CO-SEN: Bob Schaffer's Excellent Adventure

A few days ago, wingnut Senate candidate Bob Schaffer suggested that a sensible guest-worker program could be modeled along the lines of the Marianas Islands.

He did not appear to be kidding. Apparently the words "Jack Abramoff," "slavery" and "forced abortions" have escaped him.

Or maybe this 1999 fact-finding trip just slipped his mind.

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.

There's an extremely unfortunate photo of Schaffer parasailing while turning a blind eye to the abhorrent conditions in the factories on the island.



It was already going to be tough for Schaffer against Rep. Mark Udall. This is going to be the symbol of the campaign.

And to add insult to injury, today the Senate passed a bill to reform the immigration laws on the Marianas Islands that Schaffer said were so wonderful. It passed 91-4.

Talk about out of touch.

Doolittle's Chickens Coming Home To Roost

John Doolittle is so corrupt, people in other countries are flipping on him:

The governor of the Northern Mariana Islands said Thursday he's cooperating with the Justice Department's corruption investigation around jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which is focused in part on GOP Rep. John Doolittle of Rocklin, Calif. [...]

The Justice Department's interest in Doolittle appears to focus on payments Doolittle's wife, Julie, received from Abramoff for fundraising work unrelated to the Marianas. But Doolittle was also heavily involved in Abramoff's advocacy for the Marianas, endorsing (Benigno) Fitial for governor and pushing federal funding on his behalf.

Doolittle was lobbied on the issue by his own former legislative director, Kevin Ring, who went on to work with Abramoff and now is himself under investigation.

"Doolittle, he's also a friend," said Fitial.

Well, at least he called Doolittle a friend before knifing him. Seems like Fitial wants the CNMI to get its money back from Abramoff's lobbying shops, and if that means turning in Doolittle to do it, then that's what has to be done.

The venue for this admission is interesting.

Fitial spoke to reporters after testifying against a Senate bill that would impose U.S. immigration laws on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a chain of 14 islands just north of Guam in the Pacific. A similar bill passed the Senate in 2000 but Abramoff helped block it from advancing in the House.

The pressing need for this legislation comes directly from Abramoff's and Doolittle's help in keeping the CNMI an island of indentured servitude, where workers are routinely imprisoned at their place of employ, threatened, forced into the sex tourism industry, given abortions against their will, and more.

This bill was stopped in the House in 2000 thanks to the work of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and John Doolittle. That devil's bargain appears to be catching up with Doolittle now.

Dover Bitch has more on how you can help pass this bill and restore rights to those on the CNMI. In addition, you can contribute to Charlie Brown as part of Blogosphere Day and make sure John Doolittle is held fully accountable for what he has done.

The US Attorney Scandal, Jack Abramoff, and John Doolittle

The US Attorney scandal has gobbled up a lot of the headlines recently, but its origin can be traced back five years, well before the firing of 8 federal prosecutors for suspicious reasons in December 2006.

Actually, we have to go back to the island nation of Guam, a well-connected DC lobbyist who's now sitting in a jail cell, and a certain Congressman from Roseville.

Jack Abramoff made a cool seven million dollars from contracts with the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. His duties were essentially to shield the American protectorate from all US labor laws, while retaining the ability to place a "Made in the USA" label on any of their products. This successful lobbying effort allowed the CNMI to create sweatshops where sexual slavery, child labor and forced abortions were part of the landscape. And the greatest ally to Jack Abramoff in Congress on this issue was John Doolitte (CA-04), called a "hero for the CNMI" in internal emails between Abramoff and the CNMI government.

Abramoff's success in stopping all efforts to reform the labor situation in the CNMI caught the notice of other Pacific island protectorates. He soon got a job lobbying for Guam, and sought to lobby against a court reform bill which would weaken the authority of the Guam Superior Court. The Superior Court hired Abramoff, unusual in itself, and paid him in a series of laundered $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach lawyer. Abramoff was trying to hide his involvement lobbying for the Superior Court while seeking to torpedo the bill that would impact them.

Now, Guam had a federal prosecutor, named Fred Black, and he saw this business and opened a grand jury investigation. At precisely that time, he was fired.

A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after [...]

(Abramoff's financial) transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.

Black was looking into other official corruption on the island as well, so it was sensible that Abramoff would want him out of the picture.

This connection to the current scandal, a clear case of firing a federal prosecutor to shield Republicans from corruption investigations, has caught the notice of the Congress.

Two House committee chairmen yesterday asked that the congressional probe into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys be widened to include the case of acting U.S. Attorney Fred Black who was replaced in 2002 after he began investigating the now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

California Congressman George Miller, the Education and Labor Committee chairman, and West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall, the Natural Resources Committee chairman, have repeatedly pressed for a full investigation of Abramoff's dealings with the CNMI and its sweatshop industry and of the replacement of Fred Black, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI.

Nobody in the Congress today was closer to Jack Abramoff when all of this was going on than John Doolittle. He received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Abramoff. He knew exactly what Abramoff was doing in the various Pacific protectorates, and in fact he supported it with his votes. He enabled the kind of politicization of the cause of justice that we see today.

Fortunately, we have a choice in Congress. Charlie Brown needs your support at the end of the first quarter. Please consider making a contribution.

P.S. Yeah, and Jerry McNerney too. He just announced through email that he WON John Kerry's "March Madness" competition, and will receive funding from the Senator.

Jerry McNerney (CA-11)	$
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