Last Word on Illegal Immigration

Fortunately, there are a number of excellent cartoonists. One of the best is Paul Conrad. This 1999 (I think that's what it says) cartoon really captures how I feel about immigration. Were the passengers on the Mayflower 'legal'? With the right sophistry you could make the argument they were. But I just don't see any way to logically draw the line about which illegals should go home. The same arguments we hear today in the fashion of their day - whether about Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, Chinese - were said from the beginning. And the basic argument about which immigrants to keep out boils down to "well, those who later than when my family arrived." Did you know that in the late 1800's and early 1900's you didn't even have to have US citizenship to vote? That's how the big city political machines in Boston and New York were able to organize the immigrants. The US Constitution didn't set the rules for who can vote, that is left up to each state. Women were not precluded from voting in the Constitution, only by the states.

Section. 4.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

In fact:

A Boston city councilor wants the city to allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections, a move that could increase the number of eligible voters in the city by as much as a third and dramatically alter the city's political landscape.
Article Tools

A measure by Councilor at Large Felix D . Arroyo, supported by four other council members, would extend voting rights to about 95,000 immigrant residents who live in the country legally but are not citizen

I'm sure that will get some people riled up. That's not my intent. Rather, I just want people to think beyond their normal thought neighborhoods. If we really believe in democracy, then people who are affected by the policies should have a right to vote for the leaders. Is it fair that only Americans can vote for the President of the US when that office affects so much of the rest of the world? No, I'm not advocating this, but it is something to think about.

Preparing to go into the Rabbit Hole

How does one prepare to go to federal prison? Monday, December 3, Tom Anderson reports to FCI (Federal Correctional Institute) Sheridan in Oregon. Tom suggested I read The Rabbit Hole, a blog written by another felon who entered a Florida FCI for three months last March. [Like all blogs it goes in reverse chronological order. Below is the beginning of the first post, thus it's at the bottom of the March Archives]

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Introduction and Background

On February 13, 2007, I was sentenced to 3 months confinement in a federal prison followed by 3 years supervised release with a special condition of 3 months home confinement with electronic monitoring.

In 6 days, I report to the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola, FL. I must self-report by 2pm, however, the nice lady in the Receiving and Discharge department recommended I show up by noon or I risk not being able to purchase any necessary items from the commissary before the weekend (i.e. toothpaste, toothbrush, toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc.). I am leaving Charlotte on a 9:40am (EST) flight, arriving in Pensacola at 10:27pm (CST). I will then take a cab to the prison 10 miles away. I will arrive with the clothes on my back, my wedding band (no stones), $1000 cash to place in my "account" for commisary and phone calls, reading glasses, and my driver's license (airline ID). It is my understanding I will be strip-searched and my clothes (and hopefully driver's license) returned to my wife by mail. By my calculations, I will be released on June 29, 2007. I have already purchased the return ticket so I hope I calculated correctly. I have 72 hours to get back to Charlotte and contact the probation department to begin my home confinement.

I have decided to share the thoughts of my prison experience because of the paucity of information available on the subject (nothwithstanding a handful of books and websites I have found). There are, I am sure, good reasons for this. For one, people who have been convicted of a crime are not usually interested in publishing details of a consequence that may be a source of shame or embarrassment. Fair enough. Additionally, the internet as we know it is only about 12 years old and blogging is an even newer phenomenon so the vast majority of current inmates lack experience with the entire concept of sharing their life in such a public manner. Finally, blogging requires a certain technical expertise and internet marketing savvy. None of these are constraints for me.

I am not normally comfortable with sharing my personal life in such a public manner. I sympathize with the fears of Winnie-the-Pooh:

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. "

Nonetheless, there is value to me, and I hope to others, in documenting my experience.

I will not spend much time commenting on either the process or the substance of the government's prosecution of my case. The law is the law and the facts are the facts. Whether I agree or disagree at this point on this matter or that matter is really irrelevant. I entered a guilty plea, accepted responsibility, paid restitution, and received my sentence. It is what it is.

In addition, given that I am about to serve time in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons followed by 3 years under the supervision of the Federal Department of Probation, it is simply not prudent to be commenting on my case beyond what has been entered in the record, either in the form of documents submitted by my lawyers or statements made directly by me in court. Finally, the entire experience is still somewhat raw and it is common wisdom that one should avoid making comments on the record that one might later regret without adequate time for reflection.

Nonetheless, I know that the first question you are asking is, "What did this guy do to receive a federal prison sentence? How did he get to this point?"

The barest facts are as follows: On July 21, 2005, my home was raided by 7 FBI agents at 6am. . . .

[This excerpt came from here.]

Anchorage International Film Festival - Saturday free flicks for kids

Looking for something to do with the kids on Saturday morning? The Anchorage International Film Festival, which begins Friday Nov. 30, has a free session of short films billed as for the family. Wilda Marston Auditorium, Loussac Library, 10:45 am.

You can check the daily schedule for the weeklong festival here. (The daily schedule drop down window is the top window on the left.)

Kotee's Back from Iraq

It was a very pleasant surprise to see Kotee helping out at the Thai Kitchen the other night. He's part of the Thai Kitchen 'family' who have finished school and worked at the restaurant under the guidance of Sommai and Orathai and Ben. This is a traditional Thai/Lao 'social service' model that gets no funds from government. Over the years, Sommai and Ben's four sons have worked in the family restaurant, learning lots of skills - running the cash register, good social skills dealing with lots of different customers, gaining lots of 'uncles' and 'aunts' among the customers of a wide range of professions and political persuasions. In addition to their own four sons, there have always been 'cousins' - sometimes kids who were having trouble at home or at school - who were brought into the family to finish school, have a job, and be with a family that set high standards of good behavior. And in return Anchorage has had a great Thai restaurant for over 20 years, plus the positive spillover effect for their landlord, their suppliers, and the school system. And don't worry Paul, they are all here legally.

Among these family members is Kotee. When he finished high school he joined the army and worked it out so he got stationed at Fort Rich. He's been in Iraq for the last 14 months. His main job was electronics support - communications, radios, night vision, optics... His stories were full of jargon and I had to ask him to stop and explain often. He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time. They had a huge power plant right nearby that supplied power for much of Iraq. The pollution was awful and people downwind seemed to have an unusual number of physical ailments. But they could use the smoke as their windsock. He said the area is also known as the triangle of death.

He said his laptop kept him sane. He could go into his shared room (when he described it it sounded like one of those tiny Japanese hotel rooms, but it was air conditioned) and watch dvd's etc. But sometimes internet was closed down, when they were on "Rivercity." He explained that meant someone had died and all communication out was shut down until the family was officially notified. He showed us a video he made of his life in Iraq. He was in the thick of things, saw vehicles, buildings, and people blown up, but seems to have come home physically and mentally ok. He's back in Anchorage til early next summer when he goes to Fort Lewis where he's been assigned after reenlisting for five years.

He's a great guy and we were very happy to see him back and healthy.

Late November, Where's the Snow?

Lone window washer at the BP building Tuesday.

Where's all the snow? Seward Highway looking north from Tudor Bridge.

Garden section at Lowe's. But they didn't have the screws we needed.

Chugach view along Tudor at Seward Highway.

I think I'll stay out of this office.

Guest Post or maybe ReQuest Post or maybe Prize Post

Tea N Crumpet left this comment:

This is today's (28 November 2007) 9 Chickweed Lane, one of the finest comics ever drawn. This would illustrate your blog and Alaska's corruption scandal very well!

I've never had a guest post before, or a request post, so, why not? (If it's too small to read, double click it and you can see a larger version)

OK, here it is. I've always liked the way the drawing is such an important part of this cartoonist's strip, but I must admit I don't totally get this one. But Tea is a regular and so she gets her request.

And I think Tea is hit 9,998, the closest to 10,000, so let's consider this post as one of her prizes. 10,003 has volunteered for dinner at Thai Kitchen if she (if I'm guessing right) is the winner. No reason why we can't have two winners.

Anti-Sanctuary Ordinance Buried Indefinitely

I got the following email tonight from the blogger at Independent Alaskan:

Despite the fact that the Anchorage Assembly postponed public testimony regarding Paul Bauer's anti-sanctuary ordinance, Assemblyman Allan Tesche moved to postpone the ordinance indefinitely. The motion passed 8-3 (Bauer, Coffey & Sullivan voted no). A second vote for reconsideration was 8-3, so the issue will not be brought up again!!! It's done!

I guess after someone last week who claimed to be Debbie Bauer wrote things like this on the ADN blog:

As for my husband's anti-crime ordinance, what don't you understand? Google for yourself and find out just what illegal immigration has done to this country. It speaks for itself. Not a waste of time, but one man's effort in making our city a safer place in which to live. So if you want to live with illegal's move, cause this city is going to change for the better.

Are you here legally? Everyone that is making the issue of illegal immigrants has something to hide themselves.
We are proud to be the decendents of immigrant familes that processed thru Ellis Island in the 1900's.

that wiser heads on the Assembly realized where this debate could have headed if not stopped now.


While getting the link to the ADN blog just now I noticed that Kyle Hopkins just blogged the same story with a sour note at the end:

In a surprise move -- surprise to me, anyway -- the Assembly voted to postpone indefinitely a proposal from Assemblyman Paul Bauer that would let police ask you for proof of U.S. citizenship.

That means it's dead.

Bauer just handed me a written statement in response. It says, in part:

"The eight Anchorage Assembly members voting to postpone indefinitely the ordinance "Local-Enforcement-Anti-Sanctuary" is a slap in the face of law-abiding, legal citizens."

If Paul Bauer is so strongly in favor of obeying the law he might want to work on the people who run red lights, speed past schools, and beat their wives. I suspect they, and drunk drivers, cause a lot more harm to Anchorage than illegal aliens.

Funny how things work. I got an email that linked me to a page with this video. It has quotes from the bible about how people should help 'aliens'. I had been recalling that there were a number of passages I recalled that said people should take in and help strangers (which I was taught meant something like people from other lands). I think the video is a little heavy handed. But it saves me the time of finding these quotes myself. I know that quotes can be taken out of context so I got my bible out to check on the passages. The wording is a slightly different, but the key difference in the passages I looked up was that the video uses the word 'alien' where my bible says "stranger.' But alien is probably a closer translation to what those words mean in modern American English.

Leslie A. Gallant, Executive Administrator, Alaska State Medical Board Says...

I spoke to Leslie A. Gallant, Executive Administrator of the Alaska State Medical Board today to find out how someone could prevent an applicant from getting a license to practice medicine in Alaska.

BACKGROUND

Doug Pope, Bill Bobrick's attorney, alleged in court today and again in an interview after court that Lesil McGuire had called his client's wife and threatened that if Bobrick testified against Tom Anderson (Lesil's husband) that Jessica (Bobrick's wife, who was in medical school) would never get licensed in Alaska to practice medicine. As I understand it, he was trying to use this as an example of risk that his client faced by cooperating with the government. If there was a great risk, then Bobrick might be able to lower the points used to determine the length of his sentence. From television courtroom trial shows I've seen, I'm guessing this was intended for organized crime or other cases where witnesses testify at great risk - even death. [This is all related to the Tom Anderson trial and other political corruption investigations going in Alaska.] And in the end, the judge said he didn't give much credit to this issue.

Aside from the fact that the phone call apparently was not recorded so we really don't know what was said, I began to wonder whether someone could actually derail a doctor's medical licensing. So I called the Executive Administrator of the State Medical Board, Leslie A. Gallant.

Basically, she said that a person's application goes before the eight member medical board and they have specific statutory requirements for approving or rejecting an applicant. If they reject someone, they have to cite the statutory reason for rejection. Lesil McGuire's father was on the board in the mid-1990's. Below is my summary of the whole telephone interview. It's close to verbatim, but since I didn't have it on tape, I've changed it from first person to third unless I use quotes. But essentially these are Gallant's words.


INTERVIEW

Leslie Gallant said that the State Medical Board grants and denies licenses. Anyone who submits the proper credentials and goes through the process is considered on their merits. They don’t consider who they know or who their dad is, they only consider the applicant.

Five doctors, one PA [physician assistant] and two Public Members sit on the board. Dr. David McGuire [Lesil McGuire's father] was appointed to the board in April 1992, but he resigned from board - she didn’t know the exact date - sometime in 1995, because they had a very public case with another doctor named McGuire. People were confusing the names of the two physicians, so he resigned so there would be no confusion that their action didn’t involve him.

Dr. David McGuire is one of the people that interviewed and hired Gallant in 1993. “He has never, never tried to influence a board decision, at least not through me.” [I understood that from her intonation that she was simply saying nothing she knew about, and not implying that he might have through someone else.]

When I asked how someone could affect whether someone got a license or not she said that she gets calls sometimes from legislators because some medical office or clinic is riled up because they are hiring a new doctor and complaining because we aren’t doing it fast enough. They call their legislator, that "we aren’t fast enough. 'What are you guys doing?' they ask. We aren’t licensing them because we have an issue with them. When we have an issue, we have to gather more information. I just explain what’s going on.”

Meetings of the board are open, public meetings. Disciplinary proceedings, everything is in the public domain. A few documents held confidential. AMA (American Medical Association) profile, National Physicians’ Data Bank (NPDB) report, and the exams scores when they got out of medical school. Those three documents are confidential, because the originating organizations require that they be held confidential. Later she added that health information about applicants is also confidential. They have an attorney general ruling saying that certain health information should be redacted. They ask this information to be sure that a doctor doesn’t have a health problem that could negatively impact their ability to practice - say a surgeon who has Parkinson's and has tremors. They can restrict their practice to certain things, like independent medical evaluations - for workers comps or personal injury lawsuits - but never procedures. They can restrict their practice making accommodations so they can still practice without endangering the public.

Everything else is open to the public. License from other states, application, etc.

"It’s never happened in my experience that someone has tried to prevent someone from being licensed." The Board is the entity of state government that grants or denies a license. They have to cite legal grounds for denial. They have to cite specific statute or regulations that the denial is based on. For example, a suspended license somewhere else is grounds for denial, because the law says that.

They are taking quasi-judicial actions when they deny or discipline. They have to cite their legal grounds for anything or everything they do. If the board tried to deny someone, and it happens sometimes - say there is a doctor with marginal exam scores, not glowing recommendations, maybe behavior problems, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “But when those come before the board, I have to say, you might not like the application, but you don’t have the grounds to deny it.”

The person’s due process rights allow them to appeal the denial. It goes before an administrative law judge. Even a single medical board member would have to convince seven other board members. It wouldn’t happen. “I have no experience of anyone ever calling me asking me to deny an application. We have eight members, if they see no grounds, they can’t deny.”

I asked if the public files were available on line. She said no, they were all in Juneau, but that anyone can ask for a copy of a licensee file and they can get it.

End of interview, me talking again. I know that people can talk to people, not everyone is honest, and not everything is totally clear cut. But it seems that someone coming out of medical school, with passing grades, no disciplinary actions, or other negative marks on her record is certainly going to be very hard to turn down for a license, even if you had connections to the board members. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it sounds like it would be pretty hard to get away with. This would seem more clear cut than grading bar exams for example.


A couple notes. As I said in an earlier post, I have spoken with Tom Anderson. I think that I have covered the trials in a relatively objective manner so far. I think that my talking to Anderson or his wife rather than biasing me to slant things, rather makes me more sensitive to possible other views on things. I'll let just leave this note here and let the reader decide. I think, for example, I would have had this question anyway. In fact, Leslie Gallant said that the ADN had already called her today. I don't know if that was LisaDemer's doing, but I suspect it was. You continue to impress me, Lisa.

Douglas Pope Interview Excerpt after Bobrick Sentencing

I really need to get a bigger memory card for my digital camera. But here are a couple bits of the interview with attorney Pope after Bobrick received what has to be considered a fairly light sentence of five months incarceration and five months home confinement and a $3000 fine.







The tape does suggest that the viewer remember that:

1. The phone call, as I understood what Prosecutor Bottini said, was not recorded. Pope's interpretation is based on what he has heard about the phone call. We know that messages even between two people get distorted. This phone conversation was made 11 months ago. [See below] What we heard in court was presented in an attempt to lower his defendant's sentence. He argued something like the threats to defendants is a legitimate factor for considering the risk that defendants take to testify. My guess this was put in to sentencing guidelines for organized crime and drug cases where witnesses might be threatened with death. We did not hear how Lesil McGuire would have characterized the conversation.

2. There is a quasi-judicial process for determining who gets medical licenses in the State of Alaska, and a conversation with the Executive Administrator of the Alaska State Medical Board this afternoon suggests to me that it is highly unlikely that a personal feud could prevent
a qualified applicant from being licensed. I'll post my notes on that interview in a separate post.

