I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually saw something interesting on RightsideVA (one of the SWAC blogs) over the weekend: Congress starting to smell "Fishy" already... I'm surprised this issue isn't getting more attention, but I guess "the surge" is eclipsing everything else right now. Not to mention the new season of 24.

In a nutshell, there's some question about whether Nancy Pelosi bowed to pressure from Big Tuna lobbyists in her district to exempt American Samoa from HR2, the new minimum wage bill. Pelosi denies the charge.

Now I personally haven't thought for one second that Democrats are "clean" while Republicans are "corrupt," so it would not surprise me at all to see hijinks from the Democrats in the new Congress. I figure that rampant corruption is one of the fundamental requirements of politics, and is a natural part of American government. (I might even go so far as to say it's a natural part of the human condition, if I were feeling cynical.)

I'm suspicious about Pelosi and Big Tuna, but I have some doubts about the allegations. The source (or one source) of the fuss is a Washington Times article, which states:

"The [minimum wage] bill also extends ... to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws. ... One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna... StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi."

As usual, the mainstream media doesn't seem terribly accurate in this reporting. To say that American Samoa was "exempted" is a little misleading--in fact it was simply not mentioned in the bill.

Also, according to Wikipedia at least, there are many more unincorporated U.S. territories besides American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands that went unmentioned in the bill. So it also seems misleading, if not dead wrong, to say that American Samoa would be the only U.S. territory not covered by the federal minimum-wage law. Unless there's something in the existing minimum wage laws that I don't know about (which is possible, since I haven't looked them up).

That last point in particular makes me doubt that Pelosi bowed to pressure from Big Tuna to kill minimum wage laws in American Samoa, but I guess anything's possible. Pelosi does have a very creepy-looking smile.

I think another interesting question is why the Northern Mariana Islands were specifically included in the bill, and why their new minimum wage starts considerably lower than the rest of the United States ($3.55 vs. $5.85). I guess that's for economic reasons that I would probably find incomprehensible. In fairness I should point out that it looks like the Northern Mariana minimum wage rate would increase 50 cents every 6 months until it reaches the same rate in the rest of the United States.

Note to bloggers and mainstream media writers: I wrote all of that without using the word "fishy."

Thomas Krehbiel writes The Krehbiel Strikes Back, a generally centrist commentary on news, media, politics, and culture.