Because those are such powerful crimes. And those are the specific crimes mentioned in support of the bill. That was the exact sequence of events mentioned in this thread, in fact, in post 71 as the worst of DeLay’s offenses. Rape and forced abortions were common. DeLay knew about it but turned a blind eye to it by killing this bill. This is kind of the key indictment against him.
I’m not at all convinced that this is true. It appears to me, from my admittedly weak understanding of the situation, that:
-Women came to work in the territory hoping for better lives. These women were coming from incredibly poor peasant backgrounds, like starve-in-the-winter-sometimes backgrounds.
-They were kept in near-slavery conditions.
-They were treated wretchedly.
-If they complained–if anyone thought they might complain–they were summarily shipped back to their incredibly poor homes, and there was no appeal to this shipping.
Am I right so far? Or am I missing something?
If this is the case, then providing them with a stronger immigration status would give them protection from being shipped back home. That protection would mean that they might complain about the treatment without fearing that shipping. Their increased confidence in their ability to complain effectively would mean that more crimes would be reported. And the increased likelihood that rape or forced abortion would be reported would act as a deterrent against the criminals who might commit these acts.
Bricker, you asked earlier if folks really believe this is the most effective way to address the problems. If forced abortion and rape were already illegal, but were occurring rampantly anyway because the victims felt powerless to report them, then yes: putting a solid foundation under their feet such that they could report them would be the most effective way to address the problem.
Making rape be against two laws instead of against one law would be a completely meaningless measure: it’d just mean that the victims wouldn’t report two crimes instead of not reporting one crime.
Such violent acts are the extreme end of a very shitty stick, conditions apply to such workers as were suckered into the Mariannas, conditions we simply don’t permit to apply to our own. As well as these more dramatic display of horror, there are the more mundane miseries that afflict people who are in the power of greedy men.
From what I’ve read and seen, googling and web-snorkeling, the consensus about the bill was that by normalizing the status of these workers, the bill would afford them protections they did not enjoy. I would have hoped that the right to unionize might be explicitly stated, but at least a source for relief from grievance and some sort of binding arbitration seems the least we could do, given our current international hypocrisy offensive in favor of humane labor conditions.
Of course, it may be as Bricker innuendoes, just an effort to bring more citizens into being, perhaps a dastardly design to seize the political power base that is the Mariannas. It is often said that as the Mariannas go, so goes Guam. One might expect that the radical community organizing group COCONUTS is working to destabilize the voter registration rolls, perhaps by getting Chinese workers to register as Mickey Mao.
Things were not good, this is substantiated. Mr DeLay said things were good, and even offered hs own authority, after investigating, that things were good. I must believe either that he lied or that he was a person of galactic stupidity and limitless naivete. Mr DeLay has a number of qualities, mostly reptilian, but stupid is not amongst them. He would have all the reptilian qualilties but he lacks the warmth.
The most plausible explanation is that Mr DeLay ignored the desperate condition of thousands of helpless people. That is bad enough. But it is further plausible that he did so in furthering a corrupt and venal relationship, and/or for political gain. This brings us to “scum”.
Its quite apt.
PS: for all my effort and mad, mad googling skills, I cannot find any reference to Tom DeLay offering his own explanation for his extraordinary legislative actions, its almost as though he never spoke of it. But, shirley, some reporter must have asked him.
But, maybe not? Could that be, he could do that and nobody would even ask him the question?
Actually, no. Because by making rape a federal crime (no barrier or “states rights” issue in doing so on the NMI) you ensure that it’s investigated by federal authorities, not whatever lackadaisical authority was responsible for (not) enforcing local NMI law.
That’s clear and obviously the most direct route to solving the problem.
You can make an argument – and you did – that making legal immigration easier would help the situation. But it’s not the kind of argument that someone must accept or be labeled “scum.” It’s the kind of argument on which reasonable people may disagree without thinking each other “scum” for doing so.
