Yesterday, Alison St. John of KPBS in San Diego
reported on the race between Brian Bilbray and Francine Busby for CA-50. It was quite good. St. John made the Bilbray/Abramoff connection in both pieces. I liked this part:
And Bilbray himself is deliberately playing down his recent years as a DC lobbyist, for good reason - as the federal corruption investigations of Cunningham, Jack Abramoff and others have revealed the seamy underside of their cozy congressional relationships.
In fact, as a congressman, Bilbray and his wife took a New Year's eve trip to the Marianas Islands, part of a lobbying effort by Abramoff to block sweatshop reforms in that U.S. commonwealth. Bilbray downplays the connection and defends the travel.
She added more details on KPBS's local talk show, These Days, when she reported that Bilbray claims he was not aware that Abramoff was involved in the trip.
Liar.
Facts are on the jump...
Brian Bilbray traveled to Saipan with Jack Abramoff. It is a 8-10 hour plane trip each way. Some how, I think they may know each other.
The trip was from 12-27-1996 through 1-4-1997. Joining Jack Abramoff and Brian Bilbray on the New Year's Eve Holiday Congressional trip to CNMI were Bilbray's wife, Patrick Pizzella, Cong. Rohrabacher, Dana's fiancé Rhonda Carmondy, and Cong. Duncan (R-TN) and his wife.
Bilbray's staffer, David Schoeder, preceded his boss by a few weeks, traveling to CNMI on 12-7-1996.
The trips were paid for by Abramoff and reimbursed by the CNMI government at a later date. At the time of the travel Abramoff did not have a contract to lobby for the government of CNMI.
The KPBS report let Bilbray spin and then reported the facts to put that spin in context:
BILBRAY: "Well it was paid for by the northern Marianas contrary to what people say the united states government subdivision, the American government paid for that and it was cleared ahead of time."
Invoices show the trip was paid by Abramoff, who was later reimbursed by the Mariana Islands Government - which gets most of its funding from U.S. taxpayers. The lobby effort was considered successful, by the way, as the sweatshop reforms went nowhere.
I've posted about the Abramoff scandal for some time now and have been researching him since 1999. In the course of my "hobby" I have collected some documents. This evening I figured out how I could use the simple web page (that comes with my DSL service) to place some of these documents.
So I have put up a number of Bilbray/Abramoff documents at the site.
Include is a page from an Abramoff invoice that provides detail on who traveled to CNMI in December 1996. Notice that Bilbray traveled with Abramoff.
There are also newspaper clippings from the Marianas Variety reporting on Brian's trip while he was still on CNMI.
Bilbray was on the Commerce Committee. A very important committee for the sweatshop interests on CNMI as it controlled the laws governing what could be imported from CNMI to the USA. He also had introduced legislation to deny US Citizenship to anybody born on US soil who did not have at least one US Citizen for a parent. This was important to the sweatshop interests because if the children of their "guest workers" became US Citizens they might have a harder time denying basic human rights to their parents. Brian understood this and worked hard to prevent US Citizenship being used to slow down an economic system based on human trafficking.
Bilbray was also one of Team Abramoff's Champions. A go to guy for legislative work. Bilbray or his staffer, David Schoeder, are frequently mentioned in Abramoff's CNMI billing records.
Anyway, there is less than a week until the June 6 primary and special election. This could be a great victory in our effort to take this country back. Do what you can. Visit the Busby for Congress site. Give money. Give time. Let's win this one!
Bilbray is one of those people who should be forced to explain why he spent his time in the US Congress working to protect a system of forced labor, forced prostitution and forced abortions.
Bilbray used his office and position to protect abuse and promote injustice. Along with the rest of the GOP gang, he worked to block legislation extending US labor, immigration and custom laws to CNMI. The crimes were real and the evidence has of abuse on CNMI has been presented to Congress since before 1994. In fact Bilbray was sent a package of documents detailing the abuse upon his return from CNMI. He ignored it. As did most of the members of the GOP.
It is time to hold these folks accountable: both as co-conspirators and at the ballot box.
Brian has an accountability more scheduled for Tuesday. So does Richard Pombo.
Let's hold them accountable. Justice is long overdue.
2006 is now. Let's take our Country back!
