The Rape of Puerto Rico

The US island territory of Puerto Rico has had a rough time of it going back years before the devastation of Hurricane Maria.  The hurricane did, however, take down the remnants of PR's flagging electrical grid. Now a contract has been let to restore the grid and that's good news and very bad news for the rapidly declining population of Puerto Rico.

When the Americans conquered Iraq and set up a provisional government in Baghdad there were endless stories of people with no experience jumping into positions of high responsibility and of the waste/loss of hundreds of millions, more like several billions of dollars of aid cash. Anybody who could get a team with an idea to Baghdad seemed to be rewarded with a pallet of crisp greenbacks.

Is Puerto Rico poised for the same treatment? Jaws dropped when the no-bid $300 million electrical grid contract  was awarded to Whitefish Energy, a 2 year old Montana company headquartered in a cabin that, until recently, had just two permanent employees.

Whitefish has links to both Trump and to Interior Secretary Ryan "Scorched Earth" Zinke who also hails from Whitefish, Montana, population 7,279. Zinke's son also worked for the start-up company.

Whitefish, sure is purdy,

On Friday, Whitefish's favourite son, Zinke, lashed back at critics. “Only in elitist Washington, D.C., would being from a small town be considered a crime,” Zinke said.

What also makes the Whitefish contract reminiscent of  post-collapse Baghdad are the lavish "free fire zone" labour rates in the deal.


Much of the controversy that has surrounded the contract has focused on the high rates Whitefish is charging for labor. The contract shows those labor rates are pricey indeed: $240 an hour for a general foreman and $227 for a lineman. The per diems are also expensive: almost $80 a day for meals, and $332 a day for lodging. Employee flights are billed at $1,000 each way.

For subcontractors, the bulk of Whitefish's workforce, the prices go even higher. A general foreman costs $336 an hour and a lineman, $319.

Now, to make sense of those figures, a fully qualified lineman in Canada makes an average of just over $41 an hour. In California it's $47 an hour, USD, and $39 an hour in Arizona.

Whitefish Energy isn't doing much of the work perhaps because two-man companies rarely have the personnel, the means and the know-how for rebuilding an electrical grid. No problem. Whitefish is subcontracting the real work and, of course, pocketing its cut.

I don't know but it sure sounds like rape to me.

Update:

Associated Press reports that the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, has called for cancellation of the  Whitefish contract.