When we assess our financial obligations against the tide of fast depleting revenues, we know that the deep undercurrents of helplessness is just around the corner.<\/p>\n
We look toward Japan and tiger countries in the region struggling to rebuild their economies and we fervently pray that they make substantial recovery soon so we could prevent the local economy from sinking into the abyss of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
Right off hand, it is vividly and fearfully clear that we won’t be able to meet the constitutional mandate of paying off accumulated deficits incurred by three administrations. Other basic public services such as education, health and public safety are also suffering from a crisis that now demands, more so than ever before, for employment of real management skills.<\/p>\n
As revenue generation deteriorates in ways we’ve never seen since reconstruction after World War II, we also must endure vicious plans from our detractors to ruin the last industry (apparel) that now feeds the local treasury given that tourism has taken a long trip south. Yet, we read and listen to good tidings of a robust US economy that excludes and treats the NMI as though it’s a malignant outgrowth in the American political family.<\/p>\n
We also know equally well that premising such shift in federal economic policy on the whims of the US textile labor unions is far removed from the legal commitment by our mother country to assist the NMI not only “attain a higher standard of living” but a “progressively” higher standard of living. But the Clinton helmsmen have seen fit to avoid making the same policy equally applicable in the NMI.<\/p>\n
The NMI pines for some help as it sifts through the maze of an assorted external assaults on its economy. The indigenous people quiz if this is the deal it sought some 25 years ago when the Covenant was approved by the US Congress. Is the ruinous agenda of economic sanctions against a helpless and fragile island economy the appropriate alternative when it would eventually translate into greater reliance on US mainland taxpayers money? Is this the message from our detractors who’ve never even bothered to corral support for economic assimilation of these isles into the greater American Economic Community?<\/p>\n
As we pine for help, any help, we ought to seriously consider discussing the future relationship of the NMI and our mother country. We can’t forever be relegated to the whims of national politics that exercises exclusionary policies aganst the NMI completely oblivious of the negative long term consequences of ill-conceived policies. Isn’t the NMI a part of the so-called American political family? Or are we only family at the convenience of people whose political fate are at the mercy of special interest groups?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we assess our financial obligations against the tide of fast depleting revenues, we know that the deep undercurrents of helplessness is just around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46522","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}