Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes (opens in new tab)

I worked on a US Government contract to help the local colleges. Saipan is THE most corrupt and backward place on the planet, no question about it. I've spent about three months there over several years, and while the locals not in positions of power are pleasant, the politicians and others are the laziest group I've ever known. They do whatever they can to scam the US government into giving them "grants" for all sorts of line-their-own-pockets kinds of gigs.

I thought then when I was doing this project I was "helping" these folks who didn't have all we have. BS! I wasted my time and my life helping ungrateful people who ripped me off. I would not trust Saipan in any dealing with money involved.

A negative outcome for all of us would be to have a 20+ year tax cheat end up owing nothing. You can bet the plutocracy will be watching this case closely.

Agreed. The guy may be a crook, but something about that piece doesn't sit well.

For instance, why are all these private law firms spending all this time and money chasing this guy around? Certainly not out of some kind of goodwill on their part. Do they get a cut of what's collected? Are they being paid by somebody? I don't ask because I want to impeach their motives -- it's just a critical part of any story. Any "chase" story has a chaser and a person chased. We're missing key details.

I would also want to hear from the guy in question. What's his side of the story? Even horrible wartime criminals end up on CNN telling us all their side of the story, but this guy gets nothing.

Plus, it's obvious that as a reader I am supposed to have a reaction. Something like "That cheap bastard! I hope they jack the jail up and put him underneath" or some such. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the author trying to push my buttons along those lines. I find being manipulated like that uncomfortable.

Not a quality article in my book. But heck, that's not saying the guy didn't do something wrong. From this article, I just don't know one way or another. All I know is that he has money and that people are chasing him for it.

I think the OP is correct, despite all the people downvoting him for his tone. All these allegations have been been documented.

Don't forget this is the same Saipan that hired Jack Abramoff and lobbied Tom Delay (before BOTH went to jail on other corruption charges).

We turn now to Abramoff’s special relationship with the South Pacific island of Saipan and how it connects to his ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Saipan is an American territory in the South Pacific also known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In the mid-1990s Abramoff was on the payroll of Saipan officials aiming to stop legislation that would crack down on sweat shop conditions, which run rampant on the island. In 1997, Abramoff arranged a lavish trip to the island of Saipan for Delay.

The Delay trip was originally reported by Brian Ross, Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News. We are going to play 2 excerpts from the report that aired on ABC’s 20/20 on March 13th, 1998. In this first excerpt, Ross interviews Allan Stayman, a Clinton administration official in the Department of Interior who was investigating labor conditions in Saipan. Brian also talks to a worker in one of the factories and ends with Eric Gregoire, a human rights worker. Most of the workers in these factories are from mainland China.

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/4/forced_abortions_sweats...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff_CNMI_scandal

I wouldn't have downvoted you, but then your edit included some incredibly bigoted and unwarranted stereotypes:

>...fundamentalist christian [sic] ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town...

>Typical small town american [sic] fundamentalist hillbillies...

>Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist

>The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system.

This last one takes the cake. Even if I take it at your word that the Saipanese are as lazy and corrupt as you make them out to be (which seems to be the general consensus here and on Wikipedia, so I'll accept that for now), you have absolutely zero proof that they became that way because of "fundamentalist missionaries," rather than being that way to begin with. You say that these negative attitudes come "with that belief system." What belief system? It sounds like you're blaming the problems of Saipanese culture on some chimerical theology that doesn't really exist.

If those missionaries were protestants (especially if they were Calvinists) in the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries, they most likely did their best to instill the indiginous people with a solid work ethic[1], exactly the opposite of the vices you are trying to pin on "fundamentalism."

Here's my anecdotal evidence: In college, I briefly dated a Samoan girl who was working on a graduate degree at a nearby university, with her research subject being the colonial history of the South Pacific. Samoa was proselytized by Calvinists in the 19th century, and she told me that when the missionaries first arrived, the Samoans were pretty much the way you describe Saipan today, and that the Calvinist influence helped bring about a more egalitarian and less corrupt culture (with unscrupulous European traders often at odds with the missionaries because they sought to profit from the native corruption). Samoa isn't Saipan, but it is an example of "fundamentalist missionaries" having exactly the opposite effect on a South Pacific culture from what you blame them for in Saipan.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

If I earn $1.00 and owe 20 cents in taxes, I’ve earned my success in the amount of eighty cents’ worth of financial prosperity.

If I keep the entire dollar, I have earned my eighty cents AND I owe 20 cents in unpaid taxes.

This gentleman has not been convicted of any crime, but it is certainly possible that he has “earned his success” AND that he owes money for unpaid taxes.

I didn't downvote you, while I don't think you did the best job of making your point, everyone who clicked downvote should take a minute and read the Wikipedia page on it Saipan because it does sound like a seriously messed up place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saipan

Downvoted purely for "Keep downvoting this, monkeys!". HN would be better off without that sort of nonsense.

I downvoted you for your tone, not your facts - which are entirely correct.

However, I will say that Millard knew all this about Saipan and still located there so he wouldn't have to pay his taxes. If they turn on him, that doesn't make him a hero, no matter how "earned" the money was to start with. It makes him a fool.

I am unfortunately familiar with the CNMI/Saipan and what you say was true 8 years ago; no reason to think it has improved.

How the USA treats trust terriories is pretty shameful.

There are lazy and corrupt people everywhere, saying "one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth" and "the Saipanese are mostly incredibly lazy" tells me more about you then the N. Marianas. Tacking on "this is just about the people in charge" doesn't work either, paint with a thinner brush in the first place.

It's just an internet board, don't get worked up if you get downvoted now and then. Try not to call everyone monkeys and ignorant fools, we're mostly human beings and above average here.

In response to your edit, I've downvoted & flagged you. I've never flagged a comment before.

I have no use for such vitriol in my communities.

Just so you know why I did it.

Really, the whole history of the Trust Territory is a sordid, disgusting mess.

Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example, there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion, 60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it.

It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the 1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same criticisms.

it might be bad form to just be unabashedly for anyone or anything in this world, and, the way the whole thing occurs to me is that werner erhard is one of the GREAT misunderstood mysteries of our time. He is just an average guy who really got into what he was into which was empowering others effectively, I have never met e person who was more compassionate and useful and humble and not caring about $ than this guy, yet the media and anyone with a grievance promoted and repromoted and repromoted a view quite the opposite of him and that is what stuck and what gets repeated when referring to him. Just as well, being in the public spot light sucks and is one of the most useless grotesque phenomenas in society today in my opinion. what artist or politician or person exercising some kind of leadership in life does not inevitably experience the "crowned" turning on them?

the world would be a better place if there war more werner erhards, people who made the success of all humanity as their own personal business.

"crowned"? "war" Freudian slips, meant crowd and were.

Now there's a blast from the past!