Faleomavaega Rips Obama, Kerry Over PRIMNM Announcement

A clearly frustrated Faleomavaega has lashed out at President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry over Obama’s decision to sign an Executive Order creating a Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM).  While expressing his appreciation that  the conservation zone expansion would only involve Wake Island, Jarvis Island and Johnston Atoll, he said “I am displeased that the White House rushed this decision just so Secretary Kerry could have a sound bite at the United Nations.”

“Given the seriousness of the issue, I believe the Administration should have been more thoughtful about this process,” argued the delegate, “[because t]his decision affects the economies of Hawaii, American Samoa, CNMI and Guam, and every stakeholder among us deserved to be heard.”  Reflecting disappointment that he was crowded out of the decision-making process, he continued: “[I]t is unfortunate that the White House and State Department really didn’t engage in a meaningful discussion with local leaders or Congress about this initiative.”

Pointing to stalled negotiations for foreign fishing rights in the Pacific, Faleomavaega again accused Kerry of rushing for a sound bite while “the Administration may have failed to consider that its expansion just might spell trouble later for the American tuna industry in light of an un-negotiated South Pacific Tuna Treaty.   An un-negotiated treaty,” he warned, ”means less fishing grounds for our tuna boats and, environmentally, may lead to overfishing if Pacific Island nations open up fishing grounds to the highest bidders and if Asian and European vessels are given the green-light to do as they please. . . . In consideration of these facts, I believe if the Administration is truly serious about conservation, then it would have made the renewal of the South Pacific Tuna Treaty a higher priority than the expansion of PRIMNM.”

He gamely tried to reclaim his relevance by saying that he had been told by White House aides on September 24 of the President’s intentions to sign the Executive Order but was asked not to say anything until Kerry announced it in New York at a follow up meeting to his June Our Ocean Conference.  Faleomavaega did not attend the Apia meeting and while it is unclear if he also were not at the follow on gathering, judging from his news release that makes no mention of it, he was not.

It had to be annoying to him that by not announcing the White House decision, his thunder was stolen because the lead story in the September 25 Samoa News was based on a press release issued late in the afternoon of the 24th by the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, which apparently was not under the same embargo, ignored it or was faster on the draw, leaving Faleomavaega relegated to saying “me, too.”   Wednesday afternoon National Geographic also published a story on Kerry’s Wednesday morning announcement, so it seems more likely that the delegate’s crack press staff, which long has been accustomed to dictating what and when off-island news is reported locally, was caught napping.  

It is curious that Obama has given Faleomavaega such back-handed treatment considering the delegate went out of his way to take a gamble and endorse the president’s first bid for the White House in 2007 when the Illinois senator was still considered a long shot.  Both men were raised and schooled in Hawaii and Faleomavaega apparently felt a kinship with him.  In fact the relationship was considered so close that some conspiracy theorists charged that during the campaign on one of the delegate’s frequent trips to Indonesia, he was asked to negotiate with Jakarta authorities to get Obama’s childhood school records sealed.  

However, the latest attack on Obama and Kerry is another sign that he is distancing himself with the soon-to-be lame duck president and secretary of State as he tries to tries to mend fences with Kerry’s predecessor Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic Party nomination for president.  That break was underscored when he also said he would cross party lines to back legislation by a Republican in the upper house.  Referring to his objection to the PRIMNM order, he said: “This is why I stand with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who has introduced legislation to change the law so that no President will ever have the power to lock up millions of acres of public lands and waters without Congressional approval.”  A dramatic move for a man who just three-and-a-half years ago was chairman of the subcommittee that had jurisdiction over the global environment.

With virtually every member of the House, except those not running for re-election, having left Washington for home for the critical final weeks of the campaign, it is curious that Faleomavaega is still there.  There was a Washington dateline on September 25 press release, which Samoa News buried in a larger story recounting the reactions of a number of organizations to the conservation zone.  Having missed the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) summit in Apia, it seemed possible that Faleomavaega might have wanted to recoup by attending the U.N. Secretary General’s Climate Change summit in New York just ahead of this year’s General Assembly speeches but there is no evidence he traveled to New York for that gathering of even for Indian Prime Minister Modi’s meeting with Members of Congress.

Indeed, the only evidence of Faleomavaega activity was a press release pathetically announcing he participated in the annual White House picnic for Members of Congress.  Since this event is held every year, is open to all Members of the House and Senate and their families regardless of party and is not meant for conducting business, it is hardly newsworthy and only the Samoa Post ran a story.  Neither Samoa News nor Radio KHJ-FM found it newsworthy.  As with the annual Easter Egg roll and the White House Christmas party, this event is purely for socializing and photographs. 

In addition to the usual pictures with Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D), Faleomavaega made a point of mentioning (and providing the press a photo with) “my good friend, Chairman Frank Lucas of the House Committee on Agriculture, which has responsibility over American Samoa’s food stamp and voucher programs that I have worked on all these years to keep in place and increase our funding.” 
 
Why single out Lucas?  Perhaps because one of his election opponents also had a photo taken with Lucas when the chairman passed through Pago Pago in August as part of a Natural Resources Committee-led Congressional Delegation on which the second most senior Democrat, Faleomavaega, was noticeably absent.  And so it goes.

Faleomavaega: Obama's Lackey

This blogster says it all:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/obamas-mop-up-m.html

Faleomavaega Partly to Blame for Tucson Tragedy

Although we are not aware of any public statements Faleomavaega may have made following the Tuscon shooting that took six lives, he nonetheless has to shoulder part of the blame for the tragedy.  For it is the left wing of the Democrat Party, of which he is a proud member, that has forced the "mainstreaming" of so many mentally ill persons who a generation ago would have been receiving in-patient treatment at secure facilities.  Shame on him for such an ill conceived policy.

Although he is the senior Democrat in Congress involved in Asian affairs, President Obama passed him over when extending invitations for last week's dinner honoring Chinese President Hu, just as he was snubbed for the state dinner for the leader of India, even though he long has been a congressional champion of U.S.-Indian relations.  We hoped he enjoyed his consolation prizes: a ride to Washington from Hawaii on Air Force One and an  invitation to have lunch with Hu a day after the lavish State Dinner.

In fact, the presidential plane ride may be the high point of Eni's year.  Since his return to minority status in the House, Eni has watched himself stripped of his chairmanship and stripped of his vote in the Committee of the Whole.  Moreover, Republicans have slashed five percent from his office budget and new restrictions have been placed on congressional travel.   In many ways, as a non-voting delegate, he is lower on the totem pole than the nine new Democrats who were elected to the House.  He may have a nicer office than they do because of his seniority but that's about all.  If you want to see what it's like to be a new member in the minority, just read this article:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/03/AR2011010305462_2.html?sid=ST2011010305630.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie's failure to find Barack Obama's legitimate birth certificate, questions are being asked anew about Faleomavaega's role in covering up Obama's past.  One such article his here: http://debsimonforcongress.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-14-16-2011-obamas-grandparents.html.   Perhaps the Obama plane ride was to assure Faleomavaega's continued silence about the real purpose of his trip to Indonesia.

