Rossputin's Report, Part 2: The Left's Innuendos Don't Stack Up to the Truth

Yesterday we highlighted the first of Rossputin's scheduled eight-part series going in-depth to investigate the allegations made concerning Bob Schaffer's 1999 trip to the Marianas Islands.

A well-known Lefty commenter here left a cryptic comment, saying we should look at Rocky Mountain News liberal columnist Jason Salzman's blog to demonstrate that we "protest too much about telling the truth." This is what was supposed to bowl us over:

In addition to ripping off Native Americans, Abramoff made big money defending the Marianas Islands’ exploitative immigration policies, which may even have resulted in forced abortions. Abramoff spearheaded a successful lobbying campaign to block immigration reform in the Marianas. Abramoff specifically targeted the House Resources Committee, which had jurisdiction over the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, and on which Schaffer was a member. Only last month, after decades of oppositin [sic] from Abramoff and Congressmen like Schaffer, did Congress finally pass immigration reform for the Marianas.

As reported in The Post, Schaffer visited Marianas, courtesy of an organization with ties to Abramoff, and defended its immigration policies in Washington DC. Overall, Schaffer’s lobbying tactics aligned with Abramoff’s. [emphases added]

It makes a nicely packaged narrative, with a lot of innuendo and guilt by association, but its clever characterizations and omission of key facts adds up to missing the truth by a mile. When you read it carefully, what Salzman writes really doesn't say much at all, except that what Schaffer (and others) observed firsthand about CNMI doesn't match the rhetoric of Big Labor leaders.

To get a better picture, read Rossputin's second installment. First, there "may have been forced abortions," Salzman slyly writes, repeating one case of secondhand testimony. But how about the testimony of a Christian missionary who visited the island and had her eyes opened?:

And regarding “forced abortions”, Mrs. Lafferty says “I was not able to find anyone who had an abortion, whether forced or not, and nobody I met knew anybody who had had an abortion.” Lafferty went out of her way to try to ensure honest answers from the workers: “We made it abundantly clear that if anyone was being hurt, raped, or enslaved, I would see to it that the perpetrator would go to jail, and the victim would be taken care of. If anybody needed help, I would help them.” Still, with this sort of “witness protection program” offer (my characterization, not Lafferty’s), and with a Chinese missionary as a translator, none of the allegations which made Lafferty’s blood boil seemed to have any substance.

The organization that paid for the trip?:

As far as who paid for the trip that Schaffer was part of, Lafferty put it directly: “We paid for the trip and as far as I know we were not reimbursed for anything by [Abramoff lobbying firm] Preston-Gates.”

Rossputin goes on to show that the Post's sinister claims that Schaffer "met with clients of Preston-Gates" amount to nothing. He could not have conducted a thorough independent investigation otherwise.

Rossputin also debunks the Post's use of a photo to make it look like Bob Schaffer and his wife merely took a pleasure trip to the Marianas - something Lefty bloggers have seized on repeatedly to promote their distorted picture of reality:

After those several days of nearly non-stop investigation and meetings, Schaffer was scheduled to fly home the next morning when someone asked him how he had enjoyed the island, to which Schaffer responded, according to the source just mentioned, “It’s a shame it’s so beautiful and I never got a chance to see it”. That person then contacted someone he knew at the airline and arranged to get Schaffer’s return flight moved from the following morning to the following evening so that Schaffer and his wife (who had accompanied him to investigate garment factories and interview workers) could have a few hours of relaxation before flying home. Schaffer, his wife, and the staffer who accompanied them on the trip, enjoyed a few hours of recreation without hosts and without being accompanied by representatives of the government or any industry, after Schaffer’s mission on the island had been completed.

Should we expect to see anyone recant and/or apologize for perpetuating a distorted picture of reality?

Keep reading Rossputin's important investigative series.

Rossputin Begins to Dismantle Big Blue Lie Machine Slander of Bob Schaffer

A couple months ago we responded vigorously to the Denver Post's trumped up slander about former Rep. Bob Schaffer and a 1999 trip he made to the Marianas Islands. Starting today, Colorado blogger Rossputin takes the investigation even more in-depth with the first of an eight-part series, based on research and interviews, that dismantles the Big Blue Lie Machine's assertions piece by piece. An excerpt from today's edition:

According to the former [Schaffer] staffer, “We never worked with Jack Abramoff. As a matter of fact, I never met him until months after Bob retired – and I would have met him had he been involved with our office in any way since I was aware of all of Bob’s meetings. ”.

