AS EXPECTED, there’s plenty of backing and filling going on as those named in last week’s “Outsider” begin to worry a bit about the coming election. Guam voters, though cursed with notoriously short memories, are beginning to realize just how much damage has been done over several years by those we were foolish enough to elect to office. To paraphrase some unknown author: “What once was a territory with a government is now a government with a territory.”

Sen. Cruz, as acting Speaker of the Guam Legislature, wrote in a recent article that he “learned at an early age to love the truth.” He and the truth must have had a falling out and parted ways at some point, as evidenced by the distorted and biased content of a video he posted on the Internet – an exercise in transparently anti-military, anti-federal propaganda larded with distortions, half-truths and outright fabrications. It begins with a full screen flashing “80,000 people” in red, after which he asks: “How can we handle another 80,000 people?” He goes on to show selective video clips including Third World hovels which we have far too many of in Guam – never exposed to the world at large but secreted behind promotions of high-rise resort hotels and gleaming beaches full of happy tourists – and complains about the cost of proposed military family housing. He tells outright lies about quality of life disparities in Okinawa. I lived on-base in Okinawa for three years and experienced 12-hours-on, 12-hours-off water rationing for months at a time. His video presentation ends with the plea to “Defend Guam against the Buildup. Support Bill 66.” His Bill 30-66 called for a special election to determine whether Guamanians favor the buildup. What happened to it?

Sen. Cruz is a relatively well-off and influential member of our community who’s drawn a GovGuam paycheck for virtually his entire adult life. What, specifically and in detail, has he done or is he doing to improve the lives of Guam’s poor who inhabit those hovels – to elevate their standard of living to equal his, as he apparently wishes and expects from the federal government and the military? Though never having placed himself in harm’s way, he apparently believes that the dedicated members of our armed forces might somehow get more than they deserve. Is that it?

This recent anti-military ploy is simply the latest episode in a long-term campaign to obstruct federal oversight and control. It was Sen. Cruz who organized and led the ill-advised legislative assault on the Guam District Court during the Dandan landfill site selection and funding process. He’s probably the only former Supreme Court Chief Justice in the history of jurisprudence to be held in Contempt of Court and charged by a federal judge with violating his Oath of Office and “warring against the Constitution.”

Along with several other Democratic senators, he now finds himself in the crosshairs of public opinion on the military buildup pause and downsizing, the extent and effect of which is yet to be determined. Protestations notwithstanding, these are the ones who’ve worked most diligently to promote and solidify the notion that Guamanians are somehow entitled to everything while paying for nothing. They’ve completely abandoned the concept that individuals and societies should be self-sufficient to the greatest possible extent, and they want you to join them. What happened to this society? Where went pride and self-esteem?

A friend recently described for me a system of government that seems a perfect fit for Guam. It’s the “Ineptocracy” – where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and those least likely to sustain themselves are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Plato observed, “Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.” And Adolph Hitler wrote: “What luck for rulers that men do not think.” Review the title of this article and consider your current crop of ‘leaders.’