcast
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How to keep your PC clean and quick
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Do you qualify for a credit card bailout?
And how during the 1968 World Series a 50-year-old sweet-voiced southern broadcaster and a 23-year-old blind Puerto Rican musician changed American sports forever will be one of the storylines when the Tigers honor Harwell on Monday night at Comerica Park.
As a tribute to their legendary broadcaster, who died last Tuesday at 92, the Tigers have an elaborate pregame ceremony planned at 6:45 p.m. before playing the Yankees.
They will raise a white flag in centerfield with Harwell's initials. Former radio partners will handle the ceremonial first pitch -- Ray Lane delivering the ball, Paul Carey throwing it. And Feliciano will sign the national anthem, something he hasn't done in Detroit in 42 years.
On Oct. 7, 1968, before Game 5 against the Cardinals at Tiger Stadium, using only his voice and an acoustic guitar, Feliciano delivered a soulful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. No one had strayed from a straight-laced anthem interpretation, let alone on national television.
An uproar ensued across the country. Harwell, who had selected Feliciano for the assignment, had to defend his singer and his patriotism. He feared for his job. As a result, Harwell and Feliciano became lifelong friends.
A few years later, Harwell introduced Feliciano to Susan Omillian, a Detroiter, who, as a 14-year-old at the time, was angered by Feliciano's treatment. They later married and had three children.
In a 2003 interview with the Free Press, Harwell said: “People called me all sorts of names, saying I was a Communist.” And Feliciano said: “Some people wanted me deported -- as if you can be deported to Puerto Rico.”
Last fall, after Harwell revealed he had terminal cancer, he talked about the events before and after the anthem that changed all anthems in a lengthy interview with the Free Press, to be his last extensive session with local media. The highlights:
“I got into a little controversy because (general manager) Jim Campbell knew I was a tyro songwriter and he appointed me to select the singers for the national anthem for the three games in Detroit.
“The first game I picked Margaret Whiting, whose uncle and dad were great songwriters and they were from Michigan and she had kinfolks in Birmingham. She was a great nightclub singer and recording artist. She did a fine job.
“And then the second person I picked was Marvin Gaye of Motown. And strangely enough, the Tigers asked me to talk to Marvin and say, 'Marvin, we'd appreciate it if you would sing it as straight as you can and not have too much Motown influence in your rendition.' So he sang it straight.
“And then the third fellow that I picked was Jose Feliciano, a young Puerto Rican who had been coming up. He'd had one hit on the charts; he'd covered Morrison's 'Light My Fire.' It was a very popular song and I had a friend in the record business in Hollywood that said, 'I saw this guy at the Greek Theater in Hollywood and he did a sensational national anthem. He should be the guy you pick.'
“Well, we tried a couple of guys -- Eddie Arnold and a few people like that. They couldn't make it. Jose accepted and he was doing a show every night in Las Vegas. He took the red eye, came into Detroit, sang the national anthem.
“He did a sort of soulful rendition; it would be very mild if you heard it now. But at that point people thought it was a sacrilege to the flag and to the country and everything else. The American Legion rose up in arms and passed all kinds of resolutions and everybody got mad. The front page of the New York Times had a picture of him, which was very unusual at that point. There were all kinds of protests.
“A lot of people, including me, thought I might lose my job because of that. There was so much anger about it.
“Sure enough, everything worked out, and Jose and I are still big buddies and I introduced him to his new wife, Miss Omillian. They're still married and they've got kids and they're very happy.”
Harwell then added a postscript:
“When I got sick, I got a beautiful bouquet from Susan and Jose and the kids. I really appreciated that, too. We keep up with them. They send us a Christmas card every year. We're good friends.”
And they will be linked again Monday night, at twilight's last gleaming.
Contact GENE MYERS: 313-222-6736 or gmyers@freepress.com.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100509/SPORTS02/100509022/42-years-later-Jose-Feliciano-to-sing-anthem&template=fullarticle
42 years later, Jose Feliciano to sing anthem
BY GENE MYERS
FREE PRESS SPORTS EDITOR
Before Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston and even Roseanne Barr, there were Ernie Harwell and Jose Feliciano.
Quantcast
New scientific discovery fuels muscle building
Shocking discovery for joint relief
How to keep your PC clean and quick
How to restore your PC to like-new performance
Age 55 or older? Pay up to 75% less for your cruise
Do you qualify for a credit card bailout?
And how during the 1968 World Series a 50-year-old sweet-voiced southern broadcaster and a 23-year-old blind Puerto Rican musician changed American sports forever will be one of the storylines when the Tigers honor Harwell on Monday night at Comerica Park.
As a tribute to their legendary broadcaster, who died last Tuesday at 92, the Tigers have an elaborate pregame ceremony planned at 6:45 p.m. before playing the Yankees.
They will raise a white flag in centerfield with Harwell's initials. Former radio partners will handle the ceremonial first pitch -- Ray Lane delivering the ball, Paul Carey throwing it. And Feliciano will sign the national anthem, something he hasn't done in Detroit in 42 years.
On Oct. 7, 1968, before Game 5 against the Cardinals at Tiger Stadium, using only his voice and an acoustic guitar, Feliciano delivered a soulful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. No one had strayed from a straight-laced anthem interpretation, let alone on national television.
An uproar ensued across the country. Harwell, who had selected Feliciano for the assignment, had to defend his singer and his patriotism. He feared for his job. As a result, Harwell and Feliciano became lifelong friends.
A few years later, Harwell introduced Feliciano to Susan Omillian, a Detroiter, who, as a 14-year-old at the time, was angered by Feliciano's treatment. They later married and had three children.
In a 2003 interview with the Free Press, Harwell said: “People called me all sorts of names, saying I was a Communist.” And Feliciano said: “Some people wanted me deported -- as if you can be deported to Puerto Rico.”
Last fall, after Harwell revealed he had terminal cancer, he talked about the events before and after the anthem that changed all anthems in a lengthy interview with the Free Press, to be his last extensive session with local media. The highlights:
“I got into a little controversy because (general manager) Jim Campbell knew I was a tyro songwriter and he appointed me to select the singers for the national anthem for the three games in Detroit.
“The first game I picked Margaret Whiting, whose uncle and dad were great songwriters and they were from Michigan and she had kinfolks in Birmingham. She was a great nightclub singer and recording artist. She did a fine job.
“And then the second person I picked was Marvin Gaye of Motown. And strangely enough, the Tigers asked me to talk to Marvin and say, 'Marvin, we'd appreciate it if you would sing it as straight as you can and not have too much Motown influence in your rendition.' So he sang it straight.
“And then the third fellow that I picked was Jose Feliciano, a young Puerto Rican who had been coming up. He'd had one hit on the charts; he'd covered Morrison's 'Light My Fire.' It was a very popular song and I had a friend in the record business in Hollywood that said, 'I saw this guy at the Greek Theater in Hollywood and he did a sensational national anthem. He should be the guy you pick.'
“Well, we tried a couple of guys -- Eddie Arnold and a few people like that. They couldn't make it. Jose accepted and he was doing a show every night in Las Vegas. He took the red eye, came into Detroit, sang the national anthem.
“He did a sort of soulful rendition; it would be very mild if you heard it now. But at that point people thought it was a sacrilege to the flag and to the country and everything else. The American Legion rose up in arms and passed all kinds of resolutions and everybody got mad. The front page of the New York Times had a picture of him, which was very unusual at that point. There were all kinds of protests.
“A lot of people, including me, thought I might lose my job because of that. There was so much anger about it.
“Sure enough, everything worked out, and Jose and I are still big buddies and I introduced him to his new wife, Miss Omillian. They're still married and they've got kids and they're very happy.”
Harwell then added a postscript:
“When I got sick, I got a beautiful bouquet from Susan and Jose and the kids. I really appreciated that, too. We keep up with them. They send us a Christmas card every year. We're good friends.”
And they will be linked again Monday night, at twilight's last gleaming.
Contact GENE MYERS: 313-222-6736 or gmyers@freepress.com.
Decades after uproar, Jose Feliciano beloved
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100511&content_id=9959998&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
Decades after uproar, Feliciano beloved
Controversial performance in past, singer honors Harwell
By Jason Beck / MLB.com
DETROIT -- Jose Feliciano's last performance at a Tigers game almost got Ernie Harwell fired. His return on Monday, in a way, memorialized Harwell.
"Ernie would've loved it," former broadcaster Paul Carey said.
In the end, Feliciano loved it, too.
"This night was very special to me," Feliciano said.
Considering Harwell's legendary broadcasting career and the affection Detroit had for him, it's almost inconceivable that something like a national anthem performance nearly cost him all of that. But it says plenty to the time and the state of the nation when Feliciano took the field on that October afternoon.
Complete coverage >>
Harwell liked the idea enough that one of his last wishes was for Feliciano come back to perform, 42 years after Harwell asked him to perform at Tiger Stadium. It was Harwell's choice for the 1968 World Series, since the Tigers put the broadcaster -- an accomplished songwriter back then -- in charge of the anthem singers for the games in Detroit.
Harwell booked popular performers Margaret Whiting and Marvin Gaye for Games 3 and 4 and went with an up-and-coming young artist for Game 5 in Feliciano, a Puerto Rico-born guitarist who first hit the charts that year with a laid-back version of The Doors' "Light My Fire."
It was a big deal to Feliciano, not just for the exposure, but for the meaning for someone who came to New York as a young child with his parents.
Harwell once recalled that the Tigers had asked him to ask Marvin Gaye to perform the anthem straight. They didn't do so with Feliciano, who was lesser-known at the time. Nobody knew the version he had in mind when he took the field with his guitar and his guide dog prior to Game 5.
"I was just interpreting the national anthem and doing it in a way that would bring it to people's attention," Feliciano said. "I got kind of tired of seeing people eating their popcorn at a ballgame, and as soon as the anthem came on, they were so in a hurry for the anthem to get over with so they could get on to the game, and I thought that was very disrespectful."
As it turned out, Feliciano's guitar-based, bluesy interpretation of the national anthem was believed to be one of the first times anybody deviated from the standard version at a public event. Suffice to say, it was not immediately appreciated as he intended, prompting a mixed reaction that Feliciano immediately sensed as he left the field.
"It was between a boo and a yea," Feliciano said. "If you ever get to hear the performance, you can hear the combination of boos and yeas. When I left the field, I said, 'What happened? What did I do?'"
The reaction at the stadium was mixed, but the feedback from television viewers calling into NBC was strongly negative. Feliciano didn't sense how strongly until he had returned to Las Vegas to rejoin his show.
"It didn't hit me until it was all over the news and all over the papers," Feliciano said.
Once it hit Feliciano, it was overwhelming. He was a 23-year-old musician with a budding career, and overnight, radio stations were taking his records off the air. He estimates his career was stunted for two or three years.
The music industry turned on Feliciano, but Harwell never did. He steadfastly defended the artist and his performance, saying he enjoyed it. Years later, Harwell collaborated with Feliciano on a song titled "They Ain't Heard Me Yet."
For that matter, some Tigers players didn't mind it. As Al Kaline pointed out, it became a rallying cry of sorts for the team, which overcame a 3-1 World Series deficit from there.
"When I met Ernie," Feliciano recalled, "it was a relationship that lasted for many, many years."
When he heard about Harwell's illness last year, Feliciano said he wished he could do something to help. He couldn't cure cancer, but as it turned out, he could honor one of his friend's last requests.
"It didn't take much coaxing," Feliciano said. "I wanted to be around for Ernie. I would have felt left out if I hadn't been asked. I was very glad that they asked me. Ernie was my friend. Anything I can do for the Harwells, I will do."
Feliciano hasn't performed the national anthem often in the decades since, but he has stayed true to his original version. He had no plans to change on Monday, either, when he took the field in front of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment Honor Guard from the United States Marine Corps.
Other than the pace, which seemed a little faster than in 1968, the interpretation was the same. Feliciano joked that he might have played faster because it was cold.
