Post ties Sweatshop Schaffer to Abramoff, Marianas Islands trip

Excellent. I'm glad to see that Sweatshop Schaffer's mention of the Northern Marianas Islands as a model for U.S. immigration policy didn't dissapear down the memory hole. This morning's Denver Post has a lengthy article on a trip that Sweatshop Schaffer took with his buddy, and convicted felon, Jack Abramoff to the infamous islands in 1999. The article states,

Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate.

"I plan to walk right into those factories and living quarters to see for myself what conditions exist," Schaffer said in a news release in August of that year.

What he didn't say was that the trip was partly arranged by the firm of now-
jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented textile factory owners fighting congressional efforts to reform labor and immigration laws on the islands and who was being handsomely paid to keep the islands' cherished exemptions.

Schaffer and his wife stayed for free at a palm-studded beach resort and, besides factories, also toured historical sites and met with clients of Preston-
Gates, Abramoff's firm, according to a copy of the trip's agenda archived in Schaffer's congressional papers...

Nine years later, the trip has become a campaign issue: It has left Schaffer defending a guest-worker program criticized in more than a decade of government reports and journalistic exposés; and it links him to what Abramoff later boasted was an incredibly successful lobbying effort to quash reform by cashing in on ties to key House Republicans, including those on the House Resources Committee, on which Schaffer sat.

This should be loads of fun to watch unfold. I can't wait for Sweatshop to try and explain away his numerous ties to Abramoff and explain how again he feels that the Northern Marianas Islands are a model for the U.S. He can try and brush off the allegations of forced abortion, forced prostitution and virtual slavery as being pushed by labor unions but the fact is there are decades worth of independent investigations by journalists that uncovered these inhumane conditions. You can't just brush that aside.

This is a controversy entirely of Sweatshop Schaffer's own making - no one asked him about the Northern Mariana's Islands. He brought it up all on his own. You have to imagine that his campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, has had a few words for Ol' Sweatshop since the first story ran on Monday. After all, Dick has experience with Senate candidates sticking their foot in their mouths,



As a bonus, the Post article comes with this awesome picture of Sweatshop and Mrs. Sweatshop apparently preparing to investigate the conditions in the factories from the air.



Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has lots, lots more. It turns out Sweatshop decided to visit the Northern Mariana's Islands a year after The U.S. Department of Labor had determined that the accusations of a 15 year old sex slave from the Islands were, in fact, true.