911 Call to the Anti-corruption Infantry

What does this sound like: " We can't certify wild salmon  as organic because we can't verify what they are eating. Farmed salmon can be certified because we can know what they are eating, (three times the amount of other wild fish as is produced in a farmed salmon pen) and of course we make a small concession to allow the timy amounts of hormones and pesticides and dye in atlantics." That's from the Canadian government, but if you compare it to issues in the States you won't find any difference really.

This issue of feudalism settling in on Western Alaska, where the CDQ groups, for one, throw their weight around like any of your favorite land barons of the 'Old West,' or the former head of Enron, etc. Go to Nome if you think this division is sustainable. The few natural resources they haven't quite depleted yet are about all that's propping up the works.

Government has to have a lot of workers to make it look like the process is being followed in handing out permits to the extractors. Which is why we need a good law enforcement agency that has some backbone. The FBI did before, let's hope they haven't lost their nerve. This letter from Ray Metcalf in Southcentral Alaska is a compelling one for everyone interested in law and order.

Open Letter To  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder RE: Ben Stevens

Sent by U.S. Priority Mail on May 21, 2012  

Citizens For Ethical Government, Inc.

Post Office Box 231007                                                                                                                                   Anchorage AK 99523                                                                                               

Email RayinAK@aol.con 907-344-4514

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

RE: Plea for Continuation of FBI’s Investigation of Corruption in Alaska.

CC: FBI Director Robert Mueller

CC: Jack Smith, Chief of the Public Integrity Division

Dear U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder:

We at Citizens for Ethical Government understand that a large number of letters demanding the federal government’s apology to the Stevens family were recently delivered to your offices. Attached is a petition signed by 200 Alaskans who not only disagree, they wish to see the investigations of corruption in Alaska to be resumed.

We at Citizens for Ethical Government are the Alaskans who initiated the FBI’s understanding of Ben and Ted Stevens’ schemes to launder federal appropriations through the Alaska Fish Marketing Board into the pockets of fish processors. They were kicked back approximately one million dollars to Ben Stevens under the pretense of consulting fees. I was also a substantial contributor to the FBI’s understanding of Veco owner Bill Allen’s twenty-five year history of election fraud and bribery. Attached you will find an outline of a dozen kickback received by Ben Stevens at the hand of Ted Stevens.

I personally exposed Ted Stevens’ real estate business partner Jon Rubini’s use of a fraudulent appraisal to dupe the office of the Federal National Archives into paying him $3.5 million for a property that had in fact been appraised at $1.9 million, which Jon Rubini had purchased for $1.5 million one year earlier.

I did these things because thousands of people who live in Alaska live in fear of their government and the “good ol’ boy” network the above people are very much a part of. Alaska is state where honest business owners tolerate corruption in silence, for fear of being put out of business if they speak up.

While I agree that tossing a conviction obtained by prosecutors who failed to play by the rules was the right thing to do, allowing this unfortunate occurrence to derail the cleanup of corruption that grips Alaska would be the wrong thing to do.

The brave few that did speak up would be left at the mercy of a corrupt, entrenched and ruthless “good ol’ boy” system that’s already campaigning to rehabilitate its public image.

With Veco in the driver’s seat, corruption in Alaska reached that critical mass necessary to become self sustaining, with or without Veco. Numerous communities across Alaska are dominated by persons who have secured an unfair advantage over local commerce by pouring money into the pockets of candidates who sustain their unfair advantage in return.

Even though the Federal Courts have convicted four former members of Alaska’s House of Representatives for taking bribes from Veco, the remaining majority of Alaska’s House elected the Legislature’s largest remaining recipient of Veco’s contributions, Mike Chenault, as their presiding officer.

The depth of Alaska’s corruption was reaffirmed when those at the top, Governor Parnell, Congressman Young, Senator Murkowski, Anchorage Mayor Sullivan, and the entire Alaska House of Representatives by way of resolution, proclaimed Ted Stevens to be an innocent victim, whose reputation was ruined by an ill-conceived, zealous, and selective prosecution. (See attached news articles.) (See resolution below.) They, with the support of a few U.S. Senators, are demanding apologies from your office and calling for the FBI to fire the investigating agents.