The reaction from the crowd was much different. It was a rousing ovation at Comerica Park -- partly to remember Harwell, no doubt, but also for Feliciano, now 65.
"I thought the fans were wonderful," Feliciano said. "Truthfully, I didn't know how they were going to react to me coming back. This was different. It was like saying, 'Hey, some of us are sorry for what happened then. We knew that what you did was a good thing.' And they let me know it tonight."
In a way, it's what Harwell would've wanted. Even in death, Harwell impacted some lives, including one talented performer.
"I'll always miss Ernie," Feliciano said. "I don't think someone who's been a big part of your life like that, you ever stop missing them. I will always miss him. He will always be a part of me, and not a day won't go by where I won't think of Ernie Harwell."
Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Decades after uproar, Feliciano beloved
Controversial performance in past, singer honors Harwell
By Jason Beck / MLB.com
DETROIT -- Jose Feliciano's last performance at a Tigers game almost got Ernie Harwell fired. His return on Monday, in a way, memorialized Harwell.
"Ernie would've loved it," former broadcaster Paul Carey said.
In the end, Feliciano loved it, too.
"This night was very special to me," Feliciano said.
Considering Harwell's legendary broadcasting career and the affection Detroit had for him, it's almost inconceivable that something like a national anthem performance nearly cost him all of that. But it says plenty to the time and the state of the nation when Feliciano took the field on that October afternoon.
Complete coverage >>
Harwell liked the idea enough that one of his last wishes was for Feliciano come back to perform, 42 years after Harwell asked him to perform at Tiger Stadium. It was Harwell's choice for the 1968 World Series, since the Tigers put the broadcaster -- an accomplished songwriter back then -- in charge of the anthem singers for the games in Detroit.
Harwell booked popular performers Margaret Whiting and Marvin Gaye for Games 3 and 4 and went with an up-and-coming young artist for Game 5 in Feliciano, a Puerto Rico-born guitarist who first hit the charts that year with a laid-back version of The Doors' "Light My Fire."
It was a big deal to Feliciano, not just for the exposure, but for the meaning for someone who came to New York as a young child with his parents.
Harwell once recalled that the Tigers had asked him to ask Marvin Gaye to perform the anthem straight. They didn't do so with Feliciano, who was lesser-known at the time. Nobody knew the version he had in mind when he took the field with his guitar and his guide dog prior to Game 5.
"I was just interpreting the national anthem and doing it in a way that would bring it to people's attention," Feliciano said. "I got kind of tired of seeing people eating their popcorn at a ballgame, and as soon as the anthem came on, they were so in a hurry for the anthem to get over with so they could get on to the game, and I thought that was very disrespectful."
As it turned out, Feliciano's guitar-based, bluesy interpretation of the national anthem was believed to be one of the first times anybody deviated from the standard version at a public event. Suffice to say, it was not immediately appreciated as he intended, prompting a mixed reaction that Feliciano immediately sensed as he left the field.
"It was between a boo and a yea," Feliciano said. "If you ever get to hear the performance, you can hear the combination of boos and yeas. When I left the field, I said, 'What happened? What did I do?'"
The reaction at the stadium was mixed, but the feedback from television viewers calling into NBC was strongly negative. Feliciano didn't sense how strongly until he had returned to Las Vegas to rejoin his show.
"It didn't hit me until it was all over the news and all over the papers," Feliciano said.
Once it hit Feliciano, it was overwhelming. He was a 23-year-old musician with a budding career, and overnight, radio stations were taking his records off the air. He estimates his career was stunted for two or three years.
The music industry turned on Feliciano, but Harwell never did. He steadfastly defended the artist and his performance, saying he enjoyed it. Years later, Harwell collaborated with Feliciano on a song titled "They Ain't Heard Me Yet."
For that matter, some Tigers players didn't mind it. As Al Kaline pointed out, it became a rallying cry of sorts for the team, which overcame a 3-1 World Series deficit from there.
"When I met Ernie," Feliciano recalled, "it was a relationship that lasted for many, many years."
When he heard about Harwell's illness last year, Feliciano said he wished he could do something to help. He couldn't cure cancer, but as it turned out, he could honor one of his friend's last requests.
"It didn't take much coaxing," Feliciano said. "I wanted to be around for Ernie. I would have felt left out if I hadn't been asked. I was very glad that they asked me. Ernie was my friend. Anything I can do for the Harwells, I will do."
Feliciano hasn't performed the national anthem often in the decades since, but he has stayed true to his original version. He had no plans to change on Monday, either, when he took the field in front of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment Honor Guard from the United States Marine Corps.
Other than the pace, which seemed a little faster than in 1968, the interpretation was the same. Feliciano joked that he might have played faster because it was cold.
The reaction from the crowd was much different. It was a rousing ovation at Comerica Park -- partly to remember Harwell, no doubt, but also for Feliciano, now 65.
"I thought the fans were wonderful," Feliciano said. "Truthfully, I didn't know how they were going to react to me coming back. This was different. It was like saying, 'Hey, some of us are sorry for what happened then. We knew that what you did was a good thing.' And they let me know it tonight."
In a way, it's what Harwell would've wanted. Even in death, Harwell impacted some lives, including one talented performer.
"I'll always miss Ernie," Feliciano said. "I don't think someone who's been a big part of your life like that, you ever stop missing them. I will always miss him. He will always be a part of me, and not a day won't go by where I won't think of Ernie Harwell."
Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
jueves, 6 de mayo de 2010
Gutierrez should live in district he reps
Gutierrez should live in district he reps
But congressman says new home is for wife, daughter
Comments
May 4, 2010
BY MARK BROWN Chicago Sun-Times Columnist
Congressman Luis Gutierrez was calm and composed when he returned my call Monday, which is not what I would have once expected on a day the Sun-Times carried a story zinging him over a real estate deal involving his daughter.
Gutierrez didn't think it should have been a story, didn't want to see his daughter put through the news media grinder.
But when an alderman who happens to be the congressman's political protege free-lances his own off-the-books affordable housing program and one of the reduced-cost units winds up in the hands of the congressman's daughter, who flips it a year later for a nice profit, well, that's a story.
Still, it wasn't the story that prompted my call to Gutierrez.
What I wanted to learn more about was the little story off to the side, the one that said the congressman no longer lives in his own 4th Congressional District.
Now, it is not uncommon for someone to run for Congress from a district in which they do not live, and it is sometimes the case that an incumbent member of Congress will be displaced by redistricting. The only legal requirement is that they live in the state they represent, not the district.
Even those elected from homes outside their district usually move into it later, although I've been reminded that Rep. Melissa Bean never has gotten around to doing so, and Rod Blagojevich survived a couple congressional elections before he saw fit to move into his district.
Just the same, you do not often see a congressman move out of his district, or at least not do so openly. It's considered an insult to the voters who elected them.
It's the sort of thing that a politician only does when they're feeling awfully smug about their re-election prospects -- or when they're not planning to run again.
It was the latter reasoning that Gutierrez said was actually on his mind when he first moved out of his district two years ago to a condo at 3963 W. Belmont. At the time, he had announced his plans to retire, and even at that, the condo was just barely outside the district by less than a block. Then Gutierrez had a change of heart and won re-election in 2008 from that address.
Now he's running yet one more time, and in the process moved just a few months ago even farther from his district to another home in the 5300 block of West Cullom near Portage Park -- which puts him about two miles from his closest constituent.
Don't forget that Gutierrez does not represent just any old congressional district.
The 4th District is one of the most bizarrely gerrymandered pieces of political real estate in the nation -- a C-shaped creation that cobbles together the Hispanic populations on the Northwest and Southwest sides by using the Tri-State Tollway and forest preserve property as the linkage.
All of this was done for the purpose of devising a super-majority Latino district that would allow that under-represented population to send one of its own to Washington.
Now the individual who first won that seat upon its creation in 1992 no longer feels an obligation to live among the people who elect him.
I don't like that, and I called Gutierrez to tell him so. "I've never hidden where I've lived," said Gutierrez, who to my knowledge is correct on that count, although heaven knows it has been hard to keep track of him through the years as he has bounced from place to place. Gutierrez has made a practice of rehabbing homes and flipping them, taking advantage of one of the few legal means for a congressman to earn outside income.
Even with this latest move, Gutierrez has yet to change his voter registration to reflect the Cullom address, which might have caused somebody to take notice.
Gutierrez said the move to Portage Park was prompted by his wife and daughter, who he said picked it out.
He said he felt they deserved their choice after years of living in homes based on his political needs. He said he travels a lot, even when not in Washington, because of his responsibilities as a national leader on immigration reform -- an issue on which we're on the same side, by the way.
"I wanted them to be safe. They felt safer together," he said. "This is a safe place. It's a very humble place. It's not an ostentatious place. It's a home, not an investment."
Gutierrez said he didn't mean to suggest that he couldn't find a safe place to live in his district, which is good, because some 650,000 people live there.
I've known Gutierrez since 1986, when Hispanics were given their first real voice in city politics with the creation of three new seats in the City Council, including his.
Around that time I wrote a story headlined something like, "Stemberk Found Living in Riverside," the typeface so large that you would have thought I'd discovered a Nazi war criminal instead of a white Chicago alderman who had grown tired of living among his Hispanic constituents. The story helped his Hispanic opponent, Jesus Garcia, go on to win.
If it was wrong for Stemberk, it's wrong for Gutierrez.
But congressman says new home is for wife, daughter
Comments
May 4, 2010
BY MARK BROWN Chicago Sun-Times Columnist
Congressman Luis Gutierrez was calm and composed when he returned my call Monday, which is not what I would have once expected on a day the Sun-Times carried a story zinging him over a real estate deal involving his daughter.
Gutierrez didn't think it should have been a story, didn't want to see his daughter put through the news media grinder.
But when an alderman who happens to be the congressman's political protege free-lances his own off-the-books affordable housing program and one of the reduced-cost units winds up in the hands of the congressman's daughter, who flips it a year later for a nice profit, well, that's a story.
Still, it wasn't the story that prompted my call to Gutierrez.
What I wanted to learn more about was the little story off to the side, the one that said the congressman no longer lives in his own 4th Congressional District.
Now, it is not uncommon for someone to run for Congress from a district in which they do not live, and it is sometimes the case that an incumbent member of Congress will be displaced by redistricting. The only legal requirement is that they live in the state they represent, not the district.
Even those elected from homes outside their district usually move into it later, although I've been reminded that Rep. Melissa Bean never has gotten around to doing so, and Rod Blagojevich survived a couple congressional elections before he saw fit to move into his district.
Just the same, you do not often see a congressman move out of his district, or at least not do so openly. It's considered an insult to the voters who elected them.
It's the sort of thing that a politician only does when they're feeling awfully smug about their re-election prospects -- or when they're not planning to run again.
It was the latter reasoning that Gutierrez said was actually on his mind when he first moved out of his district two years ago to a condo at 3963 W. Belmont. At the time, he had announced his plans to retire, and even at that, the condo was just barely outside the district by less than a block. Then Gutierrez had a change of heart and won re-election in 2008 from that address.
Now he's running yet one more time, and in the process moved just a few months ago even farther from his district to another home in the 5300 block of West Cullom near Portage Park -- which puts him about two miles from his closest constituent.
Don't forget that Gutierrez does not represent just any old congressional district.
The 4th District is one of the most bizarrely gerrymandered pieces of political real estate in the nation -- a C-shaped creation that cobbles together the Hispanic populations on the Northwest and Southwest sides by using the Tri-State Tollway and forest preserve property as the linkage.
All of this was done for the purpose of devising a super-majority Latino district that would allow that under-represented population to send one of its own to Washington.
Now the individual who first won that seat upon its creation in 1992 no longer feels an obligation to live among the people who elect him.
