What's really driving coal power's demise

Jeffrey York, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Boulder and David Drake, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Operations Management, University of Colorado Boulder

The use of coal for electric power has been declining fast in the U.S.

 AP Photo/J. David Ake

Mon, March 1, 2021

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

People often point to plunging natural gas prices as the reason U.S. coal-fired power plants have been shutting down at a faster pace in recent years. However, new research shows two other forces had a much larger effect: federal regulation and a well-funded activist campaign that launched in 2011 with the goal of ending coal power.

We studied the retirement of U.S. coal-fired units from January 2008 to September 2016 and compared the effects of various market factors, regulations and activism on their early closure. In all, 348 coal-fired units either retired or switched to natural gas during that time.

Among the many pressures on coal power that we reviewed, a federal regulation implemented in 2015 had the biggest overall effect. The Cross State Air Pollution Rule requires states to reduce soot and smog pollution that blows across states lines, including from power plants. We estimate that it was responsible for reducing the expected production life of the coal power units that it affected by a total of 1,170 years.

Looking at coal units individually, however, we found that the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, backed by over US$174 million to date from Bloomberg Philanthropies, had the most impact per targeted plant.

The campaign works by generating public pressure on utilities and state and local politicians to close down coal-fired units, often through targeted lawsuits. When the Beyond Coal campaign targeted a coal-fired unit, we found that the unit’s life expectancy, normally 50-60 years, was reduced by an average of just over two years.

The Cross State Air Pollution Rule was the second-biggest factor per individual plant, though it affected more plants. It reduced the expected life span of each coal-fired generating unit that it affected by an estimated average of about 21 months.

We were surprised to find that neither low natural gas prices nor the adoption of renewable energy significantly reduced the life of coal units. Both have been widely touted by politicians and business leaders as the market-based drivers of coal plant retirement.

Falling natural gas prices had little impact on coal-fired power plant closures. David Drake and Jeffrey York, CC BY-ND

However, while adoption of renewable energy alone did not reduce coal units’ life spans, the average use of each source of renewable energy in an area did have a significant impact. Coal units operating in regions with high average renewable energy use retired an average of 15 months earlier.

It is important to note that a large number of coal plants were already nearing the end of their lifecycles during this period. But through statistical modeling, we were able to isolate the impact of each of these interventions on accelerating the retirement of a given unit.

Why it matters

A rapid transition away from carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. Burning coal releases nearly twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced as natural gas does, and natural gas’s contribution to global warming is significant.

From 2011 through 2018, coal-fired generating capacity in the U.S. contracted by 23%. We estimate that the emissions impact of the accelerated retirements we studied was equivalent to taking 38 million typical passenger cars off the road.

The common narrative has been that market forces and economics have driven the demise of coal. However, our research suggests that a continued focus on federal policy is a more effective route for reducing emissions.

The Biden administration has already halted new leases for coal, oil and gas extraction on federal lands. And its climate task force – which includes the Cabinet-level department and agency heads – met in February to start coordinating governmentwide climate change solutions. Those likely will include new regulations and could include a price on carbon.

What’s next

Our current work sheds light on where responsibility lies for the acceleration of coal-fired power unit retirements through late 2016.

Next, we are interested in expanding on our findings about differences between renewable energy use and initial adoption. Understanding how to increase use of renewable sources, while creating new businesses and jobs, is a critical research agenda for addressing climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: David Drake, University of Colorado Boulder and Jeffrey York, University of Colorado Boulder.

Shale’s Private Army Ramping Up Means Supply Wild Card for OPEC

David Wethe, Kevin Crowley and Sheela Tobben
Mon, March 1, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- The battered and bruised U.S. shale industry is finding a resurgence in one of the most unlikely places: private operators most investors have never heard of.

Take the case of little known, closely held DoublePoint Energy. It’s now running more rigs in the Permian Basin than giant Chevron Corp. Meanwhile, family-owned Mewbourne Oil Co. has about the same number of rigs as Exxon Mobil Corp.

That’s emblematic of what’s happening across the industry. Once minor players, private drillers held half the share of the horizontal rig count as of December. It’s the first time in the modern shale era that they have risen to the level of the supermajors.


That’s happening when, after years of unwieldy supply growth, the big guys are finally starting to show restraint. They’ve dialed back drilling after the pandemic sent oil prices into collapse. Now that the market is on the rise again, the majors and publicly-traded counterparts are mostly sticking to the mantra of discipline, all but ending shale’s decade-long assault on OPEC for market share.

