The Big Red Beast

This is a map of Republicanistan.
The red dots represent the location of a scandal.
Some of them are small, and some of them are big.
But there are lots of them. It’s hard to know where to look first.
Soon, the whole of Republicanistan will be red.
Then, no matter where you look, all you’ll see
is a big, bloody corrupt beast.
Let’s put another red dot on the map.
Care of Frederick Maryland at Demagogue (here and here), we find this article in Sunday’s LA Times. It’s about Allen Stayman, a former State Department employee who was let go five years ago, even though his bosses wanted him to stay to complete a project on which he was working. He’s always wondered why—and now he knows.

Newly disclosed e-mails suggest that the ax fell after intervention by one of the highest officials at the White House: Ken Mehlman, on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack Abramoff.

The e-mails show that Abramoff, whose client list included the Northern Mariana Islands, had long opposed Stayman's work advocating labor changes in that U.S. commonwealth, and considered what his lobbying team called the "Stayman project" a high priority.

"Mehlman said he would get him fired," an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.

What labor changes? Well, the article doesn’t say specifically, but the Northern Mariana Islands weren’t paying their workers much money, for a start. They also had some very unusual immigration laws, which had left guest workers outnumbering US citizens. But its big problem was human trafficking. See, sex tourism and sweat shops are pretty big businesses there, and because US federal laws banning child labor, civil rights violations, and sexual abuse don’t apply there, nor do federal minimum wage requirements, it’s a great place to lure women with promises of US citizenship and loads of cash, then force them into prostitution. Or slave labor. Like at the factories Tom DeLay visited and cited as an example of how capitalism should work, right before he killed President Clinton’s reform bill.

Hey—Tom DeLay was a friend of Jack Abramoff, too! What a coinkydink.

But unlike President Clinton, who actually gave a shit about people forced to work in terrible conditions for shitty wages, and women forced to fuck strangers and get abortions against their wills, the Bush White House wasn’t all that bothered. So it set to work, at the request of Jack Abramoff, whose client wanted to keep raking in dough on the backs of trafficked humans, getting rid of the one man who stood in the way: Allen Stayman.

"With only about a year left on my appointment, I didn't think it would trigger any interest from the White House," Stayman said.

…Unbeknownst to Stayman, though, within weeks of Bush taking office, the "Stayman project" was in full swing.

State Department officials resisted the dismissal, and negotiations dragged on for months. In May 2001, one of Mehlman's deputies assured Abramoff's team that, "Obviously, this guy cannot stay."

That July 9, Ralston e-mailed Abramoff with news of a deal on Stayman: "He'll be out in four months."

And he was.

Compassionate Conservatism: Offering shitloads of compassion for human traffickers since 2000.