I don't like that, and I called Gutierrez to tell him so. "I've never hidden where I've lived," said Gutierrez, who to my knowledge is correct on that count, although heaven knows it has been hard to keep track of him through the years as he has bounced from place to place. Gutierrez has made a practice of rehabbing homes and flipping them, taking advantage of one of the few legal means for a congressman to earn outside income.
Even with this latest move, Gutierrez has yet to change his voter registration to reflect the Cullom address, which might have caused somebody to take notice.
Gutierrez said the move to Portage Park was prompted by his wife and daughter, who he said picked it out.
He said he felt they deserved their choice after years of living in homes based on his political needs. He said he travels a lot, even when not in Washington, because of his responsibilities as a national leader on immigration reform -- an issue on which we're on the same side, by the way.
"I wanted them to be safe. They felt safer together," he said. "This is a safe place. It's a very humble place. It's not an ostentatious place. It's a home, not an investment."
Gutierrez said he didn't mean to suggest that he couldn't find a safe place to live in his district, which is good, because some 650,000 people live there.
I've known Gutierrez since 1986, when Hispanics were given their first real voice in city politics with the creation of three new seats in the City Council, including his.
Around that time I wrote a story headlined something like, "Stemberk Found Living in Riverside," the typeface so large that you would have thought I'd discovered a Nazi war criminal instead of a white Chicago alderman who had grown tired of living among his Hispanic constituents. The story helped his Hispanic opponent, Jesus Garcia, go on to win.
If it was wrong for Stemberk, it's wrong for Gutierrez.
Gutierrez put daughter up for her state job
Records: Congressman put daughter up for her state job
CLOUT LIST | Gutierrez denies going to Blago as hiring sponsor
Comments
May 3, 2010
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters Chicago Sun Times
Before he lent her $140,000 to buy an "affordable home," U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez helped his daughter get a government job, according to records kept by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration.
Omaira Figueroa became a consumer counselor for the Illinois Commerce Commission in June 2004, after Blagojevich aides included her in the then-secret hiring database under a spreadsheet labeled "Gutierrez, Luis (CONG-D-4th Dist.)"
RELATED STORIES
Congressman's daughter's sweet housing deal
"There should be no issues. She should get a letter offering the position in about 2 weeks," according to a note placed in the database the month before the ICC hired her.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling bans politics from factoring in to most state hiring, including the job held by Gutierrez's daughter. But that didn't keep the since-indicted Blagojevich from tracking 386 clout-heavy people who sponsored 5,700 candidates for state jobs, transfers or promotions, according to the records, which list Gutierrez as sponsoring 36 people.
His spokesman, Douglas Rivlin, denied that Gutierrez helped Figueroa get her state job with the Blagojevich administration.
"His daughter had a relationship directly with Gov. Blagojevich, who among other things attended her wedding,'' Rivlin said. "She has previously worked for the governor's father-in-law [Ald. Richard Mell]. The congressman told me he did not write a recommendation or suggest to the governor that his daughter be hired at the Commerce Commission job but recalls recommending her to Mell for her job with him originally."
Figueroa, 30, worked part-time for then-26th Ward Ald. Billy Ocasio about 10 years ago, before she became a legislative aide to Mell and then an assistant sergeant-at-arms for the City Council -- a job she held before joining the ICC, where she makes $59,016 a year.
At the time she bought her affordable home, in 2008, she was making $55,620.
Her husband, Ecliserio Figueroa, got a city job in July 2003 -- about two months after she gave birth to their son. He makes $42,456 a year as a clerk for the Aviation Department. In 2008, he made $38,208.
CLOUT LIST | Gutierrez denies going to Blago as hiring sponsor
Comments
May 3, 2010
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters Chicago Sun Times
Before he lent her $140,000 to buy an "affordable home," U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez helped his daughter get a government job, according to records kept by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration.
Omaira Figueroa became a consumer counselor for the Illinois Commerce Commission in June 2004, after Blagojevich aides included her in the then-secret hiring database under a spreadsheet labeled "Gutierrez, Luis (CONG-D-4th Dist.)"
RELATED STORIES
Congressman's daughter's sweet housing deal
"There should be no issues. She should get a letter offering the position in about 2 weeks," according to a note placed in the database the month before the ICC hired her.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling bans politics from factoring in to most state hiring, including the job held by Gutierrez's daughter. But that didn't keep the since-indicted Blagojevich from tracking 386 clout-heavy people who sponsored 5,700 candidates for state jobs, transfers or promotions, according to the records, which list Gutierrez as sponsoring 36 people.
His spokesman, Douglas Rivlin, denied that Gutierrez helped Figueroa get her state job with the Blagojevich administration.
"His daughter had a relationship directly with Gov. Blagojevich, who among other things attended her wedding,'' Rivlin said. "She has previously worked for the governor's father-in-law [Ald. Richard Mell]. The congressman told me he did not write a recommendation or suggest to the governor that his daughter be hired at the Commerce Commission job but recalls recommending her to Mell for her job with him originally."
Figueroa, 30, worked part-time for then-26th Ward Ald. Billy Ocasio about 10 years ago, before she became a legislative aide to Mell and then an assistant sergeant-at-arms for the City Council -- a job she held before joining the ICC, where she makes $59,016 a year.
At the time she bought her affordable home, in 2008, she was making $55,620.
Her husband, Ecliserio Figueroa, got a city job in July 2003 -- about two months after she gave birth to their son. He makes $42,456 a year as a clerk for the Aviation Department. In 2008, he made $38,208.
Luis Gutierrez-Sweet deal
Congressman's daughter's sweet housing deal
Comments
May 3, 2010
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters Chicago Sun Times
Every time developers asked to build condominiums in his gentrifying 26th Ward, then-Ald. Billy Ocasio had the same answer:
Your project won't be approved unless it includes at least one "affordable home."
» Click to enlarge image
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez hugs his daughter, Omaira, in 2006 after announcing he won't run for mayor of Chicago.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
RELATED STORIES
Records: Rep. put daughter up for state job Gutierrez no longer lives in his district
RELATED PDF
The building on Kedzie
COMING TUESDAY
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez's daughter's affordable condo wasn't the only project approved by the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee. A look at other developments -- and why City Hall isn't happy about them.
One person who benefitted from Ocasio's directive: Omaira Figueroa, the daughter of U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Ocasio's political mentor.
With a $140,000 loan from her parents, Figueroa bought her new two-bedroom, two-bathroom affordable condo in Humboldt Park in June 2008 for $155,000, property records show.
Little more than a year later, she sold it for $239,900 -- $84,900, or 55 percent, more than she'd paid.
Had Figueroa's condo been part of a typical affordable-housing program, that wouldn't have been possible. City of Chicago rules, for instance, now bar affordable-housing buyers from turning big profits when they resell. The rules also require that affordable homes remain affordable -- they can be sold only to buyers who meet income-eligibility guidelines.
Figueroa, though, bought her home through a 26th Ward "community" initiative that "wasn't an official government program," according to Ocasio, who resigned his aldermanic seat last year to take a $125,000-a-year post as a senior adviser to Gov. Quinn.
Ocasio estimated that about 180 affordable condos were supposed to have been created under that program. But it's unclear how many ended up being built and how many have been resold, in part because the program is defunct.
Figueroa, her husband, their son and her husband's two other children now live on the Northwest Side in a two-flat they share with the congressman and his wife -- a building that is outside the borders of Gutierrez's 4th Congressional District (see related story). Figueroa and her husband own 55 percent of the two-flat, according to Gutierrez, who said he and his wife own the rest and live upstairs.
'My father knows all about that'
Figueroa, 30, referred questions about the condo at 1834 N. Kedzie to her father, the congressman. "My father knows all about that," she said.
Gutierrez and Ocasio said neither they nor Figueroa did anything wrong. Nor, they said, did their close relationship give Figueroa an edge to get the home.
"Never," Gutierrez said. "Never. Absolutely not. Never. Never."
Ocasio and Gutierrez also said that campaign contributions they took from Roman Popovych, who built 1834 N. Kedzie, played no role in Figueroa's deal. Gutierrez's congressional fund got $1,000 from Popovych six months before Figueroa bought the condo. The developer and an affiliated company gave Ocasio's aldermanic fund a total of $13,500 between 2004 and 2009.
"I've known Omaira since she was 6 years old," said Ocasio, who hired her to work part-time in his aldermanic office about 10 years ago. "She got no preferential treatment."
Gutierrez said his daughter "participated in a program where the rules were identical for her as they were for dozens of other people." He said he lent her $140,000 because she couldn't qualify for a mortgage from a bank "for a number of reasons," including "probably" her husband's poor credit history.
"That's all I was: I was her dad," the congressman said. "We didn't hide anything. That's why you see a mortgage of $140,000.
"We charged her four-and-three-quarters percent interest because the CPA who does my taxes said that that was an interest rate that was high enough so that the IRS wouldn't say it was a gift."
For years, Gutierrez -- one of the country's most-prominent immigration reform advocates -- has been investing in real estate, making hundreds of thousands of dollars buying and selling homes in Chicago.
Two of his deals involved developers who have since been convicted of crimes: Tony Rezko and Calvin Boender. Gutierrez was never accused of any wrongdoing in their cases. He bought a condo from Rezko and flipped it for a profit. He also bought property from Boender, selling it at a loss.
$93,828 a year
When Figueroa bought her condo on June 9, 2008, she and her husband were making $93,828 a year -- $55,620 from her state-government job with the Illinois Commerce Commission and $38,208 from her husband's job with the city Aviation Department.
The 1,221-square-foot duplex is on the first floor, facing the alley. She paid 41 percent less per square foot than the next-cheapest unit, one that's 1,773 square feet and sold for $385,000 (see graphic).
How the home became affordable housing dates to January 2006, when Ocasio backed a zoning change allowing Popovych to build four condominiums on what had been a single-family lot.
Popovych was among a group of developers who'd found it hard to build affordable homes through programs under the city Housing Department's control. The city "required developers meet all sorts of bureaucratic criteria that was time-consuming and added a financial burden" to their projects, according to Ocasio.
So, about six years ago, Ocasio and community leaders came up with an alternative: Developers would get Ocasio's OK to rezone lots for condos only if they first won approval from a group called the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee.
If Ocasio agreed, he would get the City Council to approve the zoning change subject to a "declaration of restrictive covenant." That would give Ocasio oversight of the project and spell out how many affordable units would be required.
Then, not-for-profit housing groups would advertise the homes, set income guidelines for buyers and work to pair them with lenders.
By late 2005, Figueroa and her husband had submitted tax returns and pay stubs as part of a first-time home-buyer counseling workshop run by the Latin United Community Housing Association. Ocasio used to work for the group, which gets about $500,000 a year in government funding.
Gutierrez said his daughter's certificate from the home-buyer workshop was all she needed to qualify to buy a home through the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee program.
Under city rules, Figueroa would have had six months to buy an affordable home after proving she met income guidelines.
Under the 26th Ward program's rules, though, there was no time limit. So she was able to buy affordable housing 2½ years later -- when her income had risen sharply.
Is that how affordable housing should work?
"I'm not gonna have a conversation about affordable housing in the context of a real estate transaction in which my daughter did absolutely nothing wrong -- unless you could show me she violated some rule, that she got some kind of special treatment," Gutierrez said. "It's just not there."
Figueroa sold the condo last August for $239,900 -- $84,900 over what she'd paid for it.
Gutierrez said she cleared only about $53,000, though, taking into account closing costs and money she spent on home improvements.
By the time Figueroa bought her condo, the other three units at 1834 N. Kedzie had been sold for between $385,000 and $395,000 each.
All three have been rented out and are now facing foreclosure.
The men who bought those condos -- Volodymyr Kuchmiyov and Yaroslav Dzis -- appear to have ties to Popovych, according to court documents. A tenant in one of Kuchmiyov's two units said she'd been paying rent to an office at the same address as a Popovych company, V.P. Interlink Development. A tenant in Dzis' unit said he paid rent to a real estate company called V.P. Interlink at the same address and had never heard of Dzis.