But private operators’ ambitious growth plans present the cartel with a wild card as prices rebound and it attempts to lift its own production.

“It’s amazing on both fronts: private companies are getting so much bigger than we ever thought they would and the publics are drilling so much less than we ever thought they would,” said Wil Vanloh, co-founder of the private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, whose portfolio companies have combined for 18 rigs, trailing only EOG Resources Inc. for most in the nation.

With oil prices up close to 30% in the past two months, traders and analysts are watching shale producers closely for signs that they’re opening the spigots. Most big publicly traded explorers are listening to investors’ pleas and planning to keep production flat. But the contrast in output strategy from the private companies underscores just how anarchic the oil market is.

America’s oil production currently stands at about 9.7 million barrels a day, about 3 million barrels a day less than a year ago before prices collapsed, according to the Department of Energy. That means the U.S. lost production equivalent to Iran and Angola combined, or two Gulf of Mexicos, in just 12 months.

The question is where does it go from here. A Bloomberg survey of major forecasters including Enverus and Rystad Energy showed a variance of 700,000 barrels a day, more than half of Nigeria’s production, indicating how much uncertainty surrounds large, private producers whose plans are mostly shielded from public view.

If private drillers keep expanding at their current pace, it could eventually mean that U.S. production ends up on the higher end of analyst forecasts. And that, of course, could weigh on prices.

“In a few months, a lot of private operators will return in an aggressive manner to add wells and rigs because they are able to realize returns faster as oil prices are improving,” said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad.

The private drillers are on pace to spend $3 billion in just the first three months of this year, doubling from their lowest levels of 2020, according to industry data provider Lium.

The spending spree is leading to a rig resurgence. The number of U.S. drilling rigs that can bore a hole a mile deep and turn sideways for another two miles has steadily improved since history’s worst crude-price crash forced a 15-year low in August. Most of that growth has come from the private companies.

The private drillers reached a record 50% share of the horizontal rig count in December, up from 40% a year earlier.

“We are expecting output to start growing from the second half of this year, and that will likely come more from drilling by private companies than public ones,” said Bernadette Johnson, vice president for strategy and analytics at Enverus.

DoublePoint Energy, backed by investors including Quantum, has doubled production to about 80,000 barrels a day in the past year and expects to increase to more than 100,000 barrels a day over the next few months, according to Co-Chief Executive Officer Cody Campbell.

“The publics are under a lot pressure to be disciplined with the capital they spend,” Campbell said in an interview. “They don’t have the freedom to go after returns like we can.”

That freedom means the private operators could also become more of a thorn in the side of OPEC+ if they keep expanding over the next six months to a year, said Daniel Cruise, a partner at Lium. The producer group, which meets on March 4 to discuss strategy, has been withholding barrels to support the market even as some key members disagree on the path forward.

“If these guys stay out in the field and keep pumping and shale goes up, then that presents a whole other thing for OPEC,” Cruise said.

Saudis, Russia Differ Again on Oil Strategy Before OPEC+ Meeting

Some of the discipline on the part of the publicly-traded independents comes from experience.

For years, companies pledged sky-high returns even when oil was as low as $50 a barrel. But those promises were never kept. Over the past decade, shale oil and gas producers burned through more than $300 billion in capital spending above the cash generated from oil revenues, according to Deloitte LLP. That resulted in massive flows of oil but little in the way of financial returns to investors.

Indeed, oil’s dizzying collapse last year is still fresh in the minds of many, and shareholders are quick to punish the producers they think are getting too aggressive. Matador Resources Co. was widely questioned when it recently announced plans to add one rig to its Permian Basin holdings. The stock fell as much as 10% after the announcement.

Meanwhile, private equity-backed companies are being driven to pump harder than ever before because of a more complicated exit strategy.

Many of these suppliers started up around 2014 to 2017. At the time, it was enough for a private driller to acquire some land, put in a few wells, and they’d quickly get bought up in a lucrative sale as the public producers tried to increase reserves.

But with the decline in prices, it takes a lot more for a private driller to look attractive enough to tempt the now more-disciplined majors. Many private companies have little choice but to expand output and increase cash flow in the hope that they can lure public companies down the line when oil markets and valuations improve.

“You’ve got Major League Baseball and you’ve got the minor leagues, and the private equity backed companies were kind of like the minors,” Vanloh of Quantum said. “They were serving up opportunity, aggregating land, drilling some wells, proving some things up, but they didn’t really want to run a large-scale drilling program.”

