tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63837729149394277052024-03-13T19:47:15.483-08:00Alaska Political CorruptionCliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.comBlogger426125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-10404485068568994962015-02-02T21:03:00.001-09:002015-02-02T21:03:24.641-09:00List of Things Alaska Could Do Legally to Address the Fiscal Challenge<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Queenstown, N.Z.</b>--</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have been a very spotty blogger, but here is a piece I wrote for the <i>Alaska Bar Rag</i>--the official publication of the Last Frontier's lawyers--that gives a flavor of what I have been working on (both in Alaska and on vacation).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">List of Things Alaska Could Do Legally to Address the Fiscal Challenge</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 21px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Cliff Groh</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-bdf636d1-4e0b-2f55-b16b-00bc0e9cb41f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The deep slump in oil prices since the summer of 2014 has exposed and exacerbated underlying structural problems in the State of Alaska’s fiscal system. These problems include: </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dominant role of oil in the state budget—taxes and royalties from oil production account for more than 85 percent of the State of Alaska’s Unrestricted General Fund revenues (the Unrestricted General Fund is what most people mean when they say “the state budget”); </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The long-run decline in oil production that has left the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) carrying less than a quarter of the oil it was carrying in the late 1980s;</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Increasing costs of producing that oil on the North Slope; and</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Partly because of (2) and (3) above, the unlikelihood of oil prices rebounding enough to bail Alaska out of this dilemma.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With revenues sharply down, matters are complicated by the desires many Alaskans have for more state spending in various areas.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Add it up, and you have an ugly picture. The budget this year (Fiscal Year 2015—or FY2015—which runs July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015) balances at oil prices of about $117 per barrel. Oil prices are below $50 per barrel as of this writing, and the Alaska Department of Revenue has reduced its oil price forecast to $65 for the rest of FY2015 and $66 for FY2016. With an approximately $6 billion state budget and revenues looking likely to be approximately $2.5 billion this year, the budget deficit at current oil prices and production would be close to $3.5 billion in FY2015. This means that the State of Alaska would have a budget deficit of more than 50 percent in the current fiscal year.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What follows is an attempt at a comprehensive catalogue of the steps the State of Alaska could take to address the fiscal challenge. This is an exercise in description, not prescription. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> endorsement of any course of action is intended, and there is no discussion here of the many pros and cons of these approaches, whether philosophical, practical, or otherwise. Some of these items are obviously far less politically or practically possible than others.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note also that although the list below includes dollar estimates for amounts possibly gained or saved regarding some of the items listed, not all of the fiscal impacts are easily predictable. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The items below can be grouped into four categories, with a more detailed list following:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Change spending </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Collect more revenues</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Use our savings accounts and/or money generated by or in the Permanent Fund</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get someone else to pay</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I. Change spending</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reduce the budget as compared to the previous year’s spending (Notable facts about the budget include: 1. The State of Alaska’s budget is widely understood to be No. in per capita spending among the states; 2. Roughly two-thirds of the budget is composed of three items—K-12 education, Medicaid, and retirement assistance; 3. The capital budget is only about 10 percent of the budget; 4. cuts could either be either targeted or across-the-board)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Re-allocate unspent and/or lapsed appropriations in the General Fund</span></div>
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<ol start="3" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Impose another constitutional amendment limiting spending (Alaska has had a constitutional spending limit since 1982)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Limit spending as a percentage of revenues somehow defined</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Limit spending as a percentage of savings somehow defined</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">II. Collect more revenues </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adopt broad-based tax paid by individuals (Alaska is the only state in the union without either a general statewide sales tax or any form of a state income tax paid by individuals. Alaska had a state individual income tax until it was repealed in 1980; Alaska has never had a statewide sales or property tax paid by individuals. Note that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a deficit of $3.5 billion works out to more than $4,500 per Alaskan, including children. According to Prof. Scott Goldsmith of the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, U.S. Department of Commerce figures show that combined state sales and income tax per capita averaged $1,812 for the U.S. as a whole in 2010.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> State income tax (A 2010 legislative report estimated that an individual income tax in Alaska taxing 2.8 percent of adjusted gross income on a flat-tax basis would generate $500 million annually. This estimate was based on 2006 IRS data for Alaska residents and thus does not count income that could be collected from non-residents working in Alaska.)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Statewide sales tax (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That same 2010 report estimated that a state sales tax of three percent without exemptions would bring in $450 million a year.)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Statewide property tax</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Others</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Expand and/or increase selective sales and/or excise taxes</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Alcohol</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Tobacco</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Fuel</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Marijuana</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Others</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="3" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Adopt other taxes, such as head tax or estate tax</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="4" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Increase fees</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="5" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Increase petroleum taxes</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="6" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Impose and/or increase taxes on other industries</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Fisheries</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mining</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Tourism</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Others</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="7" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Increase the intensity of auditing of tax and/or royalties returns filed by petroleum producers</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="8" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Increase the rate of return on the state’s savings</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="9" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Promote economic development that allows the collection of additional revenues under existing taxes</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Increase petroleum production</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arrange for gasline/LNG export project to go into service</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Others</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">III. Use our savings accounts</span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Spend easily spendable savings—the Statutory Budget Reserve and Constitutional Budget Reserve contain together more than $10 billion as of January of 2015, and the Legislature could spend all of that money in the budget</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; margin-left: 3px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Spend funds or accounts outside the General Fund, the Statutory Budget Reserve, the Constitutional Budget Reserve, or the Permanent Fund</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Use Permanent Fund earnings in the budget in significant amounts (The Permanent Fund holds as of this writing more than $51 billion in assets. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of that more than $51 billion, the Permanent Fund Corporation’s most recent balance sheet (November 30, 2014) posted on its website shows $38.2 billion in the constitutionally protected principal (also known as the “corpus contributions and appropriations”) and another amount of more than $5.9 billion “not in spendable form—unrealized appreciation on invested assets.” More than $1.19 billion of Permanent Fund earnings are being distributed in Permanent Fund Dividends this year, and more than $660 million is reserved for inflation-proofing this year. Another sum of more than $5.55 billion is “assigned for future appropriations,” with $4.55 billion of that amount in realized earnings and the rest in unrealized appreciation on invested assets. The Permanent Fund’s principal is constitutionally protected and could only be spent by a vote of the people, while the earnings are as a legal matter available for legislative appropriation. The earnings of the Permanent Fund have traditionally been used almost entirely for the payment of Permanent Fund Dividends and inflation-proofing the Permanent Fund itself, with a fraction being used in the budget for functions related to the payment of Dividends.)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reduce share of earnings going for Permanent Fund </span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 126pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dividends</span></div>
<ol start="2" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reduce share of earnings going for inflation-proofing </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adopt a version of a Percent of Market Value (POMV)</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 126pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">approach through a constitutional amendment that would both change how the Permanent Fund is protected against inflation and also change the allocation of Permanent Fund earnings in a way that would allow spending of significant amounts of Permanent Fund income in the budget</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="4" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amend the constitution to allow spending of Permanent Fund principal in the budget</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IV. Get someone else to pay</span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Shift responsibilities from the State to local governments</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Shift responsibilities from the State to the federal government</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Borrow more money, perhaps through collateralization or from the Permanent Fund itself</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: upper-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.0791666666666666; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Securitization, perhaps by selling shares in the revenues from a gasline/LNG export project</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are variations on these basic steps. Some of the most frequently discussed variations are:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pump up the Permanent Fund’s principal to facilitate a slide into explicit rentier status, where the State of Alaska would finance its operations entirely or almost entirely through the use of Permanent Fund income (the word “Norway” has become shorthand in Alaska for this approach, apparently from a misunderstanding of Norway’s fiscal system)</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keep the Permanent Fund Dividend while bringing back the individual income tax</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guarantee some level of Permanent Fund Dividends in the constitution as a trade for using some Permanent Fund income in the regular budget </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Cash out” part or all of the Permanent Fund principal in lump-sum payments to all Alaskans as a trade for using Permanent Fund income in the regular budget </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cap the Permanent Fund Dividend to reduce the amount of money distributed each year so that the money not paid out can be used in the regular budget; such capping could occur either as a percentage of Permanent Fund income or as a hard dollar cap on either the size of the Permanent Fund Dividend or the amount of Permanent Fund income going annually to the Permanent Fund Dividend</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The long-term decline in Alaska oil production—now compounded by the recent sharp drop in oil prices—poses tough questions for Alaska. Those questions are made tougher by the effects that the journey down the Prudhoe Bay Curve will have on the economy as well as the government, given that the oil industry accounts—directly or indirectly—for approximately one-half of all the jobs in the state. Alaskans need to think deeply and carefully about the implications of the various steps we could take to address these questions. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<br /><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan and a lawyer and writer. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Groh authored a chapter for the 2012 book</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and some of the material in this essay overlaps with that chapter. That chapter was one of four chapters Groh authored or co-authored for that book or for the 2012 book </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Groh was involved in the creation of the per capita Permanent Fund Dividend Alaska has today while serving as an assistant to the Alaska Legislature in 1982. Groh was also Special Assistant to the Alaska Commissioner of Revenue in 1987-1990 and a delegate to the Conference of Alaskans in 2004. A board member of Alaska Common Ground for almost two decades, Groh became that organization’s chair in May of 2014. </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-34958941391367398922014-04-04T13:31:00.000-08:002014-04-04T13:31:21.514-08:00More on the Discipline Imposed by the FBI in the Fallout from the Ted Stevens Case<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Additional useful perspective on the discipline apparently meted out by the FBI to its agent Mary Beth Kepner is found in <a href="http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2014/03/roll-call-reports-on-mary-beth-kepner.html">Steve Aufrecht's blog post</a> from last Friday. Kepner clearly made some errors in the investigation of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. I agree with Steve's point that the commentary on the "Polar Pen" federal probe into Alaska public corruption since the post-trial collapse of the Ted Stevens prosecution has often lacked nuance, partly because the investigations of those involved in the prosecution have helped contribute to the relative silence of those on the government side in the case. </span><br />
<br />Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-81243727804768904632014-03-31T17:38:00.000-08:002014-03-31T17:38:14.738-08:00FBI Director Says FBI Agent "Severely Disciplined" for "Improper Conduct" in Ted Stevens Investigation<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I am of course late to this, but the <i>Alaska Dispatch </i>has <a href="http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140327/fbi-director-agent-severely-disciplined-ted-stevens-trial-fallout">a detailed account</a> of the news in last week's hearing.</span><br />
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<br />Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-23783760121750575322013-12-01T15:49:00.002-09:002013-12-01T15:49:52.932-09:00Alaska Bar Rag Column for the September, 2013 Edition<b><span style="font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Three
Calendars and an Incomplete Set of Options<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">by
Cliff Groh</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Note: This is an installment in a series of columns
on the Ted Stevens case.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Department of Justice was in an uncomfortable place
with the Ted Stevens case in July of 2008, the month the indictment was handed
down. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The federal criminal investigation into the U.S.
Senator’s conduct had gone on for more than two and a half years and produced a
draft indictment focusing on charges of failure to report gifts and/or
liabilities. The probe had proceeded in
fits and starts for more than a year, as the prosecution and defense had
entered into a series of tolling agreements to extend the statute of
limitations. The motivations of course
differed for the parties in making these agreements in which the defense waived
the right to claim that one or more counts in a future indictment should be
dismissed on statute of limitations grounds.