Attempts to reach Popovych, Kuchmiyov and Dzis were unsuccessful.
Ocasio: program a success
Ocasio said he doesn't know exactly how many affordable homes were created under the 26th Ward program, in part because his staff destroyed many of its records when he shut down his aldermanic office.
When he was asked about the program, Ocasio tracked down some documents. But those records don't show who bought those homes or how many have been resold.
Ocasio said that when the housing market collapsed in 2008, he let developers sell some of the affordable units to anyone, regardless of income. "Developers said, 'Look, I can't sell these units. We can't find people to buy them,' " Ocasio said. "And so, at some point ... we said, 'Go ahead. You guys need to get rid of it? Get rid of it.' "
The struggling economy also kept developers from even breaking ground on some projects, Ocasio said. Still, he considers the program to have been a success.
"I think there's worse things that an alderman can do with the power of zoning than to build affordable housing," Ocasio said. "In hindsight, there's always improvements you can make. I think, if we had the money, if we had more support from the city, we would have done all the things that everybody else did. ... We didn't have those resources."
Comments
May 3, 2010
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters Chicago Sun Times
Every time developers asked to build condominiums in his gentrifying 26th Ward, then-Ald. Billy Ocasio had the same answer:
Your project won't be approved unless it includes at least one "affordable home."
» Click to enlarge image
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez hugs his daughter, Omaira, in 2006 after announcing he won't run for mayor of Chicago.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
RELATED STORIES
Records: Rep. put daughter up for state job Gutierrez no longer lives in his district
RELATED PDF
The building on Kedzie
COMING TUESDAY
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez's daughter's affordable condo wasn't the only project approved by the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee. A look at other developments -- and why City Hall isn't happy about them.
One person who benefitted from Ocasio's directive: Omaira Figueroa, the daughter of U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Ocasio's political mentor.
With a $140,000 loan from her parents, Figueroa bought her new two-bedroom, two-bathroom affordable condo in Humboldt Park in June 2008 for $155,000, property records show.
Little more than a year later, she sold it for $239,900 -- $84,900, or 55 percent, more than she'd paid.
Had Figueroa's condo been part of a typical affordable-housing program, that wouldn't have been possible. City of Chicago rules, for instance, now bar affordable-housing buyers from turning big profits when they resell. The rules also require that affordable homes remain affordable -- they can be sold only to buyers who meet income-eligibility guidelines.
Figueroa, though, bought her home through a 26th Ward "community" initiative that "wasn't an official government program," according to Ocasio, who resigned his aldermanic seat last year to take a $125,000-a-year post as a senior adviser to Gov. Quinn.
Ocasio estimated that about 180 affordable condos were supposed to have been created under that program. But it's unclear how many ended up being built and how many have been resold, in part because the program is defunct.
Figueroa, her husband, their son and her husband's two other children now live on the Northwest Side in a two-flat they share with the congressman and his wife -- a building that is outside the borders of Gutierrez's 4th Congressional District (see related story). Figueroa and her husband own 55 percent of the two-flat, according to Gutierrez, who said he and his wife own the rest and live upstairs.
'My father knows all about that'
Figueroa, 30, referred questions about the condo at 1834 N. Kedzie to her father, the congressman. "My father knows all about that," she said.
Gutierrez and Ocasio said neither they nor Figueroa did anything wrong. Nor, they said, did their close relationship give Figueroa an edge to get the home.
"Never," Gutierrez said. "Never. Absolutely not. Never. Never."
Ocasio and Gutierrez also said that campaign contributions they took from Roman Popovych, who built 1834 N. Kedzie, played no role in Figueroa's deal. Gutierrez's congressional fund got $1,000 from Popovych six months before Figueroa bought the condo. The developer and an affiliated company gave Ocasio's aldermanic fund a total of $13,500 between 2004 and 2009.
"I've known Omaira since she was 6 years old," said Ocasio, who hired her to work part-time in his aldermanic office about 10 years ago. "She got no preferential treatment."
Gutierrez said his daughter "participated in a program where the rules were identical for her as they were for dozens of other people." He said he lent her $140,000 because she couldn't qualify for a mortgage from a bank "for a number of reasons," including "probably" her husband's poor credit history.
"That's all I was: I was her dad," the congressman said. "We didn't hide anything. That's why you see a mortgage of $140,000.
"We charged her four-and-three-quarters percent interest because the CPA who does my taxes said that that was an interest rate that was high enough so that the IRS wouldn't say it was a gift."
For years, Gutierrez -- one of the country's most-prominent immigration reform advocates -- has been investing in real estate, making hundreds of thousands of dollars buying and selling homes in Chicago.
Two of his deals involved developers who have since been convicted of crimes: Tony Rezko and Calvin Boender. Gutierrez was never accused of any wrongdoing in their cases. He bought a condo from Rezko and flipped it for a profit. He also bought property from Boender, selling it at a loss.
$93,828 a year
When Figueroa bought her condo on June 9, 2008, she and her husband were making $93,828 a year -- $55,620 from her state-government job with the Illinois Commerce Commission and $38,208 from her husband's job with the city Aviation Department.
The 1,221-square-foot duplex is on the first floor, facing the alley. She paid 41 percent less per square foot than the next-cheapest unit, one that's 1,773 square feet and sold for $385,000 (see graphic).
How the home became affordable housing dates to January 2006, when Ocasio backed a zoning change allowing Popovych to build four condominiums on what had been a single-family lot.
Popovych was among a group of developers who'd found it hard to build affordable homes through programs under the city Housing Department's control. The city "required developers meet all sorts of bureaucratic criteria that was time-consuming and added a financial burden" to their projects, according to Ocasio.
So, about six years ago, Ocasio and community leaders came up with an alternative: Developers would get Ocasio's OK to rezone lots for condos only if they first won approval from a group called the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee.
If Ocasio agreed, he would get the City Council to approve the zoning change subject to a "declaration of restrictive covenant." That would give Ocasio oversight of the project and spell out how many affordable units would be required.
Then, not-for-profit housing groups would advertise the homes, set income guidelines for buyers and work to pair them with lenders.
By late 2005, Figueroa and her husband had submitted tax returns and pay stubs as part of a first-time home-buyer counseling workshop run by the Latin United Community Housing Association. Ocasio used to work for the group, which gets about $500,000 a year in government funding.
Gutierrez said his daughter's certificate from the home-buyer workshop was all she needed to qualify to buy a home through the 26th Ward Affordable Housing Committee program.
Under city rules, Figueroa would have had six months to buy an affordable home after proving she met income guidelines.
Under the 26th Ward program's rules, though, there was no time limit. So she was able to buy affordable housing 2½ years later -- when her income had risen sharply.
Is that how affordable housing should work?
"I'm not gonna have a conversation about affordable housing in the context of a real estate transaction in which my daughter did absolutely nothing wrong -- unless you could show me she violated some rule, that she got some kind of special treatment," Gutierrez said. "It's just not there."
Figueroa sold the condo last August for $239,900 -- $84,900 over what she'd paid for it.
Gutierrez said she cleared only about $53,000, though, taking into account closing costs and money she spent on home improvements.
By the time Figueroa bought her condo, the other three units at 1834 N. Kedzie had been sold for between $385,000 and $395,000 each.
All three have been rented out and are now facing foreclosure.
The men who bought those condos -- Volodymyr Kuchmiyov and Yaroslav Dzis -- appear to have ties to Popovych, according to court documents. A tenant in one of Kuchmiyov's two units said she'd been paying rent to an office at the same address as a Popovych company, V.P. Interlink Development. A tenant in Dzis' unit said he paid rent to a real estate company called V.P. Interlink at the same address and had never heard of Dzis.
Attempts to reach Popovych, Kuchmiyov and Dzis were unsuccessful.
Ocasio: program a success
Ocasio said he doesn't know exactly how many affordable homes were created under the 26th Ward program, in part because his staff destroyed many of its records when he shut down his aldermanic office.
When he was asked about the program, Ocasio tracked down some documents. But those records don't show who bought those homes or how many have been resold.
Ocasio said that when the housing market collapsed in 2008, he let developers sell some of the affordable units to anyone, regardless of income. "Developers said, 'Look, I can't sell these units. We can't find people to buy them,' " Ocasio said. "And so, at some point ... we said, 'Go ahead. You guys need to get rid of it? Get rid of it.' "
The struggling economy also kept developers from even breaking ground on some projects, Ocasio said. Still, he considers the program to have been a success.
"I think there's worse things that an alderman can do with the power of zoning than to build affordable housing," Ocasio said. "In hindsight, there's always improvements you can make. I think, if we had the money, if we had more support from the city, we would have done all the things that everybody else did. ... We didn't have those resources."
Sweet House Deal for Rep. Gutierrez's Daughter
Sweet House Deal for Rep. Gutierrez's Daughter
Submitted by Alana Goodman on Wed, 05/05/2010 - 16:16
Email to friendEmail to friendPrinter-friendlyPrinter-friendly
Gutierrez photoRep. Luis V. Gutierrez’s (D-IL) multitude of legal and ethical problems were compounded on Monday, when it was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times that his daughter may have gotten a sweetheart deal on her home in Chicago.
Gutierrez was the mentor of former Chicago ward-26 alderman Billy Ocasio, who initiated specialized affordable-housing programs in his district. Gutierrez’s daughter, Omaira Figueroa, benefited from the program, buying an affordable condo for a discounted $155,000 in June, 2008, and selling it for $239,900 just over a year later.
While city of Chicago rules prevent affordable-housing owners from re-selling their homes for a major profit, the housing initiative put into place by Ocasio wasn’t subject to these regulations. Figueroa, who originally purchased the condo with a $140,000 loan from her congressman father, was able to the sell the condo at a 55 percent profit.
At the time that she purchased the affordable-housing condo, Figueroa and her husband were making a combined salary of $93,828 a year, noted the Chicago Sun-Times.
Gutierrez and Ocasio denied that any unethical activity was involved, and said that no special treatment was given to Figueroa.
Gutierrez has been involved in real estate deals with Chicago restaurateur Tony Rezko, who was convicted of fraud and bribery in 2008, and developer Calvin Boender, who was convicted of bribery and obstruction of justice in March.
The congressman himself was arrested last Saturday for defying police orders during a protest against immigration enforcement outside of the White House.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly begun investigating Gutierrez’s ties to disgraced developer Boender, who has long been a political supporter of the Illinois congressman. The FBI is apparently probing Gutierrez’s assistance in getting Boender a lucrative zoning approval for a Chicago development.
Phone requests for comment from Gutierrez’s office have not yet been returned.
Alana Goodman is NLPC's Capitol Hill Reporter
Submitted by Alana Goodman on Wed, 05/05/2010 - 16:16
Email to friendEmail to friendPrinter-friendlyPrinter-friendly
Gutierrez photoRep. Luis V. Gutierrez’s (D-IL) multitude of legal and ethical problems were compounded on Monday, when it was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times that his daughter may have gotten a sweetheart deal on her home in Chicago.
Gutierrez was the mentor of former Chicago ward-26 alderman Billy Ocasio, who initiated specialized affordable-housing programs in his district. Gutierrez’s daughter, Omaira Figueroa, benefited from the program, buying an affordable condo for a discounted $155,000 in June, 2008, and selling it for $239,900 just over a year later.
While city of Chicago rules prevent affordable-housing owners from re-selling their homes for a major profit, the housing initiative put into place by Ocasio wasn’t subject to these regulations. Figueroa, who originally purchased the condo with a $140,000 loan from her congressman father, was able to the sell the condo at a 55 percent profit.
At the time that she purchased the affordable-housing condo, Figueroa and her husband were making a combined salary of $93,828 a year, noted the Chicago Sun-Times.
Gutierrez and Ocasio denied that any unethical activity was involved, and said that no special treatment was given to Figueroa.
