Post by Logan on Jul 3, 2016 22:57:27 GMT -6
By Guest Contributor Howard Hills*
In 1812 the territory of Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state of the union even though war with Britain raged, the local languages were French and Spanish not English, and the region had no developed economy. In 1817 the territory of Mississippi became the 20th state only after Congress and the federal courts intervened in a mass regional land scandal revealing corruption so pervasive it threatened Mississippi’s political and economic viability.
In 1916 the U.S. Congress denied American citizenship to people under U.S. rule in the Philippines and declared that island territory would become an independent nation. In 1986 the U.S. ended American rule in U.N. trusteeship territories in the Pacific and granted sovereign nationhood to Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Just as Mississippi’s catastrophic regional land title fraud scandal is now a historical footnote, the debate in Congress over the federal debt recovery law known by the acronym PROMESA will not loom large in Puerto Rico’s history. The new law’s provisions creating a federal oversight board to create fiscal order is being labeled “colonialism” by some, but in the larger sweep of history the debt recovery program is an anti-colonial measure to restore stable local self-government that will lead Puerto Rico to either statehood or nationhood.
The current provisional federal takeover of local public finances so the territorial government can be restored to solvency is historic only because its passage re-educated Congress that it alone has the ultimate constitutional power and responsibility for how Puerto Rico is governed. That lesson goes back to the first territorial law of 1789, the Northwest Ordinance, reminding Washington territory status is constitutionally temporary, and statehood or nationhood are the only permanent constitutionally defined status options.
Read more: www.puertoricoreport.com/promesa-education-congress/
In 1812 the territory of Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state of the union even though war with Britain raged, the local languages were French and Spanish not English, and the region had no developed economy. In 1817 the territory of Mississippi became the 20th state only after Congress and the federal courts intervened in a mass regional land scandal revealing corruption so pervasive it threatened Mississippi’s political and economic viability.
In 1916 the U.S. Congress denied American citizenship to people under U.S. rule in the Philippines and declared that island territory would become an independent nation. In 1986 the U.S. ended American rule in U.N. trusteeship territories in the Pacific and granted sovereign nationhood to Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Just as Mississippi’s catastrophic regional land title fraud scandal is now a historical footnote, the debate in Congress over the federal debt recovery law known by the acronym PROMESA will not loom large in Puerto Rico’s history. The new law’s provisions creating a federal oversight board to create fiscal order is being labeled “colonialism” by some, but in the larger sweep of history the debt recovery program is an anti-colonial measure to restore stable local self-government that will lead Puerto Rico to either statehood or nationhood.
The current provisional federal takeover of local public finances so the territorial government can be restored to solvency is historic only because its passage re-educated Congress that it alone has the ultimate constitutional power and responsibility for how Puerto Rico is governed. That lesson goes back to the first territorial law of 1789, the Northwest Ordinance, reminding Washington territory status is constitutionally temporary, and statehood or nationhood are the only permanent constitutionally defined status options.
Read more: www.puertoricoreport.com/promesa-education-congress/