Abramoff firm gave $50,000 more to GOP congressional campaigns seven months after visits
Eleven million dollars can buy a lot of access in Washington. Especially if your lobbyist is Jack Abramoff.
Take Beningo Fitial, the current governor of the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific. He and his company, along with their trade lobby and funds doled out by the islands at his prodding, spent $11.5 million dollars lobbying Washington between 1995 and 2002. Now he says he wants his money back -- but he continues to maintain that Abramoff protected his island's interests...
In January 2001, Fitial enjoyed the inauguration of President George W. Bush.
Three months later, in April, Fitial met Bush a second time. He also met then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS). Then he stopped in for visit with Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL).
In other words—Abramoff seems to have arranged for a non-head of state for a tiny island in the Pacific to meet with the three most powerful men in the United States of America. But that’s not all: Fitial also met with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Senate Interior Department Appropriations Chairman Conrad Burns (R-MT). Fitial appears in photographs with Burns and Delay....
...Six months after his visit to Capitol Hill, Fitial’s family’s companies donated $50,000 to the National Senatorial Campaign Committee...
Here is another little story about DeLay.
My take on all this: The Northern Marianas Islands bring in workers, mostly women, from the Philippines and South East Asia. The prospective workers pay a finders fee for the jobs, up to $7,000, and are told they are going to work in the United States. Unfortunately, the workers are brought to the Northern Marianas Islands where they work long hours seven days per week and are housed in substandard barracks. Women have been forced into prostitution and have been forced to have abortions. These conditions have been supported by Tom DeLay and every person who met with Fitial. Why haven't we heard from the far right Christian conservatives about the plight of these workers?
