Don Young
Alaska Congressman helps Florida developer after fund raiser
http://www.alaskareport.com/a
And at first glance it doesn't make any sense why Alaska congressman Don Young would earmark $10 million for a Florida project that not one single elected official in the state of Florida had asked for, but commissioner Judah says it comes into focus when you learn there was fund raiser for young at this Hyatt outside Ft. Myers that raised more than $41,000 in campaign contributions. And Judah says one of the major organizers of the fundraiser is Dan Aronoff. He's the developer who stands to profit if the interchange is built.
"You're going to have to connect the dots. There's no question in my mind. All of a sudden this $10 million comes out of nowhere. There is a relationship between Mr. Aronoff and the money he has raised for Don Young."
Read this article, it's not just Young, it's "the system" in Congress... $64 billion spent on 12,000 earmarks, more than the USA spends on educating our children.
That's your Congress America- putting campaign cash ahead of your children.
Mr. Young received over $25,000 from the bribe-master, convicted felon Jack Abramoff and his clients.
| Don Young is near the top of the lobbyists Donation List |
||
|---|---|---|
Industry |
Young's rank out of *all* 535 Reps and Senators | $$ for the 2006 election cycle |
| Construction Services | #5 | $73,000 |
| Transportation | #6 | $84,750 |
| Food & Beverage | #7 | $64,950 |
| Sea Transport | #1 | $62,050 |
| Air Transport | #9 | $61,750 |
| Oil and Gas | since 1989 | $915,763 |
Since the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in 1989, Don Young has accepted over $900,000 from the Oil & Gas Industry. The Oil giants are raking in record profits with Exxon King of the hill, yet 17 years later, they still haven't paid over 20,000 Alaska fishermen. Don Young has done nothing other than cashing Exxon's checks.
Aside from the $83,000 in corporate jet travel, in 1999 Mr. Young took a trip to the Marshall Islands organized by Jack Abramoff...
Anchorage Daily News:
Don Young's son-in-law has a stake in a subdivision near the proposed "Bridge to Nowhere" ...
Don Young on good enough terms with Abramoff to borrow luxury suites for upcoming fundraisers.... Who attended the game with Don and the lobbyists ???
The text of the email reads ...
Don Young has asked for the use of our suites for some upcoming fundraisers. At this time, could we reserve the following events for Don Young?
Thursday, March 30, Caps vs. Pittsburgh game 7:00 p.m.
Monday, July 24, Orioles vs. NY Yankees game 7:35 p.m. (assuming we have the box)
Josephine Roque - All Headline News Contributor
Washington, DC (AHN) - A former congressional aide and lobbyist testified how he had access to insider information from Bush administration procurement chief David Safavian.
Neil Volz admitted that the information was used to further projects for Republican influence-peddler Jack Abramoff. He added that Abramoff took Safavian on a lavish golf trip to Scotland, according to CNN.
Other lawmakers also mentioned in assisting the Abramoff team were: Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio .
The testimony is part of the trial against Safavian on allegations of lying to investigators about his assistance to Abramoff while he was chief of staff to the administrator of the General Services Administration.
http://www.allheadlinenews.co
WASHINGTON -- An analysis of campaign contributions by the government watchdog group Public Citizen says Washington, D.C., lobbyists are big political donors, and that Alaska's delegation to Congress scoops up more of that money per lawmaker than any other state's.
That's because Alaska has only a three-member team, and two of the members are Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, among the most powerful members of Congress. Stevens was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Young is chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
Since 1998, Washington lobbyists have contributed $663,000 to Stevens' campaign and his political action committee, making him their tenth-most favored senator. Young was tenth-most favored in the House, with $652,448, according to the Public Citizen analysis.
"What it tells me is lobbyists are trying to influence Don Young and Ted Stevens," said Taylor Lincoln, the primary author of the report.
more
Last fall, after House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, earmarked $223 million to link the remote town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the more remote island of Gravina (population 50), the Bridge to Nowhere became a national symbol of congressional porkmania, lampooned by Leno, Letterman and Limbaugh. It was the most brazen of the record-breaking 6,300-plus earmarks inserted by individual members of Congress into the record-breaking $286 billion transportation bill. Even Parade Magazine, not known for its muckraking, featured the project as a poster child for government waste.
Young, a 33-year House veteran, defiantly boasted that he had stuffed the bill “like a turkey.” And Stevens, a 37-year senator, furiously threatened to resign if Congress shifted money away from Gravina and another bridge to nowhere near Anchorage – a bridge actually named Don Young’s Way, near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. But the projects became such an embarrassment to Republicans that the chairmen agreed to withdraw both earmarks. Budget hawks, green activists and clean-government types hailed the defeat of the bridges as a victory for fiscal sanity.
The bridges live on
Except that the bridges weren’t defeated.
The Republican-controlled Congress still gave Alaska the $452 million it had requested for the two bridges, merely removing the earmark directing where the state should spend the money. Republican Gov. Frank H. Murkowski, who was once Stevens’ junior colleague in the Senate, intends to spend that money on the bridges.
In Washington, pork has become synonymous with congressional earmarks; in fact, most media outlets – including the Washington Post – formally define it as such. So does the new “Pig Book,” which was released this month by Citizens Against Government Waste and catalogs 375 of last year’s goofiest earmarks, from the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative to the Sparta Teapot Museum. But outside Washington, most Americans think of pork as wasteful spending. They don’t really care whether it’s earmarked.
And they shouldn’t. Anti-pork activists cited the stuffed-like-a-turkey transportation bill generally – and its bridges to nowhere specifically – as evidence of the need for “earmark reforms,” and they managed to get a few modest ones into the otherwise toothless lobbying bill that is currently floundering in the House. But they’ve fallen into the classic Beltway trap of demanding procedural solutions to substantive problems. Congressional earmarks have nearly quadrupled in a decade, and many of them are outrageous. But earmarks don’t produce pork.
Porkers produce pork.
Murkowski’s well-connected family – his daughter Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is now Stevens’s junior colleague in the Senate – just happens to own land on Gravina. Young’s family just happens to own land that will benefit from Don Young’s Way. But the bridges to nowhere, the turkey of a transportation bill and the earmark explosion are all symptoms of much deeper problems: a Congress that essentially functions as a pork dispenser, a Congress that rarely seems to debate anything but the division of the spoils of government, a Congress that is essentially run Don Young’s Way.
Michael Grunwald is a Washington Post staff writer.
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How can I possibly hope to win without getting monetary donations?