Faleomavaega also figured in the Wikileaks diplomatic document dump.   One classified cable generated by the U.S. embassy in New Zealand said "Bainimarama asked Australia and New Zealand to drop their demands for 2009 elections, and called on the other PIF states to not listen to Australia and New Zealand.  He also credited U.S. Representative Eni Faleomavaega with having a better understanding of the situation in Samoa and that Faleomavaega's views, rather than those of Australia and New Zealand, should form the basis of USG policy towards Fiji."   Even if he isn't as welcome in Washington these days, at least Eni seems to continue to have a fan in Fiji's dictator.

Since he is virtually useless in Washington now, our betting is that Eni will find a way around the travel restrictions and be back on the road as soon as he can.  Nothing for him to do in DC and besides, now that his floor vote has been taken away, he won't have to worry about being exposed, as he was last term, as the Member of Congress to miss the most votes (41%).  Of course, don't expcect the territory's leading newspaper, Samoa News, to cover any of this.  His sister-in-law continues to be one of the small group of editors of the paper.  And so it goes.



 

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 attacks Japanese leader; decries vestige of imperialism

At a March 17 hearing of his own Asia-Pacific subcommittee called to examine U.S.-Japan relations, Chairman Faleomavaega in his opening statement attacked Japan Prime Minister Hatayama for his “financial scandals and uneven leadership,” which he says are among the reasons his popularity has deteriorated steeply since his election last year.  So unpopular is Hatoyama that “only one-quarter of voters say they plan to cast their ballots for the party in July’s Upper House elections,” asserted the combative chairman.

He also recalled that the Ryukyu Islands, of which Okinawa is a part, was once a sovereign kingdom that was annexed by Japan and remains a vestige of Japanese imperialism.   He also said Okinawans “face discrimination throughout Japan.”  During a visit to Tokyo in January, Faleomavaega said the wishes of the Okinawan people should be given priority in deciding the dispute over the future of the U.S. military presence on the island.

Here is the relevant text of Faleomavaega’s statement:

The burdens the Okinawan people have shouldered on behalf of the alliance should not be underestimated. With less than one percent of Japan’s land area, Okinawa is host to two-thirds of the American forces based in the country. We should also remember that Okinawa, once the sovereign Ryuku [sic] Kingdom, was forcibly annexed by Japan in 1872, and that during the Battle of Okinawa, one-third of its inhabitants died. To this day, Okinawa remains a vestige of imperialism as it languishes behind the rest of the country economically and educationally, and its people face discrimination throughout the [sic] Japan.

In dealing with the Futenma relocation issue, we must not neglect this history. Politically, we must also recognize that Prime Minister Hatoyama’s approval ratings have deteriorated steeply from almost 80 percent when he took office to 30-40 percent now, largely as a result of financial scandals and uneven leadership. Even worse for the DPJ, only one-quarter of voters say they plan to cast their ballots for the party in July’s Upper House elections.

After Faleomavaega finishes liberating West Papua from its Indonesian oppressors, one wonders if he plans to turn his attention north to pry the poor, subjugated Okinawans away from their Japanese masters.

Meanwhile, Congress is on Easter recess and most House members have returned to their Congressional Districts to explain what Obamacare will mean for their voters.  Not Eni, of course.  He contented himself with issuing a press release, which Samoa News dutifully ran, and headed off to Taiwan to meet with President Ma, who has just concluded a six-nation swing of the South Pacific.  So far, no mention of this trip in Samoa News, where his sister-in-law serves as an editor.

Over Obama, Clinton Objections, Faleomavaega Casts Deciding Vote on Genocide

Faleomavaega has continued to stake out his maverick course in dealing with the Obama administration by recently voted for a House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution that, if passed by the full House, would put Congress on record calling for Turkey to acknowledge and apology for a genocide imposed on its Armenian minority during World War I. Turkey over the years has refused to accept that it conducted such a genocide.

Although Faleomavaega is not very influential in Congress, he does have a full vote in committee and in this case his vote turned out to be very influential, because it was the tie breaker in a 23-22 vote in favor of the resolution. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have signaled to House speaker Nancy Pelosi that they hope the resolution will not be put to a test on the Floor of the House.

For someone who represents a constituency that is so reliant on the federal government for assistance, Faleomavaega is either very brave or very foolish to buck the White House so often. His genocide vote comes only weeks after he condemned the very same Obama and Clinton for failing to include meetings with Pacific Island leaders on her maiden trip to the region. That trip was truncated in Hawaii because of the Haiti earthquake and despite promises by Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary for the region, at a recent Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that Clinton would include island leaders on her rescheduled trip, it is by no means certain she will do so, especially if Faleomavaega continues to pummel the administration.

In addition to the genocide vote and the criticism of the Clinton trip, at the same hearing Faleomavaega complained to Campbell that the 176,000 dollars U.S. has given Communist Laos to clear around 80 million bombs that failed to detonate during the Vietnam was grossly insufficient. "This is absolutely outrageous,” ranted Faleomavaega, “and it's not the America that I would think of." He continued: "They never declared war against us. We're the ones that just simply went over there and bombed the heck out of them." But Campbell stood his ground, insisting that while both Vietnam and Laos want better relations with the U.S., much needs to be done in the area of human rights and democracy before real progress can be made. Once again, the ultra liberal Faleomavaega seems to turn a blind eye to such matters when it comes to his favorite left-wing and right-wing dictatorships.

Meanwhile, there has been no word out of the White House as to whether Obama will accept Faleomavaega’s invitation to visit American Samoa on his return from Indonesia-Australia trip later this month. He leaves for the Pacific in just nine days’ time: March 18. Rahm “The Enforcer” Emanuel no doubt is weighing Faleomavaega’s behavior towards Obama in the deliberations. Perhaps that is what Faleomavaega hopes to achieve: carve out an independent course and use that as an excuse if Obama declines to visit the territory. It’s all part of the Washington game. And the voters likely will rally around Faleomavaega for the discourtesy Obama would have shown. Never mind any discourtesies Faleomavaega might have shown the White House.

Faleomavaega in Travel Frenzy; Voters Unaware

Once again, we have to use the internet and other methods to find out what is or is not going on in Washington or other parts of the world as it involves American Samoa or our leaders because Samoa News, the primary source of information on this island, DOES NOT INFORM ITS READERS.

Oh yes, we are getting a blow-by-blow report on the trial and now jury deliberations of our lt. governor and one of our senators, but the Governor is in Washington for a whole bunch of important meetings, including the National Governors’ Conference, the Pacific Basin Development Council, the Coral Reef Task Force, congressional hearings and who knows what else. This week all the territorial governors are in DC because of the NGA meeting, which includes a meeting with the President and a dinner at the White House. So a lot of other organizations hold their meetings (and congressional hearings) to take advantage of everyone being there.

Therefore, this week over the years has become one of the busiest and most important for island officials. Has Samoa News ever told us that? No. Will they tell us what is going on this week? Doubtful. Most likely they will wait for the governor’s return and the issuance of a press release. Or, if the governor doesn’t hand one out, they will wait for his radio report to the people, take notes from that and write a story about the radio program. Seriously.

And with this week being as important as it is, all the island delegates in Congress can be expected to be in place, right? Most will be. How about American Samoa? After all, Faleomavaega has his “crucial” ASPIRE bill in the works. You would think he would want to take this opportunity to brief the governor and enlist his support to get the bill moving. You would think he also would want to accompany the governor to the PBDC and Coral Reef meetings so he can follow up with initiatives in Congress. You would think he would want to partipate in an oversight hearing by a subcommittee which he is the senior member of.

