Kott/Weyhrauch Pre Trial 1

I went to the US District Court Clerk's office today to see what their public computers might tell me about the upcoming trials of Pete Kott and Bruce Weyhrauch. For one thing it listed all the attorneys. In this post I'll give a little background I found through Google on the defendants' attorneys.



Bruce Weyhrauch’s attorneys


Ray R. Brown has been a shareholder in the firm since 1994. His legal interests are centered on complex civil litigation and trial practice. He is particularly interested in plaintiff's medical malpractice and litigation that involves the use of scientific or technical expertise. Ray graduated cum laude from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1981. He has an undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Texas at Arlington. He has also attended and completed the Trial Practice Institute of the National Criminal Defense College at Mercer Law School.

Following law school and his admission to the bar, Ray served as a senior felony trial attorney and later as the training director for the Alaska Public Defender Agency. He also served as an Assistant District Attorney with the State of Alaska Department of Law, Criminal Division. Following a successful career in the criminal justice system, Ray decided to pursue a civil practice.

Ray's main areas of civil practice include plaintiff's medical malpractice, employee side labor law, class action litigation and serious injury or death cases.

He has tried to verdict more than 150 cases. He is "AV" rated by Martindale-Hubbell and is listed in the Best Lawyers in America since 2003. He served on the Alaska Bar Association Board of Governors (1995-98), and is a frequent presenter at Trial Advocacy programs both in Alaska and in the lower 48. He is a member of the Alaska Academy of Trial Lawyers, Association of Trial Lawyers of America and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He loves traveling, his family and his two dogs. Source



Douglas Pope
Member

Practice Areas: Civil Practice; Personal Injury; Products Liability; Wrongful Discharge; Antitrust; Commercial Torts; Corporate Law; Constitutional Law; Appellate Practice.

Admitted: 1973, Alaska; 1974, U.S. District Court, District of Alaska; 1976, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; 1978, U.S. Supreme Court

Law School: Willamette University, J.D., 1973

College: University of Alaska, B.S., 1970

Member: Alaska and American Bar Associations; The Association of Trial Lawyers of America; National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Alaska Academy of Trial Lawyers.

Biography: (Also Member, Pope & Katcher)

Reported Cases: Hammond v. Hickel, 588 P.2d 256 (Alaska 1978); Brown v. United States, 665 F.2d 271 (9th Cir. 1982); Johns v. Commercial Fisheries Entry Comm., 699 P.2d 334 (Alaska 1985); Hickel v. Cowper, 874 P.2d 922 (Alaska 1994); Capital Info. Group v. Office of Governor, 923 A.2d 29 (Alaska 1996); Brooks v. Wright, 971 P.2d 1025 (Alaska 1999); Chijide v. Maniilaq Assoc. of Kotz., 972 P.2d 167 (Alaska, 1999); Cable v. Shefchik, 985 P.2d 474 (Alaska, 1999).

Born: Fairbanks, Alaska, June 1, 1945
Source





Pete Kott's Attorneys

Margaret R. Simonian ("Meg") joined Friedman, Rubin & White in 2003. Her prior experience includes a successful career as a criminal defense attorney at the Alaska Public Defender's Office and the Office of Public Advocacy. In this capacity she gained valuable trial skills. Before that, she served as a law clerk for Judge Eric Sanders on the Alaska Superior Court. She is a member of the Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions Committee, the Alaska Trust Board of the Alaska Trial Lawyers Association and the Planning and Zoning Commission.

Meg was born and raised in Alaska. She graduated with honors from the University of Alaska. While an undergraduate, she was a national debate champion and nationally honored as a Truman Scholar. She graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1997. She is admitted to practice in Alaska.

Source


James A. Wendt

I couldn't find a bio on Wendt. I couldn't find a law firm website. Just the bare minimum. From martindale.com I got this:

James A. Wendt
Anchorage, Alaska
(Third Judicial District)

Featured BV Peer Review Rated Lawyer Source

He did run in the Humpy’s Half Marathon August 16, 2007 finishing at a pretty respectable pace for his age group. He came in 104th out of 200 finishers listed at 1:56:43, a 8:55 miles/per minute pace. Not bad for 58 years old.


Brown was supposed to teach a seminar for the Alaska Bar Association on September 14, but he's been replaced - presumably because he expects this trial not to be finished. We was going to teach "Look Good" Cross-Examination with Terry MacCarthy which covers:

• The 3 Types of Cross
• How to Tell Your Story Persuasively through Cross to the Jury
• How to Structure Your Cross with Transitions and Looping
• How to Control Your Witness Without Appearing Overbearing
• How to Elicit and Reinforce Helpful Information from Your Witness
• How to Use Short Statements Effectively
• How to Respond to Objections

Maybe we can watch for these in the courtroom.

Too Nice to Stay In

Towards the end of August we get some spectacular days, touched with enough chill at night to remind us that summer is nearing its end and we better take advantage of the warm days we have left. So we ordered take out at the Thai Kitchen and headed down the Seward Highway. We had made reservations for a table with a view at McHugh Creek.









Then an after dinner stroll. There were red berries everywhere. In this picture they are mostly wild mountain ash (small leaves), and a few devil's club (large leaves).

The Tlingit have turned to devil's club for a list of ailments you wouldn't wish on an enemy: from coughs and colds to stomach ulcers, tuberculosis and hypoglycemia. Tribe members steep it into teas, mash it into salves, chew, sip and steam it. It's also used to ward off evil. The plant, dubbed the "Tlingit aspirin" has not been approved for medicinal use by the Food and Drug Administration.

You can hear this piece on the Tlingit's use of Devil's Club on an NPR site with Quetzel Levine.








2BNTheWild.com says this about baneberries:

White Baneberry (Actaea pachypoda)
White Baneberry is also known as Doll's Eyes.

Plant Type: This is a herbaceous plant, it is a perennial which can reach 80cm in height (31inches).
Leaves: The leaves are alternate. Each leaf is divided.
Flowers: The flower parts are not discernable with the naked eye and are up to 1cm wide (0.4 inches). They are white. Blooms first appear in mid spring and continue into late spring. Numerous filaments obscure the petals and sepals.
Fruit: Conspicuous white berries, sometimes red, in a terminal spike on thick pedicels. The shinny white berries have dark spots hence the vernacular name or Doll's Eyes. The name Bainberry refers to the fact that the attractive berries are poisonous.
Habitat: Rich woods.

Looking south down Turnagain Arm.

Rose hips have been an important food for all Native American tribes where any kind of roses can be found. Most of them are very sweet. They are extremely high in vitamin C, much more so than oranges, for example. Dried, they keep well, and will always be available in winter. Rose hips have a tangy, yet sweet, flavor and can be used fresh, dried, or preserved. The simplest use is to steep them for tea. Rose hip syrup, puree, jam, jelly, and sauce can be used as is or as a flavoring in other recipes.

from Jolene Adams

Abundant on the trail, they make for a great snack. They're still a little hard now and full of seeds. They get softer and sweeter after the first frost. But I like being able to pick them as I walk and pop them in my mouth.













Looking up toward Anchorage along the tracks about 9:45pm.

Blogging Ted Stevens

While checking how people got to my blog, I found a link from Political Blogging - US Senators where you can look up any US Senator and see what people are blogging about him or her. The link above is to the Ted Stevens pages - 10 pages, each with ten trailers for blog postings that mention Stevens. Most are rehashed stories most aware Alaskans already know about. But the cumulative effect of scanning so many blogs is telling. Our senior senator is now an American symbol of corruption in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Drew Carey's comment in a YouTube segment at Government Bytes (National Taxpayers' Website) about hosting both the Price is Right and a new game show The Power of Ten is probably the most telling. His mention of Ted Stevens is so off the cuff, as though everyone should know what he's talking about.

I thought about it. You're giving away prizes all day and making everybody happy. I really can't complain. Honestly, my whole take on it has turned around now. Now I think you couldn't do better. Here's a car, here's some money. And it's not even your money. You're giving away money and getting credit for it. I feel like a congressman. I'm like the junior Ted Stevens.

While this Seattle Times article on a BooMan post on Taylormarsh.com writes about what a consummate politician Stevens is, the general tone is that a dark cloud now hangs over him.

Stevens is known for his blustery, sometimes combative demeanor in public.

But behind the scenes, he's acted as a dealmaker in an increasingly fractious Senate, orchestrating compromises and pushing legislation through committee.

Stevens' work on the Appropriations Committee, pushing earmarks to fund his projects and backing those of other senators, may help explain why Democrats aren't celebrating his potential fall.

As I said above, not too much that informed Alaskans don't already know and a fair amount of silliness at Stevens' expense. But it's a reminder to those of us who know how profoundly Stevens has positively impacted this state, that many people Outside only associate Uncle Ted with the 'bridge to nowhere' and tubes.

Ben Stevens Confirmed as Senator A

Lisa Demer reports today in the Anchorage Daily News:

Ben Stevens ID'd as Senator A

COURT FILINGS: Ex-legislator had only been named in news reports.

By LISA DEMER
ldemer@adn.com

Published: August 30, 2007
Last Modified: August 30, 2007 at 02:24 AM

In a court ruling this week, a federal judge identified former state Senate President Ben Stevens as an alleged co-conspirator in a bribery scheme involving legislators and oil field services contractor Veco Corp.

Though news reports named him months ago, it was the first time Stevens has been so named in a court document.

The development was just one of the intriguing pieces of information popping up in court filings as the public corruption trial of former Reps. Pete Kott and Bruce Weyhrauch approaches. It's set to begin Sept. 5.

"The evidence which the United States will present at trial will show that state Senator A is, in fact, Ben Stevens," U.S. District Judge John Sedwick wrote.

The indictment against Kott and Weyhrauch says Senator A conspired with them and two Veco executives to benefit the company.

In particular, the document describes a June 5, 2006, telephone conversation between the senator and former Veco chief executive Bill Allen. In the phone call, the two agreed that Weyhrauch came to support oil tax legislation favored by Veco because Allen had promised him legal work for the company. Weyhrauch is a lawyer.

Go to ADN for the rest of the story.

Blogging is Like Fishing - Part 2

I didn't plan a Part 2, but Blogging is Like Fishing turned out to be mostly about the psychology and strategy of getting hits on your blog. But there are other observations too.

1. I write more and think more than I would otherwise. Things I would just think about in passing get caught in my blogger net and then I have to figure out what to do with them. I need to look at them in more depth, I start googling to learn more, trying to think about other not obvious connections there are to other topics. One of the points made at the writing workshop in the Village of Wales was to just write as if none of the rules matter. While I'm still observant of the standards of style in general, the blog seems to impose deadlines that force me to stop tinkering and let it float on its own.

2. I'm learning new technologies faster than I would so I can use them on the blog - my camera is a tool to illustrate my blog posts. So I've taken a lot more pictures than I would have, learned different ways to download, edit, and post them. I've had to learn how to post video, which led me to YouTube, and Viddler. If I'd waited to start blogging til now, I would have skipped those because blogger has its own direct from your computer files video upload now. But having a YouTube account gave me a better understanding of how that phenomenon is working. It never occurred to me that people would be looking at my videos. They were just a place to store them so I could upload them. But more people have looked at my 21 YouTube videos than have looked at my blog. The Sierra Leone All Stars being the big draw with over 1800 hits. I've had to learn iMovie - 05, 06, and now 08. I've also found Viddler for better quality videos, and Jamglue for audio. And I've had to learn some html, but as blogger advances, that becomes less and less necesarry, but what little I've learned does help me get the page a little closer to what I'd like, rather than just what blogger allows. But I'm still a long way off there.

