Comments (30)

Kuparuk wrote on July 24, 2007 9:54 PM:

"Veco has been the recipient of a variety of federal contracts, but it's still not clear what the company would have received in exchange for all of its alleged bribes. "

They went from being little general contractors to being an international financial powerhouse in just a few years, and it isn't clear?

Stop thinking quid pro quo. Start thinking Good Ol' Boy Network. The lobbyists and politicians in Alaska have never pulled one-for-one deals -- they've always pulled a favor here, a favor there, over long periods of time.

kuparuk wrote on July 24, 2007 10:01 PM:

"Veco has been the recipient of a variety of federal contracts, but it's still not clear what the company would have received in exchange for all of its alleged bribes."

They were handed large contracts by the oil industry and feds that should have gone to more experienced companies. From this, they turned from a small general contractor into an international powerhouse in just a few years, and it still isn't clear?

Stop thinking quid pro quo. Start thinking Good Ol' Boy Network. What made the recent busts so rare is that Alaskan lobbyists have never traded one-for-one favors. They've always dished out a favor here, a favor there, over long periods of time.

Finer Les wrote on July 24, 2007 10:05 PM:

Right, so you are saying Democrat was ever under criminal investigation ever! Get real! And President Polk's secretary of state had a brown horse as well. Clinton!Clinton!Clinton!

Just beating jakeD to the punch with nonsensical distractions. :-)

What?! wrote on July 24, 2007 10:11 PM:

Finer Les,

I'm a Republican and I won't apologize for these (allegedly)corrupt elected officials. I'm aghast with the corruption in my own Party, the Party of "values"!

Dave Bowman wrote on July 24, 2007 10:13 PM:

Another potential inmate for the Ted Stevens Minimum Security Prison for White Collar Criminals in Anchorage! At this rate, the new prison will be providing many jobs for Alaskans--though not exactly the way that Stevens and Young had in mind;>

Anonymous wrote on July 24, 2007 10:13 PM:

Don, what about those diamond jewelry "door prizes" at fundraisers your wife "won" back to back? What is her secret, is she just lucky, or just lucky to be DY's wife? Why did your aide have to tell her she held the "lucky" raffle number?
Is that a legal campaign contribution or is it beyond the statute of limitations?
Alaskans want to know.

PS Is it really legal to fly in form DC on a private jet and hunt big game on the same day? Or is the statute of limitations up on that one too?

Ducky wrote on July 24, 2007 10:48 PM:

What the hell is happening in the Great State of Alaska?

oldtree wrote on July 24, 2007 11:02 PM:

If Rep. Young is a criminal, his constituents might wonder how many years of his 35 in congress has he been corrupt and taking payoffs?

Denny Gill wrote on July 25, 2007 12:05 AM:

How much more are we going to take? How much more (alleged, yeah, let me throw that in) corruption among our Congressional delegation are we Alaskans willing to stomach? Unless they're both under indictment or in prison by then, next year, 2008, will be our opportunity to vote out Don and Ted. Right now anyone--Democrat, Republican, independent--stands an excellent chance of being voted in.

JEP wrote on July 25, 2007 12:42 AM:

...annual pig-roast?

Never was a festivel better labeled.

Denny Gill wrote on July 25, 2007 12:44 AM:

By-the-way, Alaska has achieved a TPM "trifecta" of sorts: all three members of our ignominious Congressional delegation are featured on a single page of TPM, 7/24/07, 8:45pm ADT. Hooray for us (sarcasm).

Denny Gill wrote on July 25, 2007 12:45 AM:

By-the-way, Alaska has achieved a TPM "trifecta" of sorts: all three members of our ignominious Congressional delegation--Young, Murkowski, Stevens--are featured on a single page of TPM, 7/24/07, 8:45pm ADT. Hooray for us (sarcasm).

Bud Ha wrote on July 25, 2007 1:06 AM:

What do you expect from lifetime Politicians? What goobers we are to create these men and then want to hang them when they do our bidding. It's like the mouth complaining about the butthole.

borealfox wrote on July 25, 2007 1:31 AM:

Uncle Ted? Bubba Don? Guilty? Tell me it's true! At least finally true. What I've always wanted to know is how the hell they've gotten away with as much as they have all these years.

Leslita wrote on July 25, 2007 1:38 AM:

The invite for Don's annual Pig Roast appeared in mailboxes just this week! He's not having it at Bill Allen's anymore, but he's still roasting a pig.

If you read Rick Smith (VECO) indictment, one of the charges is that he gave illegal campaign fundraisers. Wonder if it's this one???

