Meteorological hurricanes and hurricanes of political corruption and incompetence.

It is so easy to get reflexively skeptical which is almost as bad as becoming naively trusting. It is hard when reflecting on what is happening not to seem overly harsh and insensitive. However the current reporting of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico seems to be a good example of the sort of emotional manipulation undertaken by politicians to achieve ends that are not otherwise supported by the public.

In this case, the US government has taken a hard position with the government of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has three or four decades of extravagant, corrupt and spendthrift government spending with virtually nothing to show for it. It has overpromised on pensions, deceived investors and run down the infrastructure of the island while public moneys are wasted or disappear into accounts where they were not intended to go.

Puerto Rico is now technically bankrupt with no easy future. All their decisions are wretched but as a result of a cumulation of strategies and policies which at every step of the way were forecasted to end in this terrible predicament. All their decisions are horrible trade-offs.

And as always happens with centralized, unchecked government spending, Puerto Rican political leaders are trying to find someone else to pay for their terrible leadership. That's the backdrop.

From All Power Out as Hurricane Maria’s Winds, Floods Crush Puerto Rico by Gadi Schwartz, Alex Johnson, and Daniel Arkin.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hurricane Maria is likely to have "destroyed" Puerto Rico, the island's emergency director said Wednesday after the monster storm ripped roofs off buildings and flooded homes.

Intense flooding was reported across the economically strained U.S. territory, particularly in San Juan, the capital, where many residential streets looked like rivers.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the entire island shortly after 12:30 a.m. ET.

Yennifer Álvarez Jaimes, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló's press secretary, told NBC News that all power across the island was knocked out.

"Once we're able to go outside, we're going to find our island destroyed," Emergency Management Director Abner Gómez Cortés said at a news briefing. Rosselló imposed a 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew, citing flood warnings and the importance of keeping streets clear for repair and rescue teams.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz told MSNBC that the devastation in the capital was unlike any she had ever seen.

"The San Juan that we knew yesterday is no longer there," Yulín said, adding: "We're looking at four to six months without electricity" in Puerto Rico, home to nearly 3.5 million people.

Fair enough.

Except there were many headlines in advance of Irma two weeks ago similar to this one: Hurricane Irma threatens Puerto Rico with 6-month blackouts by Ephrat Livni.

The US National Hurricane Center anticipates that by Wednesday afternoon (Sept. 6) the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico will be slammed by a category 5 hurricane, Irma, to be followed by a tropical storm, dubbed Jose. Puerto Rico is already struggling with power supply woes, and Ricardo Ramos, the director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is predicting four-to-six-month blackouts in parts of the US territory.

Irma did not hit Puerto Rico directly and while there were power outages, it affected only about 30% of the population rather than the forecasted 100%.

Two hurricanes two weeks apart and in both cases, they anticipate in advance of the impact that they will be without power for 4-6 months. That sure sounds like the problem is not so much the hurricane as it is an exaggeration in advance in order to receive more money. Livni adds credence to that speculation. Emphasis added.

Ramos told local radio station Notiuno 630 AM on Sept. 5 that power would likely be restored to parts of the island within a week of the extreme weather. Still, he expects much longer outages to be common, as local infrastructure has deteriorated during a decade of economic recession. Puerto Ricans probably won’t be surprised.

PREPA has been officially in crisis since 2014 when it would have declared bankruptcy for $9 billion in debt but was unable to do so under the US Code’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy provisions. The local legislature’s attempt to work around this was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2016.

Puerto has been profligate and unwise in its spending and after three decades has finally run out of other people's money to borrow. They are bankrupt.

The various news reports are taking forecasts from Puerto Rican officials and repeating them without critical thought. Journalists are trying to find a dramatic edge to the story with examples of how ferocious the hurricanes are and parrot what government officials say. However, it is not the hurricanes's ferocity that is creating the destruction, it is the failure of the Puerto Rican government. And journalists are not reporting that.

It seems clear that Puerto Rican government officials are trying to create the narrative that these are uniquely powerful storms in order to bolster their claims from the federal government for funds for rebuilding. In particular, they ran their power system into the ground and are now seeking a way for the US federal government to pay for its reconstruction. They are doing an end run around the US government position so far - fix your own corruption and spending addiction before seeking funding from the US taxpayer.

There is no happy answer to this. There is no reason that mainland taxpayers ought to fund the reconstruction of a power system which was so irresponsibly run into the ground. It is not right that Puerto Ricans suffer. And it is not right that good money be thrown after bad.

But if we do fund the reconstruction, it sustains bad leadership and it further undermines the public's confidence in politicians to do the right thing.

But it also seems strangely inconceivable that reporters and editors from major newspapers and media outlets could have heard the same claim with virtually identical words, made within two weeks of each other, and not highlight the clear strategy being pursued by local politicians to defraud the greater public.