Why T. Boone Pickens' 'Clean Energy' Plan Is a Ponzi Scheme

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on August 21, 2008, Printed on August 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/95471/

http://www.alternet.org/story/95471/

"If you are going out of business, you don't go down with the ship, you get another ship. For us, it's natural gas." -- T. Boone Pickens, "Becoming a Billionaire"

You can't always get what you want, the Rolling Stones counseled. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need. Factor billions of dollars, questionable loyalties and a privatization rap sheet invested more in profit than people into the equation, and you usually can get both what you want and what you need. In the case of hyper-loaded oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, that means having your cake on climate crisis, fossil fuel addiction, eminent domain, water privatization and corporate earnings -- and eating it too.

In July, the oil magnate unveiled a well-publicized campaign, the Pickens Plan, which begins with an obvious premise: "America is addicted to foreign oil." Pickens' proposal to kick the habit is straightforward and simple: "Building new wind-generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years."

Sounds fair enough, especially given that Pickens and climate-crisis herald Al Gore have melded minds on the issue. But not hard enough, which is where the cracks in the Pickens Plan begin. "(Gore) asked if we could we join together and do something," Pickens explained to Bloomberg News. "I told him no, because global warming is on page two for me. Page one is foreign oil.''

That page seems to be recently written. As previously noted on either side of the red-blue divide, Pickens has funneled millions into 527s like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, helping derail John Kerry's bid for the White House in 2004. He simultaneously committed hundreds of thousands on top of that to the election and inauguration of both Bush administrations, both spearheaded by fossil fools whose kinship with foreign oil producers not only launched an invasion into an oil-rich but nevertheless sovereign nation, but also nearly tripled the price of oil in seven years and handed campaign contributors like Exxon the most bloated earnings in corporate history.

Sure, Pickens eventually decided to stop funding political campaigns, but that deathbed conversion happened the same July that the Pickens Plan ramped up its nearly $60 million media blitz.

It gets worse. Pickens is currently the head of BP Capital Management, a secretive hedge fund (aren't they all?) that has extensive connections to the magnate's hated "foreign oil" interests. The most glaring example from its investment portfolio is Halliburton, which was once run by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, is currently headquartered not in America but Dubai, and whose main business segments and subsidiaries involve oil exploration, construction, production and refining. And that's not mentioning its resume on rampant fraud and corruption, especially in Iraq but also elsewhere, which has so far cost American taxpayers billions.

But Halliburton isn't the only BP Cap holding that stinks. Pickens is also heavily invested in Schlumberger, the world's largest oil services corporation; nuclear and conventional energy powerhouse Shaw Group; the embattled ex-Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown and Root and so on. For a very rich man who decries the influence foreign oil has on American life, Pickens sure hasn't put his money where his mouth is. He's put his money where the oil is.

"Even under the Pickens Plan," explains Treehugger's Matthew McDermott, "the U.S. will be importing a significant amount of oil. It's a step toward energy independence in that it expands renewable energy production, but I think framing this debate in terms of energy independence isn't the way to go. If you want to take a populist angle on this, pushing the very real benefits that wind power and renewables in general can have in local economies stands on much more solid ground."

If Pickens were a populist, that might be true. But he's not; he's a stone-cold capitalist whose taste for profit outweighs his desire for the common good. Pickens may have spent $3 billion on wind farms to generate enough electricity to take the load off natural gas, which is currently used to heat homes and more, but only so that it can be used for cars and trucks.

Those are the shells being moved around in this particular game. But shuffling responsibilities and resources will do nothing to forestall our dystopian environmental future, unless those resources burn clean. And what the Pickens Plan does not mention is that the oil tycoon has been deeply invested in natural gas for decades. If the entire American fleet were to switch over to natural gas, the air would possibly (but not probably) be around 30 percent cleaner in a decade, but Pickens would be richer in much higher percentages. And while the air would only stay cleaner for a short while, Pickens would stay loaded beyond the grave.