DonnyBoy wrote on July 25, 2007 1:52 AM:

HEY FBI! If you're reading this. Interview some of the past guests and ask what amenities were at these parties and compare to the receipts. I've seen them set up for the parties at Bill's house (it's a small neighborhood). He would bring in set up crews days before the event (Veco workers, I presume) and they would put on a very lavish spread. It had to cost thousands of dollars to put on. Thousands. Plus, I doubt he could use his Veco employees legally. Check out the lavish affairs the Double Musky held for Ted and Lisa. check the receipts. Did they pay? Coincidence? The guy who owns the Double Musky was the one overseeing Ted's "little" construction project. All in the family, baby.

bloggerator wrote on July 25, 2007 2:42 AM:

The Soviet Socialist State of Alaska has unique needs, it's party apparatchiks and commisars tell us. Federal funding makes up 40 percent of the budget of the state of the great individualists.

No one there pays state income tax. They tax our oil that we paid for. We gave them their railroad and pay for the entire cost of all capital needs, from track to cars to ferries and stations where no one lives. But it makes a profitl. Of course it doesn't have to pay to maintain the capital investment. We do. And Alaska claims it's builing a 60 mile commuter railroad from Girdwood to Wasilla. Actually there are no commuters. The money is just another under the table funding of the Alaska RR that now has more than $100 million from that one source, a secret earmark. People ride buses much of the year. And there's a lot more paid homeland security staff at airports in Alaska than California away from LAX or SFO.

If you see joint federal local funding, look a little deeper and you'll find the local funding comes from federal community grants just for that purpose.

There's nothing wrong with the people in Alaska, but their elected party graftocans are stealing us all blind. Roads and bridges named after crooks who steal our money and pretend it's a unique need.

Llewellyn Cobb wrote on July 25, 2007 2:51 AM:

Ah, hell with this info about uncle Ted and congressmen Young... I just might owe TK an appology.

FlyOnTheWall wrote on July 25, 2007 8:25 AM:

It's probably a mistake to confine the search for qid pro quo to federal contracts. Alaska boasts a tight-knit political community, and Young might easily have picked up the phone to arrange a state or local favor, or to influence a private citizen or business to act in accord with Veco's interests. It might also have been in the nature of a retainer - really savvy supporters of elected officials contribute year in and year out, so that when they finally have a favor to ask, it won't be indictable. (Of course, it also helps to make sure that the contributions themselves aren't inherently illegal, as was apparently the case here.)

I think bloggerator has a point. The difficulty with Alaska is that it's a petro-state. We tend to forget that our system was built on a very simple proposition - that the power to levy taxes and to spend the monies collected was reserved for the people alone. That's why Congress holds the power of the purse. People take a special interest in how their dollars are spent, particularly when, if they are spent ineptly or corruptly, the state is liable to come back and take more. But in Alaska, many citizens end up receiving more from the state than they contribute - and that's in direct cash payments. It's not their money being spent, and so they're far less likely to monitor the affairs of state.

Tom Friedman (for once) actually got this right. Governments that rely on their natural resources to fund their operations will always be less efficient and more corrupt than those that raise revenue directly. (The only exceptions are the Nordic nations that have taken elaborate precautions to insulate the state from the corrosive effects of oil revenues, a step Alaska has not taken.)

Laura McGann wrote on July 25, 2007 9:30 AM:

Leslita -- If you have an invite or more info on the event, could you email me?

laura at talkingpointsmemo dot com

Thanks,
Laura McGann

Kobuk Mike wrote on July 25, 2007 12:43 PM:

COWARDS!!! What is the site all about if the ADMINS don't clean off this anonymous dribble??

At a minimum, posters should have the courage to say who they are when making allegations about someone - even if they are in public office.

I for one am proud of my Alaskan Congressional delegation and will remain so until any charge is proven, not just childishly posted on the Internet. Without Stevens and Young, Alaska would not have the roads, schools and other infrastructure we rely upon - not to mention JOBS.

Let me just say, unless you are willing to stand up and be recognized, keep your allegations or fabrications to yourself! We are all innocent until proven guilty - even when elected to public office.

johnW1141 wrote on July 25, 2007 12:59 PM:

This scandal may rival the Abramoff scandal

Yukon Roy wrote on July 25, 2007 1:00 PM:

Well said Kobuk Mike, thanks for standing up for all of us Alaskan who like to call everyone else for not being tuff enuff to give their real name we have to stick together and defend "Veco Ted", "Kenia Lisa" and "Don Bridges To No Where" they have shown us that the truth will set you free...?

Anonymous wrote on July 25, 2007 2:16 PM:

come out of the shadows against Ted?
Not
The ol' boy network eats their young and they will make sure you never do anything in this state
its scorched earth behind Allen, Young, Murkowski, and Stevens with lots of victims
cross them and you suffer big time. only the FBI can do that in an oil/banana republic

Kobuk Mike wrote on July 25, 2007 4:11 PM:

"Come out of the shadows against Ted?" Boy, you must be an inside man for sure....a few hours ago you had dirt on diamond necklaces to Don Young's wife. Now you are in the shadows with Ted Stevens....you are a regular Deep Throat....I think not!

