Hall of Famer Ditka Labels Faleomavaega an “Idiot”

Although he did not specifically mention Faleomavaega by name, it is clear that Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach Mike Ditka, now a broadcaster, was including the American Samoa delegate among those he had in mind when he dismissed the drive to get the Redskins owner to change the name of the team.  Faleomavaega has been in the forefront of those in Congress who want to force the team to adopt a new nickname because, he argues, the current name is a slur on Native Americans.

This has long been a cause for the delegate who in July, 2013 before his debilitating illness, decked out in his best Indian string tie (the only kind of tie he has worn for years, now—when he wears a tie at all), delivered an emotional speech on the Floor of the House on the subject with his voice quivering and cracking as he spoke.  He also cosponsored a bill that would cancel the team’s federal trademarks but it has gone nowhere.

Faleomavaega was prompted to speak in part to respond to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who had said earlier in July that the team’s name isn’t a government issue. Limbaugh said if fans were offended by the name, they wouldn’t go to FedEx Field, but because they do, “it obviously isn’t upsetting too many people.”

When he emerged from seclusion this past March to receive his first office visitor, the ASG director of Homeland Security, he said that, while continuing his rehabilitation, he would be concentrating his efforts on American Samoa issues, like establishment of a National Guard unit in the territory.  Yet, in late May, making his first appearance on the Floor for a five-minute substantive speech (he appeared briefly in April to acknowledge American Samoa Flag Day), he again chose the Redskins’ name as his subject, not the National Guard or any other American Samoa issue.

Now, as the NFL is in the midst of its preseason exhibition game schedule, the spotlight has returned to this issue and Ditka was asked about it during a recent interview.

“What’s all the stink . . . ,” asked Ditka?  “It’s so much [expletive] it’s incredible . . .  This is so stupid it’s appalling  . . . We’re going to let the liberals of the world run this world . . . “It’s all the political[ly] correct idiots in America, that’s all it is,” he continued.  “It’s got nothing to do with anything else. We’re going to change something because we can.”  Faleomavaega was a founding member of the ultra-liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus, although he since has left the group.

While team owner Dan Snyder says he will never change the name (and vigorous at age 49, he most likely will outlive the very sick 70-year-old Faleomavaega), there is no question that public sentiment to have him do so has picked up steam.  There is no doubt that were Congress in session, Faleomavaega once again would have been prompted to take to the Floor, perhaps even to call upon ESPN to suspend Ditka from his broadcast duties. 

This blog takes no position on the Redskins’ name but, given his limited strength and energy, wouldn’t Faleomavaega better serve his constituency by concentrating on American Samoa issues, as he promised he would?  If he must take to the Floor when Congress returns in September, how about an emotional speech on the poverty his island may face if President Obama goes ahead with his plan to create a huge Pacific conservation zone that could force the underpinning of American Samoa’s economy to collapse?

Redskins’ name, Kazakhstan nuclear waste, Cambodian debt relief, Korean comfort women, Bahraini protesters, Hawaiian sovereignty, Easter Island land tenure, West Papua Independence, Armenian genocide.  These are the kinds of issues that have dominated Faleomavaega’s agenda over the years when he hasn’t been traveling.  But, no, Coach Ditka, we wouldn’t describe Faleomavaega as an idiot.  However, we would be harder pressed to refute those who might dismiss him as a buffoon. 

Faleomavaega on Hillary’s Hit List?

It recently has been revealed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been keeping a score card or “hit list” of those who did or did not endorse her in her first run for the presidency in 2008 against Barack Obama.  Please read this PoliticoMagazine story for greater details about the list.

It is no secret that Faleomavaega was one of Obama’s earliest backers while then Gov. Togiola Tulafono endorsed then-Sen. Clinton.  When she came through here as Secretary a few years ago, we all watched carefully as Faleomavaega used his precious time with her on the ground to plead for debt relief for Cambodia while Togiola asked that American Samoa be allowed to seek official observer status at the Pacific Islands Forum—a dream that had eluded several governors before him but was always denied by State.

It also did not go unnoticed on the island that when Mrs. Clinton returned to Washington, nothing further was done on Cambodian debt relief but she did announce that State would change its long-standing policy and allow its Pacific territories to participate at the Forum as observers.

With the odds high that Mrs. Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 30 months time, the local Democratic party would do well to hustle Faleomavaega into retirement as quickly as possible so that American Samoa is not disadvantaged under a Clinton presidency.  It could be a lose/lose situation for us: Hillary wins and we get punished because Eni is on her hit list; Hillary loses and we get punished because Republicans control the White House as well as the House.