Gutierrez has been involved in real estate deals with Chicago restaurateur Tony Rezko, who was convicted of fraud and bribery in 2008, and developer Calvin Boender, who was convicted of bribery and obstruction of justice in March.
The congressman himself was arrested last Saturday for defying police orders during a protest against immigration enforcement outside of the White House.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly begun investigating Gutierrez’s ties to disgraced developer Boender, who has long been a political supporter of the Illinois congressman. The FBI is apparently probing Gutierrez’s assistance in getting Boender a lucrative zoning approval for a Chicago development.
Phone requests for comment from Gutierrez’s office have not yet been returned.
Alana Goodman is NLPC's Capitol Hill Reporter
Luis Gutierrez should not represent inmigrants
Puertorriquenos de Chicago se merecen algo mejor
05 de mayo 2010
Qué ironía: Luis Gutiérrez, un puertorriqueño, defiende los inmigrantes ilegales y su derecho a ser "americanos" con todos los beneficios y vivir el sueño americano, pero se niega y no hace nada por el pueblo de Puerto Rico, que han sido ciudadanos de los EE.UU. desde 1917.
Este hombre tuvo la osadía de describir a la gente de Puerto Rico como una especie de alienígenas del espacio exterior, que son tan diferentes de cualquier otro pueblo que nuestra cultura no se puede compartir ni ser aceptada por ninguno de los 50 estados. Esto es lo que se llama un americano feo “ugly american” que niega su propia cultura. Hablando de los “ugly americans” ¿qué hay de Nydia Velázquez? Esta senora tiene una actitud de superioridad. Ella cree que está por encima de los demás y también se olvida de sus raíces.
Habiendo nacido en Caguas de padres puertorriqueños y que actualmente viven en esta hermosa isla, se me ha despojado de mis derechos civiles jurídica como ciudadano estadounidense y “disenfranchised” por el Gobierno de los EE.UU. No puedo votar por el Presidente los Estados Unidos y no tengo representación en el Congreso, sin embargo, estos dos individuos prefieren defender a los inmigrantes ilegales en lugar de ayudar al pueblo de esta isla lograr la igualdad como ciudadanos americanos. ¡Qué desgracia para ellos.
Espero sinceramente que el pueblo de Puerto Rico que viven en Chicago y en Nueva York, donde residen no les dé su voto nunca más. La gente en estas áreas merecen algo mejor.
05 de mayo 2010
Qué ironía: Luis Gutiérrez, un puertorriqueño, defiende los inmigrantes ilegales y su derecho a ser "americanos" con todos los beneficios y vivir el sueño americano, pero se niega y no hace nada por el pueblo de Puerto Rico, que han sido ciudadanos de los EE.UU. desde 1917.
Este hombre tuvo la osadía de describir a la gente de Puerto Rico como una especie de alienígenas del espacio exterior, que son tan diferentes de cualquier otro pueblo que nuestra cultura no se puede compartir ni ser aceptada por ninguno de los 50 estados. Esto es lo que se llama un americano feo “ugly american” que niega su propia cultura. Hablando de los “ugly americans” ¿qué hay de Nydia Velázquez? Esta senora tiene una actitud de superioridad. Ella cree que está por encima de los demás y también se olvida de sus raíces.
Habiendo nacido en Caguas de padres puertorriqueños y que actualmente viven en esta hermosa isla, se me ha despojado de mis derechos civiles jurídica como ciudadano estadounidense y “disenfranchised” por el Gobierno de los EE.UU. No puedo votar por el Presidente los Estados Unidos y no tengo representación en el Congreso, sin embargo, estos dos individuos prefieren defender a los inmigrantes ilegales en lugar de ayudar al pueblo de esta isla lograr la igualdad como ciudadanos americanos. ¡Qué desgracia para ellos.
Espero sinceramente que el pueblo de Puerto Rico que viven en Chicago y en Nueva York, donde residen no les dé su voto nunca más. La gente en estas áreas merecen algo mejor.
domingo, 15 de noviembre de 2009
Puerto Rico Bonds Beat US States as Fortuno cuts
Buen articulo...lo que la prensa izquierdozzza de Puerto Rico no comenta......
Puerto Rico Bonds Beat U.S. States as Fortuno Cuts (Update1)
By Jerry Hart
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Governor Luis Fortuno’s declaration of a fiscal emergency hasn’t deterred investors from buying Puerto Rico’s bonds, whose 20 percent return this year beat debt indexes in every U.S. state tracked by Standard & Poor’s.
Keeping investors interested in the Commonwealth’s $47 billion of debt may depend on the Republican governor’s plan to cut a $3.2 billion budget deficit, revive an economy that shrank 5.5 percent in the last fiscal year and rescue a credit rating one level from high-risk, high-yield junk. Since taking office in January, Fortuno eliminated 22,500 government jobs, riling a constituency that makes up 30 percent of the labor force.
“I’m not here to win a popularity contest,” Fortuno, 49, said by telephone from San Juan during a national strike on Oct. 15, when protesters and police clashed outside the Fortress, his home in the old section of the walled capital founded by Spain in 1521. “I’m here to deliver results.”
Bonds of Puerto Rico, which was ceded to the U.S. in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, are exempt from taxes in any state, unlike most municipal debt. The securities have benefited from record cash flows into municipal-bond funds, masking an economy that contracted in the 12 months ended June 30 at twice the 2.4 percent forecast for the country as a whole in 2009, the median estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
‘Too Few Bonds’
“I’m happy to have them because there’s a lot of cash chasing too few bonds,” said Michael Walls, who manages the $533 million Municipal High Income Fund at Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas. “The more dicey a credit is, the more it’s rallied.” His fund owns Puerto Rico securities backed by sales taxes.
The difference in yield between a 6.5 percent Puerto Rico sales-tax bond sold in June, rated A+ by S&P, and a Municipal Market Advisors’ index of 30-year AAA rated municipal securities narrowed to 45 basis points on Nov. 9 from 100 on Aug. 28, as investors drove prices of the Commonwealth’s securities up and interest rates down more than higher-rated debt. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
The Commonwealth’s debt, including the sales-tax-backed and general-obligation securities rated BBB- by S&P, one step from non-investment grade, returned 20.1 percent this year through yesterday, according to the S&P Puerto Rico Municipal Bond Index. That’s a bigger gain than any of S&P’s 27 state indexes and compares with the 13.3 percent return for the S&P/Investortools Municipal Bond Main Index of all municipal debt, which rose 13.3 percent. S&P’s high-yield muni index increased 33.2 percent.
$55 Billion
A 5.75 percent Puerto Rico general-obligation bond due in 2038 that was priced earlier this month at a discount of 96.59 to yield 6 percent rose as high as 101.35 in the when-issued market to yield 5.57 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They were offered at 5.9 percent yesterday.
Debt of the Caribbean island, whose population of 4 million is about equal to Kentucky’s, is riding a rally in which investors poured a record $55 billion into municipal-bond mutual funds this year, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington, D.C.
Fortuno’s so-called fiscal stabilization plan will have to show results soon to sustain the gains investors have recorded, said Matt Fabian, managing director at Municipal Market Advisors, a researcher in Concord, Massachusetts.
“You have a major implementation risk involving how well the plan will do,” Fabian said in an interview. “It’s not a credit that’s out of the woods yet.”
Fortuno, who earned a law degree from the University of Virginia, served as Puerto Rico’s non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington before winning the governorship a year ago with 53 percent of the votes.
Shrinking Payroll
He declared a fiscal emergency in March with a plan to curtail public spending, which has boosted borrowing to 83 percent of economic output, according to S&P. That is four times more than Massachusetts, which has more debt as a portion of GDP than any state, with 20 percent in 2007, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.
Fortuno wants $2 billion of spending cuts, mostly through reductions in the Commonwealth’s payroll. He proposed deploying $6 billion of federal stimulus funds and $500 million from his government to employ fired workers on infrastructure projects while trying to lure private companies to maintain employment.
“We’re throwing almost $7 billion out there in the next few months, which is major for our size,” Fortuno said in an interview when he announced the effort.
Stabilization Fund
The governor’s fiscal plan will raise Puerto Rico’s jobless rate by 2 percentage points, said the Government Development Bank, the commonwealth’s borrowing agent. Unemployment was 16.2 percent in September, the highest since May 2006 and more than any state.
To support fired workers’ transition into private employment, Fortuno’s plan includes a $2.5 billion stabilization fund financed by sales-tax-backed bonds sold by the development bank. Carlos Garcia, president of the San Juan-based institution, said $1.5 billion for the fund was raised from a $5.3 billion series of bonds announced in June.
In the interview last month, Fortuno invoked memories of 2006, when government offices shut for more than two weeks until lawmakers negotiated a bailout from the development bank to plug a revenue shortfall.
“We don’t have a choice,” Fortuno said. “I’m not going to allow this place to close down like it did once.”
June Target
While Fortuno demands spending reductions, tax revenue is falling in the self-governing Commonwealth, whose residents pay only local income and sales taxes and no federal income levies. Collections dropped 5 percent in August from a year earlier, the eighth decline in 12 months, according to the development bank.
With unemployment rising and revenue declining, Fortuno suspended government job cuts short of his original target of 30,000, he said in an interview on Oct. 22 at a conference in Fajardo, 30 miles (49 kilometers) east of San Juan. Only $1.2 billion of the governor’s proposed spending reductions have been implemented, with the balance planned by the time the current fiscal year ends next June, the development bank said on Oct. 2.
Such delays aren’t surprising, said Horacio Aldrete- Sanchez, a Dallas-based S&P analyst.
“Balanced budgets won’t be achieved right away,” he said in an interview. “We always assumed it will take several years to achieve fiscal balance.”
Pharmaceutical Jobs
The island’s transformation from agriculture to one where manufacturing provided 46 percent of income in 2002 has stalled because of the global recession and the end of U.S. tax incentives that created 100,000 pharmaceutical jobs in the 1990s, said Miguel Soto-Class, executive director of the Center for the New Economy in San Juan, a private researcher.
More local enterprise is needed, especially tourism, which comprises 7 percent of the economy, he said.
“We consume things we don’t make with money that’s not ours, and you can’t grow an economy that way,” Soto-Class said. “We need a top-to-bottom reinvention of the taxing system to widen the tax base and lower rates.”
The development bank’s Economic Activity Index, which measures employment, cement sales, electricity and gas consumption, rose 0.8 percent in September from the previous month, the biggest gain since October 2006, the institution said Nov. 2. Still, investors are looking more toward reductions in the budget gap, spending and debt.
“The governor has said some strong things about how they’re going to reduce the deficit,” said Doug Nelson, a credit analyst at Waddell & Reed. “I’d like to believe him, but when you look at the history of Puerto Rico, they’ve had a lot of financial difficulties over the years.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jerry Hart in Miami at jhart@bloomberg.net.
Puerto Rico Bonds Beat U.S. States as Fortuno Cuts (Update1)
By Jerry Hart
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Governor Luis Fortuno’s declaration of a fiscal emergency hasn’t deterred investors from buying Puerto Rico’s bonds, whose 20 percent return this year beat debt indexes in every U.S. state tracked by Standard & Poor’s.
Keeping investors interested in the Commonwealth’s $47 billion of debt may depend on the Republican governor’s plan to cut a $3.2 billion budget deficit, revive an economy that shrank 5.5 percent in the last fiscal year and rescue a credit rating one level from high-risk, high-yield junk. Since taking office in January, Fortuno eliminated 22,500 government jobs, riling a constituency that makes up 30 percent of the labor force.
“I’m not here to win a popularity contest,” Fortuno, 49, said by telephone from San Juan during a national strike on Oct. 15, when protesters and police clashed outside the Fortress, his home in the old section of the walled capital founded by Spain in 1521. “I’m here to deliver results.”