The prosecution was looking for more time to figure out how to proceed
and to negotiate, while the defense was hoping use that time to persuade the
prosecution to drop the case, perhaps with a referral to the Senate Ethics
Committee. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Plea
Negotiations Fail and Statute of Limitations Loom Large<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The prosecution team was divided between Washington,
D.C., and Anchorage, with the Alaska-based attorneys feeling out of touch with
what was going on in D.C. Thinking
that the Stevens prosecution would not proceed, one of those Alaska-based
prosecutors who had worked the most on the case—Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe
Bottini—took on a high-profile capital murder prosecution.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Back in D.C., the prosecutor’s traditionally favorite
method for resolving a case—the plea agreement—had not come together. The Justice Department’s stick of a
threatened felony indictment had not gotten Ted Stevens to plead guilty under a
plea agreement, even when combined with the carrot of a guarantee of no jail
time. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Far from pleading out, Ted Stevens seemed to be feeling
pretty good about his chances, fortified by a firm conviction that he had done
nothing wrong and a strong legal defense team. Representing Stevens was Brendan
Sullivan—billing at a reported $1,000 per hour—and Williams & Connolly,
probably the country’s premier white collar criminal defense firm. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Given that the more than 1,000 total pages in the autopsies
of the Stevens prosecution focus on how failures in providing discovery led to
its dismissal, writing about the motivations in the decision to indict is
difficult and inherently speculative.
That said, three calendars seemed to complicate the Justice Department’s
decision-making. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The timeline that mattered officially was the statute of
limitations. The charges under
consideration dealt mostly with the Senator’s failure to report as gifts or
liabilities unrecompensed expenditures made by VECO and/or its long-time CEO
Bill Allen to improve Ted Stevens’ official residence/vacation home in
Girdwood, Alaska. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Those expenditures in that multi-year renovation process
at the structure Stevens called “the chalet” were front-loaded in that most of
them occurred before 2002. This meant
that much of the conduct at issue was in a count most at risk under the statute
of limitations (which for federal crimes would—absent a tolling agreement
between the prosecution and the defense to extend the time period—run five
years from the commission of the offense to the date the charge is
brought). This also meant that a tolling
agreement (or a series of tolling agreements) was needed to keep alive the
possibility of the prosecution bringing charges against the Senator for failure
to report his receipt of those things of value without paying for them as
either gifts or liabilities. In July of
2008, another tolling agreement was needed to leave open the option of charging
the Senator directly for the disclosure report he filed in May of 2002 for
calendar year 2001. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Clock-Watching
Election Day and Inauguration Day<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Along with the statute of limitations, the other two
calendars at play in this highly unusual case focused on November 4, 2008 (the
day that Stevens stood for re-election for a seventh full term in the U.S.
Senate, this time against a strong Democratic opponent) and on January 20, 2009
(the last day of the administration of President George W. Bush).<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The imminence of the election made the Justice Department
concerned about the political impact of the timing of any charges, as the
Department’s guidelines required that no charges should be brought to affect
any election. The report of the Office
of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) on allegations of prosecutorial
misconduct in the Stevens case notes that Brenda Morris, Principal Deputy Chief
of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, stated that line
prosecutors had early on suggested that this issue be avoided by making Ted
Stevens the first trial of the federal government’s Polar Pen probe into Alaska
public corruption, which would have meant that his trial would have come in
2007. Morris also stated that the
higher-up who heard this pitch “was not comfortable with this approach and
wanted to build momentum with other trials.”
<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Ultimately, Matthew Friedrich, the Associate Attorney
General in charge of the Criminal Division, made the call in July of 2008 to go
ahead and seek an indictment of Stevens.
Operating with the approval of Attorney General Michael Mukasey,
Friedrich decided not to enter into another tolling agreement to extend the
agreement beyond the July 31 date previously agreed on. Friedrich told OPR that his thinking was
“[I]f we were going to move on this, we shouldn’t be doing this on say November
1<sup>st</sup>[.]” <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>One of the line attorneys who would actually be “doing”
the prosecution did not see the timing the way Associate Attorney General
Friedrich did. Lawyers for Assistant
U.S. Attorney James Goeke told Henry Schuelke, the special counsel probing the
prosecution, that for “some of the Department’s then highest ranking officials”
the timing of the indictment was “possibly driven by exogenous political
factors….” <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The chief lawyer for Goeke declined an opportunity to
elaborate on that reference, but developments in the news separate from the
four corners of the Stevens case file seemed to shape the actions of Justice
Department brass. Those “highest ranking
officials” were new in their jobs and well aware of the limited time they would
be in those jobs. Mukasey had been
Attorney General less than a year as of July of 2008, and Friedrich had then
only been in his job for two months.
Both men had had to testify before Congress regarding the controversy
over unusual political influences on the removal of U.S. Attorneys during the
tenure of Alberto Gonzales, Mukasey’s predecessor as Attorney General. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">Known as a no-nonsense judge who had served in the 1970s as
Chief of the Official Corruption Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the
Manhattan-based Southern District of New York, Mukasey had a reputation for
toughness on public corruption. That
reputation led one commentator to note in September of 2007 that Mukasey’s
nomination as Attorney General was probably bad news for Ted Stevens, whose Girdwood
home had already been searched that July by federal agents. In a speech delivered in March of 2008 that
cited the Justice Department’s Polar Pen probe, Mukasey said that “</span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">We have and we carry out a duty to ensure that the
Department’s investigations of public corruption are conducted without fear or
favor, and utterly without regard to the political affiliation of a particular
public official…. Let me be clear: Politics has no role in the investigation or
prosecution of political corruption or any other criminal offense….”<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">In practice, wrote <i>New Yorker</i> writer Jeffrey Toobin, the
constraints on Mukasey created by the circumstances of his arrival as Attorney
General meant that he “was more or less obligated to defer to the judgments of
career prosecutors like [Nicholas Marsh of the Public Integrity Section]. </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">If the leaders of the
Justice Department had been more politically secure, they might have asked
harder questions about whether the facts justified the criminal charges against
Stevens.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Another factor loomed—the rapidly approaching end of
George W. Bush’s presidency. It is not
just that politically appointed superiors always have less power over career
professionals at the end of an administration; political cycles can have effect
in another way. <span style="color: #222222;">"One of the things that happens in a political or high-profile
case like this is that there’s a huge push to get it done before a change in
the administration," a former prosecutor told writer Steven Andersen in an
article about the collapse of the Stevens case appearing in <i>InsideCounsel</i> magazine in 2009. “As government lawyers think about
re-entering the private sector at the end of an administration, they want to
leave a mark with a big case.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>A Constricted Set of Choices<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 115%;">Setting aside the various possible
motivations for charging Stevens (including the belief apparently shared by the
line prosecutors that the facts and the law justified an indictment), it seems
that Matthew Friedrich unjustifiably limited the options he considered in July
of 2008. </span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">The man in charge of making the final call on the
indictment seemed to see three choices:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">1. Indict Ted Stevens
immediately on more serious charges of accepting bribes or honest-services
fraud; </span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">2. Indict Ted Stevens
immediately on less serious charges of failure to disclose gifts and/or
liabilities; or</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">3. Not indict Ted
Stevens</span><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>With the Justice
Department having squelched line prosecutors’ push for </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;">option (1), Friedrich
appeared to think that option (2) was the moderate middle ground and thus the
“safe” choice. </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">The choice of "Wait to indict Ted Stevens until
we are more organized and prepared" did not seem to come up. Granted, absent another extended tolling
agreement with the defense that would run for some months—even to a date after
the election in November of 2008—waiting to indict would have meant that the
indictment could not have directly charged the Senator with failure to report
the bulk of the allegedly unreported expenditures. But
the prosecution would still have had the benefit of the low reporting
threshold—never more than $305 per year for the relevant time period—as well as
the ability to get the evidence of uncharged crimes before the jury. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Instead of taking this course,
Friedrich and his chief deputy Rita Glavin seemed to think that success could
be secured for the prosecution by pouring the special sauce of Brenda Morris
over the case. <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Next: Brenda Morris takes first chair and the
miscalculation over the Speech and Debate Clause</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Cliff Groh is
an <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Anchorage</st1:place></st1:city>
lawyer and writer who has worked as both a prosecutor and a criminal defense
attorney. He has blogged about the “POLAR PEN” federal probe into
Alaska public corruption for years at <a href="http://www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com</span></a>, which in
its entry for May 14, 2012 features an expanded and updated list of
disclosures. Groh’s analysis regarding the Ted Stevens case
has appeared in media as diverse as C-SPAN, the Los Angeles Times, Alaska
Dispatch, the Anchorage Daily News, and the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Anchorage</st1:place></st1:city> Press. The
lifelong Alaskan covered the five-week Ted Stevens trial in person in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Washington</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">D.C.</st1:state></st1:place>
in the fall of 2008. He welcomes your bouquets, brickbats, tips,
and questions at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:cliff.groh@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">cliff.groh@gmail.com</span></a>.
</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-75259799266454745362013-07-28T23:56:00.000-08:002013-07-28T23:56:02.358-08:00Vic Kohring Runs for Public Office Again<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Vic Kohring's defining characteristic may be a <a href="http://www.adn.com/2013/07/26/2993484/former-rep-vic-kohring-convicted.html">lack of shame</a>.</span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-53447495658137084592013-06-09T19:06:00.000-08:002013-06-09T19:06:11.890-08:00John Rader: Legal and Legislative Pioneer on the Last Frontier<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">Here is my column for the current edition of the <em>Alaska Bar Rag.</em></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span></strong><br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Book Antiqua","serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">John Rader:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Legal and
Legislative Pioneer<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Book Antiqua","serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
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<b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Book Antiqua","serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the Last Frontier</span></b><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;">by
Cliff Groh<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It was 1949 or 1950.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A law student at the University of Kansas was thinking about where he
would make his way upon graduation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
young man thought of Alaska, and decided to make written inquiry about the
prospects for lawyers in America’s farthest north territory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His letter went to the Attorney General of
the Territory of Alaska—an elected position—and in due course the law student
got a letter back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reply of Attorney
General J. Gerald Williams told the young man that there were no prospects for
lawyers in Alaska.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The law student looked at the letter and thought to
himself “That’s where I need to go.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Less than 10 years later, that law student took the job
of Attorney General from J. Gerald Williams as Alaska transitioned from territorial
status to statehood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">That young man was John Rader, a native of Howard,
Kansas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now 86, Rader has enjoyed an
impressive career on the Last Frontier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This column will cover a few of the highlights:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">As a
Special Assistant to Governor Bill Egan, as an important member of the first
Alaska State Legislature, and as the first Attorney General for the State of
Alaska, Rader played a critical role in getting the state government up and
running;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">As a
State Representative, Rader conceived and engineered the passage of the
Mandatory Borough Act of 1963, which resulted in the formation of the local
governments where more than four out of five Alaskans live; and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">Ø<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">As a
State Senator in 1970, Rader led the successful effort to liberalize Alaska’s
abortion law, more than two years before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its
decision in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roe v. Wade</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Health problems have hampered Rader for the last four
decades, which helps explain the unfortunate fact that it’s mostly old-timers
who recognize his name and know of his accomplishments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This year is the 35<sup>th</sup>
anniversary of Rader leaving elective office, and it’s a good time to look back
on the achievements of a great Alaskan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Youthful Organizer of State Government:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>16 Months that Shaped Alaska<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">After years of struggle, the Alaska Statehood Act passed
and was signed into law in the summer of 1958, setting January 3, 1959 as the
day Old Glory would get its 49<sup>th</sup> star.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along with great joy, these events brought a
number of big challenges to Alaska.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">An entire state government had to be set up, including a
structure for the executive branch and a staff for that executive branch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These tasks were made significantly more
difficult by the life-threatening illness of Bill Egan, the first State
Governor, which left him incapacitated in a Seattle hospital for months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Fortunately, Alaska had an ace in the hole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seven years into his legal career that had
started with his move to Anchorage in 1951, John Rader had substantial legal
and political experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had more
