Since when have I ever read Ms.'s (the magazine's) website until something I read yesterday directed me there?

I guess it's synchronicity, but I learned earlier today that what I read only yesterday was/is true. Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay's shenanigans were even lower than I had imagined. The Republican leadership has (year after year) been stopping legislation that would bring the workers, mostly women, who work in the Marianas Islands, a US Territory, under US labor laws. By working in sweatshop circumstances, and living in conditions referred (correctly) to as indentured servitude, corporations are able to sell products produced there at low prices, making enormous profits, and ... bearing the important label, "Made in the USA."

Tom Delay, who was paid millions by Jack Abramoff, praised the islands as a "Petri dish of capitalism." And with his leadership position and the backing of most Republicans, he was able to keep the bill(s) that were introduced stalled forever ... or maybe as of now ... not forever.

New legislation, aimed at improving the lot of the women who are working there, has been reintroduced in Congress with the hope of reaching the hearts and consciences of both Democrats and Republicans who are no longer influenced by bribes and the tactics of Tom DeLay. One of the most recent allegations to surface, thanks to Ms. Magazine's investigation (their reporters and investigators actually went there!) are the concrete block "prisons," forced abortions Third World Country working conditions that keep the prices low on their products and the large sums of money paid by the women's families in the Philippines and elsewhere to secure their passage and "papers" to work in the Marianas in the first place.

Let's all write or otherwise let our representatives in Congress know our deep feelings on this issue and also write George Bush at the same time. The forced abortions to allow some of the women to continue working there would particularly upset him, I'm sure.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the lead sponsor of the current bill, told a radio audience today (on the Al Franken Show -- I have an XM Radio, thanks to my kids) that DeLay consistently -- and over several years -- blocked his (and others') efforts to impose U.S. labor and immigration standards to help convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented the Pacific territory and textile companies there.

Among other provisions under the bill, the hourly minimum wage in the territory, now $3.05, would gradually be raised to the U.S. level, $5.15.

Noting that bills to raise the island wage passed the Senate repeatedly, only to be blocked by DeLay and his colleagues in the House, Miller told the Al Frankin radio audience that the Texas Republican and Abramoff were running what could only be called a "protection racket."

Miller said that Abramoff and his lobbying companies collected more than $10 million in fees from garment manufacturers and the Northern Marianas government, according to lobbying reports and government documents.

Only in America!

Now, we need to get some Republicans behind the bill; they are as good Americans as are the Democrats, but simply didn't know what the leadership was getting away with in all of this, I believe.