LET’S be clear on what the CNMI government has done — again — in laying out $90,000 plus to hire another lobbyist. They have taken public money from all of us for the benefit of local employers only to the detriment of workers.
Far from acting in the interest of the poor and needy, this government is making sure wages stay low with a large third world labor supply so that no one with a blue passport wants a job in the private for a meager $3.05 per hour. Far from being fiscally conservative, as many people in this island passionately claim to be, this insures more welfare and all the related problems with sitting around all day doing nothing: crime, alcoholism, poor diet and worst of all, poor parental examples for children that infect the schools and make education, the real solution, way more difficult. Who wins with this: Employers and those already in the bureaucracy, particularly those with nonsense jobs whose only real marketable job skills are political connections. Who loses, everyone else, especially those actually working for the meager private sector wages here.
First off, everyone should know what a lobbyist is, and I’m rather certain not everyone does. Lobbying is a top of legalized bribery in which former legislative staffers, writers and general influence peddlers, and even former lawmakers themselves, use their contacts in government to ask for favors for their clients. The system is so hideous that banking lobbyists have been able to actually write the bankruptcy laws, pharmaceutical lobbyists set prescription drug policies, and policy on virtually everything of economic value is set by the powerful, organized elite corporations while normal people fret about Britney, Anna Nicole Smith, professional sports and all the other pop cultural piddle that passes for news these days.
Often times lobbyists take these lawmakers to vacation resorts to seduce them, such as what infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff did when he wined and dined Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, at Lao Lao Golf Course and put him up in the Hyatt here in Saipan. In return, DeLay made sure our meager wages and easy immigration continued. DeLay left office in disgrace and more civilized people took over Congress in November for the first time in a while, so now the CNMI runs the only play in their aging and unimaginative playbook: Hire a lobbyist and try to scrape out a few more years of our dying economic system. Type in DeLay and Saipan on Google and all the sordid and well documented details from many sources will appear.
Some people, and not all of them idiots I’ll admit, are out there making the argument that “the time is not right,” we have our “economic crisis,” so let’s just wait. Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you read the history of the civil rights movement, many made the “you’re right, but the time is not right” argument. Martin Luther King famously retorted that “Justice delayed is justice denied.” I would say the two situations have their similarities.
Others offer the “unique place argument,” but just once I’d like to see someone explain how people are supposed to pay the highest food, gas, power and medicine prices in America on the lowest wages in America. This absurdity is what is unique. We expect people to be Houdinies.
In short, there is one simple bottom line: This government took tax money from people making $3.05 to make sure these same people will never make more than $3.05 — yet again. They didn’t even have the ideological consistency to let private business to hire their own lobbyist to try to rig the system. All these things are obvious to see and easily verifiable with a little intellectual curiosity and even a slightly operational BS detector. Until the people of the CNMI wake up to what is going on around them, and stop voting for these same people to do these same things, this type of nonsense will continue. Frankly, and I speak directly to all those making $3.05 or perpetually unemployed and simultaneously quiet about local affairs: If you are so indifferent or ignorant to let this lobbyist and government sponsored fight to keep your wages low without protest of this government effort in your name, you probably deserve $3.05 per hour.

JEFFREY C. TURBITT
Dandan, Saipan