“Dastardly design?” “COCONOTS” “Mickey Mao?”
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Lost me again.
Oh, you poor dear! Some arguments you understand instantly, and counter with crisp efficiency, others just are so very, very confusing. Clearly, if you cannot respond, it must be my fault, once again flaunting my advantages in education and vocabulary. So very unfair of me! No wonder you are losing so badly that your are compelled to offer conjectures in the place of evidence. I am so very, very sorry.
For instance, you offer us the defense, once again, the only very not nice people regard somebody as “scum” for their opinions. Trouble is, you can’t point to anything that suggests the Mr DeLay’s knifing of this legislation is based on some political principle. Where did he say this was his motivation? It is not his opinions that make him scum, it is his actions.
You seem to try to imply, once again, that Mr DeLay was concerned with the correct and most efficient way to solve these awful problems, Trouble with that is, of course, the above given quotes wherein Mr. DeLay insists there is no problem to begin with. Just a wonderful, marvelous experiment in vigorous capitalism.
Your conjectures on possible motivations for Mr DeLay’s actions are utterly unfounded outside of your fertile imagination. Perhaps I can help? Why not something like his long standing and very, very cozy relationship with the detestable Mr. Abramoff was an effort an reform, he was bending every effort to bring Mr. Abramoff to Jesus. Its as likely, and as equally founded, as your other conjectures.
How about the good ol’ “evil twin” plot device?
Instead, you offer us the empty proposition that Mr DeLay was desperately working, and with a very dramatic intervention, to prevent an ineffective solution to a problem that he insisted did not exist. That failing, you suggest it was some plot to ease the path to citizenship for the Saipan sweater-shoppers, offering nothing whatever to support it. (Hence, my joke about an Pacific version of ACORN: COCONUTS. Referring to your long-standing devotion to the purity of the voter registration process) Well, OK, where did he say that?
So far, you got nothing. Want to try again?
OK. But the argument you’re offering is, very simply:
- The law was a good way to help stop rape and forced abortions.
- DeLay stopped the law.
- Therefore, DeLay is scum.
And I’m asking if we must believe item (1)? You ask me, in return, if I have any evidence DeLay didn’t believe it.
My only evidence is: I don’t believe it. If I had been in Congress, I would not have voted for the law either. And I like to think I’m not scum.
So this is the reason I say it’s possible to not support that law and still not be scum.
I don’t know what DeLay said about the law. But that’s not fatal to my claim, I’m saying since I also don’t support the law, I am not persuaded by the claim that not supporting it makes one scum.
So why, not being scum, would you have opposed the bill? :dubious:
I am entirely certain you would offer an alternative, some other means to resolve these problems. Hence, you are not scum. And Mr. DeLay? What alternative did he offer? Oh, that’s right, he insisted that these “problems” were nothing more than an effort to slander the good people of the Mariannas.
Further, you would have argued about it, you would have presented your case and hope to prevail. Mr. DeLay did nothing of the sort, he exercised a peculiar power and killed it dead in its tracks. You wouldn’t have done that, I have every confidence.
You would not have thwarted the unanimous…repeat, unanimous!..vote of the Senate, knowing as you must that these men have a thousand years of law school amongst them. You would have brought the issue to the floor of the House, and made your case. And, most likely, lost.
But most especially, you would not have left those poor bastards helpless in the clutches of greedy and merciless men. You would have done something, even if not this. See any evidence, any at all, that Mr DeLay lifted a finger or raised his voice to do anything about their plight? Unless you consider denying the problem even existed as “doing something”?
Because you are not scum, you would have said something. You would have done something. You might have said “This won’t work, we have to do something else”!
You seem to be trotting out a variation of your old reliable warhorse, liberal hypocrisy. You are trying to insist that we are judging him for his opinions, which is patently untrue. His opinions are merely stupid, narrow, and self-serving. His actions, and his inactions, are detestable.
I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice, what I tell you three times is true: it is not his opinions, it is his actions and his lack of action.
