Thursday, March 8, 2007

Deja View

Somebody was asking about Saipan's new lobbyist. Before you flagellate me in your comments, I know I said 'Saipan' instead of 'The CNMI'.

So the winner was William Oldaker. Who? Well, we only stalled the feds with all of those Republican lobbyists. In fact it just made the Democrats mad. So the obvious fix is to
find a Democrat.

Not just any Democrat either. How about a former Treasurer for Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden Jr. and Harry Reid, to name a few. Partner R. Hunter Biden, Senator Joe's son, doesn't hurt either.

Obviously plan b is the flip side of Jack Abramoff, et al ( Actually, he kind of knew Jack.) Who knows? It might work; those Senate staffers were sure waffling as they jetted out of town. More studies? Why not?

7 comments:

Saipan Writer said...

I'm outraged that the CNMI is spending taxpayor's money for a lobbyist--probably to argue against US minimum wage here and federalizing our immigration--both things we need and which a large segment (majority? who knows?) of the citizen community supports.

This should be headline news. We have a resident representative--he's our lobbyist. We don't need to spend more money from our cash strapped government.

Anonymous said...

Your first link was broken earlier. Thanks for fixing it. Same old, same old.

KAP said...

I tested the link when I first posted, but the Blogger software mysteriously changed one character later and it looked like the one it replaced.

I was ready to blame a bug in IE 6, but Gates gets off the hook this time.

Anonymous said...

the few people who are profitting from our wicked system would ask help from the devil himself just to maintain the status qou.

Bruce A. Bateman said...

I beg to differ with the Saipan Writer. We have a Resident Representitive all right, hugely overpaid, and nearly useless. He is not our lobbyist, however. He represents his own viewpoint. He takes no diplomatic orders from nor even any suggestions from the local admisnistration. He certainly doesn't poll the body politic and represent that viewpoint. He has managed recently to gather the short term agreement of 9 (out of some 1500) legislators on a single issue. Tomorrow morning he will be off on another assignment, posing with his cowboy hat among the Saipanese foolish enough to travel to DC this time of year.

The truth is, he only wishes to become the CNMI's first (and hopefully serving a life term) non voting hanger-on in washington. That is the full extent of his lobbying strategy. He would suck up to Mephisto to gain that end.

To take your argument one step further, we should pull him back to Saipan and drop the pretense of some kind of full time representation. Hire someone when we need a voice in that town for a specific purpose and save ourselves the shame and the millions that we currently waste.

Blah Blah, d blah blah d blah.

Gee, this blogging is fun !

KAP said...

Hey, it's SOP for Congressmen and Senators to pose with constituents. Goes with the territory and the local papers decide whether it's newsworthy.

And yeah, a non-voting delegate is something like an abstinent sex worker. But there would be a voice in committees dealing with our issues and the U.S. would pay the bills. Wow, probably even a franking privilege so you could get your pictures in the mail.

Jeff said...

Given the complete lack of a mandate this current administration has, and all the nonsense said to get elected, none of which I believed for a second, who can blame the guy for tuning out this administration. They only seem to represent the garment factories and the Chamber anyway. All in all, this current administration isn't terrible, but they lose a lot of credibility with the Jesus Camacho $4000 a month down the toilet, the Fitial friendly Chinese translation guy, the giant Hawaii junket they all just went on and those fruitless trips to the states many took, not to mention funding the government on the backs of the retirement fund members, which has been going on a while. Not as awful as possible is still not quite "good."