Being afraid to talk to someone of authority makes you part of the problem. But since I think your posting(s) are/is a BS fantasy concocted in your pea-brain, it makes you a sack of chicken something. In fact, I would wager that most of these postings don't realize that the Yukon or Kobuk are rivers in AK. If you care about the State I am proud to call home, you will anonymously talk to the authorities versus hiding in cyberspace behind some BS accusation.

In the meantime, I will keep cashing PFDs and driving down sometimes good highways, fishing out of safe ports and flying out of airports (regardless of their name) equipped with state of the art electronics with the full-knowledge that most of this wouldn't be where it is today if we didn't invest our votes in having a senior Congressional delegation.

Mr. Anonymous, stay anonymous, but please do it in the shadows of somewhere else.

Cheers!

gjdodger wrote on July 25, 2007 5:29 PM:

And this means...another GOPer with ties to a Presidential hopeful has run afoul of the law. For Don Young is the Congressional Chairman for my former Guv'ner, the one and only Mike Huckabee.

Ed*ard Teller wrote on July 26, 2007 4:14 AM:

I posted this at ADN's editor's blog a while ago in response to their Editor Pat Dougherty's defense of why they refused to print the WSJ article today (Wednesday):

Feeling the heat in the ADN news and editorial rooms? About frigging time. While I respect the accuracy of the narrative of how you decided how to run the story of the WSJ story, I find it to be one of the most disingenuous pieces of BS you've ever penned under your current job title.
Why is it that, over the past three years, time and again, your shop is outdone, outsourced, outwritten and just plain creamed by people thousands of miles away who have no primary responsibility to their readers to be on top of Alaska issues? It is one thing for a newspaper with diminishing readership and resources like yours to be beaten to our own local political stories over and over by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press. But when papers in Wisconsin and Florida are able to add siginicantly more to our knowledge about Don Young or other Alaska pols than you can, people here should shake their heads. When oncoming new news sources like TRPMuckraker.com can build case files on the corruption of politics in our state which compile interesting arrays of links to past stories here you've just plain missed (can I say "again and again" again here?) people begin to laugh.
They should.
Pat Dougherty - "uh, we might have covered this, but, you know, journalistic integrity kept us from doing this or that or the other."
The Public - "maybe I need to go somewhere where people want to fix Alaska, to get my facts."
I've written about this, regarding Young, as long ago as last October. Just a month ago, you printed this on your editorial pages:
""[Whittier] Museum organizers apparently have a special interest in aviation and have a special surprise on hand for visitors: Two dozen photos from Sen. Ted Stevens' World War II years flying in Asia. The collection includes a charming photo of young Sen. Stevens, an Army Air Force officer, strumming a guitar."
That was, I believe the last serious investigative work you've independently printed on Saint Ted. What a charming, special prize that fluff will bring your paper at next year's journalism awards, right?
The plain truth is, Pat, that the willful lack of curiosity your paper has consistently shown on these political corruption issues is becoming an increasingly sorry, dismal chapter of Alaska journalism history.
Short version - you're not very good at finding bright, shiny objects of distraction. Whatever magic the ADN once had has disappeared from view under your stewardship.

Kobuk Mike wrote on July 26, 2007 3:05 PM:

E&T, I find it striking that you would criticize the ADN for not running a story that had no real news value and relied on anonymous sources. I might need to Google journalistic ethics, but seems to me wild speculation on what may or may not be going on with respect to these serious charges should be left to bloggers like you in cyberspace.

Real news outlets may want to take the backwards approach of using legitimate sources that are validated by secondary sources….imagine that! Here you aren't required to have any journalistic integrity and can just blather away...I quite enjoy it too! Far be it from me to defend the ADN, but your agenda to tear AK apart by abusing our Congressional delegation is sickening.

It should not go without saying that all of these charges must be proven. In addition, sadly, no state or political party is immune to this ethical chatter. It just bothers me that folks outside Alaska try to impact our political process with their larger agenda of doing things like cutting our rural school funding, blocking the Alaskan economy from job creating growth (other than tourism) and locking up ANWR.

Our delegation may not be perfect, but they fight for our state and remain innocent until proven otherwise. I recall a day when fighting for your state was a primary motivator for sending someone to Washington, DC.

Tombstone wrote on August 2, 2007 10:40 AM:

Don Young can look forward to trash talking with his cellmate while they share intimate moments together rubbing each others' backs.

Say, Kobuk, not to be offensive, but "Mike" sure is an unusual last name.

Gnarly Erik wrote on August 12, 2007 8:50 PM:

The Good Old Boy criminals who have had things their way in Alaska are getting a rude awakening. I am still puzzled as to why all this dirt is coming out now. Have these boys (and girl) got on the wrong side of someone in the administration and being punished a la Joseph Wilson.

Whatever, I say let the good times roll!

I would like to point out one thing however: To all those Alaskans who keep voting these criminals in office term after term and the real enablers - and, you are every bit as guilty as your crooked politicians.

If you haven't voted them in knowingly, they you are guilty of terminal ignorance!