Views

Uncertain times

WE find ourselves in familiar and still unsettling economic instability in our community.  There are many reasons for our present circumstances including those correctly attributed to the previous administration, but this is a new administration with the task of charting a new direction based on th…
Read More →

OPINION ǀ A tale of government-funded programs and the outrage

Jim Rayphand IT’S not often I get to experience (or rather witness and ponder) in real-time the significance and living example of the famous idiom to, “Give a man a fish…,” but I found myself doing exactly that during a traffic jam one recent Saturday morning on the south side of the island.  As i…
Read More →

So you want to be ‘business-friendly’

Respect reality THE CNMI Department of Commerce aims to be “business-friendly,” and so do some lawmakers. Bravo. To begin with, they and other government agencies and officials should be more supportive of their primary source of local funding: local businesses big or small. How? Rather than attemp…
Read More →

BC’s Tales of the Pacific ǀ Indonesia Tsunami, 2004

BC Cook 230,000.  That is the number of people killed by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Indonesia in 2004.  It is one of the largest and deadliest disasters in all recorded history, yet we don’t even have a name for it.  Sumatran Earthquake/Tsunami, South Asian Earthquake/Tsunami, Boxin…
Read More →

So much for fiscal responsibility

Good politics, bad economics THE governor’s Jan. 17 letter to the Legislature’s presiding officers serves as an update to the CNMI government’s FY 2025 budget. It is a peculiar letter. On one hand, the governor noted the government’s “acute short-term cash flow challenges”; on the other hand, he ma…
Read More →

Variations ǀ Poverty, prosperity, dependence

HISTORY teaches us that poverty is the default state of humanity. In his outstanding book published in 1973, “The Conquest of Poverty,” Henry Hazlitt noted that “ancient writers have left us few specific accounts of” poverty because they “took it for granted. Poverty was the normal lot.” In ancient…
Read More →

Weekly Poll

Latest E-edition

Please login to access your e-Edition.

+