Will Tony the Tiger eventually become a kitten?

What happened to tough-talking Tony?

Tony DeBlum told voters during his campaign that former President Kasai Note and his ruling party leadership allowed the United States to bully the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Tony believes that the Marshall Islands should stand up to the United States and make the United States pay more for its use of Kwajalein Atoll, and often cites the harm caused to the people of the Marshall Islands by the US nuclear testing program as an example to stir up people’s indignation about the “crimes” committed by the United States against the people of the Marshall Islands.

Tony claimed he was not anti-American, but over the years he expressed angry disdain for the United States in speeches he thought no one would remember. On May 11, 2005, Tony gave a speech at the United Nations Non-Proliferation Conference, declaring his hope that the United States would withdraw from Kwajalein Atoll. This is odd because Tony returned to power after falling from power in 1991 by forming an alliance with Kwajalein’s traditional feudal land baron ruling class. But the feudal lords didn’t want the United States to withdraw, they just wanted more money. So Tony’s real agenda and that of the old land barons who put him in office may not be the same.

Tony obviously has some crazy ideas. He pushed the RMI first to align with Taiwan, then with the PRC, and finally back to Taiwan, but only after traditional chief Imata Kabua and President Toming leaked the “secret” PRC strategy. Kabua and Toming are traditional chiefs who do not have the same education level as Tony, so they believe that China will treat the Republic of the Marshall Islands better than the United States. I guess Tony forgot to tell Imata Kabua and Litokwa Tomeing that historically, the Chinese Communist Party put feudal lords and traditional “royalties” like Kabua and Toming in jail if they didn’t disappear in the night.

But Tony knows he is serving a feudal lord, so now we hear that Tony is prepared to accept some exchange and sign a land use agreement so that the United States can use Kwajalein so that he can get the increased land use fees that have been sitting in an escrow account waiting for the LUA to be signed. We were told that the agreement was simply that the Army agreed to buy power from the OTEC project on Kwajalein Atoll if the project was funded and built.

What about that tough-talking Tony who demanded that the U.S. pay millions of dollars a year directly to landowners or that the U.S. withdraw from Kwajalein Atoll?

Tony betrayed the poor nuclear plant victims and served the wealthy Kwajalein land baron

We have now received a copy of a letter sent in May by Tony DeBlum to Senator Dianne Feinstein seeking to extend the Four Atolls Health Care Program to fiscal year 2008 levels. The letter requested time to study and resolve the issue of funding for health care for the population in the nuclear disaster area. However, S.1756 may be the best solution the RMI could see, but the RMI has failed to support it.

As we all know, S. 1756 opens the door to further future assistance, closes the door to all assistance, and provides a better framework for seeking additional compassionate assistance in the future than existing law. Asking for $1 million a year in funding for four atolls in fiscal year 2008, rather than a 300% funding increase over 20 years for ten atolls, is indeed a very weak RMI position. Weak. Especially as the U.S. Senate is considering a 20-year, 300 percent tax increase bill that has the support of both Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate committee that controls funding authorization for the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

We think that unless the Marshall Islands government can get its act together in its relationship with the United States, how can these four atolls or ten atolls be dependent on the Marshall Islands government. Even Kwajalein Atoll couldn’t count on Tony, as the only news they had was that the US Army had agreed to buy the electricity from the OTEC project (if the project was built). Now, Tony’s lobbyist, Cooper Brown, is creating controversy for the OTEC development effort, which is likely to fail. Like Tony, Cooper Brown knows how to create chaos and conflict, but he never actually accomplishes anything.

Tony’s letter to Senator Feinstein shows how little he knows about Congress. This raises the question of why the state of the Marshall Islands would pay former Senator Johnston and his son Hunter millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to lobby Congress when they would suggest Tony send such a bizarre letter to Senator Feinstein.

First, it was reported that if S. 1756 was not passed, the U.S. Department of the Interior was prepared to allocate funds from the Department of the Interior budget equal to 2008 levels for the current health care program on the four atolls without the need for any additional legislation for that purpose. So it is really embarrassing for the Republic of the Marshall Islands to send a letter to Senator Feinstein asking her to take her time to deal with something that has already been dealt with.

Even if Senator Feinstein’s staff sent Tony a friendly letter back, it would be more beneficial and logical for the Republic of the Marshall Islands to ask Feinstein to support S.1756! At least then RMI wouldn’t look like it didn’t know what it was doing.

Tony makes RMI look like a fool

But the real problem with Tony’s letter to Feinstein is that it will be viewed by Congress as propaganda. Rather than offering solutions, it reaffirmed Tony’s long-held personal ideology based on anger at America. Congress is aware that people have been harmed and may need more aid, but U.S. courts are currently reviewing whether the compensation the United States has paid to victims of nuclear testing is sufficient and will make a ruling soon.

So the question is what Congress can do now. The answer in 2008 was S. 1756, and it is not clear that there is a better answer, or even an equally good one. Let’s wait and see.