Notes from Bobrick Sentencing

The court calendar for today was not up on the US District Court's webpage last night, so I guessed the sentencing would begin at 9am. This morning it was up - 8:30. I got to court around 8:50am and the guards at security told me the court was sealed. As I got up the stairs everyone was waiting outside the courtroom. Lucky me.

These are my notes from court today in the sentencing of Bill Bobrick. Actually, I don't even know what he was charged with since there wasn't a trial. He confesse, made an agreement with the government and has worn a wire for them. He testified in the Anderson trial. Judge Sedwick has been the judge for all the trials, so he has been able to see how the various defendants who are cooperating with the government have contributed to the evidence against those who have gone to court. Bobrick was the first of these cooperating defendants to be sentenced. Others that I know of are Bill Allen and Rick Smith of Veco and Frank Prewitt.

As always I offer a WARNING here. These are my court notes - as fast as my ears could hear, my brain could interpret, and my fingers could type. But a lot is missing. This is not a transcript, but a sketch of what was said.

9:05
Filing unsealed,
Bobrick wore a wire about people still under investigation.
[Based on his voice, it seems Judge Sedwick has a cold.]

Pope: First talk about Threat, document filed in public. Then argue for additional downward departure.

Clear that Bobrick told so many people he’d committed a crime, his wife in 3rd year in medical school. Tom Anderson and wife, had socialized in 2004-6 time period, When clear that he was cooperating, Bobrick got phone call from Lesil that she would take steps to prevent Jessica’s medical license in AK. She got Jessica’s phone number.

Then Bobrick called Bottini, understood Lesils calls to be threats, as state senator and daughter of Dr. McGuire. FBI interviewed them and phone message, and contacted Stockler [Anderson attorney] this was violation of condition of release. These threats were credible (Bobrick’s belief). We think govt will agree. Govt took contact seriously. Bobrick was when he continued cooperating against Anderson, was subject to significant danger threat to his family income.

Other cases, don’t go into details those threats. [referred to other cases that took into consideration threats to witnesses] We believe this was a credible threat that should be considered and we don’t know whether it will be carried out. Jessica Bury (Bobrick) Is in 3rd year of medical school and and LM is still a State Senator.

In our view, essentially what the govt. has suggested is four level departure, under the circumstances, we believe a 6-8 level departure is warranted. No questions Bobrick’s cooperation was significant and useful. Using the Washington case a two level departure is warranted.

Govt. Could take the position that Bobrick’s testimony was not instrumental, but it was certainly useful and highly …… The evidence that Tom Anderson received $23,000 out of $24,000 came late and came from Bobrick. No question that govt would agree here, no dispute, the FBI considered Bobrick to be truthful, reliable, trustworthy. Washington court found that to be important that trustworthiness held by both govt. And fbi.

Mr. B was more than debriefed, active cooperation, wearing a wire, testified in court. My belief, when Joe Bottini did redirect of Bobrick, that is what sank TA. Anderson received over $23 of the 24K paid to Pacific Publishing.

The credible threat made by Lesill McGuire. Personally, I thought she was tampering with the witness and she should have been indicted your honor. Whether that threat is realized remains to be seen. His cooperation was timely, in our office the afternoon he was contacted, and he’d signed the agreement. I could argue for a ten level departure downward is warranted, but realistically, I’m arguing for 6-8 level departure. It would not put court or government in awkward position when it comes to sentencing Smith or Allen.


Bottini - first the communication from Lesil McGuire. It can be conceived as a threat, New Years Day this year. Tried to track down Stockler. The following day told him if that happened again we would seek the end of Anderson’s release on bond.

J: Was this recorded? [I think]

B: Asked Bobrick for his wife’s phone number in Minnesota. Was not captured in recording, but I don’t doubt Bobrick’s recollection of what she said. I have no doubt it was a veiled threat about her ability to get a medical license in AK. They knew he was cooperative at that time. For the purpose of trying to rattle his cage, which she succeeded in doing.

It’s a real shame people are saying things about you, this could affect your getting a license in AK. I think that was the purpose of Ms. McGuire saying this, she didn’t come out and say, If your husband testifies, you won’t practice medicine in the state, but it was a veiled threat and we believe that was the intent.

What should he receive. We recommended a four level downward departure. One year and a day. You saw the evidence and saw how the plan, scheme developed. Bobrick was the source of this scheme with Prewitt. He was cooperative and did everything we asked. But tempered by what he did in this. We think we could have convicted TA without him, but he did help. We think a four level departure is reasonable. One year and a day.


J: I’m wrestling now with the extent of downward departure.
First, all the requirements of ??? Are clearly met. The extent of the downward departure. The matter is a close one. Part of the reason we are here is Bobrick’s part in the case. However, I do think a departure of 5 levels is appropriate. His assistance was of high value. A question whether his testimony was - he painted a very unflattering picture of his own conduct and assisting in other investigation, his cooperation about as much as the Govt could hope to get from anybody.

About threat from TA’s wife I can’t give too much credibility, I question, in the objective sense, I doubt it very credible. But from Bobrick’s view, it could have been serious and it could have affected his cooperation, But to B.’s credit, he cooperated as much as you could ask.

The 6-8 level is clearly too much. Even the government’s 4 level departure cuts his sentence in half. Consider a level 12 instead of 16. Rather than 24-30 months applicable. $3,000 to $300000, Qualifies for split sentence, part in prison, part in half way house. But under guideline, half would have to be served in incarceration.

Pope on appropriate sentence.

First, recognizing that guidelines do recognize that half to be served in prison, but the guidelines are advisory and urge the judge order that less than half or none of the time served be in incarceration and consistent with other cases. Will proceed

If court is going to adhere to the guidelines without going out any way, that the minimum sentence - ten months, I don’t think the govt will dispute. We believe the low end is warranted. Would like to address issue we raised in memorandum

Mr. Bobrick, I’ve been doing this a long time, the court knows that, referring to old case with your honor as private attorney, so court knows I’ve been doing this along time, I’ve been trying criminal cases for 30 years, I have never seen a person charged with a crime who is better suited for a sentence focused on rehabilitation. The many letters were not pleas for mercy, but to show the court what kind of person B is and what he could do in the future for the community. If he were in a halfway house, he would have opportunity to atone for the crimes.

Whatever his sentence, even if half of the sentence in imprisonment, then five months in home confinement or half-way house. Our recommendation is 5 and 5 so he can start the process of

Our position is this an appropriate situation where Mr. B serve all in ½ way house or half in halfway house and half in imprisonment.

J. You siad you think this is a perfect candidate for home confinement and doesn’t need structure of halfway house.

Pope: He is prepared for whatever. He will atone, STAR (Stand Together Against Rape] would allow him to work on the hotline. If home confinement would allow him to go out into the community so during the day he could do a 40-60 hour a week atoning for his crime, that would be his preference. Not clear whether home confinement would be able to stay or leave home…

J: He could do whatever the conditions the court imposes.

P. Then we believe he should be allowed to leave .

J: Thank you sir.

Bottini: I sort of jumped the gun about our ultimate

It’s been a long time since I worked with a white collar criminal who was so remorseful and I think that is significant. He never batted an eyelash about his own conduct. Immediately admitted he’d done wrong and was remorseful.

10-16 months falls in there. If you fashion a sentence…… The govt. Wont’ be upset.


Bobrick: Your honor, I’d like to address my remarks to court and people of the state of Alaska. I’ve had a long time to think about this day, but I don’t really have words to convey the depths of my shame and remorse. Not just the disappointed I’ve caused to family friends, and community, but the knowledge I played a part in contributing to the idea that our political system in Alaska is corrupt. I’ll carry that scar with me the rest of my life. No matter what sentence is imposed on me today. I’ll spend the next 30 years if I live so long, making up for what I’ve done and to pay back the people who have stood by me by continuing to undue the damage I’ve done. The only thing I can do is apologize again to all the people I’ve damaged. My wife plans on practicing medicine here, I’m not going anywhere. I plan to work to regain the trust of my community.


J:
Factors: Nature and circumstances of offense - serious, as B has just said, and I agree. There are politicians who are corrupt. TA is one who was convicted and there are others. It seems as there is not a great difference between our system of government and those other corrupt systems around the world. Corruption has a way of corroding democracy. Considering he has not considered [committed?] another crime. It appears to me Mr. B is probably the most remorseful defendant that has ever walked in the courtroom. In a sense he stands in for all of us. An example of what we ought not to do, but also what we are capable of doing. I could do pure probationary. Consider any special assistance - whether medical or other. Has no such problems his needs could be adequately met.

Has to be fair for crime committed. A sentence that was purely probationary would not be sufficient. It must also deter others.

Required to consider what is likely to protect public from Bobrick. He is the least likely to come before this court again.

Required to consider the guidelines - they are only advisory, and consider disparities. The best way to do that is to stay within guidelines that judges around the country must consider in sentencing.

I think a sentence that includes a short period of incarceration followed by short period of home confinement is acceptable.
Ten months - five in incarceration, five in home confinement.

Probation of two years. Some risk of substance abuse, must be regularly tested for substance abuse.
Conditions: home confinement five months supervised
Monitored electronically, and defendant pay, free to leave for employment, medical, religious, and community service.
In addition to substance abuse testing, andy substance abuse programs.
3. Submit to search of person on reasonable suspicion of contraband.
6. No fire arm
7. 800 hours of community service, directs probation officer to consider my do this through Star, but not limited to this.

Defendant does has ability to pay modest fine - $3000
$100 to court. $50/month or ten% of his income.

Appeal - must be taken up in ten days.

Bobrick Sentenced to Ten Months

Bill Bobrick was sentenced this morning to ten months - five months incarceration and five months home confinement. The court was sealed for the first half hour or so. The Government asked for a five [four] step downward departure for sentencing and the defense asked for 8-10 step departure. The defense argued, the government and the judge agreed, that if there was ever a defendant who had shown contrition and had cooperated fully with the government, it was Bobrick.

In the end the judge gave a five step departure. Bobrick's cooperation and contrition clearly played a significant role in the sentencing. Somewhat in contrast to this image, after all the parties had left the court building, one of the Channel 2 camera people was complaining - and the other camera people were supporting her - that Bobrick had shoved ("not bumped") her on his way out. Bobrick did not stop to talk to the press - though his attorney did. I personally think the cameras are rather obnoxious and I only take pictures from afar or when someone is clearly willing to be photographed [but I don't have an editor expecting me to take pictures] but it seems to me the contrition and remorse he mentioned in court should include accepting the press as part of the atonement he talked about.

Defense attorney Pope began by arguing that New Years Day phone calls by Tom Anderson's wife, State Senator Liesel McGuire, were evidence of a significant threat to his client's financial well being. He said that she called Bobrick to ask for Bobrick's wife's phone number at medical school in Minnesota. Pope said that Bobrick did not give her that number, but she managed to call Bobrick's wife, Jessica, and 'in a veiled threat" suggested that if Bobrick testified against Tom Anderson that she would never get her medical license in Alaska. He mentioned that in addition to her role as a State Senator, her father is a prominent doctor so that the threat was credible, and seriously disturbed Bobrick. Pope said he notified the FBI immediately and that Anderson attorney Stockler was notified that this was a violation of Anderson's conditions of release. Prosecutor Bottini's take on this was that there was no voice message, but that it was clearly intended to influence Bobrick's testimony. It seems to me that due process is the right for someone to face her accusers and have her say. Since McGuire isn't facing charges here, perhaps due process is not the issue. But to have such allegations considered without McGuire's ability to challenge them seems a little questionable.

In the end, judge did not seem to give much weight to this threat in the sentencing, though he acknowledged that it might have had an affect on Bobrick at the time, he continued to cooperate fully.

Top Photo: Press surrounding Bobrick as he walks out of the courtroom.
Bottom Photo: Lisa Demer (ADN) and David Shurtleff (APRN) interviewing Bobrick attorney Doug Pope outside the courtroom.

And the winner is....

And the winner is.... My Sitemeter hit 10,000 on Nov 26 2007 at 4:29:56 pm (Alaska Time). Well, not sure yet about the winner. 9,998 has left a comment. I'll give 9,999, 10,000 and 10,001 a day to contact me. 10,002 went directly to an old page and probably never saw the announcement. I assumed people would be able to find the "View Profile" to find the email link. "View Profile" is in the right column between "About Me" and "Blog Archive"

Here's some of what I know about the finalists:


Visit 10,003 was from Cleveland, Ohio
Browser: Internet Explorer 7.0
Operating System: Microsoft WinXP
Linked direct to Whatdoino.

Visit 10,002 was from Montclair, New Jersey
Operating System Microsoft WinNT
Browser Internet Explorer 7.0
And this person got here googling "cow parsnip tea"

Visit 10,001 from Anchorage, Alaska
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Came directly to the site.

Visit 10,000 from Lawrenceville, Georgia
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Googled "how do gangs affect 8th graders"


Visit 9,999 from Seattle, Washington
Lat/Long : 47.5951, -122.3326 (Map)
Operating System Macintosh MacOSX
Came direct


Visit 9,998 was from Wasilla, Alaska
Microsoft WinNT
Browser Firefox
Came direct

Visit 9,997 was from Anchorage
Operating System Macintosh MacOSX
Browser Safari 1.3
Came direct

Visit 9,996 was most likely the same person from Lawrenceville,Georgia
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Googling: how do gangs affect 8th graders

10,000

We're getting close to 10,000 hits since I put site-meter on this blog. Probably in the next day or two someone will be that special visitor. Site-meter lets me know a fair amount about each visitor - but not who you are or your email address. So, Monday and Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, visitors should check if the site-meter number in the right hand column says 10,000. As you can see in the screen capture to the right, it is way down there, between "Blogs of Friends and Acquaintances" and "Labels." If it does, email me (there's a link in my profile, also in the right column) if you think you're number 10,000. Or if you are right around there, let me know who you are. I'll figure out a prize for the visitor I can identify who is closest to number 10,000.

And it doesn't matter if it is the 10,003rd visitor. After all, while 10,000 sounds like a nice round number, why shouldn't we celebrate the 10,003rd visitor instead? Probably just a legacy of humans having ten fingers and something about how our brain works that makes lots of zeros seem more important.

And if you want to see what information site-meter collects, click on the number (the real one, not the picture in this post). I've left it open so people could see it for themselves. Once you're on the summary page, you can any of the links under "Recent Visitor", and then click on any of the numbers listed in the "Detail" column to see what it shows for each person. A lot more information than I realized I was leaving at sites I visited.

I at Ten Months

Last January we visited I. at the hospital when he was born. Here he is ten months later.








As I looked at the video I had a couple of thoughts. Attending the Assembly work session on Paul Bauer's proposed ordinance to ask for people's proof of legal presence in the US whenever the police stop someone is making me think things I would never have thought of. Will someone watch this and ask what language is that? Who is that person? Why isn't she speaking English? Is she legally here? Yes, she's legally here, married to a native born US citizen, and making a positive contribution to the people of Alaska through her job and hard work. She's teaching her baby her native language in hopes that he will grow up totally fluent in both her native language and English. I wonder if Paul Bauer is fluent in another language besides English? He said he spent time in Germany in the military. I wonder if he spoke German when he was in German shops or did he use English? Maybe he did.

I find the paranoia about people not speaking English incomprehensible. The whole world speaks English. It's not going to die out. It's just Americans who don't speak other languages. Except immigrants and their children who are the people we have to depend on for translators. What would we do without Arab-Americans to help us understand what the Arab world is saying and writing?

And spending the evening with the baby and his family I had to think about what Tom Anderson will be missing when he leaves for prison. His youngest is a little older than I. Five years, minus whatever good time he manages to accumulate, will be a significant time in his child's life. Just as it is for people headed off for Iraq, people who might not come back to ever be in their kids' lives again. We should all be grateful for the many things we have that we take for granted, like being around our kids when they're growing up.

Lazy Run

I took my camera on my run today. The end of November is not supposed to be so snowless. Yes, there's some snow left over, but not very much.


A - I don't know that this little lake has a name. I checked Google maps - that's why there is a map at the end - and it isn't even on that map. But then I checked for the Municipality of Anchorage Trail Maps and found a map with the trails on it. And tweaked that a bit.







This is a marshy area in the summer. B on the map.











From the bike trail bridge over Northern Lights Blvd, looking west.









And east. The bridge pictures are at C on the map.















One day I'll do a whole post on Lanie. She's a wonderful human being and was one of the people who got Anchorage's great bike trails started. This is at D on the map.






These last two pictures are at E on the map, where the bike trail comes right up on Goose Lake.














