What Do You Gotta Do to Get a GOP Vote Around Here?

Two weeks ago, the United States accused Saudi Arabia and 13 other nations of failing to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers. The State Department said that these nations would be subject to sanctions if they do not crack down.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “Trafficking in human beings is nothing less than a modern form of slavery. The United States has a particular duty to fight this scourge because trafficking in persons is an affront to the principles of human dignity and liberty upon which this nation was founded.”

(Saturday, June 4, 2005. “US Accuses Nations on Human Trafficking.” Associated Press)

Who would be against upholding our nation’s principles of human dignity and liberty?

Twenty-two members of the California Republican Assembly Caucus.

When Assemblymember Sally Lieber tried to crack down on human trafficking, twenty-two members of the Assembly Republican Caucus opposed her new law.

Lieber’s bill (AB 22) would establish civil and criminal penalties for trafficking in human beings, allow for the forfeiture of assets derived from human trafficking, create an Anti-Trafficking Advisory Task Force and add human trafficking to the list of crimes that the Attorney General is to give priority.

What’s going on? Did the California Chamber of Commerce add this bill to their “job-killer” list?

NO VOTES (11):

Daucher, Emmerson, Harman, La Malfa, La Suer, Maze, Mountjoy, Nakanishi

Plescia, Strickland, Wyland

ABSENT, ABSTAINING, OR NOT VOTING (11):

Benoit, Cogdill, Haynes, Houston, Keene, McCarthy, Niello, Sharon Runner, Spitzer, Villines, Walters