than six years in private practice and a year as the first in-house City
Attorney for the City of Anchorage, a year in which he secured the approximate
doubling of the size of the City’s territory through annexation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a candidate in 1958 for the House of
Representatives in the first State Legislature, he won the highest number of
votes received to that time by a person elected to the House, either in an
election for territorial or state office in Alaska.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 31-year-old pulled off this feat while
simultaneously managing Egan’s successful gubernatorial campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Rader served as a Special Assistant to the Governor-Elect
and Governor in December of 1958 and January of 1959 before serving as chairman
of the House State Affairs Committee after the first state legislative session opened
in late January.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along with his fellow lawyer
State Senator Tom Stewart of Juneau, Rader played in that session a critical
role in drafting and getting passed the State Organization Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The statute’s intent was “to provide a
unified, integrated, and comprehensive plan of organization for the exercise of
all executive and administrative functions of the State.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This statute established 12 departments and
the Office of the State Governor in the executive branch, while abolishing
dozens of agencies, including the Territorial Banking Board and the Coal
Miners’ Examining Board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">As the legislative session was ending, Rader was
appointed by Egan to serve in one of those cabinet positions as the first
Alaska State Attorney General (and at 32 apparently the country’s youngest).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He worked with an initial staff of five
lawyers to handle the legal affairs of the brand-new state, a big contrast from
the more than 285 attorneys now employed by the Alaska Department of Law. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The self-described “country lawyer” had to move quickly
to confront a variety of issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had
to litigate the abolition of fish traps, thought to have been done away with at
statehood but whose legality remained a live issue if operated by Alaska
Natives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals withdrew more quickly than expected from its role as the appellate
court for Alaska, leaving Rader scrambling to help set up an entire new state
court system<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Attorney General personally handled a successful
defense of a challenge brought by bar owners against regulations adopted by the
new State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, including a prohibition on liquor
establishments being open between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. on weekdays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
case—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boehl v. Sabre Jet Room, Inc.</i>, 349
P.2d 585 (Alaska 1960)—was notable both for the new Alaska Supreme Court’s
embrace of a broad view of the Legislature’s power to delegate authority to
administrative agencies and for the identity of the lawyers representing the
bar owners—Wendell Kay of Anchorage and Warren Taylor of Fairbanks, Rader’s two
most prominent rivals to become Attorney General. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In a 1994 interview with University of Alaska Anchorage Professor
Stephen Haycox, Rader—then 67—wondered in amazement at the scope of the
decisions he made in his early 30s as Attorney General, suggesting that it was
the “recklessness of youth” and being “presumptuous” that allowed him to do it.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">There’s a simpler explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rader is bold, a quality he showed when he
resigned after less than 11 months on the job as Attorney General.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said at the announcement of the decision
in 1960 that he wanted to return to private practice in Anchorage, and Haycox
wrote in his 1998 book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Law of the
Land</i> that Rader felt that by the time of his resignation “the principal
focus of his attention, the transition from territorial to state government,
had been accomplished.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a 2013 interview with this column’s author,
Rader explained the timing of his resignation as also being influenced by his
desire to have a successor confirmed during the 1960 legislative session, when
that confirmation appeared likely to be more easily accomplished. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Haycox also noted in his book Rader’s interest in running
for Governor, as Egan was not a certain candidate for re-election in 1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By late 1961—at age 34 and just 10 years
after his arrival in the state—Rader was an announced candidate for the Democratic
nomination for Governor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Although Rader campaigned for months while also
practicing law at Hartlieb, Groh & Rader (see the author’s note below), he
withdrew when Egan finally announced his intention to run for re-election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rader was still able to get back into
policy-making, however, by again getting elected to the State House in
1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Dive
Bars, Dirty Water, Loose Dogs, and Tax Inequity:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Father of the Mandatory Borough Act of 1963<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Once back in the Legislature, Rader did something many
politicians talk about a lot in theory but often avoid in practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He picked an important problem and took the
lead in proposing a solution he thought was good policy, even though that
proposed solution was controversial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
problem was the lack of regional government, which differs in Alaska from what
is seen in almost every other state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
there are cities in Alaska as in other states, there are no counties in the
Great Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, boroughs are the
units of government that stand in between cities and the state government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Alaska Constitution provides that
boroughs “shall be established in a manner and according to standards provided
by law,” but the establishing process was going very slowly in the years
immediately after statehood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 1963,
only one—the Bristol Bay Borough—had been formed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A substantial and growing percentage of
Alaskans lived outside of cities with no form of local government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
vacuum left room for a slice of Wild West in the north, generating numerous
problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sleazy bars staffed by B-girls
operated around the clock outside the city limits of various communities,
generating crime that spilled over to local citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With no animal control, loose dogs
threatened children and adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Public
health was at risk with the difficulty of getting water and sewage facilities
to untaxed areas, and tax inequity was increasing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, those enjoying their lack
of local taxes howled at attempts by cities to grow by annexation and
vigorously resisted the voluntary formation of regional boroughs that would
bring them into a local government’s tax base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rader
looked at this mess in1963 and saw the matter of boroughs as “the greatest
unresolved political problem in the State.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With his sharp insight and experience as a local government lawyer, the
lawmaker concluded that the combination of the big problems caused by the areas
without local government and the low probability of success of local efforts to
form boroughs—particularly those of an appropriate regional size—meant that it
was up to the Legislature to require the formation of a number of
boroughs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, this formation
had to be forced immediately and in a single stroke.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rader
introduced legislation that would require formation of boroughs around the
state with sweetening provisions that provided those new boroughs with grants
of land and cash from the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
measure’s lack of popularity showed clearly in Rep. Rader’s inability to find a
single co-sponsor for this bill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
subject of boroughs might sound boring, but this was one of the most
controversial and hotly debated bills ever considered in the Alaska
Legislature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Picking this issue to go
out alone on was a risky move for an ambitious politician like Rader who continued
to harbor ambitions for statewide office and looked like what one legislative
colleague called “a man to bet on.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rader
had some assets in this struggle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
only his second year in the Legislature, he had a leadership position, serving
as House Democratic Leader and chairman of the minority caucus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Although split 20-20 between Democrats and
Republicans, the body was run by a Republican-dominated coalition.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rader also used some of the best skills of
an attorney in the Legislature—reading widely, thinking broadly, researching
intensely, writing articulately—to develop and sell the bill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not
all of what Rader used to get the Mandatory Borough Act of 1963 enacted was the
straightforward tactics and strategy found in law books or recommended by
professors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The editors of the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Metropolitan Experiment in Alaska</i>
reference in an introductory chapter the “intense parliamentary maneuvering”
involved in the legislation’s passage, but more striking are the adroit
political moves Rader sets out in his own chapter in that same book, published
in 1968.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(That book was published the
same year Rader lost a race for the Democratic nomination for Alaska’s single
seat in the U.S. House to State Sen. Nick Begich of Anchorage, who lost the
general election that year before winning it in 1970.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his chapter—blandly entitled
“Legislative History”—Rader recounts that to get the bill out of the House he
rallied “the competently-controlled Republican-controlled House” against “an
incompetent Democratically-controlled Senate.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then—after the bill had become law but
while there was an outcry for a special session to repeal it—Rader told the
State Democratic Convention that all Democrats should join to fight off a
Republican attack on a bill mostly supported by Democrats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
law stuck, and it had a big effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Mandatory Borough Act produced the formation of boroughs in Ketchikan, Sitka,
Juneau, Kodiak Island, the Kenai Peninsula, Matanuska-Susitna, Fairbanks, and
Anchorage (unified in 1975 into a municipality).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those local governments cover well over 80
percent of Alaska’s population.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Leader of Fight to
Liberalize Abortion Laws in 1970<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Following his defeat in the 1968 Democratic primary for
the U.S. House, Rader managed that same year to get elected again to the
Legislature, this time to the State Senate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In his first term in that body, Rader led an effort to liberalize
abortion laws that resulted in one of the biggest political reversals in Alaska
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">At the beginning of 1970, abortion was illegal in Alaska
except to save the life of the pregnant woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rader saw that policy as unjust and
resolved to try to change the law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">As with the Mandatory Borough Act seven years before,
Rader started off alone in the Legislature, introducing an abortion reform
measure without a single co-sponsor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then came help from a wave of grass-roots organizers who helped build a broad
and diverse coalition that included the Alaska Medical Association,
conservationists, and a number of religious figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Just
over three months after Rader put in a bill by himself, the Legislature
overrode a gubernatorial veto to enact a bill that allowed a woman to obtain an
abortion of a non-viable fetus by a physician in a hospital or other approved
facility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Adopted more than two
years before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roe v. Wade</i> decision, this law made Alaska one of only four states
to substantially decriminalize its abortion laws.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The ACLU gave Rader a
Champion of Women award in 2010, and Planned Parenthood of the Greater
Northwest makes an annual award for advocacy in Rader’s name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Explanations
of Rader’s Impact<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Health issues led Rader to end his 15-year legislative
career by declining to run for re-election at the conclusion of his service as State
Senate President in 1977-1978, two of most significant legislative sessions in
Alaska history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the exception of
two stints as an advisor, that decision essentially marked Rader’s withdrawal
from public life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Rader had great influence in the quarter-century of his
public life in Alaska, and it’s worth thinking about how he did it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of it is his exquisite timing in
disregarding the Territorial Attorney General’s advice and heading north when
he did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that sense, Rader resembled
A.B. “Banjo” Paterson, author of “Waltzing Matilda,” who wrote near the end of
his life that in living in Australia as it was gaining its independence, he was
like an animal that “had the luck to walk on the lava while it was
cooling.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">But it wasn’t just good fortune that made Rader
influential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His intelligence and
boldness have already been remarked upon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also important are his deep thoughtfulness, dedication, skills as an
orator, and manners of an old-school gentleman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">While endorsing his re-election in 1972, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anchorage Daily News</i> called Rader “one
of the ablest legislators Alaska has ever had” and stated that “Alaska has
produced few more capable men in public life than John Rader.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<strong><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Commenting in 2004 on Rader’s tenure as
Attorney General, Professor Haycox wrote that Rader “</span></strong><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">set a high standard of legal competence,
political acumen and straight-on honesty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We would do well to think about John Rader’s public life
as a role model for us as citizens, as lawyers, and as lawmakers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Cliff Groh is
an Anchorage lawyer and writer who has worked as an aide for the Alaska State
Legislature and as Special Assistant to the Alaska Commissioner of
Revenue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John Rader was a law partner
of Cliff Groh’s father and was one of his father’s closest friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author has reason to believe he would
have the same view of John Rader even if he hadn’t grown up calling him “Uncle
John.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author thanks John Rader and
the relatives, friends, and former colleagues of Rader who assisted in the
preparation of this article, but the interpretations and conclusions are solely
those of the author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cliff Groh will
return in future Alaska Bar Rag columns to analysis of the investigations and
trials arising out of the federal government’s probe into Alaska public
corruption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He welcomes your bouquets,
brickbats, tips, and questions at <a href="mailto:cliff.groh@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">cliff.groh@gmail.com</span></a>.
