It’s a Pinto
Drug needle
I have heard several folks criticizing local and federal law enforcement for their failure to stop the importation of drugs found in a Chinese garment worker’s car recently. I do not agree. Trying to stop this kind of thing at the border seems almost impossible.

While 176 grams sounds like a lot (and is a lot if it is being used by a relative who is destroying his family with it) it is really a tiny amount size wise. About 6 ounces of anything, illegal drugs, shredded carrots or beach sand is a pretty small package and could be hidden most anywhere.

Before finding fault with DEA or FBI or CPA or DPS think about how difficult it would be to find that needle in a haystack. Interdiction of large quantities is probably possible because of the physical size of the contraband package. How on earth would you expect to find something that small on a regular basis? I’ve heard of drug smelling dogs but would that work on something sealed airtight and really tiny in size? My guess would be probably not. Any experts in the field willing to give an opinion?

So it seems that solving the problem by reducing demand or by curbing illegal usage would be a far more profitable use of DPS/FBI/CPA/DEA personnel time than trying to find that tiny needle in the haystack of incoming people, baggage, merchandise, ship and air cargo.

Congratulations are due to the patrol officers who were observant enough to catch this guy during a routine traffic stop and get him and the drugs off the street.
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Up the wrong tree
Recently a group of people assembled at fishing Base to vent their frustrations at the power outages that have plagued our island for the last few months. Why the leaders of the event waited to protest until after the problem was temporarily solved by the Aggreko generators is a mystery only they know the answer to.

What they want is reliable and affordable power. That is a laudable goal. The way they want to do it is a throwback to the failed mechanisms of yesteryear. Individually and collectively they are calling for and insisting that ‘affordable’ power is a right assured to everyone. It is not a right; electric power is a commodity and has a price like any other good or service.

They are asking for a regression to the old days that they themselves in the next breath call for an end to. Then as now the local government owned and operated the power plants. Here on Saipan there used to be relatively reliable power and it was affordable as well, it was cheap in fact based on what it actually cost to produce it. It was cheap because the rate paying customers were not charged as much as it cost to make the power. The difference was made up for by government subsidies. They took all the money paid by the ratepayers into the system and used it for operations, plus they took more funds wrested from other sources and threw them in on top to keep the lights on. Little or nothing was spent on a decaying infrastructure as we all know and now it has come home to roost. They kept rates artificially low and that was the problem, not the solution. So to call out now for artificially lowered rates is irresponsible and won’t work this time any better than it did last time.

We should look to someone other than our government’s Administration, this one or any other one, to come up with answers to the affordability question. Likewise we should look elsewhere to find a professional operations company if we don't want to see this emergency fiasco repeated endlessly into the future. Rate setting and reliable operations should be done by a responsible and professional third party company or co-op, not the government. Let’s leave upside pricing oversight to a well trained Public Utilities Commission and downside pricing to real costs and reasonable profits. We will all pay less and have the reliability we all want to boot.

Privatize CUC with a completely open, no strings attached bid process. Then we have a chance for reliable affordable power. Begging another government group to take the reins from this government group is begging for more of the same.
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Which color horse?
Last week’s Sour Grapes had a section about the importance of consistency of purpose between the local Administration and the new Officer we are about to elect called a Non Voting Delegate. As a side issue in that piece I wrote, “Our elected Washing Rep is still in office though he is running for another office and the Constitution says he should resign.” Pete, and a couple of other people have sent me emails offering a different interpretation and claiming that he need not resign. Pete had a copy of that email printed as a Letter to the Editor citing his reasoning. Hopefully you read it.

Pete claims that the new federal law that mandates the new NVD office was written so as to define his old job to be the same as the new job he hopes to be elected to even though they are completely different. Maybe that is true.

Note that Pete A. currently works for the CNMI and is paid by the CNMI treasury. His title is “Resident Representative to the United States”, he is an elected and paid lobbyist for the CNMI. The new position he hopes to be elected to is the “Delegate to the House of Representatives”, a different animal entirely. Whoever wins will be paid by the United States Treasury. This is clearly a different job with a different title, different responsibilities, different authority and a different paymaster. To say he is running for the same office is not factual and at best constitutes semantic pandering. Note also that the office term of Washington Rep does not even expire until 2010. Maybe the reason for the language calling an apple an orange is so there are not two representatives from the CNMI floating around Washington at the same time, and not so the current Rep does not have to resign before running for a different job.

So it is a matter of interpretation whether the current Resident Representative should resign to run for the Non Voting Delegates office. However, the time frame is so short now that I guess it doesn’t make much difference so I won’t continue to beat this different colored horse of an argument any longer.

