‘He started it!’
EARLIER this week, the House leadership shared some good and bad news with the CNMI government retirees waiting for their (Christmas) holiday bonus.
The good news is that — cue fanfare — the House wants the retirees to get their bonus.
The bad news is that the retirees won’t get their bonus until the Senate cries uncle. (Or auntie?)
The House members (i.e., their lawyers) are right, and the senators (i.e., their lawyers) are wrong, so it’s the senators’ fault because they don’t want to do what the House tells them they should do.
That’s the central “message” of the House leaders in their recent (and at times, mind-boggling) press conference.
And it’s also about “protecting” retirees who, some House members now say, might end up returning their bonuses! In addition, it’s about “protecting” up to $300 million (!) in local and federal funds!
“We’re doing the right thing,” say the House leaders who support other candidates for governor.
There are no other legal opinions out there?
If only the Senate would sit down with them, “we could do it [agree on a compromise bill] in 15 minutes,” one of the House leaders now say — over three months since the bonus was announced.
But the best part of the press conference was the admission by some of the House leaders that it’s a “political game”:
“They [the retirees] were promised by the governor…during the impeachment process in December. ‘I’m gonna give you bonus.’ [He] didn’t even come to the Legislature. ‘Let’s sit down and have a talk about retirees bonus.’ He went ahead and did it.”
Straight, as they say, from the horse’s mouth.
Regarding incest/sexual assault news stories
IN the mid-1990s, the “proper way” to report news stories involving incest and sexual assault was one of the topics of a very lively discussion among the island’s news organizations, media watchdogs and crime victim advocates.
This unpleasant subject was also discussed thoughtfully and quite extensively by an Oklahoma State University post-graduate student, Diane Faye Bugeja, in a thesis she submitted in 1988. We agree with her findings which were similar to what the local media had realized many years ago:
“If the defendant [in a case of incest] is identified [in a news story], the journalist indirectly implicates the child or siblings in a relationship. Such a situation occurred in Lincoln, Neb., when a minor told authorities that she was a victim of…incest. After publication of the report in the Lincoln Journal, the girl went to school and found that classmates had clipped and posted the article in her homeroom for everyone’s viewing. The negative connotations of incest are such that victims are attacked by social stigma. In addition, victims must cope with internal trauma, family disruption and their father’s possible imprisonment.
“The trauma for this child and others who are brought under further public scrutiny can hardly be overlooked by the journalism profession. As in a rape case, such a response can prevent victims from reporting the crime and seeking necessary counseling and treatment. Even disclosure of the father’s arrest in the typical public record of a newspaper can implicate the child, worsen the trauma and complicate the treatment.”
