Attitude toward politics needs to change

Good day, Mr. Brooks. Time for a little verbal jousting! I pretty much took your letter at face value. My letter had quite a few tongue-in-cheek sarcasms. Case in point: my retiree money comment. I know more than a few people were amused by my letter while sadly agreeing with it. First of all I don’t need to know anything about you, who you’ve shook hands with, had your picture taken with or how many books you’ve written. Your education notwithstanding, your blinders were on in regards to issues you addressed in the CNMI when you took one small part of an entire economy and assigned a very large amount of blame. No need to understand you or Economics 101 to find your meaning in that. You threw some good ideas out there, but you have to remember, no one on the Hill is listening. It’s how things are done on Saipan.

You use Hawaii as an economic point-Hawaii’s real estate bubble has grown and popped many times and will keep repeating itself. When the Japanese economy died in early 1997, Hawaii later reaped the benefit of getting a lot of that real estate back from the Japanese at pennies on the dollar. The current bubble is now largely driven by rich folks from the mainland (thanks to the Internet) who are playing the same absentee landlord game the Japanese did and are buying up properties left and right, holding them while waiting for the bubble to grow. It’ll pop soon enough; it always does.

Don’t see how it applies to Saipan. The real estate game in the Commonwealth is basically nonexistent. Article 12: You think it helps or protects the CNMI economy in any way? Ask a realtor on Saipan his opinion. Imagine how much money would be in the CNMI if you or I or any American citizen could own land and pass it on to our children. You can be sure; I’d probably still be there now, spending my money along with many others. Do you know how many folks packed up and left or changed their minds about settling down in the CNMI once they enacted Article 12 (retroactively at that)? As it is, I’ll be retiring on Saipan at a point in my life when I couldn’t care less if I own a piece of property. Can you imagine a large scale retirement community pouring money into the CNMI? Many folks have given it very serious thought-for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and American retirees. But you can bet Article 12 is the No. 1 issue that brings negotiations to a screeching halt when everyone puts their cards on the table.

And using the Philippines as an economic analogy? Really? The Marcoses raped and pillaged their country, plain and simple. There wasn’t any form of economics, British, American or otherwise, involved in solving or explaining that equation. They took the checks Ronny Raygun sent to the Philippines to fight communists and deposited them directly into their bank accounts. It was just theft on an insanely massive scale-sort of like Wall Street and Corporate America nowadays.

I’m not sure but I’ll hazard a guess that you haven’t been on the islands very long. There are a great many aspects to Saipan life that you will enjoy learning about and might take awhile to understand. I grew up in an island culture. I lived on Saipan for 11 years, started my family there. My kids and I call it home. Many locals won’t take the low salary when they have Mom, Dad, brother or sister making the inflated government wage with all the attached benefits. Many are waiting until they can get a government job. Do you blame them? I don’t. They’re not stupid or lazy; it’s just how it is.

Again, I don’t know how long you’ve been on Saipan or how familiar you are with island culture, but there is a big keeping-up-with-the-Joneses attitude in the CNMI. Where else in the world will you find a man with a wife and three kids living in a tin house and driving a fully loaded Camry? It’s for keeping up appearances. That is not a racist statement, just fact.

Take that $5.05 an hour job? I’ll put my money where my mouth is: I have. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt to show for it. I started at Hyatt in 1992 at $4.20 an hour, when the minimum wage was $2.15. My wife and I raised three kids on Saipan with, at most, a combined salary of maybe $10 to $11 an hour. We survived-thrived actually. We bought cars, took long vacations, spent our money locally, etc. Sent a lot overseas, too. That was the wage offered-you took it or starve.

I put Hitler (the Holocaust) and George Bush (Iraq, WMD, terrorists) in the same sentence because they are both guilty of doing the same thing: They created a fictional enemy for everyone to fear and place the blame for our societal ills. That, in turn, allowed them to take over our lives and take away our rights. You and Uncle Ben were doing your best to make aliens and immigrants seem like the enemy-shame on you-obviously your wife-to-be is an immigrant. I can bet your fiancée is sending money out of the CNMI to her family overseas.

Was my letter negative? Yes. It was. It also called for positive change. If you truly call the CNMI home, you’d probably feel the same way I do-I know many, many of my friends on Saipan feel the same way I do. It breaks our hearts that the CNMI, a part of America, is being run into the ground by so many corrupt and self-serving clowns. I also have many friends from the islands who live here in the mainland and they would love nothing more than to be able to go back home, me included-if and when the economy is no longer in the pits. Do you know how many fine people have left the CNMI to seek greener pastures in the mainland because they can’t afford to live in their birthplace? The CNMI is the only place in America to have its population shrink (indigenous population), since the last Census. You can look it up.

