Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens Join Forces on GOP Energy Plan

[Octafish]

Perhaps they're tied together in other ways?



From before Ted's indictments...

Ted Stevens and Sarah Palin join forces on energy plan

Wed, July 2, 2008
Posted in Alaska News, Top Stories

Senator Ted Stevens had a joint news conference with Governor Sarah Palin today to promote the energy plan put forward by Republicans in Congress, and Alaska’s role in it. Both of them said high fuel prices are swinging public opinion around to back measures to increase domestic energy supplies.

Steve Heimel, ARPN - Anchorage

Podcast: http://aprn.org/2008/07/02/ted-stevens-and-sarah-palin-join-forces-on-energy-plan/

Those two know a good deal when they see one.

[Solly Mack]

1. Time to go digging

lol

:)

[Octafish]

2. TPM says she says she's anti-corruption.

She must be squeaky-clean. On paper.

GOP Alaska Gov: Corruption-Ridden State Must 'Grow Up'

By Laura McGann - October 9, 2007, 11:50AM

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), who's made a hobby of denouncing the corruption among Republicans in her state, recently told Newsweek it's time for her state to "grow up" in a feature on the nine women governors holding office across the country.

Palin, elected on an anti-corruption platform, has worked on tackling the "cozy relationship between the state's political elite and the energy industry that provides 85 percent of Alaska's tax revenues," Newsweek writes.

Some of her decisions, including canceling funding for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, has created an intra-party rift between her office and the all-Republican federal delegation. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) recently called relations between the two Alaskans "frosty" (knowing Stevens, we'll assume the pun wasn't intended) after Palin stood in the way of the bridge.

Palin has also gone after Ted's son, former state Sen. Ben Stevens (R), saying she wants him out of his seat as Alaska national Republican committe chairman. Palin said she'd heard enough when Veco CEO Bill Allen testified to bribing him while he was in the state Senate.

SOURCE: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/cats/ted_stevens/

For the longest damn time, one can't get anywhere in today's GOP without getting-along. She must be a mole.

[Solly Mack]

3. Nah...she's not squeaky clean...there's something...there always is

I believe there's an abuse of power investigation already

[Octafish]

5. Self-styled hockey mom.

http://wordpress.com/tag/sarah-palin-scandal/

Heh heh heh.

[libnnc]

4. kick

[Octafish]

7. Investigation dogs Alaska governor

GOP getting into that equality thing, just in time for '08.

Investigation dogs Alaska governor

By STEVE QUINN – Aug 14, 2008
Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Gov. Sarah Palin, a rising young GOP star mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain, could see her clean-hands reputation damaged by a growing furor over whether she tried to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper.

A legislative panel has launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire the trooper, Mike Wooten. Wooten went through a messy divorce from Palin's sister.

Palin has denied the commissioner's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law. And she denied orchestrating the dozens of telephone calls made by her husband and members of her administration to Wooten's bosses.

Palin said she welcomes the investigation: "Hold me accountable."

Still, the allegations she abused her office could prove embarrassing for Palin, who got elected in 2006 on an ethics reform platform.

"It could be a bit of a knock on the clean-government issue in Alaska she backed," said Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.

CONTINUED...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gWi6yTVfPyJeiTBsQ33SSUiobt8wD92I9NIO0

Mush. Mush. Mush.

[bdamomma]

6. it is always about the freaking OIL.

[Octafish]

8. It's always about the freaking OIL.

Power is Money, in one form or another. And it's easier to harvest than pick off trees when it bubbles or boils or leaks out of the ground.

Pipe Dreams

Alaska is home to gigantic untapped natural-gas fields. But can the state and energy industry finally agree to build a pipeline to transport the fuel?

Tony Hopfinger
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 11:17 AM ET Jun 2, 2008

As Americans feel the pinch at the gas pump amid $128 a barrel oil, there's at least one place in the United States where high energy prices aren't all bad news. Alaska, home to America's prolific oil fields, is reaping billions of dollars in record oil-tax revenue. That, along with a populist governor determined to deliver a megapipeline project to the state, is fueling optimism among Alaskans that an energy boom may be just around the corner.

EXCERPT...

Palin's strategy is complex and fraught with all sorts of potential pitfalls, including the fact that any project depends on these same companies pledging their gas holdings to fill the pipeline. (TransCanada builds and operates pipelines but doesn't own any Alaska gas.) "The wrinkle in the pavement here is who tells who what to do when?" says Bill Gwozd, vice president of gas services for Ziff Energy Group, a Calgary-based consulting firm. "Oil producers don't appreciate somebody trying to force them to do something."

Alaska owns the natural gas; BP and Conoco, along with Exxon, hold most of the leases to develop it. The companies have long talked of tapping the reserves, but have consistently deemed the pipeline too financially risky without the state first agreeing to favorable terms on gas production taxes. Unlike Palin's predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, who wanted to give the companies generous tax breaks, she has refused to budge.

Any multi-billion-dollar play in the energy business is a gamble, and Palin's adversaries are among the best at the game. Skeptics wonder if BP and Conoco are grandstanding to kill the TransCanada proposal, with no intention of developing their natural-gas holdings until the state gives them favorable terms on gas production taxes. To those wary of decades of dashed dreams and false promises, Doug Suttles, president of BP's Alaska operation, recently told reporters, "Watch, just watch."

