What about the rest of us?

With its recent embrace of conjugation, punctuation, and attribution, the Marianas Variety has become downright boring! AND YOU KNOW HOW I HATE BOREDOM. So I’ve switched to reading the Saipan Tribune, and my funny bone has been handsomely rewarded!

The yuk-yuks on this article start right with the headline: “MVA: $2.6M appropriated budget inadequate.” Most of us learned in elementary school that $2.697 gets rounded to $2.7, not $2.6. But let’s not nitpick!

$2.6 million a year, or even $2.7 million, seems downright puny when one is accustomed to “eyeing new markets” at five-star resorts in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and New Orleans! And that’s just this past year! Just imagine all the CNMI’s families who have even less than $2.6 million to spend on groceries?! And not even a government job that provides them with, in addition to an office and a phone and a car and constant vacations, tons of airline miles they can sell? Unthinkable.

“‘We cannot manage anything with that kind of money,’ [Chris Concepcion] succinctly said as $2.697 million is a mere 1/12th of what MVA originally asked for which was $12.5 million,” according to the article.

Right. 2.697 is a mere 1/12th of 12.5. “Succinctly.”

Fine. I understand not knowing math. But isn’t there an “editor” at the Saipan Tribune who could at least double-check the stated numbers? It does take quite a bit of advanced mathematical ability to be able to ascertain that 2.697 x 12 doesn’t equal anything near 12.5, but if it’s above the math skills of Editor Mark Rabago, then surely someone at the Tribune can do it?

Maybe that same expert can tell Rabago that the first thing you learn in middle school journalism class is that nobody publishes unsigned Letters to the Editor? Even if your CCP handler says it’s a very good letter! Case in point, “In appreciation of ‘Cancer Moonshot’ and in support of further cancer prevention,” an unsigned letter to the editor the Tribune published on August 20th, with ridiculous anti-military rhetoric inside an unrelated “cancer research” wrapper. 

Oh, but back to the MVA article! Chris Concepcion, or Chrystal Marino, or Mark Rabago, should be nominated for the Fields Medal (there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics) bright quick, because 12 x 2.697 = 12.5 is a new result indeed. This is almost as good as Russ Mason’s unintentionally hilarious discussions of acids and bases in the Tribune of old, or the many, many expert virologists and epidemiologists we always have in the comment sections! Nobel prizes all around. 

By the way, the State of California’s tourism authority gets $160 million a year. That’s $4 per resident per year. Based on that, our own MVA should have a budget of about $120,000 per year. My, they’d really have to cut back on those Australian vacations! 

Better yet, the State of California’s GDP is 4.8 trillion. California’s annual visitors’ authority budget, $160 million, is 0.00333% (or 0.0000333 without the percent) of their annual GDP. The CNMI’s GDP is 500 million. So based on that metric, MVA should receive a budget of $16,650 per year. Oh, be generous and round it up to $17,000!

Can’t imagine living on $17K a year, can you, Chris? Lots of CNMI families do, you know. Or you don’t know and maybe don’t care. Is that succinct enough?

“[W]ith just a $2.697-million budget, the MVA will essentially have its hands tied behind its back when it comes to promoting the CNMI to new markets,” the article continues.  Hey now! Nobody asked to know those details. What happens in the PRIVATE PLUNGE POOL is none of our business.

But tell any small business owner that their advertising budget is limited to only $2.7 million a year and watch the reaction.

Or tell any business that’s not a well-connected CNMI hotel that the government is about to spend $2.7 million of public money on free advertising for them. Watch the reaction.

Then Chrystal Marino tells us, not quoting anyone but speaking in an authoritative journalistic voice: “As the lone economic driver of the CNMI, the MVA is vital in the recovery of the islands’ economy, but it won’t be able to fulfill that task without adequate funding.”

Thanks for that objective and well-supported viewpoint, Chrystal. Do you have any citations or backup for that statement? Pretty big statement, isn’t it, naming the MVA the lone economic driver of the CNMI? Was there a follow-up article about Kim Jong-Un inventing kimchi, Vladimir Putin being a man of peace, or Tim Scott enjoying the intimate company of women? Since, like a few of your colleagues, you’ve made a discovery that completely debunks all known economic theory, where can we mail your Nobel Prize? To your Beijing address? 

And the last word, from reliable Chris Concepcion: “Our goal is always to increase visitor arrivals to sustainable levels where the industry is able to breathe and generate sufficient revenue to fund operations and improve properties. Our goal is to increase visitor arrivals so that we get more of them at the time and that helps fund our marketing efforts overseas.”

Interesting. The goal is for hotels to “breathe” — that’s a technical term for making profits — and even fund operations and improve properties! I had no idea that ensuring profit for hotel businesses is our cash-strapped government’s responsibility. 

MVA’s ultimate goal, of course, is to “fund our marketing efforts overseas.” A worthy goal indeed! At least for hotel owners, and those lucky few — including four full-time accountants, two full-time statisticians, and a guy who supposedly spends forty hours a week certifying tour guides — on the MVA payroll and travel manifest. How about the rest of us?

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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.