"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Just 0.7 miles long, Crow Creek Road isn't a road to nowhere. It runs straight to the Double Musky Inn, a Cajun bistro owned by a Bob Persons, a close friend of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
It cost taxpayers $2.7 million to widen and pave that road, and Alaska had higher priorities. But an Associated Press examination of government e-mails and interviews with state transportation officials found that Stevens moved the project to the front of the line.
Persons, owner of the popular watering hole where the Republican senator frequently dines, testified as a defense witness this month in Washington, D.C., where Stevens is on trial for corruption.
"This is a classic pork barrel project," said David Williams, a vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. "It's like 'Hey, if you're my buddy, I'll just get you a few million dollars and make you a road to your restaurant.' "
Details of the Crow Creek deal emerged as Stevens awaits a verdict in his trial. He is charged with lying on Senate financial disclosure forms about gifts, including more than $250,000 in home improvements to his cabin, not far from the Double Musky.
Trial testimony indicated that Stevens granted Persons power of attorney to guide the home renovation. Among the many presents Stevens is charged with concealing is a nearly $2,700 massage chair from Persons. Stevens says the chair was a loan. But his explanation of why he kept it in his house for seven years led to one of the more awkward exchanges of his testimony.
Telephone messages left at Persons' home and the restaurant were not returned.
I just got off the phone with a well-respected and well-known tax attorney who doesn't want to be identified.
I asked him earlier in the day whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin can avoid paying taxes on the $150,000 worth of clothes the RNC bought her, as she and the RNC maintain. (They said the RNC now owns the clothes; she's just borrowing them.)
He said that, after consulting with a number of experts at his prominent firm, he thinks the RNC and Gov. Palin are wrong.
"It's probably not a 'gift,'" he said. "The issue is whether it counts as 'income.'"
Palin's claim that the pricey duds belong to the RNC and she's just "borrowing" them and will return them later, reminds him, he says, of some of the issues going on in the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. (Some of the issues, he specified, not the allegations of criminality.)
"This is exactly the issue with the Stevens case," he said. "When you loan something to someone can you call it a 'loan' if, upon its return, it has no practical value?
"The consensus view is she would have to count the wardrobe as income at least in the amount of the fair value of the rental of the wardrobe," he said.
He added that the law is clear that uniforms -- "big brown suits with your name on them" -- don't qualify as income, but it would be hard to make the argument that fancy dress suits from Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus are a uniform.
Labels: corruption, Sarah Palin