"Forced Abortions & Sweatshops: A Look at Jack Abramoff's Ties to the South Pacific Island of Saipan & How Tom DeLay Became An Advocate for Sweatshop Factory Owners"
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BRIAN ROSS: Essentially what he accomplished was to stop legislation, which is easier to do than to get it through. He was able to block legislation that would have changed the labor and immigration laws in Saipan and made it illegal to have these kinds of contracts. You couldn't have a contract like that in Los Angeles or anyplace else of the United States where the flag flies. But you could in Saipan. That was the loophole they were trying to close under the Clinton administration.
And in fact, when people at the Department of Interior attempted to do that, DeLay actually tried to introduce a bill to cut off funding for that particular section of the Department of Interior, to stop them from essentially backing the workers’ claims. And it became an ugly situation on Capitol Hill. And DeLay and others, but DeLay in particular, were involved in blocking the legislation and making sure that that status quo continued on Saipan. []
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/04/1524256__________________________________________
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'In the late 1990s, the Clinton adminstration wanted to apply US labor laws to the Marianas Islands, to prevent sweatshop labor and forced prostitution.
The businessmen on the islands wanted Tom DeLay to make sure no changes passed Congress. DeLay did.
Then Tom DeLay was House Majority Whip. Today DeLay is the House Majority Leader. '
http://www.moveleft.com/moveleft_essay_2005_05_16_conservative_con_tom_delay_denies_his_corruption.aspArmey and DeLay, opposing a Clinton administration proposal to bring the Marianas under U.S. minimum wage and immigration laws, wrote a letter last year to Gov. Frolian Tenorio (the top Marianas official who was replaced last month by a relative, Pedro Tenorio). They assured Tenorio they would block any move to reform the Marianas' unique wage and immigration laws.
The administration's proposed changes, they wrote, "are counter to the principles of the Republican Party, and this Congress has no intention of voting on such legislation."wpe7.jpg (4011 bytes)
Given their clout in the majority party, Armey and DeLay have made good on that promise. An aide to U.S. Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who has been active in exposing the truth about the Marianas, says he hasn't even been able to get a hearing scheduled on the matter.
The trips DeLay and the five senior Armey staff members have made to the islands have been on the Marianas government's tab, trips typically costing $4,000 to $6,000 per person. Most got rooms at the Hyatt Regency Saipan, a $250-to-$2,500-a-night luxury hotel that, as its Web site seductively notes, "lies on 14 acres of lush tropical garden, lagoons, and a magnificent beach," with amenities such as a championship golf course and snorkeling above coral reefs.
The Nation, which published an article last month appropriately titled "Congress' Beach Boys," pointed out that more than 70 congressional and party officials--mostly Republicans--have traveled to the island on these all-expenses-paid trips over the last two years, along with squadrons of conservative journalists and think-tank types. The magazine described the trips as a "lavishly funded public relations effort by the island's governor...Numerous junketeers have come back singing the praises of the [Marianas]."
Perhaps none more brazenly than DeLay.
Returning last month from his fact-finding trip, a mission on which he took his wife and daughter and got in two rounds of golf at the first-class Lao Loa Bay Golf Resort, DeLay blasted critics of what he called Saipan's "free market success." He went on to explain how he wants to use a set of Chinese-owned sweatshops on a far-off U.S. territory--factories manned by low-paid Chinese or Sri Lankan indentured servants living in squalor--as a model for Mexican labor camps here on the mainland.
He told a reporter for the Guam-based Pacific Daily News that the workers' barracks "by some U.S. standards could be criticized," but the garment factories he toured were air-conditioned and clean.
"I didn't see anyone sweating," DeLay said, reportedly with a laugh.
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http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/Armey/news2.htmlPlus many, many other articles when you enter the words- Clinton tried to change labor laws Northern Marianas- into Google.
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