frankenlies.com
#21: Franken's Saipan Switcheroo
Franken's Truth has a chapter called "The Tom DeLay Saipan Sex Tour and Jack Abramoff Getaway,"1 in which he addresses, among other things, reportedly inhumane working conditions in Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth.
By citing a 1999 conviction by the Clinton administration, Franken unfairly implies that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) endorsed a "system" of "forced prostitution." On page 179 of Truth, Franken writes (emphasis mine),
"Soon Oh Kwon, president of Kwon Enterprises, pled guilty in U.S. District Court to bringing Chinese women to Saipan on contracts to become waitresses, and then forcing them to have sex with patrons at his karaoke club, K's Hideaway."
It is simply unfair to connect Rep. DeLay to this episode. Why? The Congressman went to Saipan at the behest of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Saipan government, and the garment industry.2 To pin Tom DeLay to a seedy karaoke club is unwarranted. Abramoff, as shady as his business appears to have been, did not lobby on behalf of lowly karaoke clubs.
In this regard, Franken's attack on DeLay is simply unjust.
ADDENDUM
It is quite fair to ask: If the Clinton administration was able to successfully indict Mr. Kwon and his crooked business, why did it not aggressively file suits against Saipan's squalid garment factories? In 1992, the U.S. Labor Department under George H.W. Bush successfully charged and fined Willie Tan, a Saipan garment factory owner, for deplorable conditions at five of his sites.3 At that time, the $9 million fine against Tan was the Labor Department's largest fine ever!4 Is there a reason that the Clinton administration could not pursue a similar avenue of punishing other unlawful garment factories?5 (I address this further in the next few posts.)
[If a reader of this site can cite a single case of the Clinton administration successfully charging and fining a Saipan garment factory owner for malfeasance, please e-mail me at frankenliesmail-at-yahoo-dot-com. Thank you!6]
[Special note: If you wish to write to me regarding this post, please read this first. Thank you.]
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Notes:
1 Needless to say, Franken provides no evidence that Congressman DeLay went on any kind sex tour or had sex with anybody in Saipan. I guess this is Franken's idea of a joke.
2 Marty Schladen, "DeLay disputes charges of abuse in Saipan," The Daily News (Galveston County, TX), May 15, 2005. http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=619d24435d0c3d0e.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 It appears the Clinton administration prosecuted at least five cases of international trafficking on the Mariana Islands (see http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1998/November/560cr.htm). But this is different than prosecuting an actual garment factory owner, as the GHWBush administration did. Also, it appears that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), in the late 1990's, issued numerous citations for substandard working conditions across Saipan, including many at garment factories. OSHA now reports that the situation at Saipan garment factories has improved markedly (see http://www.sgma-saipan.org/news/pr/pr02_02_26.html). But, again, none of these actions rise to the level of the 1992 federal case against Willie Tan.
6 In addition to my own research in not finding such a case by the Clinton administration, a January 12, 1999, article in the Saipan Tribune reported, "The US Labor Department presently has no wage-and-hour case against any of the CNMI's garment factories. The US Justice Department, which is charged with enforcing federal law, also has no case against any of our garment factories." http://www.saipantribune.com/archives/newsstoryarch.aspx?cat=3&newsID=655&archdte=1/12/1999 12:00:00 AM