Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 4

December 17, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 4
-AKA-
"We Don't Care. We Don't Have To Care. We're Exxon!"

During nearly 20 years of waiting (sometimes somewhat desperately) with several "we're going to be cutting checks in the next few weeks" over-optimisms along the way, the fishermen and other plaintiffs in the oil spill litigation never lost hope. I spoke to a great number of them during this time. Many "refused to think about it" because they didn't want to get their hopes up that they would soon be seeing money. Many thought the appeals process would result in a somewhat smaller award. But even the most hard-bitten and cynical of these independent, largely "have no use for government" weather-worn men and women of the world's most dangerous profession [commercial fishing in Alaska held that distinction for many years although modern safety mandates may now have dropped us below logging] still believed. We all believed that, although the wheels may grind slowly they would grind fairly and we would receive the bulk of our money. Particularly for those who died, and even those who went broke and bankrupt or faced other horrendous problems because of the delay in the interim, the phrase "justice delayed is justice denied" was often used.

But I don't believe in the entire 20 years speaking with hundreds of fishermen, claimants and lawyers, did I ever hear anyone suggest that they thought the jury award would ultimately be thrown out. Battered, bruised, a bit leaner ... yeah, we knew the jury verdict/award was in for a rough trip through the appellate process just from Exxon's arrogant pronouncements after the trial when the essentially flatly announced that it simply wasn't going to happen and they'd do whatever it takes to make sure of that. But for a group of people who you would think would be natural cynics and who would have the least faith in "the system" of any group outside of armed fortresses in Montana, the fishermen were remarkably confident that the system would, eventually, bring them justice (in the form of a substantial check!)

In June of 2008, in the case captioned Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Supreme Court Case Number 07-219, the United States Supreme Court utterly destroyed that faith. They also utterly destroyed the entire concept of punitive damages as they had been understood for hundreds of years; and which were thus protections granted to the citizenry by the common law which protections were specifically enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. Although the award was only a pittance to Exxon [equal to ~three weeks of profit in 2006], it was a fortune to the largely ... "economically challenged" ... plaintiff class. The Court destroyed the fortunes of many in order to hand a pittance to a giant corporation. To do so they had to ignore the Constitution, the concepts of common law and the entire concept of punitive damages as it had always been known.

The money meant nothing in itself to a behemoth the size of Exxon, but the law that the case created succeeded beyond the wildest hopes of corporate boardrooms and insurance companies to behead the "punitive damage monster" which was one of the last protections against the malevolent acts of the corpocracy left to the people.

It is conservative chic now to be against punitive damages awards because the insurance companies have spend untold amounts of money to convince people (especially people in legislatures, government executive branches and those who sit on court benches, but the citizenry as well) that punitive damages caused the horrendous increases in insurance premiums. There is not a scintilla of truth to that and many studies have proven that there is no causal connection (other than by convincing people of it, the companies can get away with raising rates and have something to blame it on), or that punitive damage awards had (or have) any statistically substantive effect on either the percentage or actual amounts of money paid as damages. Even insurance companies don't really care about punitive damages. In fact, I would bet a bundle that they like having them in the states where they remain. Because the most profound connection between insurance companies and punitive damages is not in relation to how much insurance companies pay out in jury awards ... but rather as the "fall guy" for how large a premium they can get away with charging for their policies.

Yes ... I believe in the market. But insurance companies are so big and so collusive, and so tied into government, that they have, to a large extent, removed themselves from the actions of the market. That, again, is such a large topic there isn't room to deal with it adequately here. But conservatives ... Constitutional "strict constructionists" ... should be the last people in the world to want the government to intervene and yank yet one more set of protections that "the people" have and that were guaranteed by the Constitution. Those insurance company patsies are simply being used ... and unwittingly, used against their own core philosophies without being aware of it.

As noted earlier in this series, the jury awarded $5 billion dollars in punitive damages against Exxon to be paid [by mind-numbingly complex formulations] to the members of the plaintiff class ... in 1994. Exxon, true to its promise (hmm ... that is almost an oxy-moronic sentence, but it is accurate), appealed the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The trial court had ordered interest on the award at 6.9% until it was paid, so the fishermen and their lawyers weren't too bothered by Exxon's appeal to the 9th Circuit. Of course, that was because they expected to win it.

But that was just the beginning of the whittling and the incredible delays. Well, the delays didn't begin, they "continued". It had already taken five years after the spill to get a verdict in 1994. It took another seven (!) years (although no one seems to understand why) for the 9th Circuit to rule on it; throwing the verdict out as "excessive" in 2001 in the 9th Circuit Appellate decision 490 F.3d 1066.

The 9th Circuit sent it back ("remanded it") to trial court judge Holland for "reevaluation". Holland did a masterful job defending the initial verdict, but presumably to avoid directly contradicting the higher court and hoping that he would be able to end it once and for all, in December of 2002 he reinstated the punitives at four billion. Again ... we were expecting that it would get whittled at a bit. No one was greatly surprise nor greatly distressed. Indeed, we were proud of Judge Holland for sticking to his guns and not knocking it down much more substantially. The checks would soon be in the mail ... not.

Exxon marched it back to the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit sent it back to Holland saying, in effect "try again". Holland, to whom the fishermen should build a monument (if they had any money to build with which they don't), was close enough to retirement that he simply refused to be bullied. He knew that it was a fair verdict and that $4 billion was, if anything given Exxon's size, too small of an award! Thus he flatly refused to kow-tow to the judicial overlords and after drafting another masterful decision demonstrating the appropriateness of the existing award, in January of 2004 he reinstated it at $4 billion (plus the $2.25 billion in compensatories plus interest). When it comes time to build statues in Alaska he deserves one. Unfortunately, because his magnificent work was trashed by the appellate courts he won't get one. But he did exactly what the law and judges are supposed to do and he had the nerve to not back down to the power of the Appellate Justices when they "strongly suggested" that he change his mind (so that he would take much of the heat for a judgment that the Justices will, hopefully, be ashamed of for the rest of their lives). He refused to compromise his principles, beliefs or The Law, which the good judges of his generation truly believed to be an honorable thing. He believed in the concept of stare decisis upon which our entire legal foundation rests. He is the sort of judge that should have been promoted to the appellate courts.

He wasn't.

Why it took so long it seems impossible, in retrospect, to understand. But Exxon marched it back to the 9th Circuit and in January of 2006 claimed to the court that the award should be cut to $25 million! The plaintiff counsel and legal experts across the country were aghast, but reassuring. Virtually no one believed that it would get hammered further.

By this point, the IRS had special offices set up in Anchorage to make sure they got their cut of the substantial payments that even the IRS and other branches of the federal government believed would soon be forthcoming. In fact ... those special IRS offices had been set up for years. I don't know when they finally disbanded them. The law firm of Keller-Rohrback that had been appointed to handle the disbursing of the funds had their humongous data base system set up. Percentages for individual claimants had been argued about, fought about, hammered out and finally finalized. The arguments now were that Exxon should not be allowed to continually pointlessly delay the day of reckoning. So many of the original plaintiffs had died that it had become an abuse of process to continue to allow the delays.

But delay was the name of the game. Certainly Exxon in the oily blackness of its heart seemed to believe so. But, unbelievably, the 9th Circuit, after yet another set of mind-numbing procedural morasses, in December of 2006 essentially told the very Honorable Judge Holland (and the jury who devoted months of their lives to the case, the State of Alaska itself, and, most of all, those fishermen and others who had lost their livelihoods, their cultures and their ways of life) ... in the most polite terms descriptively plausible ... to "stuff it". On its own, the 9th Circuit simply bypassed Judge Holland and slashed the punitive damage award from $4 billion to $2.5 billion.

It was a mindlessly vicious thing to do and amounted to no less than outright theft.

Even though it was simple politically motivated theft that the "strict constructionists" of the Constitution have to make illogical exceptions for ... at least it was over. At least the checks would be in the mail soon. Keller-Rohrback did a test run of the plant sending the tiny compensatory damage checks to those who still "had some coming". With a sort of communal resigned sigh, the plaintiff class, litigants and attorneys both, accepted that half a loaf was better than nothing and that for the sake of closure, we needed to just accept it and get on with our lives. Exxon had already proven that justice delayed is justice denied (especially for the substantial percentage of claimants who had died over the intervening 17 years) and ... that Exxon had enough muscle that it could flex it and cause this delay and by doing so thereby making their point and proving it.

And then, in a move that shocked even the battle hardened veterans of this war; the attorneys who had fought and battled this fight for most of their careers and whose (substantial) law firms would barely break even if that after all they had gone through (and the public has a low opinion of lawyers? Well, now that I mention it I'm not very fond of the Exxon 3-piece suit goons, but the plaintiff lawyers went above and beyond) ... Exxon appealed the award to the U.S. Supreme Court. The reaction was mostly that everyone was infuriated. Plaintiffs' lead attorney, the awesome Brian O'Neill was literally "shocked". We all knew beyond any doubt that the United States of America's Supreme Court ... was not going to hear a drunk driving case.

It was just yet another delay tactic. But ... we reminded ourselves that we were at least getting 6.9% interest which at that time wasn't bad at all, and resigned to wait a few more months until the Supremes turned down the case. [Unlike many appeals, there is no appeal of right to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have absolute discretion on what cases to hear.]

Then there was a sound, a rustle in the wind, and oven doors opened wide and flames of the underworld leaped out. The Grinch stole Christmas once again. The Supremes actually decided to hear the case! It was absurd. It was beyond absurd. And every legal professor and scholar of note agreed. There was obviously no way that they were going to reduce the award further. Ahh. Perhaps this was a backhanded way of scolding the 9th Circuit for cheating the poor, the fisherfolk, the Native cultures, those who lived below the waterline [when the Titanic sank, the people in the expensive berths above the waterline almost all survived; those in the cheap berths below the waterline largely perished]. The 9th Circuit had wrongly ignored the jury, the judge and the law and had tossed those who lived below the waterline into the oiled ocean at the behest of one of the richest, most powerful corporations. Maybe we had it wrong. Maybe the Supremes were going to slap down the Grinch and we'd have Christmas after all.

We could wait another year. We'd waited this long.

Continued:

Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 3

December 15, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 3
-AKA-
Being Exxon Means You Never Have To Say You're Sorry

Oil ... $$$$$$$ ... Black Gold!

The centerpiece of international politics, wars and economics. A sizable portion of the world's population believes we are at war in Iraq because of it. A song that I quite enjoyed when there was a small handful of us loudly proclaiming that we would be nuts to go to war with Iraq; one that I copied and passed out freely before George W's "shock and awe", was entitled "How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sand?".

We have it (oil ... we're a little light on the sand). Indeed, we have so much of it we can apparently afford to dump it in the ocean.

In the minds of most people when they think of oil, they envision the stuff they pour into their car engines. And, of course they are correct. That is refined motor oil. But crude oil, the unrefined hydrocarbon gunk that is pumped out of the ground and, at one time was attributed to decayed dinosaurs, is not something you'd want in your car. Nor in your boat. Nor in your fishing pots or nets. And most certainly not in the seafood meal at the fancy restaurant.

Nor is all oil the same; not even all crude oil. The oil that Captain Hazelwood and Exxon decided to return to nature had made a remarkable journey even before it so abruptly ended.

The oil had arrived in the port of Valdez after being pumped from deep, deep wells nearly a thousand miles to the north in Alaska's North Slope Prudhoe Bay fields and travelling completely across the state (which is the most difficult, by far, of all states to travel across) via one of the world's engineering and construction marvels: the Alaska pipeline. The Port of Valdez is a deep water port, ice free (by Alaskan terms) year round, and able to handle the giant oil tankers that transported the Black Gold to the energy starved world.

Alaskan oil [somehow appropriately] is heavy, tarry stuff that requires [like many Alaskans :-)] a lot more "refining" than most. It is not the clean "sweet" oil found in backyard wells in Texas. Nor is it the stuff that Jed Clampett could find bubbling up in his backyard woodlot. Our oil is thousands of feet below the surface and for whatever reason, largely decided to locate itself in some of the most inhospitable places on earth.

Alaska's North Slope holds vast reserves of oil. As anyone who has followed the news at any time in the last few decades knows, there is a terrific and ongoing battle regarding extraction from the ANWR portion of the North Slope between the Luddites who hide behind the much cooler sounding title "environmentalists" on one side and Sarah's "drill, baby, drill" contingent on the other. This topic deserves vastly more in-depth treatment than I can give it here, but may well be a follow-on column since oil is such a "hot" topic these days in any event.

I personally am in no hurry. Even if alternative energy forms were found and oil was essentially replaced as a fuel, it has sufficient other uses that it will always remain of high value. I'd just as soon leave it in the ground as a bank account for my grandchildren. My objections however have nothing to do with environmental concerns. There are none remaining of note. That is simply a phony excuse by the Luddites. The existing oil operations in the North Slope have had no negative environmental impact. The caribou and other wildlife seems quite attracted to the spectacle (face it ... they are bored with thousands of miles of featureless tundra as their lifetime view) and it has not had any negative effects on the environment whatsoever.

No ... the only time our Alaskan crude oil has harmed the environment was when a drunk sea captain decided to see if his boat was tougher than the rocks of Bligh Reef [it wasn't].

And that harm to the environment was real. It wasn't the "pretend harm" that the greenies use to scare people into opposing drilling. This was real harm. And it not only harmed the environment dramatically (twenty years later and it still hasn't recovered ... biological processes operate much more slowly in this cold climate), but it harmed, even more dramatically, the people who made their living off that environment. And those who made their living off the people who made their living off of the environment.

For those of you just joining us, the brief synopsis is that a drunken Captain (who Exxon had put through alcoholic rehab previously and absolutely knew that he had relapsed badly; indeed he couldn't legally drive even a car - his license was suspended for his third DUI since the rehab only a few years before the accident) was given command of a massive oil tanker and, without bothering to tell anyone, apparently tried to slip through a channel where no oil tanker belonged. And then, he and his bottle went down to his stateroom to do "paperwork" while leaving control of the vessel in the hands of a third mate who was not certified to run the tanker in Prince William Sound (PWS), although he was in the open ocean. For reasons that will never be known, it didn't make it. It appears that when they first scraped the reef a drunken Hazelwood staggered into the wheelhouse and screamed "hard right". Unfortunately he was drunk (and perhaps dyslexic?). If he'd yelled "hard left" we may never have heard of the Exxon Valdez.

As it was, it (in the Captain's inimitable slurred radio report) "fetched up" on the reef and was apparently leaking some ... cargo. That "hard right" caused unfathomable destruction of wildlife and pristine habitat. The spill killed an estimated 350,000 to 390,000 seabirds, in addition to 3,500 to 5,500 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales and billions of salmon and herring eggs (along with countless other flora and fauna).

It also caused unfathomable loss and damage to those who lived there and were "married" to the land, the sea, and its abundant resources.

This happened in 1989.

No, I didn't mistype. My fingers didn't slip. I didn't get confused. It truly has taken nearly 20 years to pry any money out of them.

Let me give you a move visceral feeling for how long ago Exxon oiled us and then postponed the day of reckoning. In 1989, we had the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. On June 3 of that year, we also had the Tiananmen Square Massacure. Seems we've had several Chinese governments and entire major philosophy changes since then! :-)

The world moves right along unless you are Exxon with your foot on the brake.

Indeed, Alaska has only been a State for 50 years! For 20 of those we've been living with the never-ending saga of the Exxon Valdez.

In 1989, on November 9 ... the Berlin Wall fell. "No", you say, "that couldn't be! That was more like half a century ago." Well, the Exxon spill was 1/5 of a century ago. But yes ... before such major changes in the world ... the Exxon Valdez had already attempted to cut a new channel through Bligh reef.

In 1989, gasoline was $1.29 a gallon. The mimimum wage was $3.35. A dozen eggs were 96 cents; a loaf of bread, 69 cents! Oh and before serious competion with the internet which should have lowered it's price (!), the cost of a first class stamp was $.25!

It seems like it was a different age, a different era. And it was! Exxon managed to delay through the passing of years, decades, a century and a millenium. It is difficult to believe that the Supreme Court of 1989 (or 1994) would have sliced and diced the exemplary damages award so viciously. [Truefully, even though I understand that this Court is the most conservative in a very long time ... I still find it difficult to believe that even they would do ... what they did!]

Exxon is so big and so powerful and so unbelievably arrogant that they were able to "leverage" that power to keep the money out of the hands of the fishermen for all this time ... and Exxon has now succeeded in keeping most of the money out of the hands of the fishermen forever.

"The check's in the mail."

Exxon claimants [as all the prevailing plaintiffs in the Exxon-Valdez lawsuit are called] have been waiting nearly 20 years to hear those words; nearly 15 years since the jury verdict awarding us, in addition to modest compensatory damages, a $5 billion punitive damage award.

But, the checks aren't for anything close to that. Actually, ignoring interest [as Exxon still hopes to be able to do] and many other variables, we are roughly a decimal point off. In other words, if your share, according to the only people legally qualified to know and therefore to decide; the jurors, was say $100,000, then your "check" would be for ~$10,000. If the jury [and convoluted formulas that were subsequently applied] said your claim was worth $10,000, then your check is for ~$1,000.

And for this we waited 20 years?

Actually, the checks aren't in the mail yet. Presumably they will be soon.

The folks that will be receiving money in this first "round" are those claimants who had no issues of any sorts attached to their claims [eg: judgments against them, IRS liens, child support liens, probate issues (since so many of our original claimants have died), assignments (so many people were so broke they were forced to sell part or all of their Exxon claim to speculators for a small percentage of its worth. Of course, they may look like geniuses now ... , or other]; and had gone through all the stacks of paperwork properly and along the way filled out the proper forms to have the Claims Administrator [the law firm of Keller Rohrback] directly deposit the funds to their bank accounts.

But given the history of this situation, that's really close to "the check's are in the mail".

In 1994 a major trial was held in federal court with approximately 32,000 plaintiffs and a jury, who by all accounts took their job very seriously. After four weeks of testimony and argument and four days of significant deliberation and balancing Exxon's claim that they didn't deserve to be punished any further, primarily because of all the money they had already spent cleaning up their mess, against the reality of what happened, the jury concluded that Exxon needed to both finish reimbursing the actual "out of pocket or never in pocket" type losses (compensatory damages) which was never much at issue. It also made the finding of primary importance that Hazelwood AND Exxon were reckless (ie: "grossly negligent"). Although this point seemed unassailable and crystal clear to everyone but Exxon, it was so dear and the attorneys had fought so long and so hard to get to that point that the lead plaintiff attorney actually had tears when the announcement was made. He had done it.

The finding meant that Exxon was liable for punitive damages and, given the size of the company it was expected that they would be "significant" [the relevant standard being focused on company size and income since the purpose is "punishment" and an award of $10,000 might punish a small mom and pop, but wouldn't be noticeable to Exxon]. Generic formulations yielded nearly absurd results because Exxon was SO huge and profitable that in order for it to "feel" the punitive damages award, the number would have to be staggering.

If one wishes to swat a two year old child for doing something he shouldn't have, it doesn't take much to accomplish that goal. If you swat an elephant with the same force and power ... it would notice you no more than it would a mosquito. In fact, it would probably be more bothered by a mosquito.

Exxon was, and Exxon-Mobil is, an elephant compared even to other elephants.

Instead of shooting for an absurd number that would actually be fitting under the circumstances, plaintiff counsel determined to ask for something that, given Exxon's size, was clearly reasonable and, therefore, presumably appeal-proof. They asked for fifteen billion. The jury gave them five. This was far less than the purpose of punitive damages would dictate as it was but a small percentage of Exxon's annual profits and a pittance compared to Exxon's overall value. It may not have been something that Exxon could pay out of the petty cash annual party fund, but neither would it have a substantive negative effect on the company. This discrepancy (between the value of the award and the value and profits of Exxon) has only increased with time.

As Brian O'Neill, the plaintiff lead attorney said shortly after the initial verdict::

"With a company as large as Exxon that thinks it is above the law, you need to take a substantial bite out of their butt before they will change their behavior. We want to change Exxon. We want to make the Exxons of the world aware that they are responsible the same way that you and I are responsible. It is really a great day. It took five years to bring it about, but we got there."

Indeed, all that was true and for the first time in five years in some of the economically devastated towns and villages, it was the first day of sunshine in half a decade. Despite all the suffering, the loss of culture, the loss of livelihood, the psychic pain that could never be healed ... it was a large enough verdict that there was sunshine and some smiles again. Even though the award was fairly small in terms of the size of award compared to size of company that would be required for "punishment", Exxon was so huge that, in absolute terms, this was a tremendous award; it would arguably be the second highest sustained jury award on record.

There was only one little problem. The award was not sustained.

In a display of corporate arrogance unmatched in modern times (well, perhaps, other than Enron giving top management huge bonuses just before closing their doors), Exxon vowed that as a matter of principle, and because it thought that people should be grateful to it (for all the work it did cleaning up the spill) instead of suing it, it would make sure the fishermen and other plaintiffs never received anything anywhere close to an award of that magnitude.

Exxon succeeded beyond its wildest dreams and beyond the wildest nightmares of the plaintiffs and their attorneys. They made certain that the lesson for all to see was NOT that "the Exxons of the world were made aware that they are responsible the same way that you and I are responsible". Instead, Exxon set out to prove, and ultimately did so with resounding success that the Exxons of the world are NOT responsible the same way that you and I are responsible. They boldly and "in your face" demonstrated that O'Neill was absolutely correct in saying that Exxon believed that were above the law ... and they successfully proved that, indeed, they were.

There is an old African proverb that says: "When elephants play, the grass gets trampled." You have to give O'Neill and his firm credit though. They stuck with us the whole time and fought tooth and nail every inch of the way. It is a tragically sad commentary on our system that even with powerful law firms on our side, that we didn't manage to rise much above the level of the grass. The elephants in the world have gotten so big that there is almost nothing able to control them. They've been paying lobbyists for so long (and as we have been discovering in Alaska, the Big Oil boys have been cutting out the middle man when convenient and paying the legislators directly) that they managed, by the back door, to pack the courts as well.

At most ... we got up off the ground by sheer brute force and transformed ourselves from grass to mosquitoes.

We buzzed around them. We even bit them. But ultimately we had about as much effect as one would expect a mosquito to have in dealings with an elephant. We were naive. All of us, including the Federal District Court Judge Holland who maintained his honor by telling the 9th circuit to shove it when they ordered him to knock the punitives down. Our hot-shot lawyers were naive. The fishermen were naive. "Oh, come on ... the United States Supreme Court is not going to take a drunk driving case!" Unless, that is, you have a Court that has been picked as they rose through the system by litmus test on such things as "tort reform", which is phony lingo for "taking away rights guaranteed by the U.S. Consitution but not admitting to it". 20 years of naivete. Even more than the money (and that is saying a fair bit), I think all of us on the side of right, truth and justice are more upset by a 20 year spanking than anything else. We are embarrassed that we actually believed our "judicial system" was in the business of dispensing justice. Even I fell for it and I had a Superior Court judge tell me once to always remember that the courts are in the business of judgments; not justice.

And that there was a huge difference between the two.

Which is something we have all now (even the most stubborn of us) finally learned.

Harken back to Brian O'Neills' statement following the verdict, above. This is what he said after the Supremes gutted it:

"I feel bad for all the claimants, that they're not going to get enough money to put together their lives again. I feel bad for all the claimants because they're not going to get the satisfaction knowing that there was a just punishment administered to Exxon. And I feel bad for all of the claimants because the judicial system has let them down. It just isn't fair."

Part 4 of This Series May be Viewed Here:

Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 2

December 13, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 2
-AKA-
"The Wreck of the Exxon Valdez"

By: Captain Heavyfoot
[With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot :-)]

The legend lives on from the fishers on down,
Of the Big Sound 'twas made in Prince William.
The ocean, it's said, was their butter and bread,
But oil tar on the sandwich just killed 'em.

Tanks topped with black crude, and with vodka home-brewed,
The famed Exxon-Valdez was quite loaded.
The Captain was too, yet silent his crew,
When they poured both the Captain and cargo aboard her.

Captain Hazelwood had been drinking at two separate bars or more prior to their scheduled departure. There was sworn testimony that he had consumed at least five double-vodkas (enough to knock out anyone who wasn't an alcoholic). He didn't get even a breathalzyer test until 11 hours after the accident, but working backwards from the booze in his blood at that time they calculated that at the time of the accident he was three times the legal limit for driving a car.

Indeed, he wasn't licensed to drive a car ... his license had been suspended for (yet another) DUI. He had completed a rehab program three or four years before the accident and had wracked up three or four DUIs in that period of time! Not only were his superiors aware that he had badly relapsed, but they had actually been drinking with him not long before the accident!

In any event, shortly after the Exxon Valdez pulled away from the dock at 9:12 p.m. and having successfully passed through the Valdez Narrows, the master pilot who was specially hired for such tasks, left the ship. It was a beautiful evening on the water. The seas were calm, visibility was good and the ship had all the latest and most sophisticated of navigation equipment. The official story was that there were icebergs in the normal shipping lanes, so Captain Hazelwood instructed the man at the wheel to take the ship slightly outside the shipping lanes and around the ice. Experts agreed however that such story simply didn't hold together -- they were too far off course with too many ways, both through equipment and visual observation, to not be able to tell.

In fact, it was apparent that they weren't just skirting an iceberg or two, but indeed, whether to avoid icebergs or to make up lost time, or just to shorten the voyage, they almost certainly attempted to follow the old steamship passage and "shoot the gap" between Bligh Reef and Reef Island. This is an incredibly dangerous maneuver for a ship the size of an oil tanker. Authorities at the time likened it to flying under the Golden Gate Bridge. Yes, it can be done. Yes, it has been done before. But it is dangerous and absolutely not recommended nor approved. (There were rumors that for years tankers had snuck through there on occasion but no one had ever actually caught them at it. It was universally agreed, however, that such would be a stupid and dangerous maneuver.) Even so, at that point, Hazelwood then left the bridge in the control of a third mate and was down in his cabin "doing paperwork" through this trickiest part of the passage.

Neither Exxon nor Hazelwood ever admitted that was what they were attempting. The normal shipping lanes out there are extremely wide, deep and forgiving. Anyone could drive a tanker through that part of the journey. But they were over a mile and a half outside the shipping lanes and just barely missed the shortcut gap. Either they were horrendously screwed up (to be a mile and a half off course) which makes no sense, or that is exactly what they were trying.

The poor crewman left at the wheel didn't know what to do. Indeed Third Mate Gregory Cousins was not even certified to operate a ship in PWS and, indeed, it was flatly illegal for him to be at the wheel. (Of course it was also illegal for Hazelwood to be drunk!) It was widely reported at the time although such reports dropped out of sight quickly, that Hazelwood had put the ship on autopilot and instructed Cousins to contact him when they reached a certain point. Despite the fact that this was known as a treacherous area for large vessels; and that they were operating outside the normal shipping lanes, there were no guide boats or tugs and purportedly no one but a rudimentary computer was directing the massive ship. No one who wasn't there knows for sure what actually happened that night. There were also reports that a drunk Hazelwood had made his way back to the bridge and ordered a "hard right" when he should have ordered a "hard left". That isn't the official story either, but the micro-computer in the auto pilot was at least sober and probably would have been the preferred option to the drunk captain. Even so, "computer" is too fancy of a concept for it. The computer you are using to read this article is hundreds of times more intelligent.

If true, one of the largest a 211,500 ton, 988 foot long, fully loaded oil tanker was being controlled by a machine with the approximate I.Q. of a fancy toaster.

And it went crunch.

It shuddered to a halt, engines still running full bore driving it further into the "sandbar" as Exxon likes to call the rocks of the well-charted Bligh Reef that ripped the thin single hull like a sardine can. In the version of the story where he hadn't already made it to the bridge yelling "hard right", Hazelwood stumbled to the bridge, uttered a few choice words, and then tried "rocking" the huge vessel off the rocks by jamming it full throttle forward, full throttle reverse, as you might try to drive you car out of a mudhole. Unlike your car and the mudhole, however, these manuevers acted to rip the holes in the hull much wider and allow much more oil to escape than would have otherwise. Finally, after failing to dislodge it and after the crew inspected things, he slurred into the radio that they had "fetched up" on a reef and were "evidently leaking" some of their cargo.

Truer understatements were seldom more understated.

The "little bit" of "cargo" that leaked was nearly 11 million gallons of tarry black Alaskan crude oil. It fouled 1300 miles of mostly pristine Alaska shoreline and covered 11,000 square feet of ocean.

Although there is a minor error or two, this is an excellent dynamic one-page pictoral "overview" of PWS and the spill.

Part 3 of This Series May be Viewed Here:

Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters

December 11, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters
-AKA-
Why Exactly Is It That They Call It "Good" Friday?

Alaskans are a bit leery of Good Friday. First of all, the Christians have never exactly explained what is so good about the day that Jesus was killed and buried. But more particularly in this State, we've come to be distrustful of the date of that occasion! Possibly the two most major disasters in recorded Alaskan history were the "Good Friday earthquake" of 1964 and the "Good Friday grounding of the Exxon Valdez" in 1989.

Which brings us to the "Big News" of the last few days for many folks around these parts. The first "micro-checks" started showing up from that semi-mythical creature known as the "Exxon claims". This is the first money fishermen have seen from the 1994 jury determination to punish Exxon for deciding to let a known-to-the-company drunk command a massive ship full of oil through tight narrows, ship-lane clogging icebergs, reefs, shoals and rocks, at night.

Unfortunately there are two problems with the funds (not actually checks yet) that are finally arriving. Well, three if you count the cause.

Problem 1: They are at least 15 years late in arriving;
Problem 2: They are at least a decimal place too small; and
Problem 3: They demonstrate that our system of justice has been sold to the highest bidder. And the American citizenry didn't win the bid.

The "Wreck of the Exxon Valdez" has been written about enough to begin to wonder if all the trees cut to make paper for the books, newspapers and magazines are adding substantively to the environmental damage caused by the "accident". That said:

"Critics ranked in serried rows,
Fill the enormous plaza full.
But there is only one who knows,
And that's the man who fights the bull."

Not many of the accounts are written by individuals who were [or would have been (!)] commercial fishermen in 1989 who were beached for the summer due to the oil spill.

I, however, am one of those fishermen.

Indeed, I'm fairly well connected with the fishing community. My father was an Alaskan commercial fisherman. My grandfather was an Alaskan commercial fisherman! [I'm one of very few people who has no Native blood that can make that claim; and one of a tiny handful of folks over the age of 50 that can! :-)] I was fishing (captaining) a "cannery boat" before I was of legal age to work most of the jobs in the cannery (and making vastly more money than my high school classmates who were working the brutally exhausting and wretchedly slimy cannery jobs and hating me! :-) My brothers, uncles, cousins ... and every other legal and illegal relationship possible, including my wife ... were (and/or are) commercial fisherfolk. I know a great number of the Exxon claimants. I know many of the lawyers who represented them. I am very well acquainted with the law. I have followed this fascinating debacle for two decades and been intimately involved in parts of it. I believe that I can shed light in places and on issues in ways it hasn't previously been shed. I can't think of anyone more qualified to write about it from my particular unique perspective than myself! :-)

And so I shall.

The Exxon-Valdez, a single-hulled [ie: cheaper] oil tanker, didn't make it that night (actually, slightly after midnight on the morning of) March 24, 1989. The so appropriately named tanker run and owned by Exxon was attempting to leave Valdez, a little town in Prince William Sound ("PWS") which was, the day before, one of the most beautiful, scenic and pristine bays in the world. It was not only an unfortunate place, but also an unfortunate date as it was only shortly before the commercial, sport and "guided sport" fishing seasons started in the Sound in earnest.

Captain "Slam Drunk" Hazelwood wasn't even on the bridge. He was already inebriated before the ship ever left harbor; having ("reasonably" if you are an Exxon lawyer) spent the time while it was being loaded doing the same to himself at two local bars. The report that he had ordered a double shot of "exxon on the rocks" has been widely discredited.

His crew and other Exxon employees finished loading the sloshing oil and the sloshed Captain on board without finding any problems worth reporting regarding either.
Yeah, yeah, they just wanted to keep their jobs and he was the Captain after all. As employees of the ultimate corporate bureaucratic behemoth no one wanted to, shall we say, "rock the boat". Exxon liked to keep problems quiet, follow the "chain of command", demand and reward "loyalty" as defined by the company, and already knew Hazelwood was a drunk. Why risk your job going over the lolling head of your Captain to report that he had to be poured aboard once again?

"Just following orders", the phrase and concept made famous in the Nuremberg trials, is as robust as ever. It seems to me that a "responsible corporate citizen", yet another multiply self-contradictory phrase, indeed in competition for oxymoronic fame, that Alice can add to her pre-breakfast belief menu, would perhaps terminate (aka: "fire") crew persons who failed report that the Captain was drunk, especially given the potential for horrendous damage if the vessel was not intelligently, even wisely, captained through the Sound. But that isn't the way Exxon works. I have little doubt that the "just keep our mouths shut and hope to hold onto the job until retirement" employees were absolutely correct that it was in their personal best interests to "look the other way" (and not listen or smell either) when the Captain was ... loaded, in several meanings of the word.

It destroyed ecosystems and habitat. It played destructive havoc with important renewable commercial fishing and harvesting resources. [In Alaska a huge percentage of our revenue comes from oil and we are not raising and killing any new dinosaurs; it is a critical value of the fishing industries that they are renewable. Properly managed ... and absent massive oil spills, the salmon and herring and other should continue returning and reproducing in vast quantities for the foreseeable future.]

Fisheries were closed as giant sheets of black oil spread like ink across the waters. For nearly three calm and peaceful days Exxon's [and soon the State's and anyone else's that could be found] cleanup crews, equipment and operations put floating booms around the ship to try to contain the oil while they held meetings. There were ideas and suggestions. "Burn it! Just toss a match over board!" ... "Bacteria are the answer. They can be designed and 'trained' to 'eat' oil!" ... "Chemicals are the only answer. Neutralize it, break it down, destroy it." and on and on until the seas stopped taking a holiday. Many "experts" from out-of-state didn't truly understand the wilds of the Alaskan ocean. The wind arose mightily pushing the floating oil through, over and under the booms like they were child's toys. It drove the oil to the sands and rocks of the shore.

"And that it was buried, and the waves rose again on the third day according to the scriptures."

Ok. So maybe the scriptures weren't involved. But it was becoming a disaster of Biblical proportions. Fishermen pulled crab pots full of black oily tar; and crabs that were covered in it. They pulled shrimp pots so tarred that the fishing boats that they carried them back to shore on were condemned ... the boats were too badly oiled to ever carry "foodstuffs" again. The salmon and herring fishermen looked at the waters where they would have, in so much the same way that Jesus's disciples did 2,000 years earlier, cast their nets ... and saw the waters covered with black oozing goo. The fisheries in the Sound were closed costing the communities that had little else in the way of income, their entire year's earnings. It would have been pointless to let them fish. The market for Alaska seafoods had disappeared overnight.

This "market effect" of the news of the spill did substantial economic damage to many fishermen far away from the oiled fishing areas; but they had no apparent "standing" to bring a claim against Exxon even though the effects of Exxon's actions harmed them greatly. Again, many of these folks lost their livelihoods --their businesses -- because of Exxon.

Fishing is always a a gamble; sometimes a great single day can bring substantial revenue (my Mom always claimed that commercial fishing ruined more good men than drink did :-), but mostly the margins are very tight and a single major event (such as the Exxon caused price crash) can "sink" the business. It is of note that Alaska salmon prices have never again approached the prices that they fetched before Exxon took the mystique out of "from Alaska's pristine waters". The state has even tried setting up its own marketing department to attempt to bring back the "image" of the "brand". But now, when people hear "Alaska wild salmon" the picture they conjure is as likely to be of black, oiled waters as it is of pristine nature.] Oh ... I must get in a plug for the fisherfolks' product! Many recent studies have shown that Alaska caught salmon are indeed clean and as toxin-free as any in the world and, overall, perhaps the healthiest fish you can eat (salmon oil is nearly a miracle drug).

It is possible to calculate some of those direct damages and make educated guesses as to how much money the fishermen lost that summer. But it was not, and still is not, possible to accurately determine the long-term effects of the destruction of habitat . Entire eco-systems crashed with unknowable results. One example out of hundreds; perhaps thousands: Murres are noisy, dirty, raucous birds that have never found a market value. There were, at the most optimistic, up to 350,000 in the area of PWS at the time of the spill. 16,600 were reported dead. "Reported dead" means that the bodies were actually recovered. Although the experts certainly all took their shots ... it is anyone's guess what percentage of the birds that died had bodies that were actually recovered. Some say the actual death rate should be calculated to be six times larger than the number of bodies recovered. Others said at least ten times. But no one knows. And no one knows how many died later because their food was killed, destroyed, removed ... or, in the spring when they fed their babies, poisoned.

What is the value of that devastation of the murre population? Exxon's lawyers say that in terms of financial damages ... the number is zero; and that therefore Exxon should not have to pay anything for having caused such widespread destruction.

Exxon did dump money into the (probably more harm than good) "cleanup" and in extremely modest "negotiated fines" from the State (not much in comparison to the damages they did, according to the jury and essentially everyone who wasn't on the payroll of Exxon or some other multinational corporation). Even their insurance companies sued them claiming it was just a P.R. ploy! To this day the argument continues as to whether the cleanup did any good (beyond its obvious P.R. value which did Exxon potentially billions of dollars of good). Oiled rocks were laboriously washed by hand ... and then set back down on the beach beneath which .............~~~~~Scrubbing Rocks By Hand Foolishness~~~~~............. lurked huge piles of oil which surfaced randomly over the next couple of decades and is still doing so today. They used harsh chemicals which killed more of the life at the bottom of the food chain [which ultimately killed, and continues to kill, the life at the top of the food chain as well which included the "life of a fisherman in PWS"]. They used scalding hot water which killed corals and shellfish. No one knew what to do, or even who was "in charge", so no one knew who was to tell them what to tell them to do and what not to do ... the answers to which no one seemed to know in any event.
There are now salmon fisheries in the Sound although they can't be described as "recovered". The herring largely disappeared.

There has not been a shrimp season since the spill.

Nor does it seem, imho, that washing the oil back into the Sound with high pressure hoses would do the shrimp (or any other marine populations any good). And washing rocks by hand? Please! We didn't appreciate the insult to our intelligence. There were 1300 miles of oiled coastline! Let's see ... hire 1300 people, hand them a rag and some industrial strength cleaners and tell them to clean a mile of beach each. Well, at least the court case would have been resolved before the beach was cleaned! Oil, as any home mechanic is aware, is tough stuff to clean off! And Alaska crude ... the crudest, tarriest, ugliest of them all is a lot tougher than a spilled can of engine oil.

They may as well have put models in swimsuits out there it was so obviously for P.R. show!

It has never been easy to live the life of a fisherman in a small Alaskan fishing village. The hardships are tremendous. But the rewards of the lifestyle were of such a value that most people would never be able to experience or even understand. It is very difficult for, say, Supreme Court Justices who live in gated, gardened and guarded subdivisions and work in fancy air conditioned offices in the urban East to have any understanding of the value of this lifestyle for the people who (sometimes overcoming tremendous obstacles) have chosen it.

To be an Alaskan fisherman has such magnetic [it attracts men and women made of steel :-)] romance! It is a true dearly held dream of so very many people in the world. To be one of the last "free people" answerable to no one but your God if you have one and dependent upon no one and no thing except Nature, is such a rarity (and like so many dreams, not entirely accurate). But there is something magical about a life spent living off what nature provides; being among the last of the hunter/gatherers. Kids in cities watch the "Perfect Storm" and read about green, untrained deck hands on the boats of crab fishermen who, because they have to risk that sort of thrilling danger (and because the King Crab is such an expensive delicacy) can make $30,000 or more in a college summer vacation ... and look out the window at the soot-stained dirty gray of the city and dream the age-old dream. Few of course succeed at making their dream live. It is a long trip from New York desk jockey to Kodiak fisherman and I'm not referring to miles. Those that make it are the ones to whom its value is incalculable.

Pinned to my wall I have a small yellowed newspaper clipping. I don't know who wrote it. I do remember that the article was about the unique possiblities of the Last Frontier:

"The trapper, the miner, the commercial fishermen -- are free agents -- they dictate their own hours, direct their own labors, and when it suits them, tell people to go to hell."

To be part of that ... probably very close to the last generation for whom such is even possible means the difference between a life lived and an existence endured for many more than achieve it. It is not an easy lifestyle! Besides the backbreaking hard physical work, one must pay a substantial amount of money to get into the business. You must buy a boat or beach-site, fishing gear including nets, skiffs (on the beach, the boats they use to pick fish from are called "dories"), a fisheries permit for the fishery you wish to participate in [some permits for some fisheries sold for nearly $1 million before the spill!]. And on a bad year ... when the fish don't show or the weather was too bad to fish during the very short "height" of the run or the Fish and Game closes the fishery at the wrong time based on poor data or the boat didn't start on the "big day" (sometimes an entire season comes down to a single one-day "period" where you might make half of your income for the entire summer) or you ran it onto a sand bar through stupidity and lack of sleep when leaving the harbor at 3 a.m. or any number of other possible "things that can go wrong"... you don't make any money. It was a major struggle to "make it" in that life before the spill. Afterwards, in many parts of the state, it largely became impossible.

With no income, many fisherfolk who valued their rugged independent lifestyle had to move to the city, to Anchorage, and take desk jobs to survive. Some left the State where they were born and/or planned on living out the remainder of their lives. Some, in a personal shame that will haunt them all their lives and that the beggers of Telegraph Avenue would be incapable of comprehending, accepted handouts. First from churches and charities, later ... foodstamps and welfare. And they broke inside. And their children watch them break inside. Something far more valuable than money was lost that summer.

Yet money was the only thing the courts or anyone else could offer in exchange for what had been so rudely and stupidly taken by the foul recklessness of an oil company that simply didn't care enough to take the most basic precautions; and a captain who found the contents of a pint bottle far more important than 200,000 tons of oil.

It took Exxon nearly 20 years. Two decades of constant effort. But they succeeded at ensuring that not only did they not replace the irreplaceable. But they ensured that they wouldn't have to pay the people whose livelihood ... whose pristine thousands of miles of "front yard" had been destroyed ... any substantive amounts of money as punishment for their actions. Could a giant international globalist corporation that earned net profits of over $5 billion a year [now, 20 years later, closer to $5 billion a month] buy "justice" ... or would America and its wonderful long history of an independent court system that treats the rich and poor alike prevail?

It took 20 years. But at last, we now have the answer.

Part 2 of This Series May be Viewed Here:

Headliner

December 5, 2008
Headliner

And so she goes. Just when I am convinced that I'm going to stop talking about Sarah Palin for awhile (because there are other very important things happening in the world and my writing time is limited) ... she goes and does something that makes it impossible to ignore her.

I'm not the only one having this problem. The national media, who would probably much prefer that she hole up in an igloo someplace, find that they can't avoid talking about her either. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that she keeps doing newsworthy things that are simply not things that people in the news business can ignore and, secondly, she simply has an uncanny grip on our imagination. This appears to be true even among the pundits who claim they can't stand her.

We start to write about Obama's economic policy is shaping up [2 + 2 = what?!?] and we realize that it is critically important, will have tremendous impact on the country's present and future, affects all of us dramatically ... and is highly boring; both to us and to our readers.

Then along comes Sarah Palin. On her way to meet with the President-elect, she takes a brief side-trip at the behest of a desperate Senator about to lose his seat and a Party desperate to not let the Democrats get a 60 vote majority. She then, spending less than a day on it, personally causes the election of the Senator and saves the Republican party. Having answered their call when they asked her to lend her "star power" and succeeding beyond all reasonable or rational expectations, she then she meets the new President to-be and a bunch of admiring Governors, dusts off her apron and scoots back to continue "fixin' up" a state that is, aside from her, in total political melt-down shambles. And, of course, to fix up another pot of moose stew for her hubby and kids.

And we realize that we have "just one more" Palin column in us demanding to get out. And our fingers start talking about her.

The thing is ... both (reasons) are true. She has that "I can't stay away fromness" that is so rare, and when that sort of charisma is contained in a beautiful woman we're all helpless: male, female, black, white, liberal, conservative, Palin-politics haters and Palin-politics lovers. It makes no difference. It is the Princess Di effect. Back in the day ... even stuffy people who wouldn't stoop to admitting knowing who Princess Di was couldn't help but to surreptitiously read the "entertainment magazines" at the checkout stand if they had her picture on it.

But unlike Princess Di or Paris Hilton or Britney Spears who were famous mostly for being famous, Sarah Palin is also legitimately important and is famous for doing valuable newsworthy things. It is a remarkable combination.

She isn't some "famous for being famous" celebrity out looking for a "cause" so she can actually do something important. Palin got famous by doing things that were important.

Nor is she important because of who she married. Princess Di would never have raised a headline if she hadn't "married well" :-) Frankly, although she has neither the beauty nor the charisma of the "crowd" I'm discussing, to a lot larger extent than supporters would ever want to admit, the same is probably true of Hillary Clinton.

Nor is Palin important because she is a knock-out. That just happens to come with the package. But she would be just as legitimately important if she ... well ... if she wasn't.

But Palin has become such a phenomenon, she tops the charts at search engines and YouTube and anywhere people go, that it has even the mainstream media types scratching their heads and continuing to write, in addition to "newsworthy stuff" she does, about her popularity itself. That "phenomenon" has become a newsworthy event in it own right which is something I cannot recall ever happening to a vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket!

Quickly now ... who was Bob Dole's running mate? That isn't what's happening to Sarah. In 20 years the question about the 2008 election will be: "Now who was the presidential candidate that Palin was running with? It's right on the tip of my tongue ..."!

This is particularly mind-boggling because of the image that the punditocracy attempted to paint of her during what they all seemed to believe was her "15 minutes of fame". Even following the election the media claimed that Sarah had lost votes for McCain!

Um. Uh ... media people? Knock, knock. Excuse me, but if she is so toxic then why did Saxby Chambliss beg her to come save him and why did the Republican National Party beg her to save Chambliss to save them from a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate?

And more to the point ... why did she succeed so dramatically?

You don't suppose that it is at all possible that it was the pressosphere who ripped Palin so badly before people had a chance to know otherwise that cost McCain those votes do you?

"I can't overstate the impact she had down here." So says the Senator who was about to be unseated in the run-off election. This election was crucial to the Republican party because it appeared likely that if Martin beat Chambliss ... the Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority. Similarly, and for the exact same reason, the race was just as important to the Democrats. So all the big guns were unholstered. John McCain went down and campaigned for Chambliss ... but no one noticed. Mike Huckabee went down and stumped for him; as did Governor Romney and Rudy Giulani and essentially everyone who was anyone in the Republican party (and who, btw, are all in contention for being the "party leaders" and starting to jockey for possible 2012 presidential runs; which btw, polls now show Republicans care most that Palin runs in the next presidential election! ) ... but nobody noticed. "I went to see Mitt Romney a week ago and I think there were only about 100 people there." said one somewhat awed audience member interviewed after a huge "many thousands of people" Palin rally for Chambliss.

Al Gore went down and campaigned for Jim Martin. So did Bill Clinton. President-elect Obama taped phone messages and a radio ad and turned over his awesome vote-gathering machinery ("probably 100 or more of the Obama people came down"). Even the rapper Ludacris came down to help Martin. But nobody noticed.

Then, on the last day of the campaign, Palin swung by. She only did four short rallies in one day. And the entire world noticed.

Suddenly, Georgia was on everyone's mind. "When she walks in a room, folks just explode," Chambliss gushed after whomping Martin. "And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party."

And he kept gushing. He was grateful to all who helped ... but he made it crystal clear that it was Palin's appearance that "really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up". She has (another) serious fan in the Senate now. And the Republican National Committee isn't likely to ever think of her as a light-weight again.

She has done a better job of changing her "media-created" image (which is a remarkably difficult thing to do ... just ask Dan Quayle how to spell potato) in the few weeks since she has been out from under the thumb of the McCain staff than I can remember ever happening.

You have to hope that McCain had intelligent enough people working for him that they are now realizing what an incredibly dumb thing they did by keeping her under wraps. They bought into the ditz image also and were embarrassed that their boss had done something so foolish, so they tried to hide her as though they were ashamed to have McCain associated with her. If they had turned her loose ... well, we'll never know ... but I've a hunch that if they had ... it may well have been the vice-president elect who was drawing those huge crowds for Chambliss last week.

Rolling Heads

November 27, 2008
Rolling Heads

Having spent so much time yammering generically about the fact that Sarah Palin took on the Big Boys and won, it seems particularly appropriate to use Thanksgiving to give you all a more specific rundown on exactly who the turkeys are whose heads have, or are soon likely, to roll.

It has been awhile since I did my "Sarah Palin cleaned up Alaska" shtick on this blog. But when I'm writing in an online news or (some other) blog comment section regarding an article on Palin I find that I do some version of it fairly regularly. Generally this is when either the initial article or existing comments do the "Sarah Palin is ethically challenged, and dumb besides; even the people of Alaska can't stand her any longer" regurgitation. (It is not difficult finding such allegations; an enormous number of people still believe the media's caricature despite having at least the opportunity to learn a lot more about her now that the election is over. This is not a woman who shies from the media! :-) She has almost certainly given substantively more interviews post-election than she was allowed to do during the campaign!

My standard rap often includes the assertion that Palin "cleaned house" [and Senate :-)] up here and took on the Big Boys and won; that people had been campaigning on reform tickets for years but once elected, either joined the gravy train or were effectively silenced. When it came time to stand up and fight, they backed down and the Big Oil folks just pocketed them.

But, I claim that Palin was utterly fearless. And in her we finally found someone who would stand up to the rampant corruption and not blink. When she was serving as Chair of the Oil and Gas Commission she discovered documented, provable, rampant corruption but she couldn't get anyone to pay attention to her. So she quit and ran for her boss's job [Governor] and whupped him in the primary! A sitting Governor who had served the state for decades as a U.S. Senator and she demolished him in the primary and then tromped a two-term, very popular, prior Governor in the main race.

Then she (and the FBI whom she called in to work on the case) started cleaning up and that because of her probes some "(self) important people", including some who could have bought the entire Alaskan prison system without major financial difficulty are going to spend their retirement looking out from its bars. She showed that many of our legislators were for sale on the open market. (She found them on eBay ... no! Just kidding! :-) I claim that even Senator Stevens wouldn't have been busted if it hadn't been for the probes she started.

I further claim that once the Big Boys found that she couldn't be bought, bribed, blustered or bullied they didn't leave the state in a huff (as had been predicted by many); but just sort of shrugged and said "ok" and that she has been able to develop a good working relationship with them.

But I thought I should put some meat on those sort of amorphous claims and take a closer look at exactly who got caught either purchasing legislators or being a purchased legislator, and dispel, or respond to, however you want to phrase it, the "yeah, who?" challenge.

So, let's see. Who all has Palin "taken out"?

I should begin this by saying that the probes are continuing and that there will undoubtedly be future additions to it. [For example, our recently "reelected in a squeaker" U.S. Representative, Don Young, hasn't been charged or indicted of anything. But, by last April, he had still spent well over a million dollars (!) on attorney fees! I don't know what the tab must be by now!]

We have different "categories" of corrupt players. For starters, we have the Big Boys who a couple years ago were highly respected business leaders and well thought of "involved in the community" type folks and are now convicted felons. In addition to which they are either at or approaching retirement age and are so desperate to not spend any more of it in the Big House than necessary that they turned on their prior "partners in crime" and ratted them out to the FBI or U.S. Attorney's office in exchange for "hoped for" leniency.

The "Biggest Gun" in this group is Bill Allen who is the ex-CEO of the "used to be high flying" oil services company VECO (which is largely an Alaskan company but it also operates in Asia, the Middle Ease, the Caribbean and other parts of the U.S.). He was very involved in community affairs and a highly respected and very well known "friendly face of your friendly neighborhood oil company"! In May of 2007 he pled guilty to extortion, bribery and conspiracy to impede the IRS. Joining him in so pleading was VECO's Vice [yes :-)] President for Community and Government Affairs, Rick Smith. The specific issue that was behind the activities he pled to involved bribing legislators to pass an oil tax law that VECO was pushing. His sentencing awaits, but is anticipated to be between nine and eleven+ years in jail plus a substantial fine. This is not the sort of person who envisioned the type of "retirement community" he will be joining! Where the sentence ultimately is within that range is presumably contingent to some degree on how well he does the job of bringing down everyone else. But he cut his deal to rat on his partners in crime (allegedly) not primarily for a better sentence for himself, but to keep his son and other family members from being charged (which means we'll probably never know what all his son Mark did).

But Allen is an excellent example of how far the mighty have fallen since Sarah put the trip wires out around the candy jar. The Allen family is a family of money. It is a family that has even more money now that they "had" to sell VECO. Even Allen is living the good life at the moment. But he is going to either have a heart attack and die before he gets there (strangely it seems a lot of folks who can't psychologically or emotionally deal with spending significant time in prison die before they get there), or he is going to be spending a huge portion of the remainder of his life in jail. It will be a dramatic change for the man!

Those two, Allen and Smith, are the highest ranking Oil Boys to bite the big one. But it isn't only the oil industry that is involved. Our legislators were so clearly for sale that even a bunch of high muckety mucks in the fisheries industries are being investigated for legislator purchases! Oh, and on the "payer" side of the ledger we also convicted lobbyist William Bobrick who was sentenced to five months in prison.

The list of the "payees" (the folks on the take) that are convicted, indicted, or "allegedly anticipated to be indicted" has some even more powerful names. The biggest, of course, is "Senator for Life" ... not; Ted Stevens. As virtually everyone knows he was convicted ... excuse me, I erred on what the definition of is is! :-) Ted Stevens was found guilty by a jury [he is right ... technically he hasn't been convicted yet - that will be done by the judge at sentencing] of not reporting gifts from Allen and others. Even at that he came within a whisker of being re-elected anyway. [There was some logic to that ... even if he was kicked out of the Senate a week after being elected to the seat, the seat would be filled by a Republican. Instead we have democrat Mark Begich.]

So, Senator Stevens has been found guilty of seven felonies and lost his Senate seat ... and I have a hunch the worst is yet to come. His trial was strange enough, between prosecutorial and juror misconduct. The capper being a juror telling the judge -- after Stevens lost the election due, presumably to his "conviction", that he lied at the prosecution's behest. It makes one wonder how many layers of corruption there are. The Democrats wanted that seat badly ... they are desperate to have 60 seats so they can be "filibuster-proof". Whether or not it was intentional skulduggery (and we may well never know), there was enough bizarre stuff that Stevens may win a new trial on appeal. The process could take years before such a new trial ever came to be and no one has a clue what might happen to Bill Allen or other witness by then. Likely, Stevens is going to get convicted and sentenced ... but the man is 80 years old and stubborn as a mule ... I personally don't expect him to spend any time behind bars. But that doesn't really matter. His life is in tatters. His reputation destroyed. His life's work (and he truly did some excellent stuff) ... will be completely overshadowed by his reputation as "the crooked Senator" now. Probably even worse than all that, his pride and joy, son Ben, who was the president of the Alaska State Senate ... looks to be even deeper into the scandals than Ted. I think Ben probably will serve substantive time in prison. He is accused of taking bribes from the fisheries industry, VECO and others. Bill Allen says he bribed him. I know that is not what Ted's hopes for his handsome, dynamic, powerhouse of a son were.

What other big names? Well ... we have another parent and child combination under severe scrutiny. Ex-Senator; ex-Governor Frank Murkowski (the sitting Governor that Sarah tromped in the primary) looks like he is going under. They haven't indicted him yet, but the Feds can pretty well demonstrate that he got over $20,000 worth of unreported "value" from VECO (a large part of that was apparently polling services) ... and the word is that there will be lots more on the plate when the indictment is actually presented. He had served the state for decades as its "other Senator", but resigned to "come home and take over the Governor's job". Then ... although the law has been changed to try to keep something so embarrassing from happening again, as Governor he had the right to fill vacant U.S. Senate seats; even those that he just vacated! So he appointed his daughter Lisa!!! No nepotism in Alaska! It looks like he may not have done her any favors though as she has allegedly been caught with her hand in the cookie jar as well; for, among other things, diverting taxpayer funds to a road to her home!

So the curtain is apparently falling on two of the biggest political family acts in Alaska: the Ted and Ben show and the Frank and Lisa show.

Let's see ... in the "sure, I'll have some" department I've discussed our U.S. Representative, Don Young (the list of his alleged scandals is lengthy, but also includes VECO bribes), our current U.S. Senators, Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, our prior Governor/Senator Frank Murkowski, the ex-president of the State Senate and son of our Senator for Life, Ben Stevens. Those are the biggest names on the "take" list ... they are also the biggest names in state politics! Or were before the name "Palin" surfaced :-)

Others that have been hammered include Frank Murkowski's Chief of Staff Jim Clark (who also cut a deal with the Feds to narc out more folks). The former Speaker of the (State) House, Pete Kott was sentenced to six years in prison. Former State Representative Victor Kohing got a three and a half year sentence. Former State Representative Tom Anderson got five years.

There are several people who have either been indicted or very publicly named as on the take. That includes former State Representative John Cowdery who has been indicted for taking bribes. Former State Representative Bruce Weyrauch will be going to trial soon - Bill Allen says VECO bribed him as well. Oh, Trevor McCabe; he was hooked up with Senator Ted and was apparently the recipient of "scam" money procured by Ted.

There are ... several others who are almost certainly going to be charged. There are rumors swirling about a few more. And almost certainly there are some that are guilty that simply aren't going to get caught.

So that's the situation to date. One of the main planks on which Sarah Palin ran for Governor was to bring these people to justice [these folks were, bottom line, engaged in a conspiracy to steal Alaska's resource wealth] and one of the reasons she had a 90%+ favorability rate is because ... unlike every other politician who had made that promise ... she did it.