The private companies insist they won’t fall victim to shale’s past losses because all the operational difficulties have now been worked out of the major basins, making it easier to run large rig programs.

“The guesswork just isn’t there anymore, everything is just extremely repeatable,” DoublePoint’s Campbell said. “That’s a hard story to tell if you’re a public company and dealing with investors who have been burned.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

REAL BIPARTISASHIP AGAINST PROGRESSIVE IDEAS

Republicans and majority of Democrats vote to keep incarcerated people from participating in elections


Charles Davis
Tue, March 2, 2021


Cook County jail detainees check in before casting their votes after a polling place was opened in the facility for early voting on October 17, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. It was the first time pretrial detainees in the jail will get the opportunity for early voting in a general election. Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty ImagesMore


Progressive Democrats introduced a measure Tuesday to give incarcerated people the right to vote.


The amendment, to major voting rights legislation, failed by a 93-278 vote.


It received no Republican support. A majority of Democrats also voted against it.


"America does not love all its people," Rep. Cori Bush, a progressive Democrat from Missouri, argued on the floor of the House, saying that more than 5 million Americans are prevented from taking part in an election because they are currently incarcerated.

On Tuesday, Bush and Rep. Mondaire Jones, a New York Democrat, offered an amendment to sweeping voting rights legislation, HR 1. The legislation, as written, would already restore that right for those with felony convictions, but not for those who are now behind bars - one in six of whom are Black.

"This cannot continue," Bush said. "Disenfranchising our own citizens is not justice."

The amendment failed. No Republican supported the amendment, and most Democrats opposed it too, leading it to be put down by a vote of 97 to 328.

As it stands, only two states, Maine and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia never take away the right to vote, even when someone is incarcerated. But, per the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states disenfranchise anyone with a felony conviction, even after they have served their prison sentence. And while voting rights are sometimes restored later, there are often additional obstacles.

In Florida, for example, a sweeping majority of voters in 2018 approved a constitutional amendment restoring the right to vote for convicted felons who were no longer imprisoned. But the Republican-controlled legislature eviscerated the measure, requiring those with felonies on their record - disproportionately Black, overwhelmingly Democratic - to pay off any related fines before they could participate in an election again. According to The New York Times, as many as 80% are financially unable to do so.

Despite being denied the right to vote, those who are imprisoned do count: the US Census considers them residents of whichever place they are incarcerated in, meaning Black and Latino prisoners often help boost the congressional representation of largely white, rural populations.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of the House committee that oversees federal elections, noted that HR 1 would end that practice. Under the bill, incarcerated people would be counted, instead, as residents of their own hometowns. But she said that granting them the right to vote appealed to her sense of justice.

"If you're going to count the individuals for redistricting purposes, in their prisons, then I think they ought to be allowed to vote there," Lofgren commented. "Further, it occurs to me, those who oppose it think that denying a vote would somehow be a deterrent to criminal conduct. In fact, empowering people to be full citizens encourages rehabilitation."

In the meantime, Republicans, in power at the state level, are pushing to roll back access to voting. In Georgia, the GOP, most recently stung by a Democratic sweep of its two Senate seats, is pushing to restrict early voting and limit mail-in ballots.

And at the US Supreme Court, Arizona Republicans are defending a rule that throws out the vote of anyone who casts a ballot somewhere other than their designated polling place. As a lawyer for the party said Tuesday, lifting that restriction "puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats." Politics, after all, "is a zero-sum game."

Read the original article on Business Insider

 

USA

Bipartisan bill would ban lawmakers from buying and selling stocks

Jessica Smith

·Chief Political Correspondent

Wed, March 3, 2021

A new bipartisan bill backed by more than a dozen lawmakers would ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) and Sen. Rafael Warnock (D., Ga.) introduced the bill in the Senate on Wednesday.

Several Democratic lawmakers —including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.) — along with Republicans Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) and Rep. Michael Cloud (R., Texas) are pushing the bill in the House.

The Ban Conflicting Trading Act would prohibit members of Congress and senior congressional staff from buying or selling individual stocks and other investments. It would also keep them from serving on corporate boards while in office.

"A lot of members of Congress are still buying or selling individual stocks, and if it isn't a reality, there's a very strong appearance of basically trading based on non-public information," said Krishnamoorthi in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live.

The bill would require new members to sell individual holdings within six months of their election and current lawmakers would have to sell their stocks within six months of the bill's enactment. If they don't want to sell, current lawmakers could hold their investments while in office (with no option to trade until they leave office) — or transfer them to a blind trust.