Here is why the time right for Faleomavaega to put in his retirement papers:

•  he supported Obama over Hillary in 2008 (and as far as we can tell, has gotten nothing for it) and is probably on her hit list described in the Politico article;  

•  he is suffering severe health problems and is no longer up to the job;  even if he were not ill, he now is over 70 years old and while age and wisdom are valued in our culture, not so in Washington; there are few members of the House over 70;  

•  he no longer has Senator Inouye on whom to rely in a tight legislative spot; had the Senator still been alive and been in charge of appropriations on the Senate side, the reduction of Buy America for tuna never would have been in the final appropriations bill and Eni was not around to try to stop it himself;

• the retirements of allies Reps. George Miller and Henry Waxman take away two people on whom he could rely for help in the House (although it was Miller who sandbagged him and continues to sandbag him on minimum wage);

• even if he were healthy, he served on a committee, Foreign Affairs, of little value to us and we have seen no evidence that his service as the senior Democrat on the Asia-Pacific subcommittee has brought us any benefits; he is in and out of places like Seoul and Bangkok all the time but there is no evidence that StarKist or Chicken of the Sea are influenced by him at all;

• he never will serve in the Majority again--ever;  Democrats already pretty much are conceding control of the House this fall, with even the DNC chairman saying so; the earliest that Democrats might return to power in the House is 2022 after the next redistricting; were he still alive and in office, Eni would be approaching 80;  we need someone new to start building seniority now; if you aren't in the Majority, you are nothing; if you are a non-voting delegate in the Minority, you are less than nothing, particularly if you have a worthless committee assignment;

Over the years, Faleomavaega has been one of those who has taken the time to stake out his ground on the House floor so as to be seen on television.  We watched very carefully this year and while we saw the Guam and Virgin Islands delegates well positioned to greet the President as he strode past them on the way to the dais, Faleomavaega was nowhere to be seen.  Even though his office continues to furiously pump out news releases (including one commenting on Obama’s speech), and our local media continue to use them (especially Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is on the editorial staff) as if he were back in his office, we have no evidence to suggest he is in Washington at all.

We have not yet called for his early retirement but if this Buy America problem does not get resolved, then maybe he needs to reconsider.  It is clear that representing American Samoa by press release and letters issued from bed is not doing the job.  It may be time to go.

Woes Mount for Faleomavaega

President Obama can console himself over having a bad week by measuring himself against Faleomavaega, whose horrible year continues. Clearly he is bracing himself for a challenge for reelection by Gov. Togiola, who is barred by law from running for re-election last year.

Not one for much legislative activity over the course of his career, Faleomavaega has introduced or co-sponsored a flurry of bills the past few weeks to bolster his credentials with his electorate and to strengthen his chances for reelection next November. He also has tossed a bone to Organized Labor in an obvious effort to pave the wave for major contributions from the unions to his campaign by publicly endorsing the idea of establishing a workers' union at the local StarKist tuna cannery.

One of his bills would convert long-time resident aliens to U.S. Nationals. Were he to succeed in getting this bill passed, of course, he would have the gratitude of a group of new voters that would be large enough to cement his reelection. However, he knows that this bill has no more chance of passing in the current climate in Washington than did his laughable ASPIRE bill in the last Congress. Readers will recall that even though his party controlled Congress and the White House, he even had fellow party members speak out against the bill, which never passed out of the subcommittee.

The clever Faleomavaega knows that even though Congress is not likely to make it easier for more immigrants to get into the country, many of these long term resident aliens have numerous children born in the territory who now are adults (and all eligible to vote). It is their gratitude he is seeking at the ballot box.

Faleomavaega long has prided himself on being the voice of the Pacific in Washington (when he's there) and an influential senior policymaker. Apparently Hawaii's two House members bought this load of baloney because when the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to abolish the Hawaii-based East West Center, they turned to their Samoan colleague, a member of the committee, to save the day. At a mark up of the bill, the delegate argued against the closure and offered an amendment to retain the institution that was quickly voted down. Needless to say, his arguments fell on deaf ears and it will be up to the two Hawaii congresswomen to try to save the Center when the bill comes before the full House.

Eni has never been especially known for bipartisanship (his Memorial Day press release was filled with invective against Republicans) except in one area: he has roundly criticized administrations of both parties for neglecting the Pacific. Indeed, it is ironic that the U.S. Involvement in the region has decreased as steadily as Faleomavaega's seniority (and, ostensibly, “influence”) has increased over the past 23 years. He even criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not making visits to the island countries on her Australia and New Zealand trip earlier this year.

As a result of that trip, however, she did send Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell on an eight-nation mission to the islands. Curiously, there was not a peep out of Faleomavaega about Campbell's trip. No words of praise or anything else. It would be our guess that Faleomavaega wanted to go on the trip but was turned down. So he said nothing either out of pique or embarrassment, just as he said nothing when Clinton's predecessor, Condoleeza Rice, held a summit in Apia with Pacific foreign ministers but declined to let Faleomavaega have any role beyond being a member of her delegation. Even though he was just a few miles away in Pago Pago at the time, he pouted at not being allowed to speak and stayed home altogether. Campbell, a career foreign service officer long active in the Pacific, was aware of this incident and also knows Faleomavaega's reputation as a loose cannon. Most likely he wanted the delegate nowhere near his eight-nation visit.