Then there is the matter of Faleomavaega’s quite public invitation to President Obama to visit American Samoa on his way back from Australia, which he will visit after Guam and Indonesia next month. Surely he will want to coordinate efforts with his governor, since the governor will be seeing the President twice, once at a White House dinner and again the next day at a White House meeting with governors only. Needless to say, this is the best opportunity to press the case for a stop, which is optional at best since Air Force 1 does not need to refuel between Australia and the U.S. Mainland.

Now, we don’t have any more access to information than anyone else, so we can only speculate. But we can do some fundamental calculations based on time, distance, airplane speeds and access to information on the internet, the same information everyone else has, including Samoa News. In a February 19 CSCE press release, Faleomavaega was quoted making a statement at an interparliamentary meeting in Vienna, Austria that day. The National Governors’ meeting starts Feb. 20 and ends Feb. 22.

Other meetings follow all this week, including two hearings conducted by the House insular subcommittee. One of those hearings, at which the governor surely will testify, is on Feb. 24. It is the Oversight Hearing on the President's Fiscal Year 2011 budget requests for the Office of Insular Affairs. That is the office that funds our ASG operating budget and that is also the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over Faleomavaega’s ASPIRE bill that has gone nowhere since the hearing on it last fall. This is also the chance to brief Congress on the tsunami last September and the urgent need for additional federal assistance. Under the circumstances, no hearing could be more crucial to us.

Yet, I have a PINA news story that says Faleomavaega has accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a Tuna Policy Summit in Palau on February 25. Given the distance to Palau from Washington and adding the international dateline as a factor, it is difficult to see how Faleomavaega can attend two House hearings on the 24th and give a speech in Koror on the 25th. We will be watching the hearings on the internet to see if he is there. It is also hard to imagine he got back to Washington from Vienna in time to have any serious meetings with the governor before the governor went off to be with the president on February 21 and 22.

If there is a verdict in the lt. governor’s trial, you can bet that the Samoa News special correspondent covering the trial will have that result flashed back to Samoa News immediately but while he is waiting, do not expect him to cover any of what I have recounted above. Even if he did file a story, you could bet that Faleomavaega’s sister-in-law, who is one of the editors, would be certain that its readers remained ignorant of their delegate’s outright dereliction of duty. All they know is that he has invited Obama to American Samoa. Never mind whether Obama actually shows up. The fact that Faleomaveaga invited him proves to them how influential he is. It’s not results that count and it’s not even effort that counts. It’s perception of effort is all that matters. Give us a break.

FALEOMAVAEGA INFLUENCE PEAK REACHED; IS ON DECLINE

Remember that you read it here first. January 8, 2010 is the day Faleomavaega reached the peak of his influence in Washington. If you are startled because you have read so many of our previous essays in which we indicated that he is lightly regarded in Congress, there is no contradiction. He is not very influential to begin with, but whatever influence he has had, he began to lose once he issued a press release—widely printed throughout the region—publicly criticizing President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for ignoring the small island states during her aborted trip to the region. Once a copy of the release crossed the desk of Rahm “the Enforcer” Emanuel, who was brought in as White House Chief of Staff because of his ability to keep House Democrats in line behind Obama, we can easily imagine him reacting “What a f**king retard.”

Just 11 days after Faleomavaega’s injudicious attack on the leaders of his own party, Massachusetts Republicans captured the senate seat previously held by Edward M. Kennedy and set off a political earthquake in Washington. Coupled with victories last November in governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans gained enough momentum to derail Obama’s legislative agenda and leave open the question of what Congress will accomplish this year. As congressional Democrats’ fortunes fall, so, too, do Faleomavaega’s. After all he has a lot riding on his proposed legislation to bail out StarKist so they will keep their tuna cannery in American Samoa.

In his 21 years in Congress, Faleomavaega always has had an explanation for his ineffectiveness that the voters swallowed hook, line and sinker. After a very narrow first election in 1988, when he ran for re-election in 1990 and 1992, he explained how difficult it was for him to do much because the White House was controlled by a Republican who did not give much priority to the territories. After he was re-elected in 1992 along with a Democratic president to go along with continued Democratic control of Congress, he told the media that they had to produce now that his party controlled everything.

But in fact he produced nothing in the next two years but when facing the voters in 1994, he argues that he still was much too junior in the House to have any great achievements. Be patient, he counseled, be patient. Of course, on election night the voters sent him back to the House by a comfortable margin but the House and Senate would be quite different, because Republicans had taken control of both chambers.

For the next three terms he told voters he was doing the best he could under the circumstances (of being in the minority) and for three more terms he spoke of the additional burden of trying to accomplish things with a Congress and White House run by Republicans. But then in 2006, Democrats won back control of the Congress and Faleomavaega had acquired enough seniority to be awarded a subcommittee chairmanship.

House leaders no doubt were relieved that Faleomavaega’s interest was in foreign affairs because that is a subject over which the House has little power. Eni has proved himself a loose cannon over the years, so they hoped he would do little damage as chairman of the Asia Pacific subcommittee. He still argues he was somewhat handcuffed because George Bush still ruled the White House.

Then came 2008. Like 1992, Democrats won it all, only this time Eni now was very senior in his party, had a subcommittee chairmanship and had the advantage of having been an early supporter of Barack Obama while the nomination was still contested. Moreover, Obama grew up in Hawaii, as did Faleomavaega. So when Congress convened in January 2009, at last Faleomavaega had it all.

Now, just a year later, it all has come crashing down with his press release. As crazy as the move seems, perhaps there he is setting up a new excuse for failure. Let’s take a look at what has happened since Eni has “had it all” with Obama’s inauguration.

• He was not invited to accompany Hillary Clinton on her trip to Indonesia last year, even though Indonesia’s West Papua policy is his number one issue;
• The Speaker did not invite him to join her congressional delegation to Beijing to discuss climate change, even though both China and global environment are within the jurisdiction of his subcommittee;
• The Speaker did not invite him to join her massive delegation to international global warming talks in Copenhagen;
• Obama did not invite him to the State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India, even though he is a senior member of the congressional caucus on India;
• Hillary Clinton did not seek his input on the itinerary for her trip to the Pacific, ignored small island state issues in her East West Center address, did not invite Faleomavaega to be there for her speech and did not invite him on her trip;
• The administration and several Democratic colleagues testified against his proposed legislation to subsidize StarKist so they will stay in American Samoa.
• The Interior budget for FY11 contains no funds for a prospective StarKist bailout.

So, if this is the peak of his influence, what’s the point? Perhaps his attack on Obama and Clinton was meant to put him in a position to be “punished” so he has yet another excuse at election time as to why he did not deliver. Why not? After all, his condemnation of his leaders was embraced warmly by his electorate.

Meanwhile, his fortunes in Washington continue on a downward spiral. But as long as he has the checkbook to pay for his relentless travel schedule, why should he care? Especially since he has Samoa News in his pocket, willing to cover up any and all of his foibles and failures.

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.

GOP responds to Faleomavaega

Normally, the Republican Party of American Samoa has not played hit man on local Democrats in power but the delegate’s press release bashing President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Clinton’s Pacific trip itinerary not including any interaction with heads of island governments except Papua New Guinea was too much for them to remain silent.

