This is one of the more disturbing fabrications. Driving with unrestrained toddlers and children in pickup beds and inside vehicles is common practice, and law enforcement activity to stop or constrain it is apathetic and virtually non-existent. Thoughtless, abusive exposure of children to second-hand smoke by the nation’s heaviest smokers is widespread at home and elsewhere. It’s especially prevalent in enclosed vehicles and the cops don’t care about that, either.
There’s an extremely high incidence of aberrant sexual behavior involving children. Child and domestic abuse appear on virtually a daily basis in police blotters and local media. Endemic parental disinterest and failure to provide adequate discipline and control contribute to a high incidence of school violence, school dropouts and juvenile delinquency.
Political rhetoric notwithstanding, there’s an obvious, historically verifiable lack of support for public education (and don’t assume that any local legislation will change that). Parent-teacher organization and meetings participation is poor. Guam’s school dropout rate is among the highest in the nation and standardized test scores among the lowest. Non-certified — even non-teacher — personnel often conduct public school classes.
Teen births are among the highest in the nation, and there’s a 60 percent chance that a child born in Guam today will be born out of wedlock. That’s not the worst of it. Many or most end up in single-parent families, and the lack of interest on the part of non-custodial parents is reflected in Guam’s grim child support statistics: again, among the worst in the nation.
Modern Guam is also a supposedly democratic, equal opportunity and color-blind melting-pot society.
Now there’s a mouthful, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Anyone even modestly familiar with local government and political culture can’t miss the obvious, rampant racial discrimination that’s a part of everyday life. Members of the politically and numerically dominant ethnic group, comprising about 40 percent of the population, hold more than 80 percent of GovGuam jobs — a telling statistic. Access to those jobs and to such things as lucrative government contracts, tax breaks and local government programs, which unconstitutionally favor one ethnic group over others, is usually directly related to your lineage and how many of your relatives hold high-level positions in local government. That holds true for the executive, judicial and legislative branches.
There’s a lot more to be said about this, but you get the idea. In summary, Guam and its “culture” are not all as presented to the uninformed and naïve, meaning just about everyone who doesn’t live here. U.S. taxpayers have absolutely no concept of how much this territory costs them — averaging around $1.5 billion annually over the past several years — and would be appalled to learn of the corruption and incompetence fostered and perpetuated by Guam’s seedy political culture.
This letter will offend local activists and other ethnocentric xenophobes who can’t refute the content but would like to blame it all on someone else. Let’s see if I’m right.
DAVE DAVIS
Yigo, Guam
