Columnists

IT should be alarming to hear a public figure — a former lawmaker no less — complain that the profits of foreign investors “leave the island.” It is an economically unsound notion, tied to the similarly widespread and fallacious belief that money is wealth. According to economist Thomas Sowell, the…

Ambrose M. Bennett THE Truth is “too much conservatism is the main reason locals leave for a better life,” as the majority of People in the CNMI have demonstrated time & time again that they prefer the “conservative party of Republicans,” when by the very meaning of conservatism is “NOT to Chan…

BC Cook SINCE I spend a lot of time traveling for work, many people ask for advice on smooth, efficient travel.  I put together a few things I learned along the way and hope you benefit from some of them. When packing, less is more. One of the most common mistakes made by those who are new to trave…

“The great conundrum of our times is the phenomenal inability of our politicians to produce any useful outcome from the billions we hand them.”                                                                    — Holman W. Jenkins Jr. THE Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek calls it “the …

Ambrose M. Bennett THE Truth is the CNMI is a highly religious society that use the phrase “what we have done & failed to do” in a serious “confession” to God. However, this very serious morality-ideal goes far beyond the sanctity of religion & our personal life to include the “good & e…

Ambrose M. Bennett THE Truth I have been waiting to see what kind of results OUR Delegate was going to deliver but given the temperament & policies of Trump it doesn’t look good at all for the CNMI. I said earlier that the challenge may not be so much about the ability of our Delegate but the a…

Rosemarie D. Embile  WHEN I first set foot on Saipan, it was to be with my husband. Little did I know this island would become such a meaningful part of my life, becoming a part of me in ways I never imagined. What began as a personal chapter soon became a calling — to teach, learn from my students…

BC Cook THOSE living in the Philippines in June 1991 will never forget the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.  It has become one of the events that mark the passage of time, like a death in the family or a war.  Filipino history can be divided by it, the way Americans divide time by September 11, 2001, th…

ONE of the upsides of the current brouhaha over tariffs is that more people are now realizing that they are bad — as Adam Smith pointed out in the 18th century. To more sensible pundits, using tariffs as a “negotiating tool” is the only acceptable form of what everyone now recognizes as a tax. The …

Ambrose M. Bennett THE Truth is I’ve been saying for over a decade that “the CNMI needs to change its tourism model (Brand) from the outdated WWII to a more “Family Oriented Destination,” as Global Branding is just a fancy way of saying “our tourism model.” Global branding is “the process of creati…