Sinking living standards

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The fading-echo of the “solutions driven” slogan gets you quizzical what happened to the boisterous assertion once loaded with confidence. Has it been neutered, starved, or pounded into submission?

Or is it the usual common fallacy of customary promises instantly ignored after an election? Or has the slogan morphed into another fully greased switcher?

Measured against the growing sentiment of sinking living standards that equally reduces individual family economic freedom, there’s nothing but hopelessness in most corners here. There’s just one too many cringing faces most everywhere you go.

How long could our people endure below federal and local abject poverty income level? Isn’t it that some 51 percent are in this category for about 14 years now? “Solutions driven” has become an Orwellian joke!

A lot of what turns into near-irreversible mess in the community initially begins with the imposition of “rehearsed” suspect confidence from imperial Capital Hill. Each is so designed to foster confusion for lack of realistic answers. If the “biba” and the price is right, fuegu Lodrigu!

Crushed by debts: Politicians ought to know by now that many of the reading public could discern the truth from the apparent quiet as they may be. The village folks are ever ready to take their government to task on this score. Slowly, they’re coming out of their bought and paid for convenience. Remember the $10 million in CUC payment by BSI? Done! Trust me. They’re watching!

Everyday, men and women sit at the kitchen table literally straining to stretch their dollars in the shrinking family checks. Many can’t save anything at all for future retirement and not when family income has stagnated or remained the same for 14 years now.

Folks everywhere are simply crushed by debts and family obligations way beyond the strength of their incomes. Are solutions driven answers anywhere near the kitchen table?

Prescription: Two doctors stopped by our tiny town and offered “solutions driven” prescription as the single pill cure-all. They’ve pulled out their books to read the treatment plan. Only problem is it’s the wrong book. What they’ve been reading is how to make coconut candy, not resolve socio-economic issues! A`saina dios mihu!

Do you really have the wherewithal to resolve poverty in a viciously highly depressed economy? With revenue generation headed south what would be your source of funds under a deepening fiscal crisis? Didn’t Planning and Budget Office and Department of Finance keep you abreast of deepening fiscal crisis that has already begun?

I’m usually generous to a fault but when you purposely screw things up by mouthing off heedlessly, it gets to another level of critical scrutiny. You see, the lieutenant governor promised to resolve healthcare issues as head of the House Committee on Health several years ago. For all his pomposity he never did and, yes, he failed too! Would “poverty” be his second signature failure or would there be subsequent others?

Why do you tell people what they already know that only insults their intelligence? How could you be so callous to reiterate to 51 percent under federal poverty income level folks of their condition? It’s like telling “the world’s worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel.” Eh, we may not look it but we have brains too, pal!

Sense vs. cents: I’ve listened with a sense of neutrality to arguments on the emerging land lease renewal controversy. DPL initially encouraged negotiations then shifted gears declaring that talks would commence upon complete reversion of land and improvements.

DPL is not obligated to do anything per the position it has taken. It has stayed constitutional. The shift did nothing but spur a myriad of speculative discussions: Why abort the original position that facilitates negotiations?

Would the powers-that-be listen to the clamor of village voices or simply engage use of dismissive inconsequence in hopes the issue is dies forever? It remains to be seen.

•••

Reno, Nevada, has begun dismantling casino as its mainstay, moving in stride into a vision of becoming a manufacturing hub for cars and other consumer products.

Hmmm! Somehow this industry has simply reached a saturation point, forcing leadership to engage in economic diversification.

The fast moving train of growth primarily from China places a huge challenge on the elected elite here to either go for broke or slam the brakes of impending unbridled growth right here now. Keeping my ears to the ground just to see the undercurrents. You should do the same too.

John S. Del Rosario Jr. | Contributing Author
John DelRosario Jr. is a former publisher of the Saipan Tribune and a former secretary of the Department of Public Lands.

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