Respect for governance?

When legislators fall in line to support an issue shot down twice by governance, you pound your cranium quizzing if you’ve reached the height of unsolicited stupidity. Or is the obvious deficiency or atrophy or both on the side of blindly loyal casino boys who opted to boast arrogance with ignorance as its baseline scaffold.

This must be the epitome of dismissive arrogance rolling down from Capital Hill by boys who have no inkling of the dynamics of economic swings in relationship to casinos. It’s a leading indicator that shows if the economy is ebbing for a downward or upward turn. It’s the first to take a nosedive or otherwise, depending upon the condition of the economy.

Evidently, experts from Vegas and Macau have taken an assessment of the profitability of building a casino industry here a long, long time ago. The aging Stanley Ho from Macau was here, including experts from Sands in Vegas and other casino moguls. Why did they decide otherwise?

1.) The islands in the NMI are separated individually and don’t provide easy travel from the business center to places like Tinian and Rota. Inclusive marketing would be a nightmare!

2.) The population base is too small to support even a medium-size casino outfit.

3.) The people of these islands are basically poor and won’t be able to spend what little income they have on games of chance.

4. Global casino moguls or giants have met and decided to look into Japan that is now ripe for a major casino industry. At least, she has 2.6 million wealthy folks who can do daily or weekly splurges on their disposable income. Ours is food stamps; eh, did I reveal the truth?

I’ve been to Reno, Vegas, Atlantic City, and other casinos across the country. These places thrive because the other states are contiguous to them. Here, we need to fly or swim across Agiñgan Point to make it to Tinian and Rota, if at all.

Drop it folks. It isn’t all glitz, glamour, and tons of money. Nor will it serve as the holy grail of our woefully poor financial posture today. It’s best that we return to basics and remap our future on what works best since five centuries ago. It can be done!

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Spelling ‘milk’ turned art

Some politicians are masterful spin masters who’d deliver their suspect fatal blow rightfully or wrongly and still get away with it. The uninitiated would be caught with his pants down and walk off the stage humiliated.

Interesting though how some alleged master politicians simply fail to guard the fact that numbers win elections, nothing else! Well, GOP helmsmen have slighted strong Republican incumbents at the Legislature.

It’s a tale that while they may not remember what equals one plus one (numbers needed to win elections) at least they can spell “milk.” Well, at least they’ve got this fire dance piece down to an art.

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2012: A dizzying start 

The impending year is paralyzing in every sense of the word. It would slip into our midst like a thief in the night. He’d be in our living room while we “sleep in heavenly peace,” content that all is well and good. We won’t find out what’s missing until after our sleepwalking is done at midmorning the next day.

Unambiguously, it isn’t “more of the same” but “worse of the same” ten times over. With serious business contraction, draconian austerity is already at the front yard ready for living room introduction to families yearning for leadership. This as they struggle with new spikes in grocery stores, gas pump stations, loss of the only family income, loss of first family homes, and loss of pension when the Fund goes belly up. The prism of what lies ahead is spelled and gift-wrapped in a single word: Doom! Is this their vision of life in paradise now turned hellish from the blunders of the elected elite on the hill?

Across the Pacific, it’s unsettling too how our national leaders have trumped the debt to about $15 trillion that actually totals $120 trillion when other huge cost with entitlement programs are factored in. They spoke of averting nations in Europe that are bankrupting their financial system, only to slide easily into the same pattern. Troubling in that more people would suffer from homelessness, hunger, and complete displacement. This isn’t our vision of our “stars and stripes forever” where we allow freedom to ring “from sea to shining sea” as we traverse the “fruited plain” working with unmatched industry for brighter tomorrows

There’s a more unsettling intuition of an impending disaster somewhere nearby. Would a huge wall of rocks in the Marianas Trench out east crumble and trigger mega tsunami 100 feet high and 100 miles long to pummel the entire archipelago? Would more destructive volcanic eruptions disrupt normal life in the islands? Would a superstorm hit this year? What happens when draconian austerity hits more households?

Obviously, the issues before us demands critical and razor sharp group of leadership poised to handle crisis management beyond mediocrity or what we’ve seen in recent past. That wonderful sense of useless acquiescence must go. People don’t live by vacuous promises for better days ahead. They demand to live it in real reality, not virtual reality. All this as the trade winds sigh at a distance with dark fearful clouds gathering up storm. Unsettling, isn’t it? It seems “uncertainty” has become our lexicon.