This is also at the lake at A on the map. I couldn't tell what kind of bird it was, sort of scoter like. Usually only see them in summer and they have somewhat different markings. Maybe Catherine or Dianne (who's on her way back from bird watching in Bhutan - now that's a serious birder!) can identify it. I'm experimenting with different download levels from iMovie. This was CDRom quality. Not very good I'm afraid.





Map from Anchorage Municipality Trail Page I've added the A-E letters and the bright blue lake at A. The yellow dashed trail is my run - just under 4 miles. By connecting the trails through the university and then the Lanie Fleischer trail (the dark green one - covered with the yellow dashes of my route) I get about half the run in the woods.

Before "Before..."

To get to the movie yesterday (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - and thanks to two commenters for explaining that the title comes from an Irish Toast, "May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead") we had to walk through the mall.

If this is a predictor of holiday shopping either lots of people joined the shopping boycott, people are becoming less materialistic, they were enjoying what was for some T-shirt weather (40s F), or the economy is down. Anyway, below is a brief visit to the mall on the way to the movie.



I did this quickly, but I played around with the 'billow' transitions, but decided not to take any more time last night to figure out why some were slow and others faster. I think the clips were too short. Also saved this at 'video' quality which means it takes up very little memory, but the visual quality is pretty degraded.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead

[4/29/08: Title explanation in first comment]At one point in the movie the diamond cutter says something like, "There is evil in the world. Some people make money off it and others are destroyed by it."

I don't believe in the existence of evil as a force in the world, but clearly, there is metaphorical evil, and the Alaska political trials have demonstrated how some make money off of it, and others are destroyed. And some make money before the they are destroyed.


My writing about the political corruption trials here, has always had the goal to try to understand why some people succumb to temptation and others don't. The



traditional explanations - he's evil, he's bad, he's greedy - simply label people, as if the label were an explanation, end of discussion. But the labels don't explain how they got to be evil, bad, or greedy. Such labeling also puts the blame squarely on the individual and thus let's us change topics rather than look at the social, economic, and political structures that reward the 'bad' behaviors, such as requiring politicians to raise large amounts of money to get elected, thus setting up obligations to big contributors. This also takes the blame off of the rest of us who have tolerated this sort of corruption as long as we were the beneficiaries - all that earmarked loot from Uncle Ted for example. How many times have I heard someone say, "That's politics." But in a democracy, we the people are part of the political process, and if politics are corrupt, we bear some of the responsibility. We could spend more time learning about the candidates, we could sacrifice a little television or surfing to contact our legislators. We could stop saying "there's nothing I can do" and take some action. Of all states, Alaska's small population gives individual action much more impact.

Those who get angry at the convicted politicians because they don't seem to own up to their guilt enough for us, ought to face our own denial in all this - denial of our own lack of anger and action while the APOC was gutted, while campaign finance laws were weakened, that we were too lazy to get past the party labels in the polling place and continued to vote in the people we now so easily condemn. And if what you just read angers you and and you feel unjustly accused, then you know how Anderson, Kott, and Kohring have felt. I think they were wrong to feel that way, but their behavior was not that out of the norm in Juneau, and Kott and Kohring had been reelected regularly. That couldn't have happened without the majority in his district voting for him. And those who didn't bother to vote also share the blame. Kott was even elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Why would he think he was doing anything wrong? He was doing, in his mind, what he needed to do. And we all use that excuse - we have lives to lead, we don't have time to get involved. But in a democracy, if the honest people don't get involved, you know who that leaves.

I'm not saying that these politicians aren't guilty and don't deserve to be punished. The first three have been tried and convicted. They will all serve time in prison. But their crimes couldn't have happened without the rest of us allowing the corruption in Juneau to get worse and worse. And they might well still be honored elected officials if the Department of Justice hadn't gotten involved. Righteous indignation about these defendants says the guilty have been punished, and thus it denies our complicity. And thus prevents us from taking the action needed to minimize the risk of future repetition. Yes, there are people who were politically active, people who didn't vote for these legislators. Your joy at the guilty verdicts is nobler if it celebrates that justice was served, than if it celebrates the suffering of those found guilty.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [I have no idea what the title means] lets us watch how a crime is planned and committed. We run through events over and over again from slightly different angles. We learn about the weaknesses of the characters, the father-son, brother-brother relationships that mold people to be able to do what they do, or not be able to do what they should do. The crime is evil, ill conceived, monstrous - yet desperate men succumb. The younger brother succumbing to the older brother's taunt "You said you were going to do it, you can't back out now." [How many siblings never break out of their childhood patterns of behavior with each other?] He succumbs to the $2000 on the table, as the echoes of his daughter asking for money to see the Lion King on a school overnight outing still ring in his head and through his empty pockets. Attending the political trials in Anchorage gave a similar perspective that one just can't get by reading the accounts of the trials. We heard the crimes described from different perspectives. All of these people are human beings whose life stories help us understand how they got to here. (But since Anderson and Kohring did not take the witness stand, we learned less about them than we did about Bill Allen, Rick Smith, and Pete Kott.)

I'm not saying everyone is good or that people need not take the consequences of their actions. I accept that there are people who will always take and never give. I accept that there are psychopaths, people whose brains are missing the parts that give the rest of us a conscience. This makes it easy for them to do monstrous things. But if the part of the brain that stops the rest of us from doing evil acts is missing, can we really blame them for what they do? We don't blame the blind because their brain cannot read the light patterns that hit their eyes. Though past civilizations did attribute sometimes favored and sometimes evil status to many who had physical and mental disabilities. Letting psychopaths live free to keep doing harm is not an acceptable answer, but neither will saying they are evil help us find humane solutions to their and our problems. Yes, their problems, the problems of all who break the law, are our problems too simply because they live among us. But I also believe that most evil acts are carried out by ordinary people who never got the approval and love they needed to become mature adults, to grow comfortable with who they are. Rich children can be just as emotionally deprived as poor children. I believe a great deal of attention to child rearing is called for. Parents need more assistance in how to raise kids and the time to be with their children. They need less stress. Mexican siestas, French cafes, these are not idleness and luxury, these are cultural answers to the stresses of life. Pressures on individuals to look younger and more beautiful, to be fitter, to wear the right clothes, to have a good house, to buy flat screen televisions, all this means we have to raise enough money to live the lifestyles we see on tv and in the movies. The more debt we take on to live this advertised dream, the less freedom we have to act ethically. Most of us, faced with the right combination of setbacks become vulnerable. It doesn't take much.

• Factor 1: a medical expense our insurance doesn't cover (that's how Kohring got his $17,000 credit card debt), loss of income because of an injury, which threatens our ability to pay our mortgage, which means we might lose our house, if we have one
  
• Factor 2: an illegal opportunity to escape our problem is offered
• Factor 3: by a person we trust or who has some power over us
  

And there are those who will stand up strong and say no to temptation. Why? Saying, "They are good people" is not enough. Why did they turn out that way? Life is complex.

Someone who walks away from this movie and simply says "They were evil" and does not rather say, "They were flawed" has missed much. Or perhaps they've taken their own story about how human beings work into the movie and used that model to interpret the facts. Just as I have.

Disclosures

My first trial blog was June 28, 2007. My first words were:

Disclosure First: Tom was a student of mine a while ago. I don't remember when I talked to him last. However, I have been disturbed by this case since the beginning. I haven't blogged about this, in part, because I can't talk about anything I learned about Tom through our student/teacher relationship which is the only relationship I've had with him. I decided I should go to court and hear the evidence for myself. What I say here is strictly reporting what I saw in court, stuff anyone who went could have seen.

We nodded to each other in the courtroom and shook hands a couple of times, but said nothing more than pleasantries. But I did want to talk to him before he leaves for his incarceration and so I emailed about a week ago. We talked on the phone for a couple of hours and Monday he came over for lunch.

When I started blogging, the separation between my life and my blog was ambiguous, but it really didn’t matter because I wasn’t writing about public topics and hardly anyone was reading the blog. That changed when I started blogging the trials.

At this point, since I have been writing about public events, I do think I need to be open about relationships I have with people I write about. On the other hand, my interest in talking to Tom was not about getting material for the blog. He was my student and that relationship takes precedence over the blog. There may come a time when we both feel that it is appropriate to post something about Tom here. At this point I simply want to be open about the fact that someone I have blogged about extensively and I are having conversations, even though they will not appear in the blog.

With Tom’s permission I’ll just say that I’m convinced that Tom clearly understands that he has broken the law and violated the public trust. He’s still going back through all the things he could have done differently at every step of the way - from saying “No” to Bobrick and flat out rejecting Prewitt, to whether he should have continued to work with the agreement to help the prosecutors. And he’s still frustrated in the disparity in time different players are likely to spend in prison. I think this is probably normal for someone who has screwed up and is now trying to move on. There's stuff you have to work through. I've already commented in several posts at the obvious imbalance of power in court between the resources of the government and those of the defendants. My conversation with Tom makes it clear that even those of us who sat through all three trials only saw a small portion of what all went on before everyone got to court. Perhaps more than the tip of the iceberg, but not all that much more.

As Tom looks to the future, he makes me think of the old Peace Corps ads that went something like: "Optimists see a glass of water as half-full. Pessimists see a glass of water as half-empty. Peace Corps volunteers see a glass of water and say, 'I can take a bath with that.'" In terms of optimism and seeing a positive spin on things, Tom would qualify for the Peace Corps. But I think that his ability to see the good and block out the bad is partly what got him into trouble.

Second disclosure: I've also mentioned very briefly here that I have three UAA honor students who are doing a directed studies class with me. We've been meeting, generally over dinner, with people from different academic fields and different professions to find out how their fields deal with the idea of truth. What meaning(s) does truth have in their fields? What criteria do they use to measure it? How do they know it when they see it? We have a couple of justice students in the small group and so last night our guest was Mary Beth Kepner, the FBI agent who has coordinated the Alaska political corruptions investigations and who has been at the prosecutors' table at all the trials. I had a chance to talk to her during a break in the trial and asked if she'd come to class. What she said last night was focused on the concept of truth more than the cases. We both were clear that whatever she said was not going to the blog. But as I said above with Tom, since I have been writing about the trials and am still writing about topics that arose at the trials, I feel that I need to disclose when I meet with people involved in the trials. Even if I that's all I can put on the blog.

Later, and even later

Here it is out of the oven.



















And after dinner.













The guests have gone. We had a nice night with good friends, one new friend.

Bird Bath

Every time I look at this bird I can't help wondering why we are doing this. Generally we are vegetarian. This started more for health reasons, but was also influenced by a student film I saw long ago on slaughtering cattle. My time living in a Buddhist country also had influences I'm sure, though most Thai people do eat meat.
I tried to think about this in positive terms. This picture is the herbal massage of the bird. Next it will go in the sauna. But that's just the sort of imagery that enables us to ignore what happens to the bird before it gets into our refrigerator. We did buy a free range organic turkey so that is some solace. But I suspect the video below is more typical than not. Turkeys, chickens, pigs, cows are all treated as manufactured products, not as living things whose lives are taken with reverence and thanks. And having taken the life of a living creature, do we use all its parts, so as not to waste the life we have taken?

I was always amazed when Americans during the Vietnam war disparaged the enemy for not respecting life. Buddhists are human beings as our Christians and Jews and Muslims. Few live the values of their religion all the time, many try, some only give it lip service. But Buddhists very explicitly hold all life as sacred. Not just human life. Killing a mosquito destroys karma. It isn't equal to killing a dog which is not equal to killing a human. People I knew would help flies and mosquitoes out the window rather than kill them. Whereas Americans think nothing of killing non-human life.

I think respect for animal life disappears when people are separated from the raising of the animal and the eating of the animal. If you raise the chicken or lamb, you know how much work has gone into it. You know the miracle of an animal growing from nothing into a living sentient creature and so when you kill it for food, you understand exactly what you are killing. And you do it with mixed emotions. You don't have that understanding when you buy it wrapped in plastic in the supermarket. Maybe that's why Amerians cannot imagine eating dog meat. But we can't understand that Hindus feel the same about beef. The video shows us what happens when modern efficiency rather than humanity rules how meat is produced. Of course I don't know how typical this is or even who this guy is. But it is consistent with other reports on the food industry I've read and watched, starting with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Thanksgiving Morning

Journalism, Blogging, and Perspective

I've got several posts that I'm working on, but they aren't quite ready. One is my reflections on the ethics of undercover investigations - some of the pros and cons that have arisen as I've watched the impact of the surveillance tapes on the three political trials. There are a number of issues that make me - and apparently others - uncomfortable about trading reductions in sentencing for cooperation with the prosecutors, as well as with the idea of video cameras in one's room recording what's going on without one's knowledge. But I don't know how else the evidence for these cases could have been collected. I've got the basics down, but I'm trying to integrate examples from the trials.

Another stems from my belief in the need for journalistic disclosure of one's relationships with the people or events one covers. As the trials progressed I went from writing a blog that my mother and a few others read to someone whose blog was being read by people I was covering. I began to think about how journalists are not simply reporters of what is happening to the public. They can affect the events they are covering. The judge was constantly reminding the jury not to read or watch any news accounts of the trial for example. At one point Kohring defense attorney Browne noticed that witness Bill Allen had a folded piece of paper in his hand and asked what it was. He was told it was a crib sheet with names because of his memory problems. Browne asked to see it and took it to his table. At the next break, he shared it with reporters. The next day prosecutor Bottini complained about this - an account of the crib sheet had shown up in the Anchorage Daily News - and Browne was admonished not to share the witnesses private documents with anyone.
As journalists gather material they develop relationships. In this case, there was six weeks of trial over several months, and the prosecution team was pretty much the same. How does the personal relationship you develop with sources affect how you report the case? Do they begin to use you to get their points across? Do you use them to get stories? Well, of course all that happens, so what information do you give the readers so they can better evaluate what you are writing?

Anyway, that's why I've been quiet. I hope US readers have a great Thanksgiving. And the rest of you also consider all you have to be thankful for. I'm missing my kids far away on this holiday weekend but I'm thankful they are well and pursuing things that interest them.

Was the Tennessee Waltz the Playbook for the Alaska Oil Spill?

From Wikipedia

Operation Tennessee Waltz was a sting operation set up by federal and state law enforcement agents, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The operation led to the arrest of seven Tennessee state lawmakers and two men identified as "bagmen" in the indictment on the morning of May 26, 2005 on bribery charges. The FBI and TBI followed these arrests with an additional arrest of two county commissioners, one from Hamilton County, and the other a member of the prominent Hooks family, of Memphis. Investigators also arrested a former county administrator.

The name of the operation comes from the state song of Tennessee, "Tennessee Waltz."

And a news report from the Nashville Post:

'Tennessee Waltz' FBI Informant: I Paid Off Ulysses Jones

Email | Print By Ken Whitehouse and Richard Lawson

12-14-2005 6:32 AM —

State Rep. Ulysses Jones (D-Memphis) took a bribe from an FBI informant to push through legislation favorable to the government’s fake company E-Cycle, informant Tim Willis has claimed.

Willis, a one-time Memphis lobbyist, worked for the FBI by posing as a lobbyist for the fictitious Georgia company. E-Cycle was central to the sting operation dubbed “Tennessee Waltz,” a sting set up to nab politicians taking bribes, which led to the arrests of four sitting lawmakers and three other political operatives on May 26 of this year.

And from the Chattanoogan, we learn there was a hero:

Attorney Says Former Rep. Brenda Turner Was Tennessee Waltz "Hero"
posted August 25, 2007

A Chattanooga attorney who supported former Rep. Brenda Turner through her long political career said she was a "hero" in the "Tennessee Waltz" scandal that brought down several prominent politicians.

Attorney Russell King said, "They came to her, offered her money, and she turned them down. She did it the right way. She told them a campaign contribution would be hunky-dory, but she was not doing it any other way."

Will Alaska have a hero or two?



And how could there be an FBI legislative corruption trial without a blogger?



And what do the FBI call this operation? The Alaska Two Step? No, there's more than two steps. How about the Alaska Oil Spill? Allen and Smith did work in the oil industry and they did spill the beans. The PeePee Tea Scandal? But the Anderson case didn't involve PPT and future indictments will get beyond PPT too. Do they have a name for ours? In Tennessee, the name came out in the press coverage of the indictments. I thought maybe the press came up with the name, but its in the DOJ press releases.

At the end of the DOJ Public Integrity Section press release on the conviction of Roscoe Dixon, they include the "operation name."

Operation Tennessee Waltz is an ongoing, active, continuing investigation. The people of Tennessee and their elected officials need to understand that where the public trust has been violated, the United States Attorney's Office will prosecute. This office will continue to aggressively pursue those elected officials who engage in public corruption.

All this "the people of Tennessee. . . need to understand" sounds a little condescending. Maybe someone wised up and they decided the cutesy name and the lecture on public ethics didn't need to be included in the Alaska press releases.