It was not the Clinton and Obama bashing to which they objected but Faleomavaega’s assertion that they were only ignoring the islands the same way past presidents have. Although Clinton cancelled most of her trip because of the Haiti earthquake, she did get as far as Honolulu where she delivered a speech at the East West Center. Her text said not a word about island issues. Not one word! http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135090.htm

Imagine Faleomavaega’s humiliation. He is supposed to be “very influential” now as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, Pacific and Global Environment but, as his bizarre press release freely admits, he was not consulted on her itinerary, not invited to accompany her and not even invited to be in the East-West Center audience for her speech.

What got local Republicans hot was that he lied about previous presidents and secretaries having ignored the islands. The fact is, they pointed out in their press release http://www.samoanews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=12291&edition=1264240800, both Presidents Bush met with heads of island governments: Bush 41 in 1990 and Bush 43 in 2003. Moreover, the Bush 43 administration labeled 2007 “the Year of the Pacific” and hosted the heads of government at a summit in Washington over the opening of which Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice presided. And Rice held a follow up meeting with the region’s foreign ministers in Apia in 2008 to which Faleomavaega (who was in Pago Pago at the time) was invited. Sources tell us he refused the invitation because Rice declined to give him a separate speaking role at the gathering.

It would have been inappropriate for Eni to have spoken in Apia since foreign policy rests squarely in the hands of the executive branch in the U.S. constitution but as a practical matter Rice would not have wanted him to speak anyway because no one ever can control what comes out of his mouth. Given Faleomavaega’s decision to publicly criticize Obama and Clinton, State Department officials no doubt are thankful they did not have Faleomavaega play a role in this trip and when it is rescheduled don’t hold your breath that he has bought himself any prominence by his antics.

No one can figure out what he gained by that press release other than, as one commentator put it, appeal to that segment of his electorate who loves it when he “stands up to the man” and wants him to “get whitey.” It certainly won’t help get White House backing for his bill to rescue StarKist but since that was going down the tubes anyway, maybe he wanted to have the excuse of “White House retaliation” for its failure. At the same time, though, he has announced to the world just how uninfluential he is. The local Republican Party picked up on it in its release, noting that Faleomavaega was not consulted by Clinton on her trip to his region.

It all fits into a pattern. He should be at the peak of his power right now. He was an early backer of Obama and Obama still is popular with voters even if some of his ambitious agenda is not. If he has complaints about U.S. decline in the region during his 21 years in office (Peace Corps and embassy cutbacks: USAID and USIA offices and programs eliminated), he has the power to introduce legislation to reverse the trend. It is becoming obvious that the power to introduce does not equal the power to influence others to pass such bills, even though his party controls both Houses of Congress. He is simply lightly regarded.

Everyone knows he has his bags packed to travel at a moment’s notice. Yet despite being the chairman of the subcommittee overseeing both China and global environment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not include him in her delegation to Beijing to discuss global warming or her massive delegation to Copenhagen for the UN summit on the same issue. Despite his stated top priority being West Papuan self determination in Indonesia, Clinton did not invite him to accompany her to Jakarta. Despite his prominence on the House caucus on India, he was not invited to the White House state dinner for the Prime Minister of India—even though a couple of local socialites wandered into the event on their own without any invitation at all. And now comes this latest humiliation. Which he is at pains to make public!

Of course, his constituents know nothing of these events because the local daily newspaper, Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is one of the editors, sweeps it all under the rug. Never a word. Never a word. But perhaps she was away for a day because the paper did print the party’s release. In fairness maybe they had no choice since the GOP exposed some explicit Faleomavaega lies that he could not explain away. Looking at the reader remarks section, there was not a single comment defending him. The closest anyone came was someone who ridiculed the local Republican Party as being insignificant. Perhaps so. But their observations weren’t.

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 attacks Obama, Clinton

Maybe it was just his way of diverting media attention to his decision to join the Communists in Cambodia in celebrating the invasion by Communist Vietnam 31 years ago to restore the Cambodia Communist party to power. Or maybe it's just because he has a political death wish. We are reminded of Ann Richards's observation about George H.W. Bush at the 1988 Democratic National Convention: "Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Of course, "poor George" went on to win the White House and his son completed the revenge by defeating Richards's bid for reelection as governor six years later. But, no matter. Faleomavaega keeps rolling on to victory after victory, aided by Samoa News, where his sister-in-law is a top editor. The only real media outlet keeps Eni's blunders out of the paper.

This time it wasn't just an emotional outburst of the moment but an actual, carefully thought one (one assumes) press release headed a mild "Faleomavaega welcomes Secretary Clinton’s visit to Pacific, but expresses disappointment." Naturally, Samoa News carried the release and dutifully used the headline he supplied. But other media outlets around the world were not duped. The story written in New Zealand by the respected regional journalist Michael Field (and carried by many New Zealand newspapers) was headed "American Samoa congressman attacks Clinton" while a Washington, DC newspaper devoted to congress headlined "Democratic lawmaker condemns Clinton's fly-by diplomacy."

"Clinton's Pacific itinerary criticized," headlined the Honolulu Advertiser, while Radio New Zealand headlined characterized it as "Clinton visit a snub to most Pacific leaders." So, what exactly was it that Faleomavaega said that drew such wide-spread media attention from Washington to Wellington? Let his word speak for themselves directly from his press release:

Faleomavaega said he is "very disappointed that some 15 Pacific Island nations are being ignored and marginalized once again. For years, I have been outspoken about U.S. foreign policy towards the Pacific region because the only real foreign policy that the U.S. has with the Pacific is with New Zealand and Australia. . .My point is underscored by the fact that Secretary Clinton will be meeting with Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea while excluding some 15 Pacific Island leaders who could have gathered in one location to meet her. . . [C]onsidering that President Obama was born and raised in Hawaii and understands the challenges and needs of the community, I thought these small island nations, however small, would finally be given the time, consideration and respect they deserve.”

“I am truly disappointed that President Obama, whom I supported and endorsed from the beginning of his presidential campaign, did not weigh in upon learning that Secretary Clinton’s first visit to the Pacific region excluded all Pacific Island nations except Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea. At a minimum, the President or the Secretary could have easily called for a summit of Foreign Ministers from the island nations to meet in Samoa, Hawaii, or even New Zealand. That this was not done shows a lack of sensitivity for the region and sends a message that some 15 Pacific Island nations are not an important or integral part of our U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

“This is the wrong message to send . . . The U.S. cannot afford to take for granted the sacrifices Pacific Island nations have made on our behalf. While New Zealand refuses entry to U.S. nuclear ships, many Pacific Island nations fought side by side with the U.S. throughout WWII. The U.S. also used the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) as a nuclear testing ground, exploding more than 67 nuclear bombs, including the first hydrogen bomb ever detonated. Although the U.S. has not fully compensated the RMI for the damage we did and the contamination we left behind, the RMI is still our ally.”

“But how long will it be before Pacific Island nations begin to reconsider their relationship with the U.S.? China, Taiwan and Iran are increasing their presence in the region while the U.S. cannot even bother to re-establish USAID presence. Given that most Pacific Island nations continue to support U.S. interests at home, abroad, and in the United Nations, it is my hope that the U.S. will return the favor and support the Pacific Island community.”

