Status: NMI a welfare state!

Spent several weeks listening to the voice of simple folks at home. Didn’t have an agenda in mind going into the unscheduled discussions. It was purely a listening and reconnection session. Unfortunately, most of what was said weren’t very encouraging, though heartfelt in every respect.

Uppermost is the price of basic family needs skyrocketing while salaries have remained the same in a sluggish economy. The gap in salaries versus increases in the cost of living is oceans apart. No denying the hardship everywhere!

I could hear the anguish and gripes of working folks who have to weather it all. Their narrative or story is simply contained in two words: “High” and “Low.” The first is about the high cost of basically everything, the latter is the low or stagnant wages for more than 10 years.

To illustrate a point: Let’s say you’re earning the minimum wage of $5.50 an hour. You subtract 65 percent that includes increases in the cost of basic goods, power bills, health premiums, health deductibles, and gasoline at the pump, among other obligations. In actuality, your hourly income is reduced significantly down to about $2.40 an hour. This sum is way below the federal definition of poverty income level. How does a family of four live with $192 biweekly?

The reduction in income translates into search for family survival. It includes food coupons from NAP, NMHC housing voucher, Medicaid, and other federally funded programs designed to help families in poverty. Otherwise, they’d be out on the streets looking for both food and shelter. Is the CNMI a “welfare state”? Or did someone say corruption comes in a close second?

Juggling pennies

For many families, the juggle for payment on payday Fridays is CUC power bills or food. Many would pay the former relying on communal sharing for the other. This aspect of the culture shields a lot of families from hunger. They even share NAP food items with everyone. It has come down to “financial jungle fighting” for survival that could only be understood wearing cultural prism.

Communal sharing is an aspect of the local culture often misunderstood, especially by those who hail from other cultures. But it’s intact and if you’re quizzing why haven’t anyone been rushed to CHC for hunger, it’s because we share our food, abundantly. It’s a unique thing in our tradition that has kept us happy campers all these years even in battered “better times.”

Routines have gone basically undisturbed or weathered by most folks until you hit another woefully sensitive nerve: the high cost of health insurance. I’ve seen how families have pulled out of the program only to be met instantly with catastrophic illnesses. I’d cringe pondering what else is ahead of a very sick local population.

Thank God there’s help from the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and the head of the program deserves community accolades for her proactivity meeting the needs of folks caught in this fatal dilemma. We’re fortunate too there’s Medicaid and Medicare, the latter for seniors. But how do we prop up money when Medicaid funds are depleted in the near future?

It’s a heavily challenging task leadership must address well in advance. Otherwise, you could recite the “Our Father” and tons of mea culpa before a deficit strapped federal government severs the umbilical cord on food stamps and other entitlement programs. Even Kilili no longer issues laptops provided generously by Obama.

Folks with kids in colleges and universities have rekindled rugged individualism and gone to the family farm to work their gardens while raising farm animals. What’s grown are for domestic consumption while they use fixed income to help their kids in off-island schools. I had to admire the placement of education of their children amidst the bad times. What sterling resiliency!

That things are okay is pure folly. But folks have drawn strengths from the wisdom of their experiences to weather the disastrous storm of economic disaster at home. I chanced asking for support for incumbents. It didn’t settle well in the mind and faces of folks around the barbecue pit. I shifted gear and poked a joke and, as they were laughing, I scurried to my jeep and headed home. They were madder than hell!

In thoughtful meditation, I ventured another walk into romanticizing the future of the CNMI if we do the right things by doing it right. I could hear the distant echo of economic prosperity in “anchor investments.” Its success, however, must come with a fully thought-out integrated socio-economic plan. Even with straight from the heart expressions from the simple folks at home I still remain bullish that together we can replace apathetic with conscious leadership to rebuild our canoe of hope.

Locals and corporate war

The pages of the newspapers are replete with advertisement or public relations pieces what the two casino applicants could do to “empower” the island. One hangs its hat with NMC, the other the trade institute in Lower Base. Call it instant soba assimilation!

At the center of the casino rotunda are local warriors boasting shiny swords, spears, and David’s sling (atupat), ready to cut down anything and everything. They are there as pawns of corporate bosses sitting comfortably atop the judges’ table waiting for the impending slugfest. What would be the results of this feud?

Casino would move into the island if legal calisthenics doesn’t derail it on the way in. The only realistic remedy is to improve upon the law like opening it up for competition. The industry, though, can’t be the main engine of the local economy other than settling as a component of tourism.

An issue of such magnitude requires insightful review beyond pipe dreams of millions of fish in boat that are still loose in the open waters.