First, I want to thank the members of the Daily Kos community who made the journey down to Washington this morning to join my posse. And a big thanks to those of you who offered support from a far. It is good to know you have my back.
This was a good Hearing. The 110th Congress has thrown down a marker and made it clear that they intend to deal with the abuse, neglect and failures rampant on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
After years of being protected and encouraged by the "we-don’t-do-oversight" RepublicTans, the Pirates of Saipan learned that change is in the air. A new Sherriff is in town and his name just might be Jon Tester.
Now those of us who supported Senator Testor as he took on the congenitally corrupt Conrad Burns had high hopes for the man from Montana. I know I did.
I was not disappointed. It was great to see him in action as he cut through the BS and asked the right questions. Transcripts of the Hearing are not out yet, but you can watch it through this link.
To the jump...
This has been a long day and I will have some follow ups later, but I wanted to give a shout out to Senator Testor and touch on a few points he raised.
The 2-8-2007 CNMI Hearing page provides a wealth of information. It includes a list of the speakers, links to their statements for the records and a webcast of the Hearing.
This is a busy time for the 110th Congress and at any given hour a Senator may have to be in several places at once. When the Hearing started there were three Senators in the Room: Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). All three have history with this issue and are basically in favor of reform.
Then Senator Tester entered the room and took his seat. His opening comments come at the 29:49 mark in the webcast (excuse my quick transcript):
I can tell you that there are a lot of issues that deal with the Commonwealth that are very concerning for me. Drug smuggling; organize crime, the ability to take the active ingredients of methamphetamines and bring them into this country...
Right off that bat, Tester added a new frame to the CNMI/Abramoff scandal: Drug smuggling. As soon as he said it, I had a Homer Simpson d’oh moment. In my research, I have come across stories of the drug trade (for example see pages 15 & 16 of the Abramoff-suppressed 2002 CNMI/Guam Security Report), but I hadn’t followed that scandal thread. It is a good one.
You can’t have a good money laundering scheme without drugs. And the Abramoff scandal is essentially about laundering money for the Republican Party. Meth is a red state drug and John Doolittle helped to get it into his district. I wonder how this will play with Conservative voters in 2008?
I suspect that Tester has been looking at some new data about the Meth drug trade and the CNMI. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has lots of information that has not been released... yet.
This storyline deserves more investigation and could really hurt those Republicans who protected local control of custom, labor and immigration laws on the CNMI. It seems they protected the drug trade along with the trade of human beings.
Testor began his round of questions at the 1:16:46 mark. He touched again on drugs, and on labor abuse and accountability.
He honed in on the remarks of Jeanette Franzel of the U.S. Governenment Accountability Office. Her remarks were damning for the status quo on the CNMI. This is how her prepared statement put it:
The fiscal condition of CNMI’s government has steadily weakened from fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2005, as government spending has exceeded revenues each year since 2002. CNMI ended fiscal year 2005 with a deficit of $84.1 million in its governmental fund balance. CNMI’s liabilities also exceed its assets for its primary government. Indicators point to a severe financial crisis in fiscal year 2006. [snip]
CNMI’s long-standing financial accountability problems include the late submission of financial audit reports, inability to achieve "clean" opinions in its financial statements by the independent financial auditors, and reports showing serious internal control weaknesses over financial reporting. Many of the auditors’ findings are longstanding, going back in some cases to 1987.
So basically, money has been going to the CNMI without any process to track or audit the funds. Senator Testor had a question:
It is absolutely amazing to me that in 1997 the audit wasn’t done ...and then not for eight years ... I mean who has to be fired here?
And then, after David Cohen of the Bush DOI tried to explain the audit problem, Tester had this comment:
When you’re talking about programs that need help and there’s no audit to verify that the money goes where it needs to go, all sorts of flags fly up...if there’s no solid financial structure behind the dollars there’s no way I can, in good faith, say we’re going to give you more money, if that’s what you say is needed.
The audit question is another good one.
Money has been flowing to the CNMI from Washington. In FY 2001 the average was just under $50 million. In FY 2002 that jumped $22.6 million to almost $72 million:
The jump in funds would have been earmarked in 2001, a year when Abramoff was working the Halls of Congress for favors for his clients and collecting money to help Republicans win elections in 2002. Following how and why these funds where appropriated (and by whom) would be a very useful project.
In FY 2003 the total dropped to $57 million.
I might suggest that Senator Tester and the rest of the Committee ask for an accounting of all the funds sent to the CNMI from the Federal Government between FY1996 and FY2006. I would look for aberrations, like the $22.6 million bump in FY2002 and demand to know where the money went. Misdeeds should be reported to the Ethics Committee and/or the Department of Justice.
I’m glad Senator Tester is a voice in the 110th Congress. And I’m pleased that the 110th Congress seems to be serious about ending the system of abuse on the CNMI. Change is in the Air
There is more to report about today’s hearing and I will get to that in later posts.
For now, I wanted to do a quick take on the Hearing, thank the folks who showed up and give some respect to the new Senator from Montana.
Let’s recruit more like him for 2008.
We have a Country to take back and a planet to save (literally, the Climate Crisis is real).
2007 is now. Let’s get to work.
Cheers.
Update
Once again thanks for the comments and attention to the problems on the CNMI.
In that spirit I want to call attention to a new Diary that just went up,
The Modern Slave Trade – 27 Million & Counting by alegre.
This points to the global problem of modern human trafficking for profit and abuse. Please take a moment and check it out.