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VICTORY IS OURS! NUBEMBRE | SUMONGSONG 1 Be victorious and make| NOVEMBER your2013life a movement

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VICTORY GUAM | ABOUT

gement and intelligent choice in voting through the development, promotion and facilitation of critical dialogue in our community. Welcome to the inaugural edition of our digital magazine “V.” By helping residents understand the key policy issues and reinforcing the importance of being knowledgeable and involved in the electoral process.

Our objective is the empowerment of island residents to vote smart. A lot of people, feel like they don’t understand all the nuances and details of the importance issues to do that. They find it tough trying to figure out which candidates best represents their values. Often, especially with college students and young adults, residents simply drop out or do not engage in the electoral process.

Our Voter Awareness Initiatives will aim to change that losing proposition by making people aware of the important topical issues, the value of their participation in the electoral processes either as voters or candidates; the modes of participation in the process; procedures to become eligible for voting and the need to actually cast their vote. This effort will extend to helping voters to assess media stories, political spin and the poll-worthiness of a candidate.

We intend to accomplish this through an innovative voter engagement and education strategy by increasing engagement with island residents through social media, video and physical meetings - connecting the off to the online – and urging viral activism, encouraging voters to turn their concerns, their hopes for a better Guam - their lives - into a movement: a victorious movement that puts people before politics.

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VICTORY GUAM | INSIDE

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VICTORY LETTER | BE VICTORIOUS

V

ictoryGuam is an issue advocacy political action committee dedicated to restoring

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voter engagement and intelligent choice in voting. This can be achieved through the development, promotion and facilitation of critical dialogue in our community.

We start that dialog and engagement with this first issue of our digital, interactive magazine “V.”

Our goal is to help residents understand key policy issues, and to reinforce the importance of being knowledgeable and involved in the electoral process; the objective to empower island residents to vote smart.

A lot of people, feel like they don’t understand all the nuances and details of the important issues to do that. They find it tough trying to figure out which candidates best represent their values and often, voting-age adults drop out of the electoral process altogether - and lose their voice and their power.

Our Voter Awareness Initiatives aim to change that losing proposition. We will make people aware of the important issues, the value of their participation in the electoral processes either as voters or candidates; the modes of participation in the process; procedures to become eligible for voting and the need to actually cast their vote.

Our effort will also extend to helping voters to assess media stories, analyze political spin and the poll-worthiness of a candidate. Speaking of polls, at the end of each of the stories in our Issues section you will find a Readers’ Poll. Click the digital survey and make your opinion on the issues known to one another and to elected officials and candidates.

In the Winners section, “V” profiles the women and men, youth and groups in our community that are doing good things, succeeding and being victorious. We’ll also highlight the Losers.

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter and our website to learn more. Be informed. Get connected.

Take action. Be victorious. Because we only win when we all win. Welcome to Victory, Guam.

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ISSUE 01

VICTORY GUAM | ISSUES

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VICTORY ISSUES | GAMBLING

Guam’s purveyors of predatory gambling are like drug dealers exploiting a megamillions feeding frenzy that preys on the most vulnerable in our community.

Bad Bets.

Electronic slots and casino cafes are

THE ISSUES SOCIAL

Gambling • ECONOMY The Minimum Wage • HEALTHCARE Insurance NUBEMBRE | SUMONGSONG | NOVEMBER 2013

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Electronic slot machines are often called “the crack cocaine” of gambling. Occasional wins, near misses, and machine environmental features all impact cognitive and emotional factors. Faulty thinking contributing to triggering the brain’s pleasure centers, creating a cycle of harmful and often addictive behavior in gamblers.

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VICTORY ISSUES | GAMBLING

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VICTORY ISSUES | GAMBLING

Interpretative phenomenological analyses show related increases in aggressive behavior and domestic violence in adults who gamble.

Parke & Griffiths, Psychological Reports, 95, 109–114, 2004

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the machines belonging to a single company.

uam voters have rejected legalized gambling, in many forms, on five separate occasions in recent years. Yet, Gov. Eddie Calvo and a majority of senators greenlighted hundreds of gaming machines earlier this year.

In July, Calvo and the Rev & Tax director disregarded the advice from the attorney general and renewed the licenses and also issued more new licenses for gaming devices.

