How a plank enters a platform

Party platforms are interesting things anyway. There are tediously long and boring documents out of which a few things will be publicized. Then people will only be reading the excerpts and the gists, and you can’t blame them, because they are awful.

In theory, though, what you have is a statement of values. This is what we consider to be important, and how we are going to make it work. It also may include a fair amount of sniping, like this leadin to support for mandatory prison sentences for a long list of crimes:

“Liberals do not understand this simple axiom: criminals behind bars cannot harm the general public.”

Anyway, I wouldn’t even have bothered trying to read the stupid thing if it wasn’t for a web article I read on the oddest items in the platform—you know, things like being completely against imposition of sharia law in the United States, and examining a possible return to the gold standard. Those weren’t what caught my eye. What got me was a reference to minimum wage in the Marianas Islands:

“The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”

To show you how obscure it is, the article I was reading referred to them as the Marinara Islands. I don’t think the writer got it wrong—I think auto-correct changed it and he didn’t notice, because it seems like such a minor thing compared to taxes, healthcare, and abortion.

It struck me because of a book I had read a few years ago, “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule” by Thomas Frank. And really, the Northern Mariana Islands are a small part of that book, but I remembered.

So here’s what you need to know. It is a US Territory, so one might expect it to be similar to the United States, and certainly products made there can be labeled “Made in USA”, but they are not subject to the same regulations. This means the regulations to insure product quality, but it especially means protection and treatment of the workers.

Also, many of the workers aren’t really US citizens. They’re from nearby countries, especially China, working as immigrants. They are lied to about what their situation will be, and sometimes what location they will be going to. In general if you are rich-and well-connected you do all right, otherwise it is poverty and abuse and a lot of sex trafficking. However, when people tried to start reform there, it was fought based on how it would limit the ability of the Chinese workers to be exposed to Christianity.

That particular scam is actually old news, having come back to bite Ralph Reed during a 2006 campaign, that I think even then was overshadowed by the other Jack Abramoff scandals.

So how did this obscure issue make it into the 2012 GOP Platform? Well, obviously someone who is a big party donor is making money off of the low wages there, and wants to continue to do so. Really, it’s totally a great plan. You can exploit cheap Chinese labor while still using the Made in the USA label. Why should you mess that up by treating workers fairly, and paying enough so they can support themselves without having a prostitution side job? Oh, did I mention the forced abortions?

We can’t talk about the problems in democracy without talking about the role of big money, and that is especially true of the Republican side. So the next thing we’ll talk about is money.