Obama Ignores Faleomavaega

Prior to President Obama's recent trip to Chile, Faleomavaega made a fervent public plea for him to put Rapa Nui on his agenda with the Chilean president.  Joined by lame duck Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), who will retire at the 2012 election apparently without his Hawaiian Sovereignty bill (Akaka bill) enacted, Faleomavaega wrote an opinion piece for the Honolulu Star Advertiser that called on the U.S. to take the lead in protecting human rights on Chile's island province in the Pacific. 

As has been the case in virtually ever cause he has ever undertaken in Congress, his pleas went unheard, as Obama declined to raise the issue in Santiago.  Perhaps Faleomavaega suspected that would be the case but did not worry about taking another blow to his prestige, knowing his sister-in-law, an editor at his home town daily paper, Samoa News, would bury the story and preserve his ability to fool his consituents.  It may have been a pretext for him going to Rapa Nui himself, as we predicted he would.

Anyone who thought Faleomavaega's travel wings would be clipped in this Congress, now that he has been stripped of his subcommittee chairman, has been sadly mistaken.  The first quarter of 2012 has just come to a close and already he has been on a congressional junket to Australia and New Zealand,  stopping in Pago Pago each way just long enough to get fuel and give the people his middle finger and Rapa Nui and has announced he will be going to Korea.  Even with Republicans in charge and tight congressional budgets, he has found the money to keep on traveling.

What makes this visit to Rapa Nui so absurd is that he has absolutely no power or authority to do anything about the situation.  What makes it sad is that while he was in Rapa Nui, the new president of SgtarKist was making his first visit to American Samoa.  This was precisely the time Faleomavaega needed to be home to sit in on the  meeting between the new head of StarKist and the governor to plot a course to keep the cannery in the territory.

And of course, his fans just keep cheering him on.  Atta boy, Eni.  We have just one plea to Eni: any issue you really care about, please keep it to yourself.  Once you get involved, it ia guaranteed you will be on the losing side.