Stayman’s expulsion

In an editorial he wrote last Friday, Publisher John Del Rosario seriously called Al Stayman’s objectivity into question. I don’t know why Mr. Rosario would even bother making the effort. Everybody in the CNMI already knows Mr. Stayman is anything but “level-headed,” particularly where the CNMI is concerned. So I have to believe that our Editor-in-Chief was probably responding to a ridiculous assertion made by someone else–by someone who, incredibly enough, thinks that Mr. Stayman is the right man for the compact-impact negotiations.

The “level-headed” allegation may have just been another ruse: a face-saving measure for Mr. Stayman, who was probably transferred out of the OIA when higher federal authorities finally realized that his presence at the Interior Department was absolutely detrimental to U.S.-Commonwealth relations.

In the CNMI, no federal man is probably more resented than Mr. Stayman. Virtually every local CNMI leader, from Senator Pete P. Reyes to former Governor Froilan Tenorio, has, at one point or another, expressed great outrage at Mr. Stayman’s fanatical anti-CNMI bias.

To be sure, Mr. Stayman has been a tireless crusader for a federal takeover of our islands. He has compiled a series of unfavorable (and highly questionable) reports against us. He has submitted these reports to the US Congress, in a blatant effort to completely discredit us and weaken our position on local self-government and economic self-sufficiency–areas Interior is supposed to be supporting.

But Mr. Stayman has committed far more serious transgressions than merely filing questionable reports to Congress. Stayman actually went on the radio talk show circuit in Washington, D.C., feeding the American public tainted NMI information and thereby attempting to galvanize American public opinion against us. There is no telling how many press releases and other damaging material emanated from Mr. Stayman’s office.

We have heard that Mr. Stayman may have diverted federal Interior funds towards heightened OSHA inspections of CNMI garment factories (probably swaying OSHA toward its takeover agenda in the process). We also know Stayman was directly responsible for wasting more than $100,000 in federal taxpayer funds on a private investigator tasked with digging up the goods on CNMI factories.

Yet, to this day, Mr. Stayman has never proven his alarming charges of forced garment factory abortions. Indeed, it is highly doubtful that he ever will, no matter how much federal tax money he squanders.

There are a few other memorable Stayman deeds as well, such as the time he referred to our local Immigration Department as “basically amounting to organized crime”–this, just a year or two after he praised the department for its reform efforts.

Or how about the time Mr. Stayman toured our island with a whole bevy of personal bodyguards? Remember how he insulted the people of the CNMI by implying that we were a bunch of deranged, labor-abusing savages capable of doing him harm for standing up for noble “American values”–despite the fact that (unlike Puerto Rico and other territories) there has not been a single instance of violence against federal officials, in spite of our considerable political differences?

Mr. Stayman level-headed? Anything but! He was probably moved from the OIA in order to cover up Interior violations of The Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activism during office hours, using government resources.

Stayman, David North (OIA public affairs officer), and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may all be guilty of usurping their government authority to systematically discredit our islands and politically assassinate any and all House Republicans who had the audacity to come to our defense. These federal bureaucrats should be permanently removed from public office.