3. I'm ready to start writing some of the articles and chapters I've had on my agenda for a while. I'm even thinking of setting up a new blog related to that as a way of creating some artificial deadlines. I don't want to take away from this blog, but eventually my other writing will demand more of my time and this seems like a way to transition.

Lunar Eclipse

Eclipse from midtown Anchorage, August 28, 2007 with a tiny Canon Powershot 550. By 2:37am the moon was gone.

11:48 pm

1:24 am

1:44 am

3:49 am

4:11 am

Why I Live Here - Birding at Elmendorf Airforce Base

We were going to meet our birder friend Dianne at the Thai Kitchen, but they went on a short vacation. So we decided to go birding instead. As Reserve Officer, Dianne can get onto base and she knows great spots. At first the birding wasn't too good, but the evening scenery was spectacular.




Dianne pointed out this tiny plant, a sundew.

Drosera
(sundew)

Nature has endowed the Sundew with the unique ability to capture and digest insects. This carnivorous habit allows these plants to thrive in nutrient deficient soils and supplement its diet with animal protein. The sundews have a wide range; about 100 recognized species with new varieties being discovered that were not known to exist only a few years ago. This genus has seven North American representatives. They frequent the acid soil of pine barrens and peat bogs and are often found growing along with other Carnivorous Plants.

Sundew leaves have numerous tiny tentacle-like projections. At the end of each is a mucilaginous secretory gland. This gland secretes a droplet of sparkling fluid which gives the plant its dew-drop appearance. Insects, upon being attracted to the plant through odor and color, become stuck to the mucilage. With this stimulus, the tentacles begin to slowly enclose the victim. And later, in about an hour, the entire leaf itself may be bent over its prey. It has been found that these plants only respond to objects of nutritional value and not to sand, paper, or water.

And truly if you look at the picture carefully, the black boggy water is visible. Below you can see the larger bog area around Fish Lake.

No manipulation of these pictures. This is what it looked like!

We were at an air force base. A C-130 I believe.



As we drove from one lake to another, there were four spruce grouse grazing on the side of the road.

Dianne watching two young common loons and two adults.

In the middle of the lake, at the head of the trail is one of the adult loons.

In the middle of the picture, the white spot is the head of a belted Kingfisher sitting at the end of a branch from where it and its partner dove into the lake.

A red fox sat in the road a while than ran across the grassy field.

A pair of muskrats meet in the sunset lit water.

Engaging Muslims in Anchorage

Alaska Pacific University (APU) is putting on an extensive community study program this year on engaging Muslims. This weekend Dr. John Borelli a Catholic Scholar and Assistant for interreligious initiatives for the President of Georgetown University. This was a solid, academic talk - quite different in tone from Donald Johanson's 'science for the masses' presentation. Borelli got into Vatican political details in discussing the Catholic church's opening of dialog with the Muslim world. There was standing room only. The APU website describes the program this way:

Engaging Muslims: Religion, Cultures, Politics
A Community Education Project
Sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Chair of Catholic Theology at Alaska Pacific University

Global issues mandate that Americans gain a better understanding of Islam. This is especially true as we face the upcoming national presidential election. Islam is now the second largest religious community in the United States. Anchorage is now home to over 2000 Muslims.

Under the direction of the Cardinal Newman Chair, Alaska Pacific University is spearheading a project to foster a respectful understanding of Islam that recognizes the diversity in Islamic cultures as well as internal struggle within the contemporary Muslim world.



There was a series of exquisite handpainted pages from the Quuran outside the auditorium at Grant Hall. (I'm still trying to figure out how to get more control over photo sizes in iPhoto08, so this picture will be big enough to read the translated verses if you click on it.)





And as I neared home after the short bike ride from APU at 9pm the sky was dazzling.

Blogging Is Like Fishing

It's been a year now that I've been blogging. What Do I Know now I didn't know then? Lots. Some thoughts:

1. Blogging is like fishing

I started blogging to just see what it was all about. I really didn't care who read it, and I'm reasonably pleased that those who do stop and comment have been civil (I know that's sounds like an invitation to the uncivil, but it seems they aren't reading it, or it's too boring for them to even respond.) But I noticed early on that I started looking at the "Viewed Profile" numbers. Then someone suggested I put up site-meter. That is addictive - not just seeing how many hits I get, but where they are all from. And until I got site-meter, I had no idea how much information I left at other websites. Unlike fishing, even posts I've dropped into the water months ago can get hits today.

2. Hits

I was averaging anywhere from 3 to 10 hits per day -with spikes into the 20s - before July. Up til then, the biggest days came from my posts on automaticwashers.org trying to get help fixing my Maytag. But in July I blogged a local trial of a politician tried (and convicted) of extortion, bribery, and money laundering. That got me links on the local newspaper's website and several other sites and my hits zoomed up - 30, 45, on up to 150 and then slowly back down. But some of those folks have stayed and I'm in the 20s regularly now. This week's Sicko review got linked to a major Italian movie site and was translated into German on another site. Then there are the "unknown" referrals. Some, like my mom, are regulars. But I wonder how others found my site. One commenter said her search engine alerted her that my site had mentioned one of her flagged terms: 'prophy-paste.'

3. What are people searching for?

Major topics have been the Tom Anderson Trial, Carnival Cruise lines, Alaska Airport Railroad Depot. I like the idea that people trying to figure out how to get from the airport to their cruise get to read about how the cruiselines are ripping everyone off. A few hits for "Viddler v. Youtube." Then there are my favorites who searh for the exotic. Who are the people (three or four altogether) who have searched for awazdo? (I did some posts on trucks in India with pictures of their "Please Honk" signs. Then I discovered awazdo meant "give me horn" in Hindi (Maharashtri?) and posted on that. ) I guess other people have the same bizarre curiosity I have. People also have searched for names of people (ordinary people) I've posted about. And then there are the people whose searches get them to me, but only because the words appear scattered in different posts, but nothing I have is relevant to them. Someone the other day from New Jersey got here googling, "i live in a condo above a smoker and the smell comes in what can i do to get rid of it." That got him to my April archive that began with a post on the Confucius Institute. But five or six posts down was
"What is it about smokers?" Did he read down that far? Who knows?

4. Searching and Finding
I still haven't figured out exactly why search engines give the results they do. Sometimes they give the archive - like with the smoker - and then the person has to find it on the page. Sometimes they give my latest posts and then they have to search the blog. Sometimes they give the exact post they were looking for. I haven't studied it enough to figure out if there is a pattern - whether the word is in the post, title, or labels. I originally thought the labels were a good idea so people could search my blog by topics so I wanted to limit it to a few general categories. But I've been slipping in more specific things lately.

5. Google Hits and Technorati Rankings

Technorati seems to be focused on how many other people link to you and how high their rankings are. I've moved up from Zero to 1, then 2, and eventually up to 9 this week. (The Italian movie blog was ranked around 3200 to give you a sense.) So I'm a slight bump in the blogosphere. On the other hand, Google must be impacted by how often you post. I've been posting once or more a day on average and as I check the site-meter to see how people got to me, I've been on page one of Google fairly often.

6. New features

I started with just text. Buying my Canon Powershot changed everything. I was soon adding photos. And then video. First YouTube, then I found Viddler. And now Blogger has an upload, but it didn't work yesterday. That may have to do with the bugs in iMovie08. Fortunately, it left iMovie06 on my computer. (There was no '07, but the blog wags are calling iMovie08, iMovie07.) And Jamfest made posting audio easy. You can even download directly from websites to Jamfest. And Blogger added polls, but I'm not sure how I would use them. They seem like toys on most blogs. And I probably don't have enough readers anyway.

7. Comments.

I discovered early, accidentally, that leaving comments on other posts, often brings a visit from that blogger, and even a comment. I do wander to other blogs now and then, though I'm cruising Alaska blogs more than the 'next blog' button. I'm not even sure how I got to Mirksome Bogle. Mirk has become a regular commenter here. Visually, our sites are totally different, but our content has some overlaps - photos of nature, quirky photos, punnish, and eclecticity.

Those are some things that pop into mind musing on my blogging.

Campbell Creek Bike Trail Under Seward Highway

The Anchorage Daily News has an editorial today about completing the Campbell-Chester Creek Trail loop around UAA. That part just needs better signage for people who don't know it. The real key is completing the large loop of the Campbell Creek to Coastal Trail to Chester Creek. And a major problem is Seward Highway and Campbell Creek.

Yesterday I had to go to CompUSA on Dimond from the University. Should I drive or bike? It was a beautiful day, but the bike trail doesn't quite go the way I wanted to go. The big gap in the bike trail is under Seward Highway. The trail to the highway is great and after, but there's this gap. Lanie Fleischer - who was one (and she emphasizes that there were many others) of the early bike trail advocates and whose name is on the trail at Goose Lake - told me once long ago that she talked to the engineers building the Seward Highway. She wanted them to make sure it would be easy to one day build a bike trail under the highway along Campbell Creek. She said they sneered and purposely built it low. Lanie has no reason to make up such a story.

In any case, yesterday I decided to bike it. Here's the obstacle.

I rode south on Lake Otis to 47th, (#1 on the map) I think, where I picked up the bike trail headed west through the Waldron area, past the soccer fields and the small lake. It winds through a small park to Campbell Creek and then ends.
There is a dirt path through the woods, but I took the quiet neighborhood street to the Seward Highway. (#2) The pictures below are getting under the Seward Highway - the box on the map by #2.











This is where the little dirt path begins to go down and under the first of the four bridges (one each for north and south of Seward Highway, and a frontage road bridge on each side).















Down under the bridges.









While traffic whizzes by above, down under the bridges it's a totally different world.





And after the last bridge, now on the west side of the Seward Highway, you take another small dirt path and the new bike trail begins again with this wooden bridge.
.






















Note on this post. The reason I went to Dimond was to buy iLife08 which includes iMovie08 - a totally new way of putting together movies from iMovie06. I did this movie in the new software just by going to help when I had a problem. It is incredibly easy and intuitive. And I saw the other day that there is a new upload video button on blogger, so I wanted to try that out too. It would mean not having to post first on Viddler. But it is taking forever to upload. Let's see what it looks like when it's done.
Well, there's the answer. [When I'm making the post, there's a video screen saying "Uploading Video" but I also got a message saying it can't upload it.] It appears that I can't upload it in Viddler, it's too long for YouTube and it didn't upload here. A quick Google shows that a lot of people are having trouble with iMovie. So I'll just post this for now and see what I can do. [And it doesn't come up. I'm guessing it's too big. But the file format doesn't work for Viddler and it's clearly too big for YouTube.]

