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(.....snip) "I am very tired," wrote Li Zhen Hua, a 29-year-old Chinese woman in a letter to a friend obtained by the weekly Dallas Observer. "I want to go back to my country but I can't because we must keep two years ... Very busy. So hard. Every day work up to 1:30. I've to work on Sunday. Too much to respond to your letters."
Enter Tom DeLay and his Texas Republican sidekick, Dick Armey. When the Clinton administration sought to yank Saipan's factories into the 20th century in 1994, requiring the workers be paid a minimum wage, overtime and their living conditions improved, the island government hired a platoon of well-connected Washington lobbyists, headed by former DeLay aide Jack Abramoff, to block the plan. Abramoff, in turn, personally or through his family, contributed $18,000 to DeLay's campaign coffers. So far, the island government has paid the firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds $4 million for their efforts, records show. They also treated DeLay and Armey to trips to the island, where they played golf, snorkled and made whirlwind visits to factories especially spiffed up for the occasion, according to several accounts.
"Even though I have only been here for 24 hours, I have witnessed the economic success of the Marianas," DeLay told a banquet crowd. As for the critics of the plantation system, DeLay told the dinner crowd darkly, "You are up against the forces of big labor and the radical left."
The whip was apparently referring to the Clinton administration, whose official in charge of the Marianas, Insular Affairs Chief Al Stayman, wanted to change the sweatshop system. In a private e-mail from Abramoff to island officials, which was made available to Salon, the lobbyist vowed he would "impeach Stayman and his campaign."
Stayman is still on the job, but the Republicans, led by DeLay, have blocked every effort by the Democrats to hold hearings on the issue.
(snip/....)
http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/04news.html
There's a TON to read on this in searches. All CREEPY. One site discusses the fact the factory operators actually force the women to have abortion, to avoid taking them off the production line. It was considered really prime that Tom Delay supports people who want the poor of the world to abort children to avoid paying them for the time they need to give birth.
Abortion's fine, if you can make a profit at it, according to this principle!
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