To add insult to injury, it is his rival Togiola who has scored big on the diplomatic front. When Clinton stopped in Pago Pago on her way back to Washington from her Australia-New Zealand trip, both the governor and the congressman were there to greet her. Despite American Samoa's dire economic straits, Eni used his brief time with the secretary to urge her to give debt relief to Cambodia. In fairness, it should be conceded that Cambodia is part of Clinton's portfolio and American Samoa is not, but the governor wisely used his time to ask the Secretary (whose campaign for president he had endorsed in 2008 while Eni supported Obama) to review the U.S. policy not to permit its territories to seek official observer status at the Pacific Islands Forum.

As far as is known, Cambodian debt relief has gone nowhere but this week Clinton wrote Togiola to advise him she has changed the policy on Forum observer status and, moreover, she has invited to be a member of the U.S. delegation to the Forum next month in New Zealand, where the U.S. will formally ask that body to grant observer status to all its territories. Watch very closely in the next few days for press releases from Faleomavaega's office to see what he has to say about this policy change. Watch also whether he will be part of the U.S. delegation to the Forum.

So, it has been a very bad couple of weeks for Faleomavaega in what has been a very bad year. With the change of control of the House after the November 2010 election, of course, he lost his subcommittee chairmanship in January. To make matters worse, the following month he lost the one House chairmanship he expected to get when Freshman Congresswoman Judy Chu was named chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Since the formation of the caucus many years ago, it always had been a practice to have a Mainland APA in one of the two top positions and someone from the islands (Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and, more recently, the Northern Marianas) in the other post. Traditionally, the chairmanship rotated annually, with the vice chairman automatically moving up. Guam Congressman Robert Underwood served as vice chairman at one point and then became chairman the following year.

Seven years ago, Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) rotated into the chairmanship but, unlike his predecessors, he continued in the position until this year. All during his chairmanship, Faleomavaega served as vice chairman. So, when Honda announced he was stepping down, Eni was ready to take the gavel but Honda stabbed him in the back by recommending the chairmanship go to the freshman Chu, his fellow Californian and the first woman of Chinese descent to be elected to the House. The stunned Faleomavaega let it be known he would not oppose Chu but it was a huge blow to him. Guam's Madeleine Bordallo took his position as vice chairman. It will be interesting to see if and when she rotates into the chairmanship. If it is any time soon, one might surmise that Honda held on to the chairmanship as long as he did to wait for someone new to be elected to the House while he blocked the unpredictable Eni's ascent to the chair.

The announcement this week by Faleomavaega that he will receive an award from the Japanese American Citizens League for his service in Congress was most likely pushed by the Japanese American Honda as a sop to Faleomavaega for having stabbed him in the back in February. Otherwise, why now? Did the JACL only just discover Faleomavaega after 23 years in Congress?

Perhaps Faleomavaega should count himself fortunate not to have become CAPAC chairman. After all, he was one of Obama's earliest supporters but has received no substantial favors from him in return. He may blame Republicans for wanting to abolish the East West Center, for example, but it was his friend Mr. Obama who had proposed in his own budget to cut the Center's funding in half. In the nearly three years the Hawaii-born Obama has been president, he has seen fit to meet formally with the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses but not the APA caucus. At a meeting with staff at the White House just last week, Honda complained about this and Obama's staff finally committed to setting up a meeting. Had Faleomavaega been chair, perhaps such a meeting still would be nowhere on the horizon, giving further evidence of his lack of clout in Washington.

Of course, few people in American Samoa are aware of any of these stories because the local daily newspaper, Samoa News, where Eni's sister-in-law (who also is Democratic National Committeewoman for the territory) is one of the editors. [Can you imagine the howls of protest if any dominant paper in the states had as an editor a member of either party's national committee?] The paper gladly publishes all of his press releases, mostly verbatim, but don't look for any negative stories. Nor is there ever any analysis, tying all these threads together. No, you have to read it here if you are going to read it at all.

Communist Group Credits Faleomavaega

Saying “His call for Washington to assert its own position on Fiji and other regional matters now appears to have received a favorable hearing in the State Department,” the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), through its official World Socialist Website, has credited American Samoa congressional Delegate Eni Faleomavaega with playing the key role in changing the U.S. government’s position on dealing with the Fiji dictatorship.

The ICFI is the international Communist organization that follows the Marxist teachings of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, a leading rival to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin until Stalin had him assassinated in 1940. Although Faleomavaega was for years a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, from its inception in 1991 until he quietly dropped out when his membership threatened to become a campaign issue earlier this decade, and the caucus has ties with Democratic Socialists of America, it is unclear what ties, if any, Faleomavaega may have with the ICFI or other Trotskyite organizations.

