DeLay scandal hammering Wall Street Journal wing of GOP

ProjectUSA ^ | May 5, 2005 | Craig Nelsen

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

http://projectusa.org/ezine/2005/05-03-wsj_burns_gop_delay.html

May 5, 2005
Issue 231

DeLay scandal hammering Wall Street Journal wing of GOP

But Abramoff, the escape clause in the Contract with America, will likely be ineptly exploited by Democrats

By CRAIG NELSEN
ProjectUSA director

WALL STREET JOURNAL REPUBLICANS

Willie Tan, left, Hong Kong based owner of several sweat shops on the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. Commonwealth exempt from U.S. immigration and labor laws.

"Returning from a fact-finding trip (to the Marianas) where he played 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 the far-off U.S. territory -- factories manned by low-paid Chinese and Sri Lankan indentured servants living in squalor -- as a model for Mexican labor camps here on the mainland."

(Dallas Observer/New York Times Group)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WORLDVIEW

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL PROPOSING A BILL OF RIGHTS FOR THE EU:

• Art. I: There shall be free movement of people.
• Art. II: There shall be free movement of goods.
• Art III: There shall be free movement of capital.
• Art. IV: There shall be free movement of services.

IS THERE A PULITZER FOR PHILISTINISM?

See, the Earth, in the ugly revival meetin' world view of the WSJ's editorial writers, is nothing more than a marketplace, its people nothing more than labor units, and the purpose of life is growth, i.e., to increase our levels of consumption. Forever.

Humans, for these Morlockian used car salesmen, are a resource to be imported from wherever it can be found at the cheapest price, used like we use a household appliance, and then, when it wears out...

WSJ CAMPAIGNS
FOR A WSJ REPUBLICAN

Extra special attention is being paid to a GOP House primary in Utah, where incumbent Chris Cannon is facing a June 22 runoff against Matt Throckmorton. Mr. Cannon, now serving his fourth term, hasn't had a primary challenger since 1998. This one comes courtesy of deep-pocketed restrictionists campaigning on behalf of his opponent, who is running hard on xenophobia. CFAW and ProjectUSA have used billboards in Mr. Cannon's district to denounce him as a supporter of blanket amnesty for illegals.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL attacking "Republicans who don't seem nearly as interested in people who can speak with authority about, say, the importance of flexible labor markets."

IS THERE A PULITZER FOR GALL?

The Wall Street Journal, the attack dogs for the immigration profiteers, the apologists for corporate lobbyists, the gushing groupies of "GOP stalwart" Jack Abramoff, the Wall Street Journal complains that we are "deep pocketed?"

We spent less than $2000 on the campaign in Utah that upset this paper so much it felt the need to attack us all the way from lower Manhattan.

By comparison, the CNMI's contracts with GOP stalwart lobbying firms Greenberg Traurig and Preston Gates Ellis paid the firms $100,000 per month. One of the "deliverables" specified: block immigration legislation in Congress that would disturb the status quo on the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

NOTE: The WSJ quote above also contains these errors. 1) CFAW funded advertising in Utah, but none of it was outdoor. 2) Throckmorton was not running hard on xenophobia. 3) ProjectUSA billboards did not denounce Chris Cannon. They merely stated his position. Accurately.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL PUSHING AMNESTY

"One objection, especially from the political right, is that the Bush proposal rewards people who broke the law. But in fact illegals would be required to pay a fine, as well as to prove employment before they could receive temporary visas. The 1986 "amnesty" to which this is being compared made no such demands."

IS THERE A PULITZER FOR CREATIVITY IN MISLEADING THE PUBLIC?

Whether a policy is an amnesty has nothing to do, of course, with whether the amnesty recipient has to pay a "fine," or a fee, or pick some strawberries, or do 20 push-ups, or whatever. AMNESTY

Hard as it may be to believe for Republican Party loyalists, the corruption scandal engulfing House majority leader Tom DeLay has a bright side if you're a Republican. For every blow the party suffers as a result of having embraced the Wall Street Journal's exhortations to give corporations control over important public policies, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page loses influence in Washington. The Journal's loss is America's gain.

The amount of corporate money flowing into Washington has exploded over the past decade, and the Wall Street Journal has led the cheers as an army of influence peddlers converted those billions into legislation favorable to the corporations.

For years, the Journal has been the leading advocate for a globalcorp future of unrestrained capitalism administered by multinational corporations in a borderless world in which markets and labor have replaced nations and humans.

The Wall Street Journal was so pleased with the success the influence peddlers were having helping multinational megacorps buy up the American democracy, that it ran a front page article celebrating the best of the lobbyists, Jack Abramoff.

