The stimulus package is big on the giveaways for the special interests and corporate high rollers, yet lacking the real support America’s ordinary working citizens and elderly need. Worst, that package has absolutely nothing for those on Guam who have been deliberately damaged by America’s denial of economic freedoms and justice since WWII.
Yes, I am speaking about the most patriotic Americans, in our great country, who were born and many who still live on Guam. I am one of those Americans who to this day are without a voice.
Not having a voice makes my “Nay” vote on the economic stimulus package not even a pimple on a dog’s ass especially since dogs don’t get pimples on their ass or anywhere else. But I love my country, which is why I served it in the U.S. Navy. I am expressing my objections on the wrong political policies that continue to be pushed. I may not have a voice, but I have freedom of speech. How oxymoron is that? Only on Guam? Also in America!
Guam is definitely a small island. Despite its size, in the middle of nowhere Guam is highly desired by the “super powers” because of its “location, location, location” as commonly stated.
The first most amazing reality of the horrible havoc of two “super powers” battling it out on our soil/private property turf, without paying restitution, and destroying every progress made, was the fact that the people of Guam survived!
The second most amazing reality during the brutal occupation is; the people of Guam were forced to feed, first the Japanese Army, before feeding themselves, without any outside help. Yet no one during the Japanese occupation died from starvation.
The third most amazing mind boggling reality is the total acceptance by the people of Guam of the forced dependency on an Organic Act government that robs the citizens of Guam, from the time the Organic Act was ratified to this very day, of the freedom America fought for in WWII.
Dependency is not freedom. This act has ruined America’s most prideful patriotic WWII era citizens. America has paralyzed the powerless continuously, slowly, destroys them bit by bit permanently robbing them of their future.
Guam’s economy is shamefully built on injustice for all the wrong reasons. For 64 years, the people of Guam put up with unchecked corruption under the now perceived “inorganic” Organic Act of Congress and the White House.
Many men and women like me joined the military; ready, willing, and able to give the extreme sacrifice for the so-called “freedom” our country stands for. Yet the citizens/indigenous people of Guam, to this day, are still waiting for WWII reparation, restoration of their individual economic freedoms denied since WWII, and to be included with all other Americans as stated in the famous phrase by Filippo Mazzei: “All men are created equal.”
Hello President Barack Obama and you good folks in Congress. Please correct the injustices committed by both the federal and local governments against the people of Guam. Do not correct them with this or any other temporary piecemeal band-aid, silence the masses type solution; that only proves to weaken our democracy and continues to make worse the situation we are in.
This stimulus package is identical to the 1950 Organic Act that is not working. It is not working because the act gave elected officials latitude to represent selfish interest on federal funds, foreign and local corporate ventures, and selective governing. The conditions are the testimony. This terrible wrong on where America’s day begins needs to and must be righted. Learn from Guam’s experience and make it right for both Guam and America.
The biggest problem facing Guam today is the overwhelming acceptance of the “entitlement mentality.” If America is up-side-down as Lou Dobbs on CNN stated, then Guam is hopelessly in the abyss. This economic stimulus package together with the upcoming military buildup is more of the same actions that got us here in the first.
TONY ARTERO
Agana Heights, Guam
