Will Slavery Become An Issue In The Colorado Senate Race?

Chip off the ole block

Some Republicans have gone all the way back to before the Republican Party was founded. That Republican Party was all about abolition of slavery. That was Abe Lincoln's Republican Party. But if I were to tell you that today there are Republicans who would like to bring back slavery you would probably think I was just crazy. But then you probably don't know anything about the GOP candidate for Senate in Colorado, Bob Schaffer.

Schaffer may be trying to identify himself with Bush, McCain and the whole GOP catastrophe that has been the American government for the past seven and a half years by loudly proclaiming that he isn't going to the St. Paul Hate Fest next month. But that doesn't unglue him from his dogmatic adherence to their hate-filled and failed ideology-- nor from his own dubious "service" in Congress from 1998 to 2003. The highlight of that episode was his fabulous para-sailing excursion-- compliments of his pal Jack Abramoff-- to the Mariannas. 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.

I don't know when this will be pulled down but sooner or later computer whiz John McCain is going to surf over to Justin Schaffer's Facebook page and call his daddy-- Colorado Republican Senate candidate on McCain's ticket-- and make him take it down. Sure, Republican ideology aspires to the re-introduction of slavery, just like Schaffer said when he got back from the Mariannas. But you're not supposed to tell the voters/perspective slaves that you're for this! And young Schaffer... well take a look at some of the images on what he calls the SchafferFamilyValues page (http://schafferfamilyvalues.com/). Like this:



These are the kinds of family values Bob Schaffer has instilled in his son? He links to his son's website from his own campaign site. He even uses this kid in his campaign commercials. Young Schaffer's family values is all about anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and homophobia. Apparently, young Schaffer gets all worked up over gays:

EVEN CHENEY'S TRIP TO COLORADO FAILS TO MOVE THE DISCUSSION OFF SCHAFFER'S MARIANNAS SCANDAL

No photos of Cheney and Schaffer together were allowed so... I'm sure Schaffer LOVES this one

A couple of days ago we talked a little about the ex-congressman Bob Schaffer's junket to the Mariannas. Since then, Schaffer and his vicious attack dog campaign manager Dick Wadhams, have been in full lockdown, peeping out just long enough to hurl epithets at the Denver Post for exposing Schaffer's ties to Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption. Not even a fundraiser by Darth Cheney for Colorado millionaires-- complete with protesters and arrests-- could move the discussion away from Schaffer's corruption. And man, is Schaffer ever traumatized!

Senate candidate Bob Schaffer brushed off questions today about his dealings with labor reform in the Northern Mariana Islands when he was a congressman and instead reveled in big-time party support he received with a fundraising visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

...Asked during a press conference following Cheney's visit about Denver Post reports that link him to an effort by jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff to quash labor reform in the Mariana Islands in 1999, Schaffer was visibly angry.

"I am really disgusted with the tone and tenor and direction of the Denver Post stories. I have had no contact with the individuals in the story, particularly Jack Abramoff," Schaffer said. "It's a matter of fiction. That's all I'm going to say about it."

Schaffer went to the Northern Mariana Islands as part of a trip partially arranged by Abramoff's firm. He visited textile factories which were the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging abuses of workers. Abramoff had been hired by factory owners and island officials to stave off attempts at reform.

In a recent interview with the Post, Schaffer cited the island's guest-worker program as a "model" that could be followed in overhauling U.S. immigration policy.

Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams said today there is room for a legitimate discussion on that point. The U.S. Department of Labor cited the factories for more than 1,000 safety violations in the late 1990s.

After deflecting one question about his Mariana involvement, Schaffer turned back to his impressions of the Vice President's visit.

He said in a private conversation he had with Cheney, Cheney told him he was impressed with the growth and construction he saw from the window of his limousine as he traveled a short distance from the airport to a private reception for donors to Schaffer's campaign. Schaffer said he told the Vice President the energy industry is having a very positive impact on the area.

Protesters lined part of the Vice President's route waving signs and holding out hands painted red to symbolize Cheney's part in the Iraq War.

Even Democratic attacks on Cheney and Schaffer for their ties to Big Oil and rising gas prices came as kind of a respite from the non-stop barrage over Schaffer's role in the Culture of Corruption. Can you imagine when this sounds like a relief?

Both Bob Schaffer and Dick Cheney have a long history of supporting Big Oil over their constituents, and then receiving large paychecks from Big Oil in return. After six years in Congress supporting Big Oil, including voting to give them $28 million in tax cuts, Bob Schaffer cashed in his favors for a six-figure job as an oil and gas executive. So far, Schaffer’s big oil paychecks have totaled nearly $1 million. Cheney continues to receive a seven-figure Big Oil paycheck from Halliburton -- even while serving as Vice-President.

Cheney-- whose stay in Colorado was a two-hour hit and run-- was holed up in a private residence chosen for one reason: it's proximity to the airport. He charged $150 per person, $500 per couple, a kind of Republican Marriage Penalty. No one was permitted to photograph Cheney and Schaffer together.

One progressive blogger, Eli over at Multi Medium suggested the only way to get the press on to another topic would be for Cheney to shoot Schaffer in the face and just go for the sympathy vote.


UPDATE: LEADERSHIP FOR JACK ABRAMOFF, NOT COLORADO

This is a really good TV spot that puts exactly the right focus on corrupt wingnut Bob Schaffer:

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.