On a more serious note, I generally think handouts and bailouts are morally hazardous and I’d rather teach someone to fish than give them a McDonald’s fish sandwich.

Let them be a state!  California’s liable to crack off into the ocean at any moment, so we need a spare.

Puerto Ricans still pay social security and other taxes ‘In 2009, Puerto Rico paid $3.742 billion into the US Treasury” (Wikipedia)

it’s one of the most dynamic economic centers in the region,  counting on pharma products as one of its main exports…..which are American companies. American pharma is so big and profitable in part because they can develop so many product on the island tax free, employing a highly educated workforce for way less than they would pay on the mainland.

http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/prnt_ed/puerto-rico-exported-$41-billion-imported-$24.5-billion-in-2011-7690.html

Finally, Puerto Ricans have disproportionately served and died in the military (and can’t vote for the Commander-in-Chief). In fact, they only got citizenship in 1917 because the US needed cannon fodder for the war. It still continues to this day, Iraq War as a prime example: http://www.progressive.org/media_898

The US will never be in a bad deal, as long as they get something economic or politically strategic. Both are the case in Puerto Rico. To imply Puerto Ricans are freeloaders and welfare babies is to ignore the 100 year history of the oldest colony in the world, and how we’ve all benefited from it.

I’m quite impressed that, as a comparison, you used the District of Columbia, whose population is more that half African-American, largely descended from freed slaves and who, to this day, do not enjoy full Congressional representation. Your comments about letting them pursue independence without compensation are unfortunate. The relationship is one of duress. And as in my previous analogy to women who can manage the household budget but not vote, it seems utterly wrong to tell the woman that she’s free to leave the family home with her personal belongings but will get absolutely nothing from the family bank account.

On July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded by the United States with a landing at Guánica. As an outcome of the war, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines and Guam, that were under Spanish sovereignty, to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris.

Puerto Rico is a “spoil of war”, specifically of a pre-fabricated war created to increase US naval power.

The Foraker Act of 1900 gave Puerto Rico a certain amount of civilian popular government, including a popularly elected House of Representatives, also a judicial system following the American legal system that includes both state courts and federal courts establishing a Puerto Rico Supreme Court and a United State District Court; and a non-voting member of Congress, by the title of “Resident Commissioner”… As a result of their new U.S. citizenship, many Puerto Ricans were drafted into World War I and all subsequent wars with U.S. participation in which a national military draft was in effect.

Puerto Ricans are subject to the Draft without also being given full Congressional representation.

Some political leaders, like Pedro Albizu Campos who led the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, demanded change. On March 21, 1937, a march was organized in the southern city of Ponce by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. This march turned bloody when the Insular Police, “a force somewhat resembling the National Guard which answered to the U.S.-appointed governor”, opened fire upon unarmed and defenseless cadets and bystanders alike, as reported by a U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio and the “Hays Commission” led by Arthur Garfield Hays. Nineteen were killed and over 200 were badly wounded, many in their backs while running away. An American Civil Liberties Union report declared it a massacre and it has since been known as the Ponce Massacre.

Those protesting for independence have been massacred by the US-appointed authorities.

On October 30, 1950, Pedro Albizu Campos and other nationalists led a 3-day revolt against the United States in various cities and towns of Puerto Rico in what is known as the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s. The most notable occurred in Jayuya and Utuado. In the Jayuya revolt, known as the Jayuya Uprising, the United States declared martial law, and attacked Jayuya with infantry, artillery and bombers. The Utuado Uprising culminated in what is known as the Utuado massacre.

Attempts at independence were once again met by a massacre.

Puerto Rico has a republican form of government, subject to U.S. jurisdiction and sovereignty. Its current powers are all delegated by the United States Congress and lack full protection under the United States Constitution.

Property, not participant.

Constitutionally, Puerto Rico is subject to the Congress’s plenary powers under the territorial clause of Article IV, sec. 3, of the U.S. Constitution. (In a series of opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States, referred to as the Insular Cases, the Court ruled that territories belonged to, but were not part of the United States. Therefore, under the Territorial clause Congress had the power to determine which parts of the Constitution applied to the territories.)

In 1993, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stated that Congress may unilaterally repeal the Puerto Rican Constitution or the Puerto Rican Federal Relations Act and replace them with any rules or regulations of its choice.

In 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization passed resolutions calling on the United States to expedite a process “that would allow Puerto Ricans to fully exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence”, and to release all Puerto Rican political prisoners in U.S. prisons, to clean up, decontaminate and return the lands in the islands of Vieques and Culebra to the people of Puerto Rico, to perform a probe into U.S. human rights violations on the island and a probe into the killing by the FBI of pro-independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios.

Mostly taken from here, with some digressions to linked subjects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

I never said I was against “redress” – quite the opposite. I said that I was in favor of correcting the situation by allowing them to become a state if that’s what they want. But I don’t think we need to pay Puerto Ricans reparations if they decide not to become a state and instead pursue independence. That’s the entirety of what I was saying. If you want to change your language again to try to make me look like the one who is “repulsive” you can certainly do so, but you won’t be arguing with me, you’ll just be arguing with yourself. Again.

If it is a colony it is a rare colony that can decide to become part of the colonizing country, choose independence or independence with continued association with the colonizing country.

But it can’t do any of those things. It just held what is ultimately Barbie’s Fun Poll and has no legal effect whatsoever on what the US decides.

And the verbiage is not mine, it’s the legal definition of the relationship.

However, according to the United States Supreme Court, Puerto Rico is not free or associated; it is only a state in the general sense, not as a state of the Union in the U.S. constitutional sense. According to consistent U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence, Puerto Rico belongs to but is not an integral part of the United States. Moreover, the said jurisprudence has determined that regardless of what nominal or cosmetic veneer has moted Puerto Rico’s political status, it is essentially a U.S. colonial territory, since it is under the plenary powers of the U.S. Congress. At its most basic, this Supreme Court doctrine expresses that Puerto Rico is more like property, far from a free-governing community or nation, and thus “domestic in a foreign sense” (not for the taking or meddling by free foreign nations), but “foreign in a domestic sense” (not a partner or an equal). In the Insular Cases, the Court ruled that the United States Constitution does not automatically apply in Puerto Rico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_state_%28government%29#Puerto_Rico

Well if the New Yorkers get that Canabis legalisation too i think they have all right to go back to the old Name.

But as a state anthem, “Claridad” sounds like a much better idea than “Súbete a mi moto”.

I’m with you, though I don’t see why we need to give anyone a parting gift.

You don’t see why we owe reparations to a country that we conquered and subjugated?  How distasteful.