Puerto Rico Daily Sun Almost --But Not Quite-- Connects Dots on Rangel Rum Rebate Story

NewsBusters ^ | November 15, 2009 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Your humble correspondent has just returned from the Caribbean paradise of Culebra. Politics were far from my mind as I snorkled the Culebran reefs. However, on my way home, I picked up a copy of the Puerto Rico Daily Sun in the western outskirts of San Juan and a certain story by Robert Friedman of their Washington, D.C. bureau caught my eye because it had the word "rum" in the title: "Debate heats up in D.C. over rum rebate." As a lover of that delightful beverage, I naturally scanned the story which, much to my amusement, illustrated the state of Washington politics without exactly spelling out what the problem is.

So let us now join Robert Friedman as he lays out the situation in which Captain Morgan rum (one of my favorites) is planning to move its production from Puerto Rico to the U.S. Virgin Islands:

The three stateside Puerto Rican House members have escalated the billion-dollars battle over rum rebates with a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., indicating that the recent deal to move the production of Captain Morgan rum from Puerto Rico to the U.S. Virgin Islands could set the stage for corporate ripoffs of taxpayers.

[PJ-Comix]

Pay to play, baby! Puerto Rico LOSES because they didn't stuff enough tokens into Charlie Rangel's turnstile.

[PJ-Comix]

Culebra gets a mention in this story.

[PJ-Comix]

A Culebra mention in this story.

[2harddrive]

It is a said day when even a RUM company needs a bailout!

[2harddrive]

SAD day - LOL.

[marron]

Good catch.

Read it three times and didn’t find the other reference to Culebra though...

Was that your evil plan?

[PJ-Comix]

No evil plan but if I hadn’t visited Culebra then I wouldn’t have found this copy of the Puerto Rico Daily Sun in San Juan on my way back.

[cll]

Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.

[Ebenezer]

Huh! This Puerto Rico Daily Sun, which I had never heard of until this posting, claims on its website to be "Puerto Rico's only English-language daily newspaper". Isn't The San Juan Star still being published?

[cll]

The San Juan Star went out of business a couple of years ago. Its former employees established a cooperative to publish the Daily Sun.

[Ebenezer]

What a shame; the Star was one of the newspapers I grew up with. Curiously, its website is still on the Internet.

[cll]

Same here. But in the end it was just a collection of AP stories with a sprinkling of local news. Investigative journalism and exclusives became non-existent. The only thing worth buying it for were the comics.