SOSaipan

tsu tsu tsunami

2011-03-11T17:46:00.003+10:00

If somebody happens by this idling site, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has a warning out for the Northern Marianas.

Their estimate is about 8:53 Zulu -- about 6:53 this evening. They say its magnitude was 7.9 with no reports of damage or waves... But that's bulletin one.

From Japan I'm hearing 8.8 with large waves and major damage. Check out Earthquake-Report.com. They claim it's the largest quake ever recorded in Japan.

Mo later.

Excerpted from bulletin #9:

SAIPAN US 15.2N 145.7E 0916Z 0.65M / 2.1FT 30MIN

So it looks like 2.1 feet at 7:16 pm

I wonder where the gauge is...

Chevy Goodenough is a good name

2011-02-01T04:38:00.004+10:00

Okay, you'd have to read Gene Weingarten's piece in the Washington Post to get the joke.

Awhile back (quite a while) I ran off my reaction to a story about the planned Chevy Volt. I'm winging it, but I believe the original article said something about General Motors rolling the dice (and betting the firm) on it.

They lost, of course.

But hey, this is America and everyone gets a second chance, especially if they're Too Big To Fail. GM has almost bailed out their boat and it looks like the Volt might actually work out.

Not enough to get me out of my blogging snooze, except for a rare planetary alignment.

First, there was a reaction to his story from Powered by Coal which said, repetitiously: "Powered by Coal."

ha hahahahahaa. the whole article is a set up for that punch line. the american car industry: going backward to go forward

True enough, which got me thinking about the head of my current list of What's Wrong With This Country. That would be the Koch brothers, who seem to have become a liberal target also. When they're not suborning Justices or buying tea bags, they're funding lies about global warming.

I had to stretch to remember their names a couple of times, so I came up with Koch-coke-coal to deal with that mental burp. Weak, but it's my mnemonic and I'm keeping it.

That's the irony here. Even if you don't swallow some of the nonsense they've been enabling and buy an electric car, you're still filling their pockets.

So it's step forward and step back, but marginal progress nonetheless. Especially, as one of his readers astutely noted, because it's not much use if you don't have a secure place to plug it in.

If your power is expensive, Hello Saipan, not too practical and it's not much car for $36,000. Those are just quibbles, I think it a grand machine, even though I won't buy one soon. Finding a repair shop, I dunno.

Odds and ends

I'm a little rusty at this blogging, so there are a few danglers.

I mentioned that planetary alignment. His piece also included a cute quote that I vaguely remembered from way back, presented cutely:

This reminds me of Durwood Kirby. When he was warming up the audience for the Garry Moore show back in the 60s, he'd be asked from time to time what his real name was. He'd answer: If I weren't named Durwood Kirby do you think I'd ever call myself that?

Garry Moore was Garrison Morfit, Jr. By the way.

I am VERY old.

Also, just for closure, after the Koch bros. my WWWTC is headed by Rupert Murdoch and any one who has had any thing to do with Goldman Sachs. That last includes just about every national politician you've ever heard of and is one of the reasons for my blogger hiatus.

Sometimes you just throw your hands up and look at NASA's pretty pictures on the internet.

Meanwhile, the Volt really is just a Goodenough.

Once in a Blue Moon

2010-11-21T17:27:00.003+10:00

incredibly remiss
unrepentant
otherwise occupied

But...
I ran across this piece claiming that tonight's full moon is indeed a 'blue moon'. Not the second full moon in a month as everyone *knows*, but an extra month in a season. Supposedly, the monks didn't like years with 13 full moons because it messed up their festivals... unlucky, as it were.

Sounds good to me; it even makes sense. Just goes to show that we were more than capable of viral misinformation long before the internet piped up. The caveat, of course, being that I was interested enough to read the story and post this, but not to check the article's veracity.

absurdity

2010-03-20T09:00:00.005+10:00

Slow motion tsunami watch

2010-02-28T10:13:00.005+10:00

Yesterday's magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile gave us time enough for two panic attacks, and I'm not going to the beach today.

A patrol officer announced the first tsunami watch at about ten o'clock last night. Sort of: I saw the lights and heard a marble-mouthfilled underwater voice. But the employees called soon after, then some customers. 'Are you open? Will you be open?'

No irresponsible lout, I pecked my way to the trusty Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The site loaded in my browser more slowly than a government payment, and I soon learned why. A big one. We love lists and this comes in five on the top ten since 1900. (Hawaii was particularly nervous. Number one was from Chile too, I think, and it had a killer tsunami.(Evidently yes, at least it was just confirmed via CNN breaking news overkill.))

Still, the Pacific Ocean covers a third of the world. Chile is in the Southeast, we're in the Northwest. Even using the ballpark figure of commercial jetspeed without a TSA check beforehand, I could count on a good night's sleep before giving it much thought-- though there were early reports of 3-7 foot waves close to the quake.

Three feet in Hilo, Hawaii, the cable networks said at about 10:00 our time (Except CNBC; they were featuring Akio Toyoda falling on his sword before the U.S. Congress.) I should have recorded their boring beach pictures, it would be useful as one of those 'therapeutic' video relaxation programs.

So, at about 1:00 this afternoon I'll be at home. I live in Garapan, but up a hill. Safe enough. My neighbors went crazy when a police car went around again this morning. Massive chatter, I saw people with suitcases and bottles of water. None of my business.

If I had the ambition or energy, I'd head over to Old Man by the Sea or Jeffries Beach and try to grab a photo from a safe height. Hmm... Laulau Bay from the old Chamorro Village might be interesting. Nah, I'll play a computer game.

Dirty dancer not deportable

2010-02-23T08:49:00.004+10:00

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is at it again, deciding that nude dancing is not "categorically" a crime of moral turpitude and cause for deportation.

The story caught my eye because it might be of more than passing interest to some people locally now that immigration has gone federal. Well... it didn't hurt that they put 'moral turpitude' in the subheading. That woke me up better than a cup of coffee, almost guaranteeing a string of my favorite adjectives: vile, wicked base acts, depravity.

I was disappointed, sorely. The decision didn't even discuss the 'lewd act' that one Victor Ocegueda Nunez committed to get convicted of indecent exposure (I looked).

This all came up because Ocegueda, an illegal immigrant, was petitioning on hardship grounds to remain in the U.S. with his wife and children. Ah, but two moral turpitudes and you are out. The first was a petty theft conviction. Surprisingly draconian, or as Judge Stephen Reinhardt puts it with more judicial precision: "Go figure." That left the indecent exposure conviction and a descent into sophistry.

Instead of the facts of the case we are treated to an analog of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's easy to see why the Ninth Circuit gets slapped down so often.

Ordinarily, I would probably disagree with dissenting Judge Jay Bybee. Reading between the lines, it wouldn't be a stretch if he thought all dancing was lewd and lascivious. Still, it's hard to argue with "Whatever Ocegueda did to get himself convicted of indecent exposure, we can be fairly confident that it involved more than being a nude dancer at a bar or a 'tasteless prank'." This is California, folks.

Now I'll have that coffee.

Driven

2010-02-21T08:14:00.006+10:00

Dilatory in posting, I've been chided. Shrug, I've been busy. Not that it matters, the local newspapers bickering, more Tiger balm for the masses, bankers back to being bankers. Politics, politics and another offensive in Afghanistan (Obama's War, according to a PBS piece).

I drive a lot lately. If the Department of Public Safety is cracking down on aggressive drivers, it's on other streets in other villages. A recent study claimed that most motorists weren't as competent as they thought. The evidence is out there every day.

I've always been bemused by the 'slalom' drivers here. With the distances involved, how much faster can you get anywhere cutting in and out of traffic? My tentative conclusion is that it's some sort of compensation. 'Sure, I'm still going to be late, but look how hard I'm trying to make up the time'. Nobody's watching but your superego, of course. I guess that's part of being socialized: act as if your disapproving aunt is judging every move, even when you're alone.

My reaction is different, if not quite opposite. Much of it comes from far too much time on the road after midnight, or later after the bars close. There's a simple rule if someone is weaving, driving erratically, too fast or too slow: keep them in front of you.

That last one might take some patience, but it's a hard-earned lesson. I once passed some yahoo stumbling down the road at 15 miles an hour and immediately found myself in a bad Fast and Furious remake (ok, that's redundant). Who knows what will push the road rage button when someone is making all of their decisions with their brain stem? It's all about control. If you're in front of me I have it, behind me and I'm a potential victim.

They're the worst, but drunks aren't the only problem to get before me. Cellphoners and text-punch-drunks come in a close second. I added the ubiquitous, pestilent white tour van years ago. Now, of course, any Toyota* is on the list.

Driver's education wasn't a big thing back in the day, but I remember learning about defensive driving. I vaguely recall a film with horrible, twisted corpses in horrible, twisted wreckage.

So, when I wonder whether that guy is going to pull out right in front of me at five miles-an-hour, he usually does. If I consider that gal likely to cross over into my lane for no reason, she often does. Dogs, cats and rugrats are alarmingly oblivious to tons of steel whizzing by.

There are some vivid images imprinted in my brain. I was crawling up the hill to the college (I still think of Dr. Torres Hospital and call it hospital hill) in a long line moving at the speed of a truck-full of gravel. There were only two lanes and the shoulder barely existed. Coming the other way, drunk at eight in the morning, was a fellow who veered into the gravel 'just a bit'. He over-corrected and zigged straight at the car in front of me. In stop-motion I saw (and see) his wide eyes as he zagged and over-corrected again, I see the driver in front of me looking over his shoulder equally wide-eyed with his mouth in a cartoon oval of surprise. Three's the charm, so his last over-correction took him just past me and he piled into the next car. The last image, less vivid, is the man behind me leaning away from the inevitable collision.

Luckily, no one was hurt-- drunks seldom are, anyway-- but there was nothing any of us could do. Out of our hands, luck of the draw. I'm doing my best to never be in that helpless position again.

* Some 'independent expert' was quoted as saying that while one of the Toyota brake fixes seemed expensive at millions of dollars, it was actually *only* a buck or two per car. That would be one explanation for him not working for a car company, their logic being that if you can save a dollar or two on each car it's millions on the bottom line. (I hope Nissan executives had bad dreams for awhile because of the evil psychic juju I was generating when I discovered my Sentra had a nylon timing belt.)

Quash, anyone?

2010-02-08T18:45:00.000+10:00

KSPN-2, the local cable news channel reported tonight that District Judge Alex Munson has quashed the subpoenas for Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and four Corrections officials to appear at a Feb. 17. evidentiary hearing. They haven't posted the streaming video yet, but it can be accessed later through their home page.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said it requested the hearing to discover whether Qing Mei Cheng's transfer under escort from prison to Fitial's residence could have affected her trial on human smuggling charges.

More later... going out the door.

CNMI paper implies First Amendment Retaliation

2010-02-08T14:43:00.006+10:00

The Marianas Variety suggests, without making a specific accusation, that political retribution is behind the CNMI Department of Public Health pulling its advertising.

That would be troubling, if true -- and illegal. For example, in a quick search for First Amendment Retaliation by governments I found cases from Mississippi and Puerto Rico.

If possible, the newspaper's relations with Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and his administration have become more strained since his re-election, capped by their reporting the governor's controversial massage by a woman who was in federal custody.

I'm hesitant to say more, because the piece is more editorial opening salvo than news story. Tomorrow is another day.

However (heh), I did rummage through some back issues that were squirreled away and DPH doesn't seem to be the only government agency that is migrating away from the Variety and staying with the Saipan Tribune.

Evidently, the Variety learned this Friday, which makes the bare-bones reporting more understandable. Additionally, the paper claims that "Variety reporters covering the executive branch are also not getting replies to their requests for information and comments."

I had wondered why they were getting 'scooped' on stories that are essentially press release journalism.

Obama rasa

2010-02-05T09:42:00.004+10:00

Everyone wants a crack at President Barack Obama: demonizers to tell him off, while acolytes would probably be happy just to touch a hem on his garments. Personally, I'm still trying to figure out who is and exactly what the hell he's up to.

Some think they will get their chance this March when he stops over in Guam. My term: I haven't seen anyone phrase it that way, but Guam's still a prime coaling station. Check the oil, kick the tires, stretch your legs and it's on the road again.

Oh, yeah; "he will speak with U.S. service members on the island," according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Stalwart young men and women, clean cut (no t-shirt slogans and signs) and in the forefront where America's homeland security begins. This sounds like a script borrowed from the latter-day George Bush.

That's not meant to be as flippant and cynical as it sounds: it's what I'd do -- I could probably write the speech. The Guam activists and CNMI politicians looking for meetings and visits will very likely be disappointed. 'Bulwark' will be used once, 'defense' and 'security' several times. Japan will be mentioned, very diplomatically because of the new government's hardened stance on Marines in Okinawa.

It's been a cold winter in Washington figuratively and literally. Time to slide away from the domestic ruckus for a foreign policy War On Terror set-piece. "We're good guys," Indonesians will be told. (Like most of our Muslim allies, their draconian laws will be glossed -- though if anyone drops the word 'madrasa' into the comments I'll attempt to throttle them digitally) "WE are the good guys," he'll assure Australians... and we really wish you'd pony up some troops.

There will be pictures of shy, smiling students and Obama's kids will probably meet a koala. I predict... success.

Somewhere, I picked up the essentially useless nugget that, unlike airliners, Air Force One lands with enough fuel to get out of Dodge. They don't exactly keep the motor running, but that's one of many precautions. I'm sure that's part of the reason for the Guam stop, as is adjusting to different time zones. You don't want your President sounding incoherent due to jet lag.

Ai adai in court

2010-02-02T07:30:00.001+10:00

The lawyers have had their day in court, and now the CNMI Supreme Court says the Northern Islands will have to elect their mayor, again.

Not that it matters to anyone except the candidates and the employees either would hire. As far as I know an Acting Mayor is still appointed when the Mayor actually leaves Saipan; most of the 'residents' vote here. The office's main function (besides employment) seems to be offering quick marriages.

My main interest in the case stems from Judge David Wiseman ordering disqualified voters to unsecret their ballots. Jaw-dropping, though mitigated by the argument that, after all, they committed fraud by saying they had lived in the Northern Islands at some point. Still, once you've broken the rules once, well, why not lie about your vote too?

The Marianas Variety just printed the press release on this one.

Guest host

With District Judge Alex Munson off-island, Wiseman was the Designated Judge, ordering that the latest group trying to reach Guam illegally "shall not be removed from the Corrections facility without an order from the court or direction from the U.S. Marshals Service." The Variety mined that nugget, which the Saipan Tribune missed.

This one could easily have turned tragic, from the narrative printed in the Variety. Inexperienced people in rubber rafts, leaving in the dark and with only the vaguest idea of where they were going is a recipe for disaster. It's comic now.

Slow motions

The masseuse that was loose --though under guard -- continues to dominate local headlines. More in the Marianas Variety, which gave the U.S. Attorney's argument to hold a hearing front page coverage Monday with the headline (Gov. Benigno R.) "Fitial’s massage by detainee a personal service".

That's a quote from the motion, which just makes it the opinion of Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric O'Malley. I've actually heard a misbegotten soul argue the opposite, though it seems that line of reasoning would have about as much chance as a landlubber putting to sea in a rubber boat.

A day later, the Saipan Tribune offers up the more factual "US govt: Federal court has authority to order evidentiary hearing" on page six. To be fair, maybe the Tribune couldn't get a copy of the Friday motion until Monday. Both stories were old news anyway: from Florida, Wendy Doromal got a copy of the motion and posted a pdf Friday.

In any case, these motions and the evidentiary hearing are just preliminaries. Watch your local newspaper for more.

Questions, yes. Answers not so much

2010-01-30T15:56:00.003+10:00

"The U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have published Question and Answers regarding filing instructions for the E-2 Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Investor Classification", say two email links I just received.

Word-for-word blurbs that refer us to USCIS Questions and Answers where we learn... nothing new.

I doubt if either of my readers has a CNMI-approved lemonade stand they're trying to squeeze in under the new E-2 category, but in any case here's the first Q&A:

Q. Can I file for classification as an E-2 CNMI Investor now?

A. No. The E-2 CNMI Investor rule has not been finalized, so you cannot file for the E-2 CNMI Investor classification. All petitions filed seeking classification as an E-2 CNMI Investor will be returned to the petitioner until the final rule is published. The proposed rule was posted in the Federal Register on September 14, 2009 for a public comment period; that period is now closed.

Paraphrased: nothing to see here; move on.

The Dude abideth

2010-01-30T13:03:00.010+10:00

I wasn't ready for The Big Lebowski as written by William Shakespeare. Cute idea, but a couple of examples and I was out of that website.

Adam Bertocci took it a bit further. He's right, I'm wrong: the play went somewhat viral and New York performances from March 18 through April 4 have sold out.

I have to admit that if I'm killing time on television, I'll take this Coen brothers nugget over the other somewhat mindless drek that's available. It's easy to see why it would appeal to a budding screenwriter/film-maker. I'll pass on the Shakespearean, though.

Run Leia run

I only stayed around to learn this much because of the idiosyncratic url runleiarun.com: Run Leia Run all squeezed together. It seems that Bertocci also claims to have "what remains the only site on the Internet devoted to all the hands that get chopped off in the Star Wars saga." Who am I to argue with him?

And all because (George Lucas supposedly told Vanity Fair) "That's what happens when you play with swords."

Immigrant locator

2010-01-28T11:54:00.007+10:00

It shouldn't make much difference in the CNMI and Guam but the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning on reforming its detention system.

The change that caught my eye was the proposed launch of an immigrant-detainee locator system in June. I've read countless horror stories of lawyers and family members who couldn't find detainees who disappeared into the system. Assistant secretary John T. Morton seems to have heard them also.

O'Keefe money

I'd read that the stone money brought from Palau to Yap by David Dean O'Keefe was worth less than 'traditional' money brought by canoe. The reason is obvious: he cheated.

In the same issue of azcentral.com as the immigration piece, we learn that something similar is happening in the case of James O'Keefe. Now conservatives are keeping their distance from the stalwart who lured ACORN into promoting prostitution. His latest escapade allegedly involved trying to tap the phones of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.

"The truth shall set me free," he is quoted as twittering. But not pay the bail, I'd add. Whatever happens, he's done a public service. The right was energized by his expose, while politicians on the left were handed an excuse to keep their distance from ACORN demands.

I don't think so

The Yes men even tried to piggyback on O'Keefe's latest 15 minutes, claiming he played Queen Elizabeth in their latest phony website, the World Economic Forum. I believe that about as much as I believed the email copy of this press release.

No guts here, though I was pretty sure it was the Yes Men. A pretty obvious fake ("We just killed the Copenhagen Summit, we crashed many economies in 2009. Clearly the present system of rampant capitalism is not worthy of salvaging."), there was a small but real chance of some weird virus instead of more shenanigans.

Oh, this is the real site, and spokesman Adrian Monck reportedly responded that "the only defense to satire is common sense!" Umm, I had a Washington Post link I'll try to track down: the story listed some wrong-headed predictions coming out of Davos in the past.

Corporations are people too

I don't know if any corporations were in the gallery, but Justice Samuel A. Alito is a hot subject in pundit-land for the latest unguarded response to a Barack Obama pronouncement to Congress.

"Not true," lip-readers claim he muttered as the President wound down his State of the Union set-piece with the ringing words "I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities." Fine words, though the Supreme Court's decision to let corporations support or oppose political candidates is only lousy, not earth-shattering. Hint: check out the campaign contributions for any major candidate in the last Presidential election.

But it makes for some ringing rhetoric (He also has a fine cartoon and links to several others.) Let's see: freedom of speech, check; right-to-bear-arms, check (XE, nee Blackwater); I wonder if we can get corporations in the jury pool.

Ad hoc, ad nauseum

2010-01-28T09:31:00.004+10:00

"She's a busybody, sometimes," my grandmother said, gently explaining why my aunt was upset about something.

I thought of her when I read about the groundswell of opposition to Tim Tebow doing a Superbowl commercial. Now, Tebow is a Christian-- it's as plain as the scripture on his face -- and Focus on the Family reportedly wants to air the story of his mother refusing an abortion that was recommended by doctors.

Reportedly, I say, because nobody but the principals really knows what is in the commercial. That doesn't stop the opposition, like somebody criticizing a book or film sight unseen they're jumping right in.

They've been played. Focus on the Family will get untold publicity out of the commotion, worth far more than the $2.5 to $3 million they were willing to pay. They can't lose: if the spot is pulled they are the victim of a conspiracy. That's brilliant.

