WITH all due respect for your intentions, your comment that ISLA “nails the coffin shut on the Abramoff era of undue political influence in the Congress” is NOT correct.
The decent people of the commonwealth have not yet been provided with transcripts concerning Jack’s activity here, who his accomplices and friends are, what is the current stage of the CNMI investigation, who received our ten plus million dollars, and who else will be rotting behind bars for disgracing the islands internationally.
Our current administration has publicly bragged that our new “Democratic lobbyists” may be as effective as Jack, and judging by the fact that our longtime residents here have been stiffed by ISLA, Jack’s Democratic replacements are equally effective and apparently cheaper.
So again Congressman, with all due respect, we have sent a clear message that bribery of our elected officials by gangsters not only pays, it is quite lucrative.
In addition, ISLA, or the Island Slave Law, completely dodges the issue of slavery and leaves our entire working populace in political limbo. To make this abominable matter worse, the new local labor law signed on Thursday is the most discriminating legislation since the post-Civil War era of Black Codes.
I want to know who got paid what with CNMI money and how did they vote on such a grave matter as our hope for decency.
Representative Donna Christiansen’s knows this issue must be addressed when she said, “I feel strongly that, as a country, we have a moral obligation to many of the long-term guest workers that we were not able to resolve in this legislation.”
The bottom line is that a group of crooks here bribed the U.S. Congress for a decade and 12 years later we have not resolved the issue of decency for our guest workers. We have a diverse community of island and Asian cultures and we must send a strong message that no one can buy the U.S. Congress and get away with it, not even our new Democratic lobbyists, because in America, decency and justice prevails over cash from criminals.

RON HODGES
Puerto Rico, Saipan