Wampum

This shouldn't leave much doubt that the underpayment of lessor royalties, and the attempts by Interior and Congressional officials and staff to cover it all up, is part and parcel of Cobell v. Norton (now Kempthorne.) From the NYTimes:

Kerr-McGee Is Found Liable in Lawsuit Over Oil Royalties
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - A federal jury in Denver agreed Tuesday with a former top auditor for the Interior Department that the Kerr-McGee Corporation had cheated the government out of millions of dollars in royalties on oil it produced in publicly owned coastal waters.

The decision, reached by the jury after deliberations of about four hours, is a vindication for the auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell. He became a whistle-blower and sued Kerr-McGee as a private citizen after top officials at the Interior Department ordered him to drop his audit findings.

It is also a potentially big embarrassment for the Interior Department, which dismissed Mr. Maxwell in a "reorganization" and which had insisted that his case against Kerr-McGee had no merit.

The Minerals Management Service, an Interior Department agency that collects more than $10 billion a year in royalties on oil and gas pumped on federal territory, is now the subject of numerous investigations by Congress, as well as its own inspector general, over its enforcement of royalty rules.

As a brief reminder, Judge Lamberth ordered a full, historic accounting in late 1999. Since that time, two Administrations and a whole slew of Congressmen, most dependent on extraction industry largess to fund their campaigns, have done everything they can to prohibit such an accounting, as it would clearly require industry to open their books.

Will the new Congress address this matter? Do they have the political will to stand up to ExxonMobil and Arch Coal?

Addendum: The above news broke in the same cycle that Indian Country Today featured a story on how powerful Republican Congressmen, including Chris Shays and Frank Wolf, threatened to pressure Bush to fire Norton if she did not rescind the recognition of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.