The pro-Abramoff piece, as the Washington Post noted in a front page article in Sunday's paper, was "a July 3 story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that described the millions he was bringing in to his lobbying firm. The article...called Abramoff Washington's 'GOP stalwart' because of his pull with Republican leaders such as DeLay, who praised Abramoff for getting Indians to donate to Republicans."

No political party can throw principle and civic duty out the window and unreservedly embrace the philosophy of greed and expect to last long, because people who hold such views would selfishly view the party itself as a cash cow. The party would be milked by the self-interested for what it's worth, and eventually destroyed when a disgusted public fled for fresher-smelling political pastures.

Republicans may have reason to be thankful for the opportunity the Delay scandal presents to banish the Wall Street Journal and avoid a total destruction of the party.

For their part, Democrats must decide whether the party will exploit the DeLay scandal to its full potential, or carp feebly from the sidelines. They should keep in mind the possibility that the DeLay scandal may grow, and that it may eventually engulf the White House.

If it does, the Democrats win big, of course, but so far, the Democrats seem much quieter on this than you'd expect. The silence may be explained by the seemingly permanent paralysis of the Democratic Party (which is probably a natural result of the factionalism produced by the group identity politics the party has foolishly embraced).

Or, as some maintain, Democrats may be avoiding pressing too hard on the DeLay scandal because of similar scandals lurking on their side of the aisle. If this is the case, rank and file Democrats need to find the obstructionists and neutralize them. The Democrats are out of power; it is the Republicans who have everything--including the presidency--to lose. The party would be stupid beyond words to forego all the marbles in order to save, say, a minority leader.)

In any case, the focus of the scandal should shift from the Indian tribes to the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities on behalf of Indian gambling interests is the most widely discussed and thoroughly scrutinized aspect of the DeLay scandal so far. The story is juicy, to be sure, and the amounts of money involved are certainly scandalous, but the Abramoff/Indian gambling scandal will probably not grow much past its current reach. The victims are not powerful, there are only a few of them, and they aren't even that sympathetic--they're casinos, after all.

Furthermore, the brand of corruption in the Indian gaming scandal is mundane--just another example of white guys ripping off Indians--and the remedy is easy. Public humiliation of the white guys, jail time, damages awarded to the Indian tribes, and the scandal is fixed and over with.

For these reasons, even though there are links between the Indian gambling scandal and the Administration, it's doubtful whether the scandal has the juice to make the leap from Capitol Hill to the White House.

The Marianas Islands aspect of the DeLay corruption scandal, however, an aspect that has so far received much less attention, may have plenty of juice to make that leap.

Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities on behalf of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) have all the scandalous qualities of his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian casinos, and then some.

First, the Abramoff/CNMI scandal has several classes of victims of varying degrees of power and sympathy.

Second, the CNMI scandal takes on a deeper importance than the Indian casino scandal, because there is no way to undo much of the damage (like the suicides of Chinese peasant girls) Abramoff and others have done.

Third, the CNMI scandal is spectacular in the scope, the implications, and the sheer audacity of its corruption. The CNMI brand of corruption is the kind that most threatens civil society, it touches on important issues and big social questions, and it touches on more persons, and of a higher rank.

The CNMI scandal is a story of public corruption as pure and as dangerous as it gets. It's a story of influence peddlers in Washington, drunk on grandiosity and ambition, enriching themselves by selling to foreign interests their ability to change the laws of their own country.

The CNMI scandal demonstrates the ugly process by which our laws become the enemy of the very people from whom they are said to spring. The influence peddlers Jack Abramoff, (Cannon staffer) David Safavian, (Cannon 527 co-director) Bethany Noble, Manuel Lujan (Interior Dept., Cannon's DC entryway), and others are a serious threat, whether our pampered, untested generation can comprehend that or not. Writing on the impact of the Abramoff type of person on a Republic, the Sixteenth Century philosopher and world-class stickler, Nicolo Machiavelli, wrote that if they are "accustomed to live in a corrupt City, where education has not resulted in any goodness in them, it is impossible that they should be restrained by any accident: but so as to obtain their desires and satisfy their perversity of mind, they would be content to see the ruin of their country."

That's the story of the Marianas Islands aspect of the DeLay scandal. It's pure Wall Street Journal--as pure as G.W. Bush's oft repeated "I don't see why, if there is a willing employer in the United States, and a willing worker anywhere in the world who wants to work, they shouldn't be allowed to get together."

It's the gospel of greed, and as Tom DeLay always knew, and now truly believes, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Next:

Mammon Ain't Pretty
The Marianas Islands and the ugly ugly world of the Wall Street Journal

.

