Well, by now you've
learned about the paltry number of visits (two) the Secret Service released as documented visits made by Jack Abramoff to the White House.
Now, Raw Story reports:
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff may have met with President George W. Bush the same day President Bush nominated one of Abramoff's former colleagues to be Assistant Secretary of Labor, RAW STORY has found.
President Bush announced his intent to nominate Patrick Pizzella, who worked with Abramoff at his former lawfirm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, the same day Abramoff made a visit to the White House, according to Secret Service records released today.
On Mar. 6, 2001, Abramoff entered at 4:23 p.m. and left at 4:49 p.m., according to Cox News Service, which obtained the records from the government watchdog Judicial Watch today.
A White House press release shows that Bush nominated Patrick Pizzella the very same day.
Just what did Pizzella specialize in?
You guessed it, the sweatshop haven of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). It looks as though Bush nominated Pizzella, at Abramoff's behest, to enact policy decisions to continue the inhumane labor pratices (a bit more on them here) occuring in the CNMI.
Franklin Foer of TNR wrote of Pizzella:
Patrick Pizzella has been many things in his career: director of intergovernmental and regional affairs at the Small Business Administration, deputy undersecretary at the Department of Education, a $175,000-per-year lobbyist at the firm Preston Gates. So when George W. Bush nominated him to be assistant secretary of labor for administration and management, the Senate perused his hefty CV and gave him its unanimous consent. To the Democratic eyes on Ted Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Pizzella seemed no different from the other lobbyists flooding the new administration. As one Democratic aide notes, "We can't battle them all."
But had Kennedy's people paid closer attention to page 9 of Pizzella's Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report, they would have discovered that he is, in fact, quite exceptional, especially for a nominee to the Labor Department. For there, hidden in plain view, Pizzella notes that he provided "[g]eneral lobbying representation" for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Although they sound like a tropical paradise, the Mariana Islands are actually something close to the opposite. An American territory in the Pacific, just north of Guam, they have become a notorious haven for foreign-owned sweatshops in recent years. According to a 1998 report by a congressionally mandated task force, 91 percent of the Marianas' private workforce consists of "indentured alien[s]" usually working to pay off fees their employers charged for resettling them in the islands. Describing coerced abortions, guarded labor barracks, and systematic underpayment, the task force labeled the islands a national "embarrassment."
Blocking any federal regulations that might lessen that embarrassment was the goal of Pizzella's "representation," which lasted from 1996 to last year. It's hard to imagine anyone you would want less in the top ranks of the department ostensibly dedicated to protecting workers' rights.
Foer goes on to detail Pizzella's prior lobbying practices to sway members of Congress and the media on the 'riches' of the CNMI:
Much of Pizzella's coalition-building on behalf of the Marianas was typical Beltway networking. "He'd come to Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings to hawk his goods," says one conservative. When CNMI officials came to Washington, Pizzella hosted dinners at downtown eateries like Sam & Harry's steakhouse, where they met with conservative activists. But Pizzella also deployed a device considerably more persuasive than filet mignon: the fully paid tropical junket.
Between 1996 and 1998, Pizzella brought Republicans on regular jaunts to the islands--I spoke to eleven he'd personally invited. By The Wall Street Journal's estimate, more than 100 representatives, congressional aides, and activists accepted Preston Gates's invitations. Nor was it just Hill dwellers. Pizzella specialized in courting conservative intellectuals and journalists. In 1997 he organized a trip that included Clint Bolick (of the Institute for Justice), John Fund (of The Wall Street Journal), Kellyanne Conway (a pollster), Ron Bailey (of Reason), and Marc Lampkin (then general counsel to the House Republican Conference), among others. As one think-tank denizen told me: "If you were a conservative intellectual and you didn't get invited, you just knew you weren't cool."
Pizzella's guests flew first-class, dined at fine restaurants, and stayed at the beachfront Hyatt Regency, where they spent evenings lounging at the hotel's bar. When DeLay visited the CNMI over New Year's Eve in 1998, he played two rounds of golf at the Lao Lao Bay course.
But Pizzella also made sure the junkets played to his vacationers' ideological predispositions. On the face of it, the Marianas development strategy wasn't necessarily one conservatives would cheer. Anti-Communists might have been upset to learn that some of the islands' garment manufacturers are indirectly owned by the Chinese government, which presumably uses the profits to fund its military. Social conservatives would have been troubled by anecdotes of coerced abortions. But Pizzella's tours were carefully calibrated. For libertarians, they emphasized the islands' lack of regulations. ("It is a perfect petri dish of capitalism," DeLay has proclaimed.) For social conservatives, they highlighted the islands' growing church population. Pizzella even arranged for Bolick, a staunch proponent of school choice, to meet government officials to discuss the CNMI's interest in school vouchers. As David Cahn, a former consultant to the Marianas, puts it, "Pat's very effective. Visitors to the island seemed to get all the right information."
There are several ways to measure the work Preston Gates did on the Marianas' behalf. For starters, consider the propaganda generated from just that one 1997 trip led by Pizzella. Bolick returned to defend the Marianas in editorials for Human Events and The Wall Street Journal. Bailey penned his fond observations of the island in The American Enterprise. And the Heritage Foundation's Mitchell, another junketeer, wrote in The Washington Times that "Washington politicians should cease their assault on Saipan." Another way would be to look at the firm's billing--more than $8 million for the CNMI account over five years--or its own explanation of what that money bought. In a memo to the Hong Kong textile mogul Willie Tan, intercepted by The Washington Post in 1998, Abramoff wrote that, "thanks to past trips," the CNMI had "many friends on the Appropriations Committees in the Congress." But perhaps the best way to measure Abramoff's and Pizzella's work on behalf of the Marianas is this: Despite all the reports of abuses, Congress hasn't passed a single piece of legislation to reform business practices there.
About two months after nominating Pizzella as Deputy Undersecretary of Labor, President Bush met, and had his photo taken, with Speaker of the Marianas House, Ben Fitial. The meeting took place during an event hosted by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Fitial had become Speaker of the House literally because of the will of Abramoff and his associates. Fitial rewarded Team Abramoff's arm-bending tactics with a handsome $1.6 million lobbying contract.
Pizzella is one of three Abramoff associates to eventually work at the White House. David Safavian has since been indicted. The other, Susan Ralston, is currently the "Special Assistant to the President & Assistant to the Senior Advisor Karl Rove." Months ago, rumors of her departure to work at the Commerce Department were dismissed.
More to come on this topic as I continue piecing together various sources. Stay tuned.
