I understand this story was
covered last week in a diary, however I honestly feel the story isn't getting the kind of attention that it should.
As we all know, back at the beginning of President Clinton's first term the Whitewater investment deal gained national attention. Combined with the accusations and belatedly-admitted sexual escapades, it led eventually to Clinton's impeachment and almost removal from office on perjury and obstruction of justice.
Now, we have yet another bad land deal involving a President and his appointees, friends and donors. Only this time the case is much clearer, bolder, and obviously more corrupt. Of course, no one's lost their head yet because of this land deal.
Oh wait.. the thousands and thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, and American soldiers and contractors probably count huh? Yea, I'd think so too, since the people who profited donated thousands to Republican candidates over the past 10 years and stand to profit a second time from the same deal!
Still interested? Jump in the wayback machine to 1992 with me, after the fold!
Let me just say this first.
I'm not going to pretend that Clinton did nothing wrong, because he did. It was probably the dumbest thing ANY guy could possibly do - he was someone in the public spotlight that just couldn't keep his dick in his pants. You'd have to arrest a LOT of men if this were a real crime.
The Whitewater deal, however related by Clinton's self-admitted 'releases', was a different animal. The Clintons were looking for investments, like any other American with some money to put away for the future should do. They picked the wrong deal to get involved in, convinced by friends that it was good and would be profitable. It wasn't. They lost money. Oh well it happens, life's tough get a fucking helmet.
Then Clinton becomes president, and everything starts to hit the fan. Right-wing scumbags like David Bossie, Richard Mellon Scaife and his former hitman David Brock (who reformed himself nicely by writing Blinded by the Right and founding Media Matters for America) ran with the story, calling Vince Foster's mysterious suicide a murder perpetrated by the Clinton Administration. Between this, the sexual accusations, the 1993 WTC bombing, and the handling of Waco, a firestorm was created by 'independent counsel' Kenneth Starr that haunted almost every year of Clinton's time in office and 'ended' in the second presidential impeachment in American history.
Now don't run off yet class! The bell hasn't rung yet, and I've still got another history lesson. This is not as well known as the Whitewater/Bill's Willy saga, so I'll try to be a bit more detailed.
As mentioned in the Bloomberg article I cited, back in 1996 the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service performed an appraisal of the mineral rights in the Everglades.
The Collier family traces its fortune to the early 20th Century, when
Barron Gift Collier sold advertisements on New York City street cars, according to an October 2002 article about the Everglades deal in the Miami New Times newspaper. He moved to Florida in 1921 and bought 1.3 million acres that would later become Collier and Hendry counties.
The company has become one of the largest diversified firms in southwest Florida, according to its Web site. It owns more than 20,000 acres of citrus groves and vegetable farms, engages in real estate development and conducts oil exploration.
....
President George W. Bush announced in May 2002 that the federal government would pay $120 million in cash plus an undetermined amount in tax deductions to prevent the Collier family's privately held Collier Resources Co. from drilling for oil and gas on 400,000 acres of land it owns in what he called ``critical parts of the Everglades.'' Two previous government assessments valued the rights between $5 million and $68 million.
The report says that Ann Klee, a Bush administration political appointee, led the effort to reach an agreement with the Collier family shortly after she was named in January 2001 to administer the transition at the Interior Department between presidential administrations.
Klee and two Interior Department lawyers, Barry Roth and Peter Schaumberg, relied on a private sector estimate that recommended the $120 million payment after soliciting several appraisals, all of which were lower, Devaney's report says. It also says at least one career Interior Department official contested the high estimate.
It may seem a little bit odd that the Bush Administration would be actually trying to protect the Everglades - the country's largest wildlife refuge - from inroads by a corporation exploring for oil when you consider
this president has the worst environmental record EVER.
This article from Yahoo News, originally published by US News & World Report, helps us digs a little deeper.
In his report, (Inspector General Earl) Devaney said that Collier Resources employed a sophisticated scare campaign during the Clinton and Bush administrations to convince officials they needed to buy the oil and gas rights, or they would face exploration in the Everglades.
Congress established the Big Cypress preserve in 1974. In 1988, the inspector general said, Interior expanded the preserve, acquiring property from Collier in a land swap. Interior appraisals, Devaney explained, included the value of the mineral rights, but those rights were "excepted" from the final deal. To pay for those rights now, he added, "would result, in practical terms, in dual compensation."
Describing the history of the Big Cypress dealings, the report said that Interior agencies performed "evaluations," not formal appraisals, of the mineral rights in 1996, and again in 2000. Collier Resources, Devaney wrote, believed the evaluations were too low, wanting no less than $130 million. Finally, the parties agreed on $120 million, along with a potential tax write-off. Devaney said that an official in Interior's Minerals Management Service strongly opposed the deal but was "effectively silenced and cut out."
The deal expired in 2003, but talks reopened the next year. By then, Interior had developed new rules generally requiring appraisals in land transactions. Collier Resources, Devaney said, dropped out of the talks, arguing that a draft appraisal by an outside consultant was "seriously flawed." The appraiser valued the mineral rights in the Everglades deal at only $10.6 million.
In summary, the Bush Administration is planning to pay one of the Republican Party's most prolific donors hundreds of millions of dollars for property rights that are not only worth much less, but that have already been paid for in the past - and also giving them tax breaks for not mining or developing such land. The Collier family has already been paid off once, and would get paid twice more, because of their generosity and loyalty over the past 20 years.
If you don't think this deal is worse than Whitewater ever had been, I've got some swampland in Florida you might be interested in.