What's the harm, as long as they don't broadcast bloody pictures? (Though, I admit, wardrobe malfunctions speak more to my taste in edgy Superbowl viewing.) Then again, I don't see why People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was denied access in the past-- with the same reservations about seal-clubbing and such. PETA, in particular, is capable of the sort of humor we appreciate on Superbowl holidays.

I'm making a leap of faith here: the assumption is that CBS will screen the ad and exercise some judgment despite the television commercials I see everyday. Actually, I'm more concerned that some political hit job will sneak in thanks to the Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to market politics too.

It would be uncomfortable to think during our annual circus, but the story -- if that's what the commercial is about -- bears telling. The extremists on both ends of the abortion debate are just that. The ground in between is muddy: the mother might have died or we might have had another smug athlete.

In this case, Pam Tebow made a choice.

I'm not comfortable with abortion; I hope I never am. It is absolutely necessary sometimes. It shouldn't be used as a means of birth control and I don't trust the government to make decisions for people.

But I'm just being a busybody: we won't see the Superbowl ads on Saipan anyway.

Guam's fined too

2010-01-26T10:58:00.004+10:00

I don't follow their day-to-day travails, so I was surprised to learn that the Guam Waterworks Authority is subject to a stipulated order with the Environmental Protection Agency much like ours.

Nothing new for the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation. It is good news to see all the management positions they've been advertising.

This is the text of the EPA release on GWA:

HONOLULU -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today penalized the Guam Waterworks Authority $57,000 for failing to fully comply with a stipulated order to make improvements to its drinking water and wastewater systems.

GWA was penalized for the continued failure to meet a December 31, 2008 deadline for completing a condition assessment to determine the structural stability and soundness of steel tank water reservoirs that need immediate assessment, and for failure to complete a condition assessment of the remaining steel tank water reservoirs by December 31, 2009. Some of the tanks have severely corroded exterior walls, roofs, or valves, or are missing tank parts.

“The penalties are a consequence of GWA’s continued failure to meet the stipulated order requirements and complete the necessary improvements to provide reliable drinking water service to residents,” said Alexis Strauss, Water Division director for the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region. “These water storage tanks are a critical component of the GWA water system, as they help ensure water pressure and adequate flow throughout the system and prevent contaminants from entering the water supply.”

The condition assessment of GWA water tanks was to be performed in two phases. High priority tanks were to be assessed by December 2008, and all other tanks by December 2009. Although GWA did an initial, visual inspection of all tanks in 2008, it has not completed the required, full structural assessments of any tanks to date. The $57,000 penalty assessed today is the second imposed by EPA in response to GWA’s failure to complete the tank assessment. On August 17, 2009, EPA assessed a penalty of $19,000 for GWA’s noncompliance with its duty to assess its high priority tanks through that date.

“Many of the tanks located around the island are in poor condition which underscores the need to complete the assessment and address the deficiencies as required by the court order,” said John McCarroll, Pacific Islands Office manager for EPA’s Pacific Southwest region.

The order provides for penalties if established deadlines are not met and for additional penalties until the work is complete. It also requires upgrades and improvements to GWA’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure to ensure the proper management, treatment and delivery of safe drinking water, and proper wastewater treatment.

Auld 'Lang' Syne all over again

2010-01-26T09:36:00.004+10:00

It's fun to have House Speaker and former Governor Froilan C. Tenorio --'Lang' -- back in the headlines. Unlike most politicians, what you see really is what you get. No bland statements here, thank you.

In fact, it's hard to keep up. "This idea of suing the federal government is not good," he tells the Marianas Variety today. I don't remember hearing that during the campaign, though. Not that he really had to take a position on anything: I penciled him in as not only winning, but being in the leadership as soon as he tossed his hat in the ring.

I wouldn't interpret it as a ringing endorsement of the feds taking over immigration either, he just thinks discussions under Section 902 of the Covenant are the way to go.

Jack's jack

In the same issue, he is quoted as saying lobbyist Jack Abramoff earned his pay, because "he did the job that I hired him to do." Pretty good, as outrageous statements go. It's also true, though he is one of the few former or current politicians who will say that now.

Father knows best

All of this after we get distracted for a moment from the Governor's aching back by yet another fight over who should direct the Legislative Bureau. Tenorio wants former Rep. Daniel O. Quitugua in the post. It's pretty reasonable to argue that the previous Legislature can't appoint employees for its successor. At least he didn't use incumbent Glenna SP. Reyes' relation to the former Senate President as an argument.

Another shrubbery?

2010-01-24T08:30:00.000+10:00

Short takes I've been too busy to mention:

Masseuses are worried about their reputation? Umm, I don't think it's because of The Incident.

We're shocked to learn that even student visas can be abused.

Fitial vetoes bill on re-computation of retirement benefits. Score one for the Governor. The legislature strikes again: it's been common for some guy who retired as a mechanic or tradesman to come back in a high-paying political job so he can use those years in computing benefits.

The line-item veto of gimmes like the fishing derby wasn't bad either. Too bad boat launching in Laulau Bay sailed through. Liability? What? That's not our problem. Okay, it's easier to launch boats for emergencies on that side of the island. Nice to know, since there will be more boats there. I like my fish poached. Better get busy on that environmental impact statement, too.

Residents complain about street problems, the Marianas Variety says. I've been wondering... when I drive through the older villages at night it seems a lot of lights are out. Burnout or turnout? Or is it just me? (I was searching for night views circa 2005 to compare with a current image-- this is all I could come up with.)

Their search engine is a mess, or I'd link to the Variety's story saying most of the people in line for umbrella permits were holding... umbrellas. Now I understand the name.

I usually stay away from this one, but cockfighting has been getting its share of news. Hey, maybe we could televise the fights to all of the states where it's illegal. I was going to ask the mayoral candidates what they thought about cockfighting, but I didn't want to put Angelo on the spot.

Zoning Administrator Victor Barrett resigned. No big deal, until I read later that he might have had an "island experience". Say what? That honey got some racist flies buzzing in both directions in the Variety's Comments. Surprise, surprise Gomer, a letter from Rep. Stanley T. McG Torres too. Which is funnier, his letter or the comments in response?

I'm reminded of the Knight who said ne:

And some free advice:
There are some remedies worse than the disease. -- Publilius Syrus

What about same-sex first cousins?

2010-01-23T13:46:00.007+10:00

Gad, this feeds so many stereotypes, I really shouldn't run it. Oh, well.

Supposedly, first cousins can marry in 26 states, but only five let homosexuals marry.

And I really don't have anything else to say. To repeat the email that was forwarded to me "Thought you might like this..."

The graphic says it's from the New York Times, but I couldn't find it in a search. The New Civil Rights Movement had it.

Just because I was curious, tracked down age of consent laws, too.

Incident* exposure

2010-01-23T09:26:00.007+10:00

Governor Benigno R. Fitial's midnight massage by a federal detainee is turning into exactly the sort of public relations nightmare I expected.

Just when the local media's boilers were losing steam, CNMI Assistant Attorney General David Lochabay has moved to quash the subpoenas** to testify at the Feb. 17 evidentiary hearing. The U.S. Attorney's Office will likely oppose the motion; there may even be a pre-hearing hearing. That should stoke the fires for a few more news cycles.

And we still don't really "know" more than we did a few days after the Marianas Variety broke the story. "Sadly, it is hard to imagine how anyone connected to the incident could avoid the derision and stigma of the public after this media assault," Lochabay writes in the motion. True enough, but the brand is self-inflicted. I truly sympathize with any one experiencing severe back pain. But, really? A masseuse, charged with human smuggling?

Lochabay also suggests that the hearing is nothing more than a fishing expedition for evidence of crimes based, it seems, on Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric O'Malley's somewhat neutral response to a reporter's question that "It's way too early to say that. Even if there were, I won't tell you."

Oh, and "agents of the Federal government have already interviewed" Corrections Commissioner Dolores M. Aldan, Lochabay added.

That brings up an interesting issue, assuming that the hearing goes forward. As Lochabay points out "the Commonwealth was, and is, in a decidedly awkward position, being a prime party in interest (Indeed, the real party in interest as it was the Commonwealth's responsibility to maintain custody of Ms. Cheng)"

That wouldn't be much problem for the three Corrections officers, but there is a real possibility of a conflict-of-interest concerning the Commissioner and the Governor (To a lesser extent, based on what we "know" from media reports) if the line of questioning marches into a legal minefield.

So, my train of thought runs exactly opposite to those saying these officials shouldn't be represented by the CNMI Attorney General. In an informal hearing such as this, what's wrong with the AG handling the preliminaries until the feds have tipped their hand? If it gets sticky, it may be in some people's interest to seek their own counsel.

And the media can fire up their boilers again.

* "(This trip to the Governor's house is, hereinafter, the "incident")." -- David Lochabay's motion

** I was looking for news about this motion in the Saipan Tribune, but no luck. Fortunately, Wendy at Unheard No More is all over these court papers-- I stole her link. (The uncharitable have been trashing the Tribune for its coverage. Unfairly, I think, just because they didn't get the original story.)

Bridge to nowhere?

2010-01-20T10:31:00.003+10:00

Bridge Investment Group LLC seems to have made a bad bet on its Tinian casino plan. Then again, it appears they were betting against the house-- PL 110-229.

The immigration provisions of that law called for federal restrictions on alien hiring and investment that are much stricter than the CNMI laws and regulations they replaced.

According to the Saipan Tribune two-thirds of BIG's planned units were condominiums. Chinese investors were prominent in previous stories about their plans.

From the comments of spokesman Phillip Mendiola-Long, it would appear the company is hoping that the Department of Homeland Security will include Chinese workers when it issues its 'CW' rules and also issue investment rules with "lowered thresholds".

Neither seems likely. As Mendiola-Long points out, Chinese nationals are not eligible for the H-2 visa program. This year's list of eligible countries* has just been issued. The factors used in designating countries include:

(1) The country's cooperation with respect to issuance of travel documents for citizens, subjects, nationals and residents of that country who are subject to a final order of removal; (2) the number of final and unexecuted orders of removal against citizens, subjects, nationals and residents of that country; (3) the number of orders of removal executed against citizens, subjects, nationals and residents of that country; and (4) such other factors as may serve the U.S. interest.

It seems likely the same factors would apply to 'CW' workers and investors, and 22 reminders are currently awaiting trial for allegedly trying to enter Guam illegally from the CNMI. In addition, only the employment rules were re-opened for further comment, the investment rules are final.

* Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay.

Strange fruit

2010-01-19T08:33:00.003+10:00

Like a lot of people, I tend to get casual about holidays. Sure, I think about why the day is special, but not much. Mostly, I take the day off.

Monday was no different. I watched football idly; was a desultory bartender later; played some pool, poorly. People were nice; said nice things about Martin Luther King, except for one ignorant drunk.

That made me more desultory: I decided to clean out my email in-box, which eventually led to a somewhat warped children's book at A JOURNEY ROUND MY SKULL. A discovery, and I like the guy's sensibility so I decided to share it with my brothers.

Every email has its subject, and I decided on Strange Fruit. Suddenly, I was really thinking about MLK.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Billie Holiday had to scrap and scrape to get the song published. My, how times have changed.

Oh, yeah... I was checking out Organizing for America during the Presidential Election and I'm still on their list. They sent me a link to Barack Obama's speech and a transcript of it.

Chinese take out, column B

2010-01-16T08:52:00.005+10:00

The hearing on Gov. Benigno R. Fitial's massage by a woman accused of human trafficking has been postponed at the request of Attorney General Edward Buckingham, according to the Saipan Tribune.

Maybe that should be alleged massage; the article refers to the "alleged unauthorized release". Buckingham has his work cut out. Both Fitial and Corrections Commissioner Dolores M. Aldan told the Tribune in a statement that they knew the "unusual situation" could be a problem.

Serious enough that Aldan is quoted as saying "I made about seven calls to the number I have for Deputy Hall and about six calls to the cell phone of the attorney general." That's something like putting up a Beware of Dog sign and letting the beast roam free.

The U.S. Attorney holds all of the cards (if not the prisoners). We don't know where the feds are going with this, and it is possible they could file charges.

While the move is understandable, personally, I'm disappointed that the hearing was postponed. The information vacuum is being filled by scurrilous speculation on the street and on the internet. Almost all of the comments on the Thursday and Friday Marianas Variety stories are negative.

Newly-hired press secretary Angel Demapan is probably disappointed too. While his first days have been "really tough", media frenzies usually have a short life, depending as they do on new developments. In this case, just about the time attentions lag, the hearing will guarantee more Front Page coverage.

Still, it could be worse. National news has been dominated by the earthquake in Haiti. And, while the Associated Press story appeared in hundreds of newspapers, most of them ran a short, somewhat sanitized version like this Washington Post blurb. I couldn't find it on Reuters and only on blogs related to Saipan.

Angelo posted the KSPN video on The Saipan Blog and YouTube. There's another version on YouTube.

Detainee Massages Governor

2010-01-14T09:08:00.005+10:00

The Marianas Variety's Human smuggling defendant is governor’s masseuse gets my vote for story of the year. It's only January, but how can you top that?

The Variety says four Corrections officers escorted a Chinese woman being held for the U.S. Marshal to and from jail so Governor Benigno R. Fitial could get a massage*. Seriously.

Nobody's talking --except the Variety source(s) -- but this has all the makings of a story with legs. I'm amazed the national media haven't picked it up yet.

They will, though this probably isn't the best way to put the CNMI on the map.

Words fail me. Well, almost. It's absolutely amazing that an administration fighting to control alien labor would do this with a human smuggling defendant in federal custody. Who came up with this idea? I don't know, but there are going to be consequences.

Read the story; 'fair use' means I shouldn't quote the whole thing. I'll just wait to hear more from the Attorney General and the feds.

Off massage

Meanwhile, some wag said it was 'work release' program.

Groan. But then, I had to keep up: "I wonder if she was wearing one of those orange jumpsuits?"

Back at me: 'Maybe they thought it was part of the federal stimulus package.'

I gave up before it got out of control.

* For those of you with dirty minds, the Variety carefully notes: "In 2006, Fitial underwent a series of operations to treat his spinal stenosis, a medical condition in which the spinal canal narrows and compresses the spinal cord and nerves." Still, the island is awash in massage parlors; some of them are even legitimate.

Hate this post, please

2010-01-13T07:18:00.004+10:00

Unhappy? Stop thinking so much.

A University of Texas psychologist says it appears that people have better opinions of themselves if they don't use their higher brain functions.

That may explain why demagogues always seem so smug and self-satisfied.

Assistant professor Jennifer Beer has some good news: "In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is; and some bad: "And the more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."

Before you try to turn the logic around (like I did to start this piece), i.e. if you're so smug, you must be wrong about something, that's not what the results say. Also, 20 subjects is a teaser; something like a grant proposal for a larger study. It would be interesting to see studies in areas other than self-comparison.

Then again, maybe pointy-heads, intellectuals and other assorted geeks really aren't as good as everybody else.

Fear the fear

I'd be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from studies like that because the are based on self-reporting. Less cautiously, I'd say the press release headline Fear of anxiety linked to depression in above-average worriers is the only conclusion to be drawn from the studied silliness it promotes.

The authors recruited 94 above-average worriers and found that "Statistical analyses of questionnaire responses showed that anxiety sensitivity, after controlling for worry and generalized anxiety symptoms in above-average worriers, significantly predicted depression symptoms."

Forgive them, for they are educators and psychologists, but that's a fancy way of saying that people who are afraid of their depression ("fear of cognitive dyscontrol") and don't want it to show ("fear of publically observable anxiety symptoms") are different from other worriers. Don't those sound more like symptoms than "predictors"?

Now, I don't want to make light of the serious problems of depression and anxiety disorder. But the authors of this study? Pah, humbug.

Are we not men?

It probably won't matter to our descendants anyway, they will probably be more depressed even if they don't think about it too much. Biologist Michael Lynch tells us we've gotten too successful as a species for natural selection to do its dirty work.

He says harmful genes are building up in each succeeding generation "with significant incapacitation at the morphological, physiological, and neurobiological levels." That theory has been around for decades, but Lynch puts some numbers together to show how fast it's happening. At least, I think he does. Interested, I'm still too cheap to drop ten bucks on reading the original paper.

This is important stuff: there are still misguided believers in eugenics among us, and the debate over genetic engineering is just beginning. There are implications for health care, assisted suicide and the abortion debate. That's just off the top of my head.

At least Carl Zimmer doesn't fall into the trap of problematic statistics by predicting some improbable dollar cost.

Is that a fact?

It's nice to be reminded that the 'expert' saying x proposal will cost y dollars is probably making more assumptions than a credit-card user. Those 'statistics' are often more comfort food-for-thought than mental nutrition.

Samoa's Office of Immigration raided

2010-01-11T16:25:00.008+10:00

Human Trafficking alleged

About 20 officers from several agencies closed American Samoa's Office of Immigration last week, removing a large file cabinet and more than 15 bins full of documents, according to the Samoa News. Photos of the raid are displayed on their home page, but there hasn't been a follow-up story.

Lt. John Cendrowski of the Office of Territorial and International Criminal Intelligence and Drug Enforcement (OTICIDE, says Samoa News) told the New York Times that "In our ongoing investigation into human trafficking, we have heard from different Asian races on how they were 'recruited' to come to American Samoa in order to earn a better living."

Radio New Zealand reports that "The Office of Criminal Intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Public Safety raided the Immigration Office last week searching for files of 750 Asians, including Chinese, Korean and Filipino citizens."

Samoa News says the Independent Prosecutor's Office obtained the search warrant.

This timing is particularly bad for American Samoa, with Radio New Zealand also reporting that "A four member team from the US General Accountability Office is due in American Samoa next week to study the territory’s customs and immigration systems."

It also complicates matters for Rep. Gregorio C. Sablan, who told the Saipan Chamber of Commerce Saturday he was working on legislation to amend the 'federalization' law.

Opponents of federal control often point to American Samoa's system as an argument for local control in the CNMI.

California shaking

2010-01-10T14:13:00.006+10:00

There was a 6.5 magnitude earthquake about 3.5 hours ago offshore of Eureka, California, but the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says there is no threat of tidal waves.

KTVU.com has some pretty good coverage, including photos. The station reports power outages and property damage but no casualties.

I'm more interested than usual because I grew up just over the border in Southern Oregon. The 1964 Crescent City tsunami was big news in the area, though the reference is misleading in this context.

I've read that 'tsunami' is Japanese for 'harbor wave', and that's basically what hit Crescent City. It sits at the end of a north-facing bay that funneled wave energy from the Great Alaskan Earthquake. Damage from that quake led to the creation of the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning System.

BE attitudes

2010-01-10T06:41:00.008+10:00

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos deserve a little celebration: it's been a rough four years.

Monday's inauguration caps a first term that was all tunnel, with not much light at its end. But the problems can wait another day or two; it's bad form to squabble when there are guests in the house.

In a classy move, the Governor took the first drive towards rapprochement by going to the house of erstwhile opponent Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider, meeting with him and House Speaker Arnold I. Palacios, according to the Saipan Tribune. Hofschneider and Palacios returned the gesture by going to Fitial's residence. The rest was nuance.

"We want the feds to know we are working together," Fitial is said to have said. "It's time to get over this," (the election) Hofschneider told the Tribune in a separate interview.

"The political season is over. This is a time for partnership for the people of the CNMI," Inos said. "We wish nothing but success for the Fitial administration as they face the challenges of the Commonwealth," Palacios said.

The Tribune was so impressed by Inos' 'partnership' idea that they attributed it to all four men in the main story's lead sentence.

On the other hand, the Marianas Variety chose not to publicize inauguration events, except for a nod to Palauan President Johnson Toribiong on page six. Maybe that's some form of of the saw 'if you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all'.

Unless it's in the editorial, though even there the ongoing soap opera at Northern Marianas College took top billing. There's more than a touch of irony in editorials headlined 'A house divided' that sound like the election never took place.

Fitial's Administration is chided for fanfare the CNMI can't afford, but warned about relying on "contributions" (the quotation marks were not added) from the private sector. In Friday's Tribune, Inauguration Committee co-chair Teresa Kim was quoted saying "No government funds have been expended."

On a very basic level, what's the difference between campaign contributions and contributions to inauguration events?

In any case, here's the gubernatorial inaugural schedule. Questions about separation of church and state make Red Masses controversial in some jurisdictions, not so much in the Commonwealth.

The RSVP black-tie VIP Ball at the Saipan World Resort and suit-and-tie People's Ball at Fiesta Resort should help keep the fanfare-- and expenses -- down.