This case was prosecuted by trial attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch, II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigative Division.

Do they have a name for ours, but are keeping it quiet?

And I think I may have cracked part of the Public Integrity Section code. I mentioned in earlier posts that the press releases on Kott and Kohring never mentioned that there were counts for which these men were found Not Guilt.

The jury found Kott guilty of conspiracy, extortion under cover of official right, and bribery.

Following an eight-day jury trial, Kohring, a member of the Alaska State House of Representatives from 1994 to 2007, was convicted of conspiracy, bribery and
attempted extortion, for corruptly soliciting and receiving financial benefits from a
company in exchange for performing official acts in the Alaska State Legislature on the company’s behalf.

But I noticed that in the Dixon press release it says:

Mr. Dixon was found guilty on all five counts of the indictment. [emphasis mine]

So I looked up the Anderson press release, and bingo, it says the same thing:

The jury in Anchorage convicted Anderson today of all seven counts charged in a December 2006 indictment.

So, if the press release doesn't say "all counts" I'm guessing it means they got off on one or more counts. Come on PIN (yes, they abbreviate the Public Integrity Section as PIN, but think about it and it makes sense) you can put on your press releases that you didn't get every count. Don't force the reader to have to look up other sources of information to find that out.

Dan Fagan, Again

I've written a few posts about Dan Fagan's ADN columns. Last week I didn't have much time to even look at his column on the Supreme Court's decision on the Parental Consent Law. It begins this way:

Gas pipeline, who cares? Raise taxes on the oil industry, go ahead. Mat Maid, dogs on ball fields, the IM program, city budget, fireworks ban, irrelevant.

There is only one issue facing Alaskans and it is this. A 13-year-old girl can today walk into Planned Parenthood and get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or permission.

Let me rephrase that. A 13-year-old girl can legally have her unborn baby killed without her parents ever knowing about it.

Either Fagan didn't read the Supreme Court ruling, he didn't understand it, or he just lied about it.

This is a contentious enough issue without totally misrepresenting what was decided. The court did strike down the requirement that the parents must give permission, but strongly affirmed that they must be informed. I posted about this case earlier this week.

But such looseness with the facts is evident again this week. And he seems to have changed his mind about the relevance of raising oil and gas taxes. I don't know how to write about this one without giving you the whole column along with my comments. I'll indent his column and put it in italics so it is clear what he says and what I say. (I would hope that would be clear if I did neither, but just in case.)

The anti-oil populist movement is not new to Alaska. The so-called “backbone” folks have always been with us. But now they are in charge. And that has led us to an all-out war with the oil industry.

“Anti-oil populist movement” what exactly does that mean? They are against oil? They are against oil companies? Populists are politicians who speak and work for the people as opposed to those who speak and work for the the power elite (like big oil companies.) So it would seem that being a populist isn’t such a bad thing. Though some have used the term to mean people who PRETEND to speak and work for the poor but really are working for the rich. I’m sure we have a number of fake populists in the legislature. Certainly Pete Kott, the hardwood floor installer (who happened to also be pulling Air Force retirement and had a masters degree I- nothing wrong with either of those things, but he was more than a blue collar working eking out a living) and sheet rocker Vic Kohring both offered a populist stance, but were working for their rich big oil friends. And Dan Fagan who talks on the radio like the salt of the earth, warts and all, is writing these articles that make big oil into a deity being abused by legislative ingrates, certainly seems to fit into that pseudo populist category.

"Now they are in charge." And whose been in charge for all these years until now? Finally people not owned by the oil companies are in charge. Why am I having a problem with Fagan's logic?

“All out war with the oil industry.” Come on Dan. You believe in the free market. As I said in a previous post, in an ideal free market there is a buyer and a seller. The state here, as the owner of the oil, is the seller. The oil companies are the buyers. They each negotiate the best deal they can. If the state blows it by taxing too high, the oil companies can walk away. If the people of Alaska are willing to support legislators who stand up to the oil companies a little bit more than our previous governor because they saw tapes of oil industry representatives giving money to legislators to vote for the oil industry’s preferred tax level, then the oil companies have only themselves to blame. They didn’t play their hand well. This is not war. This is simply the give and take of your sacred free market system. True, it does happen that one of the players is a government body, but each of the big three oil companies made net profits that were higher than the Alaska state budget last year. The oil companies are not victims. You even wrote a column about standing up to bullies. I would think most Alaskans see Sarah Palin as doing just that.

The first attack: The governor gets legislation passed shutting out the producers from the process of building the gas pipeline. This will end up hurting us more than them because the oil industry can go other places to get gas to market.

I’m not quite sure what action of our governor he is referring to since he only gives generalizations and no specifics. Even if Fagan's assertion is the true, is that worse than how the previous governor worked out the original PPT bill “in closed-door negotiations with the three major oil companies on a contract for fiscal terms for a pipeline” shutting out the legislature and the public?

But the governor’s second major offensive in her “Operation Oil Companies Bad” campaign will hit the industry hardest.

High school students make less slanted arguments than this. To see how another journalist writes about the Governor’s strategy team, read Tom Kizzia’s piece on Marty Rutherford, apparently one of the governor's ‘oil companies bad’ lackeys.

After the industry has already invested $50 billion in infrastructure in our state and pumped close to $80 billion into state coffers, the governor has cut them down at their knees.

Let me get this straight. Exxon’s annual net profit for 2006 was $39.5 billion, BP’s annual net profit for 2006 was $22 billion. And Conoco-Phillips’ was a mere $15.5 billion. Three of the largest corporations in the world have been cut down at their knees by a 43 year old former mayor of Wasilla, first term Republican governor who still hasn’t been able to oust Randy Ruedrich from the chair of the Alaska Republican party? I can see them hobbling around on their bloody stumps right now. Yeah, right Dan.

According to Tim Bradner in the Alaska Journal of Commerce “Wood Mackenzie, a prestigious London-based consulting group, has ranked Alaska 99th out of 103 petroleum-producing regions surveyed in terms of political stability in fiscal terms on oil and gas. Only Venezuela, Russia, Bolivia and Argentina ranked lower than Alaska” If this is true, then the oil companies have 98 other petroleum-producing regions to get their oil from. Cut off at the knees? Do you even believe that Dan?

The tax increase coming out of Juneau last week is enormous. It proves the governor’s strategy is now abundantly clear. Higher taxes, bigger government are the keys to our economic future.

Well, at least the governor does something right - she has a clear strategy. Is that bad? I think “higher taxes, bigger government” was Vic Kohring’s scare chant too. He’s the guy you accused of selling out in a column two weeks ago about which I said your writing had improved.

The governor has allies in the Legislature made up of three camps. There are those like the governor who believe some consultants who say higher taxes do not influence investment. The problem is these consultants come from the world of theories, not real life.

Dan, please give me the name of one legislator who believes that higher taxes do not influence investment. Just show me one quote where the governor says that. Show me the quote from the consultants you say said that. They don’t exist. They all know that taxes affect investment. They just don’t believe the sky-is-falling rhetoric that oil companies and their friends, like Dan Fagan, are spreading. They are looking at more than the investment climate rating and seeing that those other 98 places all have their downsides too. Fagan is now an expert on real life?

Politicians who fall into the taxes-don’t-affect-investment theory believe they are doing the right thing but are not real bright. The second camp is made up of pure socialists, those who think “corporate America bad, government good.”

How about some names here Dan ‘McCarthy’ Fagan? Who are the pure socialist legislators? Do you even know what a pure socialist is? Again, show me some evidence. And even if there were such simple minded legislators, how is that any less simplistic than your own chant of “Business is good, government is bad?” There has to be a balance between those two sectors, plus room for other organizations and individuals who don’t fit in either camp. Reasonable people understand this and they may debate about where the appropriate balance of power is. But they don’t chant either extreme.

Rep. Les Gara said on my talk show he thinks we should tax the oil companies at 80 percent.

Under the former PPT plan, the industry paid about 63 percent to government. The governor’s new PPT plan raised the rate to about 68 percent. But on Friday the Legislature’s version of the governor’s bill raised the government share to more than 70 percent. That leaves only one branch of government, the judiciary, to make Gara’s 80 percent rate dream come true. With this Supreme Court, anything is possible.

Huh? Can you explain how the judiciary can raise the rate proposed by the governor and set by the legislature? Why would you even say this? Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t imagine any scenario where the Supreme Court could raise the tax. Please, spell out how this could happen. Can you say red herring?

The third camp of tax-and-spend politicians is the one that bothers me the most. They do it to increase their power. These panderers know the billions of extra cash they are transferring from the private sector to government will allow them to make the media and big labor happy by growing the operating budget even more.

Wait. Originally there were just “allies in the Legislature made up of three camps.” Now you are saying there are three camps of ‘tax and spend” spend politicians. It’s really hard for me to not get sarcastic here. In fact I've failed utterly to keep a an objective tone. I’ve been criticized by a few for being too even handed and not explicitly spelling out my conclusions. It’s hard to not make those judgments here about what was written, but I certainly have nothing that would allow me to conclude what Dan Fagan’s motivation is. I can only make hypotheses based on the evidence. Does he truly believe what he’s writing? Is this simply talk show hyperbole to jack up ratings? Is he getting favors from the oil companies for these free screeds in the ADN now that the Voice of the Times is only on the web? I only know that this is as one-sided, simplistic, and full of unsubstantiated allegations that totally distort reality as any thing I can remember reading. That's pretty strong language for me, but that is why I'm going through this paragraph by paragraph. And now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me finish the rest of this.

This special session will end up being a windfall not for the public, but for the state’s public employee unions.

For the average Alaskan going to work every day, trying to support a family, hoping their kids’ kids will have a future here, this massive tax increase represents a huge risk.

Here’s Dan the populist coming out. It's those nasty state public employees who do nothing for the public. Who are these average Alaskans? Oil industry employees who might lose their jobs or get transferred to a part of the world with a more stable investment climate? Like Nigeria? Or Myanmar? Well, only about 3.5% of Alaska employees work in the oil and gas industry according to the Alaska Department of Labor. (Well you have to work the numbers, but they say there were 333,100 non-farm employees in September 2007 and of those there were 11,600 in the oil and gas industry. Go here then in the drop down window get "Alaska 2001 to present (excel file).")

What’s a huge risk for you Dan? Do you think the evidence that the oil companies will abandon Alaska because of the tax increase is greater than the risk of global warming due to human causes? If so, could you show me how you analyzed both?

The oil industry as a whole paid $1 billion in production taxes in fiscal year 2006. With the new PPT plan the industry will next year pay $4.5 billion dollars in production taxes.

Let me ask you a simple question. Would a 400 percent tax increase affect your ability to invest your money? This is not brain surgery, folks.

Everything is simple to you Dan, isn’t it? It also depends on how you play with the numbers. 400 percent is pretty impressive. But there are other ways to think about those numbers. How about comparing their tax burden (I’ll accept your numbers for this exercise) to their net profit last year? $1 billion divided by $77 billion. That’s just the big three. I know you’ll complain that I didn’t isolate their Alaska profits from their worldwide profits, but you know where that will lead, don’t you? To the fact that Exxon won’t tell us their Alaska profits. But since you’re so cozy with these guys, maybe you can ask them for the rest of us. Besides, this is NET profit, what they made AFTER taxes. OK, this isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I can do for the moment and it is close enough to make my point. So their taxes will go from 1.3% ($1 billion tax on $77 billion net profit) to 5.8% ($4.5 billion tax on $77 billion net profit). Looking at it that way it’s only a 5% increase. Now I’ll grant you that their Alaska gross income might not be $77 billion, but even if it were only $30 billion their tax would go from 3.3% to 15%. A 12% increase is certainly not anything close to a 400% increase. We can all play with numbers. And I have no idea where you got the $1 billion and $4.5 billion figures to start with. We do know that the PPT tax this year was raised from 22.5% to 25%. That is a 2.5% increase in the last year. So, Dan, there are lots of ways to figure out the percentage increase and each side will come up with numbers that make their argument sound better. But the wisest heads will know which ones are pure whimsy and which ones make some sense.

But the worst part of the new PPT plan is the standard deduction. It severely limits the industry from deducting expenses, making future projects far less attractive. But that’s not what this is all about anyway: future investments. It’s nothing more than a money grab. With this new plan, the state is expected to bring in a total of almost $8 billion in revenue from the industry in fiscal year 2008.

You think the governor is popular now, wait until she starts divvying up all those billions to those with their hands out. Public employee unions may erect a Sarah Palin shrine. They can place it next to the one the media built.

Of course when the oil industry bargains in private meetings with the former governor to come up with a plan they like and then buys legislators to push the plan through the legislature and blankets the state with misleading advertisements that's not a money grab. That's, what, Dan, just doing business? And how about all the private sector company employees that work on contract for the state, building roads, bridges, schools, doing oil forecasts, unsuccessfully lobbying Congress to open ANWR year after year,etc.?

But I believe history will prove this shortsighted tax-increasing frenzy will lead to real pain and heartache down the road. I know this is a radical concept anymore in America, but the truth is that taxes do deter investment. Taxation is the power to destroy. I am confident we will someday reverse what was done last week in the Legislature. The only question is, will it be in time to save our economy?

Well, Dan, at least here we partially agree - in a few years we’ll be able to see whether your dire predictions come true. Maybe. There are lots of factors that go into this that have nothing to do with this tax plan. Ultimately, we will not be able to parse out what would have happened if.... But we will see if the oil companies pack up their marbles and leave Dodge.

Sky Visits from Juneau

Sky and his parents spent the night last night. They're visiting from Juneau. Sky's mom was nominated to be Alaskan Nurse of the Year, but someone else was picked last night. But at our house, she's nurse of the year.




It was fun having a three year old spend the night - big smiles, runny nose, mercurial changes from happy to not. But he was very careful with the nick nacks and was a good eater.

The Alaska Supreme Court Decision on the Parental Consent Act

Last week the ADN had the following headline:

Supreme Court's abortion ruling angers GOP lawmakers

SEEK CHANGE: Coghill, Dyson want Alaska Constitution amended so state can require parental consent for underage girls.

By STEVE QUINN

Radical Catholic Mom argues strongly that pro-life legislation is the wrong way to go in Alaska:

The ONLY method is a Constitutional Amendment. That is the only way. Until there is a Constitutional Amendment, no pro-life bill will be able to survive the AK Constitution.

The discussion on her blog caused me to look up the ruling which can be found here. Below I've excerpted some sections of the decision so you can see the general logic of the court in the decision. The basic question is whether the law - which requires parental consent for girls under 17 to get an abortion, with exceptions for girls who are deemed competent to make the decision on their own (if they are married, in the military, legally emancipated, etc.) or getting parental consent would not be in the interest of the girl. On the face of it, telling parents, whose consent is required for getting a shot, that they do not have veto power over an abortion, seems contradictory. The court does weigh this parental responsibility to look after the interests of the child because children are recognized as not yet mature enough to make many decisions against the constitutional right of a woman to have control over her body. The question then is whether the Parental Consent Act (PCA) is the least restrictive means to achieve the balance between the two competing rights. The majority decides it is not.

Justice CARPENETI (appointed by to the Supreme Court in 1998 by Governor Knowles) wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justice Matthews (appointed to the Supreme Court in 1977 by Jay Hammond.) They believed that the PCA did maintain the balance.

[p. 4] II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
In 1997 the Alaska Legislature passed the Alaska Parental Consent Act
(PCA). The PCA prohibits doctors from performing an abortion on an “unmarried,5 unemancipated woman under 17 years of age” without parental consent or judicial authorization. The Act subjects doctors who knowingly perform abortions on minors6 without the required consent or judicial authorization to criminal prosecution. The7 parental consent requirement can be met through written consent from a parent, guardian, or custodian of the minor. The Act also includes a judicial bypass procedure whereby8 a minor may file a complaint in superior court and obtain judicial authorization to terminate a pregnancy if she can establish by clear and convincing evidence either that she is “sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion” or that being required to obtain parental consent would not be in her best interests. If the court fails to hold a hearing within five business days after the9 complaint is filed, the court’s inaction is considered a constructive order authorizing the
minor to consent to terminate the pregnancy. 10


[p. 6] The State appealed, and on November 16, 2001, we issued our decision in
Planned Parenthood I. In that case, we concluded that the privacy clause of the Alaska11 Constitution extends to minors as well as adults and that the State may constrain a pregnant minor’s privacy right “only when necessary to further a compelling state interest and only if no less restrictive means exist to advance that interest.” We also12 reversed the grant of summary judgment and remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the PCA actually furthers compelling state interests using the least restrictive means available.13


[P. 8] As we have previously explained, the primary purpose of this section
is to protect Alaskans’ “personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusions by the State.” Because this right to privacy is explicit, its protections are necessarily more22 robust and “broader in scope” than those of the implied federal right to privacy. 23 Included within the broad scope of the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause is the fundamental right to reproductive choice. As we have stated in the past, “fewthings are more personal than a woman’s control of her body, including the choice of whether and when to have children,” and that choice is therefore necessarily protected by the right to privacy. Of course, our original decision concerning the fundamental24 right to reproductive choice specifically addressed only the privacy interests of adult women, but because the “uniquely personal physical, psychological, and economic implications of the abortion decision . . . are in no way peculiar to adult women,” its25 reasoning was and continues to be as applicable to minors as it is to adults. Thus, in26 Planned Parenthood I, we explicitly extended the fundamental reproductive rights guaranteed by the privacy clause to minors. 27


[P. 9] In the case at hand, the PCA requires minors to secure either the consent of
their parent or judicial authorization before they may exercise their uniquely personal reproductive freedoms. This requirement no doubt places a burden on minors’ fundamental right to privacy. As such, the PCA must be subjected to strict scrutiny and can only survive review if it advances a compelling state interest using the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. 28

They agree that the state’s interests are compelling.

