I KNOW there was a lot of concern citizens in the community who were looking forward to the Special Committee Investigating the Governor to come up with something more definitive as, there were many wanting the Governor to be found not-guilty and just as many and even more wanting to see him guilty. BUT we will just have to agree that we disagree until something is determined by a prosecuting official because the Governor is not off the hook yet. The Public Auditor was the RIGHT move to get the Governor prosecuted agree or disagree. But don’t forget, it was the Public Auditor who prosecuted former Governor Fitial and I’m confident there is no-way the Governor can explain-away purchasing all those personal items and first-class tickets with OUR Money — for TRUE! The Legislature can only provide “Political Solutions” like “censuring or Impeachment” but the Public Auditor can prosecute, which is what most of us-folks-in-the-cheap-seats wanted anyway — so I’m like “Let’s Get It On Public Auditor” and expedite the prosecution!
Ambrose M. Bennett
The Governor also played the “overload trick” by sending the Special Committee many thousands of pages in almost a dozen binders which was far more than they could even look at given the short time they had and it worked. But he has been playing the “stall-game” on his accountability ever since the FBI raided his offices and the receipts of his misuse of OUR money surfaced. While the Governor claims he would explain the use of OUR Money, which was a LIE and now he admits the Public Auditor should have been investigating the matter in the first place, WOW! Readers should duly note that he NEVER explained the misuse of OUR Money and he didn’t pick up the phone nor did he send a letter to the Legislature telling them they should give the case to the Public Auditor. He just sat back waiting to let his explanation become old-news and forgotten and to make sure the Legislature would “stall around” for the matter to get older and less likely prosecutable which is WHY he was literally running a “full-court-press” to get Angel to be the next speaker so he could squash it.
The Governor is literally “playing us-folks-in-the-cheap-seats” for FOOLS in our faces and need I remind readers it was already exposed on Kandit News that the Trump Administration was delaying the RICO Investigation & Prosecution for Governor Torres which PROVES he has been playing the “stall-game” and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know he was playing the stall-game with the Legislature — for TRUE! So We the People can agree on these matters regarding the Governor or disagree but only time will deliver the definitive answer as to who was RIGHT!
Defying the Fault-Finding Nay-Sayers
If there is one thing humans can do because of our “cognitive abilities” is to find fault in other people. It is one thing to find fault in our Government’s Elected & Appointed Officials but it is a totally different animal to find fault in an individual as we are taught at a very early age “judge ye not except ye be judged”. But the CNMI has a group of “fault finders” that appear regularly on Social Media and in the comment section of the newspaper. I previously labeled a group in the Comment Section as being “Cyber Rats” because all they did was spread around “trash in the comment section that often didn’t have anything to do with the subject matter I wrote about.
In a previous Epitaph I wrote about restarting our Economy with a focus on Japan & Exporting using the “Made in the U.S.A.” label and flexible Tariffs on products like lemons & bananas” to help the local people earn a little extra money when they are in season. While I can appreciate well thought-out nay-saying arguments that offer real challenges to production and exporting by elkapitan, it should be noted that his argument is flawed. The numbers and statistics he quoted were of a “general nature” that did not consider the “specificity” of developing a MORE profitable Hemp product which is WHY the CNMI must do its homework to address this all important factor in order to attract investors — it’s called doing your homework, which I’m not going to do when no one has listened in the past. Hemp is the future as it is better and stronger & more flexible than glass, fiberglass, plastics and some metals and it’s up to our “creative minds” to learn how to capitalize on the production of Hemp before someone else does it in our region.
But it is fault-finding commenting nay-sayers like ezthere who seems to be suffering from Covid and is delusional to think it is crazy for locals to sell their lemons and bananas that often go to waste on the trees in their yards, which could be sold if there was a viable market. It is the job of our Government to set & create the conditions for a market to allow locals to sell their fruits to stores when they are in season. If the stores can’t afford to bring these products in because of a high tariff when lemons and bananas are in season and plentiful on island, they will have no choice but to buy them from locals like they do with Betel Nut — duh! Some people can’t use the simplest of common sense but I hope this makes it clearer and easier for him to understand because locals could be making an extra hundred or two or more depending on their trees.
But ezthere really got worse and more delusional as he continued with his fault finding nay-saying by trying to insinuate I didn’t know what I was talking about in getting Japanese Tourist back because “Japan is presently closed.” I guess he thinks this pandemic is the “end-of-the-world” or something because Japan and the entire world is eventually going to “re-open” and back to normality. Telling me what air-carries aren’t doing now has no real relevance to what they WILL be doing in the future.
The CNMI’s challenge is to be DOING something that will create a DEMAND for air-carries to SUPPLY which is the FIRST thing you learn in Economics which is why its an “Art & Science to maintain SUPPLY equaling DEMAND.” If the CNMI does its HOMEWORK there are enough positive variables regain the Japanese Tourist Market that have proven to be successful in our history that are still applicable today. I guess he was one of those wanting the Chinese Tourist Market when we don’t have a single Chinese Tourist Site but we are still LOADED with Japanese Tourist Sites — somebody PLEASE go check on ezthere because he sounds Covid delusional!
On a final note, there have been nay-sayers proven WRONG to all kinds of changes and improvements in mankind’s history. Heck, mankind is just now learning that marijuana is really GOOD, Helpful and HEALTHIER than other vices like cigarettes and alcohol. I can remember when Fred Smith got his Doctorate at the then Memphis State University and his Professor with a PhD in Economics gave him a “C” for his Thesis that was on the “Federal Express Idea.” Well, we see the world changing success of Federal Express that was put-down by a PhD nay-sayer so I’m really not concerned at all with the fault finding nay-sayers in the CNMI who only find-fault in the comment section using “disguise names and in the shadows” but NEVER go public to really try and make a difference — COWARDS for TRUE! Maybe one-day they will learn & grow as I can only pray for the fault-finding nay-sayers. To be continued: One People One Direction.
The writer is a retired teacher, former CNMI Board of Education Member, James Madison Fellow (U.S. Constitutional Scholar) and a Fulbright-Hays Foreign Scholar who resides in Kagman III
