BOB SCHAFFER REMINISCES ABOUT HIS FABULOUS TRIP TO THE MARIANNAS

Rep. Schaffer investigating slave labor in the Mariannas

No politician who has ever gotten free skybox tickets, a free dinner, a free corporate airplane ride, nice gifts for the family or fat contributions would ever admit that these little "perks" have in any way influenced his or her policies or votes. John McCain, for example, has made a career out of stuffing millions of dollars of contributions and perks from people with business before the committees he headed, up his ass while loudly and self-righteously decrying the pernicious influence of cash on the political system and on politicians less incorruptible than himself (apparently everyone). Sometimes you get the idea he isn't running against a Democrat at all, but against corrupt Alaska Republicans Ted Stevens and Don Young, the Bridge to Nowhere being a theme in every speech McCain has made in the past 2 years. But today it isn't McCain's, Stevens' or Young's disgraceful relationships with lobbyists and bribery we're going to look at, but a close ally of all three of them, Bob Schaffer (R-CO), a former far right congressman.

Why bother with a former congressman and why today? Bob Schaffer is the GOP nominee for the open Senate seat in Colorado and today's expose in the Denver Post is making today the worst day of the campaign so far. Today's Post examines, in some depth, the startling relationship between then-congressman Schaffer and the king of the Culture of Corruption, now jailed Jack Abramoff. Except for the lurid details, the story itself is pretty commonplace. Schaffer and his wife went on an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Marianas Islands to, he claimed, get a first hand look at the near slave labor conditions of factories in those American colonies. Abramoff, who represented the factory owners, paid for it all and Schaffer and the Mrs. had a grand old time and then declared everything at the slave labor factories was kosher. Isn't that, after all, the way it's supposed to work under a Republican regime?

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.

He left believing that allegations of widespread abuse were largely unfounded-- blaming them on Big Labor's efforts to shut down a booming textile industry allowed to use the "Made in USA" label but dependent on tens of thousands of imported workers.

Ahhhh... the free market and it's champions! To this day Schaffer describes the Marianas as a "model" system that he would like to see imported into mainland U.S.A. although "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." Instead of sharing a prison cell with Abramoff-- for every briber, after all, there is a bribee-- Schaffer is going to the voters of Colorado and asking them to send him to the U.S. Senate to represent them.

So what is this "model" system would like to import to Colorado and the rest of the U.S.-- his explicit declaration? Schaffer claims he saw lots of shiny happy workers. He says they were smiling when he came in from a hard day of parasailing to "investigate" a factory. And whatever brouhaha there was, was simply the doing on those evil commie labor organizers-- the ones the Colombian government knows how to take care of. But even the Department of Labor couldn't back up Schaffer's and DeLay's and Abramoff's shameless bullshit on behalf of the factory owners. (Abramoff was paid $11 million to deliver congressional votes like those of Congressman Schaffer and he bragged that he was able to stop human rights legislation "cold" in the Republican-controlled House.)

At heart of the issue is the islands' massive textile industry, which is exempted from the U.S. minimum wage as well as most American immigration laws. The Northern Marianas economy is built on thousands of workers from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh, some of whom pay labor recruiters as much as $7,000 to land a job on U.S. soil.

A class-action lawsuit filed the year Schaffer toured the islands alleged that many of those workers lived in slum conditions, housed seven to a room in barracks surrounded by barbed wire designed to keep the workers in. Workers in some factories labored 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the suit alleged-- without pay if they fell behind set quotas.

A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.

The islands' factories were cited by the U.S. Department of Labor more than 1,000 times for safety violations in the late 1990s.

Josh at TPM puts Schaffer's junket to the Mariannas and his bizarre claims that we need to import their purely fascist economic system to the U.S. into some political context.


UPDATE: SCHAFFER'S PANTIES IN A MAJOR BUNCH

Schaffer and his attack dog campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, flipped out over the charges against Shaffer and Wadhams, typically, said the Post is guilty of "character assassination." A follow-up story this morning makes it clear that Schaffer more than endorsed the GOP's pawn-- and Abramoff employer-- in the Mariannas.

At two key moments in the political life of Benigno Fitial-- governor of the Northern Mariana Islands and a powerful former ally of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff-- then-Congressman Bob Schaffer was among several Republican U.S lawmakers who stepped in to lend their support, according to a copy of advertisements posted on a national blog and another obtained by the Denver Post.

The first was in 1999, when Fitial, who supported the islands' garment industry, was preparing an underdog run for House speaker of the Commonwealth Legislature. The second came two years later, when Fitial was running for governor of the islands.

The two instances, in which Schaffer endorsed Fitial in ads in island newspapers, show that Schaffer has had close and enduring ties with key politicians on the American protectorate, extending relationships he developed while on a fact-finding mission there in August 1999. They also show that Schaffer was part of a concerted and public campaign by Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources to boost Fitial's public career when he became key to extending a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract for Abramoff from the island's government.