Blood on the Hands, Money on the Mind
June 10th, 2006Yesterday, Tom DeLay said that he had served with honor in the House of Representatives. I, of course, disagreed, as many of us do. Tom DeLay is human filth, and that’s all there is to it. There is no nuance, no reason to have an extended discussion about it: DeLay is a vile, disgusting human being, not just because he blackmailed freshman House members in 1999 so as to make them vote to Impeach Clinton when they didn’t want to, not just because he spent his time in Washington curling up to every lobbyist in town, but because he was responsible for things like this.
At a time when the Republicans like to talk up human dignity and make mentions of fixing Immigration Law, this should be all you need to know about their truest, darkest intentions. (Special thanks to the special person who informed me of this sleazy situation.)
Members of Congress announced today they are re-introducing legislation to reform labor and immigration laws in a U.S. territory that they say Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff protected from scrutiny for over a decade. Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Hilda Solis (D-CA), and John Spratt (D-SC) are introducing The United States-Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Human Dignity Act, which they hope will apply basic labor protections and U.S. immigration laws to the Pacific territory.
Indentured servitude, sweatshops–even forced abortions–are well-documented practices in Marianas islands factories, which have thus far managed to avoid U.S. labor laws while still, as a U.S. territory, applying “Made in the U.S.A.” labels to the finished product. DeLay extolled the Saipan garment industry as “a perfect petri dish of capitalism.” Miller sought support for the bill through a Dear Colleague letter sent to fellow legislators with the subject line, “Tom DeLay out, human dignity in.”
“For more than ten years, my efforts, and the efforts of so many others, have been thwarted,” Miller said, “by the corrupt partnership of two of Washington’s most powerful players: Representative Tom DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and by their allies in Congress. Abramoff worked on behalf of the Marianas to, among other things, block implementation of U.S. labor laws. He arranged for current Marianas governor Beningo Fitial, while he was still a member of the territory’s house, to meet with President Bush and then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL).
Disgusting, unequivocally and absolutely. I say Democrats run on this issue, and anyone who opposes the application of labor laws to these places ought to be defeated.
Israel recently struck Palestine and the Palestinians — read: Hamas — responded by calling off their truce with Israel. It makes me wonder what our country would be like if we had a President willing to truly stand for Human Rights, with regard to the Marianas, and who could be bothered to do something about the violence in the Middle East but, as The Price of Loyalty tells us, George Bush decided early in his Presidency that it was time for America to “detach” itself from Israel-Palestine and let them work it out by themselves. Bill Clinton wrote in his memoirs that the situations in the Middle East and between China and Taiwan were interesting, in that, with regard to Taiwan-China, “the politicians should stay out of it, as that’s a situation that, left alone, will resolve itself” whereas the Middle East needs active, political intervention and diplomacy or else it’ll get worse. And isn’t that the truth?
How appalling that those most likely to talk up God are those most willing to sit back and allow, in the case of the Middle East, the murder of innocents because they believe that it would be embarrassing to fail at bringing peace to the Middle East, and so they’d rather not try; how disgusting that those most likely to accuse one of being unGodly or who would parade themselves in front of a Church are willing to allow slave labor on American soil. It’s such a shame that the media is unwilling to report that Tom DeLay and George Bush have blood on their hands because they had money on their mind.