Salaries have remained the same for 20 years while basic needs have gone up by a combined reduction in family buying power of as much as 80 percent. Everybody\u2019s stuck in the filthy swamp of leadership passivity or mediocrity. It has morphed into a new flagship: Bankruptcy Enterprise!<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s suspicious whispers of \u201ceconomic recovery\u201d which is so far removed from real life experiences of families literally struggling to make ends meet. <\/p>\n
The medley of crisis implosion everywhere has paralyzed the entire community. And you sit hopelessly asking redundantly: What else is imploding? This as the narrative of bankruptcy takes its permanent seat with suspicious scaffolding from the corrosive culture of ad hoc planning.<\/p>\n
Was this a matter of choice, therefore self-inflicted? Obviously, the debilitating condition came from leadership snoozing at the switchboard. Its negligence translates into hardship found everywhere. Our people are innocent victims of failure crashing and cascading heavily from the hill.<\/p>\n
The mother goose of all implosions has displaced over 3,000 families who left the CNMI in search of greener pasture elsewhere in recent years. Eh, but the guys and gals came up with casino as the salvation to our fiscal and financial miseries. They believe in the fallacy that putting the camel\u2019s nose under the tent would resolve the mess!<\/p>\n
Leadership here is a pipedream. \u201cIncompetence breeds incompetence, and eventually the slowest-witted among us recognize the man who not only doesn’t know what he’s doing but won’t listen to those who do. His earnest ignorance blights everything he touches.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the longest time we\u2019ve never had a plan founded on sound policies. Most everything falls into the convenient trap of the new corrosive culture of ad hoc planning as a result of the lack of vision. Policy dictates everything! We have none!<\/p>\n
Thick layer of representation<\/strong><\/p>\n If perchance you feel underrepresented, you\u2019re dead wrong and for good measure too. Let\u2019s revisit what I\u2019ve spouted about government in years past: \u201cEverything is government.\u201d<\/p>\n We believe in \u201ceverything is government\u201d to the extent that we\u2019ve piled layers of it one right after another. Let\u2019s list them for purposes of ocular review: Mayors of every municipality, municipal councils, legislative delegations, bicameral legislature, governor, lieutenant governor, over 15 Cabinet members, and boards and commissions.<\/p>\n It seems a bit too crowded, huh? Doesn\u2019t it remind you helping at a family party where folks cutting and slicing meat and vegetables around the table started stepping on each other\u2019s feet? But this is a festive occasion. There\u2019s nothing festive about running a crowded and inefficient government! <\/p>\n The beastly creature and its tentacles of half-cocked representatives are supposed to work the clock to assist the simple folks in the villages. But there\u2019s a virus on bureaucratic obesity that disables cranial and physical functions preventing the guys and gals from an honest day\u2019s work. As such we the taxpayers get the royal screw daily, weekly, and annually. Taxpayers get milked to the hilt. How long must we endure this egregious miscalculation in representation?<\/p>\n $100K for NM Who?<\/strong><\/p>\n Redundancy is a term we\u2019ve fallen in love with in recent past. This is attributable to the lack of framework upon which we buckle down to\u2014skip addressing\u2014and move to \u201cresolving\u201d indigenous issues. It\u2019s appalling the special ability to trash common sense altogether. The NMD bunch wanted its $100K come hell or high water. But let\u2019s revisit what you\u2019ve skipped rather conveniently.<\/p>\n There are the constitutionally mandated offices such as Indigenous and Carolinian Affairs. Both are equipped with staff and capital equipment to fulfill what the NMD bunch wanted done. Can the Legislature dispose of DPL funds from the Managaha landing fees? The Constitution leaves no room for politicians in the instant case. In brief, stay constitutional and don\u2019t simply take the quick exit in the commission of fiat. In other words, pertinent constitutional provision says DPL subtracts \u201cadministrative expenses,\u201d the balance of which is remitted to MPLT. The only permissible appropriation is \u201cearned interest\u201d from MPLT\u2019s investment turned over to the general fund. Or did I miss something in between? <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Car leases: There\u2019s the silent humongous expense \u201cwe the taxpayers\u201d fork out for our overly paid elected elite. It\u2019s known as \u201ccar leases\u201d worked up with various car dealers. Throughout the life of the contract, two to four years, we the taxpayers pay for auto services when the vehicle has mechanical and other problems. <\/p>\n When the public official\u2019s term ends, he slips by the side and buys the leased car, paying the balance. I mean, since when did we taxpayers agree that you could avail of such sweetheart deal at our expense? I strongly recommend that the public auditor probe this issue and get back what\u2019s owed taxpayers. Give us back our money spent on auto service and other expenses during the life of the contract. Eh, a fraud is a fraud is a fraud no matter how you dice or splice it! <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Hello! In bad times, it\u2019s good to learn from the lessons of history. The state of New Hampshire pays its legislators $100 per year. It pays the least that does the best. Isn\u2019t it time we also critically review whether a bicameral system is still relevant or is it more on the side of completely uselessness? It spends over $4.8 million annually for what? Has it moved the needle of growth forward? In other words, what has it done to improve family income over the last 20 years? It\u2019s all in the palm of our hands. Think about it! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Salaries have remained the same for 20 years while basic needs have gone up by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[162,256,175,21],"class_list":["post-40591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-car","tag-casino","tag-dpl","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40591","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}