One other point deserves mention. Some think I bring this up because I don’t like Pete A. Nothing could be further from the truth. I like and respect him. In fact I find him to be an engaging man with enough intelligence and diplomatic capability to do the job if he is elected by the people of the CNMI. I don't agree with his new philosophical position nor do I want to personally back someone who has 'flipped' positions, but he is certainly capable if elected which is also true for most of the other candidates.

Anyway Pete, good luck and thanks for reading Sour Grapes.
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Quote of the week: When you point your finger at the moon, you want others to look at the moon, not your finger. Zen Homily

Peace, Love, Flower Power
Some years ago there was a movie produced called Network. One of the characters, a TV newscaster, Howard Beale, said, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more”. He called on his viewers to go outside and shout that slogan in unison, partly as protest, partly as catharsis. In due time he got millions of his viewers to stand outside and chant that slogan. It brought people together in a common cause and it announced their message to the powers that be. He claimed that getting mad was the only answer to their many problems.

In the spirit of that film we, the residents of Saipan, could do something similar. Now we could go outside and vent our anger and frustration about power outages but everyone is pretty much doing that already with no success. So I suggest we try something in a positive vein. We could go outside at noon tomorrow and shout out “Keep trying CUC, we know you can do it !!”. Why might we want to do that instead of continuing to carp? Because as individuals we are helpless to do anything about it short term except give moral support to those trying to get the job done. (Unless you are a billionaire philanthropist and want to donate a power plant). There are long term solutions we citizens can help with but shouting revolutionary slogans will not get the job done.

Several people have written or spoken recently about how CUCs woes have been caused by poor management, bad planning etc. and are not the fault of the day to day workers, the linemen or the plant workers or the secretaries in their offices all of whom simply take their orders and carry them out as best they can. They too go home to find they can’t cook dinner or finish their homework because the power is out. They too are in the middle of a shower or ready to flush about the time the lights dim and go out. I agree, and what’s worse it can’t be easy to keep up employee morale in a place where the prime mission, delivering reliable electric power and water, is not working too well (okay is failing miserably).

Lack of money, lack of a coherent plan, lack of leadership, skyrocketing petroleum costs, lack of training, engines and delivery infrastructure worn out from wear and neglect. This is the mantra we’ve all heard chanted repeatedly as the cause of the electric power emergency we find ourselves in today. Collectively, they are the reason you can’t watch TV tonight, or make toast tomorrow morning.

So how do we get out of the mess? Marching, suing or shouting in frustration isn’t going to help. The temporary solution they are trying now is to rent some reliable generators and use that power to try and tide us over until the main engines can be repaired. I’m sure they would rather just go down to the generator store and order up a new power plant but our credit card is maxed out and the cash in the till won’t even pay current expenses, not to mention make a major purchase.

Maybe we can get Uncle Sugar to help us out. Maybe we could get the US military to help us out. Maybe we could apply for a loan at the World Bank or the IMF or the Asia Development fund or Household Finance Company or from Sam the Shark. The thing is, if we had that help in hand right now, today, it would be two years down the line before we saw new engines or a new power plant or new alternative energy producers shining in the sun. Unless we can get the Electric Power Fairy to wave a wand over Lower Base and fix it all overnight, the strategy of using a temporary patch on the flat tire of power generation seems the best solution short term.

Once the temporary generators are in place we need to work like the dickens to fix those broken main engines so the power can stay on while other plans are made. Meanwhile we need to develop a long range plan of action and decide once and for all what direction to go in the future. Maybe we could order three of those new generation nuclear power plants, one for each island. Maybe we could convert to coal like most of the rest of the world uses. Maybe we should opt for more of the same and buy a new petroleum based power plant even in the face of rising fuel costs. There are other alternatives too, but the point is we need to look at the options and make a firm decision and then carry that plan out if we are ever to really solve the power problem that stares us in the face. To get there at all we need to go to the private sector to get the job done and not rely on the government anymore. The alternative to planning and execution is to get used to cooking over a wood fire and going to bed at sunset.

Why bitch when it accomplishes nothing? Let’s get on the ‘we’re behind you’ bandwagon and give as much support to the hundreds of hardworking CUC employees as we can. These Worker Bees are all that stands between us and the real world of lives without electricity right now. We and our businesses and institutions have evolved too far and gotten too soft to live without it anymore.

Getting mad about it may have worked in the movie mentioned above but here in reality land we just need to help all we can, plan the best we can and then execute our plan without quitting. Divesting CUC from its government overlord is the first step in the healing process. As we have seen, you can’t legislate your way out of the problem and you can’t cure it by executive fiat. Let’s approach the problem like grown ups, responsible for our own actions.

In closing I will relate what my 4 year old said just after the power went off the other night. Standing in the yard shaking his fist at the sky he said “____ing CUC !! (expletive deleted). It seems that the outage interfered with Pooh while he was explaining math skills via DVD. When the power went off, so did my son. I can’t imagine where he heard such language.

Quote of the week: "Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)