Penny wise (and eco-friendly). STOP sending out memos for every "delegation of authority."
Literally reams of paper every month are used to send around to every government office whatever delegation of authority is happening.
Mr. High and Mighty, secretary of the stupid department, "will be off-island on official business from" this irrelevant date to that nonsensical date. During Mr. High and Mighty's absence, Mr. Muckety Muck will be acting secretary of the stupid department.
Do we not know about e-mail?
Pound wise. STOP fighting federalization. We've been spending large on lobbying, and now we're talking about litigation? We don't need to spend money on litigation. Lawyers are expensive. We have little chance of succeeding through court, and there are better uses for the funds.
And STOP the spending on lobbying.
Are we still paying $15,000/month to Oldaker, Biden, and Belair? Or did we stop after 1 year of payments, having stupidly renewed the first 6 month contract? In 2007 alone, we --the CNMI-- spent $160,000 on this lobbying firm! Not to mention the $60,000 we spent on subsidiary lobbying by Sandler, Travis, and Rosenberg! There's more great information at the Center for Responsive Politics, including reports on the issues these lobbyists worked on for the CNMI (immigration and trade).
And Governor Fitial said in his State of the Commonwealth message that U.S. Congressmen/Senators in Washington, D.C. don't know about the CNMI. What are we getting for all that money?
Does anyone know if we're still paying lobbyists? Is there a way to stop this insanity?
5 comments:
Good post!
About the waste of resources fighting federalization:
I wish that half the energy and breath wasted railing against federal takeover were directed towards efforts that would make federalization look like an even bigger waste of time and resources or at least unnecessary.
If half the energy had been used to address the problems of labor abuses and sex trafficking, we probably would have cleaned up our problems a decade ago and would still be operating under CNMI immigration, rather than having U.S. immigration take effect (in a year).
That whole spiel that they don't know about us is poor drivel. I've worked in journalism and on campaigns and those people are political junkies. Everyone knows Abramoff, and Ambramoff fits with the CNMI like hand to glove.
Ah, yes-we're still paying lobbyists. Now Fleischman-Hillard Inc. (and forgive me if I've spelled that wrong). $25,000 for 6 months. That's just $1000/week-why would anyone complain about that!
We're bleeding here.
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