Contributions may be mailed to:

ProjectUSA
POB 15641
Washington, DC 20003

copyright 2005

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

And then I received THIS email on May 6:

ProjectUSA
May 5, 2005

Playing the Christian rubes; Abramoff, Cannon, DeLay, and Pastor Pal

Dear [Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I hope no one takes offense at my choice of headlines for this ezine. I'm pretty sure that, as you read on, you'll understand the reasons I chose the phrase "playing the Christian rubes."

You'll be surprised, I think, at some of the places rubes can be found, and surprised as well, maybe, at your own feelings of compassion for some rubes who never get any.

In addition to compassion, another emotion I hope to evoke is the one expressed in this response to a recent ezine:.

"I hope this e-zine makes every reader furious."

Craig Nelsen

============================

Playing the Christian rubes
Abramoff, Cannon, DeLay, and Pastor Pal

One of the side scandals swirling around Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist the Wall Street Journal lauded on its front page as a "GOP stalwart," is the use Abramoff made of the Christian Coalition to shake down Indian tribes for tens of millions of dollars in casino earnings.

Whenever one of his schemes required it, Abramoff could call on his friend, former Christian Coalition director, Ralph Reed, to provide instant grass roots public opposition to whichever gambling interest he chose. In return for the targeted public outrage he was able to generate, Reed received large cash payments from Abramoff or one of Abramoff's associates.

Among Wall Street Journal Republicans, among those who think of immigrants as labor, and who defend mass immigration on the grounds it will make us rich, this kind of thing is run-of-the-mill, widespread, and plotted without a whisper of moral doubt or humanizing shred of self-examination.

Records of email exchanges between uber Wall Street Journal Republican Congressman Chris Cannon, his House staff, his employees, and his campaign workers concerning the setting up of 527 political groups show that the 527s were formed as a way to fleece the rubes and to funnel corporate money (AT&T, the big one) into a Utah company as a way to retire a $1.6 million Chris Cannon debt.

In all the thousands of old emails we have copies of, I haven't come across a single mention of the merits of any particular public policy other than the money-generating potential it may have as a hot button issue. (If you've ever given money to a Chris Cannon backed effort on behalf of the Boy Scouts, for example, you were fleeced, and, like we all are at times if we're trying to live lives as decent human beings, you were a rube.)

In addition to harnessing the public-mindedness of anti-gambling Christians to rip off Indian tribes, GOP stalwart Jack Abramoff took advantage of the evangelistic impulse that some Christians feel in his campaign to thwart Democratic attempts in Congress to bring the immigration and labor laws of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands in line with U.S. policy.

As reported in the newsletter published by The National Center for Public Policy Research (the non-profit Tom DeLay says he thought was paying for the trips to the Marianas Islands that Jack Abramoff paid for), April 3, 1998,

IMPORTANT GRAPHIC: PLEASE GO TO PERMANENT LINK:

http://projectusa.org/ezine/fund/2005/05-marianas.html

For you Christians who believe sincerely that God has commanded you to spread the Word throughout the world, how do you feel about your highest ideals being dragooned into a Jack Abramoff effort paid for by Chinese sweat shop owner Willie Tan to prevent Congress from changing immigration law on the CNMI? Don't answer until you read below just what it was your religious beliefs were being used to defend.

And for you members of Congress who actually swallowed this nonsense (Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay ensured the profiteers won, the immigration reform effort failed and the sweat shops continued in operation), how do you feel about the Wall Street Journal now?

And you Congressional staffers in attendance who bought this tripe, bet you never suspected your religious beliefs had been used to turn sophisticated you into a rube.

And every Republican reading this: If you don't agree that your party needs a thorough house-cleaning by now, then how much more do you need?

THE PLIGHT OF THE CNMI WORKER

During the peak of Abramoff's lobbying to preserve the immigration exemption for the Marianas Islands, the Chinese sweat shops were importing most of their humans from the Chinese peasantry. Many of the humans China exported were peasant girls who were duped into paying "snakeheads" (human smugglers) enormous (even by U.S. standards) sums to emigrate to the "United States" (which the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands technically is).

But instead of disembarking in Los Angeles as an illegal alien, the unlucky unsophisticated young peasant girl disembarked in the world of the Wall Street Journal as a perfectly legal worker, U.S. port of Saipan, CNMI, under the jurisdiction of U.S. laws except for immigration and labor laws. Instead of walking down streets paved with the gold described in the snakehead's sales pitch, the shocked labor unit found herself whisked off through dense jungle and deposited in an unregulated, uninspected sweat shop from which she had no way to leave.

Locked into a filthy overcrowded dorm at night, by day the laborer was locked into the brutal accounting system of the company store, which locked her into a debt she could never repay, and ensured the permanence of her misery in this shining example of a flexible labor market at work.

