Wampum

Acting Associate Attoney General of United States and United States Attorney for Montana (recommended by Conrad Burns and appointed by George W. Bush, and not fired by AG Gonzales for ... "the standard narrative") Williams Mercer just said that Individual and Tribal Trust is not suitable for the courts.

We're off-grid in the Mojave, watching the Senate Indian Affairs Oversight Hearing on Indian Trust Fund Litigation via the net.

Summary: Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Tester (D-MT), and Sen. Thomas (R-WY) held the first post-November oversight hearing on the Indian Trust Fund Litigation. The hearing was delayed by 90 minutes due to the vote on the floor on H.R. 1591, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill. The first panel was composed of former member of the House of Representatives and Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, Acting Associate Attoney General of United States and United States Attorney for Montana Williams Mercer, and John Bickerman of Bickerman Resolution. The second panel was composed of Eloise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the Individual Indian Trust Litigation, John Echohawk, Executive Director, Native American Rights Fund, and William Martin, Vice-Chair, Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association on Indian Trust Funds.

Kempthorne answered the zeroth question. He is just as bad as Norton and the honeymoon is dead.

On the actual issues before the Committee, the so-called Kempthorne-Gonzales letter (which neither of them possess sufficient clue to have actually written, so its actual authorship is unknown), Kempthorne was fundamentally non-responsive.

Mercer continued this theme, and expanded it to argue that the Cobell litigants were responsible for the eleven years of complex litigation, and some delicious one-liners, such as an issue is not suitable for the courts, and the litigants have no choice but to accept (any) legislative outcome. When asked directly, Mercer refused to answer if there was a trust liability.

Both pushed the $7bn figure as fair and adequate, for Individual Trust, and Tribal Trust claims, all of them, now and forever.

Bickerman's contribution was that there was clear trust liability, and an estimation that the Individual Indian Trust liablity, for mismanagement of monies received by the Department of the Interior as trustee, was on the order of $7bn to $9bn.

In follow-up by either Dorgan or Tester to Mercer, if the Individual claim liability runs to $7bn to $9bn, then the Tribal claim liability must necessarily run to ... zero. [Or $2bn owed by Tribes to the DoI if you're comically inclined, ebw].

The second panel was factual and calm. Cobell presented the case, not as a simple, yet incomprehensible accounting snafu, but as one that impoverishes real people. She brought with her a man who's land has produced oil for his father since the 1910s, but for which no royalty has been paid since 1940. I'll add more to this when the morning zoo has settled, on Cobell's, Echohawk's, and Martin's testimony.

Jon Tester has handled this first pass of arms very well. Non-confrontational, kinda dorky, but he asked some of the right questions, and he'll ask more, on the record, via follow-up correspondence.

For those not familiar with the distinction between individual and tribal trust fund mismanagement, I offer the following analogy. The Administration is pushing a "settlement" of a class-action brought by some individuals for tobacco-injury related claims, but only if it "settles" all past, present, and future claims by all individuals, and also prevents any past, present, or future state claims for compensation for medical care provided for tobacco product injury and addiction education, and ends restrictions on tobacco product advertising to children.