Time For The King Of Pork To Face The Butcher?

Late today, agents from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service searched the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (the Republican "King of Pork"). The Justice Department has been looking into the seven-term senator's relationship with Veco Corp, as part of a public corruption investigation.

One of the issues in the investigation is whether Veco, in return for political favors, paid for the renovation project that doubled the size of his Girdwood, Alaska house back in 2000.

It all started when local contractor Augie Paone was hired by Veco CEO Bill Allen to renovate the senator's house in Girdwood (about 40 miles southeast of Anchorage). Who is Bill Allen? He's the guy who pled guilty in May to federal conspiracy and bribery charges for “giving things of value” to local lawmakers. (In court documents on the case, Veco pointedly stated that it "was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling." Point well taken.

According to the arrangements made with the contractor, Paone would present renovation bills to Veco and would sometime thereafter receive payments from Senator Stevens. Interesting arrangement. A few weeks ago, Senator Stevens defended himself this way:

"As a practical matter, I will tell you. We paid every bill that was given to us. Every bill that was sent to us has been paid, personally, with our own money, and that's all there is to it. It's our own money."

Notice that Stevens didn't say that he paid for the entire renovation-- he just says that every bill that was presented was paid. So who exactly was sending Stevens the invoices, and did they represent the total amount of the renovation?

And by the way, do we really know who Stevens means by the word "we"? If his use of the royal "we" should include Bill Allen, for instance, then Stevens can claim later on that his "denial" was factually correct.

Why should we be so suspicious of Ted Stevens? A few highlights from Steven's political career:

In 1997, Stevens invested $50,000 with Alaska developer Jonathan B. Rubini. In 2002, Rubini bought back the senator's interests in his firm for $872,000. During that five-year investment period, Stevens steered a $450 million contract to Rubini to build and own housing at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

Stevens has long been accused of doing favors for organizations which employed his son Ben. In late 2003, Stevens secured a $29 million earmark for the "Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board," which was chaired (at that time) by Ben Stevens. In December 2005, Stevens helped secure a $10 million earmark for a fishing venture for which Ben secretly held an investment option.

In October 2005, Stevens threatened to resign from the Senate if lawmakers passed language that would have stripped $223 million allocated for the Gravina Island Bridge in Alaska (the "Bridge to Nowhere") and redirected it to Hurricane Katrina repairs in Louisiana. Gravina island has 50 residents. The ten-minute ferry ride to the mainland runs every 30 minutes.

In June 2006, Stevens gave the widely-ridiculed "series of tubes" speech, where he likened the Internet to a series of tubes that could be clogged with information. He also complained that "an internet was sent" by his staff which took five days to arrive because of commercial traffic.

In the Bolivian jungle, roughly 1,500 Bolivian soldiers camp out each night at U.S. taxpayer expense, as part of the "war on drugs". They are offered three meals and a snack each day as part of a $31 million State Department effort to stop the cocaine trade at its source. Until this spring, the troops were fed by a local Bolivian company, contracted via a competitive process for $3.34 per soldier per day. But in March, the same contract was awarded -- without competition -- to an Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm, Olgoonik Management Services. The new cost is $5.16 per soldier per day, an increase of 54 percent, or about $1 million more each year.