Nonetheless, in addition to his vigorous defense of Fiji military dictator Commodore Frank Bainamarama, Faleomavaega also has been cozy with autocratic leaders in Kazkhstan, Laos and Vietnam, the last where he praised Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi a couple of years ago.

As evidence of the shift in U.S. policy, the ICFI in the article points to

• Obama recently issuing a personal statement marking the 40th anniversary of Fijian independence;

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton including the Fiji Foreign Minister in an hour-long meeting in New York with senior Pacific leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in later September;

• Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell’s testifying before Faleomavaega’s subcommittee that “Our objective is to put Fiji back on track for . . . elections no later than 2014,” tantamount to endorsing a timetable which now puts “Washington . . . at odds with Canberra on this question:”

• the U.S. recently announcing it will re-establish an AID mission in Suva after a 15-year absence;

• State Department opening a new multi-million dollar regional embassy in Suva;

• The U.S. government issuing no comment on the arrest of former Prime Minister and current Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry, “on spurious charges of breaking an emergency decree . . .”

Faleomavaega no doubt approves of all these developments. At the hearing at which Campbell testified, he said “Clearly, the Australian and New Zealand policy of sanctions and isolating and punishing Fiji has not only failed but totally been counterproductive. For too long we effectively outsourced our policymaking toward the Pacific Islands to Australia and New Zealand. “

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the sometimes imperious attitudes and actions of our friends in Canberra and Wellington toward the Pacific Islands have fostered a degree of resentment and distrust that has limited their influence as well as their ability to represent US views and interests . . . By deferring to the foreign ministries of Canberra and Wellington, we left a vacuum in the Pacific that China has been only too eager to fill.”

Given Faleomavaega’s closeness to Communist China in recent years, it is unclear why he is expressing concern about China’s activities in the Pacific and the article in this publication sheds no light on that.

Election time again

Well folks, it's election time again, so we are opening up our survey to give you a chance to choose who you prefer to replace Faleomavaega as delegate to Congress. The choices this year are Aumua Amata begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, who has contested the seat several times in the past and Tuika Tuika, Jr., who has run for congress once before.

The good news for a lot of governments around the world is that they are safe from Eni's wrath for three weeks while he confines himself to the territory to face the voters. So, he will have to put aside his two main, seemingly contradictory preoccupations: coddling dictators and championing the oppressed. In the former categories are such people as Frank Bainamarama (Fiji), Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), the late Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) and Bouasone Bouphavanh (Laos). The oppressed people include West Papua's Melanesians, French Polynesian separatists, Armenians, Koren comfort women, Cambodian Agent Orange sufferers, Native Hawaiians, American Indians on reservations and low-wage cannery workers.

The only place where he has had any impact, as far as we can tell, is with the low wage cannery workers. He fought for and won for them an increase in the minimum wage, forcing one cannery to close and the other to downsize, so that now he can champion a new group: the no-wage ex-cannery workers. Atta boy, Eni, way to go in your never-ending search for "social justice."

The good news for Eni is that if he wins again, he is likely to have a whole lot more time to devote to his pet causes because if Republicans take control of Congress, as many analysts now believe they will, he won't need to show up in Washington every once in a while to chair hearings or cast committee votes at the direction of his party to give cover to real members. As was the case for the 12 years Republicans controlled the House between 1995 and 2007, he will be largely irrelevant as a member of the minority. Even though Republicans will control travel budgets, they do like to have Democrats on their fact-finding delegations abroad to show "bipartisanship," and Eni has proved useful for that purpose because he never refuses a trip he is offered.

He seems to have adopted a strategy of flying under the radar this election, as he made no formal announcement of his candidacy, just quietly filing his petitions to activate his candidacy. And he can count on Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is one of the editors, to play his little game of keeping controversy out of print. There are only 22 days left in the campaign and so far there have been exactly NO stories in the paper about the campaign. The candidates each made the first of their customary television presentations last week and Samoa News did not even bother to cover them. nor have any of the media taken the simple step of going on-line to the Federal Election Committee website to see how much money has been raised any from whom. Virtually every other newspaper in the country does this for their local congressional races but apparently not Samoa News. Maybe his sister-in-law won't like what she sees: massive contributions from people with Asian names with addresses in the U.S. No one seems to care or wonder why all these people would be so interested in a congressional race on a small, remote Pacific Island. As long as the voters are fed on Election Day, why bother, I suppose?

FALEOMAVAEGA SICK; SAMOA NEWS SILENT; HOLDS SHAM HEARING

When a major politician is seriously ill, it is the responsibility of the media to report it. Whatever you think of him, Faleomavaega is a major politician. Senior in Congress, head of a subcommittee. But a lot of people know that when he was in American Samoa recently for Flag Day, he had to be hospitalized. Then he went to the plane by wheel chair for Honolulu, where he was hospitalized again. Then to Washington where again he was hospitalized. Not a word in Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is an editor. If Samoa News is an honest, independent newspaper, we challenge them right now to put a reporter on this story and find out what is going on with Faleomavaega’s health. Although he was in Washington at the time, he was the only territorial delegate to skip a White House meeting with President Obama. Some people thought it might be because he would have been forced to wear a standard American business suit, which he no longer does (he is usually dressed in open shirtsleeves, sometime with a loose Indian bolo tie when required (like on the House floor), a lavalava and sandals. Perhaps he missed it because he was in the hospital or otherwise sick in bed.