Prevented from going on to the U.S. mainland (one cannot just move to the U.S. mainland from the CNMI--it requires a visa, not to mention money), and prevented by shame from returning a failure to the little village in China her snakehead fee had collectively impoverished, this legal immigrant, this living human being the Wall Street Journal refers to as "labor," suddenly found herself condemned to a life under intolerable conditions with no way out save suicide.

The intolerable conditions in the sweat shops that Jack Abramoff, and David Safavian, and Greenberg Traurig, and Preston Gates Ellis, and Pastor Pal, and the Wall Street Journal Republicans in Congress were fighting for in Washington DC were conditions that the American people...and the Chinese people...would find utterly abhorrent.

It is a great irony, which must have had the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal roaring with laughter, that these conditions were a product of Chinese-owned factories on American soil in which some of the cheap imported humans spent 18 hours a day sewing labels into clothing reading "Made in the USA."

WHO DESERVES THE CENSURE?

To any reader so callous he or she feels no sympathy for the trapped peasant girls because their original intent was to immigrate illegally to the United States:

1. You are probably a Wall Street Journal Republican and should be consuming information via a paid subscription to the Wall Street Journal. You should not be reading this free ezine, as it's written by a human for humans.

2. In defense of the cheap Chinese humans trapped on the Marianas: these peasant girls were harvested from among China's 800 million strong "farmer" class, the word for which in Chinese carries the connotation, "ignorant hayseed," except it's an actual class.

In the same way Chris Cannon's 527 groups were designed to bilk American rubes through hot button cause of the month fund-raising appeals (Save Our Scouts!), Chinese snakeheads bilk Chinese rubes through get-rich-quick schemes (Become a Millionaire Overnight in America, Where the Streets Are Paved with Gold!).

But isn't it illegal?

Yes, yes, and all forms of economic immigration should be outlawed immediately and our laws firmly enforced. But for a minute, put yourself in the place, if you can (Wall Street Journal readers needn't bother trying--you'll have neither the depth nor the humanity), of the ignorant hayseed Chinese girl. Imagine that you knew even enough to ask the snakehead salesman (the man putting into practice the frequently professed immigration policy preference of the president of the United States):

But isn't it illegal?

Oh the Americans have laws that you have to have a visa and so on to immigrate there, but that is only one of those quirky American customs.

Americans spend a great deal of time and effort passing immigration laws, and then write them with no enforcement mechanism. And if, like the law against hiring illegal aliens, they do have an enforcement mechanism, they aren't used (last year, even with 10 million illegal aliens working "illegally" in the United States, and with criminal penalties on the books, the Americans didn't charge a single employer with illegal hiring). Instead, during the election campaign, the American president called illegal aliens heroes!

As you can see, immigration laws are only an American superstition. To play along, in the unlikely event you are questioned by an "immigration enforcement officer," the custom for us Chinese is to repeat the words (try it): "I claim political asylum. I was forced to have an abortion." (Not bad. You'll need to work on your L's). Then the "enforcement officer" will "believe you," and you're in. If you have trouble with that political asylum part, don't worry. Part of our fee covers the cost of Chinese lawyers -- dues-paying members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association -- practicing law in the United States.

They'll help you say all the required responses to play along with the custom and then you can stay.

====================================

If ProjectUSA were a little more coherent and revealing about this scandal, it could certainly prove injurious to the pro-immigration/pro-amnesty advocates, if situations like the CNMI sweatshops actually are what lie in wait for all the newly legalized immigrants. --TSR

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

This is one of those situations where I can only hope that ProjectUSA is merely scandal-mongering. Because if this stuff is for real, some people in power (political party irrelevant) have some 'splainin' to do!

[nj26]

I have a sense that the open borders elistists are starting to feel a backlash.

[Arkie2]

"The silence may be explained by the seemingly permanent paralysis of the Democratic Party (which is probably a natural result of the factionalism produced by the group identity politics the party has foolishly embraced)".


The silence of the Democratic Party is because they know any investigation will fully implicate them. This faux scandal will engulf both parties despite the fact their actions aren't illegal.

[NEBUCHADNEZZAR1961]

I have a sense that the open borders elistists are starting to feel a backlash.

Piss on the elitist. Agitate until every illegal is shipped back to Mexico or where ever they came from. This is a law-and-order issue and if the Repbublicans in congress can't figure that out than some re-evaluation should be done by lots and lots of people.

[stinkerpot65]

Scandal is all the Democrats have left. They have no ideas, no agenda, no power, and the can't get at Bush. The Delay "scandal" is nothing.

[StAnDeliver]

Craig writes what amounts to a bad blog (replete with pseudo-Valhallian line art, no less).

[meema]

I always wondered why the Maarinas were part of that lobbying group!!!