Puerto Rico: Three thousand shipping containers loaded with emergency food, water, and medical supplies are sitting dockside in Puerto Rico with no way to distribute them to the 3.4 million residents of the US island of Puerto Rico waiting for help. Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló says they can’t find bus and truck drivers.

A dribble of aid is getting out to the countryside.

With roads and bridges out, both government and private employees can’t get to work. Communications are down. The crisis is deepening as San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has cried repeatedly in interviews describing the situation.

Drivers and people carrying gas cans are lined up all day to buy fuel for cars and generators.  Diabetes patients can’t keep their insulin refrigerated. About 97 percent of the Puerto Rico is without air conditioning as the islanders cook in late summer heat.

 NPR reported from a small town outside San Juan where 60 percent of the population is homeless. A resident of the local shelter said, “The bathrooms flooded and aren’t working, sewage is overflowing, the generator is broken and we are here in the dark.”

Gov. Rosselló said he worries about a secondary crisis; thousands of people leaving the island. “If we want to prevent, for example, a mass exodus, we have to take action. Congress, take note: Take action, permit Puerto Rico to have the necessary resources,” Rosselló said.

Death and Taxes: President Trump yesterday proposed sweeping changes to the federal tax code, calling for cuts in individual and corporate taxes while simplifying and eliminating some popular exemptions and deductions.

Speaking in Indiana, Trump said, “The current tax system is a colossal barrier standing in the way of America’s economic comeback.”

The plan would add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit, but Republicans continue to claim that lower taxes would spur economic growth, offsetting the loss of revenue.

A NY Times editorial counters, “This is the old supply-side hooey. In fact, over time the increased borrowing for unproductive tax cuts could depress growth by driving up interest rates.”

Trump would eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, a killer for residents of high tax states like New York and California, effectively cancelling their federal tax cut.

The President and Republicans are rushing to get through a tax bill so they can have one major legislative accomplishment this year.

With a current range of 10 percent to the top 39.6 percent, tax rates would go up for the lowest incomes and down for the highest. Trump wants to collapse the number of tax brackets from seven to three, with rates of 12, 25, and 35 percent. The corporate rate would be reduced from 35 to 20 percent and companies would be given a one-time repatriation rate to bring home foreign profits.

The standard deduction would double from $6,000 to $12,000 and the plan would eliminate the inheritance tax, which has long been a Republican target.

Up in the Air: Shortly before pushing off to Indiana to announce his tax cuts, President Trump told reporters he’s unhappy that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has spent $400,000 on private jet flights for official and maybe even some private business. “I’m going to look at it. I am not happy about it, and I let him know it,” Trump said.

Asked while he turned to walk away whether he would fire Price, Trump said over his shoulder, “We’ll see.”

Benched: Powerhouse Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino and the school’s athletic director were put on unpaid leave after one of the team’s assistant coaches was indicted on charges of bribing families to commit their ball playing sons to Louisville.

Pitino’s lawyer says he has been effectively fired.

On Tuesday, 10 men, including a top Adidas executive college and assistant coaches at four colleges, were charged with paying bribes. A school later identified as Louisville is accused of paying a high school player’s family $100,000.

Pitino has two NCAA championships in his coaching record, but Louisville has become famous for “one and done,” fielding players who get seasoned in their freshman year then move on to the pros.

The Obit Page: The most famous playboy has gone to bed for the last time. Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner, a prime mover in the sexual revolution who lived in a silk pajamas and a smoking jacket and worked from his circular bed, has died at age 91.

Hefner created Playboy in 1950, a perfect time to take advantage of sexual behavior loosened by World War II. Portraying himself as the sophisticate of sex, he wrote, “We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”

For years Hefner wrote a series of articles called, “The Playboy Philosophy,” but most men bought the magazine for the photos of naked women.

Hefner lived the life he wrote about, dating and marrying young, beautiful women into his 80s, keeping a dormitory full of his “Bunnies” in a dormitory at his Beverly Hills mansion. He lived to become an anachronism in a sexual world so free that he was nearly put out of business by internet pornography.

Massive Voter Fraud: President Trump claimed that millions of illegal voters cast ballots in the 2016 election and appointed a commission to investigate his unfounded claim. He’s not the only one looking into voting records. Researchers found that Trump son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner registered to vote in NY City — as a woman.

-30-