Don't swallow the label

2010-01-09T10:23:00.002+10:00

Wow, I'm shocked: food labeling can be misleading. Restaurant foods measured by researchers at Tufts University had 18 percent more calories than claimed and frozen meals came in 8 percent over what was stated on the label.

Not that it concerns me, particularly. I'm dreadfully thin, probably because of my unfortunate habit of usually eating only twice a day, exacerbated by shifting my drinking habits from exuberant to moderate.

My weight gain is minimal even when I slip into a three-a-day regimen. I credit my current slogan 'everything in moderation, including moderation.'

Don't believe everything you read, caveat emptor, and similar bromides apply anyway. I do read labels, only to check relative levels of salt, glucose, sucrose and various fats. I wouldn't believe the absolute claims for a second.

Which, I suppose, makes the story a cautionary tale for those of you caught in the diet-drama of listing every food in every meal. If, like the lead researcher, you follow the package recommendations and still gain weight, try a different diet.

There is a bias in favor of under-reporting anyway, because the portion size must be as-advertised.

Also, the study used a gadget unknown to me: the dreaded 'bomb calorimeter'. It seems this nifty device is used to burn a measured sample and calculate the heat that is produced. Now, since we know that fire in your belly is just a rhetorical device, it can hardly measure what happens in your digestive tract.

Dairyscience.info has a pretty good summary in plain language. The author includes some tables showing the conversion factors for various 'food components' when they are 'burned' in our woefully inefficient furnaces.

He also offers a warning: the energy in dietary fiber can be overestimated, "there are climate, varietal and other factors that contribute towards differences in the nutrient density of fruits and vegetables" and "feeding regime, animal genetics, climate and systems of animal husbandry also affect the nutrient density of meat and milk and consequently products derived from them."

This is just a goof for me, in any case, like trying to tell whether artificial sweeteners really have two-thirds of the calories in "Carbohydrate expressed as monosaccharide equivalent."

post apocalyptic

2010-01-07T15:03:00.005+10:00

My BS detector needs a little fine-tuning.

Some media wonks are jumping all over the Washington Post for publishing a Fiscal Times story which promotes a debt-reduction commission as news instead of opinion.

It's our fault, of course. The internet is slowly killing newspapers and magazines as we have known them. The old advertising-driven model is broken as content is distributed and aggregated on the web free of charge.

Rupert Murdoch is leading the charge to increase revenue as he tries to find a way to squeeze some dollars out of the sites that 'steal' stories from his media holdings, but he has got a lot of company.

At the same time, newspapers in particular are slashing costs by cutting staff. Ironically, newly unemployed editors and writers end up on the net competing with their former employers.

Perversity squared

But there is still a news-hole to be filled. Enter Fiscal Times (whose staff includes a couple of former Posties) and other special interest organizations. They are more than happy to provide content under the imprimatur of the Washington Post.

Which brings us back to our story and my BS detection. I read it, uncritically and quickly, a week ago and didn't notice a thing. After all, it was in the Washington Post. Yes, I knew better; I usually try to keep tabs on who is filling my head with trivia.

Mea Culpa

Look again. The article is full of attributions that are not quite exact, and conclusions without support. As Politico helpfully tells us, there is no mention of opposition to the proposal. (A wound that could easily have been healed with a sidebar even if the story was left untouched.) Worse, the Post had to wipe this egg from its face:

Correction to This Article
The article by the Fiscal Times, about growing congressional support for a bipartisan commission to address the nation's debt, contained a statement supporting the concept by Robert L. Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition. The article should have noted that the Concord Coalition receives funding from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Peterson, but not his foundation, also funds the Fiscal Times, the independent news service that prepared the article.

Logical trap

Now, as I've admitted, that is my fault. Michael Kinsley points out an interesting bit of journalistic trickery in The Atlantic: the appeal to authority.

How many times have you seen a story quoting an 'expert' from the University of Ulan Bator or Bemidji State College (not to pick on either fine institution)? Sometimes that is understandable: you go to the nearest institution for an interview.

Sometimes it is more insidious. Reporters are not supposed to express their point of view. Ah, but if you cast your net wide enough, you can find an academic or spokesperson to express it for you.

That may be harmless, or not. There may be a point of view that needs to be presented more clearly or you may want to express your point of view.

But Kinsley goes too far: you can't cut out all of the extra words. Particularly because I don't trust stories just because they are in the New York Times or the Washington Post. In some ways, the internet can be used to make superior stories: the extra information that bloats them can be condensed: for example, instead of "Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee", just write the name and link to a short biography.

I need that information, just to keep the papers honest. I don't want to think 'no, I hadn't heard of Fiscal Times, but if the Post says they are experts...'

And you don't want to get me started on 'highly placed sources' who 'are not authorized to comment.'

One of the principal marks of an educated man, indeed, is the fact that he does not take his opinions from newspapers—not, at any rate, from the militant, crusading newspapers. On the contrary, his attitude toward them is almost always one of frank cynicism, with indifference as its mildest form and contempt as its commonest. He knows that they are constantly falling into false reasoning about the things within his personal knowledge,—that is, within the narrow circle of his special education,—and so he assumes that they make the same, or even worse errors about other things, whether intellectual or moral. This assumption, it may be said at once, is quite justified by the facts. -- H.L. Mencken

Of drunken mice and men

2010-01-05T09:19:00.006+10:00

I don't think it was caffeine that left me shaking my head after this web adventure.

It all started so innocently, with a story that caffeine worked better as a reward for male than for female teenagers.

A mildly interesting five-minute read, until a comment referred me to the blurb Coffee may increase drunkensess (I don't know what they were drinking) from coffeechemistry.com.

Now, because these folks tout themselves "as the coffee industry’s leading information portal" I was puzzled that they used Red Bull as an example, particularly since an undetermined portion of its effects comes from taurine (and a smidgeon of cocaine, supposedly). Bad enough, but the next paragraph appeared to just be plainly wrong

According to researchers at Temple University in Pennsylvania, the combination of caffeine and alcohol may actually decrease cognitive and reflex skills. The FDA is currently looking into the validity of this study and reconsider allowing the addition of caffeine to alcohol based drinks.

Ignoring the fact that the Food and Drug Administration probably has more important things to do, I concentrated on the folks at Temple. Well, webmd.com, more exactly, and they had the much more accurate headline "Drunk? Coffee Won't Get You Sober". Now we're getting somewhere, and I gleefully read on to see why and how these scientists administered caffeine and ethanol to mice via 'intraperitoneal injection' to make the amazing discovery that 'coffee makes you a wide-awake drunk'.

But that's getting ahead in my story. The WebMD story relies on an email from Thomas Gould, one of the authors of the study. He basically comes to the same conclusion that I have in my extensive research on the subject: "coffee may reduce the sedative effects of alcohol, which could give the false impression that people are not as intoxicated as they really are."

Good enough, though probably not enough to satisfy John McCain or the ghost of William Proxmire. We already knew that. Ah, but the researchers went further, claiming to have measured learning, anxiety and general locomotion. I give them the last one, but those first two called for another internet search to Behavioral Neuroscience. What if the mice were just looking for their car keys?

It's the caffeine, surely, but I get obsessive sometimes, and I really wanted to see how they assigned such human concepts to mice. (Note to Rupert Murdoch: unlike many academic publications they didn't charge; otherwise I wouldn't have bothered) The paper didn't say, though that may be settled science: maybe one of the 35 mouse-fondlers in their references has already provided the definitions.

In conclusion, caffeine has been shown to reverse some of the behavioral effects of ethanol, including sedation and deficits in attention, but the current study demonstrates that caffeine was unable to reverse ethanol-induced deficits in avoidance learning. However, ethanol reduced caffeine-induced anxiogenesis. Although coconsumption of ethanol and caffeine may increase alertness during intoxication, and decrease the awareness of intoxication, there may be no equivalent rescue of learning. Thus, drinkers may consume more alcohol when they are also consuming caffeine (O’Brien, McCoy, Rhodes, Wagoner, & Wolfson, 2008), producing greater intoxication and leading to greater decrements in learning.

Sounds good to me. Now tell me about the rabbits.

Shaken, but not stirred

2010-01-04T11:09:00.007+10:00

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says a teeny (two-tenths of a foot) wave was measured in Honiara, the Solomons about an hour-and-a-half ago following a magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

There are no reports of damage from the PTWC or from the United States Geological Survey, which kindly posted this map. The USGS got two reports from the nearby city of Gizo saying there was moderate shaking. Ah, the wonder of the internet.

The PTWC does say, however, that the tsunami "may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter," but "no threat exists for other coastal areas" in the Pacific.

The quake was relatively deep; USGS says 30 km, PTWC 33 km.

UPDATE

Evidently news travels slowly there, but the Solomon Star is reporting that local tsunami may have damaged 500 homes and either the waves or the earthquakes caused casualties. One man injured himself trying to flee to higher ground.

The Washington Post has an Associated Press Report that 2-3 meter waves hit Tetepare and Rendova Islands. According to a dive shop owner, people on the nearby island of Gizo headed for the hills because they remembered a 2007 tsunami.

Jesus shoots Santa

2010-01-02T11:22:00.004+10:00

I stayed away from the Jesus shoots Santa story when it came out. People get so upset over things like that and... well, you know... it was Christmas.

I did like the added touch of Rudolph being laid out over the hood of the pickup truck.

Still, I'd put it aside and meant to drop the link. Just a chuckle in passing, like a Danish cartoon about the Prophet.

Yep, a Somali reportedly tried to take an axe to cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for his 2005 drawing of Mohammed with a bomb where his turban should be. As a proud secular whatever-you-want-to-add, I thought it was mildly funny. I also thought Muslim reaction showed a scary level of intolerance and ignorance.

I can deal with religious differences, but not the fundamental, foreign attitude that you can tell me what to print.

In the article, 'authorities' cite the obligatory 'ties to Al Qaeda'. Oh? Is this another battle in the War on Terror? What a Red Herring.

As a society, we need to stop thinking in slogans and ponder the much larger problem of a religion whose adherents condone or 'understand' murder. That is the battle we are facing for the foreseeable future.

The standard disclaimer applies: of course, not all Muslims...

If you're interested, here's some video of the Christmas tableau:

Navel intelligence

2009-12-29T06:53:00.006+10:00

The latest attempted plane bombing caught my interest because of the way perception seems to trump reality in our media-saturated age.

It wouldn't be surprising if holiday travel to the CNMI takes a hit. One incident on one of the thousands of daily flights can do that. Airline travel is ridiculously safe, particularly immediately after an incident like this, but who cares about statistics?

The system worked, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reportedly said. With all due respect... no. (UPDATE: she agrees) Her unspoken assumption is that the system can work all of the time, every where. That's a very American assumption: if we throw billions of dollars at a problem it will go away.

It won't. We can, and have, added multiple layers of security. They work very well and they can undoubtedly work better. Not perfectly, though. Sorry.

Realistically, it's been eight years since Richard Reid the shoe bomber. Both men used very small amounts of a high explosive-- and failed. We've been very lucky. There are thousands of fanatics out there and they are going to keep trying.

Let the hand-wringing begin

'What went wrong?' the politicians are howling as they put on television make-up and schedule hearings, meaning 'who can we blame?'

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was on the lowest-level database, evidently because there was 'insufficient derogatory information' to classify him higher. Supposedly his father told the American Embassy his son had extremist views. That's it-- though maybe he followed up with emails that ended up in the spam folder with other Nigerian bankers.

Seriously, Abdulmutallab probably would have earned more suspicion if there had been other factoids about him. We simply don't have the resources to investigate more than 500,000 'suspicious' people. The reports I've read say that even now, authorities are still checking out his claim of a Yemeni connection, possibly to Al Qaeda.

Degrees of separation

That Yemeni link intrigues me: evidently the poor little rich kid's mother is from Yemen and he says he studied with a radical internet cleric there. The Detroit area is home to a large number of Yemenis (and Moslems) and there have just been two air strikes against radicals in that country.

One of the targets in the second strike was a former Guantanamo detainee who went through the highly-touted Saudi Arabian 're-education' program for radicals-- he is one of the few recidivists to-date. Since almost half of the remaining prisoners are from Yemen, that's a monkey wrench in plans to close Gitmo.

Honestly, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading the Washington Post and New York Times articles on the second bombing if their lead sentences hadn't pissed me off by referring to the "suspect in the Fort Hood shootings". Innocent until proven guilty, sure, but what a namby-pamby politically correct way of putting it.

Mostly, I'm concerned that we're drawing closer to a semi-free failing state that tortures its opposition, locks up its journalists and appears to survive because the majority of the population is in a self-medicated khat-chewing stupor.

Do I hear a Yemen?

2009-12-27T10:14:00.005+10:00

If, like me, you are a little frustrated with the dribs and drabs of information about the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines plane, Politico has a pretty good story. They have also posted a copy of the criminal complaint against Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Oh, yeah. Politico linked to an ABC News report that the bomber came by way of Yemen.

Here we go again; yet another failing state with Al Qaeda moving in. I was going to make the inevitable reference to Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, but Politico posted this while I was thinking about it.

Tuning out the medicine show

2009-12-26T08:35:00.006+10:00

Quick, name five differences between the House and Senate versions of 'Health Care Reform'.

I couldn't, and I thought I was following along. Partly, it's because of distractions like this photo from TPM Muckraker. Mostly, the subject is just too complicated. Who has the time to pore over different versions of 1,000-plus page bills in a half-dozen committees?

My brother mentioned yesterday that he'd stopped paying attention to polls on the issue. Wisely, I agreed. What do the polls ask, and how? How many people think they know what's in the House and Senate bills, but are just miming talking points from one side or the other? Do they oppose it because it's another brick in the socialist wall, or because it doesn't include the public option?

How many people, like me, just don't want to hear the day-to-day bickering over arcana and see the latest politician or pundit to mount the soapbox. (I'll admit there are a lot of people with personal interests and political junkies out there, but they've got to be a minority.)

Not me, I'm like the guy in this cartoon by Ann Telnaes.

At this time of year I can't even get excited by this silly priest pushing shoplifting or the Pope trying to 'copyright' his name, image and symbols. Don't expect me to slog through the swamps of Washington.

Have another cookie. Maybe I'll tune in next year.

(Yes, folks, that's Agana's famous Roto-Pope.)

Will Your CUC cost you $320,000,000?

2009-12-24T12:24:00.003+10:00

I really hope I got this wrong.

The Environmental Protection Agency just linked me to a new toy based on Google Earth. It shows most EPA enforcement actions in the United States for 2009.

I dutifully went to the Mariana Islands-- the easiest way is to put New Guinea on the bottom of the map and the Philippines on the left side and slowly center us as you zoom in.

Once you find the islands, just click the type of enforcement action in the box on the left and little flags will pop up showing locations. Click the flag and you get a link to EPA's ECHO (Enforcement & Compliance History Online-- another toy I've been meaning to play with).

Saipan and Rota showed nothing I hadn't heard of, all of the violations except one were for the settlement (Stipulations one and two) CUC and EPA entered into March 11, 2009.

Nothing new at all, until I got to the "Enforcement Conclusion Dollar Amounts" in the ECHO search (Since it's a search, you may have to repeat the process; I can't guarantee the link will still work for very long), which lists the "Compliance Action Cost" at $320,000,000. I'm sure that doesn't include penalties for not meeting the deadlines in the stipulations.

Woa. That's the first estimate I've seen. Am I missing something? Someone please tell me I am.

Putting detainees on ICE

2009-12-24T10:59:00.005+10:00

It can't happen here, probably, but next month's The Nation has a disturbing story about detainees 'disappearing' into Immigration and Customs Enforcement subfield offices.

Author Jacqueline Stevens opens with this jaw-dropping quote from former ICE Office of State and Local Coordination executive director James Pendergraph: "If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear."

Stevens lists 186 unlisted and unmarked field offices where detainees are held, with anecdotal tales of family and attorneys trying to find people who were detained.

I could quote huge swaths of the article, but I really, strongly suggest you read the original. I think you'll be as appalled as I was. One more excerpt:

ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply--another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.

I'm making the assumption that it probably can't happen in the CNMI because we're so small. I wonder.

Take two steaks and call it morning

2009-12-24T07:44:00.003+10:00

The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet was only a few links (degrees of separation) away from my morning emails. Since the places I'm likely to visit are many, many timezones away from Saipan, that's of more than passing interest.

There's some interesting information at the site, though I'm not yet ready to plunk down $10.95 ($16.95 round-trip) for a personal A-J-L plan. Then again, it's probably a good deal because you only have to ask once for each destination.

Evidently, the plan is a spinoff from studies of circadian rhythms by biologist Charles Ehret at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago.

In a nutshell, you eat high-protein breakfasts and lunches and high carbohydrate dinners to match your current time zone. Supposedly, this resets your body's internal clock. There's some feasting and fasting involved, too, but what have you got to lose?

No alcohol, but I knew that already and for other reasons. There are some interesting claims about caffeine tucked away in the page I linked. According to the site, the "methylated xanthines" found in coffee, tea and cocoa make it harder for most people to get to sleep at night if they are taken in the morning. Conversely, it is claimed, taking them at night tends to make most people get up earlier. I'd never read that before.

This may be just the ticket for you if you're traveling over the holidays (Around Christmas, for the people out there who enjoy raining on other people's parades).

Something completely different

Thinking like a Senator (not recommended) made me do it: some clever scientists found a way to make bacteria turn little tiny gears. Neat, I thought, but some curmudgeonly suit with seniority is probably going to mock this research. Why not browse through the Argonne Newsroom and find a practical application near and dear to their heart. Travel, for instance.

Not that the exercise was necessary. Somebody, sometime, somewhere is likely to remember this research and combine it with another idea or two to give us a new gadget. That's how technology lurches forward. It makes good video anyway:

Luckily, Scientific American has a better, albeit less popularized, version of the story. (I say luckily because I usually follow links to Scientific American articles and find they are charging for a sip from their font of wisdom, which then sadly remains a staid secret.)

As it turns out, I'd stumbled onto the interesting scientific problem of getting work out of random (Brownian) motion in a fluid. Or, as the magazine cleverly puts it, the research "presents a new spin on the concept of the so-called Brownian ratchet, in which arbitrary fluctuations generate directed motion to power tiny mechanical systems."

Fascinating possibilities, but as one scientist points out, it hasn't been tested against a load. Another mentions the lack of hamster-driven appliances.

So, no NASCAR In a Bottle yet, but I still think it's neat.

The worldwide Jack Webb

2009-12-22T08:58:00.004+10:00

There are so many mistakes, misunderstandings and outright lies on the internet that fact-checking has become a growth industry. It always makes me think of Joe Friday's phrase 'Just the facts ma'am' from television's Dragnet.

I love this development, even though it often spirals wildly out of control: Media Matters loves to hammer Fox News, for instance, leading to a website critical of them from the opposite end of the political spectrum, and so on. The back-and-forth buzzing wears thin quickly unless you're committed to the subject.

Most of the attention focuses, rightly, on the major media, but no one is safe. If you write it on the internet, even one little twitty tweet, don't be surprised if it comes back to bite you. The term 'crowdsourcing' was coined to describe the sharks that will school if there is a little blood in the webby waters.

I got hooked on The St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact during the last presidential election, but I don't go there much any more. Like FactCheck.org and, to a lesser extent, the rumor debunkers at Snopes.com, they miss the lowlights that satisfy my perverse sense of humor.

Nah, give me the kind of errors Craig Silverman collects in his Regret the Error Columbia Journalism Review blog and like-named website: (Warning, close your eyes when you go over the next sentences if you are easily offended -- they're from Gawker -- 'nuff said.) "Earlier this week, we called congressman Jason Chaffetz a self-hating weirdo, an asshole, a probable closet case, and the son of Kitty Dukakis. He is not the son of Kitty Dukakis. We regret the error."

An extreme example, but I liked it. More representative is the Washington Post's Correction (Crunk) of the Year after they mistakenly claimed Public Enemy's song was saying 9/11 was a joke instead of the 911 emergency system. Here's the Post ombudsman writing about the fiasco, just because I like the headline: A spotty record on counter-errorism.

The local media's errors are usually so prosaic by comparison: the Saipan Tribune dropping $10 million in its headline and story Senate supports $6M ship disposal program or a couple of stories in the Marianas Variety where charges were stated as facts instead of alleged. A problem there: I could cite them, but even a lowly blogger has to be careful about what he 'publishes', particularly if he has cause to think it's untrue.

