LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Puerto Rico’s Governor Should Resign

To the Editor:

As of July 19, 2019, the island of Puerto Rico, along with many cities across the mainland United States, have begun mass protests directed towards Governor Ricardo Rosselló. On July 14, nearly 900 pages of leaked group chat conversations were released to the public. The group chat designated Governor Rosselló as its administrator, as well as other government officials. The comments made in this group chat display misogyny, homophobia and denigration towards other government officials and fellow Puerto Ricans, as well as a mishandling of government information, which was freely and openly discussed in unofficial and inappropriate conversations. These revelations exposed a great deal that has left members of the Puerto Rican Student Association, along with thousands of Puerto Ricans across the island and the mainland United States, with feelings of contempt, disgust, frustration and flat-out disappointment in Governor Ricardo Rosselló and his administration.

EDITORIAL: Vote ‘No’ on New York State Constitutional Convention

This post has been updated. 

This coming Tuesday, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to call for a state constitutional convention. While the idea of revising the state constitution is an attractive one, to do so now would be at best a non-event with costly side-effects, and at worst a dangerous exercise in the rollback of currently-existing protections. As a result, we urge voters to reject a constitutional convention at the ballot box this week. In the event of a convention, almost all delegates would be elected from existing state senate districts (15 would be elected at-large). The state senate map is consistently gerrymandered by the Republicans who have controlled the upper chamber for all but three years since 1938.

Afghanistan in Flux

Welcome to the 2009/2010 edition of Muckraking for Pennies. I had this long piece of dramatic rhetoric (it’d put Marc Anthony in Julius Caesar to shame, believe me) planned for this occasion but I figured that that would be a bit pretentious and boring right now. Instead, let’s focus on Afghanistan.