Mushrooms

It's been raining. Which is why the roofer hasn't been out yet to give us a new roof. But today was a beautiful sunny day, and in the woods along the bike trail, the results of all that rain were popping up. The first set, in honor of Mirk, is called The Three Mushkateers. The rest shall remain anonymush.

Donald Johanson and Freshman and Honors Convocation

This morning I went to honors freshman convocation because I will probably be working with some of the senior honors students this semester. I think I will be supervising a directed study for three students.








Then tonight we went to hear Donald Johanson the paleanthropologist who discovered Lucy. I'm really too tired to say anything worthy of the topic and the presentation, but I'll put in a little here. Here he talks about Lucy and what he's going to talk about.
DJ at UAA1 uploaded by AKRaven





Here's Lucy. She's going to tour the US starting soon in Houston, Texas. He pointed out that this is controversial among anthropologists because many feel that something this unique shouldn't do anything that might endanger it. (The article linked above identifies Richard Leakey as condeming the visit. Johanson didn't mention him by name.) Lucy belongs to the Ethiopian government and they are hoping Lucy will help make people more aware of Ethiope and attract tourists. Johanson seemed to hope that she would help enlighten some Americans who still do not believe in evolution.





The last slide compares the pelvis of Lucy to that of a human and of a chimp to show how much closer Lucy is to a human. The human and Lucy are built for walking upright, while the chimp pelvis is more for walking on all fours.

Sicko

Say what you want, but Michael Moore knows how to frame an issue. And we all have had enough experience with US health care to know that he's not just making this up. Stories of people who didn't qualify for health care. About a lady who had a surgery and then her insurance said she had lied about her health record - a minor yeast infection that had absolutely nothing to do with her condition - and so she really wasn't eligible for the surgery and should return the $7,000 payment.

Then they interviewed someone who had worked for the insurance companies whose job it was to go thru people's medical records - after they'd had an expensive procedure - and find something in their record - like a yeast infection - they could use as an excuse to drop them.

The interviewed doctors who talked about the incentives - bonuses for rejecting the most procedures, promotions because they had saved the company money by rejecting needed procedures. We heard stories of people who died because of refused procedures. Here are a few clips I took in the theater to go with this review.



Moore effectively attacks the stories that Americans have been taught about health care. Here are a couple of the myths he challenges:

1. America has the best health care in the world
2. The free public health systems in Canada and England are second class, you have to wait forever for treatment, and the doctors are poor.
3. Cuba is a wretched country
4. Americans take care of their own

He challenges #s 1 and 2 by looking at people with similar health issues in the US and in other countries and how they got treated. A man in the US without health insurance who cut off the ends of two fingers is told - the middle finger will cost you $70,000 to fix, the ring finger $12,000. Which do you want? Then they showed a guy in Canada who cut off four whole fingers and had them all reattached - and he could move them - for free. You saw the sick baby comparison in the movie. They tour health care in England looking for the terribly things people say about it and find it pretty good.

OK, I'm sure you can find horror stories in Canada and England, just as you can find stories of good care in the US. My wife and I have had good care with caring doctors in nice facilities. But we are also hearing from friends who are turning 65 who are having trouble finding doctors who will take patients on medicare.

The real issue is the outcomes. The statistics he gives are consistent with others I've heard showing the US lower in critical stats such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy than these other countries with free health care - even Cuba. If you're thinking, "that's BS," I'd ask you to stop and think why you think that. Probably because it goes against the stories in your head that we have the best health care. Go look up the statistics - not on Rush Limbaugh's site, but at the US Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. Here's a table I put together from two WHO stats, you can see life expectancy and costs.



According to this table, Moore was wrong. Cuban life expectancy for both males and females for infants is .7 years lower than US life expectancy. On the other hand, Cuba manages to be that close paying 3.7% of what the US pays for health care. Maybe the US should contract out our health care system to Cuba.

And finally Moore shows footage of various politicians, including Bush, talking about our great heroes who worked to rescue people after 9/11. Then he interviews some of them five years later with respiratory diseases and other problems who can't get the health care they need. He takes them and other people he's interviewed for the movie to Cuba where one gets $120 worth of medication at home for 3 cents, and everyone gets looked at with fancy equipment, diagnosed, and some treatment and a health plan for home. Would you get treated like that in Cuba if you walked in off the street and didn't have a camera crew with you? I don't know. I do know years ago an older friend of ours got great treatment for a stroke while visiting Canada at no cost. And in Thailand recently, my wife got rabies shots after she was bitten by a dog, for about $20 per shot. From a list serve discussion of rabies in North Carolina:

>Treatment involves at least 6 injections in the arm, given over 28 days.
>More injections are sometimes given near a wound, if the rabid animal has
>broken its victim's skin. The cost typically ranges from $1500 to $2000 and
>is often covered by insurance

If we take the low figure, that would be $250 per shot. More than 10 times the cost in Thailand.

This movie takes on people's myths about America's greatness, about the efficiency of the market, about how bad other countries are. This confrontation with a view of things different from the propaganda we're used to seeing will cause many people to go into denial. They will sit and squirm in this movie, because they'll have to deal with their own deception. But they'll know from their own experiences or from that of friends and relatives, that these stories ring true.

Truer than the images we get in commercials from the health care systems or from politicians who have received large campaign contributions from these industries. Politicians who have been wined and dined and flown to nice resorts by their lobbyists.

I read somewhere that the difference between Russian newspaper readers and Americans was that the Russians KNEW their papers were all lies and thus they learned how to read between the lines.

Liatris Spicata

The Liatris comes late, after most of the other perennials have bloomed and faded. So bright and perky. These plants have spread on their own, filling in the empty spaces. Out in front, in the sun.

Wear This T-Shirt, Win $80,000

CHARLESTON, WV - The American Civil Liberties Union today announced a successful resolution of the case of Jeffery and Nicole Rank, the young Texas couple arrested on the West Virginia capitol grounds on July 4, 2004 for peacefully expressing their opposition to President Bush. According to the settlement agreement, the United States government will pay the Ranks $80,000.

The Ranks, who wanted to attend the President's Fourth of July address without being mistaken for supporters of his policies, wore homemade t-shirts bearing the international "no" symbol (a circle with a diagonal line across it) superimposed over the word "Bush." One t-shirt said "Love America, Hate Bush" on the back and the other said "Regime Change Starts At Home." Click for more.

Don't have an anti-Bush T-shirt so you can get arrested and sue? ReadytoImpeach.com can solve that problem. Actually, these are aimed at impeaching Cheney, but I suspect the Bush crowd control manual doesn't make such fine distinctions. Unfortunately, we can't know for sure since most of the text the ACLU got was redacted.

Thanks to AlaskanAbroad for the lawsuit story.
Disclosure: My son and a friend set up readytoimpeach.com. T-shirt in the picture is the Pacific Northwest Edition. Others for the rest of the Congressional Districts are available.

OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL

Nothing new here, except that there are still people who don't get it - that the most likely reason we are in Iraq is oil, and that the Bush administration isn't going to leave as long as they think there is a chance they can get control of the oil to their oil company cronies.

Both Bush and Cheney came to the White House as oil men.

As all the other excuses for starting the war, and the rosy views of how we are winning it and should keep fighting, are exposed as pr, there is only one solid explanation. I woke up thinking I just had to post something about oil.

For those who are still skeptical and haven't read Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Prize, just go read the book. Yes, it's big. But so is our bill in Iraq. Make a sacrifice for America and read the damn book and you'll quickly see how this war fits the pattern of wars the West has waged to secure sources of oil. I'm not dismissing the importance of oil in our world, but it can't be used to justify destroying Iraq and the US constitution. And even Cheney knows that. That's why national security and not oil is the official excuse.


And after starting this post I ran across this NYTimes editorial about the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today. It underscores the Cheney Administration's rapacious thirst for oil.

This is its first lawsuit against the government, and one it did not undertake lightly — in part because it is not a litigious group and partly because the hunters and anglers who make up the bulk of its membership tend to be largely Republican.

That the partnership is now going to court shows how distasteful the administration’s public lands policies have become and how little they have changed since Vice President Dick Cheney, in his notorious energy report, ordered up a full-court press for domestic oil and gas resources regardless of the environmental consequences. Like other conservation groups, the partnership has never disputed the need to develop supplies of natural gas, nor has it objected to responsible development undertaken at a measured pace with due regard for other values, including the protection of wildlife.

What drove the partnership over the edge and into court was the sheer one-sidedness of the administration’s approach, as well as its reckless disregard for the law, and if that does not get Mr. Kempthorne’s [secretary of interior] attention, nothing will.

Poor Dan Fagan

I thought maybe that all of the criticism of Dan Fagan had caused him to work on his writing, or at least find others to help him clean it up. But yesterday's article was like the first one. Just a lot of inconsistent ranting. But I have this hypothesis that might help explain Dan's problem. I even went online to listen to his radio show. It says June 4th, but it talked about preparing yesterday's article so it wasn't June 4. And as I'm checking it now, it sounds like it's today's show.

Anyway, if we look at last week's article, we see Dan praising his Dad as this great man, who modeled for him what a man should be. And then he went on to lament that men aren't like that. But what did his dad model?

He modeled a life of character, integrity and honesty. But most importantly he showed me how to treat a woman.

When a man is a real man, he does more to help build a better society than a hundred thousand government programs.

Manhood is not about I. It's about service, sacrifice, devotion, selflessness.

Manhood is about respecting, honoring, and yes, even loving.

Now if you read these columns and listen to Dan on the radio, which of these did he learn?

I guess we can give him credit for honest - I believe that he believes what he says. At least the moment he's saying it. And he doesn't hide what he's thinking, no matter how outrageous. And he certainly believes that government is useless. But what about the rest?

Treating a woman? Well, on the show, one caller said that Dan always said he was terrified of women. Dan protested and said he certainly didn't understand them and said they were emotional and often crazy. Hmmmmm. Is that how his Dad said to treat women? Is that respect? honoring? He did claim that he loved everything about women - just before he started saying they were emotional and not understandable. I suspect Dan if your dad really did teach you how to treat a woman (and he really knew how) then women would be falling all over you and you wouldn't still, at your age, be out looking for "a woman willing to procreate with [you]." I don't think he scores high here.

What about service, devotion, and selflessness? Again, that quote, "If I ever find a woman willing to procreate with me..." I take it he isn't doing his service, devotion, and selflessness at home with his family. And he certainly isn't doing it on his talk radio. On his radio show, contrary to what he says his father modeled, Dan is all about "I". It's his unexamined, self-centered opinions, and his own made up facts. ("Hand-made" is often a good thing Dan, but not when it comes to facts.) In fact (you could check it, but the tape's not online anymore) one comment on the radio show I heard was about liberals taking off from work to go protest the Knik Arm Bridge. "They all probably work for non-profits so they can take off work, not like a real job." So, people working selflessly, in service to others don't have real jobs? That's completely not what he wrote last week about what his Dad modeled.


On the Friday show, his dad calls in, and afterward he tells his co-host, that his father loved everyone and made friends easily and he wishes he could be like his father that way. Hmmm.


So, my hypothesis is that Dan doesn't feel too good about himself. His role model was this perfect man (at least in Dan's mind) whom everyone loved, and who treated his wife and daughters with constant compliments. (What about his son? Dan didn't mention the son getting compliments.) He worked hard and selflessly for his family.