"Pickens has stated on numerous occasions that, of course, he's going to make money off the Pickens Plan," adds McDermott. "That's the nature of what he does and has done. But natural gas is probably better used to generate electricity than as a fuel source in cars. A better solution is electrically powered vehicles. While there are still technical issues, if our transportation fleet was all-electric, you could power it from whatever is the most regionally appropriate way of generating electricity cleanly and cheaply. As our ability to generate clean power improves, there would be theoretically no need to change the transportation fleet."

It's much simpler than that, argues Food and Water Watch's Wenonah Hauter. "Gas is not the solution for the future, no matter how the gas industry tries to portray it."

The biggest stain on the Pickens Plan is its architect's distasteful history of water privatization. According to Hauter, it is probably the biggest reason, more than all the aforementioned, not to trust him.

"With the water crisis looming in the future and his track record on selling water regardless of the environmental cost," she asserts, "Pickens will be viewed in the future as irresponsible. His background on promoting renewable energy can't erase his current disregard for the sustainable use of water. He recently supplemented his property holdings in Texas with 200,000 acres of land atop the Ogallala Aquifer. Under Texas law, this purchase entitles Mesa Water, Pickens' new company, to take more than 320,000 acre-feet of water, equivalent to more than 104 million gallons, from the property. The Ogallala is already severely depleted, and it's outrageous that he can stick a pipe in the ground and suck this water out without any environmental impact assessment."

Pickens has used all manner of stratagems to obtain rights to what is not a recreational, but an essential, resource for supporting life on the planet. He has spent more than $100 million to acquire water from outlying areas in Texas to sell to its metropolitan hubs, and although he hasn't yet found a buyer, it's only a matter of time. Blue gold is the new black gold, and it won't be long until the world is thirsty from one end to the other. Using his wind investment to fuel his water privatization has only made things worse.

"Pickens used the enormous wind farm erected on his property as a means to lobby for the right to pipe the Ogallala water to a major metropolitan center," Hauter adds. "He successfully passed a bill through the Texas Legislature to allow a water-supply district to transport alternative energy and water in a single corridor. Pickens also successfully loosened the legal definitions of a water district, allowing him to invoke the right of eminent domain so that he could build the pipeline through the property of several neighboring landowners. We should be concerned with these types of underhanded business dealings."

We should be concerned everywhere they occur, one might add, not just in Texas. That means putting aside the media buzz and fawning articles and seeing the Pickens Plan for what it is: a resource power grab for a post-oil oil tycoon. Natural gas will not save us from environmental catastrophe, nor will it wean us off foreign oil. Wind farms are a great start, but they deserve to be more than leadoff pitchers for natural gas, whose implementation into our fleet will do nothing to kick-start the massive emissions reductions we are going to need. Everything from oceanic dead zones and bizarre storms to desertification and societal collapse are on the burner. And we need to cool it down, rather than heat it up.

In the end, the Pickens Plan will not make that happen, no matter what kind of deathbed conversion T. Boone Pickens is experiencing.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/95471/

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
To make an appointment email: cddstarcats@yahoo.com

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"A Nation of Sheep breeds a Government of Wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow

"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes

LOOK AT THE IDIOT!





What is 4 minus three

That dumb ass!
I wish there was some kind of an assurance that he will not be President for another 4 years!

Gee . . .I wish I had a larger picture than this one I got off of the web.

Claudia D. Dikinis http://starcats.com >^..^< Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium To make an appointment email: cddstarcats@yahoo.com ***************************************************************** "A Nation of Sheep breeds a Government of Wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow "By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes

WOO-HOO cat lovers!
Venezuela has found the first fossils of an extinct scimitar cat

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20080812063943454C550770

Caracas - Venezuela has found the first fossils of an extinct scimitar cat - of the saber-toothed cat genus - in South America, during oil prospecting activities south-east of Caracas, paleontologists announced on Monday.