</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
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Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-70173121079661207132013-06-06T22:32:00.000-08:002013-06-06T22:32:10.314-08:00Attorney General Says Justice Department Will Appeal Ruling on Discipline for Ted Stevens Trial Prosecutors<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Anchorage--</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Attorney General Eric Holder<a href="http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/210501591.html"> said</a> that he expected the Justice Department to appeal the administrative law judge's ruling that overturned suspensions for two of the prosecutors in the trial of then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. In response to questions from U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska) at a Senate subcommittee hearing, Holder said that he did not agree with the ruling and expected that it would be appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-28064574970322162512013-04-08T08:47:00.000-08:002013-04-08T08:47:54.451-08:00Notes on Reading the Administrative Judge's Ruling Regarding the Suspensions of Two Ted Stevens Prosecutors<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Anchorage--</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Reading the administrative judge's ruling allows me to elaborate on two points and give news on another.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">The first point to elaborate is that the procedural defect identified by the administrative judge leading to reversal of the suspensions was a violation of the Justice Department's procedures in deciding internal discipline for prosecutors. The administrative judge ruled that the procedures called for a Justice Department attorney not in management to take the first crack at deciding discipline and that the procedures were violated by what actually happened in the handling of two of the Ted Stevens prosecutors. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">What actually happened with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joe Bottini and James Goeke is that the Justice Department first gave the decision to a line attorney in the Professional Misconduct Review Unit and then took away that decision from him when that line attorney concluded that the prosecutors did not commit professional misconduct as the Justice Department defined it. The line attorney's supervisor then decided that both prosecutors should serve suspensions for their roles in not turning over evidence that should have been disclosed to the defense. The Justice Department ultimately issued a 40-day suspension for Bottini and a 15-day suspension for Goeke. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">The second point to elaborate is that although the administrative judge did not decide on the merits of the suspensions, he stated that there is "considerable question" as to whether the suspension could be upheld given that they appeared to be more severe than those imposed in the past for similar conduct. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">The news is that Bottini has not served any portion of the suspension and that Goeke has only served one day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">The Department of Justice can appeal the administrative judge's decision, but has so far apparently offered no comment.</span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-44080654232317647462013-04-07T20:04:00.000-08:002013-04-07T20:04:29.629-08:00Administrative Judge Reverses on Procedural Grounds the Suspensions of Two Ted Stevens Prosecutors<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">An administrative judge has reversed on procedural grounds the suspensions of two Ted Stevens prosecutors sanctioned for misconduct. Charlie Savage of the <i>New York Times</i> has the story <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/us/politics/judge-overturns-suspensions-for-stevens-prosecutors.html">here</a>, and the ruling is <a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/681231/bottini-mspb-initial-decision.pdf">here</a> (PDF).</span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-46482488748060517942013-03-19T10:34:00.000-08:002013-03-19T10:34:52.668-08:00House Ethics Committee to Investigate Rep. Don Young<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The House Ethics Committee has voted to create a special panel to probe activities of Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska). <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ethics-committee-young-andrew-investigation.php">The Associated Press reports</a> that that the investigation will concentrate on "his expenses and travel costs for trips that were already the subject of an ethics investigation." According to the news organization, the probe arises after a referral from the Justice Department, which had previously investigated allegations that the Congressman "accepted gifts in exchange for political patronage."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The announcement on the House Ethics Committee website is:</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;">In accordance with House Rule XI, clause 3 and Committee Rules 10(a)(2) and 18, the Committee on Ethics (Committee) unanimously voted on February 26, 2013, to establish an Investigative Subcommittee. Pursuant to the Committee’s action, the Investigative Subcommittee shall have jurisdiction to determine whether Representative Don Young violated the Code of Official Conduct or any law, rule, regulation, or other applicable standard of conduct in the performance of his duties or the discharge of his responsibilities, with respect to allegations that he, or persons acting on his behalf, improperly obtained, received, or accepted gifts, improperly used official resources or campaign funds for personal purposes, failed to report certain gifts on his annual Financial Disclosure Statements, and made false statements to federal officials.</span></div>
Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-75627299505591366862013-02-25T09:09:00.000-09:002013-02-25T09:09:21.639-09:00Politico Corrects Inaccurate Story about Ted Stevens Case<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></strong><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Congratulations to <em>Politico</em> for correcting a major error about the Ted Stevens case. The insidery Capitol Hill publication <a href="http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=81&siteid=2069&id=1486285&t=1361738623">wrote yesterday</a> in a story that:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) lost his seat amid a campaign finance scandal, and has since passed away.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">This is wrong. Brendan Sullivan, the chief defense counsel for Ted Stevens, asserted in his closing argument that it was potential charges involving campaign finance violations that the Senator was worried about in FBI-monitored telephone calls with cooperating witness Bill Allen. The actual indictment, however, charged seven counts of failure to disclose gifts and/or liabilities under the Ethics in Government Act.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">I was happy to see that <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/defense-industry-finds-few-old-friends-on-hill-87991.html">today the article has been corrected</a> to simply say that Ted Stevens was defeated in 2008.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-79191551287626473632012-12-22T04:50:00.000-09:002012-12-22T04:50:17.214-09:00The Substance and Thinking Involved in the Ted Stevens Indictment<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Here is the latest installment of my column for the <i>Alaska Bar Rag</i>, the official publication of the Last Frontier's lawyers. It is one of a series of pieces on the Ted Stevens case.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Substance and Thinking<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Involved in the Ted Stevens Indictment<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">by Cliff Groh<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
last <i>Bar Rag</i> column described how the
Department of Justice ended up not charging U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens with the
offenses of bribery, honest-services fraud, receipt of illegal gratuities, and
conversion of government services prosecutors considered during a probe that
ran at least 33 months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">This installment
in a multi-part series on the Ted Stevens case looks at the counts of failure
to disclose gifts and/or liabilities that <b>did</b> appear in the indictment
handed down on July 29, 2008. This
piece also includes an examination of some of the other factors involved in the
indictment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Charges: Items, Dollars, and Years<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Recall that the
indictment charged seven felony counts of failing to report gifts and/or
liabilities on disclosure forms required annually from each U.S. Senator. The
prosecution alleged that Ted Stevens failed to report such colorful gifts as a
massage chair from Girdwood restaurant owner Bob Persons, a blue-eyed puppy and
a stained-glass window from Alaska real estate developer Bob Penney, and a
bronze salmon statue from the Kenai River Sportfishing Association. That first gift—a vibrating lounger that
stayed in Stevens’ home in Washington, D.C. for seven years while Stevens said
he thought it was a loan—left a lasting image that hurt the defendant at
trial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Yet the great bulk
of the unreported gifts and/or liabilities contained in the government’s case
came from the oil-services giant VECO and its long-time CEO Bill Allen in the
form of renovation work, repair, and improvements at the Senator’s Girdwood
home. The indictment alleged that over
a period of more than six years Stevens failed to report more than $250,000 in
free labor, materials, and other things of value provided by VECO and/or Allen
at the Girdwood residence. Items on the
government’s list of “freebies” included
hardwood floors, work on one deck and all the work on another deck, a roof over
the second deck, a professional gas grill, a Jacuzzi, and other furniture. The indictment included one more benefit
going from Allen to Ted Stevens that was unrelated to the Girdwood residence, a
car trade in which one of the Senator’s children allegedly ended up with a
vehicle substantially more valuable than the vehicle the Senator put up as his
part of the trade. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The benefits from
VECO and/or Allen were loaded into the early years of the period covered by the
indictment handed down on July 29, 2008.
The charging document stated that approximately $200,000 of those things
of value came in the period between the summer of 2000 and the end of 2001 and
that another approximately $55,000 worth of benefits came in 2002. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Six counts in the
indictment covered the annual reports filed for the six calendar years 2001
through 2006, and alleged that Stevens had violated a federal statute (18
U.S.C. Subsec. 1001(a)(2)) criminalizing the making of “any materially false,
fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation.” A seventh count alleged a scheme by Stevens
running from calendar year 1999 through calendar year 2006 to conceal his
receipt of things of value from Allen and VECO. That seventh count alleged that the Senator
had violated 18 U.S.C. Subsec. 1001(a)(1), which targets one “who falsifies,
conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Limiting Elements of the Offenses Charged
<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This statute has
two critical limiting features: a
required mental state and a restriction on the statements covered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The mental state on
the counts differed. In the six counts
for individual years it was “knowingly and willfully,” and the mental state in
the count for the alleged multi-year scheme was “knowingly and
intentionally.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Except for listed
exceptions, the statute covers statements “in any matter within the
jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the
Government of the United States.”
Importantly for lawyers, one of those exceptions is that the statute
does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding or that party’s counsel “for
statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or
counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding.” More importantly for this case, as to any
matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, the statute applies
only in a limited set of circumstances, including “a document required by law,
rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer
within the legislative branch.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Source of the Requirement to
Disclose: The Ethics in Government Act<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The indictment
alleged that the relevant false statements by Ted Stevens appeared in annual
disclosure forms required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C.
App. 4 Secs. 101-111). That Act requires
various federal officials, including Members of Congress, to file annual
disclosure statements detailing, with certain exceptions, their income, gifts,
assets, financial liabilities, and securities and commercial real estate
transactions. This statute was a child of the reforms adopted after the
Watergate scandals (as was the Public Integrity Section that spearheaded the
prosecution of Ted Stevens).
Particularly because of its restrictions on outside income for Members
of Congress, the legislation was highly controversial on Capitol Hill when
adopted—one Member of the House told the <i>New
Yorker</i> that the bill was so unpopular that the legislation would have
failed 2-1 if put to a secret ballot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As a statute, the Ethics in
Government Act was not a favorite of prosecutors, either. In conjunction with the statute criminalizing
some false statements, the adoption of the Ethics in Government Act made it
possible to prosecute public officials for false statements on their disclosure
forms, but such prosecutions were not common.
According to James B. Stewart’s 1987 book <i>The Prosecutors</i>, the Justice Department had adopted an informal
policy that disfavored prosecution for disclosure violations “except in the
most egregious cases.” <span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The subjective
state of mind required by the statute was the practical problem prosecutors often
found with charging public officials with the crime of failing to disclose
gifts, loans, and income. Prosecutors
were worried that juries would be sympathetic to a defendant claiming he or she
just forgot the matters that did not appear on the disclosure forms. As Stewart reported in 1987, prosecutors
evaluating charges against a number of federal officials—including Attorney
General nominee Edwin Meese—ended up declining to prosecute on disclosure
violations based on fears of inability to approve the required criminal intent
to conceal. And it was of course the
mental element that turned out to be where all the action was in the Ted
Stevens case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Shorn of any
charges of bribery or honest-services fraud, the </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;">indictment against Ted Stevens
seemed to many observers to contain only technical violations. Alaska historian John Strohmeyer branded
them “pussycat charges,” and Fairbanks newspaper columnist Dermot Cole
suggested after the trial that all the government had proved was that Stevens “</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;">may have
failed to fill out the paperwork correctly to report such gifts as a gas grill,
massage chair, sled dog and ugly artwork.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">With Bill Allen
pleading guilty to bribing Ted Stevens’ son Ben—and given the very close
personal relationship between Bill Allen and Ted Stevens over a number of years—the
federal investigators and prosecutors on the Polar Pen probe would
disagree. Although they would never say
it this way publicly, it seemed like some of those prosecutors and
investigators pursuing Ted Stevens saw the charges of failure to disclose as
equivalent to the charges of income tax evasion that brought down notorious
mobster Al Capone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The indictment had
some distinctive touches, including a number of official acts that Ted Stevens
took to benefit VECO. Prosecutors could
have inserted the list to offer a motive for why Stevens wanted to hide his
receipt of benefits. The list also
seemed to be a residue of the years the Justice Department spent investigating
Stevens for crimes with a <i>quid pro quo</i>
element, almost like spots left on a dish after a hasty handwashing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">One of those listed
official acts reads particularly odd to Alaska eyes. The i</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">ndictment’s
statement that Ted Stevens “received and accepted solicitations…from Allen and
other VECO employees” for “assistance on both federal and state issues in
connection with the effort to construct a natural gas pipeline from Alaska’s
North Slope Region” betrayed a certain cluelessness about political realities
in the Great Land. Everybody with the
slightest understanding of how things work on the Last Frontier knows that Ted
Stevens would have strongly supported the gasline if Bill Allen had never been
born and VECO had never existed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Some Additional Factors in the Indictment<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Justice Department’s
motivations for bringing the charges against Ted Stevens triggered much
discussion in Alaska and on Capitol Hill, both because of the big political
impacts of the case and because decisions on white-collar crime cases involve
more prosecutorial discretion than do blue-collar crime cases. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It was the Justice Department in
the administration of President George W. Bush that brought the charges against
the longest-serving Republican Senator ever.
When the case melted down due to revelations of prosecutorial
misconduct, however, some commentators pointed to the Democratic leanings of
some of the government’s attorneys to account for the Justice Department’s
handling of the case. The evidence
suggests that any accusation of Democratic partisanship is a bum rap as an
explanation for either the indictment or the discovery violations. Two of the biggest players—Public Integrity
Section Trial Attorney Nicholas Marsh and Public Integrity Section Chief William
Welch—were Democrats, but this shouldn’t matter and did not seem to matter in
this case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A more relevant factor in the
decision to indict Ted Stevens was a lack of focus and management by the
Justice Department throughout the process.