And according to Schaffer himself, “Remember, most people including me hadn’t heard of Jack Abramoff in those days. Preston Gates was just another lobbying firm.” In fact, after serving three terms in Congress, Schaffer honored his term-limit pledge and did not run for re-election in 2002, whereas the scandals surrounding Abramoff did not come to light until 2005. Schaffer added, “…my trip to the Marianas was paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition. Furthermore, I did not accept anybody else’s schedule as to where and when to go on the island during my investigation of the labor and ‘forced abortion’ claims.”

Indeed, if Preston Gates were close to Bob Schaffer, why did they never, as a firm or Abramoff as an individual, contribute to Schaffer’s campaigns or PAC, as they did for Mark Udall?

Read the whole thing, and bookmark Rossputin's site to follow the coming editions of this report.

Inconvenient Facts for Mark Udall and Big Blue Lie Machine's Assault on Bob Schaffer

The Catholic News Agency weighs in on the Big Blue Lie Machine's absurd claims that U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer turned a blind eye to forced abortions in the Marianas:

According to diocesan officials in Chalan Kanoa, they have received no solid evidence that forced abortions had in fact occurred.

And:

One 1998 report from the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs found squalid living conditions for foreign workers in the Marianas. Investigators also said that at least one woman claimed that her company forced her to abort her child upon discovering her pregnancy.

Schaffer said that he “found the reports credible" and had “not seen them refuted."

During the five days that he spent on the islands in 1999, the legislator told the Denver Post that he tried to determine how often abortions occurred and to track down anyone with knowledge of forced abortions occurring.

Yet, according to Schaffer, every religious or public official he talked to could only say that they had heard the rumors that forced abortions were occurring, but that they never discovered any actual evidence or had anyone come forward with a claim.

When contacted by Catholic News Agency, Angie Guerrero, Catholic Social Services’ director, confirmed Schaffer’s assertion that evidence on forced abortions is lacking.

“We have heard that (of the claims of forced abortions), but none of the alleged victims have come out and said that they were forced to have abortion. So that’s all hearsay, because we can’t prove it; they’re only allegations,” she said.

As director of Catholic Social Services, Guerrero oversees pro-life ministries throughout the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, which includes the islands of Saipan, Rota and Tinian. Her office is currently working on a program to assess the number of abortions occurring in the region, but as of yet does not have exact figures. [emphasis added]

"All hearsay." "Only allegations." That's all it takes for Mark Udall and the Big Blue Lie Machine to start slinging mud at Bob Schaffer.

Do you think some Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News reporter could have bothered to make a call to Ms. Guerrero? Do you think an apology is forthcoming from "American Right to Life Action" or from the Lefty bloggers who swarmed to its aid to denounce Schaffer without thinking?

The lie has already circumnavigated the globe several times. But now the truth has its boots on. Time for Mark Udall and the Big Blue Lie Machine to recant and move on to another story.

Aided by Denver Post, Mark Udall Launches Deceitful Attack on Bob Schaffer

It seems Mark Udall is comfortable practicing his own deception, and not simply relying on his friends in the Big Blue Lie Machine. Udall's latest deception came with an assist from a Denver Post article (H/T Mike Saccone's Political Notebook):

"I know that from what I read and the people I listened to, it was clear that there were abuses there . . .. I don't understand how you could leave the Marianas thinking everything was perfect," said Rep. Mark Udall, referring to a fact-finding trip Schaffer took in 1999 that was partly arranged by Abramoff's lobbying firm. Schaffer said he found problems in only one out of 20 factories he visited. [emphasis added]

"I don't understand how you could leave the Marianas thinking everything was perfect." Mark Udall distorted what Bob Schaffer reported on his visit. And the Post reporter (inadvertently or not?) helped him out, claiming that "he found problems in only one out of 20 factories he visited."

The problem is that even the original smear job story from the Post said "he visited more than 20 factories and found serious problems in only one" [emphasis added]. It appears the Post reporter and/or editors failed to read earlier issues of their own newspaper, much less read the actual reports and testimony in the case. Judging by his newfound interest in the issue of the Marianas Islands, Mark Udall is primarily concerned about making political points out of the issue, even if it means making the truth a casualty.

The ball keeps on moving for the alleged scandal here. When it was shown that Mark Udall was the only candidate in the race with a clear connection to Jack Abramoff, Abramoff ceased being the issue. When it was shown that Bob Schaffer's visits to most of the factories were unannounced and arranged on his own terms, the way the trip was conducted ceased being the issue. When it was shown that Bob Schaffer identified problems and reported them but proposed a different reasonable solution, the Big Blue Lie Machine fell back on name-calling and its hallmark: deception.

