The CNMI\u2019s problem is not a lack of medical referrals, a lack of CUC power plant upgrades, or a lack of DPS officers. Those are only symptoms. Everyone knows the real problem is a lack of money.
\nThe usual whiners complain about the lack of money for medical referrals or PSS or DPS in the same breath as they complain about the proposed casino. Do they have some other way to bring us $15 million in immediate cash? Do you have any other guaranteed, risk-free, enforcement-free method to have $15 million arrive in the government account for all the things our islands badly need? Or do they think there is some magical way to hire more doctors for CHC, more police officers for DPS, and more engineers for CUC, without needing to pay them anything?<\/p>\n
If you oppose the casino, be prepared to tell the mother whose child needs a medical referral that she can\u2019t have it, even though it was offered, because you want us to hold out for a better deal. Where\u2019s that better deal? More pie-in-the-sky stories about a bridge to Tinian or pharmaceuticals?<\/p>\n
Any of those \u201cbetter\u201d proposals require tremendous expenditure up front, of money the CNMI definitely doesn\u2019t have, in hopes of some kind of a return many years down the road. That\u2019s good for a government looking for a way to spend its extra cash. It\u2019s senseless for our government, which is desperately devoid of cash.<\/p>\n
So complain all you want. Maybe you don\u2019t like that the investor is Chinese. Or maybe you don\u2019t like Ralph Demapan. Or maybe you don\u2019t fancy that gambling will be happening in a tourist-friendly casino, instead of in dingy village poker parlors. But $15 million immediately in the government coffers, followed by $30 million per year, is something we badly need\u2014for our health, for our safety, for our infrastructure, and for our future.<\/p>\n
Diego C. Blanco<\/strong> The CNMI\u2019s problem is not a lack of medical referrals, a lack of CUC power…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[91,49,35,40],"class_list":["post-31484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-chc","tag-cuc","tag-dps","tag-pss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs Lito, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"