I was happy to see Gov. Benigno R. Fitial's transparency in saying Jenner & Block still on NMI payroll for $50,000 a month. (In an interesting contrast of editorial emphasis, the Tribune headlined that Fitial won't block 'green card').

At this late date, particularly since it was one of the issues in the election, I'm not interested in arguing the merits of the contract. I would, however be interested in a little fact-checking on the total cost to-date. I really don't have a clue with all of the figures that have been tossed around, and some of them are so outrageous they should be debunked.

Not real fact-checking, but I've been bemused by some of the articles about the ongoing employment controversy at Northern Marianas College. President Carmen Fernandez seems to be staying in the background as much as possible: "Fernandez’s office stated"... and "The office added,".

What? Were they thinking?

2009-12-20T07:09:00.000+10:00

It was business as usual at the CNMI Senate Thursday, with passage of a resolution 'supporting' a proposal to salvage ships. Wouldn't you think their time would be better spent in researching Worldwide Salvage and state and federal laws on shipbreaking?

It's a dirty, nasty, dangerous job. Just for starters, here's an Occupational Health and Safety Administration Fact Sheet. Asbestos, PCB's, lead: that's just the sort of imports we need.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration (MARAD) has only approved six shipyards for disposal of obsolete ships. Four are in Brownsville, Texas; there are none on the West Coast.

There is a reason for that. MARAD characterizes ship scrapping as a risky, highly speculative business, and says startup companies tend to be thinly capitalized. GlobalSecurity.org estimates that environmental health and safety requirements constitute as much as two-thirds of the cost of ship scrapping.

Shipbreaking is an international scandal, with the most toxic ships ending up in the Third World. Do a quick internet search and you'll find hundreds of references to the shipbreaking beaches of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Deep breath

Maybe this is a grand idea. How about checking the financial capacity of Worldwide Salvage to make sure we don't end up with a hulk rusting in the harbor? How about getting details of their plan, including typhoon preparations, before 'conditionally approving' it?

By contrast, the Commonwealth Ports Authority had a measured, reasonable response to the proposal. Maybe the Senate could let CPA do its job. They'd have more time to do theirs.

Back in the day, I used to regularly visit a CNMI Senate staffer for the inside skinny on budget bills. But that wasn't his most important job, judging by what occupied his time. He was an ace resolution writer.

Nauru's nightmare

2009-12-19T20:55:00.002+10:00

I've always felt sorry for Nauruans. Exploited by colonial powers that turned much of their island into a moonscape, they became independent and completed the job. Income from their phosphate deposits went into a series of increasingly ill-advised investments and now they can't afford their socialist paradise.

And you thought we had it bad. The hare-brained schemes we sometimes get in the CNMI are nothing compared to Nauru. Harboring refugees for cash, money-laundering for the Russian mafia, just give them an idea.

For instance, what does Nauru have in common with Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela?

This week, it became the fourth country to recognize the breakaway Georgian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"It has no potential, just to trade in independence," says Russian analyst Sergei Markedonov of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, "Independence is a commodity — people will trade it."

And trade they do. There are reports that Nauru is getting $50 million for the deal. In the past, they recognized the Republic of China, then shifted to the People's Republic for something like $130 million. Ah, but Air Nauru went broke, so they went back to Taiwan (Check the line on the bottom of the home page) to get its replacement, Our Airline, flying.

No criticism is meant here. If countries like Russia, the Chinas and Israel want to practice recognition by checkbook, why not join in.

Picture the island of Banaba in Kiribati. Got it? Pretty remote. Now go 300 kilometers west. There's nothing there but Nauru. No wonder so many birds 'dropped by', and no wonder they have to have their own airline.

Some 11,000 (or maybe 9,000) people ring the island in the fertile coastal area. Nauru sued Australia in 1989 and ended up with a settlement to recover the mined lands. I don't think the amount was made public, but that doesn't matter: it wasn't enough; the interior is a wasteland.

The coastal plains are threatened by rising sea levels, and Nauru estimates 40 percent of its marine biota are dead due to silting and runoff with high phosphate levels.

Did I mentioned unemployment estimated at 90 percent, with 95 percent of the employed working for the government? The highest diabetes rate in the world and one of the most obese populations; this country just can't catch a break.

The first photo is from Nauru's tourism website (Hey, they're really trying to develop), the second's less-flattering pinnacles are from the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program-- they have a climate station on Nauru.

The minimum wage (and other one-liners)

2009-12-19T06:28:00.000+10:00

Yes, I said the U.S. Department of Labor's first minimum wage report was a joke, but that's not what I'm talking about.

It's just that the next 50 cent bump in the CNMI's minimum wage has slipped four months to Sept. 30, 2010, according to this line in the Conference Committee Report, according to the Saipan Tribune: "The conference agreement includes a general provision proposed by the Senate that delays until September 30, 2010, and until September 30 of each year thereafter, scheduled minimum wage increases in American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands."

That's the one-line I'm talking about, and it makes sense to wait until DOL has had another chance to come up with a serious product based on real data. I reserve the right to scoff again, but for now I agree with the Governor's spin-doctor of jurisprudence that changes should be "based on objective and informed economic studies to properly guide federal wage policy on the islands."

I can't resist noting in passing that this provision seems to have been added quietly, with none of the warbling coming from the Senate when the minimum wage was raised originally.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial has a point when he says "This also brings some economic relief, especially considering the challenges of federalization and the economic downturn." Four months isn't much anyway, and the Commonwealth is going through some pretty big changes.

Also, if you read the Carbon Copy coming out of Copenhagen, it's clear that energy prices will keep going up. Food prices, shipping rates, gasoline, jet fuel and your CUC bill aren't back to last year's peak, but we've gotten used to the new levels.

People compartmentalize, and while they'll still fill their tank, and not many can afford to go 'off the grid', they're more than willing to resist when other businesses try to recover their costs. In short, while I still favor increasing the minimum wage, I'd like to see what effect it's had so far.

Arrested development

Even the burglars are suffering; they have to make more than one trip: Koblerville church burglarized, again. And, by gosh, we're going to do something about what Department of Public Safety Commissioner Santiago F. Tudela calls "barbaric and intolerable acts". Something like going back to 2002, evidently the last time there was a burglary task force.

Yes, DPS has a lot of officers in the Army Reserve and is undermanned when they are deployed. Still, I'd be less sarcastic if it appeared DPS had acted on its own. Tuesday, KSPN-2's Bob Coldeen reported on his own burglary and several others he had heard of, adding that DPS said they would provide more information Thursday. It's hard to believe they hadn't checked their own statistics before that.

Waiting for Thursday, I visited the DPS website. The TASC/Human Trafficking link didn't even work. It's obvious that, like most CNMI Government websites, it was created and then barely maintained. (Want to check the Sex Offender Registry?) I also stopped by the Criminal Justice Planning Agency, but they only had statistics for one year- 2004. In an email, I politely suggested that they might have forgotten to post other years, but haven't gotten a response yet.

That's history, at least TASC is back in business. In fact, we're told that Lt. Kevin Aldan of the Fire Division will be training 20 police cadets next year.

Uphill, a battle

Maybe we should call it the Northern Marianas College Board of Directed instead of Board of Regents. The Saipan Tribune's latest episode of the NMC soap opera included this choice tidbit from Regent Janet King: "I am presently ordered specifically by the president to 'cease' making comments to the media, because my comments 'undermine' the office of the president, the Board of Regents, and the college community."

Really, I've just been watching, and chatting with a few people who resigned. I don't know enough about the battle lines to chip in. Like many others, I admire the contributions of Sam McPhetres. I was puzzled that he will not have his contract renewed. But I was waiting for him to comment, and he speaks very eloquently for himself.

Really messy surgery

Good news from the Commonwealth Health Center: Public Health Secretary Kevin Joseph Villagomez says new doctors are on the way. "Most of the six physicians will come from the U.S. mainland, he said." (No word on what parts come from elsewhere.)

Maybe I'm being unfair, and either the Secretary or the reporter was having a bad day. For instance, later in the story we get the equally vague "DPH is the largest government agency in terms of hiring nonresident workers, now estimated at over 200. Most are either nurses or doctors."

A milk-curdling cry

Now that I've picked a few nits, it's time to say I don't think life as we know it will end because Gov. Benigno R. Fitial was re-elected. I disagree with some (a lot) of his policies. I think Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider would probably have been a good Governor. So what?

Why are so many people crying over spoiled, spilled milk? Let's return to reality. The problems don't change because a different man is in office. Honestly, early in the Hofschneider campaign, I saw him standing with some (I said some) supporters and almost shuddered. 'These are the guys who got us to this point,' I thought. I can say the same thing about some Fitial supporters. Strange political bedfellows.

Former Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Villagomez is a prime example. Before I'd heard of Rydlyme, I thought he shouldn't be involved in CUC, simply because he had been so involved in getting it to its present state. Maybe the Aggreko generators would not have been necessary -- and I think they were -- if someone else had been in charge from the beginning of the Fitial Administration. We'll never know.

Many of my friends lost their jobs in 2006. Many other friends would have lost their jobs if Hofschneider had won. For those in political positions, that's life, in the CNMI or anywhere else.

Years ago, I learned that you can stop hyperventilating if you take a deep breath. That's my resolution for the New Year.

Let the fines begin

2009-12-15T12:34:00.003+10:00

The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped a $29,000 fine on the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation for not following the terms of a year-old Stipulated Order (pdf).

EPA warned in an Oct. 16 email (pdf) that "Our most urgent concern is for CUC to contain its oil spills, oil containers and spill response capabilities immediately before another typhoon threatens the company's facilities and operations." I guess they meant it.

According to the EPA letter, CUC had accumulated $404,000 in penalties under Stipulated Order One (pdf) as of Oct. 9 and $230,000 pursuant to Stipulated Order Two as of Oct. 16. At that time, the fine for failure to submit a Facility Response Plan was $10,000.

Different penalties accrue at different rates, so we can't assume that the $634,000 in stipulated penalties have almost tripled; we can assume they've grown. A lot.

We can look at all of that and say the glass is half-empty, but wait. Let's look at the fine as a shot across CUC's bow: EPA is signaling that it is very serious indeed about the Dec. 31 deadlines like the financial plan, and that it won't be put off like the Legislature. Still, I give the Administration and CUC a lot of credit for ending years of dithering and agreeing to the Stipulated Orders.

Here's the text of EPA's press release (Too lazy to rewrite, I'll use bold to highlight):

EPA fines CUC for failing to submit facility oil spill response plan
$29,000 penalty follows missed deadline stipulated in the March 2009 order

HONOLULU – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today fined the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. $29,000 for failing to meet the requirements of a stipulated order seeking to reform and bring into compliance CUC’s five power plants and an oil transfer pipeline.

Specifically, the penalty is for failing to submit a satisfactory facility response plan as outlined in the order.

The order required CUC to submit a facility response plan for its Lower Base power plants by July 9, 2009. The plan was submitted by CUC. However, on September 17, 2009, the EPA disapproved the initial submitted plan and provided CUC with 20 days to correct and resubmit the plan. CUC did not resubmit a corrected plan to the EPA.

“U.S. EPA expects the CUC to immediately fulfill its obligations under the stipulated order to ensure that a facility response plan is in place at its main power plant,” said Daniel Meer, the EPA’s assistant Superfund director for the Pacific Southwest region. “The potential for oil releases from their facilities and harm to environment is significant and CUC must implement steps to prevent and prepare for such discharges or face additional penalty demands."

CUC owns five power plants on the islands of Saipan and Rota. The facilities and an oil transfer pipeline on Saipan have a history of releases of oil. The EPA has found that CUC has caused discharges of harmful quantities of oil into the nearshore waters and shorelines.

In addition to past oil releases and the ongoing threats of oil releases from these facilities, CUC has failed to prepare and implement oil spill prevention plans for each of its five power plants and a facility response plan at its main power plant in Saipan, which is near Tanapag Harbor.

A facility response plan is required by the EPA for facilities which store over 1 million gallons of oil and have potential to cause significant and substantial harm to the environment. The plans must document that a facility has the necessary resources and equipment to respond to a worst case discharge at the facility, such as those that can be caused by typhoons and earthquakes. The plan also requires the facility to conduct drills, exercises and training to ensure prompt and effective response to small, medium and large oil spills.

The stipulated order is one of two that was entered by the Court on March 11, 2009. The other order covers water and wastewater issues at the CUC drinking water and wastewater facilities.

Dylan does Christmas

2009-12-14T01:36:00.004+10:00

Yes, I laughed. First impressions are like that, and it just seemed so inappropriate.

A confession: I don't like Christmas albums anyway. The songs are fine, but if the album is sitting there I'm going to hear it over and over. I particularly don't like fill-in-the-blank does Christmas. The blank being Elvis, Perry Como... ah the list is endless. Billy Idol? Country Christmases, Blues Christmases, instrumental Christmases, I even heard a Polka Christmas album. That one was painful the first time; it's hard to describe the the suffering caused by repetition.

So. You would think the first video from Bob Dylan's Christmas from the Heart confirmed my worst fears.

A polka, though it is a catchy tune. I still wouldn't buy the album, but I've already explained that. The second video is Little Drummer Boy, one of my favorites when I was a sprout. (I have to link to the video, it's an Amazon exclusive). Nice animation, and the song suits his voice, though if I didn't know I'd think it was Leonard Cohen singing.

Not for me, but you might like this album. I'll even push it a bit because the profits go to feeding hungry people. It's very consistent with his recent work. Here's an interview.

I only found this because I'm still interested in Dylan, though only mildly in recent decades, and I put myself on an email list.

Filler

2009-12-10T13:38:00.003+10:00

Sorry, I haven't been posting lately about Saipan. I've been studying logic.

"[I]f it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." -- Lewis Carroll

Tomorrow, maybe.

Snuffing Copenhagen

2009-12-09T23:43:00.008+10:00

"If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. -- Dick Cheney

I got hooked on Politico during the Presidential election. They tried, usually succeeding, to balance the rants and raves of political and polemical characters of all shades. Sometimes they tried too hard.

That seems to be the case with their Copenhagen Connection special, which tries to keep us up to snuff on the climate change conference. Their summary of Sarah Palin's Washington Post Op-Ed sounded so reasonable that I had to read the original:

“Copenhagen’s political science”: “[G]ood environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. … But … we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. … What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. … The president should boycott Copenhagen.”

Boy, was I wrong. Those Politicos should be editing Coming Attraction trailers: I felt like I was fooled into watching a very bad summer movie. The excerpts suggest some degree of thoughtfulness, not a demagogic lead paragraph that refers to "so-called climate change experts".

Downhill from there, Palin polemically claims that "I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics," and then proceeds to ignore science and wallow in the politics of the devout denier. I have never bought the story line that she is stupid, rather I think she is George Will-fully ignorant. Like that partisan political pissant, she stuffs a straw man full of distortions, adds some outright lies and proceeds to argue with her creation. They think that they can make words like "experts" and "consensus" lose their meaning just because they sarcastically put them in quotes.

Their concern about the East Anglian emails threatening the sanctity of science is refreshing. Maybe they're compensating for their silence when Environmental Protection Agency documents were altered for political purposes. Also, I'd expect Palin to be front-and-center in denouncing criminals who hack into email accounts.

Al made me do it

Al Gore will tell you he's no scientist: just ask him. He's still too certain for my taste. Yes, probability is on his side, enough so that I believe action is necessary, but it's tough for me to travel down that fellow's road.

So, I was willing to read Palin, even that twit Will, because coal and oil aren't going away soon and because I profoundly distrust Gore's pet Cap and Trade (S)shell game. I should have known better. Evidently they don't think we need solutions, or at most the 'Just Say No' policy former President George Bush smirkingly proposed at earlier climate conferences.

What are the answers? The U.S. still has tremendous oil reserves, huge gas and coal deposits. Our dependence on those energy sources is unavoidable in the short term. Many poorer countries are even more dependent on dirty fuels. This Danish probably won't be very filling.

I expect carbon credit trading to win out and be increased, and it will end up in the greedy maw of the people who brought you last year's Wall Street meltdown. Keep saying they've learned their lesson when you see carbon credit futures and carbon credit hedges. If we're lucky, there can be a carbon credit bubble complete with carbon credit derivatives.

Banking on disaster

An example: Deutsche Bank has just put up a carbon (actually 24 assorted greenhouse gases) counter up in New York City. A fine thing, and I was happy to track down a widget I could put up on this site showing the same figures. The license is free but the terms include this ominous sentence: "You will treat the existence of the terms of this Agreement as confidential, and you agree that any information relating to the Application Tool is confidential to Deutsche Bank and/or its licensors and that you will refrain from disclosing such information to any third party." My first reaction was 'how Germanic', in the old pejorative sense of the word. My second was 'bugger off', why can't I even tell someone that there is an agreement? Of course, I could use it and tell you anyway, but I'm generally an honorable sort of guy.

Yes, the widget seems to be a good thing. Gore is probably quoting scientists when he claims we're pumping 90 million tons of Carbon into the atmosphere every day. The atmosphere, like the ocean, is huge, but neither can be our dumping ground forever. What can I say? I climbed on my high-horse when I read the terms and I'm still there.

The article that pointed me to the widget helpfully tells us that Deutsche Bank is managing about $6 billion in climate change investments. That appears to be less than one percent of the total assets they manage, but it seems to be a good thing. I just don't trust them. Why should I?

The snuff picture

In other news, the Marlboro Man has seen the writing on the wall -- it says No Smoking -- and is going green, in a way. Marlboro has been test marketing smokeless tobacco and snus (!?).

Not very well, according to analysts. Altria, the parent company of Marlboro and Philip Morris, is hedging its bets by buying Copenhagen and Skoal maker UST.

Yes, it's a stretch to include this. Hey, I got in a mention of Copenhagen and more than a billion smokers lighting up is nothing to sneeze at.

The ozone hole isn't old news

2009-12-04T10:44:00.004+10:00

Sigh. I thought the Antarctic 'ozone hole' was history, and I really wanted to leave global warming alone for awhile.

I'm warm and fuzzy about the subject, it's a ray of hope in our struggle to understand the planet and to survive on it. Back in the eighties, after about 10 years of studies and dithering, we all got together to come up with the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals because they were threatening us with too much exposure to ultraviolet light.

They agreements have been wildly successful, so much so that I was only mildly interested when NASA's Earth Observatory sent me yet another story back in September. (I'm hopelessly addicted to maps, so I got stuck looking at its fluctuations over 30 years-- the illustration here is from 2009). There were no great surprises: the decline in ozone appears to have stopped, and experts expect full recovery around 2050. The chemicals all have different 'lives' in the atmosphere, but the biggest villains last about 40-50 years.

Then, yesterday, I read that Seas could rise 1.4m, warns Antarctic climate review. Again, I was interested-- not wildly, but mildly. I seem to run across new temperature or sea level predictions every week or so. "Throw it into the hopper," say I, "let the scientists argue it out. They can try to convince me when they've reached a consensus."

That was before this simple statement rattled my cage:

For the past 30 years, the hole in the atmosphere's ozone layer above Antarctica has protected the bulk of the continent from the effects of climate change by generating fierce winds. In that time, sea ice around the continent has increased by 10 per cent.

We can't just quip 'be careful what you ask for' and start destroying ozone again; there was a reason for banning those chemicals. The UV levels would have fried our skin, our brains and toasted our DNA.

It sure wiped the smile off of my face.

No Presidents allowed

2009-12-04T09:26:00.004+10:00

Presidents Barack Obama, George Bush and William Clinton couldn't get a visa if they were aliens trying to visit the United States.

I hadn't thought of that.

They all admitted to smoking pot. "Yet," says Immigration Attorney Carl Shusterman, "U.S. immigration laws do not provide for forgiveness for would be immigrants who have admitted to smoking marijuana, even in the distant past."

It only comes up in the press when some rock star or other celebrity near the top of the fame food chain is denied a tourist visa.

How many people do silly things when they are young? They trespass, they vandalize, they drink to excess (sometimes leading to other silly things) and they vote for candidates I really, really don't like.

I wouldn't blame the immigration folks. They're probably handcuffed by a statute defining 'moral turpitude' to include substances which are illegal because they are listed in Schedule such-and-such of another law.

Shusterman brought this up to discuss a person whose green card was denied because they told a doctor at St. Lukes in the Philippines that they'd had a toke or two. That was overturned on appeal because the nature of the crime hadn't been explained (check the link for details).

Just a word of warning to my friends looking for any sort of U.S. visa. Don't admit the slightest drug use, even casual.

