American taxpayer money to flow to lobbyists through Murkowski-Stevens-Young deals: Van Ness Feldman, Blue Water Strategies, Birch & Horton

11/17, "Now K Street has its own senator, Lisa Murkowski," Washington Examnier, Carney

"The "Alaska Mafia," as it's known on Capitol Hill, K Street, and in the 49th state, is
a network of former aides to Murkowksi, her father, Frank, the late Sen. Ted Stevens, and Rep. Don Young -- all Republicans.

The aides now populate K Street firms like

• Van Ness Feldman,
• Blue Water Strategies, and
• Birch & Horton,
  

winning earmarks and special favors for their clients -- Alaska towns and privileged Alaska Native Corporations.

• Lobbyist Jack Ferguson, a former aide to Young and Stevens, is regarded as a don of the Alaska Mafia and a maestro at winning earmarks.

This is the underappreciated part of earmarks and part of why they are so corrupting:

• Earmarks don't just transfer wealth from taxpayers in the lower 48 to people of Kenai, Alaska.

Along the way, they enrich revolving-door lobbyists
who recycle the money back to Murkowksi and Young. And earmarks aren't the only favors passed around the Alaska Mafia.

• When K Street firm Brown & Rudnick announced Wednesday it had hired Murkowski's former

chief of staff and Stevens alumnus George Lowe,
the firm touted that its new lobbyist had, as a staffer,

• "helped pass legislation regarding financial incentives ... for an Alaska gas line project."

Most lucrative for the Murkowksi-Stevens-Young crowd, though, are the

• Alaska Native Corporations.

The for-profit businesses are exempt from most competition rules for government contracts, and so they make billions of dollars off of the taxpayers.

• But the ANCs, which qualify for special minority-business favors, often function as front companies,

• passing the actual work to well-established contractors who couldn't have received as favorable terms from Uncle Sam.

The ANCs are technically owned by Alaska Natives, but the Natives get a tiny fraction of the companies' revenues -- $615 per Native annually, according to the office of Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

• Most of the spoils go to the Alaska Mafiosi who run the companies or lobby for them.When you realize how dependent on federal favors these Alaska-connected corporations, local politicians, and lobbyists are,

it's clear why they went to the mat to save Murkowski after she lost the primary in August -- especially because Miller is a limited-government conservative. If Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision allowing corporate spending on politics, affected the outcome of one race this year, it was Murkowski's.

• Eight ANCs poured $50,000 to $140,000 directly from their corporate treasuries into a"Super PAC" called "Alaskans Standing Together,"

which spent $920,000 attacking Miller and boosting Murkowski.

Because the Natives are the shareholders of the ANCs, this amounted to corporate bosses

• (the highest paid of whom are non-Native)

using Natives' money to elect the woman who would then perpetuate the favor factory for these corporations and their lobbyists.

• The media loves political independents and deifies "centrists." But often, centrists of both parties are simply those who lack principal and instead set their political compass according to what is politically expedient or what helps their friends.

Expect Murkowski, as she bucks the GOP over the next six years, to get plenty of adulation. And expect her friends to get plenty of your money."


via Hot Air

P.S. Dear Reader, I am aware that Google is randomly erasing large portions of my posts. One can only assume they do not like the topics about which I post. Sometimes I don't find out what they've done until days or weeks after I've posted something. Often (daily) posts are corrupted as I try to post them, at which point I have to do them over. I'm looking for a new blog host, as this has been going on for many months now.

• Fascinating times in which we live. Susan.

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