“As elected representatives, we each have a constitutional obligation to honor the public trust we have been given. Members of Congress should not be permitted to abuse the role in order to make financial gains," said Cloud in a statement.

The bill's backers argue lawmakers and senior staffers have access to to advance notice of investigations, hearings and legislation that could impact stock prices. Last year, several senators came under fire for selling stock ahead of the coronavirus-related downturn. The Department of Justice investigated those senators and ultimately decided not to pursue any charges.

The STOCK Act, passed during the Obama administration, explicitly forbids members of Congress from trading on non-public information — but the new bill would hold lawmakers to a higher standard.

"One of the reasons folks are routinely cleared is because the law [the STOCK Act]... has such a high threshold of what is required in order to establish intent with regard to why people traded their stock, that it's nearly impossible to find people guilty," said Krishnamoorthi.

Though lawmakers have tried to pass bills to ban lawmakers from trading in the past, Krishnamoorthi said he's optimistic now that the effort has bipartisan support. He also argues Americans are becoming more aware of the issue. Krishnamoorthi pointed to a Data for Progress poll that found 67% of Americans support banning lawmakers from holding individual stocks.

"I think they're demanding we make these changes," he said.

If the bill becomes law, lawmakers could still hold diversified mutual funds or exchange-traded funds.

Jessica Smith is chief political correspondent for Yahoo Finance, based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaASmith8.

What's behind calls for Puerto Rico statehood? Here are 4 things to know.



Nicole Acevedo
Wed, March 3, 2021, 

Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., and Rep. Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico's nonvoting member of Congress and a Republican, introduced new legislation Tuesday to make the U.S. territory a state.

The Puerto Rico Statehood Admissions Act seeks to establish "a framework for admission, including a presidential proclamation upon its passage, a ratification vote, the election of U.S. senators and representatives and the continuity of laws, government, and obligations," Soto said at a news conference.
Why now


The bill comes amid renewed efforts from pro-statehood Puerto Ricans to pressure Congress after passage of a nonbinding referendum in November that directly asked voters whether Puerto Rico should immediately be admitted as a state. With nearly 55 percent voter turnout, about 53 percent of Puerto Ricans who voted favored statehood while 47 percent rejected it, according to Puerto Rico's Elections Commission.

The new legislation was introduced Tuesday on the 104th anniversary of the Jones Act, the first piece of legislation that opened a pathway for Puerto Ricans to earn U.S. citizenship.

"But still it's not a first-class citizenship," Gonzalez, who represents 3.2 million Puerto Ricans on the island, said. "We cannot vote for our commander-in-chief, we do not have four members of Congress, and yet Congress has all power over us."

The bill has the support of at least 49 House members, 13 Republicans and 36 Democrats, according to Gonzalez. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., is expected to eventually introduce a version of the bill in the Senate.
Why statehood

Puerto Ricans living on the island are U.S. citizens who are unable to vote for president. They don't pay federal income taxes, since they don't have voting representation in Congress. But they do pay payroll taxes, helping fund federal programs such as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which often serve as lifelines in a territory where 44 percent of the population lives in poverty. But as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico has unequal access to these programs compared to states.

While similar versions of the Soto-Gonzalez statehood bill have unsuccessfully been introduced in Congress since at least 2015, the newest version is different because it seeks to mirror the process used to bring Hawaii and Alaska into the union, said Soto.

Soto said there's a renewed sense of urgency to advocate for statehood as Puerto Rico works to resolve the compounding crises that have been heaped on the island over the last few years.

The island is still recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017 — the deadliest U.S.-based natural disaster in 100 years, which led to the deaths of at least 2,975 people — while simultaneously working to get out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history and survive the pandemic.
An opposing bill wants more options

The statehood bill was met with opposition from four Puerto Rican advocacy groups Tuesday. They bought an ad in The New York Times calling out statehood supporters such as Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi for their use of "cherry-picked statistics."

"If you're only listening to the governor of Puerto Rico, you're not even getting half the story," the ad reads. "True equity can only be achieved when Puerto Rico is free to decide its own destiny, armed with information and a full understanding of the entire range of nonterritorial political status possibilities available."

The four groups — Vamos Puerto Rico, Boricuas Unidos in the Diaspora, Diaspora in Resistance and Our Revolution Puerto Rico — argue in the ad that a bill that Reps. Nydia Velazquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both Puerto Rican Democrats from New York, are seeking to reintroduce in the House is a better option to resolving Puerto Rico's territorial status.

Related: The election on the island follows the historic protests following the scandal that led to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló's resignation.

The Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020 initially proposed creating a "status convention" made up of delegates elected by Puerto Rican voters who would come up with a long-term solution for the island’s territorial status — whether it be statehood, independence, a free association or any option other than the current territorial arrangement.

During Tuesday's news conference, Pierluisi said that proposals advocating for "a new process with other options, because some didn't like the result, show a lack of respect to the people's vote."

Puerto Rico has held a few other referendums in recent years.

In a 2017 plebiscite, 97 percent of those who voted favored statehood but opposition parties boycotted the vote, resulting in a record low turnout of 23 percent. In another 2012 plebiscite, 61 percent of voters sided with statehood, but that referendum was also mired in controversy over the way the choices for voters were phrased.

Independence didn't have 'fair chance'

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., recently said that Puerto Rico's debate over statehood demonstrates that Puerto Ricans are divided on issues surrounding their territorial status.

Most Puerto Ricans favor statehood or its current territorial status. Historically, the island's chances to meaningfully explore independence as an option were often met with roadblocks.

A 1948 Gag Law made it illegal for Puerto Ricans on the island to display the Puerto Rican flag, and a government-sanctioned surveillance program known as "las carpetas," (the binders) illegally tracked Puerto Ricans advocating for independence for about 40 years. Especially during the Cold War, Puerto Rico was of strategic importance to the U.S. and the nation's military.

"There was not a fair chance for Puerto Ricans to explore independence as an option, because both the government of Puerto Rico and the United States government did not allow that option to be on the table," Puerto Rican photographer and journalist Chris Gregory-Rivera, whose six years of reporting on "las carpetas" is also being showcased in an exhibition in Abrons Arts Center in New York City, previously told NBC News.

Related: The divide reflects the ongoing debate about how to best vote on the U.S. territory's future.

"What does that do to a country's ability to participate in civil society and self-determine? As we're talking about another referendum, taking statehood to Congress and a myriad of legal issues about things that have happened over the last few years, you can't ignore that part of the situation that we're in now has links to this moment in history," Gregory-Rivera said.

Pro-independence groups organized counterprotests in Washington on Tuesday as lawmakers announced their pro-statehood bill.

Monday was the 67th anniversary of an armed attack on Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists who fired on the House as it was in session. Five members of Congress were hurt and recovered; the attackers' prison sentences were commuted in the late 1970s by President Jimmy Carter.

The attack came two years after the 1952 agreement that made the island a commonwealth.

"The political purpose of that military attack was to draw the world's attention to the U.S. colonial situation in Puerto Rico and the repression against the Puerto Rican independence movement," Ana Lopez of the Boricua Independence Front said in a statement.

It’s time for Congress to give Puerto Ricans what they have demanded: statehood  Opinion


Pedro Pierluisi

Pedro Pierluisi is governor of Puerto Rico

and former resident commissioner for Puerto Rico in Congress.

Mon, March 1, 2021

On Nov. 3, as U.S. citizens in the 50 states voted for their federal representatives, more than a million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico declared in no uncertain terms, in a nonbinding referendum, that they want equality and that they no longer consent to being subject to that same federal government without having a voice and a vote.

For the third time in less than a decade, the people of Puerto Rico voted in favor of becoming a state of the United States. It is time for Congress to act on the moral and political imperative conveyed by our clear message.

Since 1898, when the United States took possession of Puerto Rico as a product of the Spanish-American War, our political status has been an open question — and an open wound.

Our current status denies us the most important principle of our democracy: equality. It keeps us perpetual second-class citizens, with American passports, but without having the same rights as our fellow citizens on the mainland, including millions of our family members. As a result, our economy suffers, our ability to respond to disasters such as Hurricane Maria suffers, our vulnerable citizens suffer and so many of our brothers and sisters move to the mainland in search of the rights and opportunities they should have at home.

We have been proud American citizens for more than 100 years. Puerto Ricans have fought in each of America’s wars in the 20th and 21st centuries. Nine Puerto Ricans have won the Medal of Honor, and the 65th Infantry Regiment was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. However, more than 375,000 Puerto Rican soldiers and veterans and 3 million of their brethren cannot vote for our commander-in-chief and lack equal representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

Now that the people have spoken so clearly, there is no excuse. Congress must act.

For years, those opposed to statehood for Puerto Rico, both on the island and on the mainland, hid behind the flimsy argument that Puerto Ricans had not made a clear, democratic choice expressing that statehood was their preferred path forward. This, despite the fact that there have been three island-wide elections in the past 10 years, and statehood has won each time.

