Saturday, February 04, 2006

John Boehner -- same as the old boss:

...billing records from the Northern Mariana Islands, a former Abramoff client, show at least 11 contacts between members of Abramoff's Marianas lobbying team and Boehner's office -- one with Boehner himself.

The contacts took place between February 1996 and August 2001. One of the lobbyists was David Safavian, who later became the Bush administration's chief procurement official and recently was indicted on charges of obstructing investigations of his ties to Abramoff. Safavian was the first administration official indicted in the Abramoff scandal.


Surely you remember the garment industry in the Northern Marianas:

Most of the workers are "young women from China who have been promised by recruiters that they are going to good jobs in America," [Brian] Ross [of ABC News] reported.

"Instead many find themselves kept behind barbed wire, in rat-infested labor camps, and put to work in huge Chinese- and Korean-owned garment factories--often under sweatshop conditions--making clothes for the American market," he said.

The clothes can legally be labeled "Made in the USA." ...

Officials on Tuesday also confirmed what an ABCNEWS 20/20 investigation had found--that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs.

"When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion," said Tu Xiao Mei, a woman who lost her job after refusing an abortion....

Saipan has spent millions on Washington lobbyists and given top Republicans in Congress free trips to the beautiful Pacific island, including one over Christmas for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

"You represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America," he told outgoing Governor Froilan Tenorio, a distant cousin of the current governor, at a dinner in Saipan this past New Year's eve....


There's a good roundup of information about Safavian, DeLay, and the Marianas here.

And there's more in the link at the top of this post about Boehner's diligent work for well-heeled campaign contributors:

Business groups that have assisted Boehner's fundraising praise his legislative work.

'I want to commend you for your leadership,' a National Federation of Independent Business official wrote Boehner in 2004, thanking him for his support of legislation to revise the nation's workplace safety law and aid small businesses in fighting what they called burdensome regulations.

NFIB's PAC gave $10,000 to Boehner's campaign last year.


Maybe he's not exactly Tom DeLay yet, but he's off to a good start.

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