Of course, if that’s all you’ve got, then you will have to insist on your penetrating powers of telepathy, that you read our collective minds and inventory the contents thereof. I trust you understand that this is mighty thin gruel. Hell, if that were true, and provable, you would never lose an argument. At least not as badly as you are losing this one.
On a side note, I suspect that Bricker and I share a problem: mad googling skills I may have, but I can find no reference, none whatsoever, that Mr. DeLay ever defended his actions at all, or that he was even questioned about it.
I can hardly credit that, it seems impossible, shirley someone would have questioned him about it, its a pretty damned dramatic gesture!
Is it possible he could have done this without anyone…anyone!..calling on him to account for it?! Bleeding Og, I hope that isn’t true!
Well, I agree that I probably would have made my distaste for the bill known. I don’t rule out deciding to kill it without a floor vote, but I certainly would have said something like, “This bill is a sham that doesn’t do what its sponsors claim it will, and I’m not going to waste the House’s time on it.”
And I agree I can’t find anything like that from DeLay.
But… I can’t find anything, PERIOD. He didn’t kill the bill in a vacuum. It required the assent of the Speaker (he being the Whip) and the at least tacit assent of a majority of the House, who can override the scheduling decisions of the Speaker. So someone must have asked, at some point, “Just why are we doing this?”
But I can’t find anything.
In the absence of any evidence, and given my own (non-scum) reasons for believing the bill was a poor choice, I can’t agree that this definitvely makes DeLay scum.
But he’s a Republican!
And the only reason he isn’t in jail is that, technically, being a Republican isn’t illegal. Yet.
Regards,
Shodan
But you would have done something. You would have done something to help those poor bastards escape their mserable condition.
If you come across someone applying a band-aid to someone bleeding to death, you might very well have said “That band-aid is not an effective solution”. All well and good, but you would apply a tourniquet. You would have called 911. You would have done something!
He didn’t. Not only did he not offer them any help, he denied that they even had a problem to be fixed! Either he lied, or he was the most totally ignorant man ever to wear pants. And determinedly ignorant, the news reports were all around him, and he insisted, on his own authority having investigated that it was all a pack of lies slandering the good people of the Mariannas. As cited above.
By these actions, he tried to turn away any remedy, claiming there was nothing to fix. Lies, counselor. Lies told by scum. And lies are not opinions, they are actions.
I note that friend Shodan has ridden to your rescue in your hour of need. Lucky you.
Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.
Won’t someone think of the Republicans?
Presumption of decency. Wholly justifiable, in my estimation.
I like to think so.
But I also wonder if that would make me a particularly ineffective legislator.
You know the old starfish story: the kid walking down the beach, picking up stranded starfish and tossing them back into the sea. A passerby points out that this is ridiculous; he can’t possibly save them all, or even most of them.
“Yes,” says the kid, “but I can save this one.”
I think it may be counterproductive, even naive, to say that the response of the House Whip should be, “I see a problem; I must provide a solution.” It should be his role to create the legislative environment that gives the executive the tools they need to solve problems.
A good example of this is the Terry Schiavo case. In that case, DeLay acted exactly against the principle I’m laying out here. He saw a grave injustice (to his mind) and sought to use the power of the legislature to fix it.
It’s interesting that earlier in the thread he was criticized for his role in the Schiavo case. I haven’t risen to his defense much on that, because I think he acted wrongly. I don’t agree it rises to the level of scum, mind you, but I believe he abandoned his correct role as a legislator.
I don’t think he did so with regard to the NMI. He doesn’t have to fix their problem; he has only to assure himself that their problem is covered by existing law.
Really? Even after post 219?
You are kinder than I.
What I think has been left out of this discussion (although I haven’t read the whole thread) is whether DeLay was profiting personally from the situation in NMI. I believe he was, at least indirectly, through Abramoff. Which raises the scum meter to previously unrecorded heights.