Columnists

IT is no secret that LOYALTY to the Republican Party does pay dividends, especially if you are a politician who has LOST the confidence OF the People — they do take care of their own at the top but those at the bottom are more like pons to be used and disposed of at will.   The recent appointment o…

FOR recreational sailboaters, one of the great ambitions is to cross the Pacific.  Even a shorter run of, say, Hawaii to the mainland would be the trip of a lifetime.  Bill and Simone Butler had bigger ideas.  In 1989 they set out to sail around the world and had made it to a point 1200 miles west …

FORTY-NINE years ago, the island’s newest newspaper, Marianas Variety, reported that the Marianas District Legislature would convene to establish the Marianas Future Status Commission. In 1972, the NMI was still part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands administered by the U.S., but was ea…

DURING the early months of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers’ work, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios encouraged us to work together to transform the Marianas after a video depicting dilapidated tourist and community sites revealed the real and unfortunate conditions o…

THE crisis in the Suez Canal, where the containership Ever Given was stuck for six days, has caused the global shipping industry to rethink things.  Many good questions were raised, some of which have complicated answers and some of which have no answers at all. We have heard the oft-quoted statist…

DURING the onset of the pandemic, we were fortunate to live on islands with uncrowded and open public spaces. On Saipan, we turned to the Beach Road Pathway, walking and jogging when indoor exercise facilities were closed. Many hopped on their bikes and navigated the road in Marpi for sightseeing a…

“OUR powers of logical reasoning,” says “The Data Detective” author Tim Harford, “are skewed by our political beliefs.” Or, as clinical psychologist and Democrat political strategist Drew Westen would put it: what passes for reasoning in politics is more often rationalization whose goal is an emoti…

PRESIDENT Biden is now in office which means there is a “New Sherriff” in town but Governor Torres seems to be still trying to “circumvent justice by getting someone he wants to be Judge and even tried to punish the Honorable Chief Justice Manglona by not recommending her for re-appointment.”  More…

IF you have eyes and ears then you have to know about all the bad examples of leadership that have been on display by the Governor who is just waiting for the trial and the previous Republican Legislature who refused to tell us what they did with OUR money and refused to investigate (hold accountab…