“China takes the time to meet with Heads of State from small Pacific Island nations and the U.S. should do the same because it is no longer enough to continually fly-over the region. Pacific Island nations deserve something better than fly-by diplomacy. While it is very doubtful that Secretary Clinton can adjust her schedule at this late date, at the very least she can make it a top priority to meet in the near future with the some 15 Pacific Island leaders she is excluding on her first trip to the Pacific region. Such a meeting would be a step in the right direction after more than 50 years of U.S. neglect."

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why there would be media interest. Faleomavaega, in a single piece of paper, pretty much destroyed any shred of effectiveness he might have enjoyed during the next three years by publicly attacking two of the most powerful leaders of his own party holding public office: the president and the secretary of state.

Not only that, he has issued a press release to the world acknowledging what we have been saying consistently since this blog was established: he has NO CLOUT OR INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON. He admits he was not consulted on Clinton's itinerary and obviously was not invited to accompany her, despite her trip being to the region he considers his back yard and over which his subcommittee has jurisdiction.

"For years, I have been outspoken about U.S. foreign policy towards the Pacific region," says Faleomavaega in his press release. For 21 years that he has been in Congress, to be exact. And what has gotten for his efforts? Looks like nothing. During his watch, the U.S. has closed embassies, USAID missions and USIA offices all over the region in scaling back their presence. In the early years he might have blamed it on having no influence with the George H.W. Bush administration or being too junior when Clinton was in the White House for two years when his party also controlled Congress. On election night 1992 he was quoted as saying his party had won it all and had no excuses if they didn't deliver. But despite not delivering he goes on and on in office. The next 12 years he could argue he was in the minority then two more with another Bush in the White House.

But since January 20, 2009, he has had a president of his own party who he supported early, as his press release notes, his party controls both houses of Congress, he has allies in key positions of leadership, he is very senior and he chairs the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over all the issues he has championed. One can credibly argue that he will never be more influential than he is today. Or more precisely, one should argue that he never will be more influential than he was the day before he issued this disastrous press release.

And yet, what has he gotten, even before the release? Nancy Pelosi and George Miller pulled the rug out from under him on minimum wage and have rebuffed every effort he has made to halt additional increases. Hillary Clinton did not invite him to accompany her on her visit to Indonesia last year, despite the fact that Indonesian policy towards West Papua has been one of his signature issues. Nancy Pelosi did not invite him to join her congressional delegation to China to discuss global warming despite his subcommittee having jurisdiction both over China and global environmental issues. Pelosi didn't even invite him on her massive delegation to Copenhagen for UN global warming talks.

Why? Because he is a loose cannon, as his recent visit to Cambodia once again underscores. You never know what will come out of his mouth. Certainly, he would have been available for travel. He has never seen an overseas trip he would pass up if invited. In fact in one commentary back in American Samoa there was curiosity as to where Eni would be this week. Would he still be winding up his Asia tour. Maybe head to Saipan for the governor's inauguration. Maybe head to Honolulu for Hillary Clinton's speech (unlikely after blasting her). Maybe down to Pago Pago for the ceremonial opening of the legislature. That's where he was when Pelosi surprised him by applying the minimum wage to American Samoa. But no, he actually was in Washington for the opening of the second session of Congress. Our betting it was mainly to change clothes and get out some resh tropical shirts to wear on a congressional fact finding delegation to Haiti. Want to place odds on him being among the first to go?

Unless, of course, he doesn't get invited.

Keep on moving, Eni. Don't hold your breath that your ASPIRE bill will get anywhere near Obama for signature. It probably won't get past the subcommittee. Rahm Emanuel comes from Chicago where they play real political hardball. He is not happy with your press release blasting the leader of your own party. Eni, you are toast. Stick a fork in you--you're done.

Too bad the people who vote you into office are never told.

Faleomavaega Humiliated

Delegate Faleomavaega suffered a huge embarrassment this week by not being invited to be a part of the Congressional delegation to the Copenhagen global warming talks. Why is that a humiliation? First, some background.

For years Faleomavaega limped along at home with declining popularity at the ballot box, in recent years repeatedly being forced into runoffs so much that he got Congress to amend the American Samoa voting statute to allow victory by plurality.

Not last year, however. In 2008 he won by a huge landslide 60%-35% over his nearest opponent. Why the reversal of fortune? He argued to voters that to defeat him now made no sense because he was on the verge of acquiring real influence for the first time in his career.

For his firm two terms, his agenda was blocked by an unfriendly White House controlled by the other party. In his third term, his party controlled both the White House and Congress but he was still very junior and further handicapped himself by proposing such strange legislation as the creation of four seats in Congress to be reserved for Native Americans (an idea ridiculed in the respected Almanac of American Politics as one of the worst proposals ever made).

Then, for the next 12 years, Faleomavaega toiled in the wilderness as a member of the Minority and had to content himself with traveling to various nooks and crannies around the world (even including two visits to the remote Torres Strait Islands!).

But by 2006, however, the Republican Party started to implode nationally, with President Bush’s popularity declining rapidly after Hurricane Katrina and the continuing war in Iraq, while his party mates in Congress were dealing with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

So, it seems almost inevitable now that Democrats would recapture control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Faleomavaega’s seniority produced a subcommittee chairmanship. Because the U.S. Constitution vests in the president sole power over foreign policy, House Democrat leaders must be thankful that Faleomavaega’s interest lies in foreign policy, so they could give him a chairmanship on the Foreign Affairs Committee with little authority or ability to do damage. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment, he could make a lot of noise but not cause much injury. By adding global environmental issues to his portfolio, the leaders also could keep him traveling and out of their hair in Washington. What little noise he could make would not be heard by President Bush, who just ignored him as he was winding down his presidency.

Then came 2008 and Faleomavaega took a huge political gamble in backing Hawaii-born Sen. Barack Obama over N.Y. Senator Hillary Clinton early in the campaign season when Clinton still was favored to win the Democrat nomination for president. To do so, at home he also had to buck his own party, which was backing Clinton. He even stayed away from the local caucus that picked national conventional delegates. But he did show up in Hawaii for that state’s delegate selection process, even appearing on stage with Obama’s half-sister, who lives in Hawaii.

Election night 2008 must have been the most satisfying of his career. Not only did he win his own big victory, but Obama won as well and Democrats increased their majorities in the House and Senate, eventually gaining a filibuster-proof majority in the latter. Moreover, with the ailing Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) stepping aside, Faleomavaega’s closest Senate ally, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), soon took over the chairmanship of the all-powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. At the same time, the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) removed from the scene a fierce protector of the minimum wage escalator law for American Samoa.

So, by the time of Obama’s inauguration, the ingredients were all there for Faleomavaega to enjoy unprecedented power and influence for the first time in his career. Indeed, having backed Obama so early, he now was in a position to ride the coattails of Obama’s first-year popularity to bring all sorts of new benefits to his economically struggling territory. It seemed his alliance with Obama also would be reinforced by his closest allies in Congress: Nancy Pelosi and George Miller.

Faleomavaega was a protégé of the late U.S. Rep. Philip Burton (D-CA), under whom he worked on Capitol Hill and who crafted and rammed through the House legislation to create a non-voting delegate seat for American Samoa, tailoring it for Faleomavaega. Burton even strong armed the governor to give Faleomavaega a job back home so he could build a base to run for Congress.