Meantime, looking drawn and with an unusually weak and raspy voice, he nevertheless conducted a congressional hearing. He ranted. He raved. He fumed. But in the end, like everything else he tries, nothing will come of Faleomavaega’s April 22 subcommittee hearing to specifically discuss the lingering affects of unexploded ordnance in Laos left from the Vietnam War-era. As is not uncommon, he issued a press release labeling the hearing as “historic,” and as usual, the sycophantic Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is one of the editors, dutiful carried the description. Please don’t bother to ask Samoa News to ask Faleomavaega why this hearing was so historic. There was no mention of it in the New York Times or Washington Post the following day. Neither Time nor Newsweek magazine saw fit to say anything about it in their editions the following week. Historic maybe in Eni’s mind and now all those who read it in Samoa News but hardly anywhere else. Don’t hold your breath waiting for legislation to remove all the ordnance, either. Ain’t gonna happen.

Maybe something will happen with the bill he has introduced in the House to authorize the Tribal Development Bank to support U.S. tribes to engage in trade relations with the First Nations of Canada, Maori tribes of New Zealand and perhaps even the Sami of Norway and Finland. If the House accepts such amendments, indigenous nations in countries such as Canada and New Zealand, who commit to protecting indigenous nation trade from unfair import/export duties or tariffs, will be able to engage in business partnerships with U.S. tribes. The bill to create a Tribal Development Bank for Native Americans is Inouye’s brain child. Amendments involving other “First Nations” are Eni’s, so don’t expect much here, either.

Faleomavaega Escapes Local Scrutiny Again

The hands of Lisa Williams must be raw from all the high fives she gets from other staff when the local media lets her boss Faleomavaega skate out of yet more difficulty in trying to explain how American Samoa will fare under national policies being considered. Williams, who is Faleomavaega’s chief press aide, also is his chief of staff, top legislative assistant and, with her six-figure salary partly paid by the Foreign Affairs Committee, his chief foreign policy adviser as well. Some say she performs other services for Faleomavaega as well but that’s a story for another day.

Since Faleomavaega gets mainly positive coverage in the local media in American Samoa, you would have to say Williams well earns her hefty salary. But you would have to consider that it isn’t a fair fight in the first place. American Samoa has two newspapers. One is more of a community newspaper that comes out three times a week and does not have the resources to do much more than run his press releases. The larger, daily, newspaper, Samoa News, is an Associated Press affiliate and does have the resources but it, too, contents itself largely with running Faleomavaega’s releases. He is also helped by the fact that his sister-in-law is one of the paper’s editors.

The single television station is government-owned and has an evening newscast that largely ignores the delegate. Only one of the local radio stations has a local news operation. It, too, pretty much runs his releases. Another station gives the delegate an hour each week for a show with content of his own choosing, so a sitting member of Congress could hardly have a sweeter deal than that. No wonder Williams has the time to do multiple jobs at once. She hardly has to break a sweat in dealing with the local press and, somewhat surprisingly, no one in the national press has paid much attention to Faleomavaega, even though fewer than 8,000 people every two years have made it possible for him to rise in Congress to the point at which he now is only two heartbeats away from chairing the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That would make him ostensibly a key shaper of American Foreign Policy, as frightening as that thought would be.

However, as Faleomavaega has demonstrated over an over again, he is no team player and has a foreign policy of his own, even if no one can figure out what it is. Consistency has never been his strongest suit. So, even though he is a protege of the late Rep. Phil Burton, the same San Francisco congressman who mentored Nancy Pelosi and George Miller, it is unlikely they will ever put the House’s foreign affairs machinery into his unstable hands. Evidence? Pelosi took a delegation to China last year to discuss climate change but did not include Eni, even though his subcommittee has jurisdiction over China and global environmental issues. She also did not put him on her massive delegation to Copenhagen for international global warming talks.

If anything, Faleomavaega’s foreign policy seems to be pro-dictator. He famously toasted Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi a couple of years ago on one of his multiple trip to Vietnam and in January this year he helped the local Cambodia Communists celebrate the annual observance of the Vietnam communists’ invasion of Cambodia to topple the Pol Pot government. That gesture was so controversial that the other members of his delegation diplomatically absented themselves from the occasion.