Those whose corrupt control of Alaska was shaken by the FBI’s investigation lost control of the Governor’s office and both houses of Alaska’s Legislature for just long enough to see a fair oil tax known as ACES become law. The same corrupt influences who pulled Veco's strings have already reasserted control over the Alaska House of Representatives, and the Governor’s office. Through advertising expenditures, the same corrupt influences that once controlled Veco have purchased the silence of most of Alaska's media while falsely advertising that Alaska's tax on oil is above average among oil producing countries. With the division of over thirty billion dollars in profits hanging in the balance from the yet to be harvested oil in Prudhoe Bay, it’s a sure bet that the oil companies will spend tens of millions of dollars in an effort to take back the Alaska State Senate next year.

Alaskans cannot throw off this yoke of corruption without help. The forces of corruption are simply too powerful. If Ted Stevens' friends in the U.S. Senate get their apology from the U.S. Attorney, Alaska will be doomed to years of corruption with no possibility of federal intervention. If Sen. Lisa Murkowski is successful in getting the FBI agents who investigated Ted fired, it will be decades before any U.S. Senator will ever be investigated for corruption again.

The Alaska House resolution declaring Ted Stevens’ innocence and demanding the federal government’s apology passed by Alaska’s forty-member House, 39 to 1.

It reads:

"BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska House of Representatives demands that the federal government grant Senator Stevens permission to sue the United States Department of Justice for redress; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that federal employees involved with Senator Stevens' prosecution be investigated for violations of the Hatch Act and, if found guilty, be subject to penalty under the Act; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States Government should issue a formal apology to Senator Stevens and the People of Alaska for this heinous miscarriage of justice."

 Only one democrat had the courage to vote against it.

The Alaska State Senate gave a committee chairmanship to a person known to have, while serving in the Legislature, executed a written contract to help a “client” secure a seven million dollar appropriation. The appropriation was made, the “client” paid as agreed, the contracts and invoices have been delivered to the Alaska State Troopers, published on the web and no one will prosecute. Conversely, in this year’s graduation ceremony, the person on the receiving end of the appropriation was awarded an honorary doctorate of law by the University of Alaska; such are the spoils of the “good ol’ boy” system in the state of Alaska.

Paul Jenkins, Bill Allen’s personal media editor and spokesman for seventeen years, has been given a weekly Sunday column in Alaska’s largest newspaper. According to Paul Jenkins’ April 5, 2009 article: –– “The federal government's unconstitutional and outrageous conduct has cost Stevens his reputation, his seat of 40 years in the United States Senate -- and immeasurable personal grief. Its true cost to Alaska -- in terms of leadership and effective representation in the Senate and a stolen election -- remains to be seen.”

Veco’s bribery of Alaska’s Legislators didn’t start with John Cowdery, Pete Kott, Vick Kohring, Beverly Masek, or Tom Anderson. Veco’s bribery schemes were obvious as far back as 1981, when I served in the Legislature.

Stevens’ choice to roll out the red carpet for Veco –– when he should have been calling the FBI instead –– gave Veco owner Bill Allen the kind of credibility he needed to conceal three decades of bribery while Exxon, BP and ConocoPhillips relieved Alaska of about sixty billion dollars that rightfully belonged to Alaska.

These are the people who have the resources to rehabilitate their public images and regain full control over Alaska’s commerce. If the investigations don’t resume, BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips will pull off the second largest heist in U.S. history, second only the sixty plus billion dollars they gained through bribery over the previous twenty-five years. Those of us who stepped forward to expose their skullduggery are likely to suffer the wrath of Alaska’s “good ol’ boy” system for the rest of our lives.

    Sincerely,

 

 

      Ray Metcalfe

        President and Chairman of

  Citizens for Ethical Government, Inc.

1 Attached file| 43KB

He Who Has the Gold rules Western Alaska

Thomas Paine once said, " To argue with someone who is without reason, is like administering medicine to the dead." Tim Smith, the President of the only State of Alaska sanctioned regional aquaculture association in the Nome area, has been debunking the claims of others to his position and his organization. It's largely what Thomas Paine warned about. But it got my attention, even if the media is ignoring this life and death struggle for a food supply in Western Alaska, not to mention a commercial salmon fishery like the rest of the State started for themselves long ago. Why is that?