At the same time Burton was mentoring Faleomavaega, he also was grooming two young, left-wing California politicians for future office: Nancy Pelosi and George Miller. The two now have risen to leadership in the House, with Pelosi attaining the speakership and Miller becoming Chairman of the powerful House Education and Labor Committee. Miller also is said to be Pelosi’s closest adviser in the House. Faleomavaega has known both of them since his days as a Burton staffer and boasts of them being his closest allies in the House.

So, talk about all the stars lining up right, it could hardly have been a more perfect environment in which Faleomavaega could flex his legislative and political muscles. But something has gone awry. Nothing seems to be going his way, either in the administration or in Congress.

The first warning sign that the emperor might not have any clothes came as early as the Democrat takeover of the House after the 2006 election. House Democrats made it clear that their first priority after taking power would be to raise the minimum wage. In fact, Pelosi announced that this measure and other priorities would be addressed in the first 100 hours of the Democrat majority, in contrast with the Republicans’ first 100 days program in 1995. Even before taking office, goaded by a Republican backbencher, Pelosi announced American Samoa would be included in the minimum wage raise and ordered George Miller to incorporate it into what would become H.R. 2.

Although virtually all Democrats and Republicans alike were in their seats—either to advance or protect their interests--when Congress was gaveled into order in early January, 2007, Faleomavaega again was off traveling. By the time he scooted back to town, the damage had been done and the new wage provision was adopted by the House.

A further sign that he might not enjoy the influence with Pelosi he touted came early this year, when the speaker led a delegation to China to discuss environmental issues and to Indonesia, where Faleomavaega has been very vocal on the question of Papuan self-determination. Despite the jurisdiction of his subcommittee, Pelosi did not include him in the delegation either to China or Indonesia.

Also early in the year, Faleomavaega’s name was missing in the list of congressional endorsements for Tony Babauta to be assistant secretary of Interior for insular affairs, the key federal agency through which so much of the aid to American Samoa flows. Even though Babauta was not being endorsed by the (by far) most senior territorial delegate, Obama nominated Babauta for the job and the Senate confirmed him.

So, is it any surprise that when the Speaker announced the composition of her delegation to the U.N. Copenhagen conference on climate change,
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1478, Faleomavaega was not on it? Earlier this week, National Journal said "If the CODEL [congressional delegation] is the roughly 16 or so that has been rumored, it would be one of the largest international congressional gatherings since the U.N. was founded in 1945.” Well, it was actually 21 members, but the chairman of the foreign affairs subcommittee with responsibility for global environmental issues was left out. There could hardly be any more important global environmental issue that climate change and there could hardly be a more important conference than the one at Copenhagen, but Faleomavaega is not part of the official congressional delegation. Oh, perhaps he will show up anyway—we wouldn’t be surprised—but everyone still will know the speaker passed him over.

If Faleomavaega were hoping the prestige of being in the Speaker’s entourage would divert attention from the fact that both Obama and members of his own party in the House have signaled that his legislation to preserve the territory’s tuna industry was going nowhere, he was sadly mistaken, because the Speaker gave him no cover. Thus, as he rises in seniority, the lack of esteem in which he is held in Washington becomes ever more obvious and each humiliation looms larger than the last. This is the biggest one to date.

As usual, though, it seems hardly to matter at home, where his loyal fans appear to be willing to settle for him “trying hard,” while his sister-in-law who is an editor at the territory’s only daily newspaper makes sure this sort of story never makes it into print. The people have no clue the ground that has been lost in Washington over the past 20 years. And so it goes.




"

Why Did Eni Not Reveal Delay in GAO study?

Although they buried the fact deep in the story, let’s give credit to Samoa News, where Eni Faleomavaega’s sister-in-law works as an editor, for admitting in this morning’s edition that the Saipan Tribune was first to reveal that the GAO minimum wage study mandated for American Samoa and the Northern Marianas will be completed in 2010, not 2009 as proposed in the House bill. Samoa News was silent on the fact that Faleomavaega neglected to mention the change of timing in his February 13 letter to local leaders informing them what was in the federal stimulus bill for American Samoa.

This is a hugely important bit of information because it means a far greater likelihood that a third 50-cent wage hike will go into effect in May, with significant implications for the territory’s economy. The canneries already have made personnel cutbacks to accommodate earlier increases. It would seem to us that Samoa News owes its readers an explanation for this omission. Did Eni report the change in study completion date in his letter to the leaders? We have not seen the full text, so it is possible they missed reporting that part of Eni’s letter.

If Eni did not report the change to the leaders, was he trying to avoid the embarrassment of this important change having been made? Did the conference committee make the change made over his objections? Or was he embarrassed because he was not even consulted? Was his “friend, ally and mentor” Sen. Dan Inouye on the Conference Committee? If so, were he and his staff not keeping Eni and his staff informed of changes being made to this critical part of the bill? If not, why were they not keeping Eni informed? Perhaps Eni’s relationship with Inouye might not be as close as he leads voters to believe (and Samoa News happily reports) or maybe the whole issue is a matter of staff incompetence on Eni's part.

Or was Samoa News simply trying to sweep it all under the rug until its hand was forced by the Saipan Tribune revelation?

Any of these explanations are possible or maybe all of them. But we’ll never know because we are not holding our breath waiting for Samoa News to ask for an explanation from Eni or offer one of their own. And as we asked in a previous post, just exactly what is Eni’s position on minimum wage, anyway? From his January 28, 2009 letter to House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman George Miller (another “friend, ally and mentor”), he says (and we quote Eni’s actual, printed words):

"I am writing to request your assistance in ending minimum wage escalator clauses for American Samoa which were enacted in P.L. 110-28. . . . I believe it is necessary, given the global financial crisis we are now facing, for Congress to provide temporary relief for our local businesses operating in American Samoa which are unable to incur further increases in minimum wage at this time. . . . [T]he current state of the economy in the U.S. and its Territories requires me to request your direct intervention. Clearly, I support Congress directing the DOL to undertake a new and more thorough study that will be useful to the economies of American Samoa and CNMI in the future. In the interim, I am hopeful that you will support my request to end escalator clauses. . . . Since workers in American Samoa have finally received a long overdue increase of $1.00 per hour in minimum wage since enactment of P.L. 110-28, I am hopeful that you will be able to place a temporary hold on escalator clauses until such time as economic conditions warrant future increases."

That language sounds pretty clear to us: PLEASE STOP WAGE INCREASES NOW although it is leas clear if he wants them "to end" or be placed on "a temporary hold."

However, in his February 13 letter to local leaders after the passage of the stimulus bill, which was heavily quoted by Samoa News in its February 14 story that neglects to mention the delay in the GAO study, Eni says “On repeated occasions I have requested [wage impact] information from ASG and from our local Chamber of Commerce because, until we have compelling evidence to do so, Congress will not and should not roll back minimum wage. . . .Can we sustain a third increase? I do not know the answer to this question. This is why I have called for a serious study [emphasis added] of the problem because, like Mr. Robinson, I believe enough is enough.

Yes, but that study now will not be completed until 2010.

It seems to us that instead of proudly running photos of Eni shoring up his support amongst Samoan military voters stationed in Kuwait (instead of accompanying Hillary Clinton on her visit to Indonesia or being back home to personally explain the stimulus bill—like most other members of Congress are doing in their districts), Samoa News ought to be asking Eni to curtail all of his travel and redouble his efforts with Miller and whoever else is necessary in Washington to suspend the upcoming May wage increase he asked Miller to have ended or suspended in his January 28 letter. If it does go into effect, does that mean that, as he states in his February 13 letter, he also will not support a rollback, even if it forces massive layoffs?