Oh, don't lie about it either. Bill Clinton could tell you about the problems that could cause.

BTW: What kind of doctor asks about marijuana use in a medical examination?

Tiger's birdie

2009-12-04T01:18:00.002+10:00

Tiger Woods has/had a girlfriend?

His private life is none of my business. Next subject?

"All of the details on this are tawdry, but we are tracking them anyway."-- Jonathon Mann on CNN

Beach bummer: when giving is taking

2009-12-04T00:35:00.007+10:00

It sounds like a vaudeville joke:

We're going to dump some sand and widen your beach. -- That's good.
You don't have beachfront property anymore. -- That's bad.

It's also one for the Supreme Court: Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

That's it in a nutshell; the state wants to turn ocean front property into ocean view property and six landowners don't like that one bit. Is ocean frontage a property right?

The Kelo case was easy for me, I didn't like taking those people's houses for redevelopment.

This one is a tougher call, but then I've always lived in places where, theoretically, you had access to beachfronts even if they were private property. Theoretically, because it's not always easy to find a way to the beach through private land.

Evidently Justice John Paul Stevens has disqualified himself because of an apartment he owns in Florida. No word on Justice Antonin Scalia. Oh, yeah, it's Florida; he'd just tell us to get over it.

I'm interested, but not too concerned. We're more civilized about such things on Saipan. Here, the owners would just start landscaping, and maybe slip in a pavilion or tennis court.

See scientist, see scientist squirm

2009-12-02T22:36:00.006+10:00

MoveOn.org doctored this photograph*, which makes it the perfect illustration for this piece. It's hilarious, too, which didn't hurt. After we stop climate change, maybe we can stop time.

Climate is a murky subject. Do we really need True Believers roiling the water even more? What do they mean by climate anyway? Not weather; that can change for a year-- or two or three. Pick your time scale: it's some sort of average, a composite of what the weather usually is like.

The climate in any place will change over time. Somebody just over the hill might have a different climate than yours, and theirs might change in a different way.

All right, they're talking about global climate, especially temperatures. I knew that. Supposedly, the figures everyone is arguing about are based on 517 temperature-monitoring stations. There are a lot more weather stations, ships at sea and satellites to supplement that data. Still, in any given year, one place may be warmer and another cooler. How do you sum up all this information?

Climatologists have made some pretty sophisticated models using that data. They make predictions based on those models and then refine them when they miss the mark. Basically, with my limited knowledge, I trust them-- the models anyway.

Starting in the 70's, "global temperatures" started a slow, steady rise. Carbon dioxide was identified as the major culprit. I was convinced. I still am.

A funny thing happened on the way to the millenium

Why, then, did "global warming" stop at about the time we looked away to obsess about Y2K? And why did some scientists start talking about fudging their data like a butcher with his thumb on the scale?

Somebody hacked the Hadley Climatic Research Unit's emails and found that there had at least been talk of fiddling with the facts. Bad scientists. Expect funding cuts, ridicule and humiliation. Global warming skeptics are having a field day. (I balance True Believers like the Yes Men with TB's on the Net Right. Sorry, NASA and the NSF trump them both.)

What's going on here? Did these people have so much of their egos invested in their work that they wanted to make the data fit? Or, had Global Warming become a religion so the facts had to be changed to conform to the dogma?

Most of their peers seem to have coughed politely and looked the other way. Others, like Professor Peter Kelemen were openly dismayed. (Yeah, it's Popular Mechanics, but that's probably one of the audiences a Columbia University professor should be reaching) His article is actually a pretty good summary, from my point of view, if you've got the time to read it. I particularly agree with his conclusion:

We're in an unprecedented situation, with regard to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the rate at which it is rising. Because this is unprecedented, we are not sure what is going to happen. But global warming is very likely, and reasonably probable outcomes could be fatal. Ignoring it would be like Russian roulette. Want to play? I do not.

Speaking of inconvenient truths

It's time to Gore Al a bit, because the earth stopped cooperating at just about the time he started popularizing the idea of global warming. Not that he's necessarily wrong, but he's too wide-eyed, gosh-darned certain for my taste. Besides, you'd almost think he was some sort of mainstream politician with all of this gobbledygook about carbon offsets. Yeah, Al. So can I pee in your reservoir if I build a treatment plant somewhere else?

Professor Keleman pointed me to the very good Der Spiegel story, Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out. I'd recommend any article that quotes Mojib Latif, who is quickly becoming my favorite climatologist.

Maybe it's the sunspot cycle, says one scientist. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is Latif's choice. (The PDO gives me a headache when I try to wade through some of the papers describing it, but that hasn't stopped me yet. It's like El Nino and La Nina, only different.) Their disagreements don't bother me a bit; in fact they're healthy. That's what science is supposed to be. Try a hypothesis; try another if that doesn't fit the data.

Whatever the cause of the current plateau, there seems to be a lot of agreement that it is indeed just a pause in the warming trend.

I've lost the link, but a scientist (Latif, I think) pointed out that there has already been substantial warming, and its effects are still working their way around a very complex planet. The oceans are warmer, mixing has changed somewhat; frankly we don't know how all of these systems interact and what changes are already irreversible.

As an example, I read one obscure paper that tried to quantify how much swarms of jellyfish contributed to mixing of warm and cold water. You see, warmer water generally means more jellyfish, but if they then cause more mixing....

* If you follow the link and watch the slide show, you will see that her poster actually reads "stop global warming". I checked-- don't know why, really. Maybe because she didn't seem that dumb.

Stuck in the middle

2009-12-02T15:38:00.004+10:00

I'm not talking about 'federalization' of minimum wage and immigration control. To me at least, that's been inevitable for a long, long time. All of this noise about whether it 'should' happen is just a distraction (That's still not the best word, but it's better than demagoguery). In the end, like a small animal chasing its tail, you end up in the same place.

No. It's here, and where do we go from here?

Oversimplifying (my specialty), I've read and seen that there are too many 'guest workers'. There likely won't be enough when the CW* workers are phased out in five years.

Boonie Workers

The idea of CNMI-only H-2 workers has been floated. What would that accomplish? The CNMI, and Guam, are not subject to the quota: we can hire as many H-2 workers as we need. There's the rub; the H-2 classification is for skilled workers, while the Commonwealth will probably be short of semi-skilled workers. That proposal sounds like misdirection; an attempt to squeeze CW skills into the H-2 rules. Better we use something like, say, BW (boonie worker).

Any system that attempts to fill permanent positions with an underclass of temporary workers will be abused, and it doesn't matter whether it is administered locally or federally.

The shining path

Guest workers and their advocates argue that the solution is residency and a pathway to citizenship. They also say it is only fair to people who have worked and lived here for 10, 20 or more years.

Some opponents argue that they will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of aliens, losing control. That's already happened, except politically, but we'll set that aside.

Others like the BW system. "What if these people get status and then run to Guam?" they ask.

So here I am, stuck in the middle. Yes, citizenship, out of fairness and equity (though, despite the urban legends, you knew the rules). Yes, don't dilute the culture (but where were you 20 years ago?). Yes, there might not be enough workers when the transition ends (why, after all of these years, aren't our wages closer to Guam's?).

Just the facts, ma'am

Jack Webb got it right, but there aren't many facts to go by. That's another chase-your-own-tail blame game. The economy will change during the transition. How much, and in what ways is anybody's guess.

So far, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services people have been asking for help in getting from here to there. Some see that as a failing on their part. I don't. Rather it's something refreshing, coming as it does from the federal government.

Of course, the Secretary of the Interior is supposed to come out with a report by May 8, 2010 including "the number of aliens in the CNMI, their legal status, the length of the aliens’ stays in the CNMI, the CNMI economy’s need for foreign workers, and recommendations, if deemed appropriate, whether or not legal foreign workers in the CNMI on May 8, 2008, should be able to apply for long-term status under United States law."

Not so fast, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nikolao I. Pula testified in May. He asked for another year, arguing that there wasn't enough time to see the trends with DHS delaying its takeover for 180 days.

Here we go again.

* The CW, or unskilled CNMI-only, category is on hold until Immigration goes back and issues its regulations following the Administrative Procedures Act.

Up in the air

2009-12-02T12:05:00.004+10:00

I'd tip my hat, if I wore one, to Saipan Tribune reporter Moneth Deposa for yesterday's Air Saipan owner denies allegations of 'fake' deals.

The CNMI has seen enough fly-by-night airlines* to justify a little caution. I even had the unworthy suspicion that, like the Air Saipan proposal before the last election, it would never get off of the ground.

The Tribune ran across the site http://deanmillsconman.com, or were contacted by someone connected with the site, since it references their articles. It is chock-full of anecdotal aspersions on Mr. Mills character. They asked Mr. Mills about them-- standard practice I know, but often more honored in the breach than the observance here.

Reasonably enough, in his email response, Mills asked "Is there any evidence of these reports such as proof of warrants and other comments?"

Domainsbyproxy.com in Scottsdale, Arizona registered the domain name with GoDaddy.com. That, and the website IP, tell you exactly nothing. We don't know who is making these accusations.

Mills signals he might, with the comments "Many of these rumors were sent by people who don't understand that business sometimes doesn't work despite the best efforts of those concerned. Sometimes it is better to close a business.than to run at a deficit."

Sounds like his ex-partners in Air Andaman to me. There's little else on the internet, and I pecked about a bit using the countries mentioned as key words.

Cautionary tale or sour grapes? I wouldn't know. But, "The threat level in the airline sector is High or Orange," says the Department of Homeland Security-- one up from the level for other sectors.

* Though I suppose the planes they abandon are useful to fire rescue for training.

Feeding the fish

2009-12-01T16:21:00.005+10:00

Feeding the fish

2009-12-01T16:21:00.004+10:00

The link said lawsuit over fish pedicure. "You must be kidding," I thought.

Nope. What do you get for someone who has everything?

According to the Phoenix East Valley Tribune, the Arizona Board of Cosmetology ordered salon owner Cindy Vong to lay off her fish, forcing her to also lay off three employees.

Ah, but this is Goldwater country, and the institute bearing his name has stepped in.

"The board's action is more about protecting cosmetologists from competition than it is about protecting consumers against anything except wet feet and smooth skin," says director of litigation Clint Bolick.

Grooming instruments need to be sterilized, says the board. That seems like it would be a one-time deal for a fish.

I'm having fun with this, but Vong says she's out $50,000 to $60,000. I'd hate to see her have to eat that investment.

Disclaimer: My feet are incredibly ticklish, so I'm probably not a proper advocate.

Please release me

2009-11-29T18:35:00.003+10:00

The Saipan Immigration Court will open Monday, according to a Media Advisory.

It will be one of 58 around the U.S. by my count, the nearest previously being in Honolulu. They must be expecting enough business to keep an office open.

To begin, Associate Judge David Wiseman said there were more than 200 cases pending when he closed down the CNMI immigration docket.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. – The Executive Office for Immigration Review will open the Saipan Immigration Court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on November 30, 2009. The Saipan Immigration Court will conduct immigration court proceedings for respondents in the Northern Mariana Islands. The Saipan Immigration Court will be an administrative control court and will receive filings and establish appropriate dockets.

The address for the Saipan Immigration Court is:

Marina Heights II Building, Suite 301
Marina Heights Business Park
Saipan, MP 96950
Hours of Operation:
8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., Monday - Friday

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is an agency within the Department of Justice. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals interpret and adjudicate immigration cases according to United States immigration laws. EOIR’s immigration judges conduct administrative court proceedings in immigration courts located throughout the nation. They determine whether foreign-born individuals—who are charged by the Department of Homeland Security with violating immigration law—should be ordered removed from the United States or should be granted relief from removal and be permitted to remain in this country. The Board of Immigration Appeals primarily reviews appeals of decisions by immigration judges. EOIR’s Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer adjudicates immigration-related employment cases. EOIR is committed to ensuring fairness in all of the cases it adjudicates.

A koan to pick

2009-11-28T13:48:00.012+10:00

"The CNMI maintains that the Commonwealth’s guest worker population currently is experiencing high rates of unemployment, and that employers are consequently unlikely to require permits for new guest workers in the near future." -- District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman

Yes, I'm still walking that dog. Come on along for the exercise.

How can a member of the "guest worker population" be unemployed? Either you're still under contract, or you're in the process of being repatriated. I meditated on that paradox all night.

But never mind, we'll deal with that when the "Transition Conditional" (240K or "umbrella") permits run out in two years-- or maybe the first time someone tries to use one.

The next lawsuit, or
If it's an umbrella why am I left holding the bag?

Enter the Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 CNMI, used "to verify the identity and employment authorization of each new employee (both citizen and noncitizen) hired in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) after November 27, 2009."

The I-9 used in the rest of the U.S. has a list of acceptable documents in a format something like a Chinese menu: you can use one from List A or one from List B and one from List C. For CNMI use only, the following documents are acceptable in List A:

All documents must be unexpired

1. A foreign passport and Alien Entry Permit with red band issued to an alien by the CNMI Office of the Attorney General, Division of Immigration before November 28, 2009, as long as the period of employment authorization has not yet expired.

2. A foreign passport and an unexpired Permanent Resident Card issued by the CNMI.

3. A foreign passport and a temporary work authorization letter issued by the CNMI Department of Labor before November 28, 2009, containing the name and photograph of the individual, if the period of employment authorization has not yet expired and the proposed employment is not in conflict with any restrictions or limitations identified on the temporary work authorization letter.

That's it. There's nothing about "an approved employment contract as provided in Department of Labor regulations"-- the language of the 240K I saw.

Maybe that will change. The umbrella permits were rushed, and the I-9 CNMI was rushed, sloppy or both. The current I-9 is Rev. 11/12/09, it replaces Rev. 10/21/09, which said the Alien Entry Permit was issued by the Department of Labor.

The sticking point is "lawfully present and authorized to be employed in the Commonwealth pursuant to the immigration laws", the language of P.L. 110-229. That is echoed by "authorizes the holder to be employed" in the umbrella permit, but that's a Labor document (policy?) and the CNMI immigration laws were superceded as of Nov. 28. I don't want to argue, that's one for the lawyers. I also don't want to get caught in the middle.

I'm up in the air until the I-9 is revised, and so are prospective employees with unbrella permits. I can only accept, and they must provide, the documents listed on the I-9. It has no provisions for CNMI documents generated after Nov. 27.

Lawfully present? Sounds good, the "Umbrella Permits", though issued by CNMI Labor instead of Immigration, may cover that.* Again, go for it, lawyers. It's not up to me. But I won't give you a job, and I can't give a job to Transition Conditional workers until somebody else volunteers to be the test case.

The "CW" classification under the transitional rules might have solved that problem, but the Restraining Order has set them back for at least two or three months. Umbrella permits definitely need to be addressed when they are revised.

* I'm not sure about the students and investors who got temporary (Rain Check?) permits from the Department of Commerce. "Holders are scheduled to return to Commerce on March 1, 2010, to claim their permanent umbrella permit."

Chamorro Savings Time*

2009-11-27T13:32:00.007+10:00

I really wasn't going to write about the lawsuit. (Saipan Tribune and Marianas Variety) The Department of Homeland Security still takes over 'after midnight' tonight. Most of the contract workers will still have to be gone in five years. So, what's changed by District Court Judge Paul Friedman's preliminary injunction?

There are no interim rules. We just get the full U.S. immigration package. The CNMI argued, persuasively to me, that DHS didn't follow the Administrative Procedures Act. Okay, the judge said, follow them: propose regulations, give an adequate comment period, consider the comments and then promulgate final rules.

It's like Daylight Savings Time: we can push time back, but only for a few months.

"The commonwealth will continue to operate under its existing labor system except for entry and exit," volunteered part-time attorney Deanne Siemer. Umm. No. We just won't have interim rules to soften the transition yet.

In one of this lawsuit's strange twists, Friedman writes that "The CNMI maintains that the Commonwealth’s guest worker population currently is experiencing high rates of unemployment, and that employers are consequently unlikely to require permits for new guest workers in the near future. Reply at 20-21. Consequently, the United States cannot argue with any degree of certainty that CNMI employers will be harmed by the issuance of a preliminary injunction in this matter."

Got that? Everybody's in limbo. If there are problems, Friedman writes, "To assist either foreign workers seeking to leave and return to the CNMI or employers desperately in need of workers from outside the Commonwealth, DHS may, if necessary, promulgate a narrowly focused and temporary emergency regulation that addresses only the problem at hand."

That's a far cry from Siemer's formulation that "Friedman also virtually commanded DHS to come up with an emergency regulation allowing aliens in the commonwealth to travel in and out."

Rhetorical question: what substantive changes do you expect to see when we get the final regulations?

("The CNMI maintains that the Commonwealth’s guest worker population currently is experiencing high rates of unemployment.")

* I'm not forgetting my Carolinian friends. It's just that I couldn't pass up the word play on Chamorro Standard Time.

No umbrella needed

2009-11-26T11:48:00.003+10:00

From the Saipan Tribune, an early sign that the new immigration rules might help local employment:

HELP WANTED
Looking for Sexy Dancer
- Female
- IR or Green Card holder

Gotta keep those tourist attractions.

James Bond's got nothing on these guys

2009-11-26T08:06:00.006+10:00

Nobody does gadgets like the Japanese, and I just wasted entirely too much time on a virtual stroll through japantrendshop.com.

I was casually checking out bulletproof sunglasses, but it was the Samurai Umbrella that got me. I've always felt dorky carrying one of those things. Then I saw the Samurai Underwear and I was hooked.

The 3D Blue Earth Puzzle looks outstanding. It's based on satellite images and population areas have glow-in-the-dark paint.

Black tissues for mourning... and black is the new white: "Black also has a “clean” feeling to it, which is why cotton swabs, toothpaste, and now these Black Tissues from Daishowa."

Fur keyboard? Radio-controlled flying cockroach or driving tissue box (available Dec. 1 for Christmas)? You got it. There's a dog voice translator -- only works with Japanese dogs, or only translates to Japanese. Something like that. Get your dog a pedometer.

Okay, Cyber Figure Alice the augmented reality maid creeps me out: Using the software, included props, and a web cam, you can interact physically with a digital maid character! Alice has a real personality and responds to your touch and loves receiving gifts from you. She’ll even take off/change clothes when you’d like her too.

Not creepy at all, once I notice endoscopeshop.com is a "partner shop". I don't even want to know.

I'd go nuts shopping here if it wasn't so pricey.

Apocalypse Not

2009-11-25T15:08:00.009+10:00

I've read some dire predictions about what the Commonwealth faces now that it appears Gov. Benigno R. Fitial will be re-elected. Nothing new, of course, equally dire predictions were made before the runoff about the future under him and under Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider, the challenger. Two sides, and support hardens to partisanship in the clinches.

I'm a fatalist myself. The government's profligate ways combined with the economy's retrenchment to form not the perfect storm, but the perfect doldrums. I had a definite preference, but there won't be much room to maneuver for either man.

The Pacific Daily News paints a pretty accurate picture in their election story. With a liability of 'close to $500 million' (David Sablan) or 'probably upwards of $1 billion' (Sam McPhetres), the government will likely be reacting to events rather than controlling them.

Any solutions will be complicated, as usual, by the fact that Rota and Tinian use their control of the Senate to say 'me too' and 'me three' whenever appropriations come around. (Another reason a union with Guam is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. They would never consent to having a Senate with veto power over their larger population, while Rota and Tinian would never give that up.)

Somehow, though the problems will be solved, or at least dealt with, simply because there is no other choice. There will be a lot of pain and suffering. The finger-pointing and second-guessing is likely to continue. More crisis management with the bottom signaled not with a bang but a whimper.

Some of Governor Fitial's detractors have said, or implied, that 'the feds' had a preference in this election, and it wasn't him. The Governor has done nothing to discourage that view. Personally, I view the federal government as a huge, amorphous caterpillar that doesn't have the motor skills to get all of its feet moving in the same direction.

Yes, the Department of Interior didn't announce the release of Compact Impact funds until after the runoff. The progress report on CUC's compliance with its stipulated order came out just before the election. But, at the same time, the Department of Homeland Security's postponement of immigration control until a week after the election seems almost calculated to help the incumbent.

People fear change, and boy, is federal immigration control a big one. Hofschneider and Speaker Arnold I. Palacios meant change from the current policies with their campaign slogan, but it got confounded with 'change to federal control'. In times of crisis it's 'don't change horses in midstream', 'stay the course', 'rally around the flag' or 'let it BE'. (Maybe it's just me, but 'let us finish the job' sounds a bit too ominous.)

