Obama Takes Increased Interest in Palin's Natural Gas Pipeline

Almost one year ago, C4P predicted that the president would eventually attempt to take over, and take credit for, Governor Palin's work to get Alaska a natural gas pipeline (you can read more about AGIA here and here).

Now the Juneau Empire reports:

Senate Majority Leader Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, said a top Obama administration official, former Alaskan Pete Rouse, told Alaska legislators in Washington that Obama would be more than just verbally supporting the Alaska natural gas pipeline.

"Mr. Rouse said the president was planning to elevate the Alaska gas line coordinator's office effort into the executive office of the president once Mr. [Larry] Persily is in place [as federal pipeline coordinator] and is official," he said.

[...]

Rep. Berta Gardner, D-Anchorage, said the message she and others received from the Energy Council meetings was that Obama would raise the coordinator's profile.

"They want to boost his position, get him access to an executive committee on energy issues," she said.

The president will be not just coordinating the pipeline project but actively pushing for it, Gardner said.

Let's call Persily the "Gasline Czar."

Some of you may not be familiar with all the names in the quote above. Please allow me to offer some background.

Pete Rouse, described above as a "former Alaskan" and "top Obama administration official" still has close ties to Democrats in Alaska. The Anchorage Daily News profiled Rouse last winter:

Rouse continued to keep many personal ties in Alaska -- along with his voter registration. In last November's presidential race, records show, the man who would co-lead Obama's transition team voted absentee in Juneau.

Rouse declined to discuss his voter registration.

[...]

One of Rouse's best friends in Alaska is state Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau. Rouse was the one who recruited Elton, a former journalist, into politics to work for [Lt. Gov. Terry] Miller. Elton said Rouse is always eager for e-mailed photos of Romeo, the black wolf often photographed around Juneau.

Elton said he followed the presidential race through Rouse, backing Obama early on the strength of his friend's endorsement. But he told Rouse he couldn't talk about Palin once she was named to the Republican ticket. As chairman of the Legislative Council, Elton played a central role in the Legislature's "Troopergate" investigation of the governor, which Republicans complained was being run by Obama supporters.

"It was awkward, because I usually love to talk about things like that," Elton said.

When Elton and his wife traveled east for the inauguration, they stayed with Rouse. Now Elton is under consideration for a high-level appointment as a special assistant on Alaska issues in the Interior Secretary's office.

After playing his role in ginning up the non-scandal the media called "Troopergate," Elton did indeed get his reward with that cushy job in Washington.

Rouse also met with Democrat Alaska legislators when they visited Washington last year. Rep. Les Gara got a bit overexcited.

Larry Persily, Obama's soon-to-be Gasline Czar, briefly worked in the Palin administration's legislative liaison office in Washington, D.C.:

After losing his Washington gig, Persily seems to have gone on an anti-Palin tear - especially after Palin was nominated for VP. Here he is in Bloomberg on August 31st, saying she's not qualified. He appears in a tinfoil-hat hit piece in the Guardian in October. He even wrote for the Huffington Post, and after the election he appeared on Alaskan Public Radio to slam Palin and spin the election results against her.

His most recent national media appearance was in this week's issue of People magazine, where he was quoted as saying "Palin is like Evita Peron."

In addition to making an ass out of himself to anyone with a microphone, Persily, at the time a staffer for Rep. Mike Hawker (RINO - Anchorage), spent much of the 2009 legislative session obstructing the governor's agenda.

Persily was "tasked by House Finance Chairman Mike Hawker to coordinate the House's efforts to stay on top of the stimulus program." He subsequently spent a lot of time asserting that the money from President Obama's "stimulus" had no strings attached. The media reported an almost constant barrage of articles with Persily bloviating that there were no strings attached to the stimulus' weatherization program, which might best be described as a colossal failure. Rich Lowry recently explained one aspect of that:

Prior to the stimulus, weatherization funds were not subject to the Davis-Bacon Act, a union-friendly law that mandates government pay contractors the "prevailing wage." Slavishly committed to the unions, Democrats made Davis-Bacon apply to the new weatherization funds, and the Department of Energy spent the past year trying to determine the prevailing wage in thousands of counties. At least the program kept someone busy.

After spending months attacking Palin and obstructing her legislative agenda, Persily got called up to the big leagues. Just like Kim Elton. Funny how that worked out.

Now the president's looking to increase the power of Persily's position.

The Empire reports that Alaska's legislators are excited that they have Persily in Obama's administration:

After returning from Washington, Ellis told colleagues on the Senate floor Monday that Persily was likely to win confirmation and be well-placed to give Alaska's views on the gas pipeline.

"I guess the president is quite impressed with Larry Persily," he said.

Uh-huh.

The president nationalized the auto industry, supported the financial bailouts and is currently attempting to nationalize health care, over the strong objections of the American people. Call me cynical, but I'm not convinced that he's going to support AGIA's free market principles.

AGIA's success thus far is because it has been rooted in free market principles. Something that has apparently frustrated Obama and the junior Senator from Alaska, Mark Begich (D). Governor Palin responded at the time:

And then we heard just a few days ago, someone says that the White House may want federal control over Alaska’s proposed natural gas pipeline. Can you imagine turning over a free market project to big government controlled by Washington? That’s not a good option.

She's made that point more than once.

Last year, Governor Palin said of the "stimulus":

Will we chart our own course, or will Washington (D.C.) engineer it for us?

It's not a surprise that Obama might want to take credit for Palin's gas pipeline. After all, as Palin has pointed out over and over, America needs a source of clean, reliable energy that comes from domestic sources, thereby increasing our national security. But AGIA needs the free market to work. Much as he may wish to claim credit, Alaska's gasline should not become an Obama public works project.