Zaldy Dandan

“ Saying stupid things about economics is why God put socialists on this planet.” — Jonah Goldberg “Elect more communists.”

THIS year will mark the first CNMI gubernatorial election since 2001 in which the incumbent governor is not a candidate. The only previous such elections were in 1989, when Governor Teno did not seek a third term, and in 1977, the first election for the Commonwealth government.

ELECTION season brings with it some of the most mind-numbing, cut-and-paste platitudes known to humanity. Why? Because many voters want to hear bromides, usually assurances that their wishes will be granted, arithmetic be damned.

Consider the facts “What is freedom? It is the right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything.” — Frederick Douglass

THE unraveling of the Indonesian government's free-meals program was in the news recently. We're talking about a $4.39 billion initiative for the initial rollout alone, with annual funding of $12.8 billion this year and about $13.5 billion next year. The goal was to feed 83 million schoolchildren, toddlers and mothers across the world's largest archipelagic state.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”. A RECENT letter to the editor of The Guam Daily

AMONG the many things you'll hear from candidates in an election year — besides “workforce training” — is “diversification,” specifically the promotion of agriculture, which has been a campaign promise

The candidate who admitted that she is running because she is uncertain about her government job may have said aloud what many candidates and voters would rather leave unsaid.

The short answer is we don't THE governor wants the Legislature to fund an additional litter control officer and the operation of DEQ's litter control program.

THIS year's gubernatorial election is the CNMI's fourth three-way contest. The first occurred in 1981, which was the islands' second gubernatorial election. The incumbent governor, a Democrat, was not renominated by his party at a contested convention, so he formed a new one, the Commonwealth Popular Democratic Party. His two opponents were the Republican Senate president and a Democratic senator.