My cynical side suspects that the thinking behind the lawsuit attempting to stop federalization was 'even if it doesn't work, it's great for the campaign.' I suppress that side, but it pops up again and suggests that the Marine Monument might have gotten a better reception if it hadn't been proposed with immigration control pending. Outsiders, pushing federalization and taking away local control all dovetail too neatly with the immigration narrative.

McPhetres brings up an interesting point in the PDN article: most of his students get a "warm and fuzzy feeling" from Fitial. I hadn't thought of that, and it's undoubtedly true, though I doubt he'll be pushing Saipanda dolls off of the Duty Free shelves.

I once told Bob Grimac, a former editor of the Marianas Variety that he would probably never understand CNMI politics if he didn't have some familiarity with big-city machine politics. Analogies are never exact, but that one has been pretty useful to me over the years.

The ward heelers were out in force in the gap between the general election and the runoff; you saw many of the free-lancers choosing up sides with their endorsements. Two things: 1) that's meant as an observation, not a judgment and, 2) I'm not saying the term applies to all of the people endorsing one camp or the other.

If you think I'm going to tell you which is which, well, that's tough. Do your own homework.

I've been amused and sometimes irritated by the spokespeople, politicians and columnists who throw out references to 'bloggers' instead of responding to a specific person. It's intellectually dishonest. A straw man: they win by default because you don't know who they're arguing with. *

I agree with some bloggers ten percent of the time and others 90 percent. Only one meets my exacting standards and is 99 percent correct. That's me. I resent being lumped into somebody's spew against bloggers in general.

For instance, here's David North reacting to the latest election. Another hollow man, but not me.

* Yes, I'm doing the same thing. Aren't you clever to catch it?

More on Saipan Shooting

2009-11-21T17:14:00.002+10:00

I'm not in the mood to write today, but I've heard a lot of speculation about yesterday's murders.

The latest I've found is from the Pacific News Center, where Brad Ruszala is reporting the gunman's name as Lee Zhong Ren.

According to Ruszala, "Lee reportedly complained of a failed attempt to open another shooting range on the island."

Saipan shooting

2009-11-20T15:50:00.008+10:00

KUAM is reporting that four people are dead and six injured in shootings on Saipan. I've been trying to get more information for several hours. Pacific Daily News says five dead and eight injured in their breaking news.

Jane Mack at Saipan Writer has pieced some details together.

Check those sites; I don't want to just compile them when there's still more information coming in.

4:00 p.m. The Saipan Tribune just posted five dead and eight injured.

6:00 p.m. KSPN-2 on cable television has more details (streaming video).

Jay Solly says no second poll

2009-11-20T15:13:00.003+10:00

Jay Solly of Marianas Consulting took exception to my piece Eve of distraction. In the interest of fairness, here is the complete text of his latest Press Release. (I removed the email address, simply because I didn't want to subject him to the spam he would get if it was published on the internet.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: JAY SOLLY
November 19, 2009

Second Poll ‘Unnecessary’ In Light of CNMI’s Chilling Political Climate

Saipan—Upon inquiries from media outlets, Marianas Consulting announced today that no additional polling would be conducted in the CNMI leading up to the historic November 23rd gubernatorial run-off elections. The company made this decision in light of the CNMI Governor’s Office and the Covenant Party’s heightened and unparalleled energies expended the day before the November 7th General Election. Though the statistically sound poll disclosed its full methodology as thoroughly or even more so than the University of Guam’s poll published earlier that week, the Governor’s Covenant Party Chairman issued a specious press release in a classic case of “shoot the messenger” chiefly because their candidate was not prevailing. The three other candidates for Governor did not issue statements.

Further, the Governor’s Office openly engaged in eyebrow-raising back-and-forth with a private company and the account of events and depth of involvement leave more questions to be asked than were answered. Consequently, this company terminated an employee with a personal relationship to Marianas Consulting’s principal consultant the same day the poll was released. In media accounts it was acknowledged that they contacted the Governor’s Office to inform that the employee had been let go, a highly unusual action for what was a private and internal personnel matter. Even more curious, the Governor’s Covenant Party thought it appropriate to comment on this personnel issue, offering words of support for the supposed “hurt” caused, but in reality, adding insult to injury.

Principal Consultant, Jay Solly comments, “On a personal note, my family and I are grateful for the outpouring of support from the community. We love Saipan and the kindness and giving hearts exhibited. We look forward to staying and will continue working for the community. It is likely that there would have been no effort to silence, discredit, or intimidate if the numbers were in Covenant’s favor. Again, neither I, nor my company, was contracted by any campaign when this poll was conducted, but now I know with certainty for whom I will not work—the rank amateurism of the Covenant Party opposition research linking Marianas Consulting to an Ontario-based company that happens to share the name made me chuckle. Incidentally, I worked in Moscow in 2005, did they check with Vladimir Putin too?”

Marianas Consulting concedes that a run-off poll again employing random sampling in line with theories of probability would likely be informative and serve well the interests of the people, but as Mr. Solly adds, “even statistics with reported sampling error come under fire in this chilling political climate fostered to stifle dissent. This, coupled with the ‘spiral of silence’ effect—where voters are less likely to voice an opinion if they fear reprisal, job loss, or isolation from the existing political apparatus—make polling in the CNMI uniquely challenging.”

The CNMI-registered company iterates that the only polls that truly matter are election polls where the free exercise of choice is safeguarded.

About Marianas Consulting
Marianas Consulting is a strategy, government & public affairs consulting firm headquartered on the beautiful island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, headed by Mr. Jay Solly. Jay has over 12 years of professional experience in political communications, public relations, marketing, and government arenas at the territory, state, and national level. Mr. Solly has advised, managed and worked on 26 campaigns in 14 years.

Honk if you love me

2009-11-19T16:51:00.005+10:00

Well, thanks for the warning. I'll stay away from the Shell/Dandan and the Microl intersections from 4-6 p.m. today. If you're into traffic jams and roadside wavings here's your chance.

Heinz S. Hofschneider and Arnold I. Palacios will be up by Dandan, while Benigno R. Fitial and Eloy S. Inos are planning to be in Oleai.

Once is too much for me. My son, uh, forgot to tell me his report card was out until the last minute, so I caught the Ben and Eloy line-up last Friday.

I even waved a few times; to Eloy out of respect, and to a few friends. But I didn't want to look as silly as Manny Borja when he used to run for office: waving at every car like one of those little bobble dolls you put in a car window.

Mostly though, because I was in the right lane, I didn't even look at a lot of the faces. I was focusing on hundreds of toes creeping over the white line into my lane, hoping no one stumbled or darted out. I thought of Imelda Marcos in a parade, wondering if she stared at all of those shoes along her route.

The little feet bothered me. I really don't like roadside rallies, but, shrug, it's your choice. Please don't bring your kids, or else make them stand in the back. I was worried about hitting someone. So worried that I failed to recognize a lot of people and tensed up.

Some supporters helped keep traffic real slow by driving back and forth, stopping occasionally.

My son was suitably impressed, but 13-year-olds don't vote. I doubt that anyone is going to change their mind based on this stuff. Why, that would be as silly as sending soundtrucks out to annoy people.

I've actually seen people claim they won't vote for this or that candidate because of roadside rallies or loud music, reminding us that it's not wise to open up your mouth and prove how dumb you are. Anyone who has been paying attention knows the candidates differ on a number of issues, and they haven't been shy about pointing out those differences. They all have long records of public service.

Obviously, they also know more about campaigning than I do. Maybe the rallies are for the participants more than for the innocent by-drivers-- some kind of group-building exercise.

Whatever. I only got to talk to three teachers before the security guard locked the gate. This time I've been warned in advance.

Whose visa waiver?

2009-11-19T16:02:00.005+10:00

Or, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Guam is looking forward to getting its share of Russian and Chinese tourists under the visa waiver program.

"Guam may be able to benefit from a similar program if the one in the CNMI proves successful, (Guam Delegate Madeleine) Bordallo and tourism officials have said," according to the Pacific Daily News.*

Uh, oh. Unfortunately for us, Guam's 'share' will probably be larger than ours. They've got the air connections and a lot more attractions. Hong Kong was just added to the list eligible for Guam waivers. It will be interesting to see how they do in that market.

Another uh, oh: "It will open up English language and educational tourism opportunities of longer duration, thereby expanding the mix and menu of teaching modules that have different time horizons," said Guam Visitors Bureau General Manager Gerry Perez.

Where have we heard this before?

Bordallo was lobbying Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano for Chinese and Russian to have Guam included in the 'parole' that was eventually approved for the Commonwealth. According to the article, she's still at it.

That may give the CNMI a very small window to get our act together before Guam is competing for the same tourists. Ah, but we've got casinos.

Well, casino. One, and it's not doing that well. A lot of plans, a few silver shovels getting scratched up in 'groundbreakings'. Don't get me wrong. I hope they work out on Tinian. I have the same hopes for Rota. I hope Saipan doesn't fall for that one.

Meanwhile, Rota leaders appear to be having second thoughts: Small-scale casino pushed on Rota.

Umm, do you mean a poker palace?

* I'd appreciate it if one of my two loyal readers lets me know when this link disappears and the article disappears into the vending-machine archives.

glass houses

2009-11-19T15:48:00.004+10:00

To start, there is never, ever any excuse for throwing rocks at vehicles. It's criminal and it could be deadly.

With that out of the way, it would probably happen less if the rockthrowers-- and the people in the community who must have seen them in action-- thought they were getting something out of tourism.

I expect to get some statistics in response. They will probably be correct and I have no doubt of tourism's benefits. They just don't 'trickle down' directly to enough households.

Bumper cars

I fear those little white tour vans. The drivers are aggressive, unpredictable, oblivious of the law and dangerous. It's not my personality, but I've had to stop myself from chasing several of them around the island so I could.... do something (I have no idea what that would be).

Maybe they're not accountable either. There was a recent traffic case where the tour company tried to avoid liability by saying the driver was an 'independent contractor'. Isn't that more like, a taxi driver?

So yes, the tour companies have to clean up their act: a lot and quickly. Parents have to get control of their kids (or adults their inner kids). Most of all, neighborhoods are only safe if the residents are in control. Is anybody watching?

You might say I forgot to mention the police. No, I didn't.

Holes in the umbrella

2009-11-17T06:59:00.003+10:00

Okay, Over 80 percent of guest workers to get umbrella permit, according to the Marianas Variety.

How about 'almost 20 percent of guest workers won't get umbrella permits', instead? That's a lot of slippage.

Some of those presently in the system may have already departed the Commonwealth, Deanne Siemer is supposed to have explained to the reporter. Well, that certainly makes me feel better. They're in control.

Somebody is. Siemer is described as "Labor’s part-time hearing officer" in this story; it's usually "volunteer legal adviser". Why is this part-time volunteer so often the 'spokesperson'? (It's not the newspapers' fault. Has anyone seen her business card to clear this up?)

It bothers me that the percentage is that high. Are one-in-five guest workers here illegally? Are they going to try to hang on illegally for a few more years? Maybe that many people have given up on trying to find work and just want to go home. And, yes, I'm sure some have already left.

Urban legend visas

Or maybe they're the people Jaime R. Vergara was talking about in his opinion piece Stragglers under the Commonwealth umbrella. It's a must-read for anyone in denial about the very large group of exploited workers.

Yes, they're "incredibly gullible", he says, "a docile population of foreigners exploited by their own kind, oblivious of any political rights, and reliant on fortune tellers and fast-buck schemes..."

They're about to pay for their mistakes, or pay later if they go back underground for awhile. A lucky few might find an advocate and take their exploiters down with them. The people who gamed the system will move on, looking for another scam. The people who created the system will try to rewrite history: 'Not Our Fault.'

I've still been hearing about 'tourist' and 'sponsor' schemes this year. It hasn't stopped. Vergara says "I saw copies of identical pleadings for a waiver addressed to no less than Labor’s celebrated volunteer asking that the waiver be granted to an overstaying tourist and a jobless consort so that they may be allowed time to seek other partners, apply for an Immediate Relative status, and qualify for the umbrella permit!"

According to Vergara, "Shanty dwellings with their ubiquitous satellite dishes house many aliens who expect the feds to start handing out urban legend visas come December." Sad, but I have to agree with him.

I was pulling up to YCO Hardware this morning and saw a flyer for a Black Friday Sale on Nov. 27. Wow, I thought, they really don't like the feds. Oops, the day after Thanksgiving is supposed to be the start of the Christmas shopping season. My bad, I hadn't seen anybody use it out here

The Northwest Pacific by North

2009-11-14T18:32:00.003+10:00

I've read dozens of articles about last Tuesday's elections, and the CNMI results weren't mentioned in any of them.

That's not too surprising, I suppose, because of the national media's obsession with What It All Means to Democrats' and Republicans' chances in next year's mid-term elections. A local election involving the Republican and Covenant parties doesn't fit neatly into that narrative.

Google just fed me one exception, not news but a blog at the Center for Immigration Studies titled The Elections and Immigration Policy. David North describes the election results as "one apple, two oranges – and in the distant Western Pacific, a split coconut."

Who is this guy? I thought as I read along. He's obviously knowledgeable, very obviously opinionated and he's got some sort of grudge.' An example: "There was no Democratic candidate but there were two independent ones. These are both named Guerrero, as there seems to be a shortage of last names in the islands."

Hafa? What's that got to do with the subject? I read a previous blog, with the "Disclosure: I worked for the Clinton Administration's Department of the Interior territorial office at the height of the DeLay-Abramoff power." Oh, that David North. (There was a lot of press at the time. Some was harsher, some kinder and gentler, by the usual suspects for the usual reasons.)

It's too bad, if I could ignore the drone of axes being ground, I might agree with much of what he writes. That's tough to do.

The Center for Immigration Studies is popular with people interested in the subject. I have no idea how many of them follow his blog

They bombed in New London

2009-11-14T16:13:00.005+10:00

Remember Suzette Kelo? She was one of the people who lost homes to a redevelopment project anchored by Pfizer Inc.

Well, the tax breaks ran out, and so did Pfizer.

The Supreme Court heard their eminent domain case about five years ago, and I remember it because it was one of those rare cases where there was public outrage across the political spectrum. 'Take the land for a road or school,' I thought at the time, 'but not to benefit a private company.'

Pfizer's research and development facility was touted as the 'anchor' of the project. It was supposed to draw hotels, condominiums, biotech office buildings, a marina, a walkway, a proposed Coast Guard Museum and public parking for the museum and the adjacent Fort Trumbull park.

From the stories I've seen, for their $78 million (or more than $80 million according to another article) they've got the parking lot. So much for the Little Pink Houses like Kelo's.

Heck, and I never thought I'd write this, Justice Clarence Thomas was right:

The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for “public necessity,” but instead for “public use.” Amdt. 5. Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a “ ‘[P]ublic [P]urpose’ ” Clause, ante, at 9—10 (or perhaps the “Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society” Clause, ante, at 8 (capitalization added)), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is “legitimate” and the means “not irrational,” ante, at 17 (internal quotation marks omitted).

This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a “public use.”

Thomas (or his clerk) was on a roll. He also said that eminent domain-fueled urban renewal often became a synonym for "negro removal".

Ah, well, nothing new. Big business teams up with government and the middle class loses.

I prefer Bloomsday *

2009-11-13T01:13:00.003+10:00

Or, as Janis Joplin said more indelicately: "It's all the same fucking day, man."

Our gullibility is charming at times, and often funny. Enter, 2012, The Movie. I've been successfully ignoring it but finally succumbed to Burl Burlingame's debunking article Doomsday denied in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.

If you haven't been shopping for crystals lately, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 (on our calendar). Presumably, so do we.

Was that story really necessary? Well, yes, apparently it was. Google it if you must, but there are as many references to 2012 as, uh, as there are stars you can see from our little planet. According to Burlingame, "the filmmakers have also created Web sites that pretend to be legitimately scientific, something that has real scientists somewhat annoyed."

I'd provide a couple of links, but that would just be driving traffic to those sites. My reasoning was similar when I decided not to write about Ben Stein's loopy Creationism catechisms; I stopped using the Drudge Report to follow news sources when I was reminded that I was enabling his looniness by building his numbers.

In a nice touch, one source refers to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which pretty much sums up my feelings: we're pretty insignificant, emphasize the small 'i'. Our calendars are constructs, like our languages and very much rooted to place. Our 'time' is tied to the earth's rotation period, which isn't fixed.

So I don't buy into specie-ific fixations on our little planet in a universe that is incomprehensible to us. Then again, we're tethered to it. If it goes, well, "so it goes".

Or, gee, maybe 2012 is when we finally enter the Age of Aquarius, though that sounds fishy to me.

* I happened to think of Ulysses, probably my favorite book, about 20 minutes before I found this article. Sigh, haven't read it in a century, though.

The Final Countdown

2009-11-12T06:17:00.014+10:00

The gubernatorial election? Nah, I wrote a piece about that but, after a bit of reflection (and a second opinion), I decided to hold on to it for now.

The Administration and contract workers basically agree about federal immigration, and neither will be happy come Nov. 28.

Hard to believe, but when you cut through the chatter they both think that our current workforce is permanent, while the main thrust of the immigration provisions in Public Law 110-229 is to gradually eliminate permanent immigrant (a contradiction in terms) workers in the CNMI.

I'm sympathetic to that view, but not convinced.

I recently heard Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider say 'development is not more auto shops along Beach Road', or words to that effect. I would go further. Development is also not more hotels if you don't have the local workforce to staff the existing hotels*.

Is the local labor force large enough for existing businesses? I think not, but I do know that there is substantial unemployment among resident and contract workers. If I were a cynic, I'd think someone is trying to keep wages low.

A lot of kids will be graduating in the next five years. It's time to pay more than lip service to preparing them for jobs in the economy. If (gasp) more than minimum wage is offered, some residents will return to the CNMI. It's hard to see how a 'soft landing' can be managed during the transition, but it can certainly be made softer.

A little sophistry, please

The Department of Homeland Security has been criticized for not soliciting comments and, almost in the next breath criticized because they're asking for suggestions on how best to manage drawing down the number of Commonwealth-only 'CW' workers. 'They don't have a plan.' Okay, what's your plan?

'How about a CNMI-only H-2 style visa?' former Chamber of Commerce President Jim Arenovski is is supposed to have asked. Well, the reporter caught it: H visas are for temporary workers. (The emphasis is mine.)

The Chamber is also supposed to have bemoaned the fact that no representative of the U.S. Department of Labor was there to explain the 'CW' visas. DHS has the authority and delegates determination of prevailing wages, eligibility and enforcement for most of the lettered visas to DOL. As far as I can tell, that does not include 'CW' visas, which makes sense because eligibility is based on CNMI labor permits.

Local control? Well, that might have been possible following U.S. laws if the suggestion had been made last year during the comment period on this final rule. It included the CNMI in the definition of U.S. effective on the date of DHS assuming immigration control and included this language:

Sec. 655.2 Territory of Guam.

Subpart A of this part does not apply to temporary employment in the Territory of Guam, and the Department of Labor (Department or DOL) does not certify to the USCIS of DHS the temporary employment of nonimmigrant foreign workers under H-2B visas, or enforce compliance with the provisions of the H-2B visa program provisions in the Territory of Guam. Pursuant to DHS regulations, 8 CFR 214.2(h)(6)(v) administration of the H-2B temporary labor certification program is performed by the Governor of Guam, or the Governor's designated representative.

Ah, temporary employment again. We're back to that. U.S. law will not allow us to have permanent immigrant workers after the transition period. The Congress can change that, DHS can't. The District Court in Washington, D.C. could delay implementation, but not change the law. I'm just a lowly layman, but I think the Governor is lucky we probably won't know the results of his lawsuit until after the runoff election.

Non-residents who have been here five, ten or even twenty years say it's unfair that they can't get a pathway to citizenship. I can't argue with that, but again it's up to the U.S. Congress. If enough residents and, particularly, their leaders join with them it could probably be accomplished.

I haven't talked to Greg Cruz, but I've met members of Taotao Tano. I may not always agree with them, but it's easy to understand their anger, their rage in some cases. This government has failed them, unless they get a shot at the brass ring: one of the disappearing government jobs. In cold, economic terms, it's often smarter to collect food stamps and other federal benefits than to work for the local minimum wage. You couldn't do much better if you were trying to create a permanent welfare underclass.

But at least you get those benefits, residents are told, you're U.S. citizens. Why does that remind me of what poor white sharecroppers were told in the antebellum South: 'at least you're not black.' Their anger, and that of others who aren't part of the group, is unfocused.

