This is the fourth in a series of articles responding to three front-page articles in the Denver Post by reporter Michael Riley which attack former Congressman and current Senate candidate Bob Schaffer for a fact-finding trip Schaffer took to the Northern Marianas Islands (“CNMI”) in 1999.

A Brief Personal Interjection:

I repeat, for the record, that I am pro-choice and my strong defense of Schaffer and his investigation of claims of "forced abortions" has nothing to do with religion, but rather with the unconscionable attacks on Schaffer for doing good work, made by people who cloak their plain pro-union agenda as caring for the well-being of workers. Another way to look at it: Between Daniel Akaka (who started TVC off on the CNMI wild goose chase) and Bob Schaffer, who made the real effort and any real difference in the CNMI? The answer is as obvious as are the motivations of the two men, the former shilling for unions and the latter performing a sincere and detailed investigation of disturbing allegations, allegations which the shills knew to be untrue, or would have known had they expended a fraction of the effort that Schaffer did. Schaffer can truthfully claim to have been instrumental in getting a sweatshop closed down. What can Akaka, or any other Democrat opponents of the CNMI say they've done other than wreck the islands' economy for their own political benefit? Unfortunately since the mainstream media has the same underhanded motivations as did the Democrats and their union puppet-masters, they are incapable of reporting the story of Schaffer in the CNMI as the good deed that it was.

Where was the Clinton Administration?

Although the subject of the Clinton administration’s activities in the CNMI will be dealt with in much greater detail later in this series of articles, one question certainly bears raising now: If the Clinton administration or their Democratic friends in the Senate believed that there were true sweatshops or forced abortions in the CNMI, they had at their disposal the entire enforcement mechanism of the federal government, everything from US Marshals and INS to the IRS and OSHA. Yet they did nearly nothing. The fact they did so little other than trying to get TVC and the mainstream media to criticize the islands (failing with the former, succeeding with the latter), means one of two things. Either they knew the allegations were false or they believed the allegations but wanted the political issue more than they wanted to make a difference. In my view, the former explanation is almost certainly correct since if they could prove allegations of sweatshops and forced abortions, they would have been able to make must faster “progress” toward their real goal of eliminating competition to US textile workers’ unions.

The CNMI’s (former) regulatory independence

The CNMI’s treaty with the US which allowed the CNMI to implement their own labor and immigration laws let the Islands serve as an interesting “laboratory”, much as our own federal system is supposed to work within the states.

Part of the CNMI’s law — the part which Schaffer was particularly focusing on when he described parts of their system as a potential “model” for immigration — was the pre-qualification of foreign workers prior to their entry into the United States. Garment workers in the CNMI were pre-qualified while still in their home countries to ensure they posed no health risk or criminal risk and that they were ready to produce at both the quality and quantity levels demanded by their prospective employer in the CNMI. Additionally, if a worker lost his or her job, the worker had a short window to find another job (or to get an exemption from the requirement) before being repatriated to his or her home country, so that there were not large numbers of unemployed workers draining the local economy and government coffers.

I will cover this in more detail in a later article, but it bears noting that as the opponents of the CNMI have slowly but surely achieved success, the garment industry on the island has steadily dwindled, as has the economic well-being of the islands residents (American citizens) who have seen their average income fall dramatically.

“Bare-knuckled politics”

Where Riley calls Schaffer’s trip “a symbol of bare-knuckled politics” with the names of DeLay, Abramoff, and others, the actual bare-knuckled politics is the Denver Post’s willingness to be used by political activist opponents of Schaffer, particularly in trying to create guilt by association…where there is not even a real association. Quoting a Democrat who states “association with these sleazy Abramoff-sponsored junkets” is something that should be found on a far-left political blog rather than posing as news in a major newspaper.

Schaffer’s trip to the CNMI was not about any “association”. It was about a Congressman performing his duty based on his own strong moral code in the service of two relevant Committees on which he served, doing intense and independent investigation of claims of various types of problems, and objectively finding much less than had been claimed.

If Preston Gates, in their capacity as attorneys and lobbyists for the CNMI, were involved in the trip without Schaffer’s knowledge, it would not be a great surprise in the sense that Schaffer is and was well-known as a champion of free-markets and human rights. Therefore, if the CNMI government believed that complaints were overstated and that their system was doing good things for their island and their people, it makes sense that they would invite a Congressman who serves on Committees that have influence over CNMI policy to come and see the system they were pleased to have built. Still, there is no evidence of CNMI government involvement in the invitation just as there is only the thinnest bit of evidence that Preston Gates was involved in Schaffer’s invitation and no evidence that Schaffer did anything other than what he thought was the right thing.

Riley quotes another Democratic operative as saying Schaffer “sided against the human rights” of CNMI workers. I have already demonstrated that Schaffer’s specific intent was to dig deeper than any other Congressman had to ensure workers’ rights were not being violated. It seems odd that the “human right” the Democrats wanted to impose was to prevent people in the Islands from having garment jobs and therefore indirectly attack all the other business on the Island which provided jobs in support of a larger and richer population. Moreover, no other member of Congress besides Schaffer played a role in helping shut down an actual sweatshop.

Riley then somehow finds it relevant to mention an unrelated case regarding TVC and Abramoff, again attempting to tar Bob Schaffer with the worst sort of guilt-by-association. It is a desperate tactic by someone who can’t find adequate facts to support his politically-motivated hit-piece masquerading as news.

Again, the only politics being made of Schaffer’s trip is by his opponents who are using a willing accomplice at the Denver Post, followed by piling on at mindless liberal blogs, to smear Schaffer without any basis in reality.