Bob Schaffer & Jack Abramoff

There’s been quite the kerfluffle in the blogosphere surrounding Bob Schaffer’s presentation of the Northern Marianas as a good example of a guest worker program. If you haven’t heard about the background story, you certainly will in the coming months. Big Oil Bob has reopened the books on some huge ethics ghosts from Republican past: Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. But wait, it gets better. The story also deals with … forced abortions. I’m going to enjoy watching Republicans trying to spin their way out from all this.

The least shocking thing about this is the utilization of sweatshops in the Marianas. As disgusting as it is, it’s a logical extension of the right-wing effort to destroy workers’ rights here in the United States. What would corporations give to employ workers for next to nothing while increasing the prices on products sold in the U.S.? A lot, considering the way they’ve shut down manufacturing plants state-side and opened up factories in countries with more conservative labor laws (read: little to none).

Now it might seem interesting that a Republican, any Republican, would be associated with a labor force getting abortions – we’ve heard for 30 years now how “pro-life” they are. In fact, they’re so “pro-life” that when female workers at these sweatshops are found to be pregnant, they are forced to get an abortion as a stipulation of their continued employment. But Republicans are more than just a little associated with these vile abuses of common decency.

Jack Abramoff was the island’s hired man on K Street and Tom DeLay was one of the island’s biggest supporters on Capitol Hill. Both men knew of the substandard working conditions that existed in the island’s factories.

Now the connection to Bob Schaffer: he went to the Islands in 1999 to see for himself what the situation was like. Guess what: he “found” nothing wrong. As ColoradoPols put it,

Bob Schaffer has also taken thousands of dollars in campaign money from Saipan politicians linked to this same congressional squashing of human rights reforms. There are literally hundreds of stories out there on the Saipan labor rights issue, which subsequently emerged a key part of the Abramoff scandal.

Gosh I’m shocked … shocked I tell you! that Bob Schaffer didn’t find any labor abuses while “investigating” on Jack Abramoff’s dollar.

This is the kind of “ethics” that existed in the halls of Congress not only when Bob Schaffer was a Representative, but up until the 2006 election when Democrats took back the reins of power. This is the kind of ethics that Bob Schaffer will take back to Congress if he is elected as a Senator from Colorado.

Or we can elect Mark Udall, who has demonstrated that he takes his job and his commitment as a representative of the people seriously.

Manifest Sophistry and AlterNet have even more information. The AlterNet artilce in particular has a good way to frame this:

Despite the growing public awareness of work conditions in the islands, Tom DeLay’s defense of the status quo remained unshaken. In 1998 DeLay co-authored a letter with House Majority Leader Dick Army (R-TX). The two men, writing to the islands’ governor, expressed how “impressed” they were with the Marianas’ “commitment to advancing the principles of free markets, enterprise, tax reform and other innovative approaches to governance.”

When Republicans talk about “free markets”, the Marianas is what they’re talking about. When Republicans talk about tax reform, the Marianas is what they’re talking about.