But Dan is still looking for a wife. So he's failed already in being a good family man. He's not respectful, he's not selfless. He's so into "I" that he can't even imagine how those evil liberals could possibly believe the nonsense they believe. Dan is far smarter than any of them. He has it all figured out. Oh dear. Dan just doesn't live up to that great role model he's just praised as the kind of man we need to make this country work right." Is Dan really ranting against the world because he can't face the fact that he doesn't live up to the expectations set by his Dad? According to Wikipedia

psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes to others one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the ego recognize them.

Could this be Dan really talking about himself:

But where are the men today? Why are so many obsessed with their own needs instead of their families?

Unlike Dan, I'm just speculating a possible interpretation. I'm not offering my speculation as the Truth. I'm just putting together the evidence that shows his inconsistencies, shows that what he writes or says in one place, does not reflect what he writes and says other places. As I see it, he professes one set of values, but his behaviors demonstrate another.

Seeing the World From Ted Stevens' View

The first amendment to the US Constitition, part of what's known as the Bill of Rights reads as follows:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Alaska's senior US Senator, and the senior Republican in the US Senate, Ted Stevens is currently under investigation by the FBI. Last week he met with the editorial staff of the Anchorage Daily News. They taped the session. Here is the last part where he gives his opinion of the ADN.

Stevens_4 imported by AKRaven



[for the other interview segments go here you'll see in the center column the choice of audio links in the picture.]




Perhaps the Senator and the editors agree on the role of the media, perhaps not, but they certainly have different views of whether the ADN is playing its role correctly.

We can hear in the tape the Senator clearly feels put upon and betrayed by the media.

You've been hanging me weekly.
Your guys, they taunt me.
They taunt me with questions no respectable reporter would ask a Senator if it's already said I'm not going to answer questions.

Based on what the ADN has written lately, they believe it is their job to report on the conduct of Senator Stevens, and that they have a responsibility to probe to find out why the FBI searched Stevens' home in Girdwood recently.

So does Stevens know he's got something to hide and he's just being belligerent to the editors when they ask him questions he doesn't want to talk about? Or does he believe that he's being hounded by the ADN and the FBI for no good reason other than being a good Senator who has done what he was elected to do?


The New York Times had an interesting story today about the Norfolk Four. It's about people who confess to crimes they haven't committed. The article argues that what the prosecutor told the jury in one of these cases

"People just do not confess,” Hansen told jurors in Tice’s second trial, “to something of this magnitude, this heinous, this vicious, without having participated in it. It’s just not natural; it’s just not reasonable.”

That is certainly the conventional wisdom.

In fact, the article says there are at least 49 cases where DNA or a later confession by someone else has freed people who confessed.

Deskovic, like many false confessors, said he believed his life was in danger and that his interrogation wouldn’t stop unless he told the police what they wanted to hear.

Nevertheless, studies of proved false confessions suggest a number of recurring markers including actual violence, threats of violence, threats of harsh sentences like execution and extreme duress brought about by isolation, sleeplessness and lengthy, high-pressure interrogation. Police interrogation is designed to be stressful and disorienting and to keep the suspect off-balance. Guilt is frequently presumed. Police may legally pressure suspects using fabricated evidence, phony witnesses and lies about DNA or polygraph results.

In some cases, people are so worn down physically and psychologically that they actually come to believe they might have committed the crime.

But he said in an interview (and in an affidavit) that Ford treated him like a criminal from the outset, poking him in the chest, yelling in his face, calling him a liar and telling him, falsely, that he’d failed a polygraph test and that a witness saw him go into the apartment. The police got him to “second-guess” his memory, Williams said. “They wear you down to the point that you’re exhausted. I just wanted the questioning to end.”

If people can believe, even for a short time, that they are guilty of crimes they haven't committed, surely it's easy to believe someone can believe he's innocent of crimes he has committed. Stevens has been threatened with harsh punishment, treated like a criminal from the outset by some, yelled at in his face. And I'm sure the 83 year old Senator often feels worn down to the point that he's exhausted. That he just wants the questioning to end.


Clearly, a US Senator who has fought for years to raise funds for campaigns, to steer money into his young state that was sorely lacking in infratstructure, and to generally fight for his constituents, will understandably lose patience with reporters who don't understand that sometimes you have to make compromises to get things done. You can't make an omelette without breaking an egg.

And reporters taking their first amendment right to a free press seriously, see their role as asking the hard questions about the Senator's behavior and the alleged favors he might have passed on to financial supporters, friends, and relatives.

In fact, as I listen to the tape, the editor sounds almost timid as he addresses the Senator who is anything but timid.

This conflict isn't new.

"Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States" an essay on a US State Department website, by Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, includes the following early history of press freedom in North America.

In 1734, John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was charged with seditious libel for having printed anonymous criticism of the colonial governor general in his newspaper, the Weekly Journal. After spending nearly one year in jail awaiting trial, he was acquitted by a jury who refused to follow the judge's instructions and convict him. Zenger's lawyer, a retired attorney from Philadelphia named Andrew Hamilton, convinced the jury that no man should be subject to criminal penalties simply for criticizing the government, especially when the facts he reported were true -- resulting in one of the earliest examples of "jury nullification" in what was to become the United States.

Backyard Bird Fest

There were so many birds in the backyard this afternoon. After seeing flashes of yellow and a couple of red breasted nuthatches were flitting right outside the window, I took the Canon Powershot 550 out to see what I could get. It took me about 15 minutes of waiting and shooting to fill my 2 gb sd-card. Downloaded and checked that video and decided to go find the old tripod. Wow, what a difference. Duh. Then as soon as I sat down, the Steller Jay came.

Rabbi Michael Oblath's Debut

We were out of town last spring when he first came to Anchorage, so this was our first chance to see and hear him. First impressions are tricky. What can I say? Reassuring. Experienced, a good clear voice, a comfortable manner. He joked about being nervous at one point, but it certainly didn't show. His sermon - and that word doesn't quite convey it - was a sharing of his understanding of the term "an eye for an eye." It was not, as I understood what he said, the cold retributive sentiment that it's so often interpreted to be. The context is what is important. This is the sentence for someone who falsely accuses another. What the other is accused of, this should be the fate of the false accuser. Or so I understood. I think this is going to be good. He let me take his picture as he was leaving. As usual, no flash.

Political CSI Part 2 - Veracifier Does Don

I posted about Political CSI Thursday and suggested the folks at the Next Hurrah did that sort of thing. But probably what they do is more like real crime investigators do and Veracifier does more like the tv show - simplifies Political CSI for average folk. Thanks to Kodiak Konfidential for this link on Don Young.

Seward City Council Member Gets Paid $50K to Fix Damage He Caused

Someone from Seward passed this newsbit along the other day. Not completely sure about all the details here, but this seems to be the general story.

At Monday's City Council meeting in Seward, Councilman Steve Schafer was asked to recuse himself because he had a conflict of interest in the next item. He then went to sit in the audience. The Council then discussed how Shafer's illegally built road over Japanese Creek had dammed up the creek during last October's flood. When the road eventually washed away, the built up debris and surge damaged the city's levee further down the creek.

The resolution before the Council was to require the bridge builder (Shafer) to pay the $100,000 damage to the levee. Normally, members of the audience can speak to an item at the beginning of the meeting for two minutes or at the end for five minutes. Shafer got his two minutes during the public comment period.

However, another council member proposed the rules be suspended so that Shafer could talk to the Council. Shafer then spoke for nearly an hour during which he argued that the engineering of the levee itself was the problem, not his illegally built road. When the rule suspension was over, the Council voted to split the cost of repairing the levee with Shafer. They then agreed that Shafer would do the repairs himself and the city would reimburse him for half the cost.


Now, there are a couple of issues here that seem strange.

• It would be interesting to know when anyone has been given an hour to address the Council. Did he get so much time because he is on the council?
  
• On the other hand, it would seem there should be some sort of due process that would allow Shafer, or any member of the public, a right to air his side of the case before being fined by the city
• And if I understood this right, after causing $100K damage, he's going to end up getting paid $50K to repair the damage. Why didn't the repair work go out to bid?
• If the problem was with the engineering of the levee, why did the City charge him at all?
  
  
  

Ben's Friends Seem to All Have Money Ties to Dad

Roll Call says that Ben Stevens' new employer got lots of money from Dad.

New Employer of Stevens’ Son Has Reaped Millions in Federal Contracts
By John Stanton
Roll Call Staff
Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007; 3:08 pm

An Alaska-based transportation firm that recently hired the son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has received more than $300 million in federal contracts over the past six years, many of which came from agencies over which Stevens has direct oversight authority in his current position as ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, federal records show.

Political CSI - The Next Hurrah

On television's CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) investigators gather unlikely evidence and with nifty technology and meticulous computer calculations miraculously find the invisible clues that solve the crime.

Our political situation for many people is like a messy crime scene. We know things have happened, but the evidence is scattered all over the room. Instead of a careful CSI investigation, we get the political spin machines creating the stories that will explain events in their clients' favor.

One of the political blogs I keep going back to is "The Next Hurrah." Blogger Empty Wheel (Journalist Marcy Wheeler) leads a group of smart people, many attorneys, who do political CSI. They take court documents, sometimes articles, and other bits of evidence into their blog-lab and break it down into little pieces to figure out what the missing words are likely to be, to find the inconsistencies, and to recreate the whole event. The commenters add sources of new information, ask questions challenging someone's hypothesis, and articulate other possible interpretations. Yes, there is a clear liberal bias - except for their resident mole Jodi - but the basic bias is for logic, consistency, and sniffing out lies.

An Example of Political CSI: Today, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers released notes, including a log kept by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller about the hospital visit to attorney general Ashcroft by Gonzales and others to get him to approve the surveillance program. You can see the actual document here, thanks to TPM's link.

Below, Empty Wheel is parsing FBI Director Mueller's log of the events to see what is implied by what is and is not said. Readers of the blog are assumed to know who all these people are.

Monday 3/1/04, 1700: Meeting with Comey in his office.

This was actually before the meeting at which Comey and Ashcroft decided not to reauthorize the program, which he said occurred on March 4, the same day Ashcroft was hospitalized. That means two things--Comey was not acting AG when the meeting occurred, and that it happened before the final decision was made. Note that Mueller draws a line after this entry, suggesting some kind of separation between this meeting and subsequent meetings.

Tuesday 3/9/04, 1000: Meeting with Fedarcyk, Pistole, Caproni (and perhaps Wainstein and Gebhardt).

These were then all top FBI people, most with a focus on counter-terrorism--Wainstein is now the AAG in charge of Counter-Terrorism. Fedarcyk, who has since retired, was quoted after Mueller's testimony as suggesting Mueller was "throwing Gonzales under a bus."

Mike Fedarcyk, a retired senior FBI official called Mueller's shot at Gonzales a "jawdropper inside the bureau."

Mueller, who was not in the hospital room, spoke to Ashcroft right after Gonzales left and testified he took notes about the incident. Fedarcyk said that appeared to be insurance against a White House counterattack.

"Usually you take notes to protect yourself. He used them to throw Gonzales under the bus. That's huge," Fedarcyk said.