Sometimes it is aimed at past leaders, sometimes at businesses and sometimes at the contract workers. People with long memories might consider the Commonwealth Bank. It slipped through the door opened when the Bank of Saipan wangled weakened laws and regulations. A lot of people lost their savings. Contract workers came through a door; they were invited to work here. The small business owners who will be forced out eventually under U.S. foreign investment regulations were following existing regulations: a door. It's not their fault.

The Commonwealth was given local control so it could protect local workers and their culture. The result was massive numbers of factory workers who diluted the culture and strained the infrastructure. But the factory owners got greedy. Not only did they exploit their workers-- and I'm cynical enough to admit that might not have done it in itself-- but they grew too large and began threatening U.S. factories and jobs. Compounding their error, they delayed federalization through lobbying. When the political tide turned, and it always does, it was personal for a lot of Congressmen and Senators and not just political any more.

So we've got U.S. Immigration come Nov. 28, and it's not going away. If the 'CW' jobs are permanent, as the Administration, the Chamber and the contract workers seem to think, they'd better find a solution under U.S. law.

Guess what? The only realistic solution I can see is legislation, probably to offer U.S. citizenship. The next Governor is going to have to deal with reality instead of continuing this wishful thinking and foot-dragging. There is a five-year window of opportunity, though it is going to get smaller every year.

But what if the non-residents get citizenship and decide to go elsewhere? Well, I think the workers and Taotao Tano could live with that. They're really in this together, though they might not see that. Some workers would stay, no matter what. They've put down roots. Others would stay if they're given a little incentive. Here's a hint: offer more that the minimum wage. Think about it; there's still time. Tick, tick.

* Or do we? Hafa Adai Hotel lays off workers blares a headline in today's Marianas Variety. Several hotels have had some workers on 32 hour weeks for at least a couple of years now.

Eve of distraction

2009-11-07T07:08:00.009+10:00

Jay Solly seems to know a bit about marketing.

His shamelessly self-promoting CNMI gubernatorial 'poll' landed him on the front page of the Friday Marianas Variety and the election-day Saipan Tribune.

Not bad for a young guy who seems to be looking for a job. Unintended consequences kick in, of course.

He reportedly used his 'significant other's' (gad I hate that term) phone to survey voters. Well, not hers exactly. According to the Tribune, it's a residential phone but it belongs to Bridge Capital LLC *. They fired her, "for improper use of company resources." A company whose unrelenting campaign for gambling on Saipan has been controversial doesn't need a pissed-off Governor.

And he was pissed, or at least his minions were. That's easy to understand. Who needs to get blind-sided the day before the election by a poll showing the incumbent is in third place? The obvious --and legitimate-- questions were asked: who is this guy and who does he work for?

So Solly

So they called Bridge Capital, who quickly cut their losses... and their payroll. Pressure from the Governor's Office? I have no idea, but there's no crying in Public Relations. It seems like a move they would make with or without pressure. But Jay and the SO (girlfriend) are victims now. Stay tuned. We need two jobs now.

Who does he work for? There's nothing obvious to go by. Personally I think he free-lanced this, but time will tell. Stay tuned. With due diligence, the Governor's people checked out Marianas Consulting on the internet, and only got marianasconsulting.com, evidently some consultants in Toronto. Nay, says Solly, it's marianasconsulting.biz, which is true enough. He bought that domain name on October 26, but it's not functioning yet. The Website Title is 404 Not Found. **

Haidee V. Eugenio writes that the Tribune got Solly's Press Release Friday. I suppose he was trying to maximize coverage in both papers. He puts a brave face on it, but I don't think this is the story he expected to read.

And the voters say

Solly claims that his methods are sound, but the numbers don't add up to me-- figuratively and literally. My "Pala-Pala Poll" shows the Governor ahead of Juan Guerrero, with more than 20 percent of the vote. I guess we'll know tonight.

I could comment on the poll's design if I knew more about it. I was looking for his Press Release or other information when I tried to track down the Marianas Consulting website. Big assumption here, but if they only called landlines they would get a skewed view of the population. A lot of people only have cell phones these days, particularly younger people. Also, in this political climate, I would expect some people to hold their cards pretty close when talking to an anonymous voice on the phone.

Survey questions have to be designed very carefully. For instance, 'Do you think the Commonwealth is headed in the wrong direction?' would be leading. 'In which direction is the Commonwealth headed?' with choices would get a better result.

Then again, at least he tried, and he's sure poked himself into the public eye.

* Mo' marketing: Bridge Capital got in its own public relations licks with the irrelevant "Since June this year, the company has donated nearly $25,000 to the CNMI community."

** The WHO IS pointed at http://www.marianasconsulting.biz instead of just http://marianasconsulting.biz There's a little more information at the site, but the Press Release he posted has less information than what was provided to the local papers. I got through once. The connection has 'timed out' every other time I tried.

Hafa da' Haole?

2009-11-06T06:59:00.008+10:00

Every time I hear about the "haole vote" I start to laugh. We're the fifth wheel of CNMI politics: almost irrelevant.

Haole is used here to mean 'someone from the States', which is not exactly what the Hawaiians originally meant. It's close enough, and that's the local usage, so I'll follow. I'll even answer to it if we're just funning.

Some politicians here never use the word. Political correctness I suppose, and I can cautiously like a sensitive guy or gal. Others don't say haole because the tone might give them away: a "haole hater", and we can't have that. Most fall in the middle and use the word. You have to read that tone, that body language and yeah there are a few adjectives that might tip you off too.

But what if he doesn't like me? Seriously? Show of hands... how many people obsess over that once they get out of primary school? Get over it. I've voted for a few haole haters; they were the best candidates.

Which nicely brings me back to the point. A couple of people who would gladly see me pack up my carpetbag have bailed me out when I had car problems. They were friendly and helpful: nothing personal.

Cue laugh track

Each of the four gubernatorial candidates has haole supporters. 'He's really very nice in person', they tell me. Really? Charming and running for office? How refreshing, he's got my vote. Yes, it's important to meet the candidates, but really. (I actually hadn't met Heinz Hofschneider until last week. We both thought that was odd. The meeting was for haoles who hadn't made up their minds and fancy themselves independent. I guess I qualified, barely.)

In the end, I expect the 'haole vote' to run pretty much the same as the overall vote, for many of the same reasons. Some have a job or expect to get a job. (No promises, understand, because all three challengers say they just won't work that way.):

Quite a few long-timers will vote for a friend or their spouse's relative-- not familia, mind you, but they just really know this candidate. Some are just too lazy to actually do a little homework.

Because, really, the four candidates have been around for a long time. They have records, and there are skeletons out there. It's easy to ask around, or Search through the files of the Marianas Variety and the Saipan Tribune. Federalization is a wild card. That aside, it's a mystery to me why the haoles will split their vote like everyone else.

They will.

Slouching towards federalization

2009-11-03T12:39:00.004+10:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It was probably inevitable: all of this apocalyptic talk about immigration made me think of Yeats' Second Coming. With the federal 'takeover' on Nov. 28 just three weeks after Saturday's election, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial continues to run against Washington. His opponents seem content to let it be BE on this subject, at least in the media.

Large businesses have consistently voiced their objections and are likely to comment on the Transitional (CW) Worker Regulations. But those regulations are likely to go into effect as scheduled, unless the Governor's lawyers can pull a rabbit out of their hat.

Unlikely allies

Now, some contract workers are having second thoughts. According to the Marianas Variety, many left a Department of Homeland Security 'forum' on the regulations "with unanswered questions and mounting uncertainty."

Apparently they're shocked that DHS is just following Public Law 110–229, and not adding any provisions. DHS does have the leeway to "phase in the U.S. federal immigration system in a manner that minimizes adverse economic and fiscal effects and maximizes the CNMI’s potential for future economic and business growth." They exercised that discretion in agreeing to add visa waivers for Chinese and Russians.

So, with a specific showing of economic harm from the CW regs, who knows? Not likely, is it? District Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services David Gulick is quoted as saying they haven’t determined yet how to reduce the numbers of guest workers in the CNMI.

But there is no doubt those numbers will be reduced. The bill and the regulations require that workers "who would not otherwise be eligible for admission" under applicable provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act find another status or leave the U.S. before Jan. 1, 2015.

What happens Nov. 28? Not the Rapture some doomsayers predict; guest workers will remain. Not the Workers' Paradise some starry-eyed optimists have predicted despite evidence to the contrary. In the short term, everything will continue as before. We'll just have a new set of friendly faces greeting us at ports of entry.

Velvet handcuffs

According to the Variety "Gulick’s main message to the migrants and their employers: CNMI-issued labor or umbrella permits are not legally recognized to allow one to reenter the commonwealth or resume work after leaving the islands for whatever reasons."

The golden umbrella becomes velvet handcuffs: USCIS won't hunt you down, but you can't leave and come back without having a status approved by them.

Time for another creative solution like the visa waiver, according to the Governor. "It doesn’t make sense for them to be restricting the travels of the workers," he says.

Well, actually it does. Anyone who is currently in the CNMI has been cleared by the local government, not the feds. It's no surprise, to me at least, that DHS wants to have investors, CW's and all other categories go through the visa process. To them, it's the same as entering for the first time.

That's the short-term. Down the road, well, how do you interpret the poem?

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

CUC's penalty phase

2009-11-02T08:34:00.005+10:00

The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation *may* be facing $630,000 in penalties from the Environmental Protection Agency. Quick, who didn't see this coming?

I use the word may because the Saipan Tribune is incredibly vague about its source. "In a Sept. 30, 2009 conference with EPA, it was disclosed that that the United States is seriously concerned with CUC's lack of compliance with many important provisions in stipulated orders 1 and 2," the article says. We'll just have to assume a letter or report on the conference is being referenced, because the article is full of 'EPA said'(s).

According to the story "There are a total of 13 provisions that were not met by CUC under the two stipulated orders. EPA described the actions as “alarming.”"

At the time they were reported, I thought that 'Stipulated Order Number One' and 'Stipulated Order Number Two' amounted to de facto federalization of CUC. (Sorry, I couldn't find links to the orders at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Northern Marianas District Court or the EPA.)

The CNMI had been stalling EPA for years, so I was optimistic when Gov. Benigno R. Fitial reportedly said he agreed to the stipulations because "We decided to fix the problem instead."

Then, in June, CUC Deputy Director Bruce Megarr told the Public Utilities and Infrastructure Committee the utility was unlikely to meet EPA deadlines. Uh, oh. Here we go again.

The timing is interesting, because the Governor 'owns' CUC's problems after endless Emergency Declarations.

Eureka!

I was looking in all the wrong places. The Saipan Chamber of Commerce has a treasure trove of Public Utilities Commission documents available for download. They include Stipulated Order Number One and Stipulated Order Number Two.

An October 16, 2009 letter signed by EPA Project Coordinator Michael Lee and On-Scene Coordinator Michelle Rogow seems to be the source for the Tribune article.

(Time to rewrite this, but I'm out of time. Also, I may have to rethink my opinion that the Chamber just isn't relevant to small business owners.)

Now that's lazy, boy

2009-10-31T07:22:00.008+10:00

You still have almost four days to bid on the ultimate la-z-boy chair at ebay.

Almost the ultimate, anyway. True, its Briggs and Stratton engine even has a nitrous oxide booster That, and the parachute (!) are about the only features left out of the description:

Engine: Briggs and Stratton Model # 19070 Type: 5641 with electric start. Transmission type unknown and is sloppy. The vehicle has front lights, rear tag light, radio, cup holder, rear roll bars and other custom options, missing the seat cushion.

It had me going, until I read the Q and A at the bottom: what use is a recliner that doesn't recline?

I missed the cup holder at first and was going to cavil about it. Then again, that's probably why it's for sale; it's a DWI forfeiture. You probably don't need to know more. You probably don't want to know more. Okay, here's more.

Print this photo and we'll have to run you over.

More? Dennis Anderson's family is auctioning a photo of him on ebay to pay legal bills. Maybe the local VFW could look into this.

Autographed photograph of the world famous DWI Motorized La-Z-Boy style Chair. All proceeds from this auction will go to Denny L. Anderson to help him pay his fines and legal fees. Dennis is a 62 year old distinguished United States Navy Veteran. He served our county for 37 years. He defended our country so we can have our freedoms we enjoy.....Winning bidder will receive a genuine 8x10 autographed photo and a 4x6 of the chair at the race track, along with a personal note from Dennis L. Anderson himself. Thank you for bidding and god bless!

Worst newspaper?

2009-10-29T23:47:00.004+10:00

The Kansas City Star may be the most unprofessional big-city newspaper in the United States.

I follow sports, so it has been hard to avoid the stories about Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson. Because of the vague references to "anti-gay slurs", I had not paid attention. "There is no there, there," so to speak.

Heh. Then I got intrigued because the story just won't go away, with hundreds of articles and at least one hundred blog references. What did he actually say?

Well, Star reporter Kent Babbs says he called a Twitter follower's profile a "fag pic". Okay, not nice, not a word I'd use at all. Strike it from the language. And, definitely, stop following him on Twitter. Ah, but Johnson didn't stop there. He called the same guy a "Christopher Street boy". Here's where I don't know the rules. Is that an epithet if it is false? Is it an epithet if it is true? Is it just a clever way of saying 'gay'? Is it okay if a gay guy uses it like it's okay for Johnson to use 'boy'?

Is it cause for suspension, a $600,000 fine in effect? Maybe I'm wrong, and the National Football League is not so homophobic that it makes 'don't ask, don't tell' look like a model of tolerance and enlightenment.

Oh, more tweet from Johnson: "My father played for the coach from 'rememeber the titans'. Our coach played golf. My father played for redskins briefley. Our coach. Nuthn."

Now we're getting somewhere; that's cause for a chewing out at the very least. Maybe the reporter can enlighten us further. "Johnson continued the rant," he writes (impartially), "and, in later responses directed toward Johnson's Twitter followers, contained inflammatory remarks about gays." Hmm. Someone has got an agenda here. He skipped right over the part about the coach and the team.

Time to make the Star the story: According to Babbs, the next day:

"Johnson, sitting next to second-year running back Jamaal Charles, told reporters that "I'm not talking till Thursday," his usual day of speaking with reporters.

Then Johnson turned away and whispered.

"Get your faggot ass out of here," he said.

Well, prove it Babbs. He says he can, because there is a tape:

Star reporter Kent Babb, standing immediately to Johnson’s right, heard the comment and checked his tape recorder to verify the offending words. Later Monday, several Star editors confirmed it by reviewing the audio multiple times.

The link is to a two second clip from the tape. I've listened to it multiple times also, and I can't understand the first part of his sentence. Listen for yourself.

So I'll repeat it: Babbs appears to have an agenda. Maybe the editors do too. I might believe otherwise if they post what was said before the two seconds they choose to spoon-feed to the public.

That doesn't make Johnson the victim and he doesn't wear a white hat in this movie. He was stupid, and he comes off like the typical spoiled sports star. He's probably on a shorter leash because of his earlier legal problems.

Now I've wasted as much time on this episode as everyone else.

Saipan to be scrapped in November

2009-10-29T11:30:00.004+10:00

I hope this isn't an omen.

The (former) USS Saipan is headed for the scrapyard, according to the Navy Times. World War II is becoming ancient history, and I wonder if the name will ever be used again.

I also wonder whether it would be possible to get a piece of the ship for display on Saipan. Is anyone even interested in that? Some items will be returned to the Navy, according to the article.

Two cents worth

That's what the Navy is paying; International Shipbreaking will make its money off of the materials. Sad, the Peleliu and Nassau are the last Tarawa class amphibious assault ships still in service.

It seems I told this story before, but I won't let that stop me: I once attended the annual Marianas Visitors Bureau dinner. An astronaut-- name withheld-- was the guest of honor. He announced to the attendees, mostly Japanese, that he'd always wanted to come to Saipan because he was a fighter pilot. You guessed it, he was sorry he missed the Marianas Turkey Shoot which accompanied the Battle of Saipan. I was in the cheap seats muffling snorts as I tried not to laugh out loud.

American Video finalists

2009-10-29T09:36:00.004+10:00

President Barack Obama's Organizing For America is airing the final episodes of its Health Reform Video Challenge. Here's how New Media Director Natalie Foster put it to me on Sept. 26:

This is your chance -- you ingenious, insightful, funny people out there -- to make a 30-second ad telling the story about why the status quo has got to go, or explaining how the Obama plan will ensure we get the secure, quality care we need without breaking the budget.

The top submissions will be voted on by the public and a panel of experts, with the winning ad aired on national television. This is your opportunity to add your voice and creativity to the debate, get some great exposure for your work, and make a huge difference.

How clever, I thought at the time. Reaching out, 'getting input' and scamming a whole bunch of free brainstorming at the same time. I've been waiting anxiously, and Director Foster says we've got the finalists:

Out of nearly a thousand excellent videos submitted, we're down to the top 20. Now it's your turn to watch the finalists and vote for your favorites -- and then we'll air the winner on national television.

The top 20 ads will also be voted on by our panel of experts and artists, including Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, animator and director Seth MacFarlane, actress Kate Walsh, Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine.

Okay, so I might not get around to waiting while 20 videos download, but I might. It's always fun to see what's happening behind the curtain, and when one of these ads starts popping up everywhere, you can say you saw it here first. You could even vote, though I don't know how much weight you have versus the judges. The deadline is Nov. 6. Here's a somewhat random sample:

Your own little toxic avenger

2009-10-28T22:37:00.006+10:00

My son may or may not be too old to care about Halloween, but I've got a couple of grandkids who are at prime ages for some trickery.

Those hectorers at safecosmetics.org are trying to spoil all of our fun. Ten out of ten commercial face paints that they tested had lead. Most of them had just a smidgeon of nickel, cobalt and chromium, too. Here's another story with links to the report.

From the release: "The report also found many hazardous ingredients listed on the labels of Halloween hair-color sprays and make-up products, including butane (persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic), thiram (neurotoxic, possibly carcinogenic, used as a pesticide), alumina (neurotoxic), propylene glycol (possibly carcinogenic) and pigment green 7 and pigment blue 15, which are not approved by FDA for use in cosmetics."

Then again, they try to be helpful by recommending natural stuff like berries and avocados. There's even a link to The Smart Momma blog, so I forgive them.

Attack of the killer vaccine

2009-10-28T19:48:00.008+10:00

This story has only one source, as far as I can tell, so maybe even Louis Farrakhan isn't this crazy:

"The Earth can't take 6.5 billion people. We just can't feed that many. So what are you going to do? Kill as many as you can. We have to develop a science that kills them and makes it look as though they died from some disease," Farrakhan said, adding that many wise people won't take the vaccine.*

That's the H1N1 vaccine he's supposed to be talking about. Then again, claiming that a New Orleans levee "may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry" doesn't indicate a firm grounding in reality.

Normally, it wouldn't matter what he says or thinks, but a lot of people listen to this wacko, only Allah knows why. They could die if they believe him.

Maher says amen

Making the movie Religiosity seems to have given Bill Maher a bad case of Christian Science, because he's against the vaccine too. He doesn't seem to think it's a plot, though (I hope). Then again, he continues to amaze me: I never thought I'd side with television doctor** Bill Frist against him, much less that I'd agree Maher's acting crazy. Of course Frist was citing the New England Journal of Medicine (Hospitalized Patients with 2009 H1N1 Influenza in the United States, April–June 2009, and Critical Care Services and 2009 H1N1 Influenza in Australia and New Zealand), while Maher "knows". I don't know how funny this is, but here's their conversation:

There's more comedy available from Glenn Beck, but I'd have to link to five YouTube videos.

* I feel a bit more confident that he actually said those things. Strange, a number of 'black' media sources didn't mention H1N1 in covering the event. Sources like FOXNews, examiner.com and a lot of newspapers just quoted the UPI story without fact-checking. The original source is The Commercial Appeal of Memphis.

Which brings us to the subject of our junk food appetite for sound bites. Yes, it's a bizarre and outrageous thing to say, but it had a context. UPI just grabbed the headline and everyone else dutifully followed along.

** That's a snide reference to his 'diagnosis' of Terri Schiavo

Dog eat dog? Well, not exactly

2009-10-26T20:10:00.009+10:00

Nice title, eh?*

Time to Eat the Dog? probably comes from the fertile mind of a marketing guru. The authors seem too serious-- hemp clothing serious-- to tease us like that. It isn't even available in the U.S., I think. Amazon's website went catatonic. Barnes and Noble came up with some cutesy substitutes. I had to go to Amazon in the Mother Country to get a peek at the cover. Gift wrapping available (with recyclable paper, I hope).

