source: DenverPost
Bob Schaffer is a former congressman from Colorado's 4th district. He's now running for senate against Congressman Mark Udall.
In 1999 he took a trip to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands organized by Jack Abramoff and paid for Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition. According to the Denver Post:
Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate.
"I plan to walk right into those factories and living quarters to see for myself what conditions exist," Schaffer said in a news release in August of that year.
In fact, it doesn't look like he looked all that hard. Below is the documented proof.
Here's his travel itinerary for that trip:
click for larger image. Source: CSU Congressional Archive
Now this page doesn't look so bad. After all, one might say this has nothing to do with Jack Abramoff. Well, look at page 2.
click for larger image
Here we see the reason Preston Gates arranged this trip was for their clients, CNMI, the Saipan Garment Manufacturers, and the Western Pacific Economic Council. As Jack Abramoff was the lead lobbyist for these accounts, it's pretty clear what was going on. What's extra interesting is that Schaffer has claimed he visited how many factories? At one point he said "more than 20 factories".
Here's page 3 of the tentative trip agenda.
click for larger image
While this is a tentative agenda let's assume for arguments sake it's what happened. If true, and assuming each evening ended at 9pm, here's what Schaffer's time was spent on.
Total possible time meeting with Government and Manufacturers: 14.5 hours
Total possible time visiting factories and workers: 13.75 hours
Of those 13.75 hours, 7 and a half were from the last day (page 3) listed as "Tour island or visit factories" We know what some of that time was spent doing:
Part of that agenda was also spent on a "Historical tour of Saipan" and at a church where he was to meet with some workers.
So, as I say in the beginning, he might as well have looked under than podium for abuses because he sure didn't look too hard while in Saipan. In all that time interspersed with touring islands and parasailing just how did he visit more than 20 factories anyway? Oh, that's right, he's lying.
My previous diaries on this topic are here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Cross posted at SquareState.