"This is not partisan politics. It's a bold, strategic, calculated move."

Presumably, this meeting served to finalize the FBI position on what they needed from the program, just before Mueller went and represented the FBI's position at a White House meeting on this.

Tuesday 3/9/04, 1200: Meeting at Card's office, VP, [CIA Deputy Director] McLaughlin, [NSA Director] Hayden, Gonzales and others present.

Note that it appears Meuller was there, but Comey was not, which suggest they thought of Mueller, but not Comey, as a key member of National Security policing.

Unlike on CSI, just a short snippet won't solve the problem. The real work takes much more work. To see how this analysis continues go to The Next Hurrah.

CSI has become an immensely popular television show. That suggests that there is broad public interest in the solving of puzzles through detailed and painstaking testing of different possibilities. So the real question is how do we make the type of political CSI that's in "The Next Hurrah" as interesting to the general public as CSI the television show is?

I'm not sure. In CSI the tv show, there's a crime and the CSI team is trying to find who committed the crime. This is the basic good guy, bad guy story. Easy for the audience to grasp. They don't have to understand all the technical wizardry the lab techs perform. It's like magic where they quickly flash shots of high tech machines and cool microphotos and presto they have solved the case. Since the audience is rooting for the 'good guys' to catch the 'bad guys,' they're willing to accept that all the technology really did prove the guilt. In fact there is a backlash against the show in the law enforcement field because juries now have unrealistic expectations of what the police should be able to prove. Another criticism of CSI listed by Wikipidia is "the level and gratuitousness of graphic violence, images, and sexual content" which surely helps with ratings.

Actually, on a simplistic level, I think Michael Moore and Al Gore perhaps gave us models of how political CSI could be popularized. You need an interesting and/or compelling narrator who will tell the viewers what is happening. You need some jarring contrasts between what people say publicly and what they do privately, and you need good graphics. It also helps for the narrator to expose some personal story. At this point The Next Hurrah is only aimed at wonks. Others probably would wonder whether these folks aren't counting angels, but I think it is more like the CSI team taking a hair from the crime scene and from that hair identifying the killer. The people want to understand and those who do need to hook up with those who know how to communicate those complex linkages to the general public who don't have the time, skill, or patience to pore over these details.

Veco Visuals

Here are a couple of visuals to go along with this morning's lead ADN story. Took these last night walking home from dinner. The building is at the corner of New Seward Highway and 36th Avenue.

FBI investigates science contracts awarded Veco

ARCTIC: $170 million in research contracts coincided with support for polar funding by Sen. Stevens.

By ERIKA BOLSTAD and GREG GORDON
McClatchy Newspapers

Published: August 16, 2007
Last Modified: August 16, 2007 at 10:03 AM

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating the National Science Foundation's award of $170 million in contracts to the oil field services company that oversaw renovations on U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens' home.


The firm, Veco Corp., captured a lucrative five-year NSF contract in 1999 to provide logistics and support for polar research, although it had no previous experience in that field. During the same time period, Veco's top executive managed renovations that doubled the size of the longtime Republican senator's Girdwood home -- the scene of a July 30 FBI raid...

This picture was to show how fire weed can beautify even an ugly parking lot. Only just realized fire weed and a couple of spruce also can screen out a Veco Building almost.

Is Another World Possible? How Do We Know Reality?

It started this morning listening to "Another" radio station - KWMD, 104.5 or 87.7 on the Anchorage FM dial. Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant leading into a story about another alternative radio station - KPFT Houston.

We’re also joined by Mary Thomas. She is the host of the weekly Zydeco music program on KPFT. The bullet that was fired into the station Monday morning narrowly missed her head.

This is coming from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now (Link to KPFT story here)

Then we hear Naomi Klein at the American Sociological Association last week

We did not lose the battles of ideas. We were not outsmarted and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks."

In this piece she talks about how the radical capitalists have shut down each budding alternative. In 1989 when the Soviet Union fell

And it was in that moment of flux and disorientation that several very savvy people, many of them in this country, seized on that moment to declare victory not only against communism, but against all ideas but their own...
...if we look back at the past thirty-five years, we see this slamming of the door on alternatives just as they are emerging repeating again and again.

She identifies a list of situations when alternatives to the American model were either crushed outright (Allende's Chile) or perverted into capitalist copies (Solidarity in Poland).

Citing declassified conversations between Kissinger and Nixon,

Kissinger says very bluntly that the problem with Allende’s election is not what they were saying publicly, which was that he was aligned with the Soviets, that he was only pretending to be democratic, but that he was really going to impose a totalitarian system in Chile. That was the spin at the time. The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world. . . The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.

And then a little later on Fresh Air, we hear Eugene Hütz, the leader of Gypsy Punk Group Gogol Bordello. Hütz grew up in Kiev with Gypsy DNA whose family left when Chernobyl blew and eventually made their way to Vermont.

All these stories reinforce that there are possibilities other than the standard model we see on mainstream media. We can have better health care, we can have real citizen involvement in government, we don't have to live lives that that require going into financial debt to Visa to pay for all the necessities of life (that didn't even exist 30 years ago) and time debt to our sleep and families.

We can know the possibilities of better lives if we escape from the ways our ideas are shaped by the fear mongering politicians and corporate media. So go to the links and listen to these ways people are not accepting the status quo.

And Here's the Rain

Video shot about 24 hours after the picture in the previous post of the Ring. So at least this time it was true: "Ring Around the Sun Means Rain Coming Soon."

Ring Around the Sun Means Rain Coming Soon

When we walked out of the Bear Tooth last night at 8:15pm there was a ring around the sun. According to Meteorologist Jeff Haby

WEATHER FOLKLORE: "A ring around the sun or moon, means rain or snow coming soon"

APPLICABILITY: This lore most commonly works in the cool season and in the mid-latitudes. Mid-latitude storm systems and fronts are more common in the cool season. It is also applicable to tropical storms and hurricanes since there are thin high clouds around the periphery of the storm system.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION: As an upper level disturbance approaches or warm front approaches the clouds tend to start off as high clouds. Over time the clouds gradually lower and thicken. Near the source of the greatest synoptic lifting is where precipitation and thick clouds are most likely. The sun or moon will no longer be visible once the clouds thicken too much.

The ring around the sun or moon is caused by ice crystals within thin cirrus clouds. The refraction causes light to shine into a ring. Cirrus clouds are generally the first layer of clouds that are seen as a storm system approaches.

PITFALLS: a. Cirrus clouds not associated with a storm system will produce the ring also. In these cases precipitation may not occur.

I'd say he's hedging his bets a bit there, and even though this isn't the cool season or mid-latitude, this morning's sky does look like there might be some rain.

Ikiru v. Comedy of Power

Comedy of Power at the Museum last night was disappointing. Here's an excerpt from the blurb:

COMEDY OF POWER is inspired by the real-life story of examining magistrate Eva Joly, whose seven-year investigation into charges of fraud and bribery at the French oil company Elf Aquitaine was described by The Guardian as "the biggest and most scandalous fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War.

Tonight we went to the Bear Tooth and had no idea what we were going to see, only that it was Monday night Foreign/Art film night. After the first minute I realized we'd seen this 1952 Akira Kurosawa classic on DVD at home.

The black and white Ikiru showed us a bureaucrat who spent 30 years of his life stamping documents and as a cog in the system who maintains his job by doing nothing. When he learns he has up to six months to live, he realizes he hasn't lived, and with the help of a few strangers, figures out what he needs to do. In 2 1/2 hours we go through questions about the meaning of life, an analysis of the post War Japanese bureaucracy, come to understand this man who as his last act, fights the bureaucracy he's been part of to help some neighborhood women build a park.

Comedy of Power in contrast squandered its two hours leaving us wondering how did this investigator manage to pull off whatever it was she pulled off (it was never quite clear what got accomplished.) We really didn't learn much about any of the characters or what was going on. How could a one woman office with an assistant who we learn at the end was a spy do all the work needed to bring down giant corporate executives working closely with politicians - including her boss? After spending a week at the Anderson trial here, I know that just that relative small case took a lot of people to gather and organize all the data.


But Ikiru I highly recommend. Its story about human beings is timeless and one everyone should read now and then.

604

According to a very reliable source, Room 604 of the Baranof Hotel in Juneau will get a name change. When one of the hotel managers found out a group wanted to use the Veco corruption suite for a fund raiser a while back, he said no. The group was offered a different, more public room, but the infamous suite wasn't going to have 100 or more people squeezed in disturbing people on the floor at a time when the hotel was full. The hotel management doesn't want to promote the room's notoriety. There's no interest in cashing in on Alaska's most famous hotel room, in fact they are even planning on renumbering rooms soon.

Broadway Under the Stars Sun

The MacBook I got about three weeks ago has iMovie 6, which I spent most of today learning to put together this video of last night's outdoor concert. Christian Heppinstall and Theatre Artists United put on the show with help from various other folks. And now that I've got down the basics of iMovie 6, iMovie 7 came out this past week, and Ben from the Apple Store at CompUSA says it is completely different. Oh well, another obsolete skill.





I continue to be pleased with Viddler. The problems with the video can all be put on me. But considering this is all recorded with my digital camera, it's not too bad. Stabilizing would be helpful in a few places. A second camera would be really helpful. But it was a fun evening, with a big crowd out in the beautiful weather.

Blogger's New Browse Profile Feature

Wow! Quite some time back I had thought this was built in and so when I went to click on Alaska on my profile hoping to see all the other Alaska Bloggers, I was very disappointed you couldn't do this. But today you can. Now I've been gathering links for Alaska blogs hoping at some point to make a map of the types of blogs that are out there. The two blog rolls on the right side are part of that effort. I'd found about 250 Alaskan blogs. But when I clicked on Alaska in the Browse Profile feature, just now, it said there were over 6000! There's no way I'm going to map all those.

But then I went back to my profile and clicked on my first listing under favorite music, Keith Jarrett. Only 305. Out of all the millions of Blogspot bloggers, only 305 listed Keith Jarrett among their favorite musicians.

The first one I clicked on was Leighton. His banner is spectacular - at least to my taste. And the first post up was the YouTube of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee which I immediately posted (below this one.) The photos on his site are also fine. And another video further down - the Secret - by Mark Day was also worth watching.

Obviously, there's something special about people who list Keith Jarrett in their favorite music. I make this claim based on a sample of one. Never mind that Leighton may find my site boring. For now, Keith Jarrett rocks. [I just picked the first Jarrett YouTube that came up. I'd never seen him perform before and I think perhaps the music is more enjoyable if you just listen. In any case the one I'd most recommend is the Koln [don't know how to do an umlaut here] concert CD.] I'll check out more of these Keith Jarrett fans later and give you a report. Meanwhile I'm going to try to put together a video/slideshow of last night's (now) "Broadway Under the Stars" at Town Square. Of course the sun doesn't go down til 10:30pm in early August, but there was a good crowd on this beautiful evening and the music was very good.

Not All Democratic Congresspeople Caved

Thank you Representative Lee for saying what needs to be said.

Short Hike Toward the BallField with Three Young Friends

We picked up S, M, and H, for a hike from the Glen Alps parking lot. We started at the steps to Flattop, but but took the upper trail towards Powerline Pass.

