What I remember from WAY BACK when all of this happened is Al Gore sent some kind of recommendation up to Bill Clinton... Bill Clinton announced that the Naval oil reserves were going to be sold and a number of companies bid for them.
What I was told happened, is Occidental was chosen without anyone paying attention to the other bidders.
They didn't bid higher. No one bothered to look at the other bidders... essentially making it into a NO BID auction... or maybe it should have been stated a ONE BID auction.
If these facts are wrong... then almost everyone who was talking about it at the time it happened got their facts wrong. Which is a possibility.
I read the articles that were linked... and they seem to say the same thing I just said above...
Of course Al Gore can't sell anything... (Oh yeah???) -- but any president, vice president or powerful Senator can pull strings to make things happen... and if someone they are obligated to... like Gore is obligated to Occidental... finally ends up with a piece of America's property... couldn't you say that the person who made the arrangement SOLD IT TO THEM?
Of course it's not technically correct... but on the face of it... that's exactly what happened...
I will make you a bet that Al Gore was richly rewarded for this. Oh yeah, it may look like he lost a large percentage of the value of his stocks... but I will bet there is some "off the table" compensation that it would take a thousand or more lawyers to find!!
No, I don't have proof... I don't have the ability to look through Al Gore's financial records, nor can I subpoena Occidental's records to see what they have paid him... off the record of course. But just knowing the past family involvement between the Gore family and Armand Hammer/Occidental... this whole deal smells really fishy to me... and to most other people too.
While you may be "technically" correct... the fact is... we don't have the facts! We don't know how much the other companies bid... we don't know that Occidental was the highest bid!!
If this is a "made up scandal" as you say it is, then 90% of the articles on the web have it wrong. Is there anywhere that the correct facts are shown?
BTW... the websites that I looked at were liberal, conservative, ecological... from all sides... It doesn't appear to be a partisan attack against Gore... the attack over the Oak Hills oil fields appears to have come from all sides.
We will be very happy to post your side too... IF you will document it with facts supporting what you are saying!!
Rayelan
: Re: HERESY AND TREASON ON THE SUPREME COURT *PIC*
: Gosh, how many errors can occur in a single post????
: This is all quite mistaken, and where it isn't exactly false,
: it is
: misleading.
: Gore COULD NOT SELL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY, and certainly did NOT
: sell Elk Hills
: to Occidental Petroleum. Nor was this a 'NO BID' DEAL, as the
: headline
: proclaims, oddly enough, omitting to consider that as alluded
: to in the text it
: quotes itself, some 22 different bidders, for all or parts of
: this holding, are
: mentioned.
: Oxy was the HIGH BIDDER, which is how it got the deal (which
: somehow is left
: unmentioned, although it firmly trumps the notion of anything
: nefarious
: there).
: Was this such a 'windfall' that Oxy profited immensely, their
: stock rose
: significantly, and Gore himself, through family holdings, was
: vastly enriched?
: Hardly. Do the research, look up the stock price for Oxy
: around this '98 time
: frame. What you will find is that after Oxy hit a high of
: around $15, around
: the range of price it had been, it dipped, rehit the high of
: $15, and then
: promptly tanked by about 66%, to the $5 dollar range, where it
: lingered for a
: considerable amount of time, only slowly re-rising to re-hit
: $15 several years
: later.
: That is, according to the investing community, Oxy had not
: gotten a tremendous
: value or super cash flow enhancer, and the smart money in the
: market sold OFF
: Oxy stock to a third its pre-existing high level, a 2/3rds
: loss of stock value.
: Meaning, Oxy probably paid nothing less than market value for
: these holdings,
: as vouched for by the fact that nobody else in the oil
: industry was willing to
: pay more for this than was Oxy, and the markets firmly
: discounted the claimed
: value of this to Oxy by discounting its stock price.
: The effect on Gore's family Oxy stock holdings? They lost
: 2/3rds of their value
: in the immediate aftermath of this supposedly sweetheart deal
: that was
: supposedly vastly enriching Oxy's bottom line at a supposed
: fire sale price for
: those assets, supposedly for Gore's corrupt reasons of making
: himself, his
: family, and his corporate backer an unearned windfall.
: In other words, there is no 'there' there. This is a madeup
: scandal with no
: apparent unearned benefit to either Gore or Oxy, and in fact,
: the opposite.