Because of a number of lawsuits, and taking the position the machines are illegal, the Guam Attorney General in 2008 shut down the gaming machines.

Nonetheless, following a raucous legislative session on Bills 19 and 20 earlier this year, under the guise of helping Guam Memorial Hospital, gambling was legalized. Only after what a local editorial described

as, “backroom deals, wheeling and dealing, political rhetoric, and posturing of senators,” was the scheme legalizing gaming permitted by Calvo to lapse into law ten days later.

In April, Calvo ordered Department of Revenue and Taxation director John Camacho to issue 170 licenses for gaming devices. A total of 217 licenses were then issued by mid-April, with the majority of

Immediately afterwards, despite lawmakers and Calvo’s promises to the contrary, the number of gambling machines on the streets, originally allowed under Public Law 32-060, nearly doubled, before vice speaker Benjamin Cruz, D-Piti, demanded a halt to new licensing. Cruz was frustrated

Gambling extracts a huge social toll.

It can be like other impulse control disorders such as kleptomania, pyromania, and trichotillomania. Gamblers are highly likely to exhibit other psychiatric problems greater than pulling out their hair! Other associated troubles include drug and alcohol abuse, mood and anxiety disorders, and/or personality disorders...all of this at the same time.

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VICTORY ISSUES | GAMBLING

“

These gambling devices are Robin Hood in reverse - taking from the poor to give to the rich. That doesn’t help GMH, it just hurts Guam.”

Vice Speaker BJ Cruz, D - Piti

that Rev & Tax was unable to provide an accurate count of machines licensed.

The vice speaker, who along with a handful of lawmakers, vehemently opposed the backdoor legalization scam that made gambling machines legal, has taken note of the creeping expansion of predatory gambling with the operations at “casino cafes.”

More commonly known as “sweeps cafes,” the island currently has only one licensed operator of this kind in Harmon and Upper Tumon, but the company PhilWeb has plans to expand on Guam.

Cruz recently introduced Bill 192, which seeks to prohibit the use of sweepstakes mechanics to allow online gambling with local payoff, wherein

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customers purchase internet access and receive a card that is then swiped and allowing access to the internet. While they can surf the ‘Net, the objective is for the customer to go online and play casinostyle games, and later convert earned card points into cash from the business.

What do you think about gambling on Guam?

Take the poll and we’ll publish the results in the next issue of “V.”

Cruz wrote to congressional delegate Madeleine Z. Bordallo seeking help. In his letter, Cruz noted that, “Though this type of business claims to be an internet cafe on paper, in reality it is a gambling den operating within a grey area of the law. 15 U.S.C. §1175, the Johnson Act, as amended, generally prohibits the manufacture, possession, use, sale, or transportation of any “gambling device” in Indian Country, the District of Columbia, and possessions of the United States.”

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VICTORY ISSUES | ECONOMY

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GUAM

$7.25

RAI$ ING

THE MINIMUM

WAGE

HELP OR HARM?

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ore than four years after the official end of the Great Recession, pay for Guam’s workers remains, like the island’s economy, stagnant. Even as the cost of living continues to rise there have been few new jobs created, and most of those, low-wage occupations that increasingly dominate the post-recession recovery.

The current minimum wage is $7.25 and remains decades out of date; if it had kept up with inflation since 1968, it would be $10.69 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.

While President Obama has called for a raise to $9 an hour, Democrats in Congress have called for increasing it to $10.10. So far, however, there has been no action from Washington, and people on Guam have begun grumbling.

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VICTORY ISSUES | ECONOMY

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While the minimum wage translates to just $15,080 per year for a full-time worker, the national poverty line for a family consisting of two people is $14,570 per year. But, that threshold figure for Guam is estimated to be more like $18,000 a year. And with a family of four, the threshold shoots up to a staggering figure estimated to be as much as $30,000 a year.

With both parents in a household working at minimum wage or just above that, a family of four simply cannot make it without considerable amounts of public assistance - or other means of income, that too often ends up coming by way of criminal or illegal activities.

One concerned lawmaker has been quietly holding private discussions with local economists about the possibility of raising the island’s

VICTORY ISSUES | ECONOMY

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will help the economy. Any time someone suggests raising the minimum wage, the howls begin: “It will hurt job creation.” To be fair, this would appear to be an intuitive conclusion.

