Federal Policy: "If it ain't broken, fix it `til it is".
It’s an interesting sentiment inscribed in a plaque pasted at the side of desk at a government office on Capital Hill. I quietly acknowledged the truth of the message which goes with the tide for a federal agenda to takeover these islands. It was troubling though how such a plan runs contrary to the president’s “welfare to work” program as he touts of a robust US economy that has created wealth and jobs.
I tried to make sense of conflicting federal policy: An agenda to ruin not only a fragile island economy, but one that has left permanent traces of instability as an investment venue. It was such a despairing experience for obvious reasons where punitive shifts can instantly kill the only economic sector upon which we generate revenues and dash all hopes for a stable economic future.
I wondered if this is what American Democracy is all about: Annihilate the livelihood of minorities especially half US Citizens in a remote island who don’t benefit from representation in the most powerful chambers on earth. Even such notion is juvenile when measured against the principles under which the greatest nation on earth is founded. It confirms an old suspicion that there’s really nothing wrong with government for corruption and violations are in the hands of people who run it.
As recently as a week ago, another minimum wage measure was introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy, Daniel Akaka and others to raise the current wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 an hour between this September and the year 2000. It included a provision that would amend the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938 to implement the federal minimum wage here, accordingly. Do these people read realistic economic conditions out here before forcibly pushing the NMI to leap to its death?
The local economy has gone from bustle to bust! It has, since the onset of the Asian crisis, disintegrated in ways so devastating that the financially strapped local government won’t be able to pay for basic public services, including medical supplies at some point this year. Imagine what these alleged economic pundits would do if they were surgeons faced with a hemophiliac on the operating table. They’ll definitely put him under the knife even with full knowledge of the patient’s fatal condition. A hemophiliac is a patient who bleeds profusely even with the smallest cuts and nicks. And you have the gall to cut him open?
Perhaps the sponsors, who seem rather generous with money they never had to raise by running their own businesses, are the most warped Santas of modern history who are the least capable of plunking down to reality check to determine how their ill-conceived proposal would bring wealth and jobs creation to its knees.
The proposal may fit the robust economy of the US mainland, but even that is suspect given how most people have never benefited from the endless blary claim of a healthy economy being touted by President Clinton. How ironic what the president trumpets in his state of the union address while we ponder if wealth and jobs creation he pushes are subject to masterful spins that purposely excludes the NMI. It’s empty words of commitment saddled on top a punitive agenda that would effectively place the NMI permanently on the federal rolls.
It boggles the mind how arrogance and insensitivity can instantly dash all efforts and hopes of building lasting investments capable of instilling pride in all that our mother country stands for. It is about time that players who opt to boast and sport adolescency revisit and pay deference to the basic intent and essence of the Covenant Agreement it approved 21 years ago. While it is apparent what seems to be the forte of federal bureaucrats and warpedly liberal democratic members of Congress, please, steer clear of an already sinking local economy. It’s the least we need at a time when we’re trying to figure out how to deal with the vicious assaults of the Asian crisis.
