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August 30, 2006 09:54 PM UTC
9 Comments
Then you have to have $200 million dollar toys so that you can play in your bathtub. Why drown it if it’s providing you with toys?
Someone please send Sen. Stevens an internet via the tubes telling him just how idiotic this is…
And by too much I mean $15 million dollars. Yes a bridge to 42 people costs more, but come on guys, they needed it, we dont need this.
The links:
The blog that got it going: http://www.tpmmuckra…
And a regular news source if you dont trutst that:
http://www.cnn.com/2…
he knows what an uproar such accountability would bring. All his pork would be out on display for anybody who taps into their tube!
At the end it reveals that Senator Coburn was one of the critics of the Bridge to Nowhere. Sounds like payback (if such a pissing contest can be called that).
Apparently, this whole hubbub was for naught, because Coburn outed him on the 18th of August in a town hall meeting.
The biggest shocker to me is that someone as progressive as Obama would co-sponsor a bill with Coburn, in my opinion one of the most conservative senators in the chamber today. Of course it could have been a freshmen on the march thing, but still, mind boggling.
on 60 Minutes that Ted Kennedy’s best friend in the Senate is Orrin Hatch, nothing like that suprises me anymore.
let me be the first to say the Ted Stevens of Alaska is a prime example for Term Limits. That “Ole Coot” is responsible for the Natural Gas Pipeline fiasco in Washington, D.C. all because he wants the folks in Alaska to get more royalties and so that we won’t have to pay the royalities to the Canadians.
Problem is 1) it will take longer to build, 2) it will cost more money, and 3) it will travel a much longer distance to get the gas to relay stations for distribution in the mainland U.S. pipeline system.
Of the 535 idiots on Capitol Hill, no person, Republican or Democrat, should be able to have that much influence.
Formula: Alaskans will get royalties. They will be so awash wish this excess revenue that the contribute to Stevens’ re-election campaign. Maybe a libray, or a highway, or something else.
Solid proof that some people in Washington could benefit from a frontal labatomy. Then again, we may find nothing but empty space or hot air.
Being born and raised in the great state of Alaska, I can tell you all that this sort of thing isn’t out of character at all for good ol’ Sweaty Teddy. A lot of Alaskans stick up for the guy regardless because they feel he somehow built the state during the 70s and 80s. With all the oil money we had coming in and rapid investment, I personally feel that we could have elected a large squash to the senate and still have seen the same level of growth, but that’s just me. There’s a popular misconception up there that the state economy will fall off the face of the earth if we don’t get Ted’s yearly serving of pork, of which he has progressively secured evermore insane amounts (cite: The University of Alaska has a $28 million dollar machine that does one very important thing – it photographs the aurora borealis). His power in the senate stems from one thing – seniority. Not that that’s unusual, but at this point it’s pretty ridiculous. The bridge scandal was embarassing, but that’s just a day’s work for Stevens.
A few other career highlights include earlier this year when he refused to swear in a group of oil execs testifying before the energy committee, which essentially broke all precident (and drew the wrath of the Democrats on the committee, who were unfortunately powerless to do anything about it). The execs unanimously denied meeting with Dick Cheney and other white house officials to help craft the Bush energy policy, but this was easily shown to be false by the most basic of investigations, which showed the execs meeting on mass at the White House with Cheney and others. There was no doubt that they had done so even before the news investigations, so it’s safe to say that Ted was fully aware that he was giving them an out. So our good senator basically let his friends from the indsutry off the hook by manipulating senate rules with his powers as committee chairman. Makes me nostalgic for the 1920s . . .
Then, one that I’m particularly bitter about, was old Ted’s swinging of the Tony Knowles/Lisa Murkowski senate race. Tony led Lisa, who gained her seat through the nepotistic handing over of her father, by over ten points for most of the race and with about a week out everybody was predicting that he had it in the bag. Ted hadn’t campaigned for Lisa at all at this point, though I believe he had offered the standard endorsement. Lisa Murkowski is a pretty dim bulb (my friend’s father had to fire her from his law firm, which hired her as a favor to her father, because of gross incompitency – and believe me, they cut the seantor’s daughter a lot of slack), and it was widely known that Ted didn’t really support her candidacy, especially since his own son was one of the other early suggested nominees to replace Frank Murkowski in the senate. Regardless, the GOP folks turned the screws on him and Ted called up the media for a press conference, where he told them something he knew to be pattently false – that if Tony Knowles was elected, then ANWR would never be opened and Alaska’s economy was doomed. FOr his entire political career Tony Knowles has advocated oil exploration ANWR, but that didn’t seem to matter. He also suggested that Knowles would have created a Democratic voting majority (not likely) and that the Democrats would of course be shortly thereafter ramping up to take away guns and hunting privelages, devestating the tourist trade and Alaska’s favorite hobby (lifestyle for many). Tony lost be a few points in a major upset, credited directly to Stevens’ Democratic devestation scare tactics.
Finally, Stevens used to be famous for being one of the poorest senators (by senatorial standards at least). Outside of politics he was party to a neverending string of failed business ventures, and he often expressed annoyance at having to file the financial disclosures that detailed his lack of success. A few years ago Ted was approached by an extrememly successful Alaskan commercial real estate developer (I believe the principle’s name is Berdini), in order to invest $50K into his general activities, apparently because the developer thought that Ted was a great patriot and just wanted him to be a part of his business. Certainly he didn’t actually need fifty grand from Ted, that’s pocket change to this guy. Ted gave hime the cash, and recieved a rougly $3 million dollar return on his investment a few years later. That’s a 60X return on his investment in an absurdly short perdiod of time. Nobody took notice right away, but not long after that, Ted basically bullied the state and federal government into giving his, uh, ‘business partner,’ a no-bid contract to develop thousands of new military homes and subdivisions on an Alaskan air force base. Some people looked into why Stevens was working so hard for the developer and saw the connection with his bank account when he filed disclosures. This story picked up enough steam to recieve a lot of coverage in the LA Times, but Stevens managed to stonewall on the issue, insisting that he had done nothing wrong. Clearly the burden was on the state of Alaska to take him to task, clearly they were unwilling to do so.
Recently his son, Ben Stevens, along with a few other state legislators, had their offices raided by the FBI, who were searching for evidence of illegal gifting and other ethical violations by VECO executives in Alaska (VECO is an oil suppport services company). I’m all for eliminating corruption at the state level, but when you take a look at Stevens’ record, the real crime is taking place at a much higher level. The guy is a sterling example of what’s wrong in Washington, and I’m really hoping that this is the year when people like Ed Perlmutter will come together and retake the House and start making it impossible for these morons like Stevens to operate.
I heard about the VECO/FBI searches yesterday and had a hearty laugh that Ben Stevens was involved. I knew little else of Stevens corruptability outside of the massive amounts of pork he throws alaska’s way and the most recent secret hold. What boggles the mind is that he has that much of an ability to basically lie straight faced and everyone believes him there. It floors me.
Stevens seniority (any senators seniority for that matter) is what makes my blood boil. He ges put in plush chairmanships even though he may have little or no knowledge about the subjects that will be before him e.g. the internet is tubes, not dump trucks. People want accountability, but they want pork more so until we as a whole realize that one is necessarily better than the other Ted Stevens and his ilk will continue to reign.