"It's South America's most important discovery in 60 years," Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Investigation paleontologist Ascanio Rincon said.

He said fossils of six scimitar cats, or Homotherium, were found along with those of panthers, wolves, camels, condors, ducks and horses, all from about 1,8-million years ago, by a Petroleos de Venezuela team looking for oil in Monagas state in 2006.

The most important find, he said, was the complete skull of a scimitar cat, an animal never before found in South America.

"For us it's a milestone and opens a window to the past."

The scimitar cat, a smaller version of the saber-toothed tiger with a hyena-like appearance and smaller, crenellated teeth, was believed to have only inhabited Africa, Eurasia and North America between five million and 10 000 years ago.

Rincon estimated the scimitar cat became extinct in South America about 500 000 years ago.

He said the finding proved the scimitar cat shared the same habitat with the saber-toothed tiger in South America. Saber-toothed tiger fossils have been found in both North and South America.

Rincon said the fossil find would expand his research into the lifestyle of the extinct big cats.

How can we stop this monster!?! Who will advocate for us? For the animals!? Congress is NOT listening!

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Bush to relax protected species rules

08/11/2008 @ 5:44 pm

Filed by The Associated Press

by DINA CAPPIELLO

http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=11971

WASHINGTON — Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.

The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1988. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

The changes would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize. Government wildlife experts currently perform tens of thousands of such reviews each year.

"If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years," said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.

Under current law, federal agencies must consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or to damage habitat, even if no harm seems likely. This initial review usually results in accommodations that better protect the 1,353 animals and plants in the U.S. listed as threatened or endangered and determines whether a more formal analysis is warranted.

The Interior Department said such consultations are no longer necessary because federal agencies have developed expertise to review their own construction and development projects, according to the 30-page draft obtained by the AP.

"We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations," the proposal said.

The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, H. Dale Hall, in an interview with the AP Monday, said the changes will help focus expertise on projects that have serious repercussions for species.

"We are trying to be more efficient, which means not do consultations that result in a difference for the species," Hall said.

A National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman declined Monday to discuss the draft proposal since it had yet to be published.

The new rules are expected to be proposed formally in coming weeks. They would be subject to a 60-day public comment period before being finalized by the Interior Department, giving the administration enough time to impose them before November's presidential election. A new administration could freeze any pending regulations or reverse them, a process that could take months. Congress could also overturn the rules through legislation, but that could take even longer.

The proposal was drafted largely by attorneys in the general counsel's offices of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department, according to an official with the National Marine Fisheries Service, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan hadn't yet been circulated publicly. The two agencies' experts were not consulted until last week, the official said.

Between 1998 and 2002, the Fish and Wildlife Service conducted 300,000 consultations. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which evaluates projects affecting marine species, conducts about 1,300 reviews each year.

The reviews have helped safeguard protected species such as bald eagles, Florida panthers and whooping cranes. A federal government handbook from 1998 described the consultations as "some of the most valuable and powerful tools to conserve listed species."

In recent years, however, some federal agencies and private developers have complained that the process results in delays and increased construction costs.

"We have always had concerns with respect to the need for streamlining and making it a more efficient process," said Joe Nelson, a lawyer for the National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition, a trade group for home builders and the paper and farming industry.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the proposed changes illegal.

"This proposed regulation is another in a continuing stream of proposals to repeal our landmark environmental laws through the back door," she said. "If this proposed regulation had been in place, it would have undermined our ability to protect the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the gray whale."

The Bush administration and Congress have attempted with mixed success to change the law.

In 2003, the administration imposed similar rules that would have allowed agencies to approve new pesticides and projects to reduce wildfire risks without asking the opinion of government scientists about whether threatened or endangered species and habitats might be affected. The pesticide rule was later overturned in court. The Interior Department, along with the Forest Service, is currently being sued over the rule governing wildfire prevention.