Come on Eni. That’s only a dozen weeks from now. Surely you can sit still in Washington for that long. And surely Samoa News can for once in its existence under its current management take an editorial position involving Eni, his sister-in-law notwithstanding. Does Samoa News not see any community responsibility to be more on top of this story, more accurate, more complete and more unbiased than it has been so far?

If not Samoa News, who? No one can rely on the government-owned TV station, the woefully underfinanced Samoa Post or Monica Miller’s five-minute news updates.

Faleomavaega’s Credibility in Washington Continues to Sink

While he may have gained renewed popularity here last fall thanks to his comfortable re-election margin, it has not helped his credibility in Washington, where his troubles continue despite his party’s control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

It is hard to know where to begin.

Eni and the other non-voting delegates were invited to a White House reception recently along with a couple dozen other Members of Congress. It was a routine event that was one of several receptions the administration is holding for legislators from both parties. So unremarkable that neither Delegates Madeleine Bordallo (GU) nor Donna Christensen (VI) bothered to make note of it by press release but Faleomavaega not only issued a release but even had his wife come in from Utah, where she has lived apart from him for a number of years, to accompany his to the White House.

Perhaps President Obama was tossing him a bone, since his secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is not including him in her entourage on her first trip abroad, to the Far East. Just as Obama took with him on Air Force One to Illinois the Republican congressman for the area he was visiting, Peoria, so, too, is it not unusual for a secretary of State to take key members of Congress with him/her when traveling abroad, especially when Congress is out of session.

When he was picked again to chair his House subcommittee, Eni said: “I thank the people of American Samoa whose chairmanship this is,” Faleomavaega said. “I look forward to bringing a Pacific perspective to U.S. foreign policy affecting this part of the world, and to working closely with the Obama Administration and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to bring renewed commitment and attention to this vital region that has been overlooked for too long.”

Looks like he won’t be working all that closely with Hillary because even though Congress passed the stimulus bill and recessed for a long Presidents’ Day holiday, Eni is nowhere to be seen with Clinton, who also declined to testify at his hearing on North Korea last week, or even send a lower level official, even though she is traveling to South Korea as part of her trip this week.

Maybe Hillary doesn’t want Eni anywhere nearby while she is in Jakarta trying to establish a new strategic partnership. According to this article in The Jakarta Post http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/17/us-and-indonesia-enter-a-strategic-partnership.html the Obama administration is nervous that some members of their own party, like Faleomavaega, might upset the applecart by pushing their human rights causes. It is rumored that Jakarta will be one of the earliest trips Obama himself will make and Clinton likely will lay the groundwork for that. It will be interesting to see if he takes Eni along with him either. There are still people convinced Eni made a secret deal with the Indonesians to seal Obama’s school records while Eni was on a visit there himself last year.

So, exactly where is Eni if not with Hillary? Well, he’s in Kuwait visiting Samoan troops. That is nowhere near the Asia-Pacific region over which his subcommittee has jurisdiction.

Ooops, we forgot. His subcommittee also considers global environmental questions, so that gives him license to travel anywhere he pleases. No doubt his chairman added that responsibility to keep Eni out of Washington as much as possible. The more he is in the air, the less damage he can do on the ground. We can just picture his press release writers doing their best trying to suppress giggles as they wrote that he also would be going to the Vatican on this trip to confer with Holy See officials on—get this—environmental issues.

Before leaving town, Eni said “I am grateful to Chairman Berman of the Foreign Affairs’ Committee for allowing me to visit our soldiers in Kuwait, and to meet with officials in Italy regarding ways we can work together to address the serious issue of climate change affecting our Pacific Island region.” We’re sure his boys in the back room chuckled and high-fived each other when Samoa News ran that one without incredulity.

Eni undoubtedly was happy to have the opportunity to get out of town and lick his wounds after his humiliating defeat in the stimulus package last week. All he really came up with for American Samoa was a GAO study (which he could have ordered on his own authority) of the impact of minimum wage raises in the territory. Even that was not a singular achievement because a study for the Northern Marianas will be conducted at the same time.

The four territorial delegates--all Democrats--offered an amendment to the stimulus bill requesting $500 million for the OIA to provide for critically needed, high-priority, and shovel-ready capital improvement (CIP) projects for American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) but it was rejected by the House. In contrast, the new governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuno (R), did get infrastructure money for his island. So much for party connections.

Eni made several appeals to the Senate, including one to his long-time “ally,” Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI), now the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. As such, Inouye was positioned to approve this request with a nod of his head but he did not. So, all the territories wound up with is money coming out of the usual formula grants. Eni's groveling to Inouye is enormously embarrassing. He put out a press release after he met with him in which he said: "After having worked with Senator Inouye for some 20 years now, he has my utmost respect and admiration. He is more than a mentor to me. He is my friend, and I am deeply appreciative of everything he does for American Samoa . . . Truly we are fortunate that a man like Senator Inouye has our best interest at heart. It is my privilege to serve with Senator Inouye . . . "

Nice try but no ad on for the islands. Could he possibly have wrapped his lips any more tightly around Inouye's masculine appendage?

In their letter appealing for CIP funds, the delegates suggested that “If offsets are required [in the bill], then we have proposed offsetting these increases with decreases in amounts available to the insular areas in certain programs in the bill, based on an understanding that the funding increase to the OIA be fairly distributed amongst the territories.” It went on to say “Increased funds at the OIA would provide greater flexibility to territories in addressing high priority infrastructure projects which are “shovel ready” and can be commenced within the next 18 months,” and concluded “We further believe that OIA’s existing management structure and its familiarity with each territory makes it well-suited to execute these projects.”

Sorry, Eni, yet again no cigar. Give him some credit, however, for in a letter to Gov. Togiola Tulafono, Senate President Gaoteote Palaie and House Speaker Savali Talavou Ale, Eni admitted congressional conferees who met to iron out final language of the bill did not provide a “separate funding stream” for the Interior Department’s Office of Insular Affairs for specific needs of the territories as originally sought by the Delegates. Hard to swallow, but facts are facts.

But, speaking of the minimum wage study, we suggest GAO, while they are at it, examine Eni’s statements over the past two years to try to find some consistency. By our count, he took seven different positions in 2006-08. So far this year, he already seems to have taken two. Last month he wrote Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller urging him to halt the next minimum wage incremental increase due in May but in commenting on the GAO study approved in the stimulus bill he said “Can we sustain a third increase? I do not know the answer to this question. This is why I have called for a serious study of the problem because, like Mr. Robinson (chairman of the American Samoa Chamber of Commerce), I believe enough is enough.” Huh? Come again?

Sounds to us like he is setting up others to take the blame if the increases keep on coming. “On repeated occasions,” said Faleomavaega, “I have requested this information from ASG and from our local Chamber of Commerce because, until we have compelling evidence to do so, Congress will not and should not roll back minimum wage. The time has come for the Chamber, ASG, and our canneries to provide the GAO with the information it needs for Congress to determine whether or not our economy can or cannot afford future increases,” he said.

So much for his letter to Miller last month asking increases be halted.

Meanwhile, do not hold your breath waiting for this headline: “Eni Says Congress Should Not Roll Back Minimum Wage.”