Indeed, was conventional wisdom in economic circles for many years. However, numerous empirical studies have found over and over again that this is simply not the case. Economists have noted that this is potentially because it actually increases

REASONS TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE

minimum wage either through legislation or by ballot initiative.

In private, 4 out of 5 island economists agree a raise is not an option; rather, they agree, it is a necessity. However, none of them really wants to come out and admit that publicly, despite recognizing the rising costs of living, a flat economy, booming tourism dollars that do not trickle down into a broader economy and the second-highest unemployment rate in the US - which has climbed significantly from 8.8% to more than 13% in just five years.

The senator continues to quietly explore the impact and benefits of introducing legislation to raise the island’s minimum wage.

VictoryGuam supports the idea and offers five reasons why he should.

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The minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of lowwage workers. One reason a minimum wage increase doesn’t kill jobs is that the increase in the price of labor is balanced out by reduced turnover and a general increase in productivity. - Center For Economic Policy Research

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employers’ ability to attract, retain, and motivate workers. Moreover, it benefits workers by increasing the reward to work.

In fact, there have been recent studies that suggest raising the minimum wage right now would have a positive effect on the economy, with low-income workers spending their new wages immediately, boosting GDP growth and lowering unemployment slightly.

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VICTORY ISSUES | ECONOMY

2.

3.

It reduces in the “wage gap” for women and minorities. Despite making up slightly less than half the workforce, women hold around two-thirds of all minimum wage jobs. Bryce Covert from the Roosevelt Institute wrote that this is a “significant factor in that bothersome gender wage gap.” Not surprisingly, then, women would disproportionately benefit from a minimum wage increase, shrinking the wage gap at a time when House Republicans have refused to pass other measures, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would help.

It reduces poverty and inequality. It has not gone unnoticed that the decline in the minimum wage over the last thirty years has contributed considerably to the rise in economic inequality, a rise that continues apace in the post-recession landscape. A higher minimum wage would help finally reverse this ever-moredangerous trend. And while the federal government’s proposed increase would still leave many Americans - especially those with families - struggling in poverty, it would nonetheless push millions above the poverty line, including a considerable number of workers right here on Guam.

Increasing the minimum wage, of course, is but one tool in fighting inequality and poverty, but it remains an effective one.

4.

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Indexing the minimum wage is, well, common sense. From 1998 to 2006, the real value of the minimum wage declined 19 percent. This wasn’t because of any policy, but because the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation, and so automatically declined in value when it wasn’t raised by Congress. Indexing a new minimum wage would ensure that Guam workers do not get screwed over by congressional inaction. Ideally, the minimum wage in fact would be indexed to wages in general or productivity, but pegging to inflation is a good first step.

It’s consistent with our values. A living wage carries out the commitment made in the Constitution to “promote the general welfare.” It is a commitment that goes all the way back to America’s beginnings.

John Winthrop, who in his famous in his famous “City on a Hill” sermon said “we must be knit together, in this work, as one man…We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.” This is a reflection of our own local, ancient value system and commitment of interdependence one on the other. inafa’maolek, part of what it takes to win.

Road to Affordable Healthcare

ISSUE 01

The

VICTORY ISSUES | HEALTHCARE

Not so clear?

.

Should the Guam Legislature raise the minimum wage?

Take the poll and we’ll publish the results in the next issue of “V.”

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The Power of

Anonymity

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n the age of Twitter and social networking, the internet provides us a certain level of anonymity. The Internet provides the chance for people to gather, in many instances, in communities that lack the traditional restraints of control and order.

Forums, blogs and, to a lesser degree, social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter provide a new sense of web community that is not so much decentralized as much as it is centered on ideas rather than directives.

This new culture of online community exists side-by-side with the offlione world, the big difference being that on the interweb people denied their voices in the offline realm, through social conformities or disengagement, are able to claim a new degree of power through faceless, yet powerful voices.

Feeling like we’re anonymous is enough to free us from the normative constraints – the unwritten rules of civilized society – that usually governs our behavior. Cloaked in anonymity, “Anons” can get away online with actually saying what they think in ways they cannot in the “real” world.

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