Please give me an opportunity to explain to the CNMI people the real State of the Commonwealth or for that matter, of CUC, from someone who knows what is really going on.<\/p>\n
To be honest, the State of Commonwealth could be doing better. It\u2019s okay, but it could be doing better. I\u2019m beginning to get upset each day reading the papers as everyone tries to blame the governor. Give him a break; he is trying his best to rectify the situation. He is probably the most educated governor we ever had in the CNMI and is very hardworking.<\/p>\n
About CUC, do the numbers. Hire an independent auditor to synthesize the government\u2019s CUC bills and see what comes out. In my opinion, though, people should realize that the way of life is growing and becoming more expensive and moving at a faster pace. Just imagine, CUC in the past few years did not have to carry the load of a Juvenile Detention Center in Kagman, nor Kagman High, Kagman Elementary, Chacha Jr. High, or Saipan Southern High School. The government\u2019s CUC bill will continue to increase as the CNMI increases its infrastructure, especially in education, public health, and public safety. Sure the Legislature appropriates $5 million a year to pay for the government\u2019s CUC bills but that\u2019s a budget for several years ago. This year the governor had to dip into government office\u2019s accounts to pay for an additional $5.2 million for CUC bills because the Legislature can\u2019t pass a reasonable budget that includes adequate payment to CUC.<\/p>\n
Oh, another thing, if you don\u2019t notice, there\u2019s a lot of CUC projects requiring man hours to create and oversee new drainage, sewer hookups, and water line projects. This could be another cause for CUC not having enough funds to pay for fuel.<\/p>\n
This is not to mention the rise in fuel cost around the world, which can\u2019t be blamed on the CNMI governor. If you don\u2019t understand, we are a small island chain dependent on the outside world for supplies, thus making external forces affect us too\u2014hello! If you don\u2019t know economics or capitalism, write to me.<\/p>\n
Another thing, if things get old, they tend to break down, just like our CUC generators. So what do we need to do\u2014fix it, right? It\u2019s just coincidence that all these problems are arising now.<\/p>\n
In addition, more and more computers are being used by the government; this eats up a lot of power. This equates to the government moving toward a quantified, systematic, and electronic-processing phase. How about the lighting at the pathway or when we watch night games at the Palacios field? That eats up a lot of power, right? Then why do we endorse such activities? Because we want these things like playing baseball at night or walking at the pathway. Why again? Because it\u2019s out of convenience and pleasure; we work in the day and relax or exercise at night. It\u2019s plain and simple. The weather is cooler at night and that\u2019s basically the only time we have to do what we want after work, unless you\u2019re rich or something.<\/p>\n
What I can say is that the people sitting up at the Legislature (and how many times have they been sitting up there) need to wise up and calculate power consumption for an expanding government. I don\u2019t know if many of them know math up there, but I can surely help them add things up or write their bills for them, especially one that can identify how to pay for the government\u2019s CUC bill without repealing the surcharge. I know I hate the surcharge, but I hate blackouts more. Many of us just work to pay CUC and this shouldn\u2019t be the case, therefore bombard your congressman to increase the minimum wage or call OPEC, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Iraq, or the President to find out what is really going on with the rise in fuel. If you get no answer, check your congressman again. Maybe they can make a bill to subsidize every consumer\u2019s fuel consumption by an invisible bill with no money attached to it.<\/p>\n
Oh, one last thing. I challenge the leadership of the House to create a minimum wage-hike bill, one that would raise the minimum wage by one cent. Why? We are always raising the issue of $5 or $0.30 a year. Can we try at least one cent so the people can see if you guys are really working up there and so we can get some hope of seeing the wage go up. Come on, it\u2019s only one cent. I wonder how long will this take? It should take a matter of seconds to say yes, I hope. Why you may ask? Because, if you guys up there can\u2019t even raise the minimum wage by one cent, why keep trying for higher? Let\u2019s be realistic and think a little bit more. With the number of years you guys have not acted on the wage hike, it\u2019s \u201calmost\u201d a penny a year gone by; we could be there already. Just remember, if you didn\u2019t already know, the governor can\u2019t raise the minimum wage without the creation and passage of a bill from the Legislature. It\u2019s simple Pol. Sci. 101. One cent can help and hurt but I know I hate seeing that one cent go up for fuel at the gas pumps even more.<\/p>\n
Another thing for you fellas up there: Stop making bills that will appropriate money to different projects without studying where all the money should be going. I mean, I see all these bills for construction, and yet we still can\u2019t pay for things and on time. You guys are eating up the funds too; let\u2019s pay the bills first, accumulate a surplus and then write a bill later. Why don\u2019t you guys write a bill that must require you to pass a budget\u2014oh I forgot, that\u2019s what the CNMI Constitution states.<\/p>\n
I hope I have offered some assistance to the Legislature and raised awareness among people because we can\u2019t be ignorant about the what\u2019s really going on. I wish we can live in a perfect world, but we can\u2019t always have it our way. Many times, there are bigger forces guiding our direction and we need to clean our own house before we get somewhere.<\/p>\n
Jay Cabrera
\nChalan Piao, Saipan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Please give me an opportunity to explain to the CNMI people the real State of the Commonwealth or for that matter, of CUC, from someone who knows what is really going on.<\/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-92992","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\/92992","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=92992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}