We stopped to play in the stunted forest. We're close to tree line here and the trees are kid sized.
























The kids decided on this warm day, they needed to rearrange the rocks in the creek under the bridge















Someone stole my camera while I was snoozing.
























M has a book on Alaska wildflowers and was excited to find the monkshood blooming everywhere she looked. But she told me the color was wrong in the book. It was blue, but these were more purple.




S decided to give H a piggy back ride.







They didn't get far.















Here we're getting back to the trail after the girls played in the tall grasses.
































We had to make another detour off the trail. This time to leave enough room for the moose and her calf. But she was taking the trail traffic in stride - and there was a lot of hikers and their dogs.















Finally back to the parking lot. As you can see it was full. At five bucks a car (free for those of us who buy annual day passes to the state park) it probably was a good idea just to maintain the parking lot and the trail heads. I wonder how many don't pay, and of that group, how many get fined, and how much of that is collected.

Anyway, it was a great day and the girls did a lot of walking and no complaining.

Fifth Day of 30 Day Sentence

Kona gets a visitor while in quarantine in Singapore. Can't tell who's happier to see whom.

What's Blooming?

I haven't been tending the garden nearly as well as I intended this summer, nor have I kept up with the pictures. Here are a few things that are blooming now.

Ligularia














Lily















Not sure the exact name, but this is a great dwarf delphinium.






















This fox glove came from deep in the woods, maybe ten years ago and is thriving.



The raspberries, always prolific, this year just have a pitiful crop. Not sure what happened but there are only a few stalks from last year that seemed to have survived. I'm hoping this year's new shoots will do better.







And a closeup of a naster[t]ium. [Someone googled 'nasterium' and got here. If I had spelled it right, the person wouldn't have gotten here. But it is 'nastertium."]
This close up shot makes it hard to reconize the Veronica.

Why Are Baseball Diamonds Different Sizes?

• Why are baseball diamonds different sizes when fields of other sports are very specific sizes?
• Why do three hour baseball games really take about the same time as an 'hour' football game?
• Why do baseball players always scratch their crotches?

Zack Hample, author of Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-Experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, answers these and other questions on a fun interview on Fresh Air. Go there then click the listen icon. (If someone knows how to embed the links from NPR here, please let me know.)

Is This Really a Story of Importance?

Tribal Fires linked to this TPM Muckraker post that begins like this:

Recently, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) appeared in the news for purchasing property on the Kenai River at far below market value last year from Alaska businessman Bob Penney. It turns out, the plot is nearby one of her more notable earmarks: a three-mile stretch of road that abuts the property of about 50 residents, for which Murkowski has secured $6 million in federal funds since 2003.

If you read closely, you find out:

1. This was a project initiated by local home owners who didn't like the increase summer traffic going to a nearby federal wildlife refuge.
2. This probably wouldn't have affected commuting from LM's returned property or Penney's
3. Penney doesn't seem to be involved. The local advocates caught Murkowski's ear on a lucky plane trip.
4. It all began in 2002, well before, presumably, Penney offered the deal.

So, making a big deal of it - unless there's more to be uncovered - seems a like throwing meat to the lynch mob.

On the other hand, it sheds more light on the serendipitous way priorities are set and money is spent. A group of people living on a fairly remote road, though on or near the Kenai River, are upset about the dust and traffic on their road, that happens to end at a wildlife refuge and the Kenai River.

I can understand, especially in the age of Uncle Ted, their seeking federal money to help fix the road. But who sits down with the map of the whole state, its infrastructure, and the needs, and says, "These are the most critical roads, bridges, etc. that need money, that will give the most bang for the buck"? I know most federal and state agencies are asked to take that sort of approach in their budget planning. So it's the people whose project doesn't come in high on that list, who I suspect jump the queue and go directly to their legislators to get their projects funded. And with no one else to argue why the project isn't as important as those on the list, or should be funded some other way, the Senator can be persuaded and can also look responsive.

And those people are gonna vote for that sort of responsiveness.

One of the benefits of living in Alaska is that you can talk personally to your elective officials if you want. And when our Congressional delegation can slip in money that otherwise might have gone to Tennessee, well, then all the prioritized Alaska projects get funded, plus a few more. The voters of Tennessee should elect more capable Congressfolk. Or so goes the logic. I'd like to think about a legislator who asks, "So have you submitted this proposal to the DOT people who evaluate the state needs? If not, that wouldn't be fair to the people who have gone through the proper channels." That'll be the day.

But the facts presented in the story don't seem to have the taint that the headline and first paragraph suggest. Will this increase the value of Penney's property? Does the Alaska Fishing Classic use this road for their important guests? Maybe there is more here. But without that, no need for the teaser headline and opening paragraph.

Viddler vs. YouTube

Here's my July salmon spawning video as saved on Viddler.




And here's the best quality I could get onto YouTube.




So, which one is better?

Alaska Railroad Video Using Viddler

Yesterday when we got back to the car parked at Indian, we went down to the beach. Just after we got there, a train went by, but I had just enough time to find a good rock tripod for the camera. And then I discovered an alternative to YouTube called Viddler. You'll notice that not only is the video quality significantly better (and judging from other Viddler videos, if I had saved it as higher quality it would be better), but there are some neat features. You can leave comments at specific places in the video for example. Place the cursor on the top edge of the video to see all the options.

The train was at 4:15pm. A short passenger train that we assume



We assumed that this train was headed for Whittier or possibly Seward. So I thought I'd be really clever and check the Alaska Railroad schedule and tell you exactly. The train passed Indian at 4:15 pm or so. The Seward bound trains leave Anchorage at 6:45am and arrives in Seward at 11:05am. So that can't be it. So let's check the Whitter Schedule and we get:

Departure Information:
10:00 AM depart Anchorage Depot, arrive Whittier 12:20 PM

So I guess this is the mystery train running on its own schedule. Or is this one of those trains that goes from the Bill Sheffield Depot at the airport and is only for cruise passengers?

Why I Live Here - Biking in the Rain

The weather report for today in the paper.







Looking out at the sky. Hmmmmmm. Best kind of rain for a bike ride.










We drove down to the the bike trail at Indian on Turnagain Arm. About 20 minute drive from home. And started out past the fireweed.














The trail meanders along Turnagain Arm, sometimes in the woods, sometimes with views of the Arm, and sometimes by the road.


















The Amanitas are popping up now.

The Amanita spp. are a genus of mushrooms containing a few species famous for their toxicity. There are many edible amanitas, but eating the wrong one can get you into heaps of trouble, not to mention the delerium, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, liver failure or death you may experience. Most poisonings tend to occur in people from foreign countries who pick Amanitas that look "just like" those yummy ones they ate at home or to overconfident novice mycophagists (people who wild mushrooms) who have not bothered to properly identify their mushrooms. So, if you plan to hunt the wild mushroom, make sure to arm yourself with the proper knowledge and only eat a wild mushroom in a foreign country based upon identification in that country's field guide, not a North American guide. Be sure that you use a guide and don't listen to any old wives' tales about how to tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones.

But you get a different view of this from the IamShaman Shop

Amanita muscaria, the highly visible and strikingly beautiful mushroom, also known as the Fly Agaric, is yellow to red in color and speckled with white. Amanita muscaria is probably humanity's oldest entheogen. Amanita muscaria's history has it associated with both Shamanic and magical practices and it was identified as the "Soma" of the ancient (4000 BC) Rig Veda by Gordon Wasson.

So Amanita muscaria has historical use as far back as we have history, and it shouldn't be hard to suppose that prehistoric man, in his activities as hunter/gatherer, recognized that there were mushrooms and other plants that had benefits not related to hunger. Our ancestors must surely have been intrigued by the Amanita muscaria. They appeared magically from nowhere, in strange and beautiful shapes and colors and gave magical visions of the beyond when eaten.

We went came back and crossed over the road to view the people fishing at Bird Creek. I'm sure yesterday (Sunday) this place was a bit more crowded.




Remember, to see this fishing rules or any other pic bigger, you can double click on it.










You can see here the well known geological formation known as the parkinglotriam cut.





And the eagle flying above didn't seem to approve.



















While Joan pushed her bike up the hill, I enjoyed the rain.














I did a whole post on cow parsnips here. These are the seeds.


















We stopped to watch a passenger train go by above the beach where the car was parked, then stopped again at Potter Marsh. Birdwatching wasn't too exciting, but the reeds were nice. Then in pulled up one of these highway scourges. I can't believe that anyone would willingling drive in one of these rolling billboards. My story is that these were Germans who made their camper reservations online. When the arrive in the US, they were horrified to see how ugly their vehicle was, but the ones billboardless ones were $50 a day more and for three weeks that would come to $1,000. So they swallowed hard, and took it. Except that before we drove off, they took pictures of themselves next to the camper. Uggh. Doesn't the Alaska billboard ban cover these moving billboards? The name of the company discretely painted on the side of a truck or van is one things, but this is horrible. (It's more satisfying to vent about this than something like the Dems rolling over and giving Gonzales the power to decide whose phone and internet get tapped. I can't believe it and if I think about it too long I'll get sick.)

Visiting European Education Students

The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is hosting ten students from Europe for several weeks of study of education in the US. They're from Germany, France, Spain, and Denmark. Some are already teaching. One of the themes is diversity education and they're getting a mix of classroom presentations and field trips to schools. I got to work with them last Tuesday and go back tomorrow. Last week we discussed Power and the power implications of lecture and participatory teaching methods. The requirements for the German students was that they had to be immigrants or from immigrant families in Germany. (Last year the group was all Germans.) The other countries made that optional but did require an interest in diversity issues. Here they are in class writing down the answer to "Who was your best teacher? What did the teacher do that was so good?" The responses tended to be combinations of caring about the students, being genuine, and knowing the subject.

You Can't Tell The Players Without a Program - Baseball Cards for Politicians

I lamented recently that we have better stats for baseball players than politicians. Well, the Anchorage Daily News published the beginnings of a program in today's edition. We can make our very own baseball cards for Alaskan politicians. I feel a little sheepish using so much from the ADN, but I've changed it a little. There are no names on the pictures. You have to guess which picture goes with which description. And I've added a picture they didn't have. You'll have to go to the ADN link to get the answers of who's who.

Tried and convicted, awaiting sentencing

- Former Anchorage state Rep. Tom Anderson. In December, he became the first person charged. On July 9, a federal jury convicted him of all counts of bribery, conspiracy and other charges connected with taking payoffs from Bill Bobrick, a lobbyist for a private prison company. Anderson worked as a consultant for Veco, the oilfield services and engineering company at the center of the broader investigation, although none of the charges against him concerned Veco. It was revealed during his trial that federal agents were investigating corruption in the Alaska Legislature as far back as early 2004. He’s awaiting sentencing.

Pleaded guilty

- Longtime Veco CEO Bill Allen pleaded guilty in May to charges of bribery, extortion and conspiracy for his dealings with four legislators: former Reps. Pete Kott, Bruce Weyhrauch and Vic Kohring, and former Senate President Ben Stevens (described in the plea as “State Senator B.”) The first three were charged; Stevens has not been. In addition, Allen admitted to paying a “bonus” in company funds to executives to illegally make campaign contributions in 2005 and 2006 to state and federal candidates. For more than two decades, Allen was a major political fundraiser for Alaska politicians. Resigned from Veco after his guilty plea.

