Right, wrong, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Jesus, you, and me

There is a difference between right and wrong. And if you care about the difference, you damn well better care about politics. Because politics defines what’s being done in your name. A case in point...

Join us on a visit to The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, in, say, the year 2001.

You’re on U.S. soil. But workers here, unprotected by U.S. labor standards, face the rawest forms of 19th century capitalism all by themselves. We’ll let The Texas Observer tell the story...

[Willie] Tan and other venture capitalists had realized they could create a garment industry that was fully protected by U.S. trade laws and virtually immune to the obstructions of federal regulation... All the capitalists needed was a labor force...

[They] contracted with recruitment squads that roved the provinces of China, the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries. The arm’s-length arrangement meant the recruiters’ methods could not be directly connected to corporations chartered in the United States. Typically, the recruits were obligated to pay $5,000 to $7,000 for the privilege of signing one-year labor contracts...

...Large families and communities of peasants raised the money for some of these young workers, whose riches earned in America were supposed to help feed and clothe them. But many recruits could never raise that kind of money. Some were steered to loan sharks... more signed agreements in which they would see none of their wages until the “recruitment fees” were paid back. They were indentured workers, at best.

...They came off the plane and were hustled through immigration and aboard buses, their faces staring out in bewilderment and apprehension as the drivers sped through the winding back streets of the capital city... Their new homes were security-fenced compounds set far back in the jungle. With maybe a sheet thrown over a cord for privacy, the women slept on cots, as many as ten jammed in one small room. They had a dripping showerhead with no privacy or hot water, and a single toilet they lined up to share. Rats and cockroaches roamed freely...

There were about thirty factories. The young women worked upwards of seventy hours a week with no overtime pay, sometimes around the clock for two or three days to meet impossible quotas. They were paid $3.05 an hour to keep the sewing machines humming (the federal minimum wage was then $5.15 an hour)... they quickly found out they had no chance of coming out ahead; the employers billed them for their lodging and food, on top of withholding for the thousands of dollars many still owed on their contracts.

Squares of raw fabric were piled up around their machines as high as they could reach; a glaring electronic production counter nagged them to work harder, longer, faster. The air was filled with dust and lint. Workers were not afforded the low-cost filter masks commonly worn by people with respiratory difficulties; for relief they wore rags over their noses and mouths like the bandanas of Old West desperadoes. If they fell asleep and ran a needle through a finger, there was no first aid station; all they got was a rebuke from a shouting supervisor who called them stupid. And those were the lucky ones...

The story truly does get worse from here. Much worse. Please read it yourself.

We’ll pause to mention that clothes made in the Northern Marianas can say “Made in the USA” -- thereby appealing to patriotic buyers who think they’re avoiding sweatshop merchandise. Which made companies like Wal-Mart, The Gap, J. Crew, and Tommy Hilfiger extremely happy.

Into this worker’s paradise strides a now-familiar face: Representative Tom DeLay, R-TX.

Tom DeLay, his wife Christine, his daughter Dani, and three staff members arrived to celebrate the New Year’s holiday in 1998. They stayed in a posh Hyatt Regency and found time for a couple of rounds of golf under the caring watch of the staffs of the governor and Willie Tan...

When he returned from the trip and a reporter pressed him about sweatshops in the Marianas, he said, “I saw some of those factories. They were air-conditioned. I didn’t see anyone sweating.” Then he laughed.

Inspired by the labor model he saw on Saipan, he threw out a daring and philosophical idea: the United States should establish an identical “guest worker” program “where particular companies can bring Mexican workers in.” The Mexicans would be paid “at whatever wage the market will bear.”

Republican DeLay took the lead in fighting Bill Clinton’s efforts to impose U.S. labor standards on the Northern Marianas. DeLay had plenty of help. Much of it came from a lobbyist who was thoroughly wired into the Republican power elite, and now represented the conservative, free-market government of the Northern Marianas. A gentleman DeLay called “one of my closest and dearest friends.”

A certain Jack Abramoff.

With Abramoff’s help, Democratic-sponsored legislation to extend U.S. protections to Marianas workers got nowhere. In Montana, for example, Republican Senator Conrad Burns, formerly neutral, was suddenly an opponent:

Burns voted against a bill in May 2001 that would have strengthened U.S. oversight over the commonwealth's labor and immigration laws. A little more than a year before Burns had not opposed an identical measure.

Burns has said the $5,000 donation from an Abramoff client had nothing to do with his 2001 change in stance on the bill...

Read it all, and decide for yourself...

Philosophers can debate whether there’s true evil in the world. As far as I’m concerned, when privileged politicians fight for wealthy tycoons against the impoverished people they’ve virtually enslaved, that’s evil. And when we vote for politicians like that -- whether through ignorance or venality -- we are complicit in what they do.

When last heard from, DeLay was complaining that he’s being unfairly targeted for his Christian convictions. If Jesus does return in the near future, seems to me he’ll throw this new gang of moneychangers out of the temple harder and faster than he did the first time.

UPDATE: Just after I posted, I came across this useful summary of the latest in the Abramoff/sweatshop/Republican scandal. For more (including the picture of George W. Bush and the Tan family hanging in their Hong Kong offices), see here.