Maybe we are splitting hairs. Maybe he is saying there should be no increase but no roll back either. GAEO should ask.

Before leaving the subject of the stimulus bill, we spotted one Mormon website http://mormonism-unveiled.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-latter-day-saints-lds-in-congress.html that reported that the Mormon members of Congress all voted along party lines, with the Democrats for it and Republicans against it, noting that the Democrats were in effect voting against the Mormon value of self-reliance. Eni is one of only four Mormon Democrats in Congress. The vast majority are Republican.

On another note in Washington, the freshman delegate from the Northern Marianas, Greg Sablan, is beginning to make some legislative moves. Recently he introduced a bill to give the delegates from the Northern Marianas and American Samoa additional service e academy appointments, equivalent to the number given to the delegates from Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Eni has signed on as a cosponsor. Our question is why only now? Eni’s been there 20 years.

One of Eni’s first bills 20 years ago was to create four reserved seats for Indians, an idea Michael Barone, an influential political writer and Almanac of American Politics editor, called one of the worst legislative ideas he had ever heard.

Don't expect to see any of this in the local media, especially Samoa News, which wouldn't know analysis if it bit them. Especially when it comes to Eni. His sister-in-law is a top editor on the paper.

And so it goes.

Indonesia Controversy Persists

The controversy over Barack Obama's citizenship and what role Faleomavaega may have played in helping to cover up Obama's childhood years in Indonesia jut don't seem to go away. What should be troubling to American Samoa voters is having in Washington a delegate who may be preoccupied not only with his incessant traveling but entanglements over his July, 2007 trip to Indonesia at a time when a new president and a new congress will moving rapidly on all fronts. In such an atmosphere, we need a delegate who not only will stick around in Washington but who will not be distracted by the business at hand. Here is the latest clip up on YouTube this morning:

American Samoa and the Indonesia Connection

The story in the Oct. 20 Samoa News about the Indonesian ambassador’s visit to American Samoa raises lots of questions that beg for answers. Let’s just take them in the order they come to mind from a reading of the article:

http://www.samoanewsonline.com/publicviewstory.php?storyid=1449&newspaperid=189&edition=1224496800&newssection=LocalNews

The paper says the article is “based on a press release” but does not identify who issued the release. Since there is nothing posted in the press release section of Faleomavaega’s website, we assume the governor issued the release.

On October 8, in the only other media coverage of this story, Samoa News reprinted a letter Faleomavaega wrote the U.S. attorney general requesting the FBI "immediately" investigate this matter but there has been no coverage of any response to the letter by Justice nor any evidence Samoa News asked the local FBI office if it were looking into the issue. The letter to Justice also revealed that the ambassador would personally visit American Samoa to pursue the matter but there was no press coverage of his arrival or his visit.

According to the October 20 story, the ambassador arrived Thursday night and paid a courtesy call on the governor on Friday to “express his sincere gratitude for facilitating the smooth departure of the 42 Indonesian fishermen who were stranded” in the territory. It sounds like the matter already had been resolved before his arrival. If so, why did he bother to travel all the way from Washington, just to personally thank the governor?

The paper also said that when it published the October 8 story it "was unable to obtain any other specific information on the case and was told by government officials that no such ‘case’ existed.” That apparently is still the case but how do you “hide” 42 fishermen from public view on a small island like Tutuila where the coconut wireless works overtime. Apparently it isn’t connected to the media.

The paper goes on to report that Togiola hosted a private dinner for the ambassador on Saturday evening. How private was it? Who was in attendance? Was Faleomavaega there? If this were a private dinner, does that mean the governor did not pay for it out of his protocol funds and that it was not held at Government House? If any government funds or facilities were used, then shouldn’t the governor release the names of the people who attended the dinner?

With so much having been alleged in the blogosphere about Faleomavaega’s July, 2007 visit to Jakarta having included a secret mission for Barack Obama to seal the records of Obama’s childhood time in the country in exchange for muting criticism of Jakarta’s treatment of West Papua, is this seemingly unnecessary visit of the ambassador to American Samoa coincidental? Some have privately suggested that perhaps the ambassador might be bringing cash to help Faleomavaega’s re-election campaign in exchange for continued quiet about West Papua. Might he also have brought some cash to aid Togiola’s election as well? Are diplomats given the “courtesy of the port” or is their luggage examined? Was the ambassador’s luggage searched for large amounts of cash?

Did anyone see these 42 fishermen go out on a plane? It seems to us there are a lot of questions that the local media should be asking. Our betting is that the story dies with today’s release unless the blogs pick up on it and press the issue. Did you notice the release was only issued and published after the ambassador was safely out of American Samoa air space? Curious, very curious.

Faleomavaega and the Indonesian Connection

Stories continue to circulate on the internet speculating that in July of 2007 Barack Obama sent Faleomavaega on a secret mission to Jakarta to persuade the Indonesians to seal up the childhood records of Obama, who was at that time known as Barry Soetoro. In exchange, Faleomavaega supposedly arranged for cash assistance and promised to mute his criticism of the Indonesian government over its policies in West Papua. Faleomavaega did in fact speak more favorably of the regime on his departure according to press accounts of the trip but the rest remains speculation at this moment.

Another interesting occurrance has been pointed out, however, which may or may not be coincidental. Although Obama's record justifiable places him in the left wing of his party, he did not join the Congressional Progressive Caucus when he was elected to the Senate. The CPC is a group of the most leftwing members of the House and Senate and includes the likes of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee from the House plus the Senate's only self-identified socialist, Bernie Sanders. Even though his Senate voting record clearly places him in this group, he did not join, perhaps to burnish a more centrist image in preparation for his presidential run. CPC was founded in the early 1990s and Faleomavaega was a charter member. As recently as 2003 he defended his membership in the press when he was criticized for belonging to a group whose views on such issues as abortion, the Iraq war, prayer in school and American flag burning were so far outside the mainstream of Samoan thought.

However, just about the time Obama joined the Senate, Faleomavaega quietly withdrew his membership from the CPC. Coincidence? Maybe. But there are some who think he may be hedging his bets in case he loses this election so that he might be in line to be named assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific. In a debate with his opponents last week, he made a point of telling the audience that he was a strong Obama supporter. This is unusual because presidential politics usually do not play a role in local campaigns since American Samoa does not vote in presidential elections and candidates for office, including congress, do not run under national party labels. Was his public endorsement meant to send yet another signal to Obama? There has been speculation that he stayed away from the local Democratic party's national delegate selection caucus last spring (he was in New Zealand inspecting a new visa system) because he knew he would not be able to pry away any delegates from Hillary Clinton, who the governor and the party establishment was backing. Interestingly enough, however, Faleomavaega did show up for the caucus in Hawaii, which claims Obama as a native son and where Obama's sister is active.

Whatever favor he may be currying with Obama, to ensure that he doesn't lose this election in American Samoa Faleomavaega is expected to be flush with contributions from his usual sources: party leadership groups, labor unions and Asian related special interest PACs. So far, none of these groups appear on his FEC reports but they are expected to be after the October 15 public release of quarterly receipts and disbursements. Meantime, people are said to be nervous on island that the Indonesian ambassador to the U.S. who is due this week in Pago Pago might be carrying large amounts of cash for Faleomavaega to distribute around the island on election day.