- Veco Vice President Rick Smith, who ran the company’s government affairs operations and worked for part of the year out of a suite in Juneau’s Baranof Hotel that was being secretly monitored by the FBI. In May he pleaded guilty to the same charges as Allen. He admitted, with Allen, to making payoffs to elected officials and campaigns totaling more than $400,000. Resigned after plea.

- Lobbyist Bill Bobrick. A longtime lobbyist at the city level and one-time head of the Alaska Democratic Party, he pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy for bribing Anderson while working for a private prison company, Cornell Cos., and setting up a sham company to funnel him the money. He testified extensively against Anderson.

Charged and awaiting trial

- Former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott of Eagle River. Indicted in May on bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges. Accused of taking payoffs and a promise of a job from Veco for helping steer an oil-production tax favored by the industry through the legislature in 2006. Aside from cash, he’s accused of being paid a “fraudulently inflated” fee by Veco for flooring work. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for September.

- Former state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch of Juneau. Charged in the same indictment as Kott, accused of switching his vote on the oil tax after receiving instructions from Kott and Bill Allen. An attorney, he’s accused of soliciting legal business from Veco in exchange for his vote. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for September.

- Former Rep. Vic Kohring of Wasilla. Chairman of the Special Committee on Oil and Gas, indicted in May on bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges. Accused of taking cash and a loan from Veco executives and the promise of a job for a relative in exchange for supporting the company’s position on the oil tax. Was a member of the Legislature when indicted in May, and later resigned under pressure from constituents and Republican House leaders. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for October.

Others connected with the investigations

- U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. Has represented Alaska since 1968, making him the most senior Senate Republican in history. Stevens has come under political attack recently from fiscal conservatives and others for his use of earmarks to direct programs and money to Alaska. Some of the earmarks benefited his son Ben and a former aide, Trevor McCabe. Veco’s Allen oversaw a construction project in 2000 that doubled the size of Stevens’ home in Girdwood, and investigators have been trying to learn if at least some of that work was an improper gift.

- Former state Sen. Ben Stevens. In his plea agreement, Allen admitted making improper payments of $243,250 to “State Senator B” — an unmistakable reference to Ben Stevens, the former state Senate president. Ben Stevens had has office searched in the August 2006 raid and was later visited again by FBI agents seeking information about his fishery interests and benefits he may have received from legislation written by his father. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars as a consultant for various commercial fishing companies and groups, and chaired a federally funded panel that awarded grants to some of those entities.

- U.S. Rep. Don Young. Alaska’s sole U.S. Representative since 1973, Young has been widely reported to be under investigation over his own ties to Veco and use of earmarks, although details of what is being examined are unclear. Since 1989, he received more than $212,000 in campaign donations from Allen, Smith and other Veco executives, making the company by far his top contributor. One of Young’s aides has pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and Young himself has ties to the lobbyist. Young has come under political attack for adding earmarks to transportation legislation that would benefit a Wisconsin trucking company and a Florida real estate mogul, both of whom contributed to his political campaign. Young recently reported spending $262,000 in campaign funds on unspecified legal fees during the first six months of 2007.

- Trevor McCabe. Seward native and former legislative director to Ted Stevens, he became partner in a consulting business with Ben Stevens, and lobbied Congress on behalf of a Southeast salmon group that obtained federal funds from Ted Stevens. An attorney and lobbyist, McCabe has represented other seafood interests as well. With two partners, McCabe sold property to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward at a price substantially above its appraisal after Ted Stevens provided the money in an earmark.

- Frank Prewitt. Former state corrections commissioner who became a consultant to Cornell Cos., a private prison company that wanted to build a large prison in Alaska (at one time teaming with Veco). Prewitt was being investigated by the FBI in 2004 when he agreed to work for the government to root out corrupt legislators and lobbyists. He passed out money and recorded conversations, providing the foundation for the Anderson case.

- Sens. John Cowdery, R-Anchorage, and Donald Olson, D-Nome, also had their offices searched in August 2006, but have not been charged.

Numpty

My blogfriend at Mirksome Bogle taught me the word numpty just the other day. So here is my own numpty as we were coming back from a numpty of a movie at the Museum. (If you really need to know it was "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.")

Carrie and Kona Arrive in Singapore

I got this picture from my son. His girlfriend and dog had to delay their trip to Singapore - where my son is going to school for a year - because they couldn't get their reservations for the quarantine kennel for Kona on time. But that gave Joel some time to get oriented. So this is Kona's home for a month while she proves she doesn't have rabies.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in Anchorage

Fleck was on my radar enough to know that I should go hear him, but I don't know that I'd heard him before. We were up so high that the seat belt sign was on through the whole concert, but not high enough to be able to use our electronic equipment during the flight. So I took my pictures before, during intermission, and at the encore. I figured that didn't really count as the concert. We were so high up, and it was so dark, it didn't really matter.




In fact, these two shots during the encore give you a much better sense of the music. It was definitely the kind of music I like - sort of a combination of electronic, jazz, with banjo. The guitarist and (Fleck on) the banjo pushed those instruments about as far out of their normal ranges as Hendrix pushed on the Star Spangled Banner. Not the same way he did, but that far. Often it was like a where's waldo, and every once in a while there'd a shadow of be something I thought I recognized - Norwegian Wood, Amazing Grace (well that was more than a shadow), Come Together, Chopsticks, etc. But mostly it was combinations of sounds and silences that one doesn't normally hear put together.


And in his final banjo solo, Fleck had the spirits of all the great pickers of stringed instruments of the US hill country, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia helping him.



I obeyed the written instructions on the program and didn't record. But you really can't report on these guys without some sound, so I found this video on Youtube. It isn't our concert. All four performers we saw are in it, though we didn't see this number.






And when the concert was over almost three hours later at 10:30pm, we spilled out into a balmy evening.

Are You One of the Four to Six Thousand Alaskans Who Matter?

In this morning's NPR piece (sorry, you have to go NPR and then listen to their ad before this plays) on Senator Stevens, Anchorage attorney, and author of Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971, Don Mitchell, explained why Stevens' friends benefiting from federal spending doesn't prove wrong doing:

If you accept that there are only four to six thousand Alaskans in Alaska who matter in the political and economic sense, a large number of that relatively small number will be former Stevens staffers or personal friends of the senator. That goes with the turf of a very small state.

I have to think about this a while. Can it be true that less than 1% of the population of Alaska "matter politically or economically"? What exactly does it mean to "matter politically and economically?

We should note here that according to the author blurb on his book Sold American

Donald Craig Mitchell is a former vice president and general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives, organized by Alaska Natives in 1967 to fight for their historic land claims settlement. In private practice since 1984, he has been intimately involved, both before Congress and in the courts, in the development and implementation of federal Native policy. In 1997, he represented Senator Ted Stevens before the United States Supreme Court as amicus curiae in Alaska v Native Village of Venetie, which upheld Mitchell's view that Congress did not intend land conveyed to Alaska Native corporations to be "Indian Country."

So, I guess that since he represented Stevens in the Supreme Court, Don must be one of the Alaskans that matter. but let's put that thought on hold for a bit.



In the same NPR piece, former Anchorage borough Mayor Jack Roderick says

Bill Allen was the Outstanding Businessman of Alaska, so what do you do? You deal with them.

I couldn't find anything about "Outstanding Businessman of Alaska," but an ADN article on Veco says Bill Allen shared the Alaskan of the Year Award with former Gov Jay Hammond in 1994. I wonder if Hammond thought the award a little tarnished sharing it with Bill Allen. Just the other day I raised the question about who picks these awards and at least found out there's a non-profit called Alaskan of the Year, Inc. (It's mentioned in the first paragraph after the opening quotes and then in the *footnote) Trying to check on Allen's honor, I found that the State Chamber of Commerce give s this award. How are they connected to Alaskan of the Year, Inc.? Are they all part of the Alaskans who matter?


OK, it is true that we are a relatively small state in terms of population and people do tend to know each other. But friends of the Senator shouldn't get signficantly greater benefits from projects than the general public. And the general public's money shouldn't be steered to projects in order to benefit friends of the senator. I already posted about how Stevens earmarked $28 million for the Bill Sheffield Railroad Depot at the Ted Stevens International Airport that is only used by passengers of (mainly) Carnival Cruisea and other Carnival owned lines like Princess and Holland-America. Is that just the natural consequences of so few people who matter?

And what about Trevor McCabe, former Ted Stevens aide, and business partner of Ben Stevens (the son), and former SeaLife Center Board member? How did he happen to buy land in downtown Seward in 2003 that suddenly became so critical for a multi-agency center that Stevens earmarked money to buy that very land as reported in Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News? Just a matter of the Senator having too many friends so someone or other of his 4000 former staffers or friends will just happen to benefit? Why did he buy that piece of land? Why did Stevens earmark money to go to the SeaLife Center instead of the City? Why did the SeaLife Center buy McCabe's land with the earmarked money? Why not the City of Seward, which owns the SeaLife Center? I guess it was just a coincidence since the Senator has so many friends it's bound to happen now and then.

Stevens has brought many, many projects to Alaska. As people look closer and closer into each one, I suspect we will have many surprises, and maybe discover more and more of the 4000-6000 Alaskans who Matter. Maybe Don Mitchell can publish the list of the Alaskans that matter and the rest of us can just stop playing like we matter at election time.

But, I still have to think about what this means. If it's true, then maybe that explains why Mitchell is opposed to Native sovereignty - those folks simply don't matter. Or maybe he'd like to believe it is true. If it isn't true, why would Mitchell say it? And if it is true, does it have to stay true? And again, what does it even mean?

Wales 9 - A Sunny Stop in Nome

The Bering Air van took us downtown (we walked back later for our flight, about 30 minutes) and the sun was shining bright and the beach is just behind the buildings on the main street. I slipped over the rocks protecting town from the ocean and stretched out in the warm (oh, high 60s, low 70s I'd guess) sun. The water was sparkling. I wondered whether my trunks were in my day pack. They were. How often are you at the beach near the Arctic Cirle on a warm day with the water so inviting? I slipped into my trunks and went to test the water. It really wasn't all that cold - it's felt colder in LA - but the surf wasn't good enough to tempt me to go in further than my knees.







Then we walked through downtown with views of the beach to our right. Stopped in the library to check e-mail.






Then continued til we were out of town










On the way back, I took these pictures of houses on the main street that face toward the beach - and the sun that day.

Wales 8 - Back to Nome

Lena helped get people's luggage to the airport, but most of us just walked the 15 minutes to the airport. After just a few days, it was hard to say good bye to the people we came to know.







But we were glad the ceiling was high enough that the plane was able to come in and the flight back was beautiful.

Wales 8 - Reindeer Corral Walk

Sunday while dinner was being prepared, we managed to get almost everyone togeter for a group picture on the steps to the Community Center. You can see how low the clouds were. Planes weren't flying in that day.




Sunday afternoon we had done some more writing exercises and worked on small arty notebooks we learned to 'bind' just by cutting a little and rolling some of the paper. Very clever, we couldn't figure out how they had been made until they showed us. And Alice had brought in this shell from the beach.





After dinner, Joan and I walked to a lagoon to see the reindeer corral. It was an almost rainy evening, with a brisk wind. We took a left on the dirt road at the airport and walked through the beautiful marshy landscape with plovers, dunlins (picture), ravens, and various other unidentified birds.















Finally we got to the reindeer corral and the lagoon. The reindeer were out somewhere eating. As I understood it, they only come here when necessary - like to harvest antlers.






On the way back we could hear the helicopter, but only see it now and again in the fog. It was taken boxes in the net up onto the hillside for the seismic team's research. I asked the pilot the next day if he could see. He said he only needed to see down, that seeing straight ahead was overrated. They weren't taking the equipment far up the hill from road where we were walking.


I couldn't help wondering how much it costs to rent a helicopter and how much it would cost to hire some local folks, where employment is scarce, to take it out on their four wheelers and then lug it the quarter or half mile further up the hill.





And when we got back they were still singing hymns in the Community Center.

The next day, Monday, July 23 - see I'm getting further and further behind here - we flew back to Nome and spent a gorgeous afternoon there. I'll post those pics tomorrow I hope.

Bob Penney on the Web 2 - Philanthropist and Environmentalist

Google comes up with lots of Penney material related to the land deal, but for someone so prominent so long, there is precious little pre-land deal that comes up on Penney.

THE PENNEY CHALLENGE
Thank you Bob Penney and the Kenai Peninsula!
Bob has issued this Challenger Grant for the next three years to be matched for a total of $100,000.

-CHALLENGER LEARNING CENTER
Thank you to all who supported the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska in 2006!

Testimony of Mr. Robert C. Penney
before the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy
August 21, 2002
Anchorage, Alaska

Introductory Remarks

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy has asked me to identify issues in my area of experience, and to make recommendations on how policies can be developed to resolve these issues. My experience is as an Alaska businessman who has worked closely with governmental processes for the past 51 years to promote stewardship of ocean and coastal resources, and especially the conservation of our fishery resources. My experience as a founder of the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, a conservation and sportsfishing advocacy group, has convinced me that protection of critical habitats is the foundation for proper stewardship of living marine resources. As co-founder of the Ted Stevens Kenai River Classic, I am proud to say sportfishermen through this event have raised more than $3 million during the last nine years for salmon habitat protection, public education and scientific research. My efforts to insure access of the sportsfishing public to these same resources has also taught me how little we know about the marine and marine-related environments, in spite of the many advances in knowledge in the second half of the 20th Century. As a final note on my experience, my special interest has long been the protection and sustained harvest of salmon, an animal that starts life in freshwater but goes on to gain nearly all of its adult weight in marine waters. Working with salmon has taught me that marine ecosystems do not stop at the shoreline. As the long-term fate of Alaska’s coastal watersheds is highly dependent on proper stewardship of coastal and ocean resources, my issues address marine, and marine-related ecosystems that cover both oceans and watersheds.

The rest is at the link.

We See What We Want To See

The Anchorage Daily News' lead editorial was on Ted Stevens today:

A sad day for Alaska

Alaskan of the Century draws scrutiny of federal authorities


It's a sad day for Alaska when a leader as influential and respected as Ted Stevens, 30-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, has his house searched by FBI and IRS agents.

Sen. Stevens has allowed a personal friendship to draw him into a potentially questionable arrangement with Bill Allen, long Alaska's most powerful and controversial political fundraiser.

When Sen. Stevens agreed to let his longtime friend Mr. Allen oversee remodeling of his Girdwood home, was Mr. Allen merely the project manager, or did he pay for part of the improvements?...

The editorial suggests that everything was fine until Stevens let Allen arrange things. People are complex. Rarely are they all good or all evil, usually some great mixture of good and not so good qualities. But when Stevens was named Alaskan of the Century in 2000 a good many of the warts were already visible. [Who chooses the Alaskan of the Century? As best as I can tell, a non-profit organization known as "Alaskan of the Year, Inc.*] But Alaskans tended to look the other way, smirk, or wink because Uncle Ted, as he's called here, consistently brought in the Federal dollars. I suspect no Alaskan who's been in this state for more than 20 minutes hasn't been impacted by Stevens. If they arrive at the Ted Stevens International Airport, if they get to ship things by mail at great rates to rural Alaska, if they drive the roads of most cities or towns, Uncle Ted has made their (I guess I should say 'our') lives easier than they otherwise would have been.

So as long as things were good, we didn't want to know too much. As long as Uncle Ted gave us our gifts when he visited, we smiled and said nice things about him. When the so called 'bridge to nowhere' campaign surfaced, some Alaskans were finally embarrassed enough to suggest that the money be sent back or to help Katrina victims . But the clues have been there for a while. We knew he had a nasty temper, or at least was a good actor, and used it to intimidate (is that the polite word for bully?) others. And if we didn't know things, the LA Times spelled a lot out in a Dec. 17, 2003 story on Stevens.

Senator's Way to Wealth Was Paved With Favors
by Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper


ANCHORAGE — He wielded extraordinary power in Washington for more than three decades, eventually holding sway over nearly $800 billion a year in federal spending.

But outside the halls of the U.S. Senate, which is a world of personal wealth so rarified some call it "the Millionaires' Club," Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) had struggled financially.

Then, in 1997, he got serious about making money. And in almost no time, he too was a millionaire — thanks to investments with businessmen who received government contracts or other benefits with his help.


Ted Stevens is chairman of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee.
Added together, Stevens' new partnerships and investments provide a step-by-step guide to building a personal fortune — if you happen to be one of the country's most influential senators.

They also illustrate how lax ethics rules allow members of Congress and their families to profit from personal business dealings with special interests.

Among the ways that Stevens became wealthy:

• Armed with the power his committee posts give him over the Pentagon, Stevens helped save a $450-million military housing contract for an Anchorage businessman. The same businessman made Stevens a partner in a series of real estate investments that turned the senator's $50,000 stake into at least $750,000 in six years.

As I was looking for this old article, I saw that others have found it too and published it now that Stevens is the center of so much attention nationally. To see the complete article, you can go to Commondreams.org. Getting it directly through the LA Times archive is much harder.


But my main point here isn't whether Stevens is good or evil. (I would never seriously ask such a question because as I said above, most people are far more complex than that.) Corruption at this level doesn't happen without the complicity of many people. We all knew, at the very least, that Alaskans were getting back far more money per capita than the people of any other state. And far more than we gave in taxes. We all knew that Uncle Ted had a great campaign war chest filled by lobbyists of all persuasions. Those of us who thought about it said things like, "Well, that's the way the game is played," or "If Ted doesn't get the money for Alaska, someone else will get it for their state," or "We are a small population in the biggest state, we have to use whatever means we can to get our fair share." Or some such argument.

At this juncture, when the power structure is being shaken up, can Alaskans of various political persuasions rally together and take a serious look at who we are and where we are going? Our Governor stood up to corruption. Her success is atypical of what happens to whistle blowers. But she did the right things at the right time and was rewarded for it. Can we as a state look at our financial situation - not as "what's in it for me," as the money flow from DC, or as our annual Permanent Fund Dividend checks - but as a way to fairly, competently, and efficiently allocate funds to those services and projects which are most needed and give us the most value for our dollar? Can we find ways to diminish the influence of professional lobbyists?

Now is the time to review whether the Permanent Fund remains a goody bag for individuals or we use its earnings as they were originally intended - to help pay for our collective state needs - infrastructure, education, police, maintenance of our land and resources, etc. The flow from DC is surely going to diminish. Our Permanent Fund is at $40 billion. Are we going to blow it? Or act collectively like responsible adults?

It is also time to reflect on what we knew, when, and what we chose not to know about Ted Stevens, Don Young, Bill Allen, and many others. What do we know about all our prominent politicians, business leaders, and educators and religious leaders as well? Do we individually have to the tools to distinguish between those who are sincerely and competently working in the public interest and those who use a facade of goodness to abuse our trust? And are we willing to not grab whatever we can from the collective pot?

This is one of those times of upheaval when we could make great changes. Or not.



*According to Taxemptworld.com , ALASKAN OF THE YEAR INC has been a charitible organization since July 1994 in Anchorage County [ok, this is a national organization that collects and posts non-profit registration forms from around the country and they don't know Alaska has boroughs instead of counties or that it is the Municipality of Anchorage, not the County] whose contact person is
RODNEY D LIND, and whose mailing address is
701 W 8TH AVE STE 600
ANCHORAGE, AK 99501-3468

A quick Google search discovers that 701 W. 8th Ave STE 600 is the office of the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick and that Rodney Lind asked the Board of Certified Public Accountants

for a waiver of the requirement that he earn 4
hours of continuing education in ethics for renewal of his CPA
license for the January 1, 2006 – December 31, 2007 renewal
period. He makes this request because he is licensed as a CPA in
two other states and receives continuing education in ethics in
those states.

The board denied the waiver

on the basis that Mr. Lind needs to be aware of changes in Alaska’s statutes and regulations.

OK, Rodney, I don't know you, and there is absolutely nothing here to suggest any wrong doing on your part. Asking to waive the ethics class requirements because you've already taken such courses in other states seems like a reasonable request. But since you are the contact person listed for the organization that selected Stevens as the Alaskan of the Century, there is a certain irony here that I just can't resist.

Bob Penney on the Web - Board Member, Kenai River Sport Fishing Association

Yesterday I said we need to know more about Bob Penney. Here's a contribution, and I'll post more as I find it. [I'm not looking for current news about the Murkowski land deal, but other things that will help me understand who he is.]

Board of Directors
Robert (Bob) Penney

Work:
Penco, AK

Personal Info:
Married - Jeannie
4 Children
10 Grandchildren
Has lived in Alaska 50+ years.
Resides at River Presence - a private family fishing lodge on the Kenai River.
D.O.B. 05-03-32

Business Acitivties:
Self-employed businessman since age 26.
Owns and operates Penco, AK, a family owned real estate development company, which holds porperties in Alaska, California, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
Has been engaged with various retail businessmen in the Anchorage area.

Organization Affiliations:
Past President of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce -1980
Co-Founder and past Chairman of Resource Development Council
Past board member of Anchorage Economic Development Commission

Fisheries Activities:
Founder, past chairman and present board member of the Kenai River Sportfishing Assoc.
Formed and helped fund HAB-PRO Habitat Preservation and Restoration efforts on the Kenai River
Founded and Chaired Kenai River Classic Sportfishing Tournament
Past member of the North Pacific Fisheries Managenment Council
Member of Alaska Sportfishing Assoc.
Lifetime member of Alaska Flyfishing Club
Partner/Owner Golden Horn Lodge - Dillingham
Shareholder - Trapper's Creek Smoking Company, a fish smoking, processor, retail and wholesale supplier
Long time advocate for public fisheries in Cook Inlet
A lifelong dedicated sports angler

"Grandpas's [sic] are here to take grandkids fishing"

Board of Directors, Kenai River Sport Fishing Association bio