"We are all watching carefully," Palin says, "but we won't sit by and wait either."

The 44-year-old governor embodies a growing anti-oil sentiment among Alaskans frustrated by the industry's lack of progress in building a natural-gas pipeline. She's enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings of any governor in the country since taking office in December 2006, with some grass-roots Republicans suggesting her as running mate for presidential candidate John McCain.

Yet, her dealings with Big Oil sometimes seem utterly un-Republican. Palin may not command an army to seize the people's oil fields like Hugo Chávez does, but that hasn't stopped her administration from trying to revoke lucrative leases at one giant oil and gas reservoir, alleging Exxon and its partners have dragged their feet for decades to develop it.

SNIP...

Getting resources to market is of increasing concern to the state. High oil prices are enriching Alaska beyond the imagination—if oil averages $120 a barrel over the next fiscal year, the state will collect an astounding $12.6 billion, the Alaska Revenue Department says. But one crude reality remains: the reserves are drying up.

Alaska depends on oil taxes and fees to fund 90 percent of its budget revenue (residents pay no income tax; a $39 billion oil-wealth savings account generates an annual dividend for Alaskans, with last year $1,654 going to every man, woman and child). The oil fields produced about 740,000 barrels last year, down from a peak of 2 million in 1988. It's not that there isn't more oil to be found, it's that the best prospects—ANWR and the Arctic Ocean—face unrelenting opposition from environmentalists. The recent Interior Department decision to list polar bears threatened will almost certainly spawn lawsuits to try to block the search for crude in the bear's Arctic habitat.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/139335

Her hubby works for a natural gas company.

PS: If Alaskans get a piece of the action on oil sales, why doesn't the rest of U.S. get a share?

[Karenina]

9. This is all WAY TOO WEIRD...

:kick:

[Octafish]

10. What is McCain Thinking? One Alaskan’s Perspective: TROOPERGATE

You want weird? We got weird. From the Alaska's newly minted most famous blogger:

What is McCain Thinking? One Alaskan’s Perspective.


EXCERPT...

So, if McCain had made his selection six months ago, the squeaky-clean governor meme would have made a little more sense. But, Sarah Palin is currently under an ethics investigation by the Alaska state legislature. The details of this investigation read like a trashy novel, and I suspect that the players will soon have newfound celebrity on the national stage. I’ll try to explain for all you non-Alaskans who suddenly have good reason to want to know more about Sarah Palin. For those of you not interested in trashy novels, feel free to skip ahead. Here it is…what we in Alaska call “TrooperGate”.

Sarah Palin’s sister Molly married a guy named Mike Wooten who is an Alaska State Trooper. Mike and Molly had a rocky marriage. When the marriage broke up, there was a bitter custody fight that is still ongoing. During the custody investigation, all sorts of things were brought up about Wooten including the fact that he had illegally shot a moose (yes folks this is Alaska), driven drunk, and used a taser (on the test setting, he reminds us) on his 11-year old stepson, who supposedly had asked to see what it felt like. While Wooten has turned out to be a less than stellar figure, the fact that Palin’s father accompanied him on the infamous moose hunt, and that many of the dozens of charges brought up by the Palin family happened long before they were ever reported smacked of desperate custody fight. Wooten’s story is that he was basically stalked by the family.

After all this, Wooten was investigated and disciplined on two counts and allowed to kept his position with the troopers. Enter Walt Monegan, Palin’s appointed new chief of the Department of Public Safety and head of the troopers. Monegan was beloved by the troopers, did a bang-up job with minimal funding and suddenly got axed. Palin was out of town and Monegan got “offered another job” (aka fired) with no explanation to Alaskans. Pressure was put on the governor to give details, because rumors started to swirl around the fact that the highly respected Monegan was fired because he refused to fire the aforementioned Mike Wooten. Palin vehemently denied ever talking to Monegan or pressuring Monegan in any way to fire Wooten, or that anyone on her staff did. Over the weeks it has come out that not only was pressure applied, there were literally dozens of conversations in which pressure was applied to fire him. Monegan has testified to this fact, spurring an ongoing investigation by the Alaska state legislature. But, before this investigation got underway, Palin sent the Alaska State Attorney General out to do some investigative work of his own so she could find out in advance what the real investigation was going to find. (No, I’m not making this up). The AG interviewed several people, unbeknownst to the actual appointed investigator or the Legislature! Palin’s investigation of herself uncovered a recorded phone call retained by the Alaska State Troopers from Frank Bailey, a Palin underling, putting pressure on a trooper about the Wooten non-firing. Todd Palin (governor’s husband) even talked to Monegan himself in Palin’s office while she was away. Bailey is now on paid administrative leave.

As if this weren’t enough, Monegan’s appointed replacement Chuck Kopp, turns out to have been the center of his own little scandal. He received a letter of reprimand and was reassigned after sexual harrassment allegations by a former coworker who didn’t like all the unwanted kissing and hugging in the office. Was he vetted? Obviously not. When he was questioned about all this, his comment was that no one had asked him and he thought they all knew. Kopp, defiant, still claimed to have done nothing wrong and said to the press that there was no way he was stepping down from his new position. Twenty four hours later, he stepped down. Later it was uncovered that he received a $10,000 severance package for his two weeks on the job from Palin. Monegan got nothing.

CONTINUED...

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/

That's weirder than Peyton Place or even Melrose Place.