[p. 10] B. The State’s Asserted Interests Are Compelling.
The State asserts that the PCA works, on the most generalized level, to
advance two interrelated interests: protecting minors from their own immaturity and aiding parents in fulfilling their parental responsibilities. We agree with the State that29 these are compelling interests.

We thus echo the United States Supreme Court’s statement that, “[u]nder
the Constitution, the State can ‘properly conclude that parents . . . who have [the] primary responsibility for children’s well-being are entitled to the support of laws designed to aid [in the] discharge of that responsibility.’ ”38

But,

[P.12] C. The PCA Is Not the Least Restrictive Means of Achieving the State’s
Compelling Interests.

We recognize that the legislature has made a serious effort to narrowly
tailor the scope of the PCA by exempting seventeen-year-olds and other categories of pregnant minors from the Act’s ban. It is true that the PCA is less restrictive than many other state statutes in terms of the scope of its coverage. But scope is only one of the important criteria that determine the extent to which a parental involvement law restricts minors’ privacy rights. The method by which the statute involves parents is also central to determining whether the Act’s provisions constitute the least restrictive means of pursuing the State’s ends.

By prohibiting minors from terminating a pregnancy without the consent
of their parents, the PCA bestows upon parents what has been described as a “veto
power” over their minor children’s abortion decisions. This “veto power” does not39 merely restrict minors’ right to choose whether and when to have children, but effectively shifts a portion of that right from minors to parents. In practice, under the PCA, it is no longer the pregnant minor who ultimately chooses to exercise her right to terminate her pregnancy, but that minor’s parents. And it is this shifting of the locus of choice — this relocation of a fundamental right from minors to parents — that is constitutionally suspect. For a review of statutory schemes enacted around the nation reveals a widely[p13] used legislative alternative that does not shift a minor’s right to choose: parental notification.

[p. 14 ..... But the State and its supporting amici fail to effectively rebut the trial court’s express findings to the contrary. According to the superior court’s findings, the PCA’s bypass procedures build in delay that may prove “detrimental to the physical health of the minor,” particularly for minors in rural Alaska who “already face logistical obstacles to obtaining an abortion.” The trial court found that judicial bypass procedures “will increase these problems, delay the abortion, and increase the probability that the minor may not be able to receive a safe and legal abortion.”

In fact, they argue, the parental notification, ultimately promotes the dialogue between the pregnant minor and her parents more than does a consent requirement.

[p. 15] Ultimately, because the PCA shifts the right to reproductive choice to minors’ parents, we must conclude that the PCA is, all else being held equal, more restrictive than a parental notification statute. The State has failed to establish that the “greater intrusiveness of consent statutes” is in any way necessary to advance its compelling interests. In fact, in its briefing before us, the State has not focused on the PCA’s benefits as flowing directly from the parental “veto power”; instead, it has consistently suggested that the PCA’s benefits flow from increased parental communication and involvement in the decision-making process. According to the State, the PCA protects minors from their own immaturity by increasing “adult supervision”; it protects the physical, emotional, and psychological health of minors, “[p]articularly in the post-abortion context, [by increasing] parental participation . . . for the purposes of monitoring . . . risks”; it ensures that minors give informed consent to the abortion procedure by making it more likely that they will receive “counsel that a doctor cannot give, advice, adapted to her unique family situation, that covers the moral, social and religious aspects of the abortion decision”; it protects minors from sexual abuse since “once appr[]ised of a young girl’s pregnancy, parents . . . will ask who impregnated her and will report any sexual abuse”; and it strengthens the parent-child relationship by “increas[ing] parental involvement,” “parental consultation,” and open and honest
communication.

[p. 16] The dissent suggests that where a minor forgoes judicialbypass, parental consent guarantees “a conversation.” But it guarantees no more than a one-way conversation and “allows parents to refuse to consent not only where their
judgment is better informed and considered than that of their daughter, but also where it is colored by personal religious belief, whim, or even hostility to her best interests.”44

While the decision is 16 pages, the dissent is 31 pages. The real difference is in the section of where they discuss whether the PCA is the least restrictive option. The dissent argues that it is. In the link to the decision this section begins on page 33.

The dissenting opinion is worth reading, but we have visitors from Juneau and you can read it at the link.

Fun Time at Central Middle School

KS, an Indian Ed teacher in the Anchorage School District invited me to meet with some of his students to talk about the Peace Corps. What do you say to 7th and 8th graders in 30 minutes? Well, I grabbed some pakimas, a farmer shirt, some Karen hill tribe shirts, a yellow King's polo shirt, and a pink polo shirt from my school in Kamphaengphet along with some books and pictures.

We had a good time learning how to put on a pakima (the blue and the red checked men's sarong like cloths) trying out the different shirts and looking at pictures of my 7th and 8th graders 40 years ago. Time went by fast and the kids were great.

Assembly Work Session on Anti-Sanctuary City Ordinance

The basic issues:

1. Paul Bauer has introduced an ordinance that would, among other things, require police to check immigration status of people they stop for traffic violations and to develop a working agreement with Homeland Security. This comes about because Anchorage has made itself a "Sanctuary City."

2. Hispanic civic organizations are strongly opposed because they believe they will be singled out as well as other people who 'look' foreign or have accents.

3. The Assembly Sub Committee had testimony from the following:

• Paul Bauer, the Assembly member who introduced the ordinance, had 30 minutes to present a slide show.
  
• Municipal Attorney said their analysis did not find constitutional problems, though there might be some problems with separation of powers issues - the assembly makes laws and the administration implements the laws. So if the ordinance would tell the police how they had to do their job, that might raise problems.
• The Municipal Prosecutor had several issues
• the negative effect it would have on police-community relations - that it would reduce trust of government and thus tips people give the police which is an important part of crime prevention and investigation
• the effect on reporting domestic violence - women would not report their sponsors for fear of losing sponsor plus other issues
• workload for his office
• Chief of Police Heun said the would continue doing what they do now. If they stop someone they ask for a driver's license. If the person doesn't have one they call it in to check and talk to them to see if we have probable cause to detain them. We have a functional arrangement with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
• Robin Bronin, Alaska Immigration Justice Project (my notes aren't too good at this point, she reiterated points about impact on community and also about domestic violence I believe.)
• Angelina Estrada-Burney from Bridge Builders - Their organization's board has unanimously voted to urge the Assembly to vote no on this.
  
• Margaret Stock - this was by far the most impressive testimony. She introduced herself as a conservative Republican. I shouldn't be amazed anymore when I meet someone from Anchorage who turns out to be a nationally recognized expert on a topic. In this case - checking the web after the work session - I've found all sorts of things about her. From ilw.com:
  

  Margaret Stock is an associate professor of law in the Department of Law, United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.; an attorney; and a lieutenant colonel in the Military Police Corps.
  

  She had a number of problems with the ordinance.
• The term sanctuary city is not a legal term, but one created on talk shows and blogs
• The Immigration Reform Law Institute that is pushing this 'ideological experiment' is using Anchorage as a Guinea Pig but if Anchorage gets sued, they won't help with the legal costs, and they are proud that Paul Bauer has introduced their ordinance.
• Generally went through a list of practical implications of this type of ordinance, written, she alleged, 'by people with no practical experience with immigration law'
  
• the illegal alien lists used are extremely unreliable
• causes people who are not a problem to be reported
• lawsuits will result as people are wrongly detained
• The Cost Benefit analysis is way off - it will be a very expensive ordinance because of future litigation
  

I've said in previous posts that both my parents were immigrants to the US and that my grandparents were unable to get visas to the US and perished in Nazi Germany. So I'm come to this with a bias.

I did get a chance to talk to Paul Bauer alone after the meeting. He talks calmly, politely, and reasonably. He has a background in the security field and said he was stationed in Berlin for a while in the military and they gathered information from East Berlin. So it is quite believable that security is a high priority item for him, for which some individual liberties are legitimately sacrificed. And at some point I might agree with that general principle, but I suspect that on a continuum from 1 to 10, he would be ready to sacrifice liberties at 1 or 2, while I would be waiting for 8 or 9. He also talked about prevention - that he wanted to deal with gangs before they became an issue and the same here. Even if illegal immigration is not a problem yet in Anchorage - and everyone agreed that we don't have very accurate numbers - he wants to get ahead of the curve.

But his arguments about national security [he started with a slide of Al Qaeda terrorists] seem to be contradicted by other parts of his argument, particularly when he emphasized that 50% of the "illegals" were Mexican and another large percentage were of other Central/South American heritage. I don't think that we are worried about Mexican being terrorists.

I don't really understand why people get so emotional about immigration. All non-Native Americans were once immigrants. There is some primal fear that is at work here. I can't help but believe that for many it is the fear of 'the other.' This is legislation that the blatant racists can get behind and say is about "obeying the law," not race. Just because sites like Alaska Pride support this law, doesn't make it racist, but it doesn't make me feel more comfortable.

If you check websites on immigration, clearly this is a hot button issue. Is immigration the 'gay marriage' of the 2008 election? Is this one of the Republican wedge issues? Is this ordinance and the attacks on Begich over the budget part of the conservative offensive to tarnish the Deomocrats' most successful politician?

Assembly Work Session on Anti-Sanctuary Ordinance

[1:42 pm. The meeting is over, the subcommittee voted to recommend not passing this ordinance. This is a very rough live blog that was updated now and again during the meeting. I will try to clean it up later today.]

Live Blogging Assembly Work Session
12:00
Assembly Work Session on Local Enforcement and Anti-Sanctuary

Assemblymember Matt Claman opened the meeting at 12noon. Assembly member Paul Bauer is making a presentation with power point. The first slide was a set of pictures on Al Queda people who entered the US illegally.


Now a list of defininitions - illegal immigration
Qualified Alien - definition - lawfully permitted ....
Alien who has been battered or subject to extreme cruelty

Reasons for Illegal Immigration
War, reunite families, prostitution



Illegal Immigration is NOT victimless crime

Misdemeanor vs. Felony
sedond and subsequent times becomes felony

Recognize concerns about profiling. 50% of illegals are of Mexican origin and 24% are of non-Mexican South America

Gateway states - California, Washington, Oregon - laws that allow immigrants to come
Cal 2.83 million, Wash - 280,00, Oregon Sanctuary State, as is Alaska - because of Anti Patriot act resolution

Health Costs to US - people get health benefits but tax payers pick up the burden, and they spread diseases long ago wiped out in US

Mexico's defense of illegal immigrants - 20 Billion dollars to Mexico - they will not enforce their borders, release valve for them

Alaska Justice Center numbers - estimate 7-10,000 in AK

12:25 - Bauer finishing up his presentation - talking about the ordinance he is introducing
Where people indicate he is not a citizen, ...

Official Use of Individual Immigration Status Information - federal rules, no one can be prohibited

If we pass this we just say you come to agreement with homeland security. This does not preempt our laws.

12:36pm Continued live coverage Municipal Attorney says he does not think the ordinance is unconstitutional. Though there is something that could raise questions about separation of powers. The assembly makes law and the administration implements them. We are not sure the assembly can tell the administration what it must do is a potential problem.

Questions:
Teshe

Claman -whether the resolution turned Anchorage into a Sanctuary City?
Attorney: Not exactly sure what the popular press means when it uses the word Sanctuary City. But based on the legal research, this did not make law. This resolution did not change the legal environment of the municipality of anchorage.

[I'm learning how to do this - taking pictures, trying to upload, etc. The Library wifi is slow, so bear with me]

12:00 Matt Claman opening the meeting
Bauer will present first, then others


Teshe - I appreciate Mr. Bauer’s presentation, I’d like a copy of the slides.
I would like to make a statement at the end. There are a number of people here who want to address this. Thank you to Mr. Bauer for his presentation.

Claman: Only question. Dr. Selkregg? I handed out a copy of the Muni Attorney’s memorandum. The Question I had that is based on the 2003 statement that Anchorage is a sanctuary city. A resolution is an opinion and does not have affect of a law. Hard to understand how that changed us to a sanctuary city?

Bauer: since this became a big issue, cities have made themselves sanctuary cities. The state started in in May and in July the city did. The situation growing so much, the Congressional Research Service, when they asked about enforcing immigration law, a list of cities that they called sanctuary.

Claman: Did you write the ordinance yourself?

Bauer: I’m not a lawyer, it comes from a public interest group attorneys that used this as a model. This is very minor compared to what is out there.

Claman: Is the group you are discussing the Immigration Law Insittute?
The next person I’ve asked to make a presentation is the Municipal Attorney

M. Attorney:

Selkregg - Question about outcome of the law. Could you explore that with us? I think it’s a critical issue.

Attorney- Footnote 2 - refer to CRS report. Katie, Texas - even though a law may be permissable on its face, sometimes laws are extremely difficult to apply in the field on a day to day basis. The expeirences that happen in the field attract law suits. Racial discrimination suits, wrongful arrest, defamation. I think about APD and have no questions they won’t try to carry out the law impeccably. This kind of law regularly attract constitutional claims about the way they are applied.

Selkregg - I’d like to know more about what is happening in other cities as the outcomes of this kind of law. Laws may look like ok, but the actual impact may be bad - such as laws that affect who can vote.
12:48pm
Selkregg - concerned that Bauer said not everyone would be asked about their citizenship
Bauer - In your view - how do you view the ordinance yourself? What do you think it means. Ms. Selkregg says its the end of the world, we'll get all sorts of law suits
Attrny: We haven't said it unconstitutiona. By and large, it passes muster. It imposes some responsibilities on APD.
Bauer: Specifically/
Attrny: ob - responsibility to ask about citizenship of detained person; cooperate with federal forces. We've said there is nothing on the face of that that is unconstitutiona. It requres APD to enter a cooperative agreement with Homeland Security. But we did say there was a separation of powers.
Bauer:
Claman: Sorry you had your three questions, lots of other people, I may have to limit questions

added 1:13pm
Municipal Prosecutor: Some concerns about how this will affect our office. Similar to concerns APD has. Law enforcement needs to have close ties to community to do its job. These are the people we protect. They are also important sources of information, which we need as evidence to prove our cases. AT times this is hard to get, no one wants to talk to the cops. This requirement to enquire about people’s immigration status, it would deter immigrants from coming forward to cooperate with police to solve crimes. Concerns about domestic violence victims not filing because of concerns about their immigration status or their batterer will no longer be their sponsor. I should note there are special provisions for specific types of visas for victims of domestic violence under federal policy. Important to place emphasis on protecting victims of domestic violence. Anything that could deter immigrants from reporting domestic violence concerns me.

Finally, effect on workload in my office. We are source of information on legal matters for APD. Prosecutors take a lot of calls when they are off duty about legal questions and providing advice to police - we will be their primary source of advice. Very complex body of law.

Committee Questions:?
Bauer: Position of prosecutors office, because of close ties of APD to community, that we should neglect helping out and enforcing illegal aliens in the community. You did hear illegals cause a burden to the community.
Prosecutor: I’m expressing concern about enforcing laws.
Claman - we have four more people have to stop already one pm.

