The irony and stupidity of “Desperate Mode”

It’s interesting to read the whining of tourism officials and representatives of companies that received millions in corporate welfare from federal pandemic funds. ‘We are in desperate mode,’ say those who received enough no-strings-attached federal money to have instead given $1,000 to every person in the Commonwealth.

 

Would the people of the Commonwealth really have preferred to fund tourism-industry handouts, instead of a $1,000 check for every person in the Commonwealth? If the Commonwealth is indeed a democracy, then how did “the people’s representatives” get it so wrong? Or was it on purpose?

 

A November 28, 2023 article in the Marianas Variety reported that officials from the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and HANMIcomplained to CNMI lawmakers that CNMI tourism is in ‘desperate mode.’

 

The irony is thicker than the criminal indictments against Ralph Torres. Rich people who made windfalls from the pandemic are the ones claiming despair,while most of the Commonwealth struggles day to day, paycheck to paycheck, CUC bill to CUC bill. There’s no concern from the Saipan Chamber of Commerce or HANMI about the common man and woman. They just want more money to help their private businesses — the funding of which has somehow become our public responsibility.

 

And why is the tourism industry in despair, when last year, the Marianas Visitors Authority received $14.6 million in federal funds? Where is the return on that investment? Where are the tourists who were supposed to come from the spending of all that money? Or was the only tourism taking place all the junkets, conventions, airline miles, and hotel buffets for the MVA staff?

 

The power was cu tat the Tinian senior center, when the Tinian Municipal Treasury received $5.8 million at the end of last year for its operations. Where did all that money go, and why can’t you keep the lights on for manamko if just a few months ago you received all of that money? Some people blame Corina Magofna for the closure of the center. Ms. Magofna is not responsible for any operations in Tinian, Saipan, or Rota. That’s the mayor’s job. And that mayor got a lot of money from the central government to do his job.

 

Back to the other desperate Ralph-wives of Garapan.

 

One hotel company – Asia Pacific Hotels, Inc. – received $13.9 million in federal funds last year. How is the situation desperate for them? Compare their situation to the government employee making $11.52 an hour and struggling through Austerity Mondays. Or the private sector employees living in slums and lining up at Empty Vessel for canned food. Or the convenience store owner who didn’t get BOOSTed, but sacrifices her meager profits so she can pay her employee.

 

Maybe HANMI can make a direct contribution to the improvement of tourism by doing the exact opposite of what it’s been doing, and encouraging price competition between hotels, and the lowering of hotel room rates. It’s funny how discouraging competition is highly illegal, but no HANMI member hotels ever compete with each other on price, nor on anything else. If HANMI cared about the law, they would step in and demand that those hotels stop their anticompetitive behavior — right? THANMI member hotels have high room rates, and ones that mysteriously move in unison. Maybe the Office of the Attorney General would find those charts interesting to look at. I digress.

 

What incentive do Korean and Japanese tourists – in this global economy – have to travel to the CNMI, when airfare to and hotel room rates — not to mention airport concession prices and taxi fares — in Guam, Hawaii, and other Pacific destinations are cheaper? When a bottle of water doesn’t cost $3.75 at the Honolulu airport, as it does at the Saipan airport? When hotels in those other destinations actually compete against one another?

 

Well, thanks to HANMI and others’ stubborn insistence on marketing to China – which was the undertext of that ‘desperate mode’  pitch – the tourism industry is going to have to consider options like reducing hotel room rates. You know, just like every other business in a supposedly free market: doing business as business and not as corporate welfare recipients.

 

That very public pitch the CNMI elite business community and the former leaders of the Commonwealth Ports Authority made to pressure Arnold Palacios into reversing his pivot away from China appears to be backfiring. They got loud, and D.C. is responding with a pitch to end the CNMI’s easy access to the Chinese outbound tourist market. I’m sure the governor saw this coming and knew the attacks against him risked ending the conditional parole policy that has done more harm than good for the country and the CNMI.

 

Two days after the ‘desperate mode’ story, a bipartisan group of 28 members of the U.S Congress, including Guam’s delegate and two very popular senators, wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security to close the loop on the longtime CNMI-only conditional parole policy. The effect of any such decision will be the end of tourism from China to the CNMI. We already see that Chinese tourists who have US visas never come to the CNMI when they can go to Guam, Hawaii, or California. 

 

The request to end the conditional parole could have been written any time over the past several years, when concerns about Chinese infiltration through the CNMI had arisen time and time again. It was the abject arrogance, audacity, and obnoxiousness of the CNMI elite business community that triggered this bipartisan response from a large contingent of Congress.

 

After gorging themselves at the federal trough during the pandemic, the CNMI’s tourism elites could have at least acknowledged the legitimate concerns the Pentagon, the State Department,, and the Palacios administration had about Chinese spies’ and criminals’ infiltration of the CNMI. But those tourism “leaders” just couldn’t get enough, and  after having made the most federal money during the pandemic, they just had to push those buttons even further. They needed that open door to China. They coveted that sweet Chinese money, no matter what the consequences, and fervently lobbied for it.

 

They were unwilling to at the very least take a pause and work with Governor Palacios on ways the CNMI could police against money laundering and other organized criminal activity. Instead they wanted it all, and now they’re getting nothing.

 

I hope those hotels that swam in federal dollars during the Torres administration saved some of that money. Because if they don’t know how to do their part to get Korean and Japanese tourists back to Saipan, “desperate mode” is just the beginning.