ALASKA

The Veep’s Pipeline Push

By Michael Isikoff and Tony Hopfinger | NEWSWEEK

Published Aug 23, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Sep 1, 2008

From the Editors (2)
Cheney Letter to Alaska Legislators, June 2006
Indictment Threatens Stevens's Alaskan Legacy

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A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.

Stevens confirmed to NEWSWEEK last week that he asked Cheney to write the letter. "We wanted the federal government to tell the state to act quickly on it," he said. (A spokesman for Alaska's other senator, Lisa Murkowski, said her office also had contacts with Cheney's office.) A Cheney spokeswoman said his office does not comment on pending legal matters.

In the motion, prosecutors said they want to show that Stevens, who has pleaded not guilty, used his political clout to benefit Allen's business interests while the oil exec was paying for renovations on the senator's home. As an example, the motion points out that Stevens discussed contacting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the pipeline; soon after, FERC issued a report on the project "similar to the message delivered by Stevens." But the Justice motion made no mention of Cheney's letter. A department spokesman did not respond to requests for comment about why prosecutors did not also include the letter or whether they expect Cheney to come up at Stevens's trial, now slated to begin next month.

Member Comments

Posted By: Krohn @ 11/02/2008 11:06:32 PM

The Wall Street crisis was planned the night of Obama's meeting at Bill Ayres home to put Obama in The White House. Together they put a beautiful plan into place.

This Strategy was first elucidated in the 1966 issue of 'The Nation' Magazine by a pair of radical Socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

David Horowitz summarizes it as:

"The strategy of forcing political change through an orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of Capitalism by overloading the Government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
unquote

Obama begin with ACORN by funneling millions into their organization. He then trained ACORN to stage protests in banks to force them to issue risky loans or they would be threatened to face racial charges. ACORN was trained to intimidate financial institutions into giving ???Ninja??? loans to people with NO assets, NO job and NO income, who couldn???t afford these loans.

That caused the housing bubble two years ago it was by ACORN's actions they were able to destroy our credit system.

As this played out, D-Barney Frank and D-Chris Dodd were able to cover up the millions of improvident loans to these bad risky house buyers. And Barney Frank and his chums successfully were able to block all of President Bush's attempts to put a rein on this problem.

So Fannie & Freddie was forced to purchase all these failed subprime mortgages.

Then both Frank and Dodd denied that there were any problems, and refused the Bush Admin. requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the 'minute they failed'.

Democrats then blamed Bush saying it happened on his watch knowing it would hurt the Republican Party in the election setting it up that Barack Obama could use this to his advantage.

Karl Marx once compared a Revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface.

Barack Obama is that Marxist mole !
Posted By: wendydk @ 11/01/2008 11:46:09 AM

How to bring down a democracy: the steps toward totalitarian rule, in the order followed by Hitler and the Nazi Party; SEE IF THEY SOUND FAMILIAR.

1. Improvise an attack (or take advantage of an attack) on the country
2. Declare the country under attack by an enemy; real or improvised
3. Force legislation that limits civil liberties and gathers broad powers unto government
4. Brand dissenters and peacemakers as unpatriotic and browbeat them into submission
5. Keep the fear factor high to make the public easier to manage
6. Institute massive propaganda campaigns using state-controlled no-longer-free media and fear of government retribution
7. Law enforcement and government personnel and ordinary citizens are used to spy on, control and break dissent.
8. Institute the equivalent of a national homeland security department, overseen by one person with unlimited powers
9. Confiscate all firearms from the citizenry
10. Institute the mass murder and imprisonment of any who resist the new ideology.
11. Launch pre-emptive strikes into other countries in an attempt to spread the new ideology

Sound familiar? It should, its not only the direct path of Hitlers rise to power, but also parallels the events starting with and following 9/11. President Bush was very familiar with the game plan, as his Grandfather and his Grandfathers father-in-law were supporters of Hitler and Nazism, both before and after the war. (See George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush and the Union Banking Corporation)

Of course, the Bush Administration has skipped a couple of the items on the list, but theyll get to them if their party is allowed to remain in power; it will be the only way for them to retain control over the citizenry.

The Reichstag Fire: the funeral pyre of German democracy

http://www.essortment.com/all/nazireichstag_rghx.htm

THE BEST REASON TO VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA THIS ELECTION YEAR
Posted By: C. MacLean @ 10/30/2008 8:47:34 AM

In the greater scheme of things, this isn't one of Cheney's bigger crimes. In fact, writing a letter or making a phone call isn't a crime at all. Obnoxious, to be sure, for a federal official to be instructing states what to do, but not criminal.

Now - his role in Abu Gharib, Guantanomo Bay, the Iraq war, and wire tapping without judicial oversight - those are crimes. His profiteering with Haliburton, and maybe Enron? Definitely in the criminal realm. Refusing to answer congressional subpeonas? Full blown criminal act.

If we'er going to go after the man, let's get him on his legitimate criminal behavior.

It's not as if there aren't plenty of real crimes to choose from.