As one experienced Alaska lawyer observed, the Public Integrity Section
and the higher-ups in Washington never seemed to understand what they had in
the “Polar Pen” prosecution, treating Alaska as a backwater even after a Congressional
powerhouse became a target. The best
way to see this is to contrast the Justice Department’s handling of the Ted
Stevens case with how federal prosecutors dealt in the 1990s with another
powerful politician, U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D.-Ill.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There were a number of
similarities between the cases of the two Capitol Hill titans. Each served in Congress for more than 35
years and ended up as legends at home.
Both were long-time chairmen of critical Congressional
committees—Rostenkowski helmed the tax-writing House Ways and Ways Committee,
while Stevens had served for years at the top of Senate Appropriations. Each had their lengthy careers ended by
charges arising out of investigations that initially did not target them (the
probe of Rostenkowski was an outgrowth of an examination of irregularities in
the House post office system, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of
mail fraud and served 15 months in custody).
Each faced charges brought by the executive branch under the control of
the same party as that of the defendant (Rostenkowski was indicted in May of
1994 during the Clinton administration). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There were key differences as
well between the Rostenkowski and Stevens cases. The Rostenkowski case was brought by the
Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, while that office was excluded from
the Stevens case. Rostenkowski was
charged with an unexpectedly wide-ranging 17-count indictment that covered
fraud and embezzlement, conversion of public funds to private use,
witness-tampering, concealing a material fact from Congress, wire fraud, and
aiding and abetting a crime.
Prosecutors charged Stevens, on the other hand, with an unexpectedly
narrow set of counts alleging failure to disclose his receipt of gifts and/or
his liability for debts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Most importantly, prosecutors
substantially experienced in high-profile public corruption cases seemed to pay
more attention to the Rostenkowski case for a longer period of time than the
Stevens case. As detailed in the <i>New York Times</i>, Eric Holder took over as
U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. after the investigation into Rostenkowski
had run on for a number of months.
Holder had previously prosecuted a Congressman in an Abscam public
corruption case. The new U.S. Attorney
quickly instructed the chief of the office’s public corruption section—a
prosecutor who had successfully brought cases against a governor and a federal
judge—to drop or re-assign other matters and work full-time on the Rostenkowski
case, and the indictment came approximately seven months later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Contrast that intensive focus of
attorneys with extensive experience in high-level public corruption cases with that
of the lawyers most actively involved in the Ted Stevens case before the
indictment. The smart and hard-working
Marsh had only been a prosecutor for about a year when he started working on
the Polar Pen probe, and he had no previous experience being in charge
day-to-day of a high-profile public corruption case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Bottini was
a highly experienced federal prosecutor with a strong reputation for straight
shooting, but had no experience in a case like the one against Ted Stevens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Next installment:
The indictment’s curious timing and the false choice it represented</span></i></div>
Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-34301865271480160672012-11-25T16:42:00.000-09:002012-11-25T16:42:14.774-09:00Did Payoffs Grease the Way for the U.S.'s Purchase of Alaska?<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Tom Kizzia has <a href="http://www.adn.com/2012/11/24/2702900/now-it-can-be-told-sewards-role.html">a front-page story</a> in today's <i>Anchorage Daily News</i> discussing evidence that questionable payments--perhaps bribes--went to key Members of Congress to secure passage of legislation to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867. This evidence comes from a new biography of Secretary of State William H. Seward. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Norms were different back then, as shown in the historically accurate portrayal of political maneuvering in the new movie <i>Lincoln</i>. The film shows lobbyists associated with Seward--and President Abraham Lincoln--dangle jobs in front of Members of Congress to get them to vote for the 13th Amendment to prohibit slavery. It is even more clear that laws--and the enforcement of the laws--also were substantially different in the 19th century than they are today. The magisterial book <i>Bribes</i> by John T. Noonan, Jr. points out that it was not until 1853 that it was against the law to bribe a Member of Congress, and there were no convictions before 1905. Noonan cites the English observer James Brice's estimate in 1889 that about one-quarter of Congress took cash, stocks, land, or other property for their votes or committee actions. </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-79711915153168715892012-11-10T10:05:00.001-09:002012-11-11T07:46:09.031-09:00Why Were So Many Experts Surprised by Obama's Victory?--UPDATED<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A number of people have asked why s<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/accountability-watch-who-is-predicting-what/264563/">o many presumably well-informed people</a>--<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/">apparently including high-ranking people in the Mitt Romney campaign itself</a>--were so surprised when President Barack Obama won re-election, particularly by the margin he did. One of those asking was my sister, so I wrote this analysis for her. I am taking my wife's suggestion to post a slightly edited version of that analysis on this blog. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Despite a number of public polls showing the likelihood of an Obama victory, some analysts gave wildly incorrect predictions of a strong win for former Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee. One example of such a terrifically inaccurate prognostication was that by the long-time political analyst Michael Barone. This veteran columnist and co-founder of the seminal <i>Almanac of American Politics</i> <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/barone-going-out-on-a-limb-romney-beats-obama-handily/article/2512470#.UJ6Q-eQqZbI">wrote</a> on Nov. 2 that Romney would win 315 electoral votes. Barone gave a backup prediction in the same piece that subtracted Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from Romney's column and thus still had Romney winning the presidency with 285 electoral votes, 15 more than the 270 needed to gain victory in the Electoral College. (Barone eats his crow <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/i-was-wrongwhere-it-counted/article/2512860">here</a> in the face of the President's victory, which now with <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/10/obama-wins-florida-topping-romney-in-final-tally/">the Florida recount showing Obama the winner in that state </a> makes his Electoral College total stand at 332.) </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;">This question of "Why were people surprised when Obama won?" is separate but related to the question of why Obama won, which would include factors such as the nation's changing demographics, the Obama campaign's superior get-out-the vote efforts (as </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/obama-campaign-clawed-back-after-a-dismal-debate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&" style="color: #222222;">conceded</a><span style="color: #222222;"> <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83653.html">by</a> Romney campaign staff), and the apparently more effective use of advertising by the Obama campaign and its affiliated groups. Influenced by the commentators </span><a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/shellshocked.php" style="color: #222222;">Josh Marshall</a><span style="color: #222222;"> and </span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/how-can-that-be-more-on-the-they-cant-both-be-right-saga/264024/" style="color: #222222;">James Fallows</a><span style="color: #222222;">, I offer this list of reasons for why there was so much surprise Tuesday night in the world of Fox News:</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1. As my son's Campaigns and Elections professor pointed out to that class, the economic fundamentals were not as negative for Obama as a number of commentators thought, particularly because the economy is improving and many voters blame George W. Bush for the disappointing economy.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">2. Some commentators predicting a Romney victory focused on a perceived momentum and an intensity gap favoring Romney in the last month of the campaign. The problem was that at least in some cases this perception of momentum, enthusiasm, and intensity seemed to be sharply influenced by the facts that (a) those commentators themselves strongly disapproved of Obama's policies and (b) those commentators spent a lot of time talking with other people who strongly disapproved of Obama's policies and projected the feelings of their friends to the electorate as a whole. (This last sentiment is sometimes known as "the living in a bubble and not knowing it" problem, (unfairly) associated with the former <i>New Yorker</i> film critic Pauline Kael's alleged reaction to Richard Nixon's sweeping victory in 1972.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">3. More technically, some commentators thought that most of the polls showing a lead for Obama were skewed by assuming that the voting public would consist of more Democrats than Republicans. Those commentators thought that was unlikely. A good example of that "Most polls are skewed" view was the <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/mitt_key_to_victory_NXRQVJOH67X9eN3e9qoLDM">John Podhoretz column</a> just before the election in the <i>New York Post</i> which relies on the Rasmussen and Gallup national polls, two organizations that consistently reported better results for Romney that many other polling outfits. As Podhoretz notes, Rasmussen predicted in October 39 percent R and 33 percent D, and Gallup predicted in October 36 percent R and 35 percent D.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The exit polls showed that most of the polls conducted by organizations other than Rasmussen and Gallup were right--in fact, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/presidential-campaign/267017-who-gets-the-blame-romney-or-the-gop">38 percent of the voters identified as Democrats and 32 percent identified as Republicans</a>. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">How did Rasmussen and Gallup get this so wrong?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have heard four explanations. The first is a <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/inside_gallups_epic_fail.php">huge racial mistake by Gallup</a>, which assumed that 78 percent of the voters would be white. Instead, the exit polls showed that only 72 percent of the voters were white. Nonwhite voters were obviously much more likely to vote for Obama than white voters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A second factor is that Rasmussen and Gallup missed how much self-identification as Republican has dropped in recent years, with possible explanations being unhappiness with George W. Bush's presidency or displeasure with perceived obstructionism by Congressional Republicans during Obama's presidency.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The other two explanations for why Rasmussen and Gallup thought the voters would be so much more Republican and/or white than actually occurred are rooted in technical deficiencies in the methodologies of some polls. Rasmussen runs robo-polls through automated pre-recorded telephone calls, and <a href="http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2012/06/cell-phone-addi.php">federal law prohibits a computer from calling a cell phone</a>. People who have only cell phones and not land lines tend to be younger and more likely to be minorities than people who have only land lines. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/did-polling-only-in-english-distort-key-polls/264930/">It also appears that some polling organizations do not use Spanish-language interviewers</a>, and that might produce a small but significant bias in critical states such as Florida and Colorado.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">4. Some commentators predicting a Romney victory pointed to the traditional rule in politics that undecided voters break late against the incumbent. That traditional rule did not apply in 2012. In fact, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/1107/Exit-polls-show-President-Obama-should-go-on-listening-tour-not-take-victory-lap">exit polls showed that most of the 9 percent of the voters deciding in the last few days went for Obama</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">5. Romney led in many of the polls (and in the exit polls) among independents, and some commentators predicting a Romney triumph cited the traditional rule in politics that the candidate who wins independents wins the election. Independents did go for Romney--<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/presidential-campaign/267017-who-gets-the-blame-romney-or-the-gop">the exit polls showed that Romney won independents by only 5 points</a>, although that was a smaller margin than the Romney campaign was counting on. But that 5-point advantage was also insufficient for Romney because of another problem with the traditional rule this year alluded to in Point 3 above--it is not true that independents are a group sitting equidistant between the two parties. A number of self-identified independents are former Republicans who had stopped using that label. As Josh Marshall has pointed out, a number of those newly self-identified independents were still likely to hold conservative views and may have stopped labeling themselves as Republicans out of a belief that the Republican Party favored too large a government. That movement of Tea Party types away from describing themselves as Republicans weakened the predictive effect of the "independents control" rule. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>[November 11--Following a conversation with my son, this morning I updated this post and tweaked it for clarity.]</i></span></div>
Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-65042733697211277312012-10-30T11:43:00.000-08:002012-10-30T11:43:44.594-08:00Alaskans, You Should Read This Before You Vote on the Constitutional Convention Question<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Proposition No. 1 on Alaska's ballot next Tuesday asks the voters to decide whether there should be a Constitutional Convention. The Constitution itself requires that this question appear on the ballot every 10 years, and this is the year for that vote.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is a deceptively simple question with big ramifications. I have worked with Alaska Common Ground, an organization of which I am a board member, to develop a position paper on this issue. <a href="http://akcommonground.org/Files/Analysis%20of%20Constitutional%20Convention.pdf">Here</a> is a link to it.</span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-89335500117368935962012-10-04T14:24:00.000-08:002012-10-04T14:24:06.426-08:00Alaska Legislative Candidate Discloses Apparent Bribe Attempt from VECO in 1996 Regarding Private Prison<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Richard Mauer of the <i>Anchorage Daily New</i>s does it again, getting an Alaska State Senate candidate to <a href="http://www.adn.com/2012/10/03/2649952/senate-candidates-firm-received.html">reveal</a> that in 1996 he was offered engineering contracts and "a whole bunch of money" for his re-election campaign to the Anchorage Assembly if the official would support the effort of the now-defunct oil-services giant VECO and other companies to build a private prison in South Anchorage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The legislative candidate--Anchorage Republican and consulting engineer Bob Bell--told the newspaper that he turned down the money and did not support the prison but also did not report this apparent bribery attempt to authorities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mauer's article includes this exchange:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"Told that the offer of an engineering contract in return for his support of the prison as an Assemblyman could be a crime, Bell replied:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">'It is?'"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The <i>Anchorage Daily News</i> story also reports that Bell had released a list showing that the oil producer BP was the biggest client of Bell's engineering firm in 2011, and in fact had paid more than $1 million. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">These revelations have the potential of shaking up a State Senate race that is a critical campaign in the efforts of Gov. Sean Parnell and oil producers to engineer a majority in the State Senate friendly to Parnell's initiative to cut taxes on oil production in an attempt to stimulate that production. </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-7998183390025370082012-10-02T22:57:00.002-08:002012-10-02T22:57:58.266-08:00Tom Anderson Likely to Get Off Probation Early<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Federal probation authorities have made an unopposed request that ex-Alaska State Rep. Tom Anderson be released early from probation. Richard Mauer of the <i>Anchorage Daily News</i> has <a href="http://www.adn.com/2012/10/02/2648280/convicted-ex-lawmaker-will-get.html">the report</a> on the request, which would shave about nine months of Anderson's sentence based on the former Anchorage Republican legislator's compliance with the terms of his supervised release, including a substance abuse program.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It is always seemed odd in some moral sense that Anderson--who is obviously not the most culpable figure in the federal probe into Alaska public corruption--has served the most severe sentence of any defendant in the cases arising from that investigation. </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-80344025554966658752012-09-08T10:08:00.001-08:002012-09-08T10:08:19.547-08:00How the Feds Started Investigating Ted Stevens and Moved Toward an Indictment<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Here is the next installment of my series of columns on the Ted Stevens case in the <i>Alaska Bar Rag</i>. This latest piece will appear in the edition of the official publication for the Last Frontier's lawyers that is published this month. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How
the Feds Started Investigating Ted Stevens and Moved Toward an Indictment<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">by
Cliff Groh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our understanding of the Ted Stevens case has grown
substantially in the past several months from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office
of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) report on misconduct in that prosecution,
which comes on the heels of the report of the court-appointed special counsel
(“the Schuelke report”). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is so much in the record now about the Justice
Department’s development of the indictment against Ted Stevens, in fact, that
this piece—the second in a series of offerings on this highly significant
case—is only the first installment of my columns on the charging decisions in
that case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The following analysis presents facts and opinions based
on the more than 2,000 pages contained in those reports and the responses and
rebuttals to them. This column also
relies on information gained from my in-person coverage of the five-week Ted
Stevens trial in Washington, D.C. in 2008, my continuing coverage of the
post-trial litigation and other cases arising out of the “POLAR PEN” federal
investigation into Alaska public corruption, and dozens of interviews with
participants and observers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Contrary to what many Alaskans believe, a search of the record
does not show a malevolent plot to prosecute Ted Stevens so as to remove him
from the U.S. Senate for partisan reasons or to retaliate against him for some
old personal slight. The Justice
Department’s handling of the case can be legitimately faulted on a number of
levels—the timing was ill-advised, the organization was chaotic, the management
was dysfunctional, and the discovery violations were deeply disturbing. There does not appear, however, to have
been an evil mastermind behind the charges against Ted Stevens. My reporting and analysis backs up the
reporting of the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>
and the <i>Washington Post</i> in pieces
published at the time of the collapse of the Ted Stevens prosecution in April
of 2009 regarding the absence of what the latter newspaper called “base
political motivations.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Ted Stevens Case Grows Out of Operation Polar Pen, and Operation Polar Pen Starts
with Private Prisons<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Let’s walk through the process that brought the
charges. The investigation that brought
down Alaska’s most important public official began not with an examination of a
U.S. Senator’s home renovations and his mandatory annual disclosure forms. Instead, the probe that led to the
prosecution of Ted Stevens started five years before his indictment as an
investigation into private prisons. In
the dry words of the OPR report, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage opened
that corrections-focused investigation in July of 2003 “after the FBI developed
information that an Alaska private prison company and a lobbyist were corruptly
influencing state legislators.” In a
nod to the Last Frontier correctional origins of the investigation, the probe
was dubbed “Operation Polar Pen.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The investigation began with the work of an FBI agent
named Mary Beth Kepner. Her blond hair
and trim physique made her look a lot more like a soccer mom than one of the
grim-faced feds famous from the days of J. Edgar Hoover. (Indeed, her achievements as a college
soccer goalie still live on the Internet.)
Starting in Philadelphia—where she investigated complex white-collar and
organized crime cases—Kepner had been with “the Bureau” for more than 10 years
when she opened Polar Pen while working in the FBI’s small Juneau office. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The investigation grew in depth and scope after the
federal government got Frank Prewitt—a former Alaska Commissioner of
Corrections turned private prison lobbyist and consultant for Texas-based
Cornell Companies—to become a cooperating witness. Prewitt started recording (“wiring up”) on
various Alaskans and provided information that allowed federal investigators to
get wiretaps on telephones. <b> </b>(Setting aside whatever immunity
Prewitt’s cooperation got him for his own potential exposure as a defendant, it
is striking that Prewitt received $200,000 from the federal government for his
work; it is indeed odd that Prewitt couldn’t find room to mention that payment
in a 167–page book he wrote about his experiences as an informant.)<b> </b> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Justice Department’s Top Corruption Fighters Get on the Case<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As Polar Pen ballooned, the lawyers working on the probe
changed. The Anchorage-based U.S.
Attorney’s Office started receiving assistance in June of 2004 from the Justice
Department’s Public Integrity Section.
Given that the Public Integrity Section soon came to direct all the
prosecutions growing out of the Polar Pen probe—including the Ted Stevens
case—a little examination of that unit is in order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Public Integrity Section was founded in 1976 on a
wave of reforms following the Watergate scandals. By its official mission, it “oversees the
federal effort to combat corruption through the prosecution of elected and
appointed public officials at all levels of government.” Staffed with about 30 attorneys, the Public
Integrity Section has had some high-profile successes. Notable achievements included the Abscam
investigation in the late 1970s and early 1980s (which led to the convictions
of six Members of Congress) and the more recent probe into super-lobbyist Jack
Abramoff (which has led to the conviction of more than a dozen people,
including a Member of Congress and several executive branch officials and
Congressional staff members). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Public Integrity Section had traditionally been known
as an elite outfit and a breeding ground for stars like Attorney General Eric
Holder and Reid Weingarten, one of a number of the unit’s lawyers who went on
to a well-compensated career as a criminal defense attorney for the rich and
famous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By 2004, however, the Public Integrity Section was in the
midst of some turmoil. Heavy turnover
dogged the section during most of the 2000s, with the <i>New York Times</i> finding that only a quarter of the prosecutors who
had been with the unit at the beginning of President George W. Bush’s tenure remained
there at the end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The comings and goings were particularly frequent at the
unit’s top. The <i>Washington Post</i> reported in April of 2009 that the Public Integrity
Section had had five heads in the past six years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nick
Marsh Comes to Probe Alaska Corruption<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The lead attorney on the ground for the Public Integrity
Section—Nicholas “Nick” Marsh—was new to his job as well, and his part in this
story is important enough that it’s worth sketching out his background. A slender and intense man in his early 30s when
he began work on the Polar Pen probe in 2004, Marsh had only become a
prosecutor about a year before he started traveling back and forth between the
“Main Justice” headquarters in D.C. and Alaska. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The boyish-looking Marsh had been a high-flyer in his
relatively short life. After clerking
for Fairbanks-based Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals, the native Kentuckian had worked for two old-line law firms in New
York City, rising to junior partner at the second. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marsh wanted to be a prosecutor, however, reflecting a
passion for public service and a strong impulse to mix it up. That last quality showed up in his lettering
in lacrosse in college, a fact at odds with the wonky vibe he displayed in
court. He joined the Justice Department
in 2003 and was assigned to the Public Integrity Section in the fall of that
year. After he completed a six-month
detail in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Marsh’s supervisors in
the Public Integrity Section put him on Polar Pen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marsh’s assignment on the Last Frontier was definitely
not full-time, as the young attorney juggled a variety of cases around the
country. The new hire impressed his
bosses by handling three appellate cases his first year, according to the <i>National Law Journal</i>. Marsh also worked in 2004 on the
Mississippi-based prosecutions flowing out of fraud in lawsuits involving the
drug fen-phen, and he was on the government’s courtroom team at a 2005 trial in
New Hampshire over a Republican campaign official’s involvement in jamming the
phones on a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote drive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Justice Department approved a partial recusal of the
Anchorage-based U.S. Attorney’s Office in September of 2004 that gave Marsh a particularly
big role in the Polar Pen probe. While
giving four lawyers from that office the job to “monitor, manage, and direct
the day to day operation” of Polar Pen, the Deputy Attorney General
simultaneously assigned the Public Integrity Section “overall responsibility”
for the probe, including “investigative and prosecutorial decisions.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bolstered by more than 17,000 intercepted conversations
caught on wiretaps, the Polar Pen probe into Alaska public corruption expanded
to cover allegations that VECO executives corruptly influenced state
legislators over the construction of a natural gas pipeline and related
petroleum tax legislation. Polar Pen
progressed to the point that federal officials investigated at least 19 people,
according to a filing submitted by one of the prosecutors involved in the
investigation, while Alaska journalist Bill McAllister reported in 2007 after
news broke of the probe that multiple sources had told him that it would result
in the indictment of 26 people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Polar
Pen Zeroes in on Senator Ted Stevens<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Back when Polar Pen was still covert, the probe started
focusing on its most prominent target, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska icon
and Capitol Hill powerhouse who had held his Senate seat for more than three
decades. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The record isn’t clear about when the investigation began
that focus on Ted Stevens. Some
observers thought that the <i>Los Angeles
Times</i> started that ball rolling with two articles in 2003. The first focused on the links between the
lobbying and consulting clients of Ted Stevens’ son Ben and legislative
assistance provided by Ted Stevens to those clients, including VECO. Another <i>LA
Times</i> story published that year headlined “Senator’s Way to Wealth Was
Paved with Favors” laid out how Ted Stevens became a millionaire “thanks to investments
with businessmen who received government contracts or other benefits with his
help.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At Ted Stevens’ trial, prosecutors introduced evidence of
assistance that the Senator had provided to VECO on a Pakistani pipeline
project referenced in one of those newspaper articles; on the other hand,
federal investigators never interviewed Chuck Neubauer, the journalist who did
most of the reporting and research on the two <i>Times</i> stories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Another straw in the wind comes from a statement in a <i>Wall Street Journal</i> article by reporter
Evan Perez in 2009 that the Ted Stevens case “was investigated for more than
four years.” Given that the indictment
and trial both occurred in 2008, that would put the start of the federal probe
into Ted Stevens at no later than 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Department of Justice’s official history—the OPR
report—says that it was a monitored telephone conversation between VECO
executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith on October 19, 2005 that shifted the spotlight
of the federal probe onto Ted Stevens. In that call, Allen and Smith discussed
benefits VECO had provided to Ted Stevens in the form of renovations at
Stevens’ Girdwood residence. The OPR
report then states: “Thereafter, the
government obtained additional information about the Girdwood renovations,
noting that Stevens had not reported the benefits on his United States Senate
Public Financial Disclosure Reports for the corresponding years.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Whatever the precise date federal investigators started
looking hard at Ted Stevens, it is clear that very shortly after that telephone
call the leadership of the Anchorage-based U.S. Attorney’s Office wanted no
part of the probe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On November 5, 2005, the Justice Department approved what
the OPR report describes as an “office wide” recusal of that office based on
the office’s concern “[g]iven the high degree of sensitivity of such an
investigation and the controversy likely to be engendered by investigating such
individuals in the close knit Alaskan community.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This recusal left the Public Integrity Section in charge
of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. Despite that “office wide” recusal, the
investigation also proceeded with the assistance of two Anchorage-based
Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In practice, this recusal made Marsh Polar Pen’s “top
dog,” as veteran Anchorage attorney Jeff Feldman told <i>New Yorker</i> writer Jeffrey Toobin.
