Hatch Act 101 Seminar
Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) has decided to offer senior employees training in abiding by the Hatch Act while conducting political activities. It’s a must seminar what with alleged overt political activities having received media attention in recent weeks fueled by revelations by the Don Young investigation.
The memo circulated to staff says the training “is designed to meet the mandatory annual ethics training require” and will “educate senior employees about the limitations on their political activities under the Hatch Act”. Well, I suppose there’s truth to the saying that “intellectual atrophy begins the day one leaves campus”.
The Hatch Act 101 Seminar is a must for all those who are itching to violate ethical laws of the federal government.
Another seminar may also be in order: “Leaving the 19th Century and catching-up with 20th Century” so Interior could join the rest of the global village prepare for the challenges of the 21st Century. Emphasis should include respecting self-governing insular areas. What pathetic lead federal agency who’s failed itself in law enforcement and now blames the NMI for its sterling failure.
Proposed federal minimum wage
It’s asinine to impose a federally mandated minimum wage on the NMI given that the cumulative benefits for guest workers here pans-out to about $6.61 an hour.
What’s warpedly ironic though is the granting of an industry wage to American Samoa while simultaneously insisting an unequal application of federal policy in the NMI.
Furthermore, the bipartisan support of granting another $1 to increase the minimum wage obviously would have to be premised on the robust national economy, which, for purposes of discussion, doesn’t include the CNMI by any stretch of the imagination.
These isles are sandwiched between dizzying assaults of the Asian crisis and the unstabling effects of a federal takeover trumpeted to well-meaning future investors.
Furthermore, local leadership has failed in sterling fashion defining the stark difference in the economic engine that has sputtered (tourism) to near death and the sturdy though much maligned apparel industry. In other words, there’s the service and manufacturing industries which deserve fair treatment if the NMI is to protect any further contraction of its revenue generation measures.
Too, the NMI also suffers from the lack of a chief law enforcement officer (legally situated Attorney General) which exacerbates any decent efforts to enforce labor laws in the NMI. I often wonder if this isn’t a subtle conspiracy to compromise our dedicated efforts to keep our house in order. I’ll leave that to speculation and be guided accordingly.
Lack of help for small businesses
The government of Japan works the clock to inject economic stimulus to assist midsize and small businesses fully wary that it can’t afford to allow their sputtering engines to conk out. In doing so, it would have incurred humongous deficit spending beyond what they’ve seen since the end of WWII.
The bipartisan support to increase federally mandated wages would cost small businesses around $17 billion. In light of the envisioned impact on small businesses, bipartisan support agilely wants to infuse tax breaks to ease the burden as the increase fall into place over the next two years.
Here in the islands, we’ve found a new toy: Tax businesses to the hilt and hope that others struggling to make ends meet eventually join the 2000 tourist related businesses who have shut their doors since two years ago. And we want to do in style: March into a box labeled “Didn’t Know What Happened!” Dios miho gi hilo` tano`. Dalai este na diskuido!