In 2005, the House passed a bill that would have made similar changes to the Endangered Species Act, but the bill died in the Senate.

The sponsor of that bill, then-House Resources chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., told the AP Monday that allowing agencies to judge for themselves the effects of a project will not harm species or habitat.

"There is no way they can rubber stamp everything because they will end up in court for every decision," he said.

But internal reviews by the National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that about half the unilateral evaluations by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that determined wildfire prevention projects were unlikely to harm protected species were not legally or scientifically valid.

Those had been permitted under the 2003 rule changes.

"This is the fox guarding the hen house. The interests of agencies will outweigh species protection interests," said Eric Glitzenstein, the attorney representing environmental groups in the lawsuit over the wildfire prevention regulations. "What they are talking about doing is eviscerating the Endangered Species Act."

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
To make an appointment email: cddstarcats@yahoo.com

*****************************************************************

"A Nation of Sheep breeds a Government of Wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow

"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes

These are incredible photos of a White Bengal Tiger named Odin.




Odin is six years old and 10 feet long from tail to nose. Odin lives at a Zoo in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco.



Odin with his British trainer Lee Munro.



Odin was hand-raised at the zoo. And after he was weaned, his British trainer Lee Munro discovered his remarkable skill.



When a lump of meat was thrown into a pool of water, Odin would happily dive in after it.

'He makes a funny face - and it's actually to close his nostrils to stop the water from going into his nose.'



Not all big cats enjoy the water but for Tigers from the hot climate of South-East Asia it's one way to cool down.


'Plus they hunt in and around water. They're an ambush predator so they wait for prey to come down to the water.'



'When you actually see him dive underwater he looks so graceful,'



'Odin loves the water and he loves food,' he said. 'Not all big cats will dive and swim underwater even for meat treats.'



Munro said tigers were the most powerful swimmers out of all land-dwelling animals.


Tragically, within our lifetimes, zoos might be the only places left to see these magnificent animals.



A century ago there were about 100,000 tigers in the wild. Now there are just 2,500 adults, with the Bengal variety almost extinct. None has been seen in the wild since the last white tiger was shot and killed in 1958.



White tigers are the most rare. They get their white color from an unusual and extremely rare genetic combination.



I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did.

Claudia . . .I knew it, I knew it! Bush is a sissy!

Jammy

Suskind: Bush ordered fake letter linking Iraq to 9/11

08/05/2008 @ 8:46 am

Filed by David Edwards and Nick Juliano

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Suskind_Bush_ordered_fake_letter_linking_0805.html

A blockbuster new book from investigative journalist Ron Suskind adds another revelation to the growing canon demonstrating the lengths to which President Bush and members of his administration lied, misled and deceived the American people to pursue its invasion of Iraq.

Bush allegedly ordered the CIA to forge a handwritten letter from the head of Iraq's intelligence service to Saddam Hussein that purported to link the Iraqi dictator to the ringleader of the hijackers who toppled the Twin Towers on 9/11, according to news accounts of Suskind's new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Such use of an intelligence service to influence domestic political debate could be an impeachable offense, Suskind writes.

Politico's Mike Allen reports:

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.” [...]

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.

The faked letter was first reported as genuine by the conservative London Sunday Telegraph in December 2003. Right-wing commentators and Bush defenders harped on that disclosure as evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. According to Suskind's book, the CIA had been protecting Habbush in the early months of the invasion; the agency persuaded the Iraqi intelligence chief to write the letter in his own handwriting and paid him $5 million.

CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante reported Tuesday that Suskind's sources had seen a draft of the letter written on White House stationary.