This development meant that Bottini—who had been a prosecutor for
approximately 20 years—was effectively supervised on POLAR PEN by a lawyer with
about 10 percent of his experience as a prosecutor. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Polar Pen prosecution team increased to four in 2006
with the addition of Edward Sullivan, who was immediately assigned to the probe
upon his joining Public Integrity. (Confusingly,
three unrelated Sullivans played significant roles in the Ted Stevens
case—there was Edward Sullivan the prosecutor, Emmet Sullivan the trial judge,
and Brendan Sullivan the chief defense counsel.) Edward Sullivan had been a lawyer for 10 years
when he started on Polar Pen, and he—like Marsh and Goeke—had clerked for a
federal judge. (It is a telling social
commentary that the OPR report details federal clerking experience of these
three lawyers while omitting Bottini’s experience clerking for a state court
judge.) Despite Edward Sullivan’s
impressive resume, his prosecutorial experience was zero.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Grand Juries Hear Evidence, While a Logical Source of Help Goes Largely
Untapped<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Polar Pen team presented evidence regarding Ted Stevens
to grand juries between November of 2006 and June of 2008. One grand jury sat in Anchorage, and the
other sat in Washington, D.C. Despite
the use of the grand jury in the nation’s capital, the Washington, D.C. U.S.
Attorney’s Office had no significant involvement in the Ted Stevens case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This was too bad for the prosecution, particularly since
the Justice Department was aiming for a possible trial in Washington. As <i>Washington
Post</i> reporter Carrie Johnson pointed out after the government’s case collapsed
in 2009, the government’s path could have been smoother if the Washington U.S.
Attorney’s Office had been part of the case, thereby adding “players who were
familiar with the courthouse and the personality of the trial judge.” Such a role for that office would have not
been at all unprecedented in a major public corruption case. The Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office ran
the prosecution of U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D.-Illinois), the long-time
chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, that produced his
guilty plea in 1996 and a sentence that put him in federal custody for 17
months. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There are varying explanations for the lack of
significant participation by the Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office in the
prosecution of Ted Stevens. That 2009 <i>Washington Post</i> story reported that
prosecutors in that office “were consulted about the Stevens case starting in
2006 but declined to participate, thinking that the charges were shaky,
according to sources familiar with the discussions.” That article also stated that sources said
“The assistant U.S. attorneys also considered overly aggressive the
prosecutors' early plan, later abandoned, to get a warrant to search the
lawmaker's D.C. area home….”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On the other hand, the OPR report suggests that it was
the competition for glory that blocked the participation of the Washington U.S.
Attorney’s Office, not that office’s perception that the Polar Pen team was on
the wrong track with Ted Stevens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Glen Donath, an Assistant U.S. Attorney from the Fraud
and Public Corruption Section of the Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office, did
attend at least one grand jury session in Washington in April of 2007 regarding
Ted Stevens. The Public Integrity
Section ran him off the case quickly, however.
Donath—who had previously served on the team defending President Clinton
at the impeachment trial—ended his slight participation in the Ted Stevens case
after Public Integrity officials communicated to him that he was not needed and
that any role he would play would be minor and merely an accommodation to his
superiors. Edward Sullivan told OPR
that Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch spelled it out more bluntly,
conveying the message that Donath was “coming in late” and would be viewed as a
“fifth wheel.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Charges
the Justice Department Considered <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Contemporaneous media reports in the <i>Anchorage Daily News, </i>the<i> </i>Associated
Press<i>,</i> and <i>Roll Call</i> showed that the federal government conducted a wide-ranging
investigation of Ted Stevens and his close associates. As detailed in that coverage and in
interviews, this probe included an examination of legislative assistance Ted
Stevens had provided that had benefitted his son Ben (who was by 2006 President
of the Alaska State Senate), Ted Stevens’ former long-time legislative aide
Trevor McCabe, and Anchorage businessmen who had engaged in real estate deals
with Ted Stevens that the Senator bragged about publicly. As part of this investigation, the FBI
Interviewed former state legislator and activist Ray Metcalfe, who had
accumulated evidence to support allegations regarding real estate transactions
and fisheries legislation. The Justice
Department also perceived early on in the investigation that tax charges could
be brought against Ted Stevens, and the OPR report says that IRS agents
remained part of the prosecution team through the Ted Stevens trial.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the end, however, the prosecution’s charges did not
relate to real estate transactions, fisheries legislation, or income taxes, and
the word “earmark” appeared nowhere in the 28-page indictment issued on July
29, 2008. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Instead, the prosecution focused during the three-month
period before the issuance of the indictment on five charges: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--Bribery under 18 U.S. Code
Subsec. 201(b)(2);<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--Illegal gratuities under
18 U.S. Code Subsec. 201(c)(1)(B);<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--Honest-services fraud
under 18 U.S. Code Secs. 1341-1351;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">-- Conversion of services of
government employees for personal use under 18 U.S. Code Sec. 641; and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--False statements, by
concealment under 18 U.S. Code Subsec. 1001(a)(1) and by omission under 18 U.S.
Code Subsec. 1001(a)(2).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Except for the potential conversion charge—which
concerned Ted Stevens’ alleged use of Senate staff members to pay the personal
bills of himself and his family—all these potential charges would have related
to things of value received by Ted Stevens and not reported on mandatory annual
Senate disclosure forms. Most of those
things of value involved renovations to the Senator’s Girdwood home provided by
Bill Allen and/or VECO. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There’s a common problem with the three charges listed
above regarding Ted Stevens.
Conviction under the bribery or illegal gratuities statutes requires
“official acts” in connection with the crimes.
Honest-services fraud—a favorite arrow in the federal prosecutor’s
quiver before the U.S. Supreme Court sharply restricted the reach of the
statute in 2010—does not explicitly require a <i>quid pro quo</i> between the receipt of a specific thing of value and a
specific official act. With honest
services fraud, prosecutors have tended to look to prove the defendant received
a stream of things of value in exchange for a series of official acts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At least one line prosecutor pushed hard for the
inclusion of one or more of these counts in the Ted Stevens indictment. Higher-ups at the Department of Justice,
however, seemed to perceive that Stevens had delivered so much for so many
Alaskans over four decades that it was difficult to say that the Senator was
motivated by gifts to do official acts.
Those supervisors appeared to understand that it was difficult to throw
a rock in any populated place on the Last Frontier and not hit somebody who had
benefitted from an official act of “Uncle Ted”—whether it was a local
appropriation or intervention with the federal bureaucracy—and that the great
majority of those who had received help from the Senator had never given him a
penny in campaign contributions, much less gifts (and had certainly never given
his son Ben a lobbying or consulting contract).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It would have probably fortified the Justice Department
brass in their rejection of bribery/illegal gratuities charges/honest services
fraud charges against Ted Stevens if they had been aware of a conversation the
lead FBI agent on Polar Pen had with a journalist in May of 2008. Mary Beth Kepner met with reporter Tony
Hopfinger at a coffee shop in midtown Anchorage. This meeting occurred more than nine months
after the FBI had executed a search warrant on the Senator’s Girdwood home and
in the final throes of the Justice Department’s decision on the
indictment. In the conversation—later
recounted in <i>Crude Awakening</i>, a book
by Hopfinger and Amanda Coyne, and in a recent interview with Hopfinger—Kepner speculated
that Allen had bribed Ted Stevens by renovating the Senator’s house. The FBI agent then asked the reporter: “What do you think the <i>quid pro quo</i> was?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Given that this conversation occurred after the FBI had been
investigating Ted Stevens for at least 2.5 years and in the last 90 days before
the Justice Department announced the indictment, it was surprising that the
lead FBI agent on the Ted Stevens investigation would at that point ask a
reporter in a coffee shop for that reporter's opinion on a critical element of
a case against Ted Stevens. (Then
again, Kepner was known for her ability to get people to tell her things, and playing
dumb is one well-known way to do that.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The prosecutors also considered a charge of
conversion. This charge would have been
based on evidence that the Senator had for years arranged for Senate staff
members to work on the Congressional clock to pay from his personal account his
family’s personal bills—including his wife’s credit card bills, the family’s
regular household bills, and the bills for the Senator’s participation in a
horse racing partnership. The 1994
indictment against another Congressional titan—Rep. Rostenkowski—had included a
charge of conversion of federal funds based on the Congressman’s alleged use of
Congressional staff members working on federal time to perform personal services
for Rostenkowski. As laid out in a
2007 article by John Stanton in <i>Roll Call</i>,
Ted Stevens’ alleged use of a Senate staff member making more than $150,000
annually to serve as his “personal bookkeeper” substantially exceeded the occasional
<i>de minimis</i> personal tasks some
Senators asked of their own Senate staff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Although Polar Pen’s line prosecutors expressed to their
superiors in the spring of 2008 their belief that the evidence and the law
supported a conversion charge against Ted Stevens, those lower-level lawyers
advised against pursuing such a charge because it would significantly distract
from a prosecution based on the Senator’s alleged falsehoods in his annual
disclosure forms. (The prosecution did
use evidence that the above-described Senate staff member routinely paid
Catherine Stevens’ department store credit card bills while cross-examining the
Senator’s wife at his trial.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Next: The charges of failure to disclose required
financial information that the Justice Department finally settled on <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cliff
Groh is an Anchorage lawyer and writer who has worked as both a prosecutor and
a criminal defense attorney. He has
blogged about the “POLAR PEN” federal probe into Alaska public corruption for
years at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com, which in its entry for May 14, 2012
features an expanded and updated list of disclosures. Groh’s analysis regarding the Ted Stevens
case has appeared in media as diverse as C-SPAN, the Los Angeles Times, Alaska
Dispatch, the Anchorage Daily News, and the Anchorage Press. The lifelong Alaskan covered the five-week
Ted Stevens trial in person in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2008. He welcomes your bouquets, brickbats, tips,
and questions at cliff.groh@gmail.com. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-18278509522264617982012-08-21T13:23:00.002-08:002012-08-21T13:23:41.428-08:00More of My Writing on Another Alaska Topic<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Entertaining relatives the past two weeks has slowed down my distribution of this news. A chapter on the Prudhoe Bay Curve and Alaska's fiscal system I wrote is in a book published this month by Palgrave Macmillan. It is the second in a series of two academic books published this year on the Permanent Fund Dividend. The first book was published in April, and it included three chapters I co-authored. Here is a link to the book published this month:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Exporting-Alaska-Model-Permanent-Guarantee/dp/1137006595">http://www.amazon.com/Exporting-Alaska-Model-Permanent-Guarantee/dp/1137006595</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br />Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-31216844928933908502012-07-27T15:32:00.001-08:002012-07-27T15:32:29.306-08:00Tomorrow Is Ted Stevens Day in Alaska--Get Outside and Enjoy It<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Anchorage--</strong></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Tomorrow is the fourth Saturday in July, and that means under a law enacted last year it is officially Ted Stevens Day. </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-90875610798854432402012-07-26T11:57:00.000-08:002012-07-26T11:57:32.766-08:00Confessed Briber Rick Smith to Get Off Probation Two Years Early<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Former VECO Vice President Rick Smith is scheduled to get off probation after only one year despite being ordered to serve three years of probation as part of his sentencing for his role in Alaska's biggest public corruption scandal. <i>Anchorage Daily News</i> reporter Richard Mauer <a href="http://www.adn.com/2012/07/25/2556189/ex-veco-vp-will-be-off-probation.html">reports</a> that Smith's probation officer has labeled him "a low risk to re-offend."</span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-75358902698719456662012-07-16T09:22:00.000-08:002012-07-16T09:22:16.371-08:00Former Head of DoJ's Public Integrity Section Calls for Discovery Reform While Observing that He Was Not Responsible for the Discovery Failures in the Ted Stevens Case<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">William M. ("Bill") Welch II, the head of the U.S. Justice Department's Public Integrity Section during much of the investigation and all of the trial of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, has <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202562947386&thepage=1">co-authored a commentary</a> about the law regarding the process by which prosecutors provide evidence to the defense in federal criminal cases. This process of sharing evidence is called "discovery." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This piece by Welch and his lawyer has two points:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">1. The law of discovery in federal criminal cases should be reformed in ways that go beyond <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s2197/text">legislation</a> proposed by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska). Welch urges changing the standards in the law to make relevance rather than materiality the focus in federal criminal discovery to "ensure more robust and complete discovery to the defense."