He is so loved in Kazakhstan that the dictator there (who also held the job as a Communist during Soviet times) even took out an advertisement in the Washington Post to praise one of his several visits to the central Asian country. He also has turned in recent years from being a friend of Taiwan to being an ardent backer of the regime in Beijing and--in a demonstration it is not just communists he adores--he has become the chief defender of Fiji’s military dictatorship, in the process condemning (and alienating) Australia and New Zealand. He has no fans in Jakarta because of his attempts to force Indonesia to give up its West Papua province, they are not wild about him in Ankara because of his stance on Armenian genocide and Tokyo is not pleased about his demands that Japan compensate World War II Korean sex slaves.

But how much of all this do the people know about in American Samoa? None. Unless he puts it in a press release, the local media will not touch it. And the voters cheer him on even if members of his own party in Washington wish he would just go away. There always are hopes because his health has been in general decline for years and at age 67 he can’t hope to go on much longer. He can hardly walk, has had major heart surgery and is seriously overweight. His travel schedule is so brutal, that he can be seen nodding off to sleep in congressional hearings on occasions when he is passing through Washington.

One occasion in Washington he never misses is the annual State of the Union address. Viewers always know he is there because he is one of those members who shows up in the House chamber hours early on the day of the speech so he can assure himself a seat on the aisle the president comes down as he makes his way to the podium. That way he can shake hands with the president and be seen on television. Except this year.

Adorned with his trademark bolo tie (the only member of the House who does not regularly wear a standard necktie--not even those members with Indian blood wear the bolo), he could be seen this year sitting next to his freshman colleague from the Northern Marianas on a separate aisle. Perhaps he wanted some distance after having blasted Obama last week for not ordering Secretary of State to hold a summit with island leaders while she was in the region.

So, how did he escape local scrutiny again? Well, at the State of Union, Obama asked Congress to impose a three-year spending freeze on all discretionary domestic programs. The story of the speech was carried in Samoa News but buried in the paper and no attempt was made to tie the request to the local situation. A freeze would be significant if not fatal to the local economy because Faleomavaega is asking for a $25 million subsidy to offset mandated wage hikes which threaten to force the remaining cannery to pull out. In fact, the canner has asked for only a three-month extension of its tax exemption rather than a year as they await word on what Congress is willing to provide.

Not a word out of anyone as to what effect the spending freeze would have on Eni’s $25 million request. And there is no evidence Samoa News took the simple and logical step of asking him, either by phone or by e-mail or through Lisa Williams, what the freeze would mean. Not a word in the paper. Not a single word.

So, today Obama has sent a budget request to Congress for the fiscal year that begins October 1 (fiscal year 2011). It is in the amount of 3.8 trillion dollars. Now that the budget has been made public, the various agencies can talk about their programs. If not to Faleomavaega (who may be traveling), Samoa News could make a simple call to the director of the Office of Insular Affairs at Interior, a Samoan, or to the desk officer, also a Samoan, or to the director of OIA’s budget office to ask “how much has been included to fund Faleomavaega’s tiny request of $25 million?” That’s $25,000,000 out of a budget of $3.8 trillion. Not billion, but trillion!

Don’t hold your breath. Most likely Samoa News and the radio station will wait for his press handout in which he will brag once again how he helped prevent the budget cutters from whacking away at the $23 million subsidy it provides the local government for its operations and $10 million for capital improvements, even though those amounts have stayed at the same level the whole time he has been in office while the population has doubled. Lisa Williams can pull last year’s release out of the file, update it, send it off to Pago Pago and high five the staff again as she lights up her victory cigar.

We are betting there is NO money in the Interior budget for Faleomavaega’s little scheme, which should once and for all convince all doubters that his bill is going nowhere at all. Perhaps his attack on Clinton and Obama last week was meant to give him an excuse for not delivering: retaliation by Obama for him “standing up for the little guy.”

Stay tuned.

CPPA Denounces Faleomavaega for Laos Visit

The Center for Public Policy Analysis ( CPPA ) in Washington, D.C., and a coalition of dozens of Laotian and Hmong organizations today issued an international communiqué denouncing American Samoa Congressional Delegate Eni Faleomavaega's statements, along with those of the other two Members of Congress who recently visited a government model show-camp in Laos and declared that there were no human rights violations against Hmong refugees forcibly returned from Thailand to Laos.

According to CPPA, over 8,000 Lao Hmong refugees who fled political and religious persecution in Laos were forced by the Thai and Lao military back to Laos from 2007-2009. Between Christmas and the New Year holiday, over 4,700 Lao Hmong refugees were forced back to Laos. Most of the refugees have been imprisoned in Laos’ secret network of jails and camps in remote provinces. Australia journalists from “The Age” recently sought access to one such secret camp where many Hmong refugees were held behind razor wire in squalid conditions. The Australian journalists were arrested and their cameras reportedly seized; they were expelled.

Laos, under the Hanoi-backed communist Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (LPDR), is one of the most corrupt, says CPPA, and oppressive regimes in the world according to a recent public sector corruption and press freedom indexes issued by the respected non-governmental organizations Transparency International (TI) and Reporters Without Borders (JSF). Laos is listed at the bottom of these indexes along with its allies in North Korea, Burma and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV).

