Bankruptcy refuses to die

The NMI is broke! Leadership trembles nervously as it peeps into the inevitable fiscal disaster torching the entire archipelago. Reality shows the fiscal train wreck disintegrating or is this just a figment of my imagination?

We read with the usual yawn budgetary shortfall to the tune of $12 million for pension pay while PSS declares “no money” to pay its utility bills. Close behind are landowners threatening to close off roadways for non-payment of their land claims or pre-war properties acquired by the government a long time ago.

Add the pension obligation bond loan—basically a generational loan—where our children would shoulder paying for it over the long haul. These setbacks are woefully discouraging indications of our fiscal, therefore, economic posture. But wait, legislators are traveling to check if the skies are falling. Isn’t the NMI drowning in monsoonal rain and deluge of debts and deficit spending?

Perhaps the listless camaraderie has forced the elected elite into a corner, paralyzed by the monstrosity of “fiduciary responsibility.” Is the paralysis insurmountable? Now they’re confused which synonym to use in place of “bankruptcy”: insolvency, fiscal failure, indebtedness, overdraft, privation, ruination or destitution. Changing the adjective doesn’t change or force the disappearance of bankruptcy like morning dew. Does it?

Troubling the fiscal ruination at home that started with the deployment of the apparel industry and reckless imposition of federal immigration. But even more troubling is the lack of conscious leadership equipped with composure and dignity to guide the economy to safe port. Leadership must have been picked like dead carcass by invisible vultures heading out to sea at dawn.

As the cogs, nuts, bolts, and tire come off our wagon of what’s now perennial bankruptcy, the net effect is the vicious reduction in the purchasing power of villagers everywhere.

Furthermore, the issue of affordable energy is replete with hardship in the villages and business community. But the gang on the hill is engrossed in feasibility studies to figure out what the outmoded solar energy has to offer, a source as expensive as fossil fuel-generated power generation. Eh, feasibility studies never die too! Liquefied gas? Kidding, huh?

Perhaps all should brace for the long haul in ruination and destitution. The mess has turned into the nursery rhyme “Ol’ McDonald…and a broke, broke here; and a broke, broke there, here a broke, there a broke, everywhere a broke, broke.”

It’s a dizzying phenomenon that offers suspect respite in Eddy Arnold’s “make the world go away.” Only problem is: dawn brings the same redundancy until sunset. Or perhaps my observation is flawed in every sense. But until we could realistically slaughter bankruptcy, it would stick around and simply refuse to die! Is it still raining?

There’s the slippery slope of indigenous political correctness. We wake up to the morning sun blaming everybody else for the socio-economic debasement of the CNMI. It’s the new cultural fad of the “blame game” in perpetuity.

We grandly ignore that it was leadership’s negligence that the cogs, nuts, bolts and tire have come off our wagon, now careening down Capital Hill destination: delusion, apathy and self-destruction.

From violation of labor laws to driving the retirement program into permanent insolvency and dissolution, politicians have earned their crown jewel sending the multitude into the subterranean netherworld of misery in abject poverty. Yet we blame everybody else for the mess except leadership or elected elite.

Obviously, conscious leadership has been a missing component since decades ago. There’s now the vicious and merciless vilification of foreigners we see as perceptual threat or nuisance. Didn’t you see the magma—melted molten volcanic rock—that started torching paradise since two decades ago?

I probed the issue for legitimacy. The training of the local work force is the responsibility of leadership, not CWs. Moreover, we’ve captained our canoe since 1977 electing public officials. The CWs aren’t part of the political equation. Don’t recall exogenous interference in the political process. So where’s the legitimacy of political correctness that we need not earn our dues?

Indeed, there are issues in the relationship that need refinement. But have we actively sought revival of the 902 talks to realistically resolve matters beyond the redundant indictment of colonialism? Did we neglect “internal paternalism” as part of the equation of failure? We can spout all we want but the legal framework remains the Covenant Agreement. Must reset our buttons in 2014.

Moreover, we’ve cited Covenant Section 802 on military land requirements, ignoring the substance of Section 806 (a and b). The feds only need a request for more land requirements provided it secures congressional approval. If it secures it and we refuse to accommodate its land needs, it still could use eminent domain to confiscate land here.

The China behavior only exacerbates the urgency for the national government to move in to secure land needs, build its facilities in order to protect allied countries in the name of national security.

It’s good exercise promoting local sentiment against turning Pagan into a target range. We should point out the requirements under the agreement if only to put DOD on notice that unless it has something under its belt, everything stops. How come its planned use of Pagan fails assimilation, i.e., joint use of the island? It makes sense, given the lack of local funds for decent emplacement of requisite basic infrastructure.

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