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">2. The failures in discovery in the Ted Stevens case were caused by people above and below Welch in the Justice Department and not by Welch. In Welch's telling, those people responsible for the failures in discovery include "the overworked prosecution team" led at the Ted Stevens trial by his own No. 2, Brenda Morris (although Welch omits her name). </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-86324184684570116832012-07-10T16:00:00.000-08:002012-07-10T16:00:16.209-08:00Ted Stevens' Top Lawyer Complains of Insufficient Punishment for Prosecutors<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I am late to this because it appeared last week when I was out admiring the beauties of Prince William Sound and marveling at a giant snow pile in Valdez (more than 20 feet high as of last Friday). Brendan Sullivan, Ted Stevens' chief defense lawyer, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wheres-the-punishment-after-justice-dept-misconduct/2012/07/05/gJQAJMvPQW_story.html">offers</a> his analysis of the reports on prosecutorial misconduct against his client.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-26150278212424028802012-06-27T14:12:00.000-08:002012-06-27T14:12:06.584-08:00Two Assistant U.S. Attorneys Appeal Suspensions Issued in Probe of Ted Stevens Prosecution<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Anchorage--</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As expected, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, the two federal prosecutors facing suspensions in the Justice Department's investigation into the botched handling of the Ted Stevens case, <a href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2012/06/two-prosecutors-in-stevens-case-appeal-disciplinary-action.html#more">have sought review</a> of those suspensions. The two government lawyers have filed appeals with the U.S. Merit System Protection Board. Although neither of the appealing attorneys has filed a substantive pleading with this appeals board, expect <a href="http://www.mainjustice.com/2012/06/27/ted-stevens-case-prosecutors-appeal-disciplinary-action/">two of the arguments</a> to be that (1) it was unfair to discipline these two line prosecutors while letting their superiors off the hook for the higher-ups' role in the errors and omissions and (2) it was procedurally improper to take the decision on the discipline away from the attorney who initially reviewed the matter and recommended no discipline.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383772914939427705.post-65671665822537963502012-06-20T16:13:00.000-08:002012-06-20T16:13:55.559-08:00The Big Questions in the Ted Stevens Case: Part I<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Anchorage--</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Here is my latest column for the <em>Alaska Bar Rag</em>, the quarterly publication for the Last Frontier's lawyers.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The Big Questions in the Ted Stevens Case: Part I</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Cliff Groh</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Confusion and misinformation continue regarding the Ted Stevens case, even in the wake of the release in March of a court-appointed special counsel’s report on the prosecutorial misconduct that produced the case’s dismissal and a debate about how discovery works in federal criminal cases. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Following an investigation that lasted well over two years, the report found that “The investigation and prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’ defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of [Bill Allen,] the government’s key witness.” The prosecutors under scrutiny acknowledge that failures occurred in discovery, but deny any intent to conceal. Still to come is a report by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog unit, on the results of its own probe, and the OPR report might lead to sanctions for some of the prosecutors involved in the trial. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The release of the special counsel’s report written by Washington, D.C. attorneys Henry Schuelke and William Shields has sparked renewed interest in what occurred in this landmark case. This article offers answers to the most frequently asked questions about the bungled Stevens prosecution and the fall-out. What follows is based on my in-person coverage of the five-week trial in Washington, D.C. in 2008, my continuing coverage of the post-trial litigation and other cases arising out of the “POLAR PEN” federal investigation into Alaska public corruption, my review of the 525-page special counsel’s report and the hundreds of pages of responses and rebuttals it generated, and dozens of interviews with participants and observers. This series of questions and answers runs in rough chronological order, and it is the first installment of a series that will appear in the Alaska Bar Rag.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Why do people care so much about this case, more than three and a half years after the trial and almost two years after Stevens’ tragic death in a plane crash in 2010?</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Ted Stevens was an Alaska icon and a powerhouse in the U.S. Senate. The scrappy lawyer won seven straight elections for the Senate as a Republican after his appointment to a vacant seat in 1968; the noted political analyst Michael Barone pointed out that at the height of his popularity Stevens carried every precinct in the state. Serving on the Senate Appropriations Committee for more than three decades and as chairman for more than six years, “Uncle Ted” showered so much federal funding on our young state that Alaska newspapers routinely used the term “Stevens money” without quotation marks to describe Uncle Sam’s projects and programs. As Stevens said in his farewell Senate address in 2008, “Where there was nothing but tundra and forest, today there are now airports, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, hospitals, clinics, communications networks, research labs, and much, much more.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The legacy of the man tagged “the Alaskan of the Century” was more than the billions shipped from the federal treasury to the Last Frontier. Stevens played major roles in the enactment of the most significant Congressional measures affecting the 49th State. Those bills bearing the Stevens stamp included the legislation that created Alaska Native corporations (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA), helped make Alaska’s fisheries sustainable, and allowed the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). The Almanac of American Politics observed that “No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska; quite possibly no other senator ever has.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The indictment in 2008 of Stevens on seven felony counts brought the first federal trial of a sitting U.S. Senator in more than 25 years. The case matched a prosecution trial team supervised by the Justice Department’s elite Public Integrity Section against a squad captained by the $1,000-per-hour Brendan Sullivan from the prominent Washington, D.C. firm of Williams & Connolly, renowned for its scorched-earth approach to white-collar criminal defense. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts that the trial judge overturned in the wake of post-trial revelations of the prosecution’s discovery failures. Along with triggering multiple investigations of prosecutorial misconduct, the collapse of the case brought calls for reform in the practices and rules governing discovery in federal criminal cases.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Looking at the trial provides lessons for litigators and those lawyers who actually try cases, and review of the post-trial litigation gives tips for attorneys in all areas of practice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>What was the nature of the relationship between Ted Stevens and Bill Allen, and why did the two men get so close?</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The indictment against Stevens relied heavily on the Senator’s failure to report his receipt of things of value from Bill Allen and VECO, the Alaska-based oil-services and construction company that Allen built into a multi-national giant with close to a billion dollars in annual revenues. By the late 1990s, Stevens was very personally close to Allen. This relationship went way beyond discussions of politics or petroleum policy on long airplane trips and fishing trips with others. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Ties between Stevens and Allen got to the point that the two of them went on several one-on-one vacations the two men called “Boot Camps.” In these regular get-togethers, Stevens and Allen went off in the desert by themselves to try to shed a few pounds by taking walks and drinking wine in lieu of hard liquor. These “Boot Camps” continued after Allen suffered a brain injury in a 2001 motorcycle accident. The last of these retreats appears to have occurred in early 2006, less than eight months before Allen became a cooperating witness for the Justice Department against Stevens and a number of other defendants charged in cases arising out of the “POLAR PEN” probe. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">While the motivations of Allen—a business titan with big North Slope contracts and the political point man for the major oil producers in Alaska—seem obvious in this relationship, Stevens’ reasons for getting so close to Allen are murkier. A pilot for the Army Air Corps who later graduated from Harvard Law School, Stevens’ closest friends tended to resemble him in being World War II veterans who became attorneys. Allen, on the other hand, was more than 13 years younger than Stevens and was never considered a candidate to become a lawyer. The rough-hewn welder-turned-tycoon was eight years old when Japanese officials signed the Instrument of Surrender on the battleship Missouri and 15 years old when he dropped out of high school. Moreover, Allen’s reputation was unsavory long before he admitted bribing state legislators and long before allegations about him engaging in sexual relations with underage girls became public (allegations which he has denied and for which he has not been charged). As longtime Alaska journalist Michael Carey noted of Allen, “You didn’t have to smell sulfur to know the devil was in the room.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Stevens’ tight relationship with the multimillionaire magnate might stem partly or wholly from the Senator’s admiration for a rich self-made Alaskan, and observers have noted Stevens’ willingness as a lawyer to associate himself with people—including clients—who would not get a universal seal of approval. Those who prosecuted Stevens suggested that in becoming so personally close to the long-time VECO CEO Stevens also wanted to cozy up to an oilpatch insider who substantially funded Republican political campaigns, provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying and consulting income to his son Ben, and was eager to give the powerful U.S. Senator valuable gifts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>What charges did the federal government bring against Ted Stevens?</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The Department of Justice filed on July 29, 2008 an indictment of Ted Stevens charging seven felony counts of failing to report gifts and liabilities on disclosure forms required annually from each U.S. Senator. Six counts covered the annual reports filed for the six calendar years 2001 through 2006, and a seventh count alleged a scheme by Stevens running from calendar year 1999 through calendar year 2006 to conceal his receipt of things of value from Allen and VECO. The mental state in the six counts for individual years was “knowingly and willfully,” and the mental state in the count for the alleged multi-year scheme was “knowingly and intentionally.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The Ethics in Government Act sets a low dollar threshold for reporting gifts. The law required the disclosure of gifts from a single source if the aggregate value of the items received in a particular year exceeded a particular dollar value. For the calendar years 1999 through 2002, the requirement was to disclose gifts over a value of $260; for calendar year 2002, that dollar value was $285; for calendar years 2004 through 2006, it was $305. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">In addition to charging Stevens with failure to report gifts in all seven counts, the indictment also charged the Senator with failure to report liabilities (debts) in each of the six counts tied to individual years. For each of those six years, the law required the disclosure of liabilities of more than $10,000 owed at any point in time during the calendar year. The prosecution’s theory in the indictment was that if the receipt of a particular thing of value was not reported as a gift for the calendar year in which it was received, that transaction was instead a loan that needed to be reported as a liability for that year and subsequent years. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The indictment alleged that Stevens received more than $250,000 worth of benefits that he failed to report. In terms of monetary value, the great bulk of the gifts and liabilities alleged in the indictment came from Allen and VECO as renovations and furnishings at a home in Girdwood owned by Stevens. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">The indictment alleged that Stevens also received unreported gifts from others, including Alaska businessmen Bob Penney and Bob Persons, both friends of Stevens. At trial, those gifts turned out to include a stained glass window and a runty husky puppy alleged to have come from Penney as well as a $2,695 massage chair from Persons. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><em>Questions Left to Answer</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Why did the Department of Justice charge Ted Stevens with the particular charges in the indictment?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Why did the Justice Department in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush charge the longest serving Republican Senator ever less than four months before Election Day in his hotly contested race for another six-year Senate term? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Who made the decision to prosecute Stevens?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Who was in charge of the prosecution team at the trial?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">How did there end up being more than twice as many defense attorneys as prosecutors working on the trial?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">What were the arguments, strengths, and weaknesses of the prosecution and defense at the trial?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Why did Ted Stevens testify on his own behalf, and what effect did that decision have on the verdicts?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Why did the jury bring back guilty verdicts on all counts?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">How did the prosecution fail in discovery, and why has there been no prosecution of the prosecutors identified as being responsible for the discovery violations?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">How would the defense have used the evidence held back in the discovery violations to seek an acquittal on all counts?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Even if the prosecution had provided the defense all the discovery to which it was entitled, what is the likelihood that the jury would still have returned guilty verdicts on some or all of the counts?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Cliff Groh is an Anchorage lawyer and writer who has worked as both a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. He has blogged about the “POLAR PEN” federal probe into Alaska public corruption for years at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com, which in its entry for May 14, 2012 features an expanded and updated list of disclosures. Groh’s analysis regarding the Ted Stevens case has appeared in media as diverse as C-SPAN and the Anchorage Press. The lifelong Alaskan covered the five-week Ted Stevens trial in person in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2008. He welcomes your bouquets, brickbats, tips, and questions at cliff.groh@gmail.com. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>Cliff Grohhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494299086745035172noreply@blogger.com0