You Mean DeLay and Abramoff Did Exactly What Nancy Pelosi Did???

One of the things that Tom DeLay was excoriated for was working with Jack Abramoff to keep the U.S. controlled Mariana Islands in the Pacific, free from the U.S. Minimum Wage and immigration laws.

Seems as though the Mariana Islands, including Saipan (pictured above) had been home to a number of Chinese run sweatshops since the very early 1980s. The Chinese loved this arrangement as it allowed them to label their goods "Made in the USA," avoiding both charges of "using slave labor" and the import duties that existed at the time.

A bad bit of business to be sure, BUT no worse than Nancy Pelosi's January attempt to do much the same for a San Francisco lobbyist (StarKist Tuna) who wanted her to exempt Guam from the U.S. Minimum Wage hike - she only caved when the story went public.

Stories like the Chinese sweatshops on the U.S. controlled Mariana Islands are important and they DO highlight a real example of American political corruption. What is hypocritical however is for some in the media to act as though this corruption is the domain of one Party more than the other - many those sweatshops arrived at the tail end of the Carter administration, and have existed there and grown ever since, under Congresses controlled by BOTH Democrats and Republicans, under BOTH Democratic Presidents and Republican ones.

To find out that within weeks of assuming the Speaker of the House position, that Nancy Pelosi would do precisely what Tom DeLay was excoriated for, responding to a lobbyist and trying to exempt an American controlled protectorate (Guam & the Mariana Islands) from the impact of the U.S. Minimu Wage laws is troubling, to say the least.