This information needs to be spread from sea to shining sea. Before those phony 9/11 coins were sold on TV, the Mariana Islands (a US protectorate) had already become the GOP's very own "promised land of unregulated free enterprise" - and Tom DeLay was the "Sweatshop Shill on Capitol Hill" Read how he paid back his buddy Kenneth Lay for his generosity over the years...
http://www.alternet.org/story/13140
DeLay Gets Enron a Piece of the Mariana Action
Although far from Texas, the Marianas provided DeLay with yet another opportunity to help Enron. When the Marianas put out a call for bids for a new $120 million power plant, a Japanese company was awarded the contract. Enron, attracted by the island's lack of environmental rules, wanted in and complained to DeLay that they had not been given a fair shot at the contract for the power plant.
DeLay responded by calling in some chits from his friends in the Mariana administration - in particular Ben Fital, a conservative politician whom DeLay's former aides, Ed Buckham and Mike Scanlon, helped get elected as the island's representative in Congress.(The Washington Post reported that Buckham's lobbying firm, Alexander Strategies Group's representation of Enron's interests in the Marianas won him $50,000 in fees.) Delay demanded that the power plant bidding be re-opened and that Enron's bid be given new consideration.
And so it came to pass. The bidding was re-opened and Enron was declared the winner. Apparently, free-market mechanisms like open bidding are only good when they favor the right player. Islanders say the bidding was rigged in Enron's favor.
"There were all kinds of political pushes from the top and the side and every way," Vincent Mesa, the island's former manger of the its power utilities, recalled later. "There were all kinds of political interference. They (government officials) didn't want to understand it. They said, 'Just do it! Give Enron the contract."
But, now with Enron in bankruptcy the power project has been left to rust in the Pacific sun and the islands are stuck with spotty electric power and lots of debt.