Rocky Heun, Chief of Police: Willingness to answer questions. Police will always fall back on probably cause and ????. No matter how law shakes out, we’ll continue doing, what we do right now. To investigate and enforce the law. We will make a traffic stop, for instance. If a person doesn’t have a drivers license, then we start talking. Attena go up. Check to see if they really have one, and talk to see if we have enough probable cause to detain them. We contact ICE, we have a functional relationship. ICE will give us advice - take guidance from ICE if we have probable cause to believe that someone is an illegal immigrant.
Scope of the problem as we know it. Mr. Bauer and I contacted ICE and we couldn’t get the scope of the problem. I went back to the APD files:
Arrests 2005 total of 6 2006, 7, this year 5. Total 18
We made total of 15,000 in 05 this year 10,750

APD arrests of illegals 42,817 chargeable offenses , we had 18 illegals. That doesn’t mean there are illegals we aren’t in contact with. Office of Detention and removal of ICE regularly check the jails to see if there is anyone there to be remanded. I don’t know those numbers so I’m interested in the FOIA request that Bauer has filed.

Tesche: Do you have statistics about violent crimes committed by illegals that hasn’t been made public?

Heun: I don’t have that, but I can get back to you.

Tesche: I want to test the proposition that there is a crime wave by illegals.

Bauer: One question. In your contacts what were circumstances of arrests that led APD to make contact with these folks.
Heun: Most were traffic stops, based on our suspicion
Bauer: Why dig further?
Heun: Not having a drivers license, you engage in conversation that leads to things.
Selkregg: I know you’ve been working with the immigrant community, if we pass this proposal, how will it affect our relationships.
Heun: Intl. Associ. Of Chiefs of Police have guidelines. This is a concern. Always a concern when any element in the community perceives itself to be isolated from the police.
Claman: Immigration Justice Project
Robin Bronin, Alaska Immigration Justice Project

Robin Bronin, Alaska Immigration Justice Project
….Congress has been creating legislation to help immigrants come forward, especially those who have failed to get their documents because a spouse has been abusing them.
Claman: We would like copies of both documents.
Bauer: Do you now or have you ever harbored or supported illegal immigrants and if you did would you give us numbers and could you help us develop our statistics?
Bronin: I don’t have that information 1:17

Bridge Builders, Angelina ????: Sent email to all members of assembly, that board members of BB have passed a resolution against this ordinance. Our member come from various ethnic communities of Anchorage. We want Anchorage to become the first city without prejudice. This ordinance would be harmful to our goal.
We work with the police and ASD hoping that Anchorage will serve as a cultural mecca, that people will value the diversity of Anchorage. Distressed with the anti-immigration sentiments on blogs and media that this ordinance has generated.

Bauer: Hi Angelina. One question. As the ordinance is drafted…. What fear do you see that legal immigrants would have?

Angelina: Who would be asked - profiling? Would people with dark skin or an accent be asked but not others?

Bauer: I agree with you. And the ordinance does have things that get that through. The presentation prior stated statistics… in no way can you get away about illegal immigrants.

Angelina: We believe in equal respect for all people here.

Selkregg: Have you asked UAA and hospitals about this?
Angelina: We work with them but haven’t asked

Fed. Employee, attorney, : I’ve been an attorney in Professor at West Point, Dept. Of Law. But today only talking on behalf of myself.

Dept. Of Defense has a significant number of illegal immigrants fighting in Iraq. We do grant postumas citizenship to those who die in combat

I’m a registered Republican and conservative who lives on the hillside.

Sanctuary City term is not a legal term. It is basically a talk radio and blog term. The slide show had lots of errors. All the Al Queda entered country legally.

Ordinance offered by people with no practical experience with immigration law. It is ideological experiment. Not a problem in Alaska. We are a guinea pig for this organization. They are very proud Bauer has introduced this here in Anchorage and brag about it on their website.

This generally causes people who are not a problem to be reported. Hard to determine who is or is not a citizen. I’ve had people walk into my office who said they were illegal aliens and after 45 minutes I told them they were citizens. And vice versa. Very had to figure out if someone is illegal alien. Run the name through the data base, but the data base is full of errors. Rep. ???, ran her new attorney’s name through the data base and found she was listed as illegal. She’s not.

Cost Benefit - lawsuits happen, expensive, go on for years, ordinances get struck down. Facing millions of dollars in attorney’s fees. The institute doesn’t pay the attorney fees for legislation they foist on them.

It requires checking anyone who is not a citizen.

Bauer: It’s 1:30 this meeting is over.

Claman: We started 6 minutes late, so we will go six more minutes.

Tesche: I don’t know enough about immigration law to ask a question.
Johnson: C/B analysis - Bauer says he wants it passed because it will create fear. And attached link
Bauer: You need to get your facts straight.
Claman: We’ll resolve that off the record.
Bauer: I have a lot of questions. You have impeccable qualifications. I did training at West POint ROTC. Millions of dollars of lawsuits.
???: Not this one, this one hasn’t been tested.
Bauer: Thank you. This is a totally different ordinacne.
???: Yes, we’re a guinnea pig they got you to file
Bauer: They didn’t get me. I chose on my own there were two models and I DID NOT chose number 2.
Claman: Close public hearing. Subcommittee ready to make recommendation?
Tesche: I would incorporate all the comments on the record and propose a do not pass.
Johnson: I listened to everyone and have had calls. I felt all along, to be honest, that the resolution of 2003 was non-binding. I have to say I do not feel this is a Mu;nicipal Issue and I’m not comfortable tying up MOA resources and support do not pass.
Claman: As chair. I don’t get past the sanctuary city analsysis. It’s an expression of opinion and they are valuable and they differ. It is not binding on what we do. I can’t get to the point of sanctuary city. Also recommend do not pass.

The attorney name is Margaret Stock.

The meeting is over. I’ll post this then try to clean it up and add stuff later. 1:10pm

Charlie Wilson's War

At the movies last week, we saw the preview [I know, they call them trailers these days, but 'pre' 'view' as something you see before seeing the actual film and something you see before the feature movie, still seems to make more sense than something you drag behind, like a trailer] for Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

I want to make a plug here for George Crile's book. It's a very engrossing giant of a book that tells the nonfiction stories of Congressional intrigue, setting up the US arming of the Muhajedeen resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan, and wheeling and dealing with the powers that be in Pakistan. This book goes into great detail, but reads like a good adventure spy novel. There's no better way I know of to till in some of those blanks about how we got where we are today in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I know that the movie, no matter how good it is, just can't go into the details that book does. If kids studied history by reading books like this, it would be the favorite subject of more than few people like Ropi.

So, before the movie publicity causes all the library copies to be checked out, go get your copy and start reading Charlie Wilson's War.

Library Day, Anchorage is Our Home

Lunch with A.S at the Thai Kitchen. Decided to bike it because it would be easier to park than the car at the UAA library afterward. It was nice being in the library, it's been a while.










Found my book - Scott Gant's We're All Journalists Now. Someone on the Next Hurrah had recommended it. And it fits right in the my previous post on bloggers credentialing. When I read this in the inside cover

Are bloggers journalists, even if they receive no income? Even if they are unedited and sometimes irresponsible? Many traditional news organizations would say no But Gant contends otherwise...

Then the bike trail home, by the south fork of Chester Creek at the bridge at UAA.






But I left the bike home later when I went downtown to the museum for the showing of Anchorage is Our Home - co sponsored by Healing Racism Anchorage and the Hispanic Affairs Council of Alaska (HACA). The film is a series of clips from interviews of people in Anchorage talking about racism they have encountered, how it affected them, and the kind of Anchorage they would like to see. The Mayor dropped by and said a few words - mentioning particularly Paul Bauer's proposed new Assembly Ordinance to require Anchorage Police to ask anyone they stop for any 'legal' reason to produce proof of their legal status in the US. There is an Assembly Work Session on this Wednesday at noon in City Hall.

You want to know who supports Bauer's proposed ordinance? Check out the Alaska Pride blog. While you are there check out his White Nationalist links some of his

Other Favorite Sites

* The Truth About Martin Luther King
* Council of Conservative Citizens
* American Nationalist Union
* American Renaissance
* Jeff Rense
* Conservative HQ Forum
* Boycott Cabela's

General WN Blogs

* Anti-Semite Sam's Blog
* Aryan Matters Blog
* Bill White's Blog
* Dietrich's Blog
* Estonian Sunshine Blog
* Expose Them All
* Masher News Blog
* Nationalist Dissident Voice (UK)
* Panzerfaust Blog
* PC Apostate Blog
* Snow White's Blog
* South Africa Blog
* State Line Star
* The Rabbit Hole
* Tuonela's Blog

* White Reference Blog

I don't have the heart to provide the links to these sites, but you can get them on the Alaska Pride site. Look at a few of these and then tell me that racism doesn't exist in Alaska.

Mountain Ash Berries on Ice

Big Oil's Still Big Oil

[This began at the end of the previous post on the state censoring a blog, but it got so long I decided to make it a separate post.]


While you check out Alaskan Abroad, don't skip the letter "consultant Daniel Johnston recently sent to legislators." I quote in part:

For those of you who had to suffer through my testimony the past two years you will recall numerous references to risky places like Libya, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Russia where the government share of profits ("take") was in the high eighties i.e. around 85+%.

So now Alaska is considering a change to the petroleum profits tax which will add another 1% or so to Government take. Yawn. [emphasis mine]

This, as we read in today's Anchorage Daily News that Rep. Mike Chenault of Nikiski "successfully pushed through an amendment to bring the rate back down to 22.5 percent." And, "Rep. Mike Hawker objected to raising the tax." If it weren't for Rep. Mike Doogen, I'd be wondering if we shouldn't make Mikes ineligible for the legislature.

These guys are still buying the oil companies' arguments that they will leave for easier pickings. If that's the case, why aren't the oil companies answering the questions about their Alaska profits?

Several state legislators, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Hollis French, D-Anchorage, and House Resources Committee Co-Chairman Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, have unsuccessfully tried to press the companies for cost and profit information specifically for Alaska.

They've found those who produce oil in Alaska don't like to talk about their profits in the state, and in some cases won't say anything.

Do the Mikes really believe their line about their accounting doesn't break out Alaska finances separately? They're playing hardball and you guys are blinking.

We've watched the surveillance tapes. We know what goes on. Mikes, is your free market ideology blocking your common sense? The free market posits two parties making a deal. The oil companies are making a deal. They are offering much lower than they are willing to settle for. They'd be stupid if they offered their last best level first. And the state, the owner of the oil, this scarce commodity that is now pushing $100/barrel, is the other actor. It should be asking much higher than it's willing to settle for. Given what the oil companies are paying elsewhere, it should be a lot more than 25%. Either you guys are a little slow on how the game is played or you've got reasons to push the oil company line that you aren't sharing.


Call your legislators and tell them not to sell out the state. If this oil was in your back yard, would you settle for 22.5% of the profits and let the guys who got it to market take all the rest, minus their costs? Sure you would.

Remember, these Republican legislators are the same people who have kept Randy Ruedrich as their party chairman. This is the guy Sarah Palin filed ethics complaints against when she quit the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

State Censoring Blogs?

This was posted on the political/oil/Czech rock blog Alaskan Abroad Saturday:

I just found out the state blocks AA [Alaskan Abroad] on state-owned computers, at least for classified employees. The ban doesn't apply for legislators or the Third Floor. How cool is that?

My response? Not cool at all. The most positive explanation would be that something in his plastic people coverage snagged the State internet filter. But then it would have snagged the ADN as well, surely. And I know State workers can get the ADN because they've linked to this blog from the ADN.

And why would the third floor have access? Or do they have unfiltered access to the internet?

So, first, is this really happening? If it is, who sets the State policy on state employee internet access? Why would a blog that focuses on Alaska politics and oil issues get blocked? This is a giant step backward for bloggers.

Watching the Snow Fall

This is the sequel to the thriller, The Leaves Are Falling.






Join me on the deck1234567891011121314151617181920123456789101 All is still, winter snowflakes 12312341234567891234567894567891 only moving things

Refugee Nation

Wow - another story telling show. This time three main story tellers presenting some of the stories of Lao Refugees to the US. They aren't always easy as we hear about the difficulties of adjusting to a new land after surviving war and refugee camps in Thailand. Although the two main actors are from LA, this is not a slick Hollywood production. Rather it is a well acted, genuine performance by people who want to entertain and educate about their people - the Lao refugees in the US. This is still a work in progress and I expect that the transitions from scene to scene will get a little tighter and the film will be better integrated into the rest of the performance. But these are my picky points and they really don't detract from the power of the show. This is a chance to see behind the news images people might have (or as the show points out, not have) of Lao and Hmong people.

The ADN did a great job of covering this show on the front page this morning. Below is a brief video of the question and answer period after the performance with Leilani Chan, Ova Saopeng, and May Lee-Yang.




And according to their blog, they've been having a busy but great time in Anchorage. They've been to various schools, to the Senior Center, met with Alaska Native kids, and tried out several of the Thai/Lao restaurants. Here's what they say about their welcome in Anchorage.

It's been two days in Anchorage and already we feel like part of the family. We've been welcome with warm smiles, hugs and hospitality unmatched beyond any expectation. In these two days so far, we have met more people, been filled with excitement and enthusiasm and gone to several happenin' events in Anchorage that it's like we never left home.

Also check out the website.

I know that Mike Huelsman, the Executive Director or Out North Theater, is responsible for much of the hospitality.

Anchorage is blessed to have such cultural riches and if you don't already have tickets to something Sunday, you should go to see Jack Dalton at Cyrano's and then Refugee Nation at Out North. You can get your tickets online there.

Refugee Nation has a 7pm performance Sunday and 4pm on Monday afternoon.
Dalton's My Heart Runs in Two Directions at Once has a Sunday 3pm show, then Monday - Thursday at 7pm. Cyrano's is on D Street between 4th and 5th Avenues downtown.

Yes, this is less a review and more a shameless plug. But I wouldn't be pushing this if I didn't think it was really worthwhile.

Jack Dalton - My Heart Runs in Two Directions

Just go to Cyrano's tonight. Just do it. Jack Dalton really is a story teller. That's his profession. In the stories we heard last night, he tells his own story. If I were to try to give a synopsis it would be like trying to describe a kind of music you've never heard before. Your brain would try to grab onto the closest images you have to the words I'd use and you'd come up with your own story.

But Jack tells his own story and it is the telling that makes the story powerful. One message he clearly sends is this: He wants through his stories to give others the courage to tell and to live their own stories. I guess I can list the scenes as printed in the program since they are his own words:

Act One: From the Tundra
Can't Sleep
Birth
Byron Scott Dalton
Heathen Savages
Foreigner
Happy Birthday
Really Being Yup'ik
Not Really Being Yup'ik

Act Two: From the City
The Storyteller
My Heart Runs in Two Directions at Once
Ellangellemni: The Moment I Become Aware
Angallguq: One Who Facilitates Healing


I knew Jack casually when he was a student at UAA and a waiter at Golden Pond restaurant long ago. There was always something special about him. The picture above from the program captures a Jack I don't know. The picture toward the end of this postseems to show his warmth and humor better. I also appreciated last night how quick he is. Several times he slipped out of character to make real time comments, and then easily slipped back into character. Or was that part of the act too?

Darjeeling Limited

Light, but not as light as it appeared, and lots of fun. Three brothers on a pilgrimage in India. The India part appealed. They obviously had a good time making the movie. The official webite has lots of material about making the movie and the soundtrack that deftly blends Indian music and Western music.



I've made two versions at different quality to see the difference. I'll post the second one soon. [Here's version two. Is the difference significant enough to justify using 5 times the megabites?]

DOJ Press Release on Kohring Trial

Again (as with the Kott verdict), the Department of Justice tells the world that the defendant was convicted of three counts (bribery, conspiracy, and attempted extortion) but doesn't mention that he was NOT convicted of one count (extortion.) It's one thing for private companies to omit important information to make themselves look good, but it's entirely different when the government does that.

Also of interest is that they say he faces a maximum of 35 years in prison (20 years on the attempted extortion charge, 10 years on the bribery charge, and five years on the conspiracy charge.) If the attempted extortion charge means up to 20 years, what would he have been facing if convicted for extortion? Not only did the DOJ not mention that he was acquitted on one charge, but that he was acquitted on the most significant charge - Extortion.

The last paragraph is also of interest:

This case was prosecuted by trial attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch, II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke of the District of Alaska. The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigative Division.

The first sentence includes all four attorneys, though only Sullivan and Bottini actually tried the case. Marsh was there for the first couple of days. He said he was returning to DC after that. Goeke was in Courtroom 3 during most of the Kohring trial, sitting in the back.

The last sentence says the IRS is investigating the case with the FBI. One question that has been raised about the Veco contributions to remodeling Ted Stevens' Girdwood house has been about what Stevens did for Veco in return. Can the Government prove a direct connection? There is the National Science Foundation grant that Veco got. But if the IRS is investigating too, perhaps they are checking on whether Stevens declared the $100,000 worth of work Allen says Veco did for Stevens on his income tax forms.









FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2007
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
CRM
(202) 514-2007
TDD (202) 514-1888

Former Alaska State Representative
Victor Kohring Convicted on Public Corruption Charges

WASHINGTON – A federal jury in Anchorage, Alaska, has found former Alaska State Representative Victor H. Kohring guilty of conspiracy, bribery and attempted extortion, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Following an eight-day jury trial, Kohring, a member of the Alaska State House of Representatives from 1994 to 2007, was convicted of conspiracy, bribery and attempted extortion, for corruptly soliciting and receiving financial benefits from a company in exchange for performing official acts in the Alaska State Legislature on the company’s behalf.

On May 4, 2007, Kohring was arrested following the unsealing of two indictments charging him and two former Alaska representatives with various public corruption offenses.

At trial, the jury heard evidence that Kohring, while serving as a member in the state legislature, solicited bribes from and took action to benefit the financial interests of VECO Corporation, a major Alaska oil services company. Trial evidence, including more than 25 recordings of conversations involving Kohring and former VECO executives, showed that Kohring repeatedly agreed to lobby his colleagues and, if needed, cast votes in VECO’s favor on a key petroleum production tax proposal pending before the Alaska legislature. In exchange, Kohring received multiple cash payments and solicited a $17,000 payment.

“Former Representative Victor Kohring betrayed his oath of office and the people of Alaska when he deliberately and repeatedly took bribes in exchange for official acts,” said Assistant Attorney General Fisher. “I thank the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who have worked so hard on this case. Their efforts demonstrate that the Department of Justice will pursue public officials who abuse their positions of power for their own financial gain.”

The VECO executives who testified at trial, former Chief Executive Officer Bill J. Allen and former Vice President of Community Affairs and Government Relations Richard L. Smith, pleaded guilty in May 2007 to providing more than $400,000 in corrupt payments to public officials from the state of Alaska.

Kohring is the third former member of the Alaska House of Representatives to be convicted this year of corruption crimes. Thomas T. Anderson, a former elected member of the Alaska state House of Representatives, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for extortion, conspiracy, bribery and money laundering for soliciting and receiving money from an FBI confidential source in exchange for agreeing to perform official acts to further a business interest represented by the source. Peter Kott, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was convicted in September 2007 of extortion, bribery and conspiracy, and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 7, 2007.

Kohring faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the attempted extortion charge, a maximum sentence of 10 years on the bribery charge, and a maximum sentence of five years on the conspiracy charge. U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick of the District of Alaska set sentencing for Feb. 6, 2008.

This case was prosecuted by trial attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch, II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke of the District of Alaska. The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigative Division.

###

07-878

Back into the Real World - Chester Creek

I had errands to do. The snow is long gone. It was into the low 40s. On the way home on the Chester Creek bike trail I checked out the progress of winter. It's slow this year. Last year at this time we were in New Dehli and Anchorage was going into deep freeze. I love the green feet of this tree.







I stopped to enjoy the music of the water hidden in the middle of Anchorage.

Trial Leftovers - Access to Courts and Credentialing Bloggers

There's a lot of material that I haven't had the time or energy to report, mostly issues that came up during the trials and needed some thought time and some research. One of those topics - one of these days - is the role of wire tapping and other surveillance techniques. But not today. Today I want to talk about a) media access to court rooms and b) the issue of press credentials for bloggers.

Media access to the courtroom in the big picture was not the issue this. Everyone could get into the court room. However, you have to go through more stringent and separate security from the regular security for the federal building. At the Anderson trial, this security meant no cell phones, cameras (still or video), audio recording, or computers past security. Attorney John McKay, hired by the Anchorage Daily News and KTUU jointly, was able to get the Judge and I guess also the US Marshals to allow the press to take cell phones and computers past security. Cell phones had to be completely off inside the court room. McKay was also responsible for getting access for the press to the government's surveillance tapes as soon as they had been used as evidence. The trial coverage significantly changed when they began posting the tapes online during the Kohring trial.

But this sort of access was only a temporary waiver of the rules by Judge Sedwick for the Kott and then the Kohring trials. This doesn't change the rules for the US District Court in Anchorage. John McKay said the Marshals had a number of security issues. Googling didn't really add any other issues.

Issues raised to restrict press (including video/still cameras, audio ) access to courts:
a. space in the courtroom
b. privacy and security of jurors, witnesses (particularly undercover agents and rape victims), defendants (children)
c. disturbance of the court proceedings - basic goal for the judge is a fair trial

Reading the ADN during the trial, I marveled at the photographs of the Linehan trial. Our State Courts have different rules. And some other states allow live audio and video feeds from the courtroom. California has particularly detailed rules for press access including getting permission to bring in video and audio equipment.

Apparently the fact that many laptops phones have video and audio recording capabilities and was discussed in the negotiations, but I guess they decided to look the other way. I certainly assumed that if any video or even a photo of the courtroom showed up in the media, that the computer and cell phone privileges would be gone.

Why press passes may be needed, including for bloggers.

• Determining who gets In
  The courtroom was never so crowded that anyone was turned away. Apparently during the Exxon Valdez trial, this was not the case. So, in the event that a courtroom is too small to hold spectators and press, there is a need to determine a) who is media and b) which members of the media get in. Again, at the Exxon Valdez trial I was told it was first come, first served and that a video room was set up for those who couldn't get into the actual courtroom.
• Determining who doesn't have to leave the cell phone and laptop with security
  This did become an issue for the Kott and Kohring trials. For some journalists, it was not an issue. They simply used their notepads and pencils. But I couldn't have covered the cases the way I did without my laptop. As I think I've related before, the established media folks gave me advice on creating a press pass and wished me luck. I never had any serious trouble getting in. Security knew me from the Anderson trial and let me through. Though once or twice they asked who I was with and I showed my pass and they let me through.
  On the second day of the Kohring trial, one of the guards asked for my url and my email address and said he'd get back to me. And he let me through with the computer. The next day I had no trouble. The next day, when he was back, he told me that they didn't have a policy for bloggers, but the judge said, since I'd covered the previous two trials, I could take my laptop in.

So, if media get special privileges how do you determine who qualifies as media?

In general, your employer, a traditional media outlet - newspaper, radio or television station - gave you a pass. In some cases these had to be approved by the organization you were covering - particularly where there was limited space (White House Press Corps) or special access given to the press. So, what about credentials for bloggers?

In the perfect world, there would be room for everyone. Is there a fair way to determine who is a 'legitimate' blogger and who is not? One could say that people who cover 'news' on a regular basis are different from people who simply post pictures of family or mushrooms. But before the Anderson trial, I had never done any sort of thorough reporting of anything, and who's to say which family blogger won't suddenly get serious about some community issue and want media privileges to bring a computer or camera in?

Googling, I learned that this question about press credentials for bloggers is being dealt with in all sorts of venues. Sports bloggers post a lot on this with different outcomes that seem totally idiosyncratic. One sports franchise rejects bloggers, while another grants them passes, but not access to locker rooms, and a third gives them press passes. The Washington Capitals asked a blogger to come up with a blogging policy. Some other bloggers chronicle their somewhat successful attempts to get AFL press credentials.. The Ladies Professional Golf Association said no. The Latin Grammys also said no to a blogger.

The American Bar Association allows bloggers into their meetings and events, conditionally

“New media” journalists, such as bloggers, must authenticate their status as reporters by supplying links to and/or samples of their blogs or media outlets. Credentials will be granted at the discretion of the Director.

The CIA apparently changed their definition of media to make it inclusive of bloggers.

GovernmentExecutive.com is reporting that the CIA has adopted a new definition of "news media" that could significantly reduce the fees and costs for citizen journalists who request documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

And then there is the Media Bloggers Association that is credentialing bloggers.

Up here in Alaska, I'm not sure there's that great a benefit to the credentials generally, but having my laptop in court sure was a big deal. Reviewing what's out there, it seems there are a few existing standards that have been used by various institutions.

• how long and frequently you blog
• do you cover 'news' in the particular area rather than just post family pictures
  
• % of your income that comes from media work (California legislature)
• affiliation with established media
• do we like what you write about us? This was not listed anywhere, but I assume it is a factor
• links to your post and ratings from blog rating sites like technorati

Coincidentally, The Next Hurrah, a great blog that focuses on the Federal Courts and the Department of Justice among other topics, discussed blogger press passes today because of a New York City case

New York journalist Rafael Martinez-Alequin and his lawyer Norm Siegel are challenging the New York City police department's policies for issuing press credentials. (For somewhat arcane reasons having to do with access to crime scenes, the NYPD issues all City media credentials.)

Marci Wheeler, posting as emptywheel on the Next Hurrah, doesn't think the percentage of income criterion is constitutional. I hope not because it would cause me serious problems. She also emphasized the criterion of links.

I suggested that rather than judging on readership (since really focused blogs tend to spike when their expertise becomes relevant), a Court ought to judge on links. Since linking is a sign of reliability, you'd want to show links to show that you're considered reliable (and, preferably, knowledgeable on the subject) by your peers.

While my blog isn't highly specialized normally, it certainly did spike when I was covering the trials.

A hockey blogger even questioned the whole need for press passes,

What is there to gain by doing it? Really. The key selling point of the blogging community is that we're not the media. We have a hell of a lot more freedom to post a certain angle or perspective that many in the mainstream media cannot get away with. The more bloggers try to "gain respect" within the framework of the mainstream media, the more they have to adhere by certain guidelines and behaviors, and the closer the bloggers are to becoming incorporated to that mainstream.

I did think some of the Media Bloggers Association requirements seemed focused on aggregating power for the head of the organizations:

* Members must be intimately familiar with the MBA Mission Statement and Statement of Principles and support both without reservation.
* Members must be subscribed to the MBA Broadcast e-mail list (MBA-Announce) at all times.
* An MBA event or activity is any event or activity so designated by the President of the MBA.
* Members are expected to promote the organization and portray the organization in a positive light in both word and deed at all times.
* Members are expected to identify and recruit potential members.
(emphasis mine)

I also think that there may be times - like covering Federal cases in Anchorage - where getting accepted as media would be important for my blogging.

And finally, there is the problem of having the agency itself decide who can cover it. It's ok for privately owned sports teams to limit access perhaps, but for government there are additional problems. While I think Judge Sedwick has been scrupulously fair and respectful to everyone in the courtroom [no, this is not sucking up now that I realize he might be reading my blog, I'm still calling them the way I see them] not every judge will be so fair. There is no question that media who are highly critical are not as welcome and may not get their press pass renewed.

Perhaps a committee that has diverse representation could work with the agency. Even this can be hijacked as the history of US regulatory agencies has shown over and over again. But it's more transparent better than just a judge or administrator. And publishing criteria used is also critical.

Liberty Watch 2

When you buy a certain type of car, suddenly you see them everywhere. When you are pregnant, suddenly you notice all the other pregnant women around. When you get a new model of things, you suddenly start noticing things that you didn't see before. Naomi Wolf's ten steps to dismantling a democracy is helping me organize different incidents in my head and fit them into a coherent model of what's going on. So I've started a new tag - Liberty Watch - to point out actions that fit into those ten steps. This one is more about non citizens but it relates to keeping track of people, restricting their movement, and preventing key individuals from presenting their views publicly. So it would seem to partially fit the following steps in Wolf's list:

4. Create a surveillance apparatus for its ordinary citizens.
5. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens,
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict the press

Below is a mass email I got from the president of the American Association of University Professors, probably the major institution that represents American university faculty, about foreign professors having trouble attending conferences or taking visiting professorships in the United States.



In spring 1983, just over two years into Ronald Reagan's first term as president, I was in the midst of a complex ballet with the U.S. State Department. My institution, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had invited the distinguished cultural studies and Marxist scholar Stuart Hall to teach a course and keynote a conference. He had just been told by the U.S. visa office in London that they had no record of his application?an application he had submitted three times. I scheduled a tentative interview with National Public Radio, then presented the State Department with a choice: issue the visa or listen to me discuss the situation on NPR. It issued the visa. Those, apparently, were the innocent Reagan-era days when the State Department could actually be embarrassed by bad publicity.

A quarter of a century later, in 2007, we are living in a very different world. Our State Department is no longer subject to embarrassment on this issue. The atmosphere today is reminiscent of the Cold War, when the U.S. government regularly barred from the country visitors whose views it rejected. But Congress repeatedly restricted this power, first limiting exclusion to those presenting a genuine national security risk in 1977, then explicitly applying standards for constitutionally protected speech to foreign visitors a decade later, finally shifting the focus for deportation and exclusion from beliefs to conduct in 1990.

As a result, for many years foreign scholars have given papers at conferences and taught at our colleges and universities. These interactions have advanced knowledge across a whole spectrum of fields and strengthened our ties with other nations.

But for six years foreign scholars have frequently been denied entrance to the United States. Often they have been turned back after their planes have landed. Most had already visited here without incident. Some had done so after the 9/11 attacks; a number are graduates of U.S. institutions. Their stated reasons for visiting have been both clear and legitimate.

Earlier this year, as AAUP president, I signed an extensive legal declaration outlining the AAUP's consistently strong stand against the exclusion of foreign scholars for ideological reasons. For about two years we have been involved in litigation seeking to compel the government to admit Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan to the country. His visa was revoked in 2004 as he prepared to take up a tenured appointment at the University of Notre Dame. Then he was denied a visa to address the AAUP annual meeting. The declaration I signed lists Michael Chertoff and Condoleezza Rice, respectively Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary of State, as defendants.

Usually no reasons are given for denying a visa. In Ramadan's case, as a result of our lawsuit, the government was compelled by a court to give an official explanation. It said Ramadan had provided "material support" to terrorists. The support? Donations that Ramadan had made to European Palestinian-relief organizations which later gave money to Hamas. The idea that Ramadan could have anticipated later donations defies reason. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union was once again pressing our case in federal court. On October 25, an assistant U.S. attorney suggested that potential donors write to organizations specifying that no donations go to support terrorism. Suffice it to say I am not convinced that would prove effective.

Another suit involves South African scholar Adam Habib, who in 2006 was intercepted at the airport and denied entry to the United States, where he was scheduled to meet with officers of the Social Science Research Council, Columbia University, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Bank. The State Department subsequently revoked the visas of his wife and their two young children?an extraordinary step for which no explanation was given. Contending that censorship at the border prevents U.S. citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment, the lawsuit challenges his exclusion and contends that his exclusion violates the First Amendment.

On many other occasions the AAUP has written letters on behalf of excluded scholars. Sometimes our efforts and those of other academic organizations have succeeded in having travel restrictions against particular scholars lifted, but the list of distinguished visitors prevented from entering the country continues to grow.

Obviously we must bar entry to those presenting genuine threats to national security. But the government should not act as if we fear ideas almost as much as we fear bombs. As the ACLU put it, it sometimes seems we are fighting not so much a war of ideas as a war against ideas.

We urge all of you to write to your representatives in Washington to reverse this practice and let foreign scholars visit the United States. (If you are not sure how to reach them, use the AAUP's lobbying tools.)

You may not agree with Tariq Ramadan or all of the other excluded scholars, but we hope you'll agree that the University of Notre Dame had a right to offer him a job, and the AAUP had a right to invite him to address our annual meeting. Academic freedom embodies principles behind which all of us can unite.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

Talk of Alaska

Here's Phil Munger (on the left) and Steve Heimel, the host of Alaska Public Radio Network's (APRN) Talk of Alaska this morning getting ready for today's discussion on blogging the political trials. I appreciated that Dennis called up and identified himself as the commenter who supported Aaron Selbig's righteous indignation. And Aaron himself called too.

You can listen to the show here.

I'm still trying to figure out the circularity of how all this works in circles - from the trial to the blogs to the radio back to the people who commented on the blogs.


Phil Munger hosted the USA v. Kohring blog, which had a limited life from the beginning and has started a new blog called Progressive Alaska His first post yesterday said, in part:

There are* a growing number of progressive Alaska-based or Alaska-related web sites and weblogs. None seems to be keeping up with this site expansion in a comprehensive way.

I think it is vital that opportunities for these sites to be aware of each other, and to develop communication links, grow rapidly between now and the 2008 elections.

He has this bloglinked there and in the greater scheme of things, I guess it fits into the broad category. But I'm more interested in promoting authentic dialog that doesn't start with the answer, but with the questions. I'd rather see smart, genuine, cooperative politicians of a variety of viewpoints who are working for the public interest, than politicians whose only goal is to win for their side.


*[To [sic] or not to [sic.] When I quote in blocs like this I sometimes wonder if I should put a [sic] after obvious mistakes as one would in a quote in an academic journal to indicate that the mistake was in the original. Most of these quotes are simply cut and pasted so, unlike the old days when you had to retype the quote (and thus could introduce new errors) the odds today are that the error was in the original. Also blogs are a lot less formal and typos are not uncommon - in my blog as in others. So, I'll leave out the [sic] and let the readers figure it out or not. This fits in with Steve Heimel's comments that bloggers are defining the rules as they go along.]