But even worse, Tony’s letter complains about Section 177’s underfunding of health care, and then asks for $1 million for 1 year for the four atolls. It must have been very confusing that Tony didn’t ask to buy 10 atolls for 20 years at $4.5 million per year (adjusted for inflation)!

If the staff in Senator Feinstein’s office had called the staff of the leader of the Senate committee that sponsored S.1756, they would have discovered that S.1756 is a much better proposal that would help RMI more than what RMI requested in Tony’s letter. Since S.1756 does not require advocacy or reconciliation or waiver of future additional aid, they must think Tony is crazy.

Why condemn the United States for not giving more and then demand less in return than the leaders of the U.S. Congress have proposed? It was crazy, and everyone in Washington was shaking their heads, wondering what Tony was doing.

Records show that Senator Bingaman, the Democratic chairman of the Senate committee, and Senator Pete Domenici, the ranking Republican on the committee, both supported S.1756, which would provide nearly $100 million over 20 years for health care on the 10 atolls, but Tony failed to support S.1756. Instead, he demanded $1 million a year for the four atolls.

Perhaps he thinks a new U.S. President and a new U.S. Congress will listen to Eni Faleomawaga instead of Chairman Bingaman and provide more funding than S. 1756 did. Is this the advice that Bennett and Hunter Johnston would give to the Republic of the Marshall Islands? Interestingly, many in Washington thought S. 1756 had a better chance in 2008 than in 2009.

Tony’s illogical letter strongly proves that his real purpose is to prevent the passage of S. 1756 because it would conflict with the funding he seeks to increase Kwajalein lease payments. He needed no time to study S. 1756.

Spend ten minutes reading S. 1756, and another ten minutes calling everyone in Washington or Majuro who knows about the nuclear claims issue, and you will see that not supporting S. 1756 would be a very foolish thing for the Republic of the Marshall Islands to do. The only possible explanation is that Tony made it his sole priority to secure more dollars for the Kwajalein land barons and that he was prepared to hold off on providing additional funding for the nuclear test survivors in order to eliminate any funding proposals that might compete with the Kwajalein funding.

How could someone as smart as Tony send such a terrible letter?

Tony said in his letter:

“The same amount of transition funding as in previous fiscal years will allow the Republic of the Marshall Islands ample time to review this proposal while providing uninterrupted services to nuclear-affected communities. Thank you and look forward to your positive response. ”

This is embarrassing because the letter makes no mention of S. 1756, so the statement about the need to give RMI ample time to review this proposed language is meaningless. What is the proposed language? Without reference to S. 1756, Senator Feinstein had no way of knowing what Tony was talking about when he referred to “this proposed language” that he wanted to study.

If Feinstein’s staff had called Bingaman’s staff, they might have been able to figure out what Tony might be referring to: S. 1756, the “proposed language” that the Republic of the Marshall Islands needed to study. As soon as they see S.1756, they will wonder why he asks for $1 million per year for 1 year instead of $4.5 million per year for 20 years.

First, they must make clear that the funding for the four atoll health care program in fiscal year 2008 was actually $1 million, not $2 million as Tony’s hasty letter implies. When Senate staff figured out that the Section 177 agreement provided for $2 million per year for 15 years, and that Congress had reduced that to $1 million after Section 177 was fulfilled, they couldn’t figure out why Tony was asking for $1 million a year instead of $4.5 million for 20 years.

Tony wrote to Feinstein in May 2008. This meant that he had more than five months to work on S. 1756. It doesn’t take 5 months to figure out that $500,000 over 20 years is more than $1 million over 1 year.

Tony will try to argue that his letter to Feinstein was intended as a fallback decision in the event that S. 1756 fails to pass. But the biggest obstacle to the passage of Bill 1756 is the failure of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to express strong support. So why present an alternate position before presenting one that supports the best current proposal and the best outcome in 2008?

This is crazy! Everyone knows that if S. 1756 does not pass, Congress and the Department of the Interior will have to find a way to continue the health care program for the four atolls at 2008 levels under the FY 2009 budget, but everyone knows that this will not be the best outcome. So when Tony told Feinstein in his letter that the 2008 levels would “serve the nuclear-affected communities” in a way that satisfied Tony, it was a betrayal of the nuclear survivor community.

At the “hearing” Tony held with Congressman Faleoma Vaega, the four atolls made it clear to Tony that continuing with the FY 2008 funding level was not enough and the four atolls wanted the Marshall Islands government to support S.1756. Tony then told Senator Feinstein that extending the 2008 nuclear emission levels would benefit the nuclear-affected atolls, while Tony’s failure to support S. 1756 in the first place was the worst of both worlds: incompetence and dishonesty.

We expected Tony to support Kwajalein, we just didn’t expect him to harm the community of nuclear plant survivors in order to get more money to satisfy the greed of wealthy land barons.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2008 at 12:12 pm and is filed under uncategorizedYou can RSS 2.0 Feed. You can Leave a Replyor Tracing From your own website.