Well, gee golly Gomer

Given that there is no CNMI institution singularly more responsible than the CNMI Judiciary for the CNMI’s demise among investors over the past two decades, it is curious to read the groveling drivel by which several CNMI Bar Association members publicly intimate that the best and brightest have served as CNMI jurists and those presently serving should not be subjected to salary diminution as the general CNMI citizenry starves.

After all, it was the CNMI Judiciary, was it not, which in lieu of promptly disposing of baseless and greedily-motivated Article 12 land claims originating in the 1980s, opted instead to needlessly create the CNMI Supreme Court to divest jurisdiction over those claims from the U.S. District Court’s then-existing Appellate Division, and to thereafter perpetuate those legally baseless claims for years until final disposition by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals?

Which, of course, is in turn why investors from Japan and elsewhere correctly deemed the CNMI an investors’ nightmare as this nonsense persisted into the mid-1990s or so. Followed, soon after, by the departure of Japanese luminaries JAL, Tokyo Marine, and others, e.g., Nikko Hotel.

It was the CNMI Judiciary, was it not, which thereafter, in tandem with their legislative counterparts, orchestrated the enactment of legislation compelling the CNMI Retirement Fund to loan to the CNMI Judiciary the $10 million or so used to construct the CNMI Judiciary’s temple-to-itself, in the shadow of the nearby, decrepit, high school so desperately needing repair to educate the CNMI’s most valuable gift, its youth?

Fast-forward to present, and let this CNMI Judiciary disclose to the economically suffering CNMI public, if it will, just how much of the $10 million loan from the Fund has been repaid? Why might the word “zero” come to mind? Interest payments?

Or, just why must CNMI judges/justices be furnished with publicly-funded vehicles and gasoline when they are paid to be at work in the Guma Hustitia and, while there, to work at work?

As for the CNMI Judiciary’s relationship with the seemingly-soon-to-be-bankrupt CNMI Retirement Fund, well, gee golly Gomer, how many retired judges/justices are receiving how much in the way of hefty six-figure annual payments from the Fund?

And now we’ve got the specter of the Chief Justice urging the legislators not to cut CNMI judges’/justices’ salaries? Hmmm, let’s ponder: perhaps instead it might suffice to simply slash 50 percent of their salaries for reprogramming in payment to the CNMI Retirement Fund?

Investors want stability in tandem with functioning public institutions possessing integrity and competence. In the CNMI Judiciary they’ve gone wanting over the course of the 1980s and 1990s with the result now in the 21st century readily apparent by way of the CNMI’s economic collapse the result of failed investor-confidence causing wholesale investor-flight.