 Tim's purpose in writing all those letters explaining the truth of the matter is hitting some kind of wall. Was Governor Parnell's trip to Nome to add some bricks to that wall? Why did a Trooper lady take a tape recorder over to the Teller Mayor's house to have coffee right after that trip. After he had simply been talking to the Fish and Game Commissioner about jump-starting the hatchery program in the Nome area. And all the clicking on Tim's phone is apparently trying to drown out his conversations.

All because Tim wants to raise some salmon in a hatchery to HELP, also as President of the Nome Fishermen's Association. The fifty-five odd fishermen's organizations in Alaska should be ashamed of failing to rally to the side of one of their sister organizations.

Tim's opposition knows Thomas Paine was referring to them. And the State of Alaska knows who they are too. It's probably unreasonable to think that the head of a several hundred million dollar Nome area organization that has been opposing Tim will step down just because he was reported to be using Public Safety Officer standing to intimidate folks.

But it is reasonable to believe that top public officials in Juneau will stand on the right side of this struggle. I saw one of those Facebook 'shared' political cartoons about one Party devolving into simply, 'making sh.. up." Again, people all the way down the ladder take their cues from our top people. If you can call some political candidates our top people. Well, some would call them that anyway. The good thing about content storage places like blogs is that they can record for posterity how things devolved and who did nothing to help. Such as the United Fishermen of Alaska, with their '35 member organizations.' So much for being 'united' and also for being on the right side of history.

The big question is whether the State of Alaska officials will be on the right side of history, or will they also be the dead ones that Thomas Paine referred to in his famous quote. If they don't quickly resolve this, the next election cycle will surely see more information on this attempt to deprive Western Alaskans of revived salmon runs. And by the way, salmon runs that the State of Alaska stood by and did nothing to protect from the Bering Sea trawlers. Of course the fisheries management body, of trawl lobbyists, still debates their role in their demise. Even though many experienced analysts say the king salmon by-catch and 'dumping' was over 400,000 king salmon a year at the peak of the destruction. It's less now they say.  Of course it is, because they pret'n near wiped 'em all out.

I've heard it said that in the summer, in Western Alaska villages, parents used to keep a big pot of cooked salmon chunks for the kids to snack on. Recent reports of dental decay being twice the national average out there would suggest the pot of salmon has been replaced by junk food, highly preserved by chemicals. I don't know why some of it is even classed as 'food'.
All the fast food is not a entirely different story.

Governor Parnell just appointed a dentist to a new commission to try address this problem in the bush. A big problem is that this dentist made a number of racial slurs about the Alaska Natives and even went so far as to suggest they should die out if they can't get their act together. Is there something going on here that all Alaskans and even the nation might want to be aware of?

When the rich guys wipe out the historic food supply of king and chum salmon and 'help' them by replacing it with junk food, what do you think is going to happen? Even the act of harvesting the salmon was glue to hold those cultures together, giving meaning to life in Western Alaska. It's all related, but sure easy to say it's not. The history books are waiting to write what the State of Alaska is going to do about finally restoring the salmon runs in Western Alaska.

At this point, talking to Governor Parnell, the oil lobbyist,.is like talking to the dead. I suppose listing the salmon runs up there as 'Endangered' or 'Threatened,' under the Endangered Species Act might get someone's attention. But why not just take the logical route to protecting the social, economic and ecological values. The Secretary of the Department of the Interior directed the Bureau of Land Management to take such a approach to forest management in Western Oregon. It is obvious that the science of resource management has fallen on deaf ears long enough.

The glimmer of hope is not with the Administration in Juneau, but with the pending merging of the National Marine Fisheries Service with the Department of Interior. What does NOAA care about social justice anyway? NMFS has steadfastly refused to do the economic impact studies, as required by law, of their privatization programs for the fisheries off Alaska's coasts. To my former banker boss it would all be very simple, his philosophy was that "He who has the gold, makes the rules." Do we need to rewrite the Boy Scout Motto?