Editorials

What has been will be again SEVERAL House members on Wednesday spoke about the importance of fiscal responsibility and accountability. Hurrah! And yet they are also in favor of providing public funds to not just one specific class of voters, but to others as well, in an election year. What about me…

Just the facts HOUSE Local Bill 22-26, which would allow five casino licenses on Saipan, is legally problematic. Can a local bill amend a CNMI statute? It seems that the answer depends on whose lawyer you’re asking. Legislators, in short, may need to sort that out (with lawyers) before they can act…

An old and bad idea BRAD Polumbo of the libertarian Foundation for Economic Education says a new report shows why the proposed large increase in federal taxes on cigarette and nicotine products “is such a terrible idea.” Don’t be surprised, he adds, when criminal enterprises see the biggest benefit…

Sweet time THE House majority bloc is not in a hurry to act on the impeachment resolution because it’s a done deal. Signed and sealed, so to speak. And it will be delivered to the Senate at the date of the House majority’s choosing. As then-U.S. Congressman Gerald Ford once said,  “An impeachable o…

Endgame ON Tuesday, just before the House JGO voted to hold the governor in contempt, one of the committee members stated that they “are finally towards the end of the investigation….” Finally indeed. The committee should now issue its report and introduce the articles of impeachment. As the House …

Immiseration by any other name THIS is the most important detail CNMI lawmakers should remember whenever they want to “photo-copy” wage/tax measures introduced at the federal or state levels: those bills’ starting point is the U.S./state economy. The U.S., which has a population of over 300 million…

Nothing is old when everything seems new THESE are quite unprecedented times for the Commonwealth, but many of us are unfamiliar with its history and are probably unaware that, so far, there have been very few original concepts or new policy proposals now being considered on Capital Hill. Even the …

Gone too soon FOR many of us, it may be hard to feel thankful on Thanksgiving. It has been a dreary week. As of Tuesday, there had been 313 new Covid-19 cases since Oct. 28th, and it seems that each day,  more individuals are testing positive for the coronavirus. And now we learn that two of the is…

Let’s try humility, for a change SEVERAL years ago, one of the biggest — and saddest —  news stories in the U.S.  was about the Veterans Affairs hospitals. “Nobody wanted this outcome,” author and political commentator Kevin D. Williamson wrote at the time. “That outcome, recall, is a great many de…

A thousand times no  PRESIDENT Harry Truman — so the story goes — believed that his successor, Gen. Ike Eisenhower, would find the presidency “very frustrating. “He’ll sit here,” Truman said, “and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the Army.” P…