The following is taken from the text of the joint international communiqué issued by the CPPA and a coalition of Laotian and Hmong organizations:

“We are deeply saddened by, and must denounce in the strongest terms, the deplorable, distorted and misleading comments of the three U.S. Congressmen, Joseph Cao, Mike Honda and Eni Faleomavaega, during their recent visit to Laos, and to the Lao government's Potemkin Village show camp at Pha Lak in Vientiane Province. Tragically, the U.S. Congressmen have helped to cover-up and whitewash the horrific crimes of the Lao government against the Laotian and Hmong people and refugees who were brutally forced back from Thailand in recent years by the Thai and Lao military,” the International Communique stated.

“It is important to note that Pha Lak village houses only a fraction of the Hmong refugees returned to Laos in previous years as well as many dozens of Lao government informants and undercover agents. It is a tightly-controlled, Lao government camp upgraded for foreign visitors and administered in cooperation with the LPDR Ministry of Propaganda.

“The Lao government and military continue to attack and kill unarmed Laotian and Hmong people. Congressmen Joseph Cao, Mike Honda and Eni Faleomavaega, at their press conference in Vientiane and upon their return to the Washington, D.C., have remained silent on the horrific human rights violations, persecution, atrocities and war crimes that have been inflicted on the Laotian and Hmong people in recent months and years, including the arrest of over 300 peaceful protest marchers in November of last year that prompted a resolution that was passed by the European Parliament that was passed on Thanksgiving Day, November 26.

“We also denounce the failure of the U.S. Congressmen to address at their press conference in Vientiane, while visiting Laos, the clearly articulated concerns of the European Union in their recent resolution of November 26, 2009, urging the release of all Lao political and religious dissidents, and prisoners of conscience, including the Lao student pro-democracy leaders of the October 1999 Movement for Democracy as well as the November 2, 2009 reformist marcher leaders who were arrested.

“It is deplorable that [Faleomavaega and his colleagues] did not visit, or seek to visit, the secret camps and prisons in more remote areas in Laos where most of the Hmong refugees as well as Laotian dissidents are being jailed, tortured and imprisoned. Many of these secret prisons and camps in Laos are administered jointly by the Vietnam Peoples Army (VPA) and Lao Peoples Army (LPA).

“Independent journalists from ‘The Age’ in Australia and other human rights organizations and activists have documented the existence of secret camps and prisons in Laos where refugees and dissidents are held in squalid conditions.

“Other independent sources, including the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Time Magazine, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House, the Foreign Prisoners Support Service have documented human rights abuses against Lao Hmong refugees as well as the enclaves of Lao and Hmong civilian and dissidents hiding in the jungles and mountains that suffering from starvation, military attacks and persecution in Laos.

“Hundreds of Lao Hmong refugees have disappeared or have been killed by the Lao government and military in recent years. Moreover, many hundreds of Laotians, were arrested in Laos in November of 2009, and in recent years, seeking to organize political and economic reform movements as a result of the one-party military regime and its systemic corruption and exploitation of the Laotian people.

“Additional hundreds of independent Laotian and Hmong Christian, Catholic, Animist and Buddhist religious believers, who continue to flee Lao military and security force persecution and attacks, according to independent religious and non-governmental organizations.

“Religious persecution of the Laotian and Hmong people, including the thousands of refugees who fled to Thailand and then were forcibly repatriated back to Laos, was never discussed by [Faleomavaega] or the other U.S. Congressmen. Lao Hmong and minority Protestant Christian, Catholic and Animist believers have been brutally persecuted in Laos as well as by the Thai military in refugee camps prior to their forced repatriation back to secret camps in Laos.

“We are concerned that the three U.S. Congressmen have, at their press conference in Vientiane and in subsequent public comments, repeatedly misled the international community about the nature of the regime in Laos and the plight of the Lao and Hmong people; They have helped the Lao government with its devious and terrible agenda to force Lao Hmong political refugees and asylum seekers back to Laos and oppress and persecute them;

“Moreover, it is deplorable that Congressmen Joseph Cao, Faleomavaega and Mike Honda did not visit the jailed Lao student leaders or the Lao and Hmong political and religious dissidents imprisoned in Laos.

“At a critical time in the Lao Hmong refugee crisis, the three Congressmen made no effort to address these key issues or other vital human rights concerns at their press conference in Vientiane, Laos or its aftermath in Washington, D.C. Congressman Joseph Cao, Congressman Eni Faleomavaega and Mike Honda have perpetuated the Lao government's propaganda against the freedom-loving Laotian and Hmong people, and the defenseless refugees forced back to Laos."

