So it appears as though the Chairman of the Republican National Committee (Ken Mehlman) arranged to have someone fired from the State Department, perhaps in exchange for some free tickets to a U2 concert.
Who was fired and why? Allen Stayman had been advocating labor reforms in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianna Islands (CNMI), a US Commonwealth that the GOP has helped to keep exempt from many US labor regulations. Mr. Stayman was working to improve sweatshop labor conditions for immigrant workers in the tiny US Commonwealth — labor conditions that have included forced abortions for pregnant workers.
Unfortunately for Mr. Stayman, his efforts to bring legal reform to the Islands caught the attention of prominent GOP Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was working on behalf of CNMI business interest. A few calls to well-positined Republican friends (including the Chairman of the Republican National Committee), and Abramoff’s bidding was done. Stayman was gone.
Thanks to the GOP, sweatshops in the CNMI can continue to abuse their workers, force them to have abortions when they became pregnant, and legally place a “Made in the USA” sicker on their products.
Why don’t the Democrats make more of this? Over and over again, in the name of keeping regulation off the backs of businesses, Republicans have knowingly allowed the practice of forced abortion in CNMI sweatshops to continue.