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According to Fox News:
Puerto Rico's governor announced that the U.S. territory has overwhelmingly chosen statehood in a nonbinding referendum Sunday held amid a deep economic crisis that has sparked an exodus of islanders to the U.S. mainland.
Nearly half a million votes were cast for statehood, more than 7,600 for free association/independence and nearly 6,700 for independence, according to preliminary results. The participation rate was just 23 percent with roughly 2.26 million registered voters, leading opponents to question the validity of a vote that several parties had boycotted.
Also covered by AP.
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Puerto Ricans Back Becoming 51st State
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @12:13PM (11 children)
They lack the culture of America, and should therefore be given independence as their own country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:19PM
They will never choose this as it would mean financial collapse, as opposed to current form of financial slavery a la Greece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:20PM (2 children)
American culture?
What exactly comprises 'American culture'? Guns, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, bullying and perpetual warmongering?
In that case you're right, I guess. All PR has is the guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:28PM
You're not making any American feel bad.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:53PM
Pointing at little bitches like you and laughing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:45PM
Oh come on, they even modeled they're flag after Captain America. How much more American can they get?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 12 2017, @02:23PM (5 children)
Louisiana also lacked the culture of the United States. But, we bought it from France, broke it up, and admitted the segments into the union, one at a time. Today, the Louisiana purchase is as "American" as any other part of America.
What do you even mean by "lacks the culture"? Is it because they are genetically non-white? Is it the black and latino ethnicity that makes them "lacking"? Does brown skin make them lacking? I can't think of any other standards by which their culture is really lacking.
Maybe their culture would improve, in your sight, if a lot of them had died in America's wars?
https://www.army.mil/article/15498/Puerto_Rico_veterans_honored/ [army.mil]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Puerto_Rican_military_personnel [wikipedia.org]
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/voices-too-many-puerto-rico-s-veterans-are-moving-away-n764676 [nbcnews.com]
There are currently some 330,000 veterans and some 35,000 Puerto Ricans in active duty service. The Puerto Rico Army/Air National Guard and the Reserve components represent another 10,000 Puerto Ricans in uniform. At least, 375,000 Puerto Ricans are veterans or are still wearing the uniform. That is without counting the several thousand serving in the national guard units of the 50 federated states of the Union. Puerto Ricans are the only Latino group over-represented in the military.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @03:07PM (3 children)
A quick look at the demographics shows that basically every race/ethnicity group is under-represented except Black Americans.
It is interesting to look at the further breakdown by sex, which shows that most non-white groups have a larger proportion of women (presumably due to the lack of white women serving).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/214869/share-of-active-duty-enlisted-women-and-men-in-the-us-military/ [statista.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_and_ethnic_categories [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 12 2017, @05:10PM (2 children)
I suppose that we could dig into that, to first find out how accurate the Wiki's numbers are. Then, we could bounce around what all those numbers mean.
Looking at the statista page, it appears that black WOMEN may be over represented. Black men, at 17%, are near the percentage of black men in the US population. I would expect that probably fluctuates slightly from year to year.
Now, taking the quote into context, the article I cited claims that Puerto Ricans are the only group of Hispanics that are over represented in the military. It makes no claim that Hispanics are over represented - it only claims that Puerto Ricans are. All other groups of Hispanics might be UNDER represented, but the Puerto Ricans are grossly over represented, and we would still get a result that shows that ALL Hispanic people are under represented.
I wonder though - why are there almost twice as many black women in the service as we might expect? And, why are there proportionately fewer white women than the other races? Am I interested enough to dig into that question? Hmmmm . . . probably not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @07:28PM
I didn't mean to try to refute your point.
I was simply pointing out that demographic groups being underrepresented in the military seems to be the norm. Specifying that Peurto Ricians are the only Latino group overrepresented needlessly limits their exceptional degree of service to their ethnic group (or tries to paint other Latinos as unpatriotic).
The comment about women was just because the results are so strikingly different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:38PM
Maybe lot of Puerto Ricans fall for the citizenship meme, because they don't realize they have de facto citizen rights?
Who knows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2017, @06:32AM
The most obvious problem is Spanish. We are already having a bit of a disaster; we shouldn't make it worse. A country has problems with unity if there is more than one language. The economy suffers too; you can never reach your full potential with all the overhead of translation and the friction in trade.
Another big problem is that they don't really endorse a competitive market with minimal government. I don't quite want to call them communist... but they are too close for comfort.
Another big problem is that the better workers have already left the island. The people who remain are lazy, elderly, uneducated, dumb, and disabled. At least "lazy" counts as culture, and the rest is mighty bad too.