The Way of the World is Suskind's third book on the inner workings of the Bush administration, joining The One Percent Doctrine, which outlined the often extreme anti-terror policies advanced by the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, and The Price of Loyalty, which painted a picture of the early day's of Bush's presidency with the help of ousted former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Predictably, the White House is unhappy with Suskind's latest offering and the Bush administration is relying on its trademark push-back of insulting the messenger. White House spokesman Tony Fratto insulted Suskind, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Wall Street Journal, as a practitioner of "gutter journalism," and called the allegations "absurd."

Suskind appeared Tuesday on NBC's Today Show for interviews about the latest book.

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
To make an appointment email: cddstarcats@yahoo.com

*****************************************************************

"A Nation of Sheep breeds a Government of Wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow

"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes

Claudia sent this to me and I found it quite fitting for this month, this year and every year!

Jammy

Another Election Season, Another Political Prosecution in Alabama

Scott Horton

February 1, 2008

The morning calm in the small Alabama town of Toney, located near Huntsville, was broken at 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning. A team of five FBI agents, accompanied by a prison matron, pounded on the door. When the man of the house answered, he was forced into the yard, shirtless in the early morning cold. The team had come for his wife, Sue Schmitz. She was dragged out of her bathroom, where she was taking a shower, handcuffed, breaking her flesh and scraping her wrists, and hustled off to prison.

Who was this threat to the community? Sue Schmitz is a diminutive, 63-year-old retired social studies teacher who has lived in the town for 38 years, roughly 20 of them as a civics teacher. She is loved in the community and among her students is legendary for her passion for civics and her outreach to the disadvantaged. The dream of her life was to let the fire of civic spirit catch on in communities and among families on the margin of society, where the danger of drug abuse and criminality are the highest. She dedicated her life to it. She launched a program called “We the People,” designed to build civic spirit and interest in participatory democracy among school children. And Sue Schmitz’s advocacy of civic engagement led directly to her conflict with U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, who considers it to be criminal. But one other fact figures directly in this drama. Schmitz is a Democratic member of the state legislature.

The Alabama G.O.P. is busy revving up its plans for the fall elections, and today gives us a unique opportunity to see its various limbs moving in perfect concert. The party’s objective is to take control of the state legislature. The party’s leader, Governor Bob Riley, announced that if he can raise $7 million, the party can take control of the legislature in 2010. Riley is busy mustering every tool at his disposal to accomplish that goal. That, of course, is all politics as usual–the sort of thing that goes on in states in every corner of the country. But there’s something exceedingly rotten in Alabama. And it’s revealed when we take careful stock of how Governor Riley and his party go about implementing their plans.

First, where do we read about this? On the editorial page of one of the three Newhouse newspapers that have a lock on the state’s print media market, and which operate as the press service of the Republican Party. The Mobile Press-Register, which otherwise publishes fawning pieces about Governor Riley’s cowboy boots and describes Karl Rove as a persecuted genius, now tells us that the G.O.P.’s plan to “take control of the legislature” (their words) is a wonderful idea. Indeed, it gets the official seal of approval of the paper. You can read this on line at the Press-Register’s website, but why not read it at the website of the Alabama G.O.P.? After all, they are all part of the same operation. Why bother maintaining the pretense of independence?

Here’s the core of their story:

Most Republicans are advocates of reform, perhaps because they’ve been on the outside looking in at a deeply entrenched system. The Democratic Party has controlled the Legislature for more than a century. That kind of political dominance breeds complacency, cynicism and corruption.

Got that? Republicans = reform. Democrats = corrupt. No need to deal with individuals and their record of service. No need in fact to actually explore any political issues, like education or taxation. That would just confuse your poor, tired mind. The labels are all you need to know.

Let’s keep in mind that the state government is in the hands of the G.O.P., and the legislature in theory provides oversight. What happens to the process of oversight when the executive and legislature are in the hands of the same party? I think we all know the answer to that: corruption. Voters often exercise just the kind of wisdom that the Founding Fathers envisioned by providing for opposing parties to live in an uncomfortable cohabitation. Uncomfortable for the politicians, that is. For those concerned about the hoggishness at the public trough that inevitably accompanies one-party crony rule, it can be the best solution. So when the Press-Register writes about “corruption” and “reform,” just remember that they mean those terms in the Orwellian sense.

