While all eyes are on Greece, another crisis close to home

Is Puerto Rico shades of things to come?

"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender," Prov. 22:7., KJV.

Sound familiar?

Some 61 percent of the "poor," citizens of Greece, voted Sunday against becoming slaves to their countries international lenders, but we doubt the writer of Proverbs had a democracy even as old as Greece's in mind.

European leaders hoped to get back together this week to come up with a Plan B -- or is it C, D or F? -- to save the European union and the Euro currency as well.

Ironically, one of the major creditors is Germany -- the same country for which Greece accepted 115 Marks in1960 as compensation for Nazi crimes after the Greek Central Bank was forced to loan Nazi occupiers 476 million Reichsmarks at 0 percent interest in 1942.

Arguments that the 1960 transfer was only a downpayment haven't gotten very far with the current German administration.

"Austerity" measures Greek voters turned down are foreign to us in the United States, but there's a situation hitting a little closer to home.

A decade into a recession, Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States, has decided it cannot pay on its $73 billion debt much longer.

As a result, the new sales tax was increased from 7 percent to 11.5 percent, and more tax increases are scheduled for October.

Government workers will have fewer vacations, fewer overtime hours and paid sick days, and others will lose health care benefits and transportation.

Critics say political leaders have continued to take the easy way out, spending more money than they had, increasing debt and blaming opposition leaders instead of facing reality.

Sound familiar?

Government rules have added to the problem -- Puerto Rico is required by a 1920 law to receive its goods from mainland ports on American-built ships manned by American crews, which pushes up costs -- how many goods arrive in the U.S. by similar means?

About 35 percent of Puerto Ricans use food stamps, 41 percent are officially living in poverty, about double that of Mississippi, and 60 percent are enrolled in Medicaid or some form of Medicare -- but the federal government plans to make an 11 percent cut in one of those programs, Medicare Advantage.

There are calls in Congress to relax the shipping law and allow parts of the Puerto Rican government to declare bankruptcy.

Let's hope such exercises aren't a warmup for the island nation's parent country to the north.