Columnists

IN July 1984, Variety reported that the CNMI Senate was “out of money.” The Senate “will be broke…next week and the July 20 paycheck for the Senate’s approximately 90 employees will be their last of the fiscal year,” according to the director of the Department of Finance. He said “he saw no solutio…

HONIARA, a city on Guadalcanal, the capital of the Solomon Islands.  A boy in front of me finishes his cola and casually throws the bottle on the sidewalk.  It lands in a heap of 20 more bottles against a fence.  Across the street a man urinates against a building, then another and another until I …

THE truth of the matter is Ralph Torres has made victims of us All in the CNMI in how he misused OUR money and now I’m (Ambrose M. Bennett) a clear targeted victim of Ralph & Sixto who conspired with the Legislature to make sure I could not be part of the Cannabis Industry. I made the mistake o…

1997 was a banner year for the CNMI economy. Tourist arrivals totaled 726,690 — the highest in Commonwealth history — and the government’s proposed budget amounted to an amazing $257 million, which is equivalent to $480.9 million today. (The projected revenue for FY 2024? $172.5 million.) Back then…

FIJI airlines operates one flight out of Honolulu per day, at midnight or whenever they feel like it, and my hotel pushed me out at 11 a.m.  Since the ticket counter will not open for another nine hours, I have nested at the local IHOP to eat and people watch.  Besides me on my laptop, every custom…

IT has been known for some time that the government of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, out in the Western Pacific, is dominated by foreign-worker-loving employers, and that the bulk of the territory’s private sector workers are nonimmigrant aliens with no prospect of citizenship.…

BESIDES the hospital, CUC is the only other government entity whose closure is unthinkable. So many other government offices can shut down for days, weeks or even months, without anyone noticing a difference as long as their employees are still paid regularly. We don’t need to imagine what life cou…

IF in fact one could actually die of a broken heart (figuratively speaking), I don’t think I would have made it past the Summer of 1990 — teenage sweetheart problems at the end of my Junior and beginning of my Senior years in high school.  Of course, my heart was much stronger then, younger and wit…

IT is three o’clock in the morning in Honolulu as I sit at the computer drinking coffee and reading the news of the world on my laptop.  I have crossed five time zones to get here, so my body thinks it is mid-morning.  I am destined for the Solomon Islands where I will participate in an ambitious e…

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the newly sworn in administration was struggling to pay the government’s gargantuan obligations amid a severe economic downturn. The administration said it had to cut costs, starting with the government’s single largest expenditure: personnel. A government-wide personnel audi…