The last several years have seen an explosion of no-bid state contracts in Alabama in which cronies of Governor Bob Riley are involved. What happens when newspaper reporters in Montgomery submit stories about these scandals to the three Newhouse newspapers? Alas, I’ve tracked that process, too. The stories don’t run and the reporters get chided. The Press-Register is absolutely right. There is a culture of “deeply entrenched” corruption in Alabama, and they’re a significant part of it. But for the Press-Register the seat of corruption lies not there, but in the Alabama Education Association, the organization that represents school teachers. Why? Because the AEA has crusaded for improvements to the state’s secondary education system, and has backed the Democrats, who generally support spending more money on education. You’d think a newspaper would favor reducing the state’s illiteracy rate, but you’d be wrong. After all, this is Alabama.

So the G.O.P.-loyal newspapers lead the charge into the campaign, calling for voter contributions to G.O.P. coffers to fund taking over the legislature. And they also crank out political propaganda for the G.O.P. in the form of stories that pass for news coverage. At the core of this is the work of the Riley Administration’s court chronicler, Brett Blackledge at the Birmingham News. Blackledge has earned his stripes with a crusade looking into Alabama’s two-year college system, where he is fearlessly rooting out corruption. Funny how everything he writes is perfectly choreographed with Governor Riley’s themes of the week and seems seamlessly joined with criminal investigations conducted by the U.S. Attorney, about which Blackledge is impeccably well informed. And strange that his investigation of the two-year college system neglects to mention that Governor Riley ran it.

Still all of this pales in comparison with the single most wondrous fact about the Blackledge reportage–only Democrats ever figure in the crosshairs. Mind you, there’s probably no shortage of corruption in this college system, feather bedding and the like. No shortage of allegations have come to me, Blackledge and the U.S. Attorney’s office concerning corruption. A great many of them involve figures connected to Governor Riley and the G.O.P. But, alas, there doesn’t seem to be enough ink or newsprint to allow Blackledge to write about those cases. Or perhaps there’s another reason. It would be what my politico friends call “off message.”

And today we see the typical pincer movement involving the Alabama G.O.P. election campaign’s third arm, the U.S. Attorney’s office. Specifically, Alice Martin, the sometime U.S. Attorney, sometime G.O.P. candidate for elective office. Martin fully understands the benefit to the party and its election efforts of criminal prosecutions being commenced that target elected Democrats, are geared carefully to the election cycle, and are hyped extensively to the party media apparatus. And yesterday, as Sue Schmitz was dramatically dragged from her home in Toney, Alice Martin went before the press with an announcement which will feature prominently in Republican campaign literature for the coming years. She announced an indictment that Blackledge signaled, with his usual perfect clairvoyance in all things prosecutorial, was in the works months back.

Sue Schmitz’s day was dramatically interrupted by her arrest. She had never before had a conflict with the law in any way. And yesterday morning, she had just been preparing to take a group of school kids from underprivileged backgrounds on a tour of the state capital, Montgomery. Here’s how the AP reports the story:

“We charge that Representative Schmitz’s only substantial ‘work’ was to work her official position in the Legislature to land a job through the postsecondary system,” U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said in a statement.

Schmitz was employed from January 2006 until October 2006 by the CITY Skills Training Consortium, an arm of Alabama’s troubled two-year college system. The federally funded program operated at 10 sites statewide to help at-risk youth referred by juvenile courts develop academic, behavioral and social skills. The indictment claims Schmitz made as much as $53,403 annually as a program coordinator despite rarely showing up and doing virtually nothing for the money.