Today, there can be no doubt about where the American citizens of Puerto Rico stand. On Nov. 3, we were asked a simple question: “Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a state?” and given two alternatives, “Yes” or “No.” “Yes” carried the day by a clear majority.

Moreover, the statehood question, which shared the ballot with other island-wide elections, garnered more than 100,000 votes more than the candidate who received the most votes. The statehood question was clearly on voters’ minds, and the “Yes” vote transcended party politics.

In fact, for the past 80 years, the divide between the Democratic and Republican parties on Puerto Rico was defined largely in terms of support and opposition to statehood. But, in the wake of the plebiscite, pro-statehood activists were elected to the top leadership roles in both the Republican and Democrat parties. For the first time in living memory, both of the major American parties are united on the political future of our island.

The last obstacle, however, appears to be party politics on the mainland. Members of both major parties have voiced opposition to Puerto Rican statehood for various reasons, including the idea that federal representatives from Puerto Rico would be perpetually for one party or the other. Of course, Alaska was admitted to the union as a “perpetual” blue state while Hawaii was “destined” to be a GOP stronghold. Neither of those assumptions hold true today and, if we have learned anything from the recent election, it is that concerted efforts to address a community’s concerns can produce surprising results.

But even if partisans remain unconvinced, there are far greater issues at play. Now that Puerto Rico’s desire to become a state is clear to all who believe in the sanctity of free and fair elections, it is time for Congress to act. The alternative — maintaining the status quo by doing nothing — is a betrayal of the fundamental American principle that a legitimate government requires the consent of the governed.

As the democratically chosen governor of Puerto Rico, I will work every day to ensure that my constituents, the proud American citizens whom I serve, are finally granted the rights due them.

Ultimately, however, history will be on the shoulders of the 535 voting members of the 117th U.S. Congress.

I suspect that none of them would idly stand by if their constituents were stripped of their right to have a voice and a vote in the federal government. I urge each to think about why that same principle should not apply to my constituents and to respond accordingly to their call for equality.

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE FOR PUERTO RICO


Statehood for DC could come sooner than Puerto Rico — here’s why

April Ryan
Wed, March 3, 2021

Senate Majority Leader Schumer reveals a divide in the Latinx Hill leadership splits members on statehood for Puerto Rico.

Statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico appears to be within reach this year as significant movement on the For the People Act (H.R.1 and S.1) clears a pathway for the territories to gain equal representation in the federal government.

But in the case of Puerto Rico, the island lacks the same unified support D.C. has built.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

With the U.S. House, Senate and the White House in Democrats’ control, many believe this is the time to add the two territories into the statehood.

When it comes to statehood for the District of Columbia, President Joe Biden has been a long-time supporter according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is in favor of the status change. He said the Democratic Caucus “will do everything it can to see that it happens [statehood]” for the nation’s capital.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on March 3, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

During a roundtable call with Black journalists, Leader Schumer said that there is “division” in the ranks of Latinx federal lawmakers on the Hill. Some are supportive of statehood for Puerto Rico and others are seeking different options.

Congressmen Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is supportive of statehood for Puerto Rico and wants to end “colonialism.” He contends this plan not only gives Puerto Rico representation in the House and Senate, but it will provide additional money for benefits like SNAP, Pell Grants, Medicare and Medicaid.

“If Puerto Rico had statehood, it would have five members of the House of Representatives, as well as two senators,” Torres tells theGrio. “When you have two senators and five representatives in the House, you are in a much stronger position to secure federal funding.”

Torres thinks the difference in making Puerto Rico a state “would mean billions of dollars in new funding.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks at a press conference endorsing New York City Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang on January 14, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

In some instances, not granting Puerto Rico statehood could leave the country in dire straits.

According to Torres, without federal representation, Puerto Rico lacks financial control, but as a state, the island would have more sovereignty over its funds. He pointed to the PROMESA bill of 2016, introduced by Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, as the root cause for the case for statehood hinging on financial autonomy.

“The law that establishes the financial control board to handle the debt crisis, deprives Puerto Rico of self governance. It has deepened colonialism in Puerto Rico,” Torres said.

In 2020, Puerto Rico voted on a referendum for statehood, which showed the majority of those on the island are in favor. Among the four Puerto Rican members of Congress, Torres is one of half who shares the opinion that statehood is “the only escape from colonialism,” and that a vote on statehood is democracy in action.


The post Statehood for DC could come sooner than Puerto Rico — here’s why appeared first on TheGrio.