All the discussion from the Left has shed far more heat than light on this matter. Now, candidate Mark Udall himself has perpetuated a clear lie. And the Denver Post let him get away with it. But not here he won't.

Evidence Turns "Honest Debate" Re Bob Schaffer and Marianas Against Big Blue Lie Machine

Lefty propagandist Alan accuses me of fearing an honest debate because I have yet to respond directly to his following colorful characterization:

You're right about the money being perceptual and subjective--even though you and Wadhams hoped to use it as a shield against the real questions, which involve Schaffer's "Potemkin village" tour of the CNMI, and his subsequent official actions that were precisely aligned with the Abramoff strategy of stalling reform in the territory. This is about how Bob Schaffer, either willingly or negligently, abetted a scheme that deprived workers of basic rights (and even their unborn children) for the enrichment of Chinese nationals who wanted to manufacture their products in the same sweatshop conditions found in China while still being able to label them "Made in the USA." This is about Schaffer's unyielding and deeply troubling opposition to human rights reform in the CNMI, reforms which Udall co-sponsored repeatedly while Schaffer took parasailing trips to Saipan and declared the situation there a "model" for the rest of the country. This is about how Schaffer enabled a medieval nightmare of abuse and exploitation on American soil, a nightmare that is only now ending with a different majority party in Congress.

My question is whether Alan (not to mention absurdicus, Taylor West, or the rest of the Big Blue Lie Machine) has actually read or looked at any of the Congressional oversight hearings on the CNMI issue in which Bob Schaffer participated. If he (or they) had, he probably wouldn't be so brazen about using the term "Potemkin village tour" or stating that Bob Schaffer was opposed to reform in the territory.

Here is the key excerpt from Schaffer's testimony at the oversight hearings** (Note that this was Congressional testimony made under oath):

I went to Saipan and spent five days. Visited probably eight or nine factories in the time that we were there. And, with the exception of two or three, all were unannounced. We literally showed up based on testimony we had taken from other workers that we had heard off-premises of work sites and worked kind of backwards. Found out where the complaints were first, then went to the factories and met—showed up at the gate and asked to come in and sometimes there were exchanges between the gate and the front office, but, in all cases, we were eventually let in, never took more than five minutes at the longest.

The first factory we saw was a Chinese-owned factory, owned out of Hong Kong. It was probably the worst one we saw. My experience was not the same as those who said they had been there and found things to be wonderful. I found a number of specific factories and specific incidents that I found to be offensive and believed they need some attention, clearly. Those issues I’ve discussed with a number of people and, for my part, my five-day investigation is not over. This hearing is certainly part of it and there’s still a lot of documents that we’ve requested that we have yet to receive.

But I will say this. We spoke with lots and lots of workers, not just on work sites. We met with about 10 who had plaintiff’s attorney bringing lawsuits against the garment industry, had helped arrange for us. We met with several at a church on Sunday. And with the exception of those that were organized by the plaintiff’s attorney—obviously they had complaints of some merit or they wouldn’t have been there—almost all workers said they would come back to CNMI. The biggest complaint we had was that, because of the work slowing down, the number of contracts seemed to be dropping, that workers are not able to work as much as they want to. They like the overtime hours and they like the time and a half pay that they receive and they want to work more. And that was probably the biggest complaint....

You know, there are, in all seriousness, there are real problems in CNMI that need to be addressed. I am encouraged that there has been a new election in January and there is some new leadership that seems to be a little more forceful in bringing about some of the changes that need to occur. I’m also impressed that the industry itself seems to have gotten a little more serious in the last few months about trying to enforce some of its own internal standards. And we did see some evidence of that, not just because they told us, but because we interviewed workers and asked them about changes that they’d seen, whether they knew about the rights that they had and how they found out and how they had read them.

But question is one that does ignore the importance of maintaining and preserving and elevating the level of human dignity for any human being. That is not in dispute in my mind. What is in dispute is how to arrive at securing that goal, whether we resort to Washington, DC, and our laws here in Washington to accomplish that or whether we rely on the ingenuity of local governments.

Congress is almost a continuous investigation like this. Every day you can walk somewhere around Capitol Hill and find an investigation about some American scandal, whether it’s selling missiles to the Chinese, whether it’s letting the Chinese government steal sensitive nuclear technology out of our most sensitive areas, whether it’s a labor disputes, whether it’s sweatshops in New York City. And so the notion that somehow we are the definitive characters in deciding what laws are most appropriate is just nonsense.