Let’s just pause and look at what’s going on here. A massive federal case has been launched, at a likely taxpayer cost in excess of $2 million, against a social studies teacher, who it is alleged (on the basis of sharply disputed evidence) was not putting in as many hours as she should have in teaching her classes. This has to count as one of the more absurd (if not malicious) cases I’ve seen in recent years. And remember, this is a Justice Department that can’t spare an FBI agent to look into, or a prosecutor to handle, a gang rape case involving Jamie Leigh Jones, or any of the dozens of other cases involving rape, assault and homicide in Iraq. They’re not “priorities.” On the other hand, bringing charges against Democratic office holders has been a very high priority from the day Bush took office, and it continues to be so today.

More than this, note how party connections flavor the U.S. Attorney’s interest in cases of feather bedding. Recall that a Missouri criminal attorney conducted a detailed investigation into the service of Mark Everett Fuller as District Attorney in Coffee and Pike Counties. His study, presented in a sworn affidavit and backed up with documentation, showed that Fuller was an absentee district attorney. He drew his salary for the job, but he spent his time out of state, largely in Colorado, attending to the business that he owns and operated and which continues to provide most of his income–Doss Aviation. The affidavit was submitted to the U.S. Attorney and the Justice Department. No investigation of its allegations occurred. The allegations of “feather bedding” in the case involving this Republican official were many times greater than the one charged against Schmitz. But what happened? Nothing. The U.S. attorney was not interested. As a prosecutor told Time’s Adam Zagorin, different rules apply with respect to the “home team.” Fuller went on to be the judge designated to handle the highest profile political prosecution in the country, involving former Governor Siegelman. Now we’re seeing more evidence of the two distinct flavors of justice dispensed by Republican prosecutors in Alabama: one marked with a “D” and the other with a “R.”

U.S. Attorney Martin seems to have a problem with the truth. She’s currently under investigation for giving perjured testimony in connection with an employment litigation. I lay out the details of the accusations against her, which are quite compelling, here. However, Martin serves at the pleasure of the president, and, as comedian Jon Stewart would say, it clearly pleasures him for her to continue to serve. And it pleasures Karl Rove and the G.O.P. state organizers even more.

Former school teacher, now state legislator Sue Schmitz

“My client is a wonderful, dedicated educator. It’s been her life’s work. These charges are garbage,” said her attorney Buck Watson. He also noted that he had advised the U.S. Attorney that if they decided to indict his client, she would come in on her own, and he would handle it–an offer spurned in favor of the heavy-handed arrest squad. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s bizarre.” I spoke with several of Schmitz’s colleagues, who were shocked by the charges. And it’s spreading a message of cold fear in the community. Others with whom I communicated were afraid to have their names appear in print. “This is a political vendetta. Anyone who objects to what they’re doing will become a target,” one teacher told me.

So why would a federal prosecutor put such tremendous resources into arresting and prosecuting a retired social studies teacher? Schmitz is an irresistible target. She’s a Democratic member of the state legislature. Note how Alice Martin’s loudly trumpeted indictment works in a perfect trifecta:

• The battle plan rolled out to retake the legislature, announcing “corrupt Democrats” as the target

• The Newhouse papers run the call to arms and funds, and print a sequence of stories designed to make it all credible

• The U.S. attorney’s office in Birmingham announces the indictment of a “corrupt Democrat” retired school teacher.

And today, as expected we see stories in the Newhouse papers announcing the indictment, with predictably tendentious commentary. All of this is geared at helping smooth the way for a successful prosecution, and more to the point, a successful Republican takeover of the state legislature. It is a pattern that Alabama has witnessed over and again in the last six years.

The charges against Schmitz will of course have to be proved in a court. And whether they are meritorious or not, Schmitz will be put to hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal expense and is having her reputation tarnished, all courtesy of the taxpayers. Whether the charges stand or fall, all of this activity has one clear-cut beneficiary: the Alabama G.O.P. and its plans “to take control of” the state legislature. Funny, but the ballot box doesn’t figure very prominently in that effort.