The title continues: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, which is probably what the authors wanted. Fantastic Read headlines a five-star review at the British Amazon. Dangerously Dull, responds the one-star review:

It's possible that this book might inspire people to think a bit more about the consequences of their actions and steps they can take to live more sustainably. However I suspect the endless statistics, tables and often preachy and negative tone may have the exact opposite effect for some people, and lead them to draw the conclusion that nothing can be done anyway, that all the things that make life pleasant are unsustainable,and they might as well just give up now.

My other half has a PhD in mathematics, and after reading the introduction to this book, he abandoned it and declared that he was unconvinced that the authors had any real understanding of statistics.

The juicy, quotable stuff gets picked out in all of the articles: a large dog has twice the carbon 'footprint' (pawprint, they all guffaw) of an SUV; a cat equals a Golf**. The book of course is about appliances, lighting, packaging and a host of other wasteful habits we enjoy.

On the U.S. side of The Pond, in the Land of the Hopelessly Literal, most stories focus on the, er, juicy parts. Some bloggers never bothered getting past the title.

"The title of the book is a little bit of a shock tactic, I think, but though we are not advocating eating anyone's pet cat or dog there is certainly some truth in the fact that if we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat, and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things on our environment. -- Professor Robert Vale

I haven't seen PETA's reaction.

I've had fun with this, but it's because I really do believe in sustainable living... if it's not too inconvenient and doesn't cost too much more.

* I learned about the book from a Canadian news aggregator. It's a beta website-- probably why it loads slowly in the browser-- and they seem to think hockey is as important as Iran's nuclear program, but pretty good overall.

** Save The Earth: Eat Fluffy
Barking Mad!
Reducing Your Carbon Paw Print... You get the idea.

Say hello to my little friend

2009-10-26T08:29:00.007+10:00

Disturbed, likely to become depressed, this swirling mess of clouds is expected to pass near Guam on Tuesday, says the National Weather Service. It's about 500 miles East of Guam.

SINCE OCTOBER IS ONE OF THE PEAK MONTHS FOR TROPICAL CYCLONES IN MICRONESIA...RESIDENTS OF THE MARIANAS SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THIS DISTURBANCE. WEAK DISTURBANCES CAN QUICKLY INTENSIFY THIS TIME OF YEAR IN THIS PART OF THE WESTERN PACIFIC...AND WATCHES OR WARNINGS MAY HAVE TO BE ISSUED ON SHORT NOTICE.

To my caffeinated eye, it's bound to pass through the Mariana Islands, and I WISH THEY WOULDN'T SHOUT.

Advertising ague

2009-10-25T08:34:00.010+10:00

There's a Google ad at the bottom of this page, you may have noticed. It would be more trouble than it's worth for me to actually deal with the pittance I could get as a commission, but I leave it there.

Think of it as a canary in my coal mine. Google's algorithms try to parse what's posted here for key words, guess who is reading it, then come up with advertising that will make your mouse finger twitch. Good luck with that: I don't know my next subject until I find it. It is somewhat useful to be reminded that I'm becoming obsessive about a subject, and hey, I don't want to feel like I'm getting free bandwidth from Google.

Non sequitor

Immigration seems to be on my mind these days; at least an immigration ad keeps popping up offering legal advice. Free legal advice. Sam Goldwyn is supposed to have said "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." I haven't been able to trace the similar saw 'Free legal advice is worth what you paid for it', but I tend to agree. Listen, by all means, but don't sell your farm without more information.

Since this is written in the CNMI, you might jump to the conclusion that I'm talking about Howard Willens in the Governor's Office and Deanne Siemer at the Department of Labor. I'm not. Well, I am, but not specifically. I really don't want to jump into that turgid, turbid and torrid river of prose.

More advice is coming as this is written. A plethora of people are discussing DOL's Umbrella Permits at American Memorial Park. I'm confused about them, with a wait-and-see reaction similar to Saipan Writer.

Beautiful ugly pictures

All of that was just a meander in my stream of thought anyway, brought on by advertisements for Chinese chemical companies when I was tracking down these Chinese photographs. Those ads, and others from chemical companies, were very poor product placement by Google. (It always seems to be about China with that company, doesn't it?)

Lu Guang's powerful, disturbing photos brought to mind the cliche "a picture is worth a thousand words" (It's often called a Chinese proverb, but modern usage seems to be derived from an advertising slogan.) I read about parts per million of pollutants and pore over articles about their horrendous pollution, but you can almost smell and taste the chemical stew he portrays.

The subject isn't academic for people in the Mariana Islands. When we get our 'volcanic haze' warnings, it seems like it's usually a burp from Anatahan piggybacking on a noxious air current emigrating from Asia.

It's all about us

Follow the link to the photos (Please!) and you'll get a bonus: self-centered politicopaths, mostly from the U.S., arguing about socialism, communism and capitalism. Silly me, I thought pollution was caused by uncontrolled development, not ideology. They're crying 'poor me' instead of 'those poor people'.

That's another form of pollution.

Hen-pecking the Fox house

2009-10-23T23:23:00.006+10:00

Try this: define "news" for me.

It's not so easy, is it? New things? It's news to me? That's why I think President Barack Obama and company are way out on a limb declaring that Fox is not a news network.

For myself, I'll just agree with the wag who said "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it" Okay, the end of the sentence is ", and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." He was talking about pornography, but I'd give news more leeway, even Fox News.

Not that I think the attacks are particularly serious. Every President tries to manage the conversation and discredit opponents, though I wish Obama had a writer who could come up with something as quotable as William Safire's 'nattering nabobs of negativity'. (Or, I suppose, the sense of humor to suggest borrowing it. Use N3 if you're texting or twittering.)

Hurts so good

There's a symbiotic relationship here anyway. Obama probably assumes Fox viewers will oppose him no matter what he does. I thought that before I noticed how many "liberals" follow Fox closely enough to complain about its coverage of issues. In any case, he gets sympathy and support from his base by playing the victim.

Fox, of course, called the bet by declaring its martyrdom. Professional shoe-throwers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity know a ratings goldmine when they see it. Their friends chime in, the other side responds and off we go. This little tussle looks like it will have the legs to go through more than one round of the news cycle.

Game on, as long as this quote from the New York Times doesn't indicate where the White House is headed:

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”

A principled stand, says the angel one of my shoulders. The devil on the other reminds me that Beck came from CNN and Major Garrett used to write for Mother Jones.

Irony Alert

That segues nicely into an article in mysantonio.com about local groups joining Basta Dobbs. CNN, like Fox, is in business and I doubt that they think a group with the Spanish name Stop (Lou) Dobbs fits the demographic for his show. Again, however, there seem to be enough critics monitoring him to provide a ratings bump. Even if they succeed, they might just be pushing him right before he jumps. He's been talking to Fox, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Nicely played

Ready to post, I discovered that Lou Dobbs wants Basta Dobbs on his show. Nice move by CNN; another lob to the backcourt after the Latino in America pieces. Roberto Lovato responded with this backhand: I'll only appear if it's alongside CNN President Jon Klein because "our issue is not with you so much as the network that provides you with a platform." Ooh, game and set, I think. Match? Well, in a word, Fox.

Where does it end? Marc Lamont Hill is fired by Fox because he's too liberal, according to some. Contessa Brewer (nice name for Hollywood) introduces Jesse Jackson as that other Rev. Al Sharpton. They're both going to land on their feet. It's entertainment, and it's news too. So take a deep breathe and buy your ticket to the show you want to enjoy.

I wonder if the housepaint was scratched.
Guam - One of the two suspects in the October 15th robbery and stabbing of a Tamuning home has been arrested.

Ugh. A story that will probably make me mad:
Rape As A Preexisting Condition

Hee. Do I really need to read the story?
Pilot of Plane That Overshot Runway: We Were Not Asleep

How do you say "Garbage In Garbage Out" in Spanish? (It looks like they're blaming the computer.)
Dallas police ticketed 39 drivers in 3 years for not speaking English

Visa waivers approved, temporarily

2009-10-22T12:13:00.007+10:00

The Pacific Daily News is reporting that a CNMI-only visa waiver for Chinese and Russian tourists will be approved after Nov. 28 "on a case-by-case basis".*

It might only be a breather, because the "parole" will only be available "During the period from Nov. 28, 2009 (the transition program effective date), until the date of publication of the final Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program (VWP) rule (or other date that the Secretary of Homeland Security may determine)."

Still, it's good news in the short term, and maybe we can separate the coming of federal immigration control from the coming election.

That's a pretty vain hope. Several politicians have said they are going to raise issues with Customs and Border Patrol officials who are here for an operational visit. Operational is the key word here; they're not policy makers. Here's the list printed by the Saipan Tribune:

The visiting federal officials are led by CBP Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Field Operations Thomas S. Winkowski, and CBP Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Information Technology Charles Armstrong.

Also visiting are David Morrell, executive director of the Office of Field Operations' Mission Support; Cheryl Peters, program manager of the Office of Field Operations; Richard Vigna, director of Field Operations in San Francisco; Bruce Murley, area port director in Honolulu, Hawaii; and Rocky Miner, port director in Guam.

Later in the day...
Pacific News Center has a short blurb, indifferently written, on the officials' visit to Guam:

The speaker (Judi Wonpat) says that the federalization of CNMI's immigration will require them to use some of Guam's US customs agents however it will be on a part time basis and shouldn't affect any of Guam's operations.

The speaker adds that they did not have an answer as to the viability of extending the visa-waiver program to China and Russia. They did however reassure the Speaker that they would be on track to implament the CNMI's federalization on Nov. 28th.

More...
PNC has also reprinted a Press Release (indifferently written) from Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo's office saying that the hearing on H.R. 3770 has been posponed until a later date. That bill proposes a one-year delay in implementing the Guam-CNMI visa waiver.

And...
Last, but certainly not least, PNC has the (decently written) reaction from Congressman Gregorio C. Sablan:

"I’ve been assured that all the necessary equipment to do the pre-screening and monitor visitor exits will be in place by November 28,” said Kilili. “I have been very concerned about the Department’s operational readiness, but I’m beginning to see some forward motion."

* I'm glad I stopped by Unheard No More this morning. I missed the PDN headline when I picked up the local papers this morning. The Department of Interior's announcement doesn't appear on their website yet; I'll try to link to it soon, particularly when PDN's pay-per-view time limit kicks in.

Catching the military wave

2009-10-22T11:16:00.004+10:00

The Atlantic has a nice piece about the Guam military buildup in their November issue.

My brother sent me the link to Jeannette Lee's breezy, informative article. She covers the main issues pretty well, and it's nice to see some coverage outside of Washington's Beltway:

New planes, ships, artillery ranges, and more are all on the way. The most talked-about aspect of what’s known as “the buildup” is the pending arrival of 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa, Japan. The incoming service members plus their families and the accompanying civilian workforce will swell Guam’s population of 170,000 by 15 to 30 percent by 2014.

"We don’t want to be treated like a 21st-century colony," Guam Sen. Judith Guthertz is quoted as saying. "We support the buildup, as long as it’s a win-win for Guam and the military."

Stephen Roberto puts it more succinctly: "Just don’t be the loudest person in the bar."

I like the surfer story device, too.

Masked ball

2009-10-21T23:28:00.007+10:00

I almost missed the latest internet hyperventilation; that's what comes from not surfing for a few days.

Illegal aliens=spacemen. Brilliant! I came up with that when I was nine or ten years old, thinking it was funny and original. Other people rolled their eyes or just ignored me. (Most legitimate news organizations don't even use the term if they can avoid it.)

How times have changed. These days "alien" is not a word that's being asked to carry too much baggage, it's a political statement.

Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm gettin' soft.

Activists see the orange jumpsuit and the over-sized green card as an attack on immigrants. They've been pressuring businesses to stop selling the costume. Predictably, "William Gheen, the president of Americans for Legal Immigration, said he intends to buy the costume, and calls the reaction unfounded.", says CNN. There are hundreds of other stories and comments, but they really don't shine much more light on the subject.

So wear it, or don't. Your reaction says more about you than about anything else. Hey, I was prepubescent a long while ago. I would have loved a costume like that. Oh, as a practical matter, I wouldn't recommend running around at night in that jumpsuit. It's also hard to eat, drink and breathe when you're wearing a rubber mask.

You wanna see something really scary?

Someone mentioned Bernie Madoff and Michael Jackson masks being popular this year. Which Jackson, I thought, idly... and what accessories? I'll look it up Yep, Sergeant Pepperish uniforms, gloves, wigs and... holy mother of pearl who is that masked man? Hoo, was that a bad idea.

It's so lifelike. Now I'm afraid to sleep.

This Justice isn't color-blind

2009-10-18T01:38:00.003+10:00

Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell is getting hammered for refusing to issue a marriage license to a black man and a white woman because he doesn't believe in "mixing the races".

Parish, state and federal officials, Democrats and Republicans all agree that even Louisiana has come too far for that. Gov. Bobby Jindal, for example says that "Disciplinary action should be taken immediately — including the revoking of his license."

I was appalled, of course, which was why I looked up the original stories. Maybe I've been on Saipan too long, watching its residents "mix" with a vengeance.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," he said "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." Whew. I hadn't heard a lame rationalization like that since the last rerun of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?.

But even a screenwriter would think it 'over the top' to have a character say he had "piles and piles of black friends" and come up with lines like these: "They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

So, yeah, he's bigoted, disgusting and I find his views abhorrent.

And, yet... both stories say he refers couples of different races to another Justice of the Peace. That doesn't excuse his views, but it lowers my fever a bit.

People who know better than I say that's still breaking the law, so I suppose he'd better be put out to pasture with the other dinosaurs.

I wouldn't want him to sign my marriage certificate anyway.

CNMI Immigration countdown

2009-10-17T16:17:00.007+10:00

Rep. Gregorio C. Sablan's bill to delay federal immigration control for one year and Rep. Madelline Bordallo's similar bill to delay the Guam/CNMI Visa Waiver Program seem to have fallen into a cone of silence.

I've had problems with broken links to searches of the Library of Congress' Thomas database in the past and both bills are short, so I pasted Sablan's H.R. 3647 and Bordallo's H.R. 3770 here for easy reference.

Nov. 28 is only weeks away, and both bills have been referred to committee. "No news coverage" of H.R. 3647 or H.R. 3770, says opencongress.org. The Pacific News Service blurb I mentioned last week didn't include the bill number. The Marianas Variety ran a press release from Bordallo's office Wednesday, but it doesn't appear to be on their website.

Legislation that's not controversial doesn't sail through the House and Senate in six weeks, and these bills are bound to face opposition. I haven't seen this elsewhere, but an immigration attorney in Japan says "Legislative Hearing on the H.R. 3770 amendment is scheduled to take place on Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 10:00 a.m."

At this late date, I wonder how many people just want to get rid of the uncertainty.

H. R. 3770

2009-10-17T16:07:00.000+10:00

Just the text of the bill so I can refer to it in a later post

H . R . 3770

To make technical corrections to subtitle A of title VII of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 8, 2009

Ms. BORDALLO (for herself, Mr. BROWN of South Carolina, Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA, Mrs. CHRISTENSEN, Mr. PIERLUISI, Mr. BOREN, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, and Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To make technical corrections to subtitle A of title VII of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. STUDY.

Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall submit to the Committee on Natural Resources of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate a report on the economic situation in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the effect of the amendments made by subtitle A of title VII of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 on the future economic situation of the Commonwealth.

SEC. 2. NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS VISITOR ENTRY PROGRAM TRANSITION.

(a) In General- Notwithstanding section 705(b) of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (48 U.S.C. 1806(b)), the amendments made by section 702(b) of such Act shall take effect on the date that is 1 year after the transition program effective date described in section 6(a) of Public Law 94-241 (48 U.S.C. 1806(a)) (as added by section 702(a) of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008). In a case in which the transition program effective date has been modified under paragraph (3) of such section 6(a) before the date of the enactment of this Act, such amendments shall take effect on the date that is 1 year after the modified date.

(b) Treatment of CNMI Visitor Entry Program- During the 1-year period referred to in subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security shall administer the visitor entry program of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands consistent with the provisions of Commonwealth law governing the program that were in effect on the day before the commencement of such period.

Redactic

2009-10-17T10:00:00.006+10:00

A made-up word, I think-- at least it doesn't come up in dictionary searches.

The root means revise or edit, of course, but I like the added echo of didactic: 'inclined to teach or lecture others too much', among other meanings.

It describes me pretty well.

I'm an active reader, and my reactions to the written word range from 'I wish I'd said that' to 'you can't be serious'. Ho-hum is the norm, which can be a good thing: it's hard to follow the play when an attention-grabbing actor is at center stage.

That's a long introduction, but I'm trying to explain why I always return to words and phrases I spot in print. It's more about me than the writer.

So... I was struck (heh) by an item in today's Saipan Tribune: "An almost $600,000 worth of federal funded water project has been completed, and now serves over 1,000 customers in Marpi, As Matuis, San Roque, and portions of Tanapag."

Clang. My ears hurt, figuratively. The article is understandable: it's easy to end up with an extra "a", "an" or "the" when you're rewriting something. Maybe that horrible phrase "worth of" got added later. Deadline pressure, I suppose, and no one read the lead before the article was published. (I was also warned, in my first Journalism class, to avoid the word "over" and use "more than" instead. It can be pretty comical if it's used with the wrong verb.)

Yes, I'm probably pedantic, but I had to go back and reread this sentence: "The CNMI government, through Labor special counsel Deanne C. Siemer, special legal counsel to Gov. Benigno Fitial, Howard Willens, and Labor deputy secretary Barry Hirshbein announced on Thursday during a press conference about the new policy of issuing “umbrella permits” to an estimated 13,000 alien workers."

But hey, I want to be positive. Like a brooding, black bird of prey... "the fate of former Finance Secretary Antonio R. Cabrera rests on seven women and five men who were selected yesterday during a day-long court proceeding to serve as jury in his trial on corruption charges. Doesn't my simile add life to the story summarized in today's Flashback?

Don't worry, I'm through being redactic (the spell-checker doesn't like it) for at least awhile, but I wanted to mention DEQ red-flags 7 sites on Saipan, 2 on Rota.

Do they actually, physically raise red flags at those locations? I haven't seen flags myself, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

H. R. 3647

2009-10-16T18:16:00.004+10:00

Just the text of the bill so I can refer to it in a later post

H. R. 3647

To delay the implementation of the provisions of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 applying Federal immigration laws to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

September 24, 2009

Mr. SABLAN introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To delay the implementation of the provisions of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 applying Federal immigration laws to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. DELAY IN APPLICATION OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAW TO THE COMMONWEALTH.

(a) In General- Notwithstanding section 6(a) of Public Law 94-241 (48 U.S.C. 1806(a)) and section 705(b) of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (48 U.S.C. 1806(b)), the amendments to Public Law 94-241 and the Immigration and Nationality Act made by subtitle A of title VII of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008, and the other provisions of such subtitle applying the immigration laws (as defined in section 101(a)(17) of Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(17))) to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, shall take effect on December 1, 2010.

(b) References- Any reference in law to the transition program effective date described in section 6(a) of Public Law 94-241 (48 U.S.C. 1806(a)) is deemed to refer to December 1, 2010.

SEC. 2. REPORT.

(a) In General- Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide to the Congress a report including the following:

(1) A fully detailed budget of anticipated expenditures for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 to carry out the provisions of law applying the immigration laws (as defined in section 101(a)(17) of Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(17))) to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

(2) The equipment, software, personnel, and other infrastructure needed to implement such provisions and a plan to put this infrastructure in place.

(3) The `additional layered security measures' and other changes that must be in place before China and Russia may be included in the Guam and Northern Mariana Islands visa waiver program described in the amendments made by section 702(b) of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008.

(4) A timetable for including China and Russia in the visa waiver program described in paragraph (3).

(5) An analysis of whether bonding of Chinese and Russian tourists would mitigate any potential threat that inclusion of China and Russia in such program may cause to the welfare, safety, or security of the United States or its territories.

(6) The groups of individuals who may not easily fall within the Immigration and Nationality Act classifications and for whom Northern Mariana Islands classifications may not be appropriate.

(7) The Secretary of Homeland Security's policy decisions intended to reduce fear and anxiety about what will happen when Federal immigration laws are applied to the Commonwealth.

(8) The Secretary of Homeland Security's plans for requiring any alien present in the Commonwealth on or after December 1, 2010, to register with the Secretary.

(b) Updates- The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide to the Congress updated reports on the topics described in subsection (a) not less frequently than every 30 days until December 1, 2010.