The Joint International Communiqué from which the above information was drawn was cosponsored and issued by the following organizations: United League for Democracy in Laos, Inc., the Lao Human Rights Council, Inc., the Laos Institute for Democracy, the Lao Veterans of America, Inc., the Hmong Advancement, Inc. , Hmong Advance, Inc. , Lao Abroad Solidarity Foundation, Lao Hmong Students Association, Laotian Students Organization for Democracy; Laotian Community of Louisiana, Lao Hmong Community of Minnesota, Hmong Community Organization of Minnesota, Laotian Community of Minnesota, Laotian Community Network of Texas and Louisiana; Laotian Community of New York; Michigan Lao Hmong Community Group; Laotian Community of Virginia; Lao Hmong Community of California; Laotian Community of Tennessee, Lao Hmong Community of North Carolina, Laotian Community of Florida and others.

These groups are the latest who can get in line behind others who have been incensed by Faleomavaega's controversial pronouncements during his various travels in Asia and the Pacific over the last three years, especially during the three frightening years since he has become subcommittee chairman for the region. Of course, he has little real influence on U.S. policy but while that is understood in Washington, it is not appreciated in the region or especially in his home district, where the local daily paper, Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is an editor, carefully keeps controversy out of print.

Faleomavaega has managed to alienate Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Indonesia and Turkey in the past three years as well as groups struggling against repressive regimes in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China. Shhhh. Don't tell anyone, especially not his cheering squad in American Samoa.

Faleomavaega in New Asia Blunder

Well, our globe-trotting Congressman is at it again. Asians will be excused for ducking when they see him coming because they never know what surprises this "loose cannon" will have for them. On a previous Southeast Asia swing it was a controversial toast in Hanoi to the murderous Vietnam dictator Ho Chic Minh that ruffled a lot of feathers, especially those of U.S. veterans back home. On this trip to the region, it was Cambodia.

Leading a three-man congressional delegation on a four-country boondoggle, Faleomavaega decided to join a Cambodian People's party celebration of a controversial day that among other things celebrates the Vietnam invasion of Cambodia. The Cambodian People's Party was previously known as the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), which was founded as a Marxist-Leninist party.

Faleomavaega's traveling colleagues, Mike Honda (D-CA) and Joseph Cao (R-LA), diplomatically choose to stay away from the event and visited a killing field instead. The story can be read here: . Several of the Asian blogs wrote stories critical of Faleomavaega's decision, with one prominent blog headlined "Eni Faleomavaega: Purposely Ignorant or Really Simple-minded?" When asked about his decision at a press conference, Faleomavaega replied "What I pay attention to on January 7 is the toppling of the Pol Pot regime." Of course, that is sort of like celebrating the date an airline became an all-jet fleet but ignoring the fact that the date also represents the mid-air collision of the company's last two propeller-driven planes, which resulted in the all-jet fleet.

Naturally, people back in American Samoa were treated only to an innocuous story in Samoa News, where Faleomavaega's sister-in-law is a top editor, about how their fearless leader was heading a delegation to Cambodian to discuss increasing trade and canceling the country's debt to the U.S. No word about the January 7 flap. Of course not. That gets swept under the rug and people go on singing Eni's praises. The photo used by Samoa News did show, however, that the Cambodian prime minister and both of Faleomavaega's colleagues were appropriately dressed in suits with neck ties while Eni was in open collar attire.

In another blog commenting on Faleomavaega's ignorance, one commenter asked: "What...is wrong with that congressman? He's from America? I thought American politicians do not support any dictators around the world. Man, I think Eni should have never got involved with the CPP's celebration...He should know that CPP is an exclusive gangsters clique that continue to victimize the poor of Cambodia. In addition, Eni should have been more educated about the Jan. 7 event. He should have connected more dots in order to see the whole truth of things. Man, I am so disappoint about this! An American Congressman from America being a [supplicant] to Hun Sen's clique??? This is an unbelievable. If Eni wanted to participate in any celebrations at all, he should have made a better choice. This is a very bad move on Eni's part. Eni should have never wasted any time with these CPP gangsters who do not value freedom and opportunities for the rest of the Cambodian people. Bad choice of attendance indeed."

Another one said "The US Congressman joined Hun Sen to celebrate the continuism of the Communist Party. What...was he thinking! Shame on you, Mr. Faleomanvaega...what an ignorant!" Yet a third chimed in: "Congressman Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa), is a disgrace to the Free World, to praise Dictator Hun Sen and Vietcongs' aggression in Southeast Asia. Eni's party is (D- American Samoa) but D stands for Dictator rather than Democrat. Shame on Eni Shame on You!"

A fourth commenter said "Because of Eni Faleomagvaega's attendance in the CPP's 31st commemorative event of the Jan. 7, now the CPP news dap-news.com claims that the United States of America recognizes the Jan. 7th of the CPP. Now Eni has to clarified his position."

A toast to Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi? Celebration of the Vietnam invasion of Cambodia that restored the CPP to power? Coincidence or connect the dots? You decide. At least two other congressmen decided they were not going to play "follow the leader."