Here Jeff. This is a winger talking point which is probably where you caught wind of it. There was a live chat with a Post reporter, who covered the story, where this came up and he responded to it.
Washington: Looks like Speaker Pelosi was bought off by a large corporation in her district, and what a surprise, no coverage in The Post? The minimum wage increase includes all of our territories, except American Samoa. One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island’s work force.
StarKist’s parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco. No coverage of the hypocrisy this morning in The Post, which just proves my point – biased anti-republican paper.
Jonathan Weisman: Dude, I was the first to write on this. See below (man, I enjoyed this question)
HEADLINE: Minimum-Wage Bill Stirs Controversy in Pacific Islands;
Democrats Aim Raise for Northern Marianas but Not Samoa
BYLINE: Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
After years of protection from the likes of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, employers on the Northern Mariana Islands would finally have to pay workers the federal minimum wage under legislation before the House tomorrow.
Democrats have long tried to pull the Northern Marianas under the umbrella of U.S. labor laws, accusing the island government and its industry leaders of coddling sweatshops and turning a blind eye to forced abortions and indentured servitude. But Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist now in federal prison, spent millions of dollars from the island and its business interests currying favor with Republicans, aligning support with conservative interest groups and thwarting every effort to intervene in the Northern Marianas’ economy.
But Republican leadership aides accused the Democrats of using a double standard by imposing the higher minimum wage on a government with a Republican representative to the United States while continuing to exempt a territory with a Democratic delegate. American Samoa and the tuna industry that dominates its economy would remain free to pay wages that are less than half the bill’s mandatory minimum.
Washington: I wrote the post of the Pelosi double standard. Your article is 80 percent about what Republicans did, and about 20 percent on what is happening now. You never once mention it is Pelosi’s home district, nor do you mention the company is based in San Fran. It is basically bashing Republicans, with one little side note at the bottom about the new bill.
Jonathan Weisman: I looked at Del Monte, which is San Francisco-based, but Del Monte executives have given to Republicans almost exclusively and have given nothing to Pelosi or the major Democratic committees. If they had, we would have printed it, but our standards are a little higher than the guilt-by-association standards of our competitor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/01/05/DI2007010501219.html