Blog Meets Radio - KSKA Tuesday at 10am

Should I mention this in the blog? Well, my goal here was to learn about blogging. As a result of blogging the trials my blog got more attention than it ever had with pictures of mushrooms and birds. Enough that Steve Heimel invited me to be a guest on Talk of Alaska tomorrow for the topic: Blogging the Political Trials. I'm not sure who all else is on the panel, but I think Phil Munger of USAvVictor H. Kohring will be. I hope Kyle Hopkins the ADN blogger will be there too.

My friends avoid me these days. For some reason they don't think blogging and political trials should be the only topic of discussion. So it's not that I will run out of things to say. My concern now is saying things important. Writing is a much easier format for me. I can spell check it and go back and edit it until I'm happy with it. But talking live on air - no second chances.

This summer has seen a real transformation of the Anchorage Daily News' use of the web. After the Anderson trial, their attorney convinced the judge to require the prosecution to distribute the surveillance tapes - audio and video - to the press right after they are shown in court. By the second trial, the ADN's website was full of the tapes, as well as audio recordings of the trial itself made by the court. Some of the audio/visual material have been offered in their entirety, some not. Some have been well organized and described, some not. They've also linked to blogs, including this one, which has markedly increased the daily hits. The hits have gone down after each trial, but to a higher low than before the trial. We'll see how many stick around when I'm not focused so thoroughly on one specific topic of considerable local interest.

Anyway, a number of folks in the rest of the media have been very supportive of my blogging. And this crossing media borders phenomenon will continue tomorrow on 91.1 fm in Anchorage and other public radio stations around the state as blogging itself becomes a news topic.

Liberty Watch - Who Reads Your Email?

In this report, an ATT engineer reports that the NSA collects internet traffic with the cooperation of ATT. While they say they use computers to sift it and only read a tiny fraction of what goes through, the capacity to read anyone's email is now, seemingly in place. Who needs to go to court to get wire taps if they can read your email? I'd say this would be part of Step 4 of Naomi Wolf's ten steps for dismantling a democracy.


4. Create a surveillance apparatus for its ordinary citizens.

Dan Fagan on Vic Kohring

I've given Dan a bad time now and then here about his ADN column, so it's only fair that I give him credit for a decent column. Yesterday's column on Kohring actually offered a little more insight into what makes Vic tick.

Often, Dan's column has fallen into a category I'd call rhetorical pollution. By that I mean, when we discuss politics and other important issues in the public square, the ideal is to shed light, clarify positions, add new facts, so that we can come to understandings of how things work and what is the best policy. Unfortunately, there are people who have gained little corners of the public square who have used that soap box, not to enlighten, but to litter the public square with invective against people and institutions, with uninformed opinion, and often home made facts. People like this do actual harm, just as people who litter do harm. We have to clean up the mess they made before we move forward in solving public problems. We have to reestablish the facts, challenge the biased opinions, and basically undo the pollution in the pursuit of public truths. I've only listened to Dan's radio show a couple of times on the radio - internet actually - but I found his newspaper columns to mostly be in the rhetorical pollution category.

But yesterday's column wasn't in that category. It actually made interesting observations - comparing Kohring's public optimism as he faces prison to a character int he Shawshank Redemption who kept hope alive in prison. That guy was innocent Dan wrote, does Vic have hope because he thinks he's innocent? Insightful. Then Dan talked about his own observations of Vic's habit of eating other people's food. Yet, while being critical -

[t]he jury had no choice but to find Kohring guilty. He traded on the power we entrusted him with as a public servant.

- Dan is also compassionate about a fellow human being in trouble.

Dan adds enough anecdotes in addition to what others have related and to the trial evidence - that Vic was always on the lookout for a free meal - for me to speculate with a reasonable level of confidence that Vic has some deep seated issues around food and money. [OK, some of you are saying, "took you long enough," but I only really have any direct contact with Vic through the trial, and I think trying to understand who people are based on what they've experienced is a valid approach]

Vic is about 6'7" so he does have a lot more body to nourish than most of us. He's also a middle child - an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister - he told us during a break in the trial. It doesn't sound like there was a lot of money in the Kohring household and with four siblings, maybe Vic actually went to bed hungry some nights. Many people who lived through the depression became almost stingy with how they spent their money for the rest of their lives. Possibly Vic has tapes playing in his head - maybe he can hear his father telling him not to waste money. I don't know, these things work in strange ways. Some, who were poor, spend like crazy when they get a little money. Others are always afraid of being poor again and just stash it. Pete Kott had $30,000 in cash in a closet when the FBI searched where he was living in Juneau.

Anyway, Dan's column adds a bit to what we know. It's in the positive contribution side of the scale.

It would have been really interesting if Dan had talked about the many times (according to the court testimony) Veco got Vic air time on Dan's radio show. Both Dan and Vic have been stalwart supporters of the oil industry. Dan, working in the private sector, doesn't have to report any support he gets. But what did he think of Vic at the time - besides his eating habits? A little more insight into what he thought of his guest at the time and how he might handle political guests in the future would have made this column yet better.

Paul Kendall on Hydrogen

I met Paul Kendall the other day when I was part of a panel that discussed the political corruption trials here in Alaska. He said he's learned that he's good at gathering information and finding things, but not at getting his ideas out to the world. So I pulled out my digital camera and took some pictures and made some sound memos. I only got him once he was into his pitch and I had to stop each time after 60 seconds. So what I have on the video are three interrupted clips of 60 seconds. But I told him I'd give him at least my small audience. If you want to know more, email me (there's a contact link in my profile) and I'll pass it on.



He's obvious intelligent, he is passionate, knows his subject, and is a very fluent speaker. He knows that some people think he's crazy, but assured me he's never been on meds and isn't 'off his meds.' I liked him.

More Horror Stories from Naomi Wolf

In a comment on the previous post, Phil linked to this piece by Naomi Wolf on another blog. These stories sound so unreal that I'm sure many will say, "It can't be true" or "She must have done something suspicious" but that's what they said as the Nazi's took over. We have the advantage of knowing about Nazi Germany, something those living in Germany in the 30s didn't have. Here are a couple of excerpts from her post:

Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’

Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States’ — though it is squarely inside the airport — so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States’ - is a legal no-man’s land — so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?’ `Lady, this is not detention,’ the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.’

Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared’ for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.

– Is building a US Embassy in Baghdad the size of eighty football fields and at a cost of well more than half a BILLION dollars evidence of short- or long-term thinking?

In a June post, I created a vision of a military coup in the US to set up a scenario to imagine the choices that Iraqis must face daily. If Wolf is correct, Bush and company have been using the presidency and the power of the US government to set up the base for taking over the country - with Blackwater as their private military.

Many Jews perished in Germany because they didn't leave when they could. If you read this report seriously, you can get a sense of how it must have felt. Can you give up your home, your job, whatever savings you have because some people are saying this is going to happen? I don't know that Wolf isn't seeing things that aren't there, but I don't know that she is wrong either.

Naomi Wolf - Ten Steps to Dismantling a Democracy

My mother was 11 when Hitler came to power in 1933. As a Jewish girl, she experienced the various laws that step by step made life more difficult for Jews, including when she was no longer allowed, as a Jew, to go to school. She managed to get out of Germany and to the US in 1939, and I grew up hearing these stories. Hearing how the country she took for granted and felt totally a citizen of, slowly deteriorated and made her and her family the evil threat to society. Since then I've
read my share of books about this period to fill in more details. A recent one that I'd strongly recommend is Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness

So when I see similar things happening here, I'm seriously disturbed. Most German Jews, not to mention gentile Germans, didn't believe it could possibly happen there. Just like most Americans don't believe it could happen here. When I've told people that the Bush administration is copying the Nazis in the steps they took to dismantle the rights of German citizens, they look at me like I'm crazy - we don't have concentration camps. I'm not talking about concentration camps, but what the Nazis did before they sent Jews and Gypsies and others to concentration camps. The steps they went through that allowed the citizens of arguably the most educated and advanced country in the world at the time, to accept concentration camps when the time came. [And if a number of blogs are correct, FEMA has set up a series of detention camps.around the country that could be used to put away dissenters and other undesirables. Originally set up for illegal immigrants and used for Katrina refugees, these blogs relate, there are such camps planned and being built all around the US already. The links I could find look kind of flakey, but I've been assured by people I trust and pointed to FEMA regulations for this.]

So I was pleased to find someone who has written a book about the progressive steps to dismantling a democracy. Wolf identifies ten steps that are used to overthrow democracies and shows how they have been used in various regimes and how they are being taken in the US today. Well, it's depressing as hell, but to the extent that this is exposed and people become aware of what is happening, the better our chances of blocking this.




[This is not showing in my preview window, but maybe it will show on the blog itself. Jeremy, at KWMD (87.7 and 104.5 FM in Anchorage) says they've already played this on the air and will play it again tonight -Sunday- at 6pm. You can try YouTube.]

Here are the ten steps as outlined by Naomi Wolf in her book The End of America and discussed in this tape from Youtube from a talk at the University of Washington October 11, 2007.

1. Declare the existence of sleeper cells.
2. Create a secret prison system where torture takes place outside the rule of law and very often establish military tribunals that strip prisoners of due process
3. Create a paramilitary force
4. Create a surveillance apparatus for its ordinary citizens.
5. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens,
6. infiltrate citizen groups
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict the press
9. Recast dissent as treason
10. Declare martial law - months before an election, destabilization


A quote from Naomi Wolf's talk:

Name a society that created a secret prison system outside the rule of law where torture takes place that didn’t sooner or later turn the abuse against its own citizens

She does have some proposals for what to do.

Thanks to http://1984comic.com/ for posting this from YouTube.

Day Light Savings

Our old mountain ash drops its leaves reluctantly. All the other trees are bare. The little snow we had is gone. Got to run again today after the trial and then rain. I guess I've gotten soft since our time in Portland.

Day light savings ends today. It really isn't relevant this far north in the winter or summer. And gaining an extra hour on the weekend isn't bad. It's setting the clock forward in spring that bothers me.

My proposal for spring is to set the clock forward at 4pm on Friday. People who work get an hour off with pay, of course. They can just work harder earlier that day. Few offices do that much work on Friday anyway. And the bars and movies and restaurants can all deal with it. It's not a perfect plan, but it's better than losing an hour of weekend.

Web Surfing Tip

Don't Google in long sentences - actually this was an AOL search:


was george washington an average military tactician and a bad speller


I don't know how this search item got to my blog, but I have nothing whatsover on those topics. But I'm sure most of the words hit something (do I have tactician? Don't know.) If you're looking for a longish phrase, put it in quotes.

Buddhist Influence on my Views of Anger

Harpboyak left a comment early this morning on my post suggesting Aaron Selbig's righteous lack of compassion for Kohring was not the ideal path:

Gimme a break! Vic is a CRIMINAL who refuses to recognize the reality of his behavior. I agree that he needs rehabilitation, but it won't happen until he admits that what he did was WRONG.

Aaron, me, and everyone else is damned right to be angry and demand retribution from these criminals that violated the public trust and their oaths of office. They gave alway BILLIONS of our oil money to the oil companies!

I guess the three years I lived in Thailand rubbed off on me. Buddhists take a very different view of anger. They see it as weakness, as losing control of oneself. They get embarrassed for you if you lose your temper. I know this is hard for Americans to understand, but I found this story on a site on Buddhism that might help explain my view on this. The link goes to the site which has a lot more on the topic of anger.

A BAG OF NAILS

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. But gradually, the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the first day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.
"You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there."

But what about righteous anger? The site has something on that too (though probably not as powerful as the story.)

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama mentioned:

"When reason ends, then anger begins.
Therefore, anger is a sign of weakness."

Is anger or hatred ever justified? A direct answer from Allan Wallace in 'Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground up':

"'Righteous hatred' is in the same category as 'righteous cancer'or 'righteous tuberculosis'. All of them are absurd concepts.

This does not mean that one should never take action against aggression or injustice! Instead, one should try to develop an inner calmness and insight to deal with these situations in an appropriate way. We all know that anger and aggression give rise to anger and aggression. One could say that there are three ways to get rid of anger: kill the opponent, kill yourself or kill the anger - which one makes most sense to you?"

Buddhism doesn't have rules in the Western sense. Rather it has teachings that show people how to live a life that will, eventually, lead one to perfection that releases one from the cycle of rebirth, and to nirvana. It is up to the individual to adopt those teachings or not, because it is the individual's life that is affected.

In Aaron's case, the anger was multiplied by broadcasting it over the airwaves. I just was expressing my disappointment that this alternative radio station, in essence, wasn't so alternative. As the quote above says, "anger and aggression give rise to anger and aggression."
He's just doing what his opponents do with a different spin. But he continues the cycle.

Rev. Koun Franz of the Anchorage Zen Community

impressed me at the discussion after the reading of the War Prayer.

The comment that was most enlightening to me was from Rev Koun Franz in response to what a good Buddhist would do if he saw someone violently assaulting another. It would be ok to intervene, he said, if you did it for the right reason, which would be to help both people. If you intervened from moral superiority to punish the aggressor you would cause a short term benefit, but you would be perpetuating what the aggressor was doing. This helps me understand a story I heard the other day about a survivor of the Mi Lai massacre during the Vietnam war. Asked today what she thought about Americans coming to Mi Lai today, she said she was glad they came. What if it was one of the people who killed her family? That would be even better, because then I could forgive them.

Of course, it isn't this simple. We also get this advice

The late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Tryungpa Rinpoche often taught that five kleshas (in the Tibetan tradition, they are greed, hatred, delusion, pride, and jealousy) are in essence five wisdoms. The wisdom side of anger, for example, is discriminating awareness.

How can this be? Anger makes us sharp and quick to criticize, but anger also helps us see what's wrong. Our feelings and emotions are actually serving like intelligence agents, bringing in news from the field of our experience. We should not dismiss, ignore, or repress them.

Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

The audio is bad, but the video gives a sense of the rush of the media get their story and Browne's love of playing them.



Driving home from the courthouse I heard Aaron Selbig on KUDO saying things like, "I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for Kohring. He violated the public trust, his constituents..." Aaron's not the only one.

Kohring sold out his constituents and the people of Alaska. I have no tolerance for what he did. But he is also a human being. I was sorry to hear Aaron's retributive ranting. I understand the righteous outrage he feels. But Kohring has been tried and convicted and will go to prison. Save that anger for the people who are still out there violating the public trust. Go after them. As I get older, I know that the total lack compassion Aaron expressed simply perpetuates the win/lose, the us/them mentality that keeps us stagnant as a society. So, if Aaron gets his way, we'll have 'us versus them' Democrats doing the same thing in the state legislature? No doubt retribution is a natural instinct. But as we grow up we learn to positively channel those instincts that still survive in our amygdalas.

I was hoping KUDO would offer an alternative to testosterone radio mired in playground behavior and ideas. Retributive justice as we practice it in the US has gotten our prison population up to 2.24 million people. People that we pay to house and feed. People who aren't contributing to society, aren't working to help restore their victims. What's wrong with our society that we have such a relatively high percentage of our population in prison? KUDO should be asking these bigger questions and exploring alternatives like restorative justice. We should be figuring out why people have taken this path, how to divert people starting on that path, and how to help the Kohrings learn to give instead of only to take. Selbig wasn't modeling the kind of behavior we'd like Kohring to have. And, yes I realize that there are some people who will never be rehabilitated and we have to find ways to keep them from harming others. There are psychopaths out there. But they didn't choose to be born without a conscience any more than the rest of us chose to have that part of our brain functioning.

Having sympathy for a human being who is hurt does NOT mean one excuses that person for the wrongs he has committed,. Instead of lashing out at him for our own faults we may see in him, or because we can't deal with people like him who directly affect our own lives, or whatever reasons, it seems more practical and decent to recognize that we too are fallible; that we should deal with the Kohrings who directly affect us. Not through safely beating up on already injured person, but by taking more control of our own lives. Aaron use those stones to build something not to pick on a man who is already down.

Kohring Jury Says Guilty Three Times out of Four

In case you haven't heard, the jury found Vic Kohring guilty of three counts - bribery, conspiracy, and attempted extortion - and not guilty of extortion about 1:30pm today.

The media crowd around Kohring (left) and his attorney John Henry Browne. Kohring thanked people and apologized. It was hard to hear - he speaks softly and there was lots of noise.

The media were waiting in the Federal building waiting for Kohring and his attorney to come through the security for the District Court part of the building (no cameras allowed through the security.)








Here they are clustered around the security exit.