FOR weeks local media outlets have waxed effusive over the advent of a 2 percent reduction in water rates for Guam residential customers. Wow! For me, that will run about $.30 a month. One of them published on July 31 an article telling us it was all made possible because GWA had finally finished paying for water it purchased from the Navy. The part about paying the Navy for water is right, but the part about “purchased” should have read “stole,” because that’s the truth of the matter. GWA for years stole water from Navy lines through illegal hookups and eventually got caught at it. GWA subsequently entered into a consent decree to pay the Navy $9 million in installments for the stolen water plus interest and other costs in order to avoid a much more expensive lawsuit. That, friends, is why GWA has been paying the Navy roughly $1 million a year since 2003 and you’ve been subsidizing the thievery. So much for truth in reporting. Then again, it may just be sloppy research.

“Pick Moe Cotton” – really catchy, pure genius as a political attention-grabber. Moe has been criticized to no end for using what some claim is a racially-insensitive slogan for his senatorial campaign, presumably because it reminds them of the slavery in America that was abolished way back in the 1800s. Nobody thinks it important to mention or recall that many thousands of white share croppers also "picked mo cotton," both during and following the slavery era.

While many of us recognize Guam as arguably the most racially discriminatory community in the nation today, we tend to accept as normal certain racial themes of the political season. The United States Senate Judiciary Committee has published a report to supplement 1982 amendments to the U.S. Voting Rights Act, to be used as guidance for the courts when evaluating charges of racial bias in voting. It lists seven factors for special consideration – commonly referred to as the “Senate Factors” – number six being “the presence of overt or subtle racial appeals in election campaigns.” We have a plethora of both, though Moe’s sign doesn’t qualify. Last week I surveyed a small segment of the Guam highway system – 5.1 miles from Yigo to the north fringe of Dededo – and counted exactly 100 campaign signs, some nearly the size of shipping containers. There are campaign slogans and appeals in a language I don’t speak or understand; pictorial representations of ancient culture-specific artifacts such as latte stones; pervasive reference to familial, clan and ancestral tracings and more. In fact, there were few signs completely devoid of those “overt or subtle racial appeals.” How about somebody posting that on a website so we can all count the hits?

Admiral Bushong – kudos for telling it like it is – stands tall as the first high-ranking U.S. service member to lay it on the line and lay bare the petty obstructionism, defamation of U.S. service members and indisputable damage to the Guam economy perpetrated by some elected officials. Note that I don’t, and never will, refer to them as leaders because they are not. They are abject followers of the popular vote and the perks and benefits that accompany it. They lie through their teeth during the election campaign and develop selective amnesia immediately thereafter (i.e. “education is my top priority”). They often rely on the name recognition of better people who came before, though they conspicuously lack the abilities, convictions and intelligence. Thank you, admiral, for reminding them at long last that they’re not only American citizens but among the most favored, and that they have responsibilities and obligations that apparently never occurred to them.

An update on the consumer complaint issue – as I predicted might happen, feedback on my April 3 consumer complaint to the AG’s Office has apparently completely dried up following my article of two weeks ago critical of the AG. But then we all know how the system works in Guam.