Wampum

Since Lambert asked, and Susie always tells me I need to do a better job of simplifying the story for non-Indians, here's my best shot at a short-and-sweet synopsis.

How Republicans benefit from a Congressional settlement of Cobell v. Kempthorne (v. Norton, v. Babbit), aka, the Indian Trust Fund case and why Democrats should care.

Cobell v. Kempthorne (most recently known as Cobell v. Norton) is the ten-year old class-action lawsuit by various Individual Indian Trust Account (IITA) holders against the Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the subordinate organization which administers the accounts. Monies in the accounts derive from royalties paid by oil, gas, mining, forestry, ranching, farming and other industries or individuals who lease land owned by "individual" Indians (versus land held by entire tribes, which is to addressed in a separate lawsuit.) The lands were originally divided and distributed back in the 1880s, under the Dawes Act, and has been administered by the BIA since that time. The lawsuit seeks a full accounting of all IITAs, and proper compensation for monies missing and interest not paid due to mismanagement and/or graft. The money Indian trust holders seek is their own - this is not a lawsuit for "reparations" for breaking of treaties or the US policy of acculturation or genocide. This is capitalism pure and simple - the Indians leased the land, via the US government, to corporations and individuals, and the Indians want payment for those leases.

The problem lies in the accounting - the BIA and Interior never considered accounting for the royalties a top priority (probably figured all the Indians were going to die soon enough anyway,) and so tens of thousands of receipts and other accounting paperwork were lost, in floods, fires and general record storage (I've seen photos of records being stored in dilapitated wood buildings, but can't locate them at the moment.) However, Judge Royce Lamberth, who oversaw the case until being removed, by petition of the US government just a few months ago, ruled that a full accounting must take place before a settlement could be reached. If government records are not available, then the next step would be to subpoena industry accounts of royalties paid. This, I believe, is what the leasees fear the most, as it will most likely show that potentially a $100 billion in royalties were under paid (or even never paid at all.) This was the number IITA researchers, who compared amounts paid to to total profits reported in corporate annual reports, arrived at a number of years ago. It is similar to the outcome Friends of the Earth and the New York Times reporters discovered when investigating federal land royalty underpayments last spring.

For the first few years of the lawsuit, particularly under the Clinton Administration and Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Interior was able to mere delay and obfuscate. However, as Judge Lamberth became more irritated and ruled for an accounting, Interior, under the Bush Administration and Secretary Gale Norton moved from incompetence and petty muddying to outright contempt for the court's decisions. At one point, Lamberth even threatened Norton with jail, so outrageous was Interior's behavior. It was at this time that Interior looked to their Republican allies in Congress, seeking a settlement which would prevent an accounting of the royalties, paid or unpaid, by some of the largest financial supporters of the Republican party. When Republicans took over the Senate in 2002, the potential for this endrun seemed certain, particularly with Richard Pombo and Ben Nighthorse Campbell overseeing the Congressional committees responsible for trust legislation. Everything seemed to be on-track for a quick, low-ball settlement.

Then the Abramoff scandal erupted.

In late February, 2004, the Washington Post published their first report on Abramoff and his dealings with certain gaming tribes seeking access to Congress and Interior. A few days later, Senate Indian Affairs Committee member John McCain announced he would seek hearings into the Abramoff fiasco. That night, Committee Chairman Ben Nighthorse Campbell checked himself into a Washington hospital, complaining of chest pains; turned out he had a bad case of indigestion. A week later, Campbell announced that despite kicking off his re-election campaign just a month earlier, he would not seek re-election, citing "health concerns" (NB, Campbell is currently healthy enough to work as a high-paid lobbyist in DC.) Campbell allowed McCain to oversee the Committee hearings, including the subpoena process, and McCain took over the chairmanship when Campbell retired.

In April, McCain obtained the first Abramoff documents subpoenaed from Greenberg Traurig and other sources. Some of \these documents (many still highly redacted) were not made available to the public until hearings began in the Fall of 2004. However, soon after McCain took possession of the Abramoff emails, with their potential to take down now only Abramoff and his lobbying buddies, but dozens of Congressional and Administration officials, McCain's top advisor John Weaver met with Karl Rove to purportedly "iron-out their differences", four years after the ugly 2000 primary season. The result? McCain buries any evidence that could hurt Bush's re-election effort, at least until after November, and McCain becomes Bush's heir apparent for 2008.

A month later, McCain joined Bush on the campaign trail, and had little to say when Bush cronies swiftboated his colleague and friend, Senator and Vietnam-veteran John Kerry, similarly to their actions against McCain in 2000. For his part, McCain postponed the opening of the Abramoff hearings from early summer until fall, and made sure the first, and only, hearing prior to the November election focused solely on Abramoff's "maltreatment" of his tribal clients. It was a full year, and only after significant leaking from unnamed Committee members, that McCain called Interior officials before the Committee, and even then, he softballed on all but Italia Federici, whose Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy had actively attacked his support of global warming legislation. Even McCain nemesis Grover Norquist, clearly indicted in Abramoff documents, was treated with kid gloves - McCain asserted that he would subpoena Norquist, but never carried out the threat, and Norquist, for nearly a year banished from the White House, found his way back into Rove's office (and good graces.)

In the meantime, Chairman McCain took the opportunity to wield his new-found power and push the case for a settlement of the Trust Fund case. Initially, Indian plantiffs were somewhat hopeful - McCain had long been a reliable supporter of many Indian issues, and so many figured he would at least be better than average on a fair resolution of the mess. McCain quickly disabused Indians of that hope, as he literally pulled a settlement figure out of his, ahem, a figure of $8 billion. The minimum amount Indians had determined to be equitable was $27 billion, and even that was well below the realistic figure, well above $100 billion.

Why $8 billion? My personal opinion is that McCain determined that amount to be below an imaginary "tipping point", where American taxpayers, and voters, would demand accountability from the corporate leasees, particularly in light of the recent hullabaloo over underpaid Gulf of Mexico lease royalties totalling over $10 billion. McCain could couch the $8 billion as essentially "reparations", and possibly get it passed under the radar; a higher number, and Congresscritters might begin to take notice of an otherwise ignored Indian issue, and demand an accounting, the very last thing Big Energy wants.

High corporate profits find themselves into political coffers, overwhelmingly tilted towards Republicans and their "causes", e.g. front groups like CREA. Should the Trust Fund not be settled by Congress, but by the courts, as it should be, the "true accounting" would likely remove upwards of $100 billion in profits from those leasees, and, in turn, from funding corrupt Republicans.

Last month, the Bush Administration achieved its first major court victory on the Trust Fund case - their petition to remove Judge Lamberth from the case. The Indian plaintiffs, however, are fighting the decision, though their battle looks to be up-hill. However, there is no indication that any other judge would reverse any of Lamberth's, a well-known Conservative, decisions on the case. At this point, it's just another delay. But it does provide an impetus, and opportunity, for McCain to railroad through the settlement, thereby earning the graditude, and all the campaign dollars that flow from such, to McCain and his 2008 Presidential run. In the meantime, the Bush Administration appears to waffle over the settlement, and McCain gets to add more "Mr. Independent" coup to his belt by issuing a few pugnacious press releases and writing a letter or two to Kempthorne and crew.

McCain might have lost the love of the "Christian" right over his waffling on torture; should he obtain the fealty of Big Oil, he might not even care.

(All the sources for this "synopsis" (cough, cough) can be found under the Abramoff and the Injuns container on the left sidebar.)