Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Jack Abramoff Sweat Shop Lobbyist


My my not satisfied with being a mover and shaker for the right wing fundamentalist lobby in the Republican party and the Bush regime. Jack Abramoff tries his hand at interntational trade lobbying. Abramoff promoted a Tawainese sweat shop company to the PTB with the Bush administration and the Republican House and Senate.

And why shouldn't he, the Bush adminstration loves outsourcing and sweat shops. After all it's their policy of outsourcing and sweat labour of Latin American underground workforce that the Bush administration relies on for rebuilding post Katrina America.



Mystery firm linked to US lobbyist scandal

Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of Representatives and US Department of Labor.

Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and Trading, according to the Land Registry.

Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.

Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.

The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA" label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.

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