Alaska Humanities Forum Pitches In Juneau

This is part of my continuing coverage of the people who come to Juneau to talk to their legislators.  Of course, I'm only you showing a fraction of 1%.  But just to give you an idea.

I ran into Jim MacKenzie in the hall outside the Senate Finance Subcommittee meeting Thursday. Jim, a former student, runs the Leadership Anchorage program at the Alaska Humanities Forum.  He and others from the forum, including his boss, AHF president and CEO Greg Kimura, to tell legislators about what the Humanities Forum is doing.  Fortunately for me, they also were serving lunch (this was the first time I've gone in without breakfast).

So here's Jim and Greg on the video. 

I did ask Greg who they could justify bringing so many people down to Juneau and he said they are doing double duty, visiting with people involved in Humanities Forum programs here in Juneau.  Up til now, he said, they haven't had any state funding, but their funding for the summer history teachers workshops has run out, and this is a really important program to help teachers teach Alaska history.

This is their Alaska history curriculum for high school teachers.  The DVD's have historic Alaska films that they converted.









They also published this statehood anniversary collection, Alaska at 50,  which Greg said was the top seller at the University Press.  That's probably not saying a lot.

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.

October 1, 2007 - Leadership Anchorage and Clerk's Office

It was Joan's birthday today. We went out for dinner last night with friends. Today the rain reminded me of Portland. I had a meeting at the Alaska Humanities Forum with former student of mine and new MPA (they don't all get indicted) Jim MacKenzie, who's the new director of Leadership Anchorage. Jim's had an interesting career, strongly influenced by joining the Jet Program
where he taught English in Japan. He ended up staying for nine years I think, with various jobs - hotels, airlines - and getting married before coming back home to Alaska. Here he worked for a number of years on the staff at the Japanese Consulate General's office. It often surprises people when Jim starts speaking in fluent Japanese.

Then I stopped at the US District Court Clerk's Office to start getting up to speed for the Kohring trial that beings October 22.

Here are the charges. After the Anderson and Kott trials, they look familiar - conspiracy, extortion, and bribery. There’s also a motion to suppress evidence from the initial search of Kohring’s office and interrogation. The press has covered this, but reading the defense’s motion describing what happened that morning and then reading the government’s version is like reading about two totally different events. I’ll share that here when we get closer to the trial.




This is a large file so you should be able to double click it to see it better. I also saw that Kohring's local attorney is Wayne Anthony Ross. The internet is full of Ross links, that one was just the first that popped up. Kohring also is represented by Seattle attorney John Henry Browne. Here's what Adam Liptak wrote in the New York Times about Browne (I'm assuming this is the same Browne):

On Second Thought, Let’s Just Rate All the Lawyers

Published: July 2, 2007

John Henry Browne, a criminal defense lawyer in Seattle, was steamed. A new Web site that rates lawyers the way Zagat rates restaurants, with numbers, had assigned him a low score.

So Mr. Browne filed a class-action lawsuit last month.

“We want to shut the site down,” he said.

The site is called Avvo.com, and Mr. Browne’s first rating on its 10-point scale was 3.7, a score in a range that the site labels “caution.” After he complained, the rating was changed to 5.5, or “average.”

Mr. Browne said he deserved better. As evidence, he said a magazine had called him a “super lawyer.”

But it was Bernie Willard Potter’s initial score of 6.2, or “good,” that drