Monday, December 29, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Bankers' Manifesto of 1892
BANKERS MANIFESTO
"We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.
Organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.
At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome.
This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation.
The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.
When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes,
they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.
People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.
The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.
By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished."
(The above was printed from the "Banker's Manifest", for the private circulation among leading bankers only, taken from the "Civil Servants' Year Book, "The Organizer" of January, 1934.)
The Banker's Manifesto ties in with U.S. Senate Document No. 43, 73rd Congress, 1st Session (1934), to wit:
"We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.
Organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.
At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome.
This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation.
The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.
When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes,
they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.
People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.
The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.
By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished."
(The above was printed from the "Banker's Manifest", for the private circulation among leading bankers only, taken from the "Civil Servants' Year Book, "The Organizer" of January, 1934.)
The Banker's Manifesto ties in with U.S. Senate Document No. 43, 73rd Congress, 1st Session (1934), to wit:
| "The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called "ownership" is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere "user" and use must be in acceptance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State." |
The way of the World
Education is the key to power and wealth. Ever since mankind lived in caves the better educated a person was the better chance for survival they had and the better their lives would be.
Education became a religion, Shamans were just men that knew more about the natural order than those around them. Those in the know passed that knowledge along to their immediate family members, and therein was born the roots of royalty. Having the knowledge gave them the power and having the power became a family affiar, passed along from Father to Son through the generations.
As humankind started to settle into towns and cities the need for central rule became greater and while occasionally a warlord would gain power through shear force it was mainly the educated that became the rulers. This was most in evidence in the formation of the great religions. The shamans, priests and rabbis held tight to the esoteric learnings, releasing just small portions to those under them and carefully choosing those that would be led deeper into the mysteries. They selected those that they felt could be trusted not to "spill the beans" as it were, keeping the truths confined to those that would use it to maintain power.
As we became even more civilized and the need arose for a method of trading other than direct barter money came into vogue and with money came money merchants. As we came to accept currency as being something of value we also became enslaved to those that controlled the money. Today the Worlds banks are run by the same elite royal families that arose in the still dark dawn of civilization.
These banking families have no power over the rest of us other than their education and wealth. The education was given to them because they shared a common bloodline, the wealth was given to them for the same reason, to keep the wealth in the family.
In the great ruling royal families it is understood that you will not marry outside the royal bloodlines. "Bluebloods" will intermarry even at the cost of inbreeding to protect their accumulated wealth. If they choose to marry outside the lineages they know that their linages will not be allowed to share in the collective wealth and power.
When the American Revolution came around the elite saw it as a direct threat to their power base. They were the highborn that were leaders by birthright and here this new system threatened to give power and wealth to any commoner that had the force of will to ascend the throne. Their answer to this was to create a new class of royalty, a clandestine royal class that pretended to commoner status while adhering to the tenants of the European Bluebloods.
The Brown Brothers Banking family from England were central to this new royalty, and even today they hold power from a golden throne. Before the new Country of America was 20 years old the Bankers had taken control of our commerce. By the we reached our 100th birthday in 1876 they had control of every aspect of American education, religion and commerce.
In 1913 they took total control over the American monitary system, removing it entirely from any "commoner" control and placing it into a "Federal Reserve" system completly under their control. With the ability to print, issue, withdraw and control the value of the nations currency they retained the same controls that their fathers had as Kings.
If you attempt to print and issue your own currency, even if it is accepted by those that you wish to do business with, you will be arrested and jailed by the Federal Reserve. There are a few brave concerns that have started minting "Liberty Dollars", mainly based on silver and gold, that are strictly called "barter tokens", not currency or legal tender, to evade the threat of prison.
I accept Liberty Dollars in my own business, as a matter of personnel pride in freedom and democracy. I encourage everyone I can to find alternatives to supporting the Ruling Class Bankers by using fair trade, barter, in kind exchange or alternative value tokens such as Liberty Dollars and bypass the bankers, removing their ability to scrape away your personnel wealth a small portion at a time. of course they will still want to force you to report every minute transaction and the value of goods or services exchanged and make payments in the form of tax on the value of the items you received. But then I am just a poor, uneducated peasant and my labors are worth nothing, and the items I accept in trade for my labors are equally without intrinsic value, so there is nothing to be taxed as there is nothing of value being exchanged as long as I avoid utilizing the Federal Reserves private currency.
Education became a religion, Shamans were just men that knew more about the natural order than those around them. Those in the know passed that knowledge along to their immediate family members, and therein was born the roots of royalty. Having the knowledge gave them the power and having the power became a family affiar, passed along from Father to Son through the generations.
As humankind started to settle into towns and cities the need for central rule became greater and while occasionally a warlord would gain power through shear force it was mainly the educated that became the rulers. This was most in evidence in the formation of the great religions. The shamans, priests and rabbis held tight to the esoteric learnings, releasing just small portions to those under them and carefully choosing those that would be led deeper into the mysteries. They selected those that they felt could be trusted not to "spill the beans" as it were, keeping the truths confined to those that would use it to maintain power.
As we became even more civilized and the need arose for a method of trading other than direct barter money came into vogue and with money came money merchants. As we came to accept currency as being something of value we also became enslaved to those that controlled the money. Today the Worlds banks are run by the same elite royal families that arose in the still dark dawn of civilization.
These banking families have no power over the rest of us other than their education and wealth. The education was given to them because they shared a common bloodline, the wealth was given to them for the same reason, to keep the wealth in the family.
In the great ruling royal families it is understood that you will not marry outside the royal bloodlines. "Bluebloods" will intermarry even at the cost of inbreeding to protect their accumulated wealth. If they choose to marry outside the lineages they know that their linages will not be allowed to share in the collective wealth and power.
When the American Revolution came around the elite saw it as a direct threat to their power base. They were the highborn that were leaders by birthright and here this new system threatened to give power and wealth to any commoner that had the force of will to ascend the throne. Their answer to this was to create a new class of royalty, a clandestine royal class that pretended to commoner status while adhering to the tenants of the European Bluebloods.
The Brown Brothers Banking family from England were central to this new royalty, and even today they hold power from a golden throne. Before the new Country of America was 20 years old the Bankers had taken control of our commerce. By the we reached our 100th birthday in 1876 they had control of every aspect of American education, religion and commerce.
In 1913 they took total control over the American monitary system, removing it entirely from any "commoner" control and placing it into a "Federal Reserve" system completly under their control. With the ability to print, issue, withdraw and control the value of the nations currency they retained the same controls that their fathers had as Kings.
If you attempt to print and issue your own currency, even if it is accepted by those that you wish to do business with, you will be arrested and jailed by the Federal Reserve. There are a few brave concerns that have started minting "Liberty Dollars", mainly based on silver and gold, that are strictly called "barter tokens", not currency or legal tender, to evade the threat of prison.
I accept Liberty Dollars in my own business, as a matter of personnel pride in freedom and democracy. I encourage everyone I can to find alternatives to supporting the Ruling Class Bankers by using fair trade, barter, in kind exchange or alternative value tokens such as Liberty Dollars and bypass the bankers, removing their ability to scrape away your personnel wealth a small portion at a time. of course they will still want to force you to report every minute transaction and the value of goods or services exchanged and make payments in the form of tax on the value of the items you received. But then I am just a poor, uneducated peasant and my labors are worth nothing, and the items I accept in trade for my labors are equally without intrinsic value, so there is nothing to be taxed as there is nothing of value being exchanged as long as I avoid utilizing the Federal Reserves private currency.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
The rise and fall of the American Empire
If Alaskan's are any measure of the state of the American ideal then the America of fabled glory is in severe decline. would Thomas Jefferson had risen to political stature if he had been a man of low morals or a convicted criminal? Well, Ben Franklin exhibited low morals and did well, but criminal records were not tolerated among polite society in those days.
Ted Stevens sits on the Committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Appropriations, Commerce, Science, Transportation, Rules and Administration and yet he could not join the Army, work at McDonalds or WalMart or own a gun in the State of Alaska. You did turn in your guns didn't you, Uncle Ted?
Ted Stevens served the Country with honor in the Armed Forces during WWII, served the State of Alaska with honor for many years and was honored in due course with accolades and and Airport. When he decided that he was entitled to cross the lines of decent conduct and sell his vote for self gain he should have been scorned, jailed and rebuked. That he was not is telling on the state of our democracy.
Ted Stevens sits on the Committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Appropriations, Commerce, Science, Transportation, Rules and Administration and yet he could not join the Army, work at McDonalds or WalMart or own a gun in the State of Alaska. You did turn in your guns didn't you, Uncle Ted?
Ted Stevens served the Country with honor in the Armed Forces during WWII, served the State of Alaska with honor for many years and was honored in due course with accolades and and Airport. When he decided that he was entitled to cross the lines of decent conduct and sell his vote for self gain he should have been scorned, jailed and rebuked. That he was not is telling on the state of our democracy.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Coming to a City near you, Avian Flu
US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears
11 Oct 2008 When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard. Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism." The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.
11 Oct 2008 When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard. Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism." The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.
Supari says US using bird flu virus to develop biological weapons
06 Sep 2008 Indonesia stopped sharing the samples with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December 2006 on fears pharmaceutical companies would use them to make vaccines that are too expensive for poor countries... Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has broadened her critique of an "unfair, neocolonialist" global health system, raising the possibility earlier this year the United States was using the virus to develop biological weapons in her book "It's Time for the World to Change: Divine Hands Behind Avian Influenza." Supari told a rapturous crowd at a book discussion last week that rich nations were creating "new viruses" and sending them to developing nations in order create markets for drug companies to sell vaccines. "Indonesia sends a virus to the WHO but it suddenly it ends up with the US government. Then the US government turns the virus into dollars and we don't know what kind of research," Supari said.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
NEW U.S. ANTI-PIRACY LAW ALLOWS CONFISCATION OF YOUR PROPERTY
"A bill has been signed into law by president George W Bush which allows law enforcers to seize your property should you be suspected of piracy ie downloading one song without permission with your computer in your home. This is called "civil forfeiture" where articles can be seized and held if it is thought they are to be used in committing a crime, or infringement. Internet Service Providers will be especially unhappy with this part of the bill. Their servers are at stake. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, or PRO IP Act, has been criticized by both the US Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Commerce (DOC)."
This Law is a serious infringement on your right to privacy. If you visit a website that has an embedded audio track it will download the song automatically to your hard drive. The Fedz will see the MP# transverse the Server and come take your computer, wherein they will no doubt find an assortment of unregistered or ill gotten software, music, porn, images, chat logs and corn bread recipes. What makes your internet connection diffrent from your telephone? They don't need wiretaps to view your server logs, or warrants. But then under the 4th Reichs Patriot Act they don't need a warrent for anything they want to do.
This Law is a serious infringement on your right to privacy. If you visit a website that has an embedded audio track it will download the song automatically to your hard drive. The Fedz will see the MP# transverse the Server and come take your computer, wherein they will no doubt find an assortment of unregistered or ill gotten software, music, porn, images, chat logs and corn bread recipes. What makes your internet connection diffrent from your telephone? They don't need wiretaps to view your server logs, or warrants. But then under the 4th Reichs Patriot Act they don't need a warrent for anything they want to do.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
How To Fight the New World Order
"The Resistance Manifesto"
Announces the Declaration of Resistance to the New World Order
How To Fight the New World Order
- The main reason that I put this web site on the World Wide Web was to show you what the reality we live in is really like, behind all lies, illusions, rumors and ignorance. To have this knowledge is the first step in fighting the New World Order. But knowledge without wisdom can be dangerous. -
- by Wes Penre, January 24, 2005 -
How to Say No to the New World Order
- Living in a society saturated with values and ideas serving the rule of money, what can be done? The key to resisting the combined forces of the Corporate One World Order is an alternative worldview. -
- Axis of Logic.com -
Preparing for the Worst
- As JFK once said, "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." So, as the storm clouds start brewing all around us, let's make sure the roof is in order, before it's too late. -
- Three World Wars -
Please Be Aware Of the Illuminati Agenda Before You Lose Faith In Your Country!
- So be aware that the solution to the problem is not to erase the borders and create a One World Government to bring peace and order to the world. The solution is for us (yes, the responsibility lies on us, the people) to say "NO" to Globalism and the New World Order, have the Illuminati puppets replaced, and the Illuminati kings drawn out from High Places and put into Justice for their crimes against humanity. -
- by Wes Penre, May 10, 2004 -
America: After the Coup
- The following is a broad brushstroke design, and only meant for the consumption of those who dream to be free. There will be many arguments, which are always valuable. Perhaps if I can help guide our mindset in a positive fashion, in the slightest way, I can do my little part for humanity and for the formerly great United States of America. Can we become what I describe below? I can imagine it. If enough people imagine, doesn't it become reality? -
- by Erik Fortman -
A Call to Action: What YOU Can Do!
- While it is good that more people are speaking out and informing the public of what is happening, the average citizen is left wondering what is to be done? Good question. I have put forth several suggestions as to what the average person can do to begin working against the New World Order, a few of which are as follows ...
The Truth About the New World Order,
Otherwise Known as the Global Economy- Is There Anything We Can Do? -
How to Fight and Resist the New World Order
- Hidden Mysteries Website -
NESARA - National Economic Security and Reformation Act
- NESARA initiates PEACE IMMEDIATELY and
1. Provides forgiveness of credit card, mortgage, and other bank debt as remedy for bank and government frauds;
2. Abolishes the IRS; creates flat rate non-essential "new items only" sales tax revenue for government;
3. Initiates U.S. Treasury Bank System, which absorbs the Federal Reserve, and new precious metals backed U.S. Treasury currency;
4. Restores Constitutional Law... -
- Nesara.us -
Adolph Eichmann and You
- There is a lesson here for all of us. If we don't want to be complicit in state crimes, we need to stop being such good citizens. -
- by Henry Makow, Ph.D, June 25, 2005 -
Americans Are Waking Up!
[.pdf file]
- InfoWars.com, Aug 8, 2005 -
The Truth Is Negative? - Since When?
- The point is that we do not have limitless time to expose what is happening and every day that passes more and more children are suffering. Tell them we have to go more slowly and gently because we don't want to upset people. -
- by David Icke -
- The bird flu has wiped out populations before. The 1918 flu killed 25% of the population in some cities and took the lives of tens of millions of people around the world. Yet today, we are no better at treating these viruses than in 1918. -
- by Mike Adams, Truth Publishing -
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Arresting news
Freedom of the Press? Only if your reporting the news they want reported.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Radio and Television was arrested at the RNC.
78 Year Old Nun Arrested at Republican National Convention
Your own intrepid Area907 reporter was arrested at the Alaska State Fair when the Starplex Security goons didn't like my Press Pass.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Radio and Television was arrested at the RNC.
78 Year Old Nun Arrested at Republican National Convention
Your own intrepid Area907 reporter was arrested at the Alaska State Fair when the Starplex Security goons didn't like my Press Pass.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Sarah Palin - A Lamb before the Wolves
Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin hit the Alaska Republican Party hard when she outed two of her fellows for misconduct. The Republican Old Guard took notice of her and saw that she was going to be another thorn in their side like JFK.
So they decided that sending her up as VP would open such a can of worms in her life that she would never survive the vetting by the Press. I'm sure that they were hoping that once the entire National Press Corps got finished with her she would slink off in disgrace never to lighten the inner workings of the Republican Party again.
And even if she does somehow manage to survive the press stories, both the real and manufactured, then at least they managed to divert attention from the other great Republican embarrassment, the trial of the longest sitting Republican Senator, our own dear Ted Stevens.
So it's a win/win/win for the Republican Old Guard, if she survives and McCain gets elected then she gets sequestered away in the most ineffectual job in American Politics, the Vice Presidency. If he looses she returns to Alaska and hopefully the Vetting will sink her future ambitions.
But just imagine the ideal World for a moment. John McCain gets elected and Sarah does the VP thing for a few years till McCain either bites the bullet or 2012 rolls around and Sarah Palin becomes President of the US by landslide with Ray Metcalfe, who won the 2008 Alaska Senate seat after both Ted Stevens and Mark Begich were indicted and convicted, as her VP. Then in 2020 Ray Metcalfe takes the helm as the newly purged and squeaky clean Republican Party becomes the shining light for Democracy and Freedom that it was once intended to be. Sarah Palin will accept appointment to the Supreme Court after her two terms.
So they decided that sending her up as VP would open such a can of worms in her life that she would never survive the vetting by the Press. I'm sure that they were hoping that once the entire National Press Corps got finished with her she would slink off in disgrace never to lighten the inner workings of the Republican Party again.
And even if she does somehow manage to survive the press stories, both the real and manufactured, then at least they managed to divert attention from the other great Republican embarrassment, the trial of the longest sitting Republican Senator, our own dear Ted Stevens.
So it's a win/win/win for the Republican Old Guard, if she survives and McCain gets elected then she gets sequestered away in the most ineffectual job in American Politics, the Vice Presidency. If he looses she returns to Alaska and hopefully the Vetting will sink her future ambitions.
But just imagine the ideal World for a moment. John McCain gets elected and Sarah does the VP thing for a few years till McCain either bites the bullet or 2012 rolls around and Sarah Palin becomes President of the US by landslide with Ray Metcalfe, who won the 2008 Alaska Senate seat after both Ted Stevens and Mark Begich were indicted and convicted, as her VP. Then in 2020 Ray Metcalfe takes the helm as the newly purged and squeaky clean Republican Party becomes the shining light for Democracy and Freedom that it was once intended to be. Sarah Palin will accept appointment to the Supreme Court after her two terms.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Open Letter to the Anchorage Assembly
Is it your desire to live in a corrupt state? A state where the measure of your success is judged by how much you can steal rather than how much you can contribute? If so, all you have to do is stay the course because the FBI cannot clean up Alaska or its largest city, if Alaska’s community leaders dig in their heels to resist the cleanup.
I spent several years forcing every member of the Alaska Legislature to look at the corruption in their midst. Most said they couldn’t see what I was talking about. Some said, “not my job” while others said, “There is nothing I can do.” Not one single Legislator was willing to stand against corruption.
When our forefathers created three branches of government it was their expectation that when one of the three branches stepped out of line, the other two branches would take use their collective powers to restore the wayward branch’s compliance with a system of laws. It is a duty of the office you hold to take action.
Had our state’s system of checks and balances functioned properly, had Murkowski’s Attorney General not attempted to obstruct justice, the FBI wouldn’t be in the middle of our state’s business, cleaning up the mess made possible by elected officials saying “not my job.” When the executive branch of government fails to clean its own house, there is no person with a greater obligation to confront corruption in the executive branch of government than you.
When rational people appear to make irrational decisions, it's usually because they have a hidden incentive you didn't know about. For twenty five years, a majority of both houses of Alaska’s Legislature appeared to make an irrational decision to let oil companies take Alaska's oil for a tiny fraction of what it was really worth. However, their decision wasn’t irrational at all. A majority of Alaska’s Legislature justified that the gratuities they took from Veco were worth the tens of billions of dollars the state lost because they did.
Now at seven convictions and counting, the cost of twenty five years of corruption is obvious. Alaska went from massive deficits to massive surpluses on the heels of Veco’s exposure. Those who attribute the surpluses to rising oil prices would be wrong as millions of barrels were leaving Alaska un-taxed. Zero tax equals zero income to Alaska regardless of the price of oil.
About nine months ago, Mayor Begich gave away the city’s economic interest in a Municipal parking garage through a cleverly written lease. A gift worth about ten million dollars to the developers of a 22 story building next door. In the absence of intervention, Jerry Neeser and Mark Pfeffer will be in position to tell prospective tenants of their 22 story building that they control the parking, facing those prospective tenants with the prospect of riding bicycles to work or renting from the only landlords with parking.
Ponder for a moment the reaction from Penny’s shoppers had the Mayor given all the parking within three blocks of the downtown mall to Nordstroms. Would other store owners sue the city? Of course they would.
The days that a mayor can give away a parking garage with confidence jail time won’t follow are gone and it is time for you to decide which side your on. If you want a government run by white collar crime all you have to do is pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Four years ago I wrote an article published in most Alaska newspapers suggesting that Veco was paying bribes to large numbers of legislators and that their bribery was costing this state tens of billions of dollars. The name calling from the rich and powerful throughout the state started before the ink was dry on the newsprint. Since that day you have seen five confessions and three convictions by jury, all from within the ranks of those who said I was dead wrong.
Three years ago I accused Ben Stevens of taking bribes from Veco. His protests were quite similar to Mark Begich’s protests today. Had I not done so, neither Mark nor I would be running for the US Senate because Ben would have already filled his daddy’s shoes in Washington.
Two years ago I wrote an article detailing how Ted Stevens was laundering federal money into the pockets of his boy and his boy’s business partner Trevor McCabe, by funneling the money through a handful of Seattle based fish processing companies, who were funneling money back to Trevor McCabe and Ben Stevens through consulting fees. Six months later the offices of the processors were raided by the FBI and Trevor McCabe is now cooperating with the FBI’s ongoing investigation with hopes of shortening his jail time. ----(Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 10, 2008, McCabe 's attorney, Michael White of Seattle, said, " Trevor has been instructed by his lawyer to continue to cooperate with investigators and make no public comments.")
Over the past year, I have written extensively about John Rubini and the several real estate investments he has made with Mark Begich and Ted Stevens. Through the hand in hand cooperation of Rubini’s carefully selected business partners, Rubini has secured hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate that once belonged to the federal government and tens of millions in tax breaks through the passage of special legislation Ben Stevens pushed through the Legislature and a companion ordinance pushed through by Mark Begich.
Begich said the tax breaks were for the troops living in the base housing Ted Stevens had earmarked into the hands of Jon Rubini and Ted Stevens’ brother-in-law for free. However, the only thing Mark’s Tax breaks achieved, was an increase to the bottom line for his business partner Jon Rubini and the brother-in-law of Ted Steven’s, while they raised the rents on the troops.
The other excuse Begich used was that he wasn’t sure if the Municipality could tax Rubini’s privately owned military housing setting on ground Rubini leases from the federal government for one dollar per year. Before you buy into that argument, read the clip below on taxation, directly from Alaska’s constitution:
Article 9 - Finance and Taxation § 5. Interests in Government Property: Private leaseholds, contracts, or interests in land or property owned or held by the United States, the State, or its political subdivisions, shall be taxable to the extent of the interests.
Rubini’s rewards were well worth the $52,000 Rubini dressed up as real estate deals to pay Mark Begich. He gave Begich a small interest in two high-rise office buildings so he could buy him out when he needed a favor, much like he did with Ted Stevens when he bought Ted out of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation building for $1,050,000. (All public record).
I highly doubt that there is anyone left on the Assembly who isn’t aware that the National Archives purchased Jon Rubini’s eight acres between your chambers and Lowe’s Hardware, believing it was zoned B-3. They paid him $3,525,000 for property he had picked up one year earlier for $1,550,000. They based their purchase price on the belief that the property was zoned B-3 and had been appraised at $4,495,000. The property was R-3 not B-3 and it was not appraised anywhere near $4,495,000.
When was the last time you saw a real estate professional, a mayor, or private investor get caught perpetrating or assisting in the sale of property to the federal government under fraudulent pretenses and not go to jail? – Are you willing to risk the possible consequences of helping Mark sweep this one under the rug?
(For any assembly member who will take the time to look, I will be happy to review documentation that demonstrates decision makers at the National Archives had been advised that the property they purchased was zoned B-3. They were advised of that before they started looking, and during their comparative evaluations, and after the purchase was complete.)
I recently asked assembly chair Matt Claman to review the agreement to eliminate Jon Rubini’s taxes. Claman couldn’t have ran any faster from the subject. That’s exactly what I meant by community leaders digging in their heels to resist the cleanup. When honest people compromise their principles in favor of victory or unity, they have also lost sight of their reason for having cared in the first place.
Turning back to Municipal gifts of parking garages, I am going to sue the Municipality for the illegal appropriation of public assets into the hands of a private person, If the assembly fails to intervene in Mark Begich’s gifts of the Sixth and Seventh Avenue parking garages to Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser.
The appropriation lacks public purpose, was not voted on by the body with the authority to appropriate, and even if the assembly had done so, the assembly would have violated Alaska’s constitutional prohibition barring grants and special privileges of special appropriations to individuals without a public purpose. See clips from Alaska’s constitution below. For details on the gift of the parking garage, go to:
http://citizens4ethics.com/docs/Gift of Parking Garage Explained.doc
Article 1 - Declaration of Rights § 15. Prohibited State Action:
No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. No law impairing the obligation of contracts, and no law making any irrevocable “grant of special privileges” or immunities shall be passed. No conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.
Article 9 - Finance and Taxation § 6. Public Purpose:
No tax shall be levied, or appropriation of public money made, or “public property transferred,” nor shall the public credit be used, except for a public purpose.
Before Begich gave Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser a parking garage, he required the parking authority to lease 67 parking spaces from them at $432 per space, ($29,000 per month) while arranging to rent parking spaces to Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser on the other side of the street at $75 per space.
Before that Mark Begich attempted to persuade the Municipal Assembly to purchase City Hall from Jerry Neeser for about ten million dollars more than it was really worth.
After Jerry Neeser, Mark Pfeffer, and John Rubini landed the contract to build the new convention center, Mark Begich fattened their bottom line by waving dozens of inspection and code compliance requirements that any other developers in town would have been forced to comply with. Begich also gave Jerry Neeser free access to fifteen acres in the heart of downtown to store equipment and construction materials. I highly doubt that Mark Begich would have arranged wavers or free storage for any other developers.
If Mark Begich’s appetite for doing favors for Jerry Neeser, Mark Pfeffer, and John Rubini doesn’t raise every red flag for corruption in your body, there is something dreadfully wrong with your moral compass.
As you may recall, in the case of Ben Stevens, I first tried to recall him for doing Legislative favors for Veco. The Division of Elections, APOC, several Legislators, the Attorney General, and Alaska’s Superior Court, all said he had broken no laws and no crime had been committed. Now even former Governor Murkowski’s chief of staff has pleaded guilty to participating with Veco’s criminal activities and it’s a good bet he won’t be the last.
It would be disingenuous to pretend you don’t sense corruption. And I can only think of one reason why you would say you didn’t. The buck stops with you. Should you fail to act, I will take the city to court and be as relentless at uncovering who is doing what for whom and why as I was with Ben Stevens and Veco.
Ray Metcalfe
I spent several years forcing every member of the Alaska Legislature to look at the corruption in their midst. Most said they couldn’t see what I was talking about. Some said, “not my job” while others said, “There is nothing I can do.” Not one single Legislator was willing to stand against corruption.
When our forefathers created three branches of government it was their expectation that when one of the three branches stepped out of line, the other two branches would take use their collective powers to restore the wayward branch’s compliance with a system of laws. It is a duty of the office you hold to take action.
Had our state’s system of checks and balances functioned properly, had Murkowski’s Attorney General not attempted to obstruct justice, the FBI wouldn’t be in the middle of our state’s business, cleaning up the mess made possible by elected officials saying “not my job.” When the executive branch of government fails to clean its own house, there is no person with a greater obligation to confront corruption in the executive branch of government than you.
When rational people appear to make irrational decisions, it's usually because they have a hidden incentive you didn't know about. For twenty five years, a majority of both houses of Alaska’s Legislature appeared to make an irrational decision to let oil companies take Alaska's oil for a tiny fraction of what it was really worth. However, their decision wasn’t irrational at all. A majority of Alaska’s Legislature justified that the gratuities they took from Veco were worth the tens of billions of dollars the state lost because they did.
Now at seven convictions and counting, the cost of twenty five years of corruption is obvious. Alaska went from massive deficits to massive surpluses on the heels of Veco’s exposure. Those who attribute the surpluses to rising oil prices would be wrong as millions of barrels were leaving Alaska un-taxed. Zero tax equals zero income to Alaska regardless of the price of oil.
About nine months ago, Mayor Begich gave away the city’s economic interest in a Municipal parking garage through a cleverly written lease. A gift worth about ten million dollars to the developers of a 22 story building next door. In the absence of intervention, Jerry Neeser and Mark Pfeffer will be in position to tell prospective tenants of their 22 story building that they control the parking, facing those prospective tenants with the prospect of riding bicycles to work or renting from the only landlords with parking.
Ponder for a moment the reaction from Penny’s shoppers had the Mayor given all the parking within three blocks of the downtown mall to Nordstroms. Would other store owners sue the city? Of course they would.
The days that a mayor can give away a parking garage with confidence jail time won’t follow are gone and it is time for you to decide which side your on. If you want a government run by white collar crime all you have to do is pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Four years ago I wrote an article published in most Alaska newspapers suggesting that Veco was paying bribes to large numbers of legislators and that their bribery was costing this state tens of billions of dollars. The name calling from the rich and powerful throughout the state started before the ink was dry on the newsprint. Since that day you have seen five confessions and three convictions by jury, all from within the ranks of those who said I was dead wrong.
Three years ago I accused Ben Stevens of taking bribes from Veco. His protests were quite similar to Mark Begich’s protests today. Had I not done so, neither Mark nor I would be running for the US Senate because Ben would have already filled his daddy’s shoes in Washington.
Two years ago I wrote an article detailing how Ted Stevens was laundering federal money into the pockets of his boy and his boy’s business partner Trevor McCabe, by funneling the money through a handful of Seattle based fish processing companies, who were funneling money back to Trevor McCabe and Ben Stevens through consulting fees. Six months later the offices of the processors were raided by the FBI and Trevor McCabe is now cooperating with the FBI’s ongoing investigation with hopes of shortening his jail time. ----(Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 10, 2008, McCabe 's attorney, Michael White of Seattle, said, " Trevor has been instructed by his lawyer to continue to cooperate with investigators and make no public comments.")
Over the past year, I have written extensively about John Rubini and the several real estate investments he has made with Mark Begich and Ted Stevens. Through the hand in hand cooperation of Rubini’s carefully selected business partners, Rubini has secured hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate that once belonged to the federal government and tens of millions in tax breaks through the passage of special legislation Ben Stevens pushed through the Legislature and a companion ordinance pushed through by Mark Begich.
Begich said the tax breaks were for the troops living in the base housing Ted Stevens had earmarked into the hands of Jon Rubini and Ted Stevens’ brother-in-law for free. However, the only thing Mark’s Tax breaks achieved, was an increase to the bottom line for his business partner Jon Rubini and the brother-in-law of Ted Steven’s, while they raised the rents on the troops.
The other excuse Begich used was that he wasn’t sure if the Municipality could tax Rubini’s privately owned military housing setting on ground Rubini leases from the federal government for one dollar per year. Before you buy into that argument, read the clip below on taxation, directly from Alaska’s constitution:
Article 9 - Finance and Taxation § 5. Interests in Government Property: Private leaseholds, contracts, or interests in land or property owned or held by the United States, the State, or its political subdivisions, shall be taxable to the extent of the interests.
Rubini’s rewards were well worth the $52,000 Rubini dressed up as real estate deals to pay Mark Begich. He gave Begich a small interest in two high-rise office buildings so he could buy him out when he needed a favor, much like he did with Ted Stevens when he bought Ted out of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation building for $1,050,000. (All public record).
I highly doubt that there is anyone left on the Assembly who isn’t aware that the National Archives purchased Jon Rubini’s eight acres between your chambers and Lowe’s Hardware, believing it was zoned B-3. They paid him $3,525,000 for property he had picked up one year earlier for $1,550,000. They based their purchase price on the belief that the property was zoned B-3 and had been appraised at $4,495,000. The property was R-3 not B-3 and it was not appraised anywhere near $4,495,000.
When was the last time you saw a real estate professional, a mayor, or private investor get caught perpetrating or assisting in the sale of property to the federal government under fraudulent pretenses and not go to jail? – Are you willing to risk the possible consequences of helping Mark sweep this one under the rug?
(For any assembly member who will take the time to look, I will be happy to review documentation that demonstrates decision makers at the National Archives had been advised that the property they purchased was zoned B-3. They were advised of that before they started looking, and during their comparative evaluations, and after the purchase was complete.)
I recently asked assembly chair Matt Claman to review the agreement to eliminate Jon Rubini’s taxes. Claman couldn’t have ran any faster from the subject. That’s exactly what I meant by community leaders digging in their heels to resist the cleanup. When honest people compromise their principles in favor of victory or unity, they have also lost sight of their reason for having cared in the first place.
Turning back to Municipal gifts of parking garages, I am going to sue the Municipality for the illegal appropriation of public assets into the hands of a private person, If the assembly fails to intervene in Mark Begich’s gifts of the Sixth and Seventh Avenue parking garages to Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser.
The appropriation lacks public purpose, was not voted on by the body with the authority to appropriate, and even if the assembly had done so, the assembly would have violated Alaska’s constitutional prohibition barring grants and special privileges of special appropriations to individuals without a public purpose. See clips from Alaska’s constitution below. For details on the gift of the parking garage, go to:
http://citizens4ethics.com/docs/Gift of Parking Garage Explained.doc
Article 1 - Declaration of Rights § 15. Prohibited State Action:
No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. No law impairing the obligation of contracts, and no law making any irrevocable “grant of special privileges” or immunities shall be passed. No conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.
Article 9 - Finance and Taxation § 6. Public Purpose:
No tax shall be levied, or appropriation of public money made, or “public property transferred,” nor shall the public credit be used, except for a public purpose.
Before Begich gave Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser a parking garage, he required the parking authority to lease 67 parking spaces from them at $432 per space, ($29,000 per month) while arranging to rent parking spaces to Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser on the other side of the street at $75 per space.
Before that Mark Begich attempted to persuade the Municipal Assembly to purchase City Hall from Jerry Neeser for about ten million dollars more than it was really worth.
After Jerry Neeser, Mark Pfeffer, and John Rubini landed the contract to build the new convention center, Mark Begich fattened their bottom line by waving dozens of inspection and code compliance requirements that any other developers in town would have been forced to comply with. Begich also gave Jerry Neeser free access to fifteen acres in the heart of downtown to store equipment and construction materials. I highly doubt that Mark Begich would have arranged wavers or free storage for any other developers.
If Mark Begich’s appetite for doing favors for Jerry Neeser, Mark Pfeffer, and John Rubini doesn’t raise every red flag for corruption in your body, there is something dreadfully wrong with your moral compass.
As you may recall, in the case of Ben Stevens, I first tried to recall him for doing Legislative favors for Veco. The Division of Elections, APOC, several Legislators, the Attorney General, and Alaska’s Superior Court, all said he had broken no laws and no crime had been committed. Now even former Governor Murkowski’s chief of staff has pleaded guilty to participating with Veco’s criminal activities and it’s a good bet he won’t be the last.
It would be disingenuous to pretend you don’t sense corruption. And I can only think of one reason why you would say you didn’t. The buck stops with you. Should you fail to act, I will take the city to court and be as relentless at uncovering who is doing what for whom and why as I was with Ben Stevens and Veco.
Ray Metcalfe
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Mark Begich and Anchorage Sweetheart Deals
Gift of Parking Garage Explained
On the September 9, 2007 editorial page of the Anchorage Daily News, a staff reporter wrote “When the Begich administration leased a downtown parking site from influential developer Mark Pfeffer, the city overpaid -- by a lot.”
The Daily News concluded its editorial saying:
“Without subpoena power or wiretap authority, it's impossible to know if the mayor's defense is just a smokescreen. But whether it was favoritism or just an honestly overpriced contract, it turned out to be an embarrassingly bad deal for a mayor who prides himself on his business acumen.”
The editorial was in response to an appraisal I (Ray Metcalfe) wrote on the value of a 67 space parking lot located on the corner of 6th and G in downtown Anchorage. I had reviewed the lease executed between Augustine Development LLC (Owned by Jerry Neeser and Mark Pfeffer, partners with John Rubini in the construction of the new Convention Center two blocks away) and The Community Development Authority, formerly known as the Anchorage Parking Authority, who agreed to lease Mark Pfeffer’s property described as:
Lots 9B and lot 12 of block 53 of the Original Townsite of Anchorage, according to the official plat: Plat number 81-124 of the Anchorage Recording District, and I have made the following observations, value estimations and conclusions.
The Community Development Authority is a quasi-privately operated subsidiary of the Municipality of Anchorage (MOA). Possession of the leased property has been delivered over to the Anchorage Parking Authority — ostensibly for the purpose of operating a 67-space public parking lot.
The closest comparable property is a seventeen space parking area in the same block, adjacent, and immediately west of the subject property. It shares a property line with the subject property; and there are no obstructions to prevent drivers from driving between the two adjacent parking areas.
Augustine Development, LLC owns both the subject property and the 17 space comparable property next door, which is within the same ½ block as the subject property and was part of the property he acquired with the purchase of the Inlet Inn.
At the time Augustine Development, LLC, owned by Mark Pfeffer, purchased the Inlet Inn, February 2nd, 2007. At the time, Diamond Parking, a privately owned parking lot operator, was leasing the 17-spaces of paved parking area on the 6th Avenue side of the Inlet Inn, (approximately 5,700 square foot and part of the Inlet Inn’s property) paying approximately $47 per parking space per month, to the owners of the Inlet Inn. Diamond Parking then retailed the spaces, which it acquired at wholesale prices, to the general public, retailing it for a profit, averaging around $150 per month in gross retail revenues per space.
The Anchorage Parking Authority, owned by the Municipality of Anchorage, now also known as the Community Development Authority, initially leased the 67-space (24,511 square foot of property adjacent to the above referenced 17 spaces,) from Mark Pfeffer’s Augustine Development, paying Mark $29,000 per month, or $432 per space.
The City of Anchorage agreed to pay Mark Pfeffer’s Augustine Development over nine times as much as an adjacent private lessor agreed to pay to a private lessee in an arm’s length fair market transaction. There is no question that Mr. Pfeffer was aware of the wholesale and retail values attributable to the adjacent property because Pfeffer had purchased the Inlet Inn’s interest in the lease agreement between the Inlet Inn and Diamond Parking. Pfeffer had also been negotiating with Diamond parking prior to Mark Begich’s instruction to the Anchorage Parking Authority, to make what turned out to be a vastly superior offer. The Parking Authority needed look no further than across the street to see that Diamond Parking’s parking lot adjacent to Mr. Pfeffer was 80% vacant almost every day of the week.
Parking facility operators will generally offer private land owners a fixed monthly payment equaling approximately 1/3 of whatever they determine to be the projected likely gross income they could expect to derive from the property, or alternatively, for those land owners willing to share the risk of unexpected shortfalls in income, parking operators will generally offer a fluctuating ½ of whatever the actual parking space rents turn out to be.
According to figures the Parking Authority released after this investigation began, the spaces Begich arranged for the city to rent for $29,000 per month were running about 80% empty and bringing in about $10,000 per month. As demonstrated by the 17 spaces next door, which also run about 80% empty, the industry standard that a private company would have paid Pfeffer for the same deal would have been 1/3 of the anticipatable gross monthly income, or about $3,300 per month. The remaining $25,700 in payments Mark Begich arranged for Mark Pfeffer to receive from the Anchorage Parking Authority was nothing less than a money laundering shell game neither of them thought anyone would notice.
Before the original Begich/Pfeffer fleecing agreement was replaced by the much more clever agreement outlined below, it had funneled seven payments of $29,000 per month, or $203,000 of your city’s dollars into the pockets of Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser.
In an understatement worthy of the Guinness Book of Records, Carma Reed, the former head of the City’s parking agency acknowledged to the Anchorage Daily News that the City was losing money on its $29,000 lease payments. She also said they planned to renegotiate the agreement.
Keep in mind that the City’s act of leasing spaces from Mark Pfeffer doesn’t add one single parking spot to available parking in Anchorage. Mark Pfeffer is perfectly capable of running his own parking lot and collecting the $10,000 it makes each month if Diamond Parking failed to make a management offer that pleased him. Either way, it would not add or subtract one more parking space for the parking public to choose from.
However, the Parking Authority did renegotiate. They increased the number of spaces the City was leasing from Pfeffer to 87 spaces. And they reduced the rent per space to $166 per space per month, equaling three times what private industry had previously been paying next door. The net effect was to reduce the payment to Pfeffer from $29,000 to $14,500, thereby continuing to pay Pfeffer about $10,000 per month more than a private company like Diamond Parking would have been willing to pay.
That’s not quite the way Begich described it when he announced his decision to get tough on negotiations, but that was the net effect.
They also failed to highlight one more major addition to the new deal. The new deal gave Mark Pfeffer what, in real estate technical terms is called a leasehold interest. It conveys valuable leasehold interests in Anchorage’s parking facilities, worth tens of millions of dollars, to Mark Pfeffer and his partners over the next 22 years. Mark Pfeffer is effectively being given a City parking garage so he doesn’t have to spend his own money to build the parking he will need to make his building he is building across the street economically viable.
Mark Pfeffer is being given the right to lease 570 parking spaces in the parking garages of the City of Anchorage.
Rather than making parking available to individuals and letting those individuals choose which developer to lease office space from, Begich has chosen to hand over control of Anchorage’s public parking to one developer. A developer he hopes will remember his generosity for the rest of his political career.
The Privately owned Dimond Parking Company leases parking permits in downtown Anchorage, to the public for $150 per month. The publicly owned Anchorage Parking Authority subsidizes the commercial rate by renting spaces to the public at about half the going commercial rate. In this case, the subsidy promised to Neeser and Pfeffer is about $75 per space per month. Begich’s contract with Neeser and Pfeffer allows Neeser and Pfeffer to re-rent their 570 spaces, at the commercial rate, to future tenants in the building they are building on the other side of the street, directly across Sixth Avenue from the parking garage above the bus depot. The net value of Mark Begich's gift to his friends Neeser and Pfeffer calculates to about $40,000 per month over the next 22 years, or a little over ten million dollars in ill-gotten profits cleverly lifted from the pockets of Anchorage taxpayers over time.
The above described actions are what some politicians call “Salting the System.” Ted Stevens has been doing it for forty years. Ted has imbedded an army of beholding foot soldiers throughout the business community and inside of the bureaucracy that regulates it. It was fear of that army that caused so many people to run for cover when I asked for help in exposing the bribery schemes of Veco and Ted’s son, Ben Stevens.
As for the favors Mark Begich is doing for Mark Pfeffer, future developers may not be so lucky. The individuals they hope to make their tenants will be faced with leasing from Pfeffer or doing without parking. Developers competing with Pfeffer will be faced with testing the waters of the bribability of future Mayors or going out of business and Alaska’s political arena will continue to be dominated by those willing to reap huge rewards at risk of jail time for decades to come.
Unlike the 80% empty parking lot the City took off of Mr. Pfeffer’s hands, the parking garage across the street above the downtown bus depot is about 80 % full from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM five days a week.
At $1 per hour for nine hours per day each space can bring in $9 every business day of the month. Twenty business days times $9 per day equals $180 per month. Subtract 20% to adjust for the fact that on average, each space is occupied only 80% of the time between 8 and 5, and each space has the potential to generate an average of $144 per month. Subtract $75 per space for the base lease that Mark Begich has decided to give Mr. Pfeffer, and, Mark Pfeffer prospectively may soon be collecting $69 per month times 570 spaces, or $39,330 per month. Prior to this agreement, Pfeffer’s booty would have gone straight into the city’s treasury. It is now destined for the pockets of a person Mark Begich hopes to draw from for the duration of his political career.
And just in case you missed it, the City is leasing spaces from Mr. Pfeffer on one side of the street for $166 per month, while agreeing to lease to Mr. Pfeffer on the other side of the street for $75 per month. Meanwhile, to cover the losses, Mark Begich authorized the parking authority to raise the charge for parking meters and double the size of your fines for parking overtime. Mayor Begich attempted to explain away this entire ruse by saying the City needed more parking. However as noted above, this scheme doesn’t add one space to the available parking spaces in Anchorage.
No doubt excuses will be made and the shell game will continue. There is a big difference between the city meeting its obligation to make sure parking is available to the general public and giving parking garages to developers. It makes little difference whether unscrupulous developers extract their ill-gotten booty through jacking up the City’s parking rents, or through stiff-arming competing developers who have no parking, while Pfeffer charges higher rents because he does.
Ted Stevens is now considered vulnerable primarily because of similar corrupt little shell games that I exposed. His shell games are under investigation the U.S. Justice Department and my bet is several of the participants are going to jail before it is over. The only thing that will change if Alaska simply replaces old corrupt politicians with younger ones is who gets the graft.
Last year, the U.S. Justice Department charged Pete Kott with four felonies. One of the charges he was convicted of was violating the federal statute requiring public officials to provide “Honest Services,” and another was conspiracy. Kott was convicted of both and I can’t think of a single reason why the same principles would not apply to the above.
Ray Metcalfe
Metcalfe4Senate.com
On the September 9, 2007 editorial page of the Anchorage Daily News, a staff reporter wrote “When the Begich administration leased a downtown parking site from influential developer Mark Pfeffer, the city overpaid -- by a lot.”
The Daily News concluded its editorial saying:
“Without subpoena power or wiretap authority, it's impossible to know if the mayor's defense is just a smokescreen. But whether it was favoritism or just an honestly overpriced contract, it turned out to be an embarrassingly bad deal for a mayor who prides himself on his business acumen.”
The editorial was in response to an appraisal I (Ray Metcalfe) wrote on the value of a 67 space parking lot located on the corner of 6th and G in downtown Anchorage. I had reviewed the lease executed between Augustine Development LLC (Owned by Jerry Neeser and Mark Pfeffer, partners with John Rubini in the construction of the new Convention Center two blocks away) and The Community Development Authority, formerly known as the Anchorage Parking Authority, who agreed to lease Mark Pfeffer’s property described as:
Lots 9B and lot 12 of block 53 of the Original Townsite of Anchorage, according to the official plat: Plat number 81-124 of the Anchorage Recording District, and I have made the following observations, value estimations and conclusions.
The Community Development Authority is a quasi-privately operated subsidiary of the Municipality of Anchorage (MOA). Possession of the leased property has been delivered over to the Anchorage Parking Authority — ostensibly for the purpose of operating a 67-space public parking lot.
The closest comparable property is a seventeen space parking area in the same block, adjacent, and immediately west of the subject property. It shares a property line with the subject property; and there are no obstructions to prevent drivers from driving between the two adjacent parking areas.
Augustine Development, LLC owns both the subject property and the 17 space comparable property next door, which is within the same ½ block as the subject property and was part of the property he acquired with the purchase of the Inlet Inn.
At the time Augustine Development, LLC, owned by Mark Pfeffer, purchased the Inlet Inn, February 2nd, 2007. At the time, Diamond Parking, a privately owned parking lot operator, was leasing the 17-spaces of paved parking area on the 6th Avenue side of the Inlet Inn, (approximately 5,700 square foot and part of the Inlet Inn’s property) paying approximately $47 per parking space per month, to the owners of the Inlet Inn. Diamond Parking then retailed the spaces, which it acquired at wholesale prices, to the general public, retailing it for a profit, averaging around $150 per month in gross retail revenues per space.
The Anchorage Parking Authority, owned by the Municipality of Anchorage, now also known as the Community Development Authority, initially leased the 67-space (24,511 square foot of property adjacent to the above referenced 17 spaces,) from Mark Pfeffer’s Augustine Development, paying Mark $29,000 per month, or $432 per space.
The City of Anchorage agreed to pay Mark Pfeffer’s Augustine Development over nine times as much as an adjacent private lessor agreed to pay to a private lessee in an arm’s length fair market transaction. There is no question that Mr. Pfeffer was aware of the wholesale and retail values attributable to the adjacent property because Pfeffer had purchased the Inlet Inn’s interest in the lease agreement between the Inlet Inn and Diamond Parking. Pfeffer had also been negotiating with Diamond parking prior to Mark Begich’s instruction to the Anchorage Parking Authority, to make what turned out to be a vastly superior offer. The Parking Authority needed look no further than across the street to see that Diamond Parking’s parking lot adjacent to Mr. Pfeffer was 80% vacant almost every day of the week.
Parking facility operators will generally offer private land owners a fixed monthly payment equaling approximately 1/3 of whatever they determine to be the projected likely gross income they could expect to derive from the property, or alternatively, for those land owners willing to share the risk of unexpected shortfalls in income, parking operators will generally offer a fluctuating ½ of whatever the actual parking space rents turn out to be.
According to figures the Parking Authority released after this investigation began, the spaces Begich arranged for the city to rent for $29,000 per month were running about 80% empty and bringing in about $10,000 per month. As demonstrated by the 17 spaces next door, which also run about 80% empty, the industry standard that a private company would have paid Pfeffer for the same deal would have been 1/3 of the anticipatable gross monthly income, or about $3,300 per month. The remaining $25,700 in payments Mark Begich arranged for Mark Pfeffer to receive from the Anchorage Parking Authority was nothing less than a money laundering shell game neither of them thought anyone would notice.
Before the original Begich/Pfeffer fleecing agreement was replaced by the much more clever agreement outlined below, it had funneled seven payments of $29,000 per month, or $203,000 of your city’s dollars into the pockets of Mark Pfeffer and Jerry Neeser.
In an understatement worthy of the Guinness Book of Records, Carma Reed, the former head of the City’s parking agency acknowledged to the Anchorage Daily News that the City was losing money on its $29,000 lease payments. She also said they planned to renegotiate the agreement.
Keep in mind that the City’s act of leasing spaces from Mark Pfeffer doesn’t add one single parking spot to available parking in Anchorage. Mark Pfeffer is perfectly capable of running his own parking lot and collecting the $10,000 it makes each month if Diamond Parking failed to make a management offer that pleased him. Either way, it would not add or subtract one more parking space for the parking public to choose from.
However, the Parking Authority did renegotiate. They increased the number of spaces the City was leasing from Pfeffer to 87 spaces. And they reduced the rent per space to $166 per space per month, equaling three times what private industry had previously been paying next door. The net effect was to reduce the payment to Pfeffer from $29,000 to $14,500, thereby continuing to pay Pfeffer about $10,000 per month more than a private company like Diamond Parking would have been willing to pay.
That’s not quite the way Begich described it when he announced his decision to get tough on negotiations, but that was the net effect.
They also failed to highlight one more major addition to the new deal. The new deal gave Mark Pfeffer what, in real estate technical terms is called a leasehold interest. It conveys valuable leasehold interests in Anchorage’s parking facilities, worth tens of millions of dollars, to Mark Pfeffer and his partners over the next 22 years. Mark Pfeffer is effectively being given a City parking garage so he doesn’t have to spend his own money to build the parking he will need to make his building he is building across the street economically viable.
Mark Pfeffer is being given the right to lease 570 parking spaces in the parking garages of the City of Anchorage.
Rather than making parking available to individuals and letting those individuals choose which developer to lease office space from, Begich has chosen to hand over control of Anchorage’s public parking to one developer. A developer he hopes will remember his generosity for the rest of his political career.
The Privately owned Dimond Parking Company leases parking permits in downtown Anchorage, to the public for $150 per month. The publicly owned Anchorage Parking Authority subsidizes the commercial rate by renting spaces to the public at about half the going commercial rate. In this case, the subsidy promised to Neeser and Pfeffer is about $75 per space per month. Begich’s contract with Neeser and Pfeffer allows Neeser and Pfeffer to re-rent their 570 spaces, at the commercial rate, to future tenants in the building they are building on the other side of the street, directly across Sixth Avenue from the parking garage above the bus depot. The net value of Mark Begich's gift to his friends Neeser and Pfeffer calculates to about $40,000 per month over the next 22 years, or a little over ten million dollars in ill-gotten profits cleverly lifted from the pockets of Anchorage taxpayers over time.
The above described actions are what some politicians call “Salting the System.” Ted Stevens has been doing it for forty years. Ted has imbedded an army of beholding foot soldiers throughout the business community and inside of the bureaucracy that regulates it. It was fear of that army that caused so many people to run for cover when I asked for help in exposing the bribery schemes of Veco and Ted’s son, Ben Stevens.
As for the favors Mark Begich is doing for Mark Pfeffer, future developers may not be so lucky. The individuals they hope to make their tenants will be faced with leasing from Pfeffer or doing without parking. Developers competing with Pfeffer will be faced with testing the waters of the bribability of future Mayors or going out of business and Alaska’s political arena will continue to be dominated by those willing to reap huge rewards at risk of jail time for decades to come.
Unlike the 80% empty parking lot the City took off of Mr. Pfeffer’s hands, the parking garage across the street above the downtown bus depot is about 80 % full from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM five days a week.
At $1 per hour for nine hours per day each space can bring in $9 every business day of the month. Twenty business days times $9 per day equals $180 per month. Subtract 20% to adjust for the fact that on average, each space is occupied only 80% of the time between 8 and 5, and each space has the potential to generate an average of $144 per month. Subtract $75 per space for the base lease that Mark Begich has decided to give Mr. Pfeffer, and, Mark Pfeffer prospectively may soon be collecting $69 per month times 570 spaces, or $39,330 per month. Prior to this agreement, Pfeffer’s booty would have gone straight into the city’s treasury. It is now destined for the pockets of a person Mark Begich hopes to draw from for the duration of his political career.
And just in case you missed it, the City is leasing spaces from Mr. Pfeffer on one side of the street for $166 per month, while agreeing to lease to Mr. Pfeffer on the other side of the street for $75 per month. Meanwhile, to cover the losses, Mark Begich authorized the parking authority to raise the charge for parking meters and double the size of your fines for parking overtime. Mayor Begich attempted to explain away this entire ruse by saying the City needed more parking. However as noted above, this scheme doesn’t add one space to the available parking spaces in Anchorage.
No doubt excuses will be made and the shell game will continue. There is a big difference between the city meeting its obligation to make sure parking is available to the general public and giving parking garages to developers. It makes little difference whether unscrupulous developers extract their ill-gotten booty through jacking up the City’s parking rents, or through stiff-arming competing developers who have no parking, while Pfeffer charges higher rents because he does.
Ted Stevens is now considered vulnerable primarily because of similar corrupt little shell games that I exposed. His shell games are under investigation the U.S. Justice Department and my bet is several of the participants are going to jail before it is over. The only thing that will change if Alaska simply replaces old corrupt politicians with younger ones is who gets the graft.
Last year, the U.S. Justice Department charged Pete Kott with four felonies. One of the charges he was convicted of was violating the federal statute requiring public officials to provide “Honest Services,” and another was conspiracy. Kott was convicted of both and I can’t think of a single reason why the same principles would not apply to the above.
Ray Metcalfe
Metcalfe4Senate.com
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Ray Metcalfe for US Senate Campaign
You're invited to come on down to Henry's Great Alaska Restaurant at 80th and Old Seward in South Anchorage. It's on the east side of the Old Seward Hwy., just a couple of blocks before Dimond, if you're traveling south on Old Seward.
There's no obligation. Just listen in or participate. It's your choice.
Food and refreshments will be available for purchase from the restaurant.
This is a preliminary campaign kickoff meeting and there probably won't be a lot of people. It will be a good opportunity to meet Ray in person and ask your questions. We'll talk about corruption, give you some insight into the current investigations, pass out some yard signs, and sign up some volunteers.
Donations will be accepted but are not required. Curious onlookers are welcome.
We will also be taking reservations for "Ray's three hour tour of corrupt real estate deals," Giving you a first hand look at how dozens of politicians and community leaders arrange for money laundering, kickbacks, and bribes, through the use of real estate.
This will happen Wednesday, June 11th from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Oil Company Bribery of Alaska's Public Officials 1981 to 2008 - Chapter One
By
ConocoPhillips President Jim Bowles just can't seem to get Palin's attention. He said she just doesn't understand the economics of it all. Maybe he should just try the same old fashioned economics his predecessors at ARCO used with former Governor Tony Knowles. Just write her a big check. Click here (PDF) to see what I mean.
Did you look? If you did, ask yourself three questions. Do you remember any time in state history when it was legal to contribute more than $1000 to an elected official or a committee formed for his election or other benefit? Do you remember a time at all when it was legal to write a check to an elected official even though all of his former campaign debts were paid and he or she wasn't running for office? Better yet, do you remember a time when it was legal for corporations to write $15,000, $20,000 and $30,000 in checks to an elected official for any reason?
On second thought, I suspect that if Jim Bowles tried with Palin what worked so well with Knowles, she would soon take steps to provide him with a matched set of metal bracelets.
Read the complete article here...http://alaskareport.com/metcalfe/m91113_tony_knowles.php
Friday, February 01, 2008
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Ron Paul 2008
If you haven't heard about Ron Paul it's because the "mainstream media" is scared of him, he will hurt the Corporate Interests that own America. He will return us to the land of the free by doing away with Personnel Income tax (illegal anyway) and hopefully he will have the US Treasury and Mint control the printing and distribution of American Money, not the Private Federal Reserve Corporation.
Google Ron Paul, Watch his videos on YouTube, learn about this man and tell others, he may be our last, best hope to regain control of America.
Transcript of Jay Leno Interview with Ron Paul, The Tonight Show, Jan. 7, 2008
JAY LENO: All right. My first guest, running for
President of the United States among the Republicans,
he's considered a long-shot maverick, but he's the
number one GOP fundraiser right now, and he's moved up
to number three in many of the latest polls. And
don't forget, Huckabee was unknown. Remember he came
here the night before Iowa? Won the next day. The
power of this show, ladies and gentlemen. Please
welcome Ron Paul.
Hey, thanks for coming on such short notice.
RON PAUL: Thank you. Nice to be here.
JAY LENO: Now, I got to ask you. This seemed really
unfair to me. You were excluded from the debate last
night, and I'm trying to figure out why FOX News chose
not to put you on. What do you --
RON PAUL: You know, we tried to find that out. That
was a natural tendency of ours, to try to figure this
out. But they didn't return our call.
JAY LENO: I mean, did you show up and they go, "No,
no"?
RON PAUL: No, it didn't go that far. You know, I
realized that they really had some property rights
ability there, and I wasn't going to crash the party.
But I've been trying to figure out what to do. And I
thought, "Well, maybe I ought to sue them." And then
I thought, "What am I going to sue them on?" I've
decided what to sue them over, and that is for fraud,
because of this fair and balanced idea, you know.
So -- I just --
JAY LENO: Let me ask you. Here's something
interesting. I found out about this sort of on my
own. We went, "Hey, where's Ron Paul?" And then we
made some phone calls. You weren't -- I saw you
interviewed with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. It wasn't
mentioned. I don't think -- I don't want to be
unfair. I didn't see it on MSNBC or any of the other
cable channels. It seems like a big story: One of
the major candidates or certainly major in terms of --
you have as much prestige as anybody else in
fundraising -- is left out. Why was this not a story?
RON PAUL: You know, I don't know. I can speculate.
If I qualified, as you point out, that I had the
qualification, it must be they didn't want to hear the
message. Maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they're
frightened. Maybe they don't want to hear the truth.
Who knows? We'll have to figure that out.
JAY LENO: Okay. I mean, what do you do? Do you call
FOX News at this point and go, "I want to know why I
was excluded"?
RON PAUL: Yeah.
JAY LENO: You seem like a gentleman. You don't seem
like that type. But it seems like you should be
kicking somebody's ass right now.
I mean, you're being extremely polite for something I
think you got screwed over, quite -- you know, I mean, I
might not necessarily agree with you, but I think, as an
American, we like to see everybody get an equal shot,
especially someone who deserves an equal shot. And it
seems like --
RON PAUL: You know -- the American people believe that way too. And I think
you've tapped into the sentiment of what America thinks.
But you know, even the Republican party in New Hampshire
came to bat. They withdrew support for the parties --
for that debate, so we give them credit. But I think
there are others in the Republican party that might just
not as well hear my comments because, you know, I'm a
strict Constitutionalist, and I believe that our platform
should have meaning, that if I vote that way or support
that position, it contradicts what we're doing, you know,
is sort of like waving a flag, and they don't like that.
I think that's part of it. And FOX, I think, is tied
pretty close to some of the national policy issues. And
I think --
JAY LENO: But you're a Republican.
RON PAUL: Yeah, but they don't -- they're not.
That's the problem.
JAY LENO: Okay.
RON PAUL: See, if I follow the platform and they
don't and then I get on the stage with all the others
who are following -- you know, doing that and then I'm
saying, "Hey, I actually believe in the Constitution.
I believe what we're supposed to be doing, and I
believe my promises," and they're not doing it, then
that's pointing this out to them. And I think there's
a little bit of embarrassment there.
And I think the war has a lot to do with the issue
too, because I strongly opposed the war before we went
in there, and I think there are some who think it's
very important that we be over there. There's some
who actually think we should be there for a hundred
years. I don't think that's the right thing to do.
JAY LENO: Okay. Now, everybody seems to be going
after Romney. Nobody seems to like Romney these days
what's the problem with him?
RON PAUL: I guess they figured he was the
frontrunner, but he's coming down now. But you know,
one thing I'm a little bit afraid of is that they
might be doing that for religious reasons, and I don't
like that. I disagree with Romney on some of the
issues, and he's gone after me on the stage, but that
shouldn't be the reason that he doesn't do well.
JAY LENO: Do you think that's the reason?
RON PAUL: I think subtly there is a little bit of
that. And I don't think that's right. But yeah, they
were after him. But I think he's invited some of it
too, some of the flip-flopping. You know, he did
something when he was in Massachusetts, and now the
positions -- and now --
JAY LENO: Yeah. See, I grew up in Massachusetts.
Seems to be a totally different guy than what --
Massachusetts, he and Ted Kennedy were fighting for
the most liberal guy, it seemed.
RON PAUL: Yeah. And then when he was running for the
Senate, he said some things that he doesn't say
anymore.
JAY LENO: Right.
RON PAUL: And the politicians, some of them -- I
guess you've noticed over the years, sometimes they'll
say one thing to one crowd and something to another
crowd. I think that's something that nobody's ever
accused me of doing. I say the same thing, no matter
which ear it is and which crowd it is.
JAY LENO: And you're tied with Giuliani in
New Hampshire. Is that about right? You're --
RON PAUL: That's right, essentially tied.
JAY LENO: You're in the same place.
RON PAUL: Of course, you know, he had 4 percent in
Iowa, and I had 10. And that didn't give me
qualification.
JAY LENO: I find this fascinating. I mean, I know
Mitt Romney spends his own money. He's got quite a
personal fortune.
RON PAUL: Yeah. He has more than I do.
JAY LENO: But you have raised more money from
outside, you know --
RON PAUL: Yeah, I think we raised the most of anybody
in the fourth quarter. Of course, they haven't
released all their numbers yet, which means they're
not competing. But we raised almost $20 million. And
I say "we." It really is "we" because, you know, the
grass roots do it, these meet-up groups who we have,
like 1400 meet-up groups around the country.
And they have fun doing this. They have a day, and they
say, "Let's all send Ron Paul some money on this day."
And they go and do it, and they break all kinds of
records. Pretty amazing
JAY LENO: Let's take a break. When we come back, I
want to ask you two things. I want you to think about
this. Don't tell me now. When we come back, I want
to find out -- let's say you get the nomination.
Which of that field would you pick as your running
mate? Don't tell me now.
RON PAUL: OK. I'll have to think hard about that
one.
JAY LENO: What do you think of the Democratic
candidates?
More with Ron Paul after this.
Welcome back. We're here with Presidential candidate Ron
Paul.
OK, let's say you win the nomination. Now, most people
that win usually pick from the other candidates in the
field. Which of the other Republicans do you choose as
your running mate?
RON PAUL: Well, the one that agrees with me on all
the issues.
But they don't seem to be very agreeable right now, so I
would have to talk to them and see if they've changed
their mind, and then I would have to interpret whether
they're very sincere about it.
JAY LENO: But anybody you like? Anybody that's kind
of close but not quite?
RON PAUL: Well, not yet. We're still working on
that. You know, when we had a little confrontation
early on in the debates with Mayor Giuliani when he
was confused about what causes terrorism --
-- I sent him some books. And I said, "Please read these
books." But so far it doesn't sound like he's read his
books. He hasn't done his homework.
(Applause.)
JAY LENO: Let me ask you something about this
terrorist thing, and clear this up, because you hear
things secondhand. You said that we were to blame?
RON PAUL: No, no, not really.
JAY LENO: Okay.
RON PAUL: Our policies have a lot to do with it. The
people who are to blame are the thugs.
JAY LENO: You're not talking about 9/11?
RON PAUL: Yeah, I'm talking about 9/11. The thugs
that killed our people, that came over here, they're a
hundred percent to blame. But that's sort of like
saying if somebody gets murdered, the murderer is a
hundred percent responsible. But people always look
for motives. If you're looking for the murderer, you
have to know motives. So we have to look for the
motives of these people who go insane to try to kill
us. And the motives are related to the fact that we
occupy their countries. Even before 9/11, we were
plenty -- a lot involved in the Middle East. That is
very significant. I do not believe for a minute that
they come here only because we're free and prosperous.
That isn't the case. There may be a few, but you
can't motivate a people to do that. So you and I, the
American people, they're not responsible. But some of
our bad policies in the Middle East now for 50, 60
years -- we used our CIA to install the shah in Iran.
If somebody did that to us, we'd be pretty annoyed.
Or if the Chinese had military bases on our land or
said that they came here to protect their oil, the
American people would be pretty outraged. The
Republicans and Democrats would be joined together.
They would be really very annoyed.
JAY LENO: We have their toys at least. We have the
Chinese toys.
RON PAUL: That's it. That's better than --
JAY LENO: You don't support the surge?
RON PAUL: No, I didn't vote for the surge. Hopefully
the surge had something to do with it; there's less
violence. But I'm afraid what happened is that we
lost the south. The south now is all controlled by
the Shiites, and they're aligned with the Iranians.
And the British left. So we more or less lost the
south, and there's more peace there and less killing.
But there's more killing over there. It's still very,
very disruptive. I'm scared to death that we're going
to be in Pakistan before it's over. And we still
haven't taken off the table any option to go into
Iran. We don't need that. The American people don't
need a bigger war. Besides, we're broke. We don't
have any money to afford this anyway.
JAY LENO: Do you find it weird that people are more
concerned about the economy now than they are about
the war? The economy seems to beat out the war.
RON PAUL: Absolutely. The economy has become a big
issue just in this last year since I've been running,
but it should have been expected. But it is connected
to the war. The other night when they asked the
question, "Well, if we can afford a trillion dollars
fighting this war in Iraq, we can afford a trillion
dollars for medical care for the people," yes, that's
where our money is. The trillion dollars went to the
war. It should be here taking care of our people here
at home.
JAY LENO: And you say also we need to stop printing
dollars. What was that all about?
RON PAUL: Well, it's very clear -- you know, they
make fun of the fact that I refer to the Constitution,
that only gold and silver should be legal tender. And
the founders understood what runaway inflation was all
about.
JAY LENO: Well, it used to be; right?
RON PAUL: Yeah, sure, up until 1971. But the
founders had runaway inflation with the continental
dollar, and they say, "No more bills of credit," which
is paper money. And people make fun of what I say
about "Have something solidly behind the currency so
governments can't print it." But I think the silly
notion is that when government, the politicians --
trust them? When they need a little bit of money, let
me print it? They tend to do that. Then they wonder
why does the value of the dollar go down? They don't
talk about printing money. They talk about, "We have
to do something about the value of the dollar. The
Canadian dollar now is worth more than the American
dollar." It's related to the fact that we allow the
politicians to print money when they want to. So we
have to deal with monetary policy. We can't escape
it. It's coming.
JAY LENO: Do you think Americans really want change?
Because everybody says, "Oh" -- every candidate's got
change. I've heard the word "change" more than
anything else, yet we still seem to keep doing the
same things. We don't really want that much change,
do we?
RON PAUL: You know, I think it's a mixed bag. I
think the American people want change.
And the politicians know that, so everybody gets up and
says, "I'm for change. I'm for change." But the whole
thing is, is what kind of change? You know, right now
whether you like Republicans or Democrats, does foreign
policy change? No. Does monetary policy change, and are
they going to even talk about it? Does fiscal policy
change? No. We elect the conservative Republicans, and
they make the deficit worse than the rest. Yeah, the
American people are tired of that. They want real
change. And to me, that means the only significant
change we ought to have is get enough people in
Washington that read the Constitution, obey the
Constitution, do only the things that we're allowed to
do.
JAY LENO: Let's say you're not running for President.
You're sitting home in Texas. You're not in either
party. Which of the Democrats do you like? Which is
closest to --
RON PAUL: Closest to it. Well, that doesn't mean I
have to vote for them.
JAY LENO: I'm just saying which -- if you had to pick
someone from the Democratic field, who do you like?
RON PAUL: Well, a good friend of mine that I talk to
all the time on foreign policy is Dennis, Dennis
Kucinich, because he understands civil liberties. He
understands a lot about foreign policy. And sometimes
when there's only two of us that will vote in the
House against expanding our war in the Middle East, he
and I will be voting together. So I have a lot of
respect for him, but we would disagree on economic
policy. But it's good that you have allies on both
sides of the aisle.
JAY LENO: Now, I know you've got to go back to
New Hampshire tonight; right?
RON PAUL: That is correct.
JAY LENO: Well, thanks for coming. I just wanted to
clear up that thing. I thought it was blatantly
unfair, and thanks for coming by and giving us a
little --
RON PAUL: Thank you.
JAY LENO: Ron Paul. We'll be right back.
Google Ron Paul, Watch his videos on YouTube, learn about this man and tell others, he may be our last, best hope to regain control of America.
Transcript of Jay Leno Interview with Ron Paul, The Tonight Show, Jan. 7, 2008
Courtesy of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno 9:40 PM PST, January 7, 2008
JAY LENO: All right. My first guest, running forPresident of the United States among the Republicans,
he's considered a long-shot maverick, but he's the
number one GOP fundraiser right now, and he's moved up
to number three in many of the latest polls. And
don't forget, Huckabee was unknown. Remember he came
here the night before Iowa? Won the next day. The
power of this show, ladies and gentlemen. Please
welcome Ron Paul.
Hey, thanks for coming on such short notice.
RON PAUL: Thank you. Nice to be here.
JAY LENO: Now, I got to ask you. This seemed really
unfair to me. You were excluded from the debate last
night, and I'm trying to figure out why FOX News chose
not to put you on. What do you --
RON PAUL: You know, we tried to find that out. That
was a natural tendency of ours, to try to figure this
out. But they didn't return our call.
JAY LENO: I mean, did you show up and they go, "No,
no"?
RON PAUL: No, it didn't go that far. You know, I
realized that they really had some property rights
ability there, and I wasn't going to crash the party.
But I've been trying to figure out what to do. And I
thought, "Well, maybe I ought to sue them." And then
I thought, "What am I going to sue them on?" I've
decided what to sue them over, and that is for fraud,
because of this fair and balanced idea, you know.
So -- I just --
JAY LENO: Let me ask you. Here's something
interesting. I found out about this sort of on my
own. We went, "Hey, where's Ron Paul?" And then we
made some phone calls. You weren't -- I saw you
interviewed with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. It wasn't
mentioned. I don't think -- I don't want to be
unfair. I didn't see it on MSNBC or any of the other
cable channels. It seems like a big story: One of
the major candidates or certainly major in terms of --
you have as much prestige as anybody else in
fundraising -- is left out. Why was this not a story?
RON PAUL: You know, I don't know. I can speculate.
If I qualified, as you point out, that I had the
qualification, it must be they didn't want to hear the
message. Maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they're
frightened. Maybe they don't want to hear the truth.
Who knows? We'll have to figure that out.
JAY LENO: Okay. I mean, what do you do? Do you call
FOX News at this point and go, "I want to know why I
was excluded"?
RON PAUL: Yeah.
JAY LENO: You seem like a gentleman. You don't seem
like that type. But it seems like you should be
kicking somebody's ass right now.
I mean, you're being extremely polite for something I
think you got screwed over, quite -- you know, I mean, I
might not necessarily agree with you, but I think, as an
American, we like to see everybody get an equal shot,
especially someone who deserves an equal shot. And it
seems like --
RON PAUL: You know -- the American people believe that way too. And I think
you've tapped into the sentiment of what America thinks.
But you know, even the Republican party in New Hampshire
came to bat. They withdrew support for the parties --
for that debate, so we give them credit. But I think
there are others in the Republican party that might just
not as well hear my comments because, you know, I'm a
strict Constitutionalist, and I believe that our platform
should have meaning, that if I vote that way or support
that position, it contradicts what we're doing, you know,
is sort of like waving a flag, and they don't like that.
I think that's part of it. And FOX, I think, is tied
pretty close to some of the national policy issues. And
I think --
JAY LENO: But you're a Republican.
RON PAUL: Yeah, but they don't -- they're not.
That's the problem.
JAY LENO: Okay.
RON PAUL: See, if I follow the platform and they
don't and then I get on the stage with all the others
who are following -- you know, doing that and then I'm
saying, "Hey, I actually believe in the Constitution.
I believe what we're supposed to be doing, and I
believe my promises," and they're not doing it, then
that's pointing this out to them. And I think there's
a little bit of embarrassment there.
And I think the war has a lot to do with the issue
too, because I strongly opposed the war before we went
in there, and I think there are some who think it's
very important that we be over there. There's some
who actually think we should be there for a hundred
years. I don't think that's the right thing to do.
JAY LENO: Okay. Now, everybody seems to be going
after Romney. Nobody seems to like Romney these days
what's the problem with him?
RON PAUL: I guess they figured he was the
frontrunner, but he's coming down now. But you know,
one thing I'm a little bit afraid of is that they
might be doing that for religious reasons, and I don't
like that. I disagree with Romney on some of the
issues, and he's gone after me on the stage, but that
shouldn't be the reason that he doesn't do well.
JAY LENO: Do you think that's the reason?
RON PAUL: I think subtly there is a little bit of
that. And I don't think that's right. But yeah, they
were after him. But I think he's invited some of it
too, some of the flip-flopping. You know, he did
something when he was in Massachusetts, and now the
positions -- and now --
JAY LENO: Yeah. See, I grew up in Massachusetts.
Seems to be a totally different guy than what --
Massachusetts, he and Ted Kennedy were fighting for
the most liberal guy, it seemed.
RON PAUL: Yeah. And then when he was running for the
Senate, he said some things that he doesn't say
anymore.
JAY LENO: Right.
RON PAUL: And the politicians, some of them -- I
guess you've noticed over the years, sometimes they'll
say one thing to one crowd and something to another
crowd. I think that's something that nobody's ever
accused me of doing. I say the same thing, no matter
which ear it is and which crowd it is.
JAY LENO: And you're tied with Giuliani in
New Hampshire. Is that about right? You're --
RON PAUL: That's right, essentially tied.
JAY LENO: You're in the same place.
RON PAUL: Of course, you know, he had 4 percent in
Iowa, and I had 10. And that didn't give me
qualification.
JAY LENO: I find this fascinating. I mean, I know
Mitt Romney spends his own money. He's got quite a
personal fortune.
RON PAUL: Yeah. He has more than I do.
JAY LENO: But you have raised more money from
outside, you know --
RON PAUL: Yeah, I think we raised the most of anybody
in the fourth quarter. Of course, they haven't
released all their numbers yet, which means they're
not competing. But we raised almost $20 million. And
I say "we." It really is "we" because, you know, the
grass roots do it, these meet-up groups who we have,
like 1400 meet-up groups around the country.
And they have fun doing this. They have a day, and they
say, "Let's all send Ron Paul some money on this day."
And they go and do it, and they break all kinds of
records. Pretty amazing
JAY LENO: Let's take a break. When we come back, I
want to ask you two things. I want you to think about
this. Don't tell me now. When we come back, I want
to find out -- let's say you get the nomination.
Which of that field would you pick as your running
mate? Don't tell me now.
RON PAUL: OK. I'll have to think hard about that
one.
JAY LENO: What do you think of the Democratic
candidates?
More with Ron Paul after this.
Welcome back. We're here with Presidential candidate Ron
Paul.
OK, let's say you win the nomination. Now, most people
that win usually pick from the other candidates in the
field. Which of the other Republicans do you choose as
your running mate?
RON PAUL: Well, the one that agrees with me on all
the issues.
But they don't seem to be very agreeable right now, so I
would have to talk to them and see if they've changed
their mind, and then I would have to interpret whether
they're very sincere about it.
JAY LENO: But anybody you like? Anybody that's kind
of close but not quite?
RON PAUL: Well, not yet. We're still working on
that. You know, when we had a little confrontation
early on in the debates with Mayor Giuliani when he
was confused about what causes terrorism --
-- I sent him some books. And I said, "Please read these
books." But so far it doesn't sound like he's read his
books. He hasn't done his homework.
(Applause.)
JAY LENO: Let me ask you something about this
terrorist thing, and clear this up, because you hear
things secondhand. You said that we were to blame?
RON PAUL: No, no, not really.
JAY LENO: Okay.
RON PAUL: Our policies have a lot to do with it. The
people who are to blame are the thugs.
JAY LENO: You're not talking about 9/11?
RON PAUL: Yeah, I'm talking about 9/11. The thugs
that killed our people, that came over here, they're a
hundred percent to blame. But that's sort of like
saying if somebody gets murdered, the murderer is a
hundred percent responsible. But people always look
for motives. If you're looking for the murderer, you
have to know motives. So we have to look for the
motives of these people who go insane to try to kill
us. And the motives are related to the fact that we
occupy their countries. Even before 9/11, we were
plenty -- a lot involved in the Middle East. That is
very significant. I do not believe for a minute that
they come here only because we're free and prosperous.
That isn't the case. There may be a few, but you
can't motivate a people to do that. So you and I, the
American people, they're not responsible. But some of
our bad policies in the Middle East now for 50, 60
years -- we used our CIA to install the shah in Iran.
If somebody did that to us, we'd be pretty annoyed.
Or if the Chinese had military bases on our land or
said that they came here to protect their oil, the
American people would be pretty outraged. The
Republicans and Democrats would be joined together.
They would be really very annoyed.
JAY LENO: We have their toys at least. We have the
Chinese toys.
RON PAUL: That's it. That's better than --
JAY LENO: You don't support the surge?
RON PAUL: No, I didn't vote for the surge. Hopefully
the surge had something to do with it; there's less
violence. But I'm afraid what happened is that we
lost the south. The south now is all controlled by
the Shiites, and they're aligned with the Iranians.
And the British left. So we more or less lost the
south, and there's more peace there and less killing.
But there's more killing over there. It's still very,
very disruptive. I'm scared to death that we're going
to be in Pakistan before it's over. And we still
haven't taken off the table any option to go into
Iran. We don't need that. The American people don't
need a bigger war. Besides, we're broke. We don't
have any money to afford this anyway.
JAY LENO: Do you find it weird that people are more
concerned about the economy now than they are about
the war? The economy seems to beat out the war.
RON PAUL: Absolutely. The economy has become a big
issue just in this last year since I've been running,
but it should have been expected. But it is connected
to the war. The other night when they asked the
question, "Well, if we can afford a trillion dollars
fighting this war in Iraq, we can afford a trillion
dollars for medical care for the people," yes, that's
where our money is. The trillion dollars went to the
war. It should be here taking care of our people here
at home.
JAY LENO: And you say also we need to stop printing
dollars. What was that all about?
RON PAUL: Well, it's very clear -- you know, they
make fun of the fact that I refer to the Constitution,
that only gold and silver should be legal tender. And
the founders understood what runaway inflation was all
about.
JAY LENO: Well, it used to be; right?
RON PAUL: Yeah, sure, up until 1971. But the
founders had runaway inflation with the continental
dollar, and they say, "No more bills of credit," which
is paper money. And people make fun of what I say
about "Have something solidly behind the currency so
governments can't print it." But I think the silly
notion is that when government, the politicians --
trust them? When they need a little bit of money, let
me print it? They tend to do that. Then they wonder
why does the value of the dollar go down? They don't
talk about printing money. They talk about, "We have
to do something about the value of the dollar. The
Canadian dollar now is worth more than the American
dollar." It's related to the fact that we allow the
politicians to print money when they want to. So we
have to deal with monetary policy. We can't escape
it. It's coming.
JAY LENO: Do you think Americans really want change?
Because everybody says, "Oh" -- every candidate's got
change. I've heard the word "change" more than
anything else, yet we still seem to keep doing the
same things. We don't really want that much change,
do we?
RON PAUL: You know, I think it's a mixed bag. I
think the American people want change.
And the politicians know that, so everybody gets up and
says, "I'm for change. I'm for change." But the whole
thing is, is what kind of change? You know, right now
whether you like Republicans or Democrats, does foreign
policy change? No. Does monetary policy change, and are
they going to even talk about it? Does fiscal policy
change? No. We elect the conservative Republicans, and
they make the deficit worse than the rest. Yeah, the
American people are tired of that. They want real
change. And to me, that means the only significant
change we ought to have is get enough people in
Washington that read the Constitution, obey the
Constitution, do only the things that we're allowed to
do.
JAY LENO: Let's say you're not running for President.
You're sitting home in Texas. You're not in either
party. Which of the Democrats do you like? Which is
closest to --
RON PAUL: Closest to it. Well, that doesn't mean I
have to vote for them.
JAY LENO: I'm just saying which -- if you had to pick
someone from the Democratic field, who do you like?
RON PAUL: Well, a good friend of mine that I talk to
all the time on foreign policy is Dennis, Dennis
Kucinich, because he understands civil liberties. He
understands a lot about foreign policy. And sometimes
when there's only two of us that will vote in the
House against expanding our war in the Middle East, he
and I will be voting together. So I have a lot of
respect for him, but we would disagree on economic
policy. But it's good that you have allies on both
sides of the aisle.
JAY LENO: Now, I know you've got to go back to
New Hampshire tonight; right?
RON PAUL: That is correct.
JAY LENO: Well, thanks for coming. I just wanted to
clear up that thing. I thought it was blatantly
unfair, and thanks for coming by and giving us a
little --
RON PAUL: Thank you.
JAY LENO: Ron Paul. We'll be right back.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
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