As financial crisis deepens

The bad times have blinded our sight on the growing financial crisis at home. People at the helm prefer ignoring the colossal financial mess for fear it has no choice but to brave deficit spending in the stormy sea of red ink.

The obvious divide between the elite and ordinary citizens is wedged even further. It’s like the bull and cart have each gone its own way. Each is loose heading into the crowd as we watch who could get hurt or killed. Dangerous!

Parading under our nose for over a decade are two federal policies we’ve opted to ignore: labor and immigration. They’re the two most destructive policies against the fragile dystopian economy—where nothing works—preferring to toy with remedial gun control laws. Perhaps there’s the sense that if we “whine” louder the feds would grant us another Christmas wish.

Then came the longstanding problem in the lack of water especially in the business center. Two decades of waltzing with the same mess only to find out that the problem has metastasized or spread into stage four cancer. Simultaneously, we hear expressions of planned growth on investments even without the emplacement of basic infrastructure. Isn’t this a glaring anomaly in the way we plan our future?

The only major project rolling down the runway is Best Sunshine’s hotel facility. But when it turns on its water and power, what happens to the immediate community? Do we blame BSI or the NMI for planning failure? Can the water problem support any further development? Unless something gives so-called leadership would be sashaying around as fulltime Cyclops.

Sacrificial Lamb: Under Covenant Section 603 the NMI was excluded from the customs territory of the U.S. In brief, manufactured products from the NMI entering U.S. markets would not be taxed. We did very well in the apparel industry, a $2.1 billion sector that complimented other investments like tourism granting the NMI sufficient funds in the mid-eighties for most of its basic needs. In fact, in 1993 we told the U.S. Congress no more grant funds!

Such tidings that our apparel industry mushroomed into the $2 billion plateau didn’t sit well with former California Congressman George Miller. He sees our success as “unfair” competition for paying workers here below federal minimum wage pay. Well, sir, it was the only level the NMI could afford then. Why would it bother you?

Sure enough, under pressure by his labor unions he had to concoct an agenda to destroy the NMI’s apparel industry so in the end he saves the garment industry in his backyard.

Use of the U.S. mainland liberal media focused on human rights abuse. Isn’t this also a fact in the garment industry between New York and California? Or was the media’s paid trip out here a good vacation time?

The net effect of the apparel industry’s destruction championed by Miller is joblessness and hopelessness to date. There isn’t an iota of breadcrumbs on the floor for villagers to scrounge up for the family dinner table. Where are Kilili and the “solutions driven” team on this issue?

Fodder for Comedy

The Commonwealth Ports Authority is rumored to be re-arranging its Saipan airport office to accommodate Lt. Gov. Victor Hocog recently tasked the harbor project.

The CPA board needs someone who owns a ship and is clever siphoning public funds without the constitutionally mandated legislative appropriation.

His Senate lapdog would also be hired to drive Hocog around, a similar job he once had in Guam with medical referral.

Delta Airlines is also fixing room and board for Ralphy and Victor to use as intermediate quarters before heading out for another junket trip paid for by taxpayers.

***

Meanwhile, there’s the involuntary disappointment whenever I accidentally turn to channel 23 only to see a bunch of confused people talking, not speaking, persistently disoriented. But the entry and exit are instant. The lack of wisdom turns the trip into long yawn sessions. Thus, the quick exit to avoid developing dyslexia.

Admirable though efforts to impress spectators with garbled English further blurred and highlighted by the lack of common sense, clarity and coherence.

The troop is comprised of the “hmm, hmm, hmmm”, “nu, nu, nu,” and “uh, uh, uh” categories. The first think they could think, struggling. The second gropes for words to connect, while the last think they sound intelligent but parked their IQs in their back pockets. It’s good fodder for comedy.

It is further highlighted by the absence of sentences signifying a complete thought substituted with incomplete Chamorro-English, epenthesis and haplology. There’s the predictive shallow discussion spiked by braggadocio. Though frustrating, it was still amusing in that I haven’t heard chopped Chamorro-English used for a long time. Last I heard it was back in the third grade.

Some legislators braved the notion that the NMI is sovereign and peddled appealing the local gun control law ruled unconstitutional in recent weeks. I mean, where does one go after the U.S. Supreme Court? It’s very humiliating. Or did their civics course include the creation of another supreme court? May we see your textbook on Problems of American Democracy so we could ID your self-concocted court?

In the Senate, I found it is no longer the traditional sturdy voice of reason. I mean some of the guys are basically mute. I heard a Rota senator attempt to say something only to confuse everybody, including himself. What he said in English was unintelligible. His Chamorro is completely without rhyme or reason. I figure he’s incapable of any sense of organized thought so he sounds at least halfway decent. Is he really a representative of his people?

You listen to the likes of Senators Paul Manglona and Terry Santos and it’s easy discerning their fluency and logical thought process arguing a point. Why can’t the bench warmer freshman and loose-tongued senators emulate their senior colleagues in the use of rhyme and reason?