The INS, for example. I would hate to see the CNMI have a record similar to the INS in the United States. When I call the INS, when we find illegal aliens in my district, they laugh at us and tell us we’ll get there in a year or two if we feel like it. Now nobody can tell me that those kinds of laws will be in the best interests of CNMI.

The Department of Interior, for example. Now I heard the gentleman from Samoa talk about the unfortunate nature of these hearings becoming political. When the Department of Interior itself fires off memos that says, ‘‘As a one-time candidate with a similar district against a Frelinghuysen in the old New Jersey fifth, I understand the utility to all hands of administrative candidate communications on such matters.’’ Now this is a communication involved directly in a political campaign about this issue at CNMI. I’m sorry the administration has decided to make this topic a political issue. It should not be and it’s unfortunate that it has become such.

Yes, the Department of Labor. I could go on about all the efforts that I’ve seen in my own district of the Department of Labor putting people out of work and reducing the number of jobs in my district.

And then, of course, you know, I don’t what I’d say about the Department of Justice, the least of which is that they themselves in the CNMI hire non-resident aliens to do jobs for them. You know, we could go on about the other investigations going on in the Senate about the new revelations that the Department of Justice down there in Texas. FBI background checks. Chinese campaign checks making their way to Democratic National Committee going uninvestigated. The independent counsel and on and on and on.

I guess the final conclusion is that there are acknowledged problems in CNMI but Washington, DC, is the absolute last place anyone should look to fix them because this government has proven time and time and time again that, in the end, at the end of the day, people around here in DC tend to make matters worse, not better. [emphases added]

To say therefore that Bob Schaffer "abetted a scheme that deprived workers of basic rights (and even their unborn children)" is more than a gross exaggeration - it is an intentional mischaracterization of a substantive, philosophical policy disagreement, taken out of the context of its time as fodder for a scandal du jour. Whether it's been perpetrated out of ignorance or willful malice, participants in an "honest debate" would look at such evidence and reassess their characterizations.

I suggest that if Alan and the Big Blue Lie Machine wanted an "honest debate" about the issue, they wouldn't ignore actual evidence and leap to a conclusion that smears someone's character, and then browbeat anyone who disagrees with that evidence-free conclusion. Because Bob Schaffer did not work to support a particular kind of heavy-handed federal reform does not mean he "enabled a medieval nightmare of abuse and exploitation on American soil...."

Those on the Left may disagree with Bob Schaffer's view (whether past or present) of how to reform CNMI, but they have not been approaching the issue in that way - they have been approaching it as an opportunity to engage in political mud-throwing. Too bad. Perhaps they could explain why workers trapped in alleged "sweatshops" that were enduring "a medieval nightmare of abuse and exploitation" did not see the situation as dire as cadres of Lefty bloggers sitting in comfortable Colorado homes and offices apparently do.

Besides building their attacks on a distorted characterization of events and conditions at CNMI, the Big Blue Lie Machine's impeachment of Bob Schaffer's character and integrity has yet to prove that any of the arrangements or indirect connections with Jack Abramoff led to a change in Schaffer's votes. They have just concluded that the votes were immoral based on a preconceived notion that has been challenged here.

I submit that Alan, absurdicus, and company have greatly distorted their disagreements with Schaffer both on description of the island's working conditions and on policy prescription to address the problem. They also have taken the leap and falsely aligned Schaffer's views and interests as aligned with a class of Chinese manufacturers, when they are in fact distinct and separate.

Because Bob Schaffer's personal visit to CNMI, which included numerous unannounced visits to factories and other sites to interview real workers spontaneously, did not come to the same conclusion cited by Alan and his friends, perhaps we should look more closely at where the observations differ in terms of time, place, context, source, and methodology, etc.

However, I think all that gets at a deeper point than the Big Blue Lie Machine is interested in dealing with. They want to drive a 30-second soundbite attack TV campaign commercial based on loose points, drawn from a Denver Post news story written to win some sort of investigative journalism award.

In case some point in this post was missed or didn't come across clearly enough, please feel free to follow up. I hope the Left will not ignore the evidence but is willing to continue the "honest debate."

**Due to temporary FTP troubles, I'm not currently able to upload the large PDF. Please feel free to remind me, and I will upload and link a copy of the Congressional oversight hearing for further examination**