Time to regroup

We live in a beautiful archipelago. It is endowed with white sandy beaches and turquoise waters that surround it. However, our sense of trust disappears as we ponder the incompetency of people upstairs on whose feet we’ve laid our future. Troubling!

As such, we’re basically shipwrecked looking shockingly at the iceberg from our rescue boat. We hope to return to normalcy though even this is drowning under the rough waters of the lack of leadership at home.

Took a simple overview of where we’re headed under such devastating conditions. It looks pessimistic what with the NMI government now the largest employer here piled with corruption and mounting deficit that that derail optimism. It’s a serious indicator of what’s coming down the pike. Could we continue prolonging self-denial?

Someone once said: “If you can’t dazzle the people with brilliance; baffle them with BS.” Seems fitting in this case, right? The villagers’ mouthwash of corruption won’t fade. It will linger!

The calculus of what politicians could do disappears into the sunset. Revenue generation is at its weakest. Would there be realistic fiscal trajectory so the rubber meets the proverbial road?

Some basic services may suffer heavy financial paralysis including the obligation to the settlement fund. This requires hard decision-making that should include paring down cost to skeletal level. Evidently, I’m not peddling fiction here. Bankruptcy has metastasized!

The projected FY16 budget is short by over $7 million while we yawn at the FY`15 deficit of $9.1 million. Factor in the need for the hospital and the school system and you’re dealing with a fiscal challenge that is difficult to resolve. Collecting from new investments would take about two or more years. There’s the troubling $510 million beastly cumulative deficit government managers must wrestle with.

Under dwindling fiscal resources employees must endure several more years of zero salary increase. Most would have to employ the culture of communal sharing to eat out of the same bowl of rice most of the next several years. I strongly suggest you guard the family purse in terms of expenditure. It’s down to pennies, nickels, and dimes until the economy makes headway, if at all. No fun a task but a must to ensure we stay above water.

Obviously, there’s a need for a plan on how to revive the local economy. In the absence of a fully thought-out plan we’d be employing ad hoc planning (plan by) rather than “plan for” what lies ahead. Putting together a plan is an issue the NMI can no longer ignore. It should secure the benefits of a blue print leaving room for policy refinement as it moves forward.

Understandably, the NMI isn’t endowed with natural resources it could rely upon to meet its financial needs. But it could review policies on investments with the view to easing stringent requirements and cuts in its operations.

We’re in deep fiscal straits and not even the tons of white grain along the shore could sand down this reality for the foreseeable future.

Hillside tidal shift

There’s speculation of a few changes in the guard from the old to the new under a different piper. Some of these folks would descend, if not, already.

I’d like to see if the severally beatified Unsinkable Molly Browns could hold unto power. The tidal shift is up to the new titular head. It’s a team he should forge to ensure continuity and stability. It’s a tough job deciding who goes and stays.

It’s a matter of realignment and it is here where the red line is drawn that could translate either way: survival or destruction. Call it reality check!

Minimum wage discussion

We hear sob stories of how another increase in minimum wage would destroy small businesses, jobs or force price hikes of basic goods that returns everything to square one. The debate goes in and out of various quarters. Specifically how it would help resolve poverty. It’s an involved issue that also brings up which wage system is best: minimum or living wage?

The minimum gives employees at this level something to look forward to until further notice. It is mired in shallow politics. The second grants employees more income to maintain decent lifestyle, e.g., a house, family car, and disposable income for other family needs like college education for the kids. This too can’t be forced given its devastating effects and neither system resolves eradication of poverty.

Even with increase in the minimum wage, many recipients still receive entitlement benefits like food stamps and Medicaid. Some have refused any increase in wages taking preference in the amount of assistance coming from the two programs. Do you blame them? Indeed, many are reliant on Medicaid to cover family health needs as they quiz what happens if the program suffers heavy budgetary cuts in the near term under republican charge in Washington?

If a Republican president comes in cushioned by a GOP majority in the U.S. Congress we could almost guarantee that Obama’s signature domestic policy in Obamacare would be repealed. It may be disadvantageous to us but would Congress even listen when its goal is to reduce the national debt and help return health insurance to private hands? It’s an issue that merits critical review for it seems we’ve taken a superficial leap of faith and reliance on a program destined for eventual scrapping.

It’s time to retreat and focus on the training and education of our people. A good program on skills acquisition and education would render living in poverty a closed chapter. It prepares, via skills acquisition and education a much more sure footed future. It builds good familial values in the essence of hard work or rugged individualism Therefore the focus should be on training and the education of our people. Statutory increase isn’t the answer and history has proven it time and again.