Bonds of Puerto Rico, which was ceded to the U.S. in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, are exempt from taxes in any state, unlike most municipal debt. The securities have benefited from record cash flows into municipal-bond funds, masking an economy that contracted in the 12 months ended June 30 at twice the 2.4 percent forecast for the country as a whole in 2009, the median estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
‘Too Few Bonds’
“I’m happy to have them because there’s a lot of cash chasing too few bonds,” said Michael Walls, who manages the $533 million Municipal High Income Fund at Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas. “The more dicey a credit is, the more it’s rallied.” His fund owns Puerto Rico securities backed by sales taxes.
The difference in yield between a 6.5 percent Puerto Rico sales-tax bond sold in June, rated A+ by S&P, and a Municipal Market Advisors’ index of 30-year AAA rated municipal securities narrowed to 45 basis points on Nov. 9 from 100 on Aug. 28, as investors drove prices of the Commonwealth’s securities up and interest rates down more than higher-rated debt. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
The Commonwealth’s debt, including the sales-tax-backed and general-obligation securities rated BBB- by S&P, one step from non-investment grade, returned 20.1 percent this year through yesterday, according to the S&P Puerto Rico Municipal Bond Index. That’s a bigger gain than any of S&P’s 27 state indexes and compares with the 13.3 percent return for the S&P/Investortools Municipal Bond Main Index of all municipal debt, which rose 13.3 percent. S&P’s high-yield muni index increased 33.2 percent.
$55 Billion
A 5.75 percent Puerto Rico general-obligation bond due in 2038 that was priced earlier this month at a discount of 96.59 to yield 6 percent rose as high as 101.35 in the when-issued market to yield 5.57 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They were offered at 5.9 percent yesterday.
Debt of the Caribbean island, whose population of 4 million is about equal to Kentucky’s, is riding a rally in which investors poured a record $55 billion into municipal-bond mutual funds this year, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington, D.C.
Fortuno’s so-called fiscal stabilization plan will have to show results soon to sustain the gains investors have recorded, said Matt Fabian, managing director at Municipal Market Advisors, a researcher in Concord, Massachusetts.
“You have a major implementation risk involving how well the plan will do,” Fabian said in an interview. “It’s not a credit that’s out of the woods yet.”
Fortuno, who earned a law degree from the University of Virginia, served as Puerto Rico’s non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington before winning the governorship a year ago with 53 percent of the votes.
Shrinking Payroll
He declared a fiscal emergency in March with a plan to curtail public spending, which has boosted borrowing to 83 percent of economic output, according to S&P. That is four times more than Massachusetts, which has more debt as a portion of GDP than any state, with 20 percent in 2007, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.
Fortuno wants $2 billion of spending cuts, mostly through reductions in the Commonwealth’s payroll. He proposed deploying $6 billion of federal stimulus funds and $500 million from his government to employ fired workers on infrastructure projects while trying to lure private companies to maintain employment.
“We’re throwing almost $7 billion out there in the next few months, which is major for our size,” Fortuno said in an interview when he announced the effort.
Stabilization Fund
The governor’s fiscal plan will raise Puerto Rico’s jobless rate by 2 percentage points, said the Government Development Bank, the commonwealth’s borrowing agent. Unemployment was 16.2 percent in September, the highest since May 2006 and more than any state.
To support fired workers’ transition into private employment, Fortuno’s plan includes a $2.5 billion stabilization fund financed by sales-tax-backed bonds sold by the development bank. Carlos Garcia, president of the San Juan-based institution, said $1.5 billion for the fund was raised from a $5.3 billion series of bonds announced in June.
In the interview last month, Fortuno invoked memories of 2006, when government offices shut for more than two weeks until lawmakers negotiated a bailout from the development bank to plug a revenue shortfall.
“We don’t have a choice,” Fortuno said. “I’m not going to allow this place to close down like it did once.”
June Target
While Fortuno demands spending reductions, tax revenue is falling in the self-governing Commonwealth, whose residents pay only local income and sales taxes and no federal income levies. Collections dropped 5 percent in August from a year earlier, the eighth decline in 12 months, according to the development bank.
With unemployment rising and revenue declining, Fortuno suspended government job cuts short of his original target of 30,000, he said in an interview on Oct. 22 at a conference in Fajardo, 30 miles (49 kilometers) east of San Juan. Only $1.2 billion of the governor’s proposed spending reductions have been implemented, with the balance planned by the time the current fiscal year ends next June, the development bank said on Oct. 2.
Such delays aren’t surprising, said Horacio Aldrete- Sanchez, a Dallas-based S&P analyst.
“Balanced budgets won’t be achieved right away,” he said in an interview. “We always assumed it will take several years to achieve fiscal balance.”
Pharmaceutical Jobs
The island’s transformation from agriculture to one where manufacturing provided 46 percent of income in 2002 has stalled because of the global recession and the end of U.S. tax incentives that created 100,000 pharmaceutical jobs in the 1990s, said Miguel Soto-Class, executive director of the Center for the New Economy in San Juan, a private researcher.
More local enterprise is needed, especially tourism, which comprises 7 percent of the economy, he said.
“We consume things we don’t make with money that’s not ours, and you can’t grow an economy that way,” Soto-Class said. “We need a top-to-bottom reinvention of the taxing system to widen the tax base and lower rates.”
The development bank’s Economic Activity Index, which measures employment, cement sales, electricity and gas consumption, rose 0.8 percent in September from the previous month, the biggest gain since October 2006, the institution said Nov. 2. Still, investors are looking more toward reductions in the budget gap, spending and debt.
“The governor has said some strong things about how they’re going to reduce the deficit,” said Doug Nelson, a credit analyst at Waddell & Reed. “I’d like to believe him, but when you look at the history of Puerto Rico, they’ve had a lot of financial difficulties over the years.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jerry Hart in Miami at jhart@bloomberg.net.
Puerto Rico-Island paradise Tax shelter
Great article...
By Richard Rahn
Have you noticed that many politicians who have trouble dealing with reality also seem to prefer fantasyland when dealing with budgets?
Those on the left never stop claiming that problems will be solved if only tax rates are increased. Why then does California, with its 10.6 percent state income tax rate, have a huge budget deficit and a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, while Texas, which does not have a state income tax, enjoys a budget surplus and a below average unemployment rate of 8.2 percent?
Why then does nearly bankrupt Rhode Island with the eighth-highest overall state tax burden in the United States, including a 7.75 percent income tax rate, have a 13 percent unemployment rate, while South Dakota with the fourth-lowest state tax burden and no state income tax, have virtually full employment with only 4.8 percent unemployment?
New York politicians have been living in political fantasyland for many years. Upper-income people living in New York City have faced the highest state and local income tax rates in the country (over 12 percent). Recent studies show high-income earners are in mass flight from New York to friendlier tax environments. The rational thing for New York politicians to do would be to cut tax rates to make New York more competitive; but no, they increased taxes on the top earners (many of whom continue to pack their bags).
It is not only politicians who live in fantasyland, but others as well, such as some labor leaders. The new (in office since January) Republican governor of Puerto Rico, Luis G. Fortuno, inherited a budget deficit of $3.2 billion, which is larger than any state budget in the United States on a per capita basis.
For many years, Puerto Rico has suffered from bloated government with five times as many government workers per capita than California. Seventy percent of the budget goes for government salaries and benefits.
Mr. Fortuno has had little choice but to take drastic action to keep the government from going bankrupt and losing its credit rating. He has already laid off 4,000 government employees, and he plans to lay off another 17,000 this week.
As would be expected, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who brought on a good part of the crisis through its excessive employment and wage demands, is now trying to prevent the governor from doing what is needed.
The SEIU has yet to learn that a parasite that kills its host soon finds it has no place to live (work) - just ask the auto union. Unlike the governor, the SEIU and the others continue to live in fantasyland, ignoring the fact that the cookie jar is empty.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has a long history of confusing facts with fiction, this past week added to the administration's claim that "nearly 650,000" jobs have been created or saved by the stimulus package. He said the recovery plan "is operating as advertised" and is on target to reach the president's goal.
In reply, the highly respected economist, Alan Meltzer, who has a long history of being able to distinguish between facts and fiction, said: "The administration can make up any number it pleases. The number has no meaning. The Council of Economic Advisers gets a number for jobs saved using the same model that Dr. Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein used when they forecast that the $787 billion stimulus program would keep the worst unemployment rate in this recession at about 8 percent. But as we all know, since that bill became law, our economy has shed some 3 million jobs and the unemployment rate is nearing double digits."
Ironically, the Obama administration and the politicians who run New York, California, etc., may ultimately help Mr. Fortuno by driving many of their highest-earning and most productive citizens to Puerto Rico.
Mr. Fortuno has made it clear that he believes the key to solving Puerto Rico's economic problems is to reduce the size of the government and take its foot off the windpipe of the private sector. He told me at a breakfast meeting last week that he wants to reform the tax system and reduce rates for everyone.
Any American citizen (which includes all native-born Puerto Ricans) who resides in Puerto Rico pays income taxes to the Puerto Rican, not to the U.S., government. The maximum income tax rate in Puerto Rico is now 33 percent, just a couple of points lower than the U.S. federal rate.
But if Mr. Obama succeeds in raising the maximum federal income tax rate up to the 50 percent range (by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and increasing "surtaxes" to fund his health care and energy schemes), and if the high-tax states continue to raise their rates so the total burden on upper-income people reaches 60 percent or more, Puerto Rican residency is going to become increasingly attractive.
At the moment, most who flee the high-tax states go to states without an income tax like Texas, Florida, and so on, but they still have to pay the federal income tax. Thus if Mr. Fortuno is able to reduce the maximum marginal tax rates in Puerto Rico to the mid-20s, many job-creating entrepreneurs are likely to make a beeline toward what will increasingly be an island paradise, where tax rates will be half of what they are on the mainland.
Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.
By Richard Rahn
Have you noticed that many politicians who have trouble dealing with reality also seem to prefer fantasyland when dealing with budgets?
Those on the left never stop claiming that problems will be solved if only tax rates are increased. Why then does California, with its 10.6 percent state income tax rate, have a huge budget deficit and a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, while Texas, which does not have a state income tax, enjoys a budget surplus and a below average unemployment rate of 8.2 percent?
Why then does nearly bankrupt Rhode Island with the eighth-highest overall state tax burden in the United States, including a 7.75 percent income tax rate, have a 13 percent unemployment rate, while South Dakota with the fourth-lowest state tax burden and no state income tax, have virtually full employment with only 4.8 percent unemployment?
New York politicians have been living in political fantasyland for many years. Upper-income people living in New York City have faced the highest state and local income tax rates in the country (over 12 percent). Recent studies show high-income earners are in mass flight from New York to friendlier tax environments. The rational thing for New York politicians to do would be to cut tax rates to make New York more competitive; but no, they increased taxes on the top earners (many of whom continue to pack their bags).
It is not only politicians who live in fantasyland, but others as well, such as some labor leaders. The new (in office since January) Republican governor of Puerto Rico, Luis G. Fortuno, inherited a budget deficit of $3.2 billion, which is larger than any state budget in the United States on a per capita basis.
For many years, Puerto Rico has suffered from bloated government with five times as many government workers per capita than California. Seventy percent of the budget goes for government salaries and benefits.
Mr. Fortuno has had little choice but to take drastic action to keep the government from going bankrupt and losing its credit rating. He has already laid off 4,000 government employees, and he plans to lay off another 17,000 this week.
As would be expected, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who brought on a good part of the crisis through its excessive employment and wage demands, is now trying to prevent the governor from doing what is needed.
The SEIU has yet to learn that a parasite that kills its host soon finds it has no place to live (work) - just ask the auto union. Unlike the governor, the SEIU and the others continue to live in fantasyland, ignoring the fact that the cookie jar is empty.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has a long history of confusing facts with fiction, this past week added to the administration's claim that "nearly 650,000" jobs have been created or saved by the stimulus package. He said the recovery plan "is operating as advertised" and is on target to reach the president's goal.
