Shafting the taxpayers!

Outrage was the instant reaction of folks all over about the new legislative salary of $75,000 per year. No, you didn’t wake up from a bad nightmare. It’s the truth! It’s one sure step they’ve taken to cement their Cadillac lifestyle!

Let’s simplify the new raise. There are 25,658 employees CNMI-wide. Some 51 percent or 13,085 are earning poverty income level or less. Did you get this, pindehu?

Federal definition of poverty income is $24,000 for a family of two and $26,000 for a family of four. How many are earning below this level?

Former speaker Oscar C. Rasa says it isn’t the conscionable thing to do, for it creates disparity between poorer workers and their elected officials. He noted that instead of raising their salaries their focus must zero-in on how to improve the family income level of the working people NMI-wide.

Moreover, the law requires the appointment of a commission outside the Legislature. This didn’t happen but the Legislature established one comprised of its own membership and hurriedly passed its own pay raise.

The commission is legally mandated to use the composite price index—a method indicating the rise of the cost of living here—upon which a figure is used for legislative salary increases. This requirement was also bypassed, in obvious violation of the law.

Currently, legislators are earning over $15,000 more annually against those who had to endure poverty level income and below. Legislators now earn $39,500 per year. Eh, they also get car leases paid for by, yes, we the taxpayers!

It boggles the mind if the gals and guys have attained academic and professional credentials to even dream up such humiliation. Or is it because of such ignorance that they had the courage to inflict self-humiliation?

Anyone among you has a mastery of something justifying a huge salary? Why would you be earning more than the fully educated and degreed NMC or PSS instructors and registered nurses? “Biba” is not a ticket for your combined ignorance and obvious arrogance!

Review: Have any of you come to realize that all federal grants and programs are accompanied by a set of policies? Do you realize there’s nothing you could do to improve or even chance amending it? Do you understand the concept of supremacy of laws?

Recalled former speaker Heinz Hofschneider’s proposal to turn the Legislature into a part-time body. This, people, should be your focus over imposing your insatiable desire to fill up your pockets. It would save taxpayers millions of dollars per year paying for incomplete and warped representation! Another visionary whose counsel must be heeded!

In my many conversations with the late former speaker Mitch Pangelinan, he too fervently hopes the elected elite meets to do the right things by doing them right. I appreciate the sense of vision, calm, depth and clarity of the three former speakers.

Unfortunately, greed has blurred the eyesight of those now in office. They’ve openly ignored the needs of over 13,000-plus employees who stretch what little they earn to make ends meet for their families. At issue, Mr. Legislator, is your willful blindness to fill your pockets while sinking families deeper into the abyss of hardship in abject poverty.

The salary raise increases the governor’s loot from $70,000 per year to $120,000. Among territorial governors, Guam’s titular head makes $90,000 per year. Salaries on this front are based on a standard such as population, breadth of socio-economic programs, etc. It isn’t picked off thin air as it was done here.

Judges have specialties supported by BA/BS, three years of law school and professional experience thus the $120,000 per year. What is your specialty or mastery, if any? Is this something you’d like to explain?

What “we the people” see with our eyes determines the future of juveniles behind such reckless and adolescent agenda. It’s only next year when our verdict would ensure your final journey into the sunset. Not a condemnatory piece but an active and proactive observation of greedy and misguided politicians.

Salute to Mayor Apatañg: Among mayors of recent past, Mayor David M. Apatang is uniquely the most outstanding of officials who’ve served in this capacity. His chief of staff, Henry Hofscheneider, has rallied the troops to keep the island pristine, as it should be.

Apatang’s forte is organization and practices what a leader does best: gather his people together to fulfill a task benefiting the folks at home. This is what leadership is all about. The mayor has done exactly this! He deserves public acclamation if he plans to seek re-election next year. Si yuus maase`!

Digital Age: Although there’s dedicated efforts to revive the local culture, the ways of islanders is further threatened by the intrusion and adoption of the digital age, not to mention the derailing influence of colonial powers.

In the process, technology has shifted normal family activities from dinnertime conversations to instant texting. Kids use their phones and iPhones daily. Recalled a family patriarch who asked his son if he’s said his prayers. The kid, using his iphone, sent him an instant message, “I did.” Too busy on his iPhone, the father asked a second time. “It’s in your iPhone, dad”.

Indeed, we’ve entered a juncture in modern life, as though driving a car at night our vision is limited to the end of the headlight. In other words, everything after that is dark. You wouldn’t know what to expect.

Be that as it may, we should be mindful that mastery of technology can never replace a parent’s interaction with his or her child…talking to your child is the best way to encourage learning.