This also brings up another Article 12 point: The folks who have left, they want to sell their land because they have permanently relocated to the mainland, but are being forced by Article 12 to sell to a local who, by the way, doesn’t have any money these days (unless he or she is an overpaid government official and they’re not buying either) because the local economy is in the toilet. No need for a degree in economics to see how that’s not helping the economy.

You also say the CNMI needs to produce to have a viable economy. Taken into account the Jones Act? (That’s another one you can blame on the U.S. government) As for calling the voters inept, your words, not mine. My words for local voters are much stronger and a majority of folks will agree with me. Been around long enough for a CNMI election, Mr. Brooks? If not, you are in for a treat. On the islands, or any island culture for that matter, voting tends to go along family lines. It’s who you’re related to, not who is best for the job that get elected into office. Island folks tend to vote for candidates who are more like themselves rather than who is smartest or most able to get the job done. And that is not a derogatory comment; just stating common facts. Ask any number of locals, they will quite unashamedly tell you, “Yeah, I voted for my uncle, auntie, cousin, etc…” Families are so tight on the islands that currently, getting them to vote for someone other than a member of the family is highly unlikely to happen. This tight family connection, on one hand, is a great and wonderful thing. Mainland America could learn a lot from it. On the other hand, well, you know…can’t be very easy for them either, what with the Commonwealth being such a small town and all.

Also, votes are bought in the simplest of ways on the islands. Why do you think the politicians in the CNMI each gave themselves such large discretionary funds? It’s for election time! It’s for paying power bills, beer for parties, tent and picnic table rental, etc. Case in point: A candidate who will remain unnamed, although everyone who reads this will know exactly who I am talking about, ran around Saipan giving out $10 gas vouchers in the days right before an election. It’s how things are done on Saipan. I voted every chance I had while living in the CNMI, even though the choices were very limited each election. You tell me to run for office in the CNMI, I would but I am a realist. (I will ask my Saipan friends at this point to stop laughing) There are many, many fine folks in the CNMI who should run for office but won’t because they and their supporters know and understand they will not get elected because of the current voter mentality.

I never put any blame on the U.S. government for the CNMI’s problems. Sure, they failed when they gave billions to the CNMI with no guidance, checks, or balances, but that was it. No more blaming other folks-plain and simple. I put the blame for the CNMI economical woes directly on the folks running the show. Not the folks who are affected by it. Because the folks running the show aren’t the ones affected by their own decisions! They voted to give themselves huge stipends-Tinian and Rota officials with $5,000 a month in stipends?-that they don’t have to show any accountability for. Seriously, why does a senator in the CNMI need that much? How much are their housing allowances, etc., and that famous discretionary fund they all hang on to so dearly.

The regular government worker in the CNMI is the one who has gone without due to the payless paydays. At this point it doesn’t matter that they are possibly making triple the income of the private sector when you don’t get paid. Shouldn’t the folks who caused/failed to fix, the economic collapse be the ones to take a payless payday first? Add up all their perks and see how much they are taking home per month. I doubt they are so low on funds that they can’t make their rent, pay power bills, and buy groceries, unlike the rank and file in the CNMI government. The rank and file will be ignored by those on the Hill. Why? Because that’s how things are done on Saipan. If you got the meaning of my letter, it’s that how things are done on Saipan game the CNMI political machine and that has to come to an end. I know the people of the CNMI are tired of the game, too, but what can they do? If your man’amko are telling you to vote for your uncle, well, then, you vote for your uncle.

The island attitude toward politics needs to change. Change will obviously move at the pace of the islands. The CNMI, if it is to continue growing and becoming a better place to make a living and support a family, has to change. If the CNMI politicos can’t get their act together, Uncle Sam will eventually step in, take over everything and the Commonwealth will end up like Guam, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico. The last thing the CNMI needs is the feds showing up in full force. Having Homeland Security firmly entrenched there is bad enough. As for thinking I’m racist, if you knew me, you’d know how far that is from the truth. I was raised in Hawaii and we call anyone older than ourselves Auntie or Uncle. The same goes for Saipan. Trust me, you wouldn’t want me to tell what I really think of Uncle Ben in a newspaper.

Paul H. Beebe
Spokane, Washington