In reply, the highly respected economist, Alan Meltzer, who has a long history of being able to distinguish between facts and fiction, said: "The administration can make up any number it pleases. The number has no meaning. The Council of Economic Advisers gets a number for jobs saved using the same model that Dr. Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein used when they forecast that the $787 billion stimulus program would keep the worst unemployment rate in this recession at about 8 percent. But as we all know, since that bill became law, our economy has shed some 3 million jobs and the unemployment rate is nearing double digits."
Ironically, the Obama administration and the politicians who run New York, California, etc., may ultimately help Mr. Fortuno by driving many of their highest-earning and most productive citizens to Puerto Rico.
Mr. Fortuno has made it clear that he believes the key to solving Puerto Rico's economic problems is to reduce the size of the government and take its foot off the windpipe of the private sector. He told me at a breakfast meeting last week that he wants to reform the tax system and reduce rates for everyone.
Any American citizen (which includes all native-born Puerto Ricans) who resides in Puerto Rico pays income taxes to the Puerto Rican, not to the U.S., government. The maximum income tax rate in Puerto Rico is now 33 percent, just a couple of points lower than the U.S. federal rate.
But if Mr. Obama succeeds in raising the maximum federal income tax rate up to the 50 percent range (by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and increasing "surtaxes" to fund his health care and energy schemes), and if the high-tax states continue to raise their rates so the total burden on upper-income people reaches 60 percent or more, Puerto Rican residency is going to become increasingly attractive.
At the moment, most who flee the high-tax states go to states without an income tax like Texas, Florida, and so on, but they still have to pay the federal income tax. Thus if Mr. Fortuno is able to reduce the maximum marginal tax rates in Puerto Rico to the mid-20s, many job-creating entrepreneurs are likely to make a beeline toward what will increasingly be an island paradise, where tax rates will be half of what they are on the mainland.
Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.
Indecencia
Buen articulo....
Por Zoe Valdes
Indecencia. Por Zoe Valdes
A los cubanos no está sucediendo lo que a los rusos en la época en que escapaban del comunismo: afuera nadie les creía. Pero a nosotros nos está pasando peor, porque nosotros nos hemos quedado desfasados en todo, fuera de caja o de molde, fuera de tiempo. Pocos nos entienden; la revolución castrista fracasó como proyecto, pero ha obtenido un sólo triunfo: el hombre nuevo. El hombre nuevo es ese que tan bien retrata el cineasta León Ichaso en su reciente película Paradiso, Son los que vienen de Cuba con el cuchillo entre los dientes, a los que les da lo mismo jinetear que matar, y viven esencialmente del engaño, de la mentira, del trueque y del truco. Son el hombre y la mujer orquesta, hoy son actores o actrices, mañana serán cineastas, pasado devendrán escritores, o pintores; la cosa es vivir del cuento, y hasta dinero le sacan. No leen, ni les interesa leer de manera profunda, leen lo estricto para tener un barniz, y con ese barniz salir al ruedo a encajarle los cuernos a quien se les ponga por delante. Llegan a tu casa, en medio de un domingo, o de cualquier noche, te lloriquean un poco, piden dinero prestado, o que les consigas un trabajo, si es una beca, mejor, te sacan ideas, proyectos, te ensalzan con falsedades, te comen a mentiras, lo mismo harán con otros en cuanto te dejen a tí, al rato, en el café más cercano los verás lloriqueando frente a un amante que hicieron viajar desde Barcelona, o desde Japón, o desde la Conchinchina. Dan la mordida o el zarpazo y se largan con su rumba a arañar al próximo que ya tienen en mirilla.
En cuanto poseen un pasaporte (cosa fácil para ellos, lo tramitan desde la cama y sin pagar impuestos), y un trabajito o beca bien remunerados, regresan a Cuba a especular; se compran una casa o se la tumban a alguien. Dicen ellos mismos de sí mismos que se han convertido en personas de culto, qué risa, por dios, qué poca vergüenza y todavía menos modestia, qué estupidez tan inmensa. Y al instante, y lo que resulta más oneroso, se convierten en agentes del régimen. A trabajar para que se hagan concierticos por la paz en la plaza de la revolución, y a contarles a los “ingenuos” que en Cuba todo ha cambiado, que ya debemos pasar página, olvidar y perdonar, qué cínicos, como si ellos vivieran del olvido y del perdón. ¡Qué siniestros y sobre todo, qué indecentes en el peor sentido de la palabra! Yo viví en una época en que incluso la indecencia era tierna, era bajarse los blúmers debajo de una escalera, o hacer el amor en una azotea o apretar en el Malecón. No, ahora la indecencia lleva carnet y es militante castrista, el carnet tiene forma de libro o de cuadro, en la mayoría de las ocasiones; y en sus páginas, como en las telas, se cuentan las mismas ponzoñas que contaron en el pasado sus protagonistas reales; los robots sociolistas empiezan entonces a desenterrar mártires. ¡Pobre gentuza sin vida propia que se aferra a la de los demás para poder existir!
Es probable que Juanes, al inicio, haya sido víctima de esta gente, como Benicio del Toro; aunque al segundo lo conocí y enseguida me olió a ñángara envilecido. Juanes ayer hizo alarde de ubicuidad: Mientras afirmaba en Telesur que lo habían amenazado de muerte y citaba de manera errónea e inculta la frase de Voltaire con la que lo apoyaron en Twitter en lugar de amenazarlo como afirmó, además daba una entrevista a El Nuevo Herald en la que decía que sentía haber dañado a la comunidad cubana de Miami (no ha sido sólo a la de Miami a la que ha ofendido, ha sido a la del mundo), y también se presentaba en un concierto en Nueva York “arropado”, acuñó la prensa, de cantantes que lo apoyaron, defendieron, y resguardaron ¿de quiénes? De nosotros ¡faltaría más! De los malos de la película, de”los verdugos”, del exilio histérico, etc. ¡Qué indecencia! Así que él va a cantarle a una dictadura que ha asesinado vilmente a cientos de miles de inocentes, ha metido en la cárcel a otros tantos de miles, ha expulsado al exilio al veinte por ciento de la población, usa la pena de muerte cada vez que le sale de las verijas, para colmo, el concierto se lo organizan y amparan dos desalmados que firmaron una carta de apoyo a la pena de muerte contra tres jóvenes negros que sólo intentaban irse de ese país de basura, y ahora resulta que Juanes es la víctima del exilio y nosotros los verdugos. ¡Qué descaro tan insoportable!
Entonces le vi las cejas a Juanes, tiene las mismas cejas de Zapatero y que las de Obama; las mismas que las de Castro. Entonces me di cuenta que Juanes es otro de los que ha salido con el cuchillo entre los dientes, pagado por Havana Club, el ron castrista robado a Bacardí; Juanes es otro hombre nuevo, de los fabricados fuera, alfabetizado por las necias canciones de Silvio, los discursos del Ché y de Fidel que tanto alabó en un periódico mexicano. Juanes es de la misma estirpe de esa mujer nueva y de ese hombre nuevo cubanos, que salen de Cuba, no por problemas políticos, no, ¡qué va!, ellos salen a jinetearse al mundo bajo control de Gabo y de la Balcells. Dijo Juanes que él no es comunista, no, él es un oportunista, o sea, está en el camino correcto para devenir comunista, y comunista de los rastreros, de los representantes de la crueldad, de los voceros conscientes que están siendo mensajeros del horror. A eso me refiero, a la inmoralidad de pensamiento, a la acción cochina.
Pero quiero adelantarles algo, amigos míos, en esta guerra hemos perdido los que amamos la libertad. Porque en esta guerra -como bien dice Juan Abreu-, ellos hablan de paz, se llenan las bocas para hablar de paz. Y con la careta de la paz van ensuciando la libertad y cagándose en nuestros muertos, con toda la pompa y el ruido ensordecedor de una música para imbéciles. No estamos tratando aquí con gente decente, estamos frente a delincuentes, a gente que lo único que les vale es la pasta, los millones, frente a capitalistas millonarios disfrazados de mendigos, como Manu Chao y compañía, con pañuelito palestino al cuello, y tatuajes del Ché hasta en los párpados, estamos tratando con extremistas de izquierda, que son idénticos a los extremistas de derecha. Y ellos saben que lo que vende es eso, por eso se aferran al miserabilismo de izquierda, a una paz de pacotilla, a una paz manchada de sangre, a una paz en la que ni ellos mismos creen, porque nunca han vivido el terror, jamás lo sintieron en carne propia.
Estamos ante la indecencia más asquerosa que jamás se haya visto, la de los sucios de espíritu y de corazón.
Por Zoe Valdes
Indecencia. Por Zoe Valdes
A los cubanos no está sucediendo lo que a los rusos en la época en que escapaban del comunismo: afuera nadie les creía. Pero a nosotros nos está pasando peor, porque nosotros nos hemos quedado desfasados en todo, fuera de caja o de molde, fuera de tiempo. Pocos nos entienden; la revolución castrista fracasó como proyecto, pero ha obtenido un sólo triunfo: el hombre nuevo. El hombre nuevo es ese que tan bien retrata el cineasta León Ichaso en su reciente película Paradiso, Son los que vienen de Cuba con el cuchillo entre los dientes, a los que les da lo mismo jinetear que matar, y viven esencialmente del engaño, de la mentira, del trueque y del truco. Son el hombre y la mujer orquesta, hoy son actores o actrices, mañana serán cineastas, pasado devendrán escritores, o pintores; la cosa es vivir del cuento, y hasta dinero le sacan. No leen, ni les interesa leer de manera profunda, leen lo estricto para tener un barniz, y con ese barniz salir al ruedo a encajarle los cuernos a quien se les ponga por delante. Llegan a tu casa, en medio de un domingo, o de cualquier noche, te lloriquean un poco, piden dinero prestado, o que les consigas un trabajo, si es una beca, mejor, te sacan ideas, proyectos, te ensalzan con falsedades, te comen a mentiras, lo mismo harán con otros en cuanto te dejen a tí, al rato, en el café más cercano los verás lloriqueando frente a un amante que hicieron viajar desde Barcelona, o desde Japón, o desde la Conchinchina. Dan la mordida o el zarpazo y se largan con su rumba a arañar al próximo que ya tienen en mirilla.
En cuanto poseen un pasaporte (cosa fácil para ellos, lo tramitan desde la cama y sin pagar impuestos), y un trabajito o beca bien remunerados, regresan a Cuba a especular; se compran una casa o se la tumban a alguien. Dicen ellos mismos de sí mismos que se han convertido en personas de culto, qué risa, por dios, qué poca vergüenza y todavía menos modestia, qué estupidez tan inmensa. Y al instante, y lo que resulta más oneroso, se convierten en agentes del régimen. A trabajar para que se hagan concierticos por la paz en la plaza de la revolución, y a contarles a los “ingenuos” que en Cuba todo ha cambiado, que ya debemos pasar página, olvidar y perdonar, qué cínicos, como si ellos vivieran del olvido y del perdón. ¡Qué siniestros y sobre todo, qué indecentes en el peor sentido de la palabra! Yo viví en una época en que incluso la indecencia era tierna, era bajarse los blúmers debajo de una escalera, o hacer el amor en una azotea o apretar en el Malecón. No, ahora la indecencia lleva carnet y es militante castrista, el carnet tiene forma de libro o de cuadro, en la mayoría de las ocasiones; y en sus páginas, como en las telas, se cuentan las mismas ponzoñas que contaron en el pasado sus protagonistas reales; los robots sociolistas empiezan entonces a desenterrar mártires. ¡Pobre gentuza sin vida propia que se aferra a la de los demás para poder existir!
Es probable que Juanes, al inicio, haya sido víctima de esta gente, como Benicio del Toro; aunque al segundo lo conocí y enseguida me olió a ñángara envilecido. Juanes ayer hizo alarde de ubicuidad: Mientras afirmaba en Telesur que lo habían amenazado de muerte y citaba de manera errónea e inculta la frase de Voltaire con la que lo apoyaron en Twitter en lugar de amenazarlo como afirmó, además daba una entrevista a El Nuevo Herald en la que decía que sentía haber dañado a la comunidad cubana de Miami (no ha sido sólo a la de Miami a la que ha ofendido, ha sido a la del mundo), y también se presentaba en un concierto en Nueva York “arropado”, acuñó la prensa, de cantantes que lo apoyaron, defendieron, y resguardaron ¿de quiénes? De nosotros ¡faltaría más! De los malos de la película, de”los verdugos”, del exilio histérico, etc. ¡Qué indecencia! Así que él va a cantarle a una dictadura que ha asesinado vilmente a cientos de miles de inocentes, ha metido en la cárcel a otros tantos de miles, ha expulsado al exilio al veinte por ciento de la población, usa la pena de muerte cada vez que le sale de las verijas, para colmo, el concierto se lo organizan y amparan dos desalmados que firmaron una carta de apoyo a la pena de muerte contra tres jóvenes negros que sólo intentaban irse de ese país de basura, y ahora resulta que Juanes es la víctima del exilio y nosotros los verdugos. ¡Qué descaro tan insoportable!
Entonces le vi las cejas a Juanes, tiene las mismas cejas de Zapatero y que las de Obama; las mismas que las de Castro. Entonces me di cuenta que Juanes es otro de los que ha salido con el cuchillo entre los dientes, pagado por Havana Club, el ron castrista robado a Bacardí; Juanes es otro hombre nuevo, de los fabricados fuera, alfabetizado por las necias canciones de Silvio, los discursos del Ché y de Fidel que tanto alabó en un periódico mexicano. Juanes es de la misma estirpe de esa mujer nueva y de ese hombre nuevo cubanos, que salen de Cuba, no por problemas políticos, no, ¡qué va!, ellos salen a jinetearse al mundo bajo control de Gabo y de la Balcells. Dijo Juanes que él no es comunista, no, él es un oportunista, o sea, está en el camino correcto para devenir comunista, y comunista de los rastreros, de los representantes de la crueldad, de los voceros conscientes que están siendo mensajeros del horror. A eso me refiero, a la inmoralidad de pensamiento, a la acción cochina.
Pero quiero adelantarles algo, amigos míos, en esta guerra hemos perdido los que amamos la libertad. Porque en esta guerra -como bien dice Juan Abreu-, ellos hablan de paz, se llenan las bocas para hablar de paz. Y con la careta de la paz van ensuciando la libertad y cagándose en nuestros muertos, con toda la pompa y el ruido ensordecedor de una música para imbéciles. No estamos tratando aquí con gente decente, estamos frente a delincuentes, a gente que lo único que les vale es la pasta, los millones, frente a capitalistas millonarios disfrazados de mendigos, como Manu Chao y compañía, con pañuelito palestino al cuello, y tatuajes del Ché hasta en los párpados, estamos tratando con extremistas de izquierda, que son idénticos a los extremistas de derecha. Y ellos saben que lo que vende es eso, por eso se aferran al miserabilismo de izquierda, a una paz de pacotilla, a una paz manchada de sangre, a una paz en la que ni ellos mismos creen, porque nunca han vivido el terror, jamás lo sintieron en carne propia.
Estamos ante la indecencia más asquerosa que jamás se haya visto, la de los sucios de espíritu y de corazón.
sábado, 3 de octubre de 2009
Estas desempleado no escuches los izquierdozos
Quede desempleado ahora que:
No quede ahora mismo, me avisaron con 2 meses de anticipación.
1. Un bono en mi bolsillo de $15,000 pesos pal que me de trabajo.
2. Seguro de salud por 1 ano
3. Website de empleos.
Me pagan los sellos y comprobantes para tramitar los certificados de nacimiento, medico, y de buena conducta. Computadoras, fax e Internet gratuito en las oficinas que tienen en la ponce de leon.
4. 5,000 para estudiar. Etc.
Vienen $6,000.00 millones. Escuchen bien….6 billones. Crea tu empresa y busca como llevarte un poco de eso. En vez de perder el tiempo escuchando izquierdosos alborotosos y pelus. Excepto los que tienen el coquito raspado(como Julio Rivera Saniel). Que lo que quieren es que te pases 2 meses peleando con el PNP y pierdas tus beneficios, ponte a crear tu empresa con el financiamiento del gobierno y llévate tu purucha de chavitos de Obama. Tengo 3 corporaciones con 3 empleados a mitad de precio! Llegaron con $15,000 en el bolsillo que Fortuno les dio.
No seas bobo…los izquierdozos lo que quieren es vender sus libritos y desequilibrar. Ya casi nadie les hace caso y por eso tienen que gritar mas duro y hasta interrumpir el DIA a día de la gente pensante y decente. A mi me importa un bledo si somos populares o pnp o independentistas, después que mis hijos, mi familia y amigos estén en las papas. Total mientras estos pierdan el tiempo peleando, menos competencia y mas contratitos pa los que estamos afuera no peleando si no trabajando. Que créanme que trabajos si lo hay, 6 billones pa repartir, lo hay. Yo los estoy buscando. Sigan peleando. Yo me voy pal parque con los nenes. Tarados! Creanme en 2 Anos estamos en las papas. El flaquito de Fortuno se las trae. Se va a salir con la del.
No quede ahora mismo, me avisaron con 2 meses de anticipación.
1. Un bono en mi bolsillo de $15,000 pesos pal que me de trabajo.
2. Seguro de salud por 1 ano
3. Website de empleos.
Me pagan los sellos y comprobantes para tramitar los certificados de nacimiento, medico, y de buena conducta. Computadoras, fax e Internet gratuito en las oficinas que tienen en la ponce de leon.
4. 5,000 para estudiar. Etc.
Vienen $6,000.00 millones. Escuchen bien….6 billones. Crea tu empresa y busca como llevarte un poco de eso. En vez de perder el tiempo escuchando izquierdosos alborotosos y pelus. Excepto los que tienen el coquito raspado(como Julio Rivera Saniel). Que lo que quieren es que te pases 2 meses peleando con el PNP y pierdas tus beneficios, ponte a crear tu empresa con el financiamiento del gobierno y llévate tu purucha de chavitos de Obama. Tengo 3 corporaciones con 3 empleados a mitad de precio! Llegaron con $15,000 en el bolsillo que Fortuno les dio.
No seas bobo…los izquierdozos lo que quieren es vender sus libritos y desequilibrar. Ya casi nadie les hace caso y por eso tienen que gritar mas duro y hasta interrumpir el DIA a día de la gente pensante y decente. A mi me importa un bledo si somos populares o pnp o independentistas, después que mis hijos, mi familia y amigos estén en las papas. Total mientras estos pierdan el tiempo peleando, menos competencia y mas contratitos pa los que estamos afuera no peleando si no trabajando. Que créanme que trabajos si lo hay, 6 billones pa repartir, lo hay. Yo los estoy buscando. Sigan peleando. Yo me voy pal parque con los nenes. Tarados! Creanme en 2 Anos estamos en las papas. El flaquito de Fortuno se las trae. Se va a salir con la del.
viernes, 12 de septiembre de 2008
Republicanos vs Democratas: Populares vs. PNP
El problema para los democratss es sencillo. Los demócratas se conforman con lucir inteligentes mas que con ganar. Se conforman con perder luciendo bonito(algo así como los pipiolos en PR) ganan todos los debates pero no salen de un 5%. Confianza, arrogancia, ambos…quien sabe?
Los republicanos han sentado una base sólida y bien organizada en la que esperan el mínimo error del contrario por pequeño que sea y lo riegan por todos los medios que ellos controlan y alimentan de una manera impresionante. Solo recuerden como un candidato pulido como John Kerry comete un error al hacer un comentario desafortunado de la hija homosexual de Cheney y los republicanos “go for the throat”. A los 30 minutos esta en todos los medios de comunicación tanto locales como nacionales que ellos han mantenido y crecido año tras año. (Kerry insults Cheneys daughter), con la cara triste de Cheney al lado de esta, como consolándola.
El pueblo puertorriqueño y el americano se parecen mucho en que somos pueblos que no se informan, se concentran en los titulares, no profundizamos. De hecho un pueblo que no conoce ni la estructura política, ni la jurídica no tiene perspectiva ninguna ni fundamento alguno para seleccionar bien. Tiende a seleccionar sus candidatos en base a apariencias, en base a lo que le es familiar. Que es lo familiar para estos dos pueblos, pues el jefe de la familia en la novela de las 7pm, ( viejo de cabello blanco, y tez blanca de un hablar muy correcto y firme) y el hijo de este que va a ser su sucesor en la empresa y comparte estas características, claro sin el pelo blanco.
Puedes tener preparada la mejor presentación del mundo, y ser el mejor presentador, pero si el tema es la belleza de la piel, a una audiencia de cochinos, de que sirve. Aunque algunos estén usando lipstick! Perdón, no pude aguantarme.
EL que mejor entienda eso, es el que va a tener éxito, y va a ser seleccionado. Los demócratas (y los PNP también) (los populares siempre lo han entendido), tienen que asimilar el hecho de que para poder ejecutar sus ideas, algunas de las cuales (no todas) son buenas, tienen que llegar primero al trono. Tienen que entender su publico.
Mi humilde opinión…
Prensadisidentepr
Los republicanos han sentado una base sólida y bien organizada en la que esperan el mínimo error del contrario por pequeño que sea y lo riegan por todos los medios que ellos controlan y alimentan de una manera impresionante. Solo recuerden como un candidato pulido como John Kerry comete un error al hacer un comentario desafortunado de la hija homosexual de Cheney y los republicanos “go for the throat”. A los 30 minutos esta en todos los medios de comunicación tanto locales como nacionales que ellos han mantenido y crecido año tras año. (Kerry insults Cheneys daughter), con la cara triste de Cheney al lado de esta, como consolándola.
El pueblo puertorriqueño y el americano se parecen mucho en que somos pueblos que no se informan, se concentran en los titulares, no profundizamos. De hecho un pueblo que no conoce ni la estructura política, ni la jurídica no tiene perspectiva ninguna ni fundamento alguno para seleccionar bien. Tiende a seleccionar sus candidatos en base a apariencias, en base a lo que le es familiar. Que es lo familiar para estos dos pueblos, pues el jefe de la familia en la novela de las 7pm, ( viejo de cabello blanco, y tez blanca de un hablar muy correcto y firme) y el hijo de este que va a ser su sucesor en la empresa y comparte estas características, claro sin el pelo blanco.
Puedes tener preparada la mejor presentación del mundo, y ser el mejor presentador, pero si el tema es la belleza de la piel, a una audiencia de cochinos, de que sirve. Aunque algunos estén usando lipstick! Perdón, no pude aguantarme.
EL que mejor entienda eso, es el que va a tener éxito, y va a ser seleccionado. Los demócratas (y los PNP también) (los populares siempre lo han entendido), tienen que asimilar el hecho de que para poder ejecutar sus ideas, algunas de las cuales (no todas) son buenas, tienen que llegar primero al trono. Tienen que entender su publico.
Mi humilde opinión…
Prensadisidentepr
martes, 9 de septiembre de 2008
viernes, 5 de septiembre de 2008
Le mejor de Puerto rico-Parques para Bebes 2-4 aNos
Para aquellos padres que no saben donde llevar a sus ninos pequenos, los sabados y domingos. Varias opciones que yo he tratado y parecieron seguras y divertidas. Sus sugerencias son bienvenidas.
1. Stella Maris Condado
2. Munoz Rivera-San Juan
3. Urbanizacion Santa Elvira-Caguas
4. Parque Central-San Juan
5. El Morro
6. Parque de los ninos - Bayamon
1. Stella Maris Condado
2. Munoz Rivera-San Juan
3. Urbanizacion Santa Elvira-Caguas
4. Parque Central-San Juan
5. El Morro
6. Parque de los ninos - Bayamon
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