The NMI’s failed bravado

Out of ignorance and adolescent arrogance, we spouted bravado or decisions that it’s okay to lose Nippon investments in favor of a new friend and partner. We ignored the pioneering efforts of Nippon investors in tourism here in the late ’60s. We forced them to think with their luggage. They did!

Little did we know of its disastrous consequences like our deepening financial troubles these days. Call it political immaturity!

Now we’re back-pedaling, seeking to revive tourism from the Land of the Rising Sun. Well, it’s basically history! In two short years, when Japan opens its integrated casino resorts, most of their very own would invest right at home visiting the new tourism facilities! Would the IR now in the works for the island ever be completed?

Recalled when we told Congress in 1993 to stop all grant funds from the U.S. Congress for we were filthy rich! Now we begin seeing the realities of a deteriorating economy, worried sick as to ask Trump to be included in his basic infrastructure plans. Well, Trump is talking improving facilities across the country, not across the ocean. Did you get that, pal?

Sadly, we are sowing the seed of ignorance and junior varsity courage dazed at the poverty income level of over 51 percent of families here. Boy! What progress we’ve made “advancing to the rear!”

Losses: Over time we’ve lost some $7 billion of investments when the last Nippon yen was wire transferred from here. The NMI never recovered from such loss even with new partners. Remember the total relocation of the $2.1-billion apparel industry? The NMI lost a total of about $12 billion in combined investments. Now we wish to revive tourism from Japan. Really? Isn’t this a day late and a dollar short, so to speak?

Basics: A recent study says tourism plans here are “unrealistic” and would require immediate building of needed basic infrastructure to support it. It must be understood that development gravitates to places where basic infrastructure have already been emplaced. It’s never the reverse!

Disoriented, we now want to partake in Trump’s infrastructure plans. He’s talking about updating facilities across the country, not across the Pacific. We also want to partake on all entitlement programs that would be spared by the Trump administration. What are they? Talk about the epitome of adolescent inconsistency and incomprehension!

Skinny: President Donald Trump’s long-awaited skinny budget is finally here, according to the March 16 commentary by Romina Boccia, the leading fiscal and economic expert at the Heritage Foundation who focuses on government spending and the national debt of.

“This slim budget reprioritizes defense spending and reverses eight years of Obama-era shifts in spending from a core constitutional priority toward his domestic pet projects. Federal agencies, beware: The era of fiscal profligacy may be coming to an end, and quickly,” Boccia noted.

“Trump’s first budget plays a key role in the congressional budget process. This skinny budget is only part one. It focuses on the one-third of the budget for which Congress appropriates funding every year, called discretionary spending. Cuts would include mandatory spending or entitlement programs. Obama left behind $20 trillion in federal deficit Trump must deal with.

CHC in shambles: Reportedly, the hospital finance is in shambles. Well, the elected elite has turned Manila hospitals into their hospital of choice over CHC. It’s guarding their Cadillac lifestyle while we make do with an insufficiently funded healthcare system.

Healthcare is one of three most vital area of government, the other being education and public safety. Perhaps the solutions driven team has some magical medication under its sleeves to begin righting serious anomaly at the local hospital. I challenge you to do something right by doing it right!

It’s health and poverty income salaries of 51 percent of workers here and over 46 percent of folks without some form of health insurance that presents real challenges to the “solutions driven” team. A useless hopeful speech pales against recent performance! Can’t fool the poor that things are well when they struggle with familial poverty daily.

Rainy day: When the NMI made tons of money in the mid-’80s through the ’90s, did it save anything at all for that rainy day or “not yet, already?” A lot is wrong in paradise! Just ask the 3,000-plus locals who evacuated elsewhere in recent past in search of greener pastures abroad.

Then there’s the mounting deficit, now pegged at $471 million excluding other long-term debts like the $700 million-plus owed the old retirement program.

The pearly isles of the NMI are home for our people. The elected elite must work the clock to ensure it stays that way, not a hellish hole that becomes a nightmarish part of memory. This evacuation continues to this day.

2018 contest: We’ve heard questions asked casually or apprehensively who would be the gubernatorial tandems in next year’s contest. The answer comes like colors of blurred rainbow at a distance.

Nonetheless, it’s easy discerning the sentiment of informed citizenry, political loyalists and alleged kingmakers. The options are obvious: repeat with the “do-nothing” solutions driven team or an informed team fully rounded with people’s issues ready to make changes, or the neophyte with empty biba smiles plastered across their face.

Prism: A friend related he couldn’t believe my personal story about poverty. I reiterated that I have lived it and even tabbed water my way between classes. And unless he’s lived it, he can’t see it without my prism to understand and appreciate what I had to endure a long time ago.

We didn’t have food stamps then nor was there a school lunch program to fill our tummies before class. It was either tab water, boiled taro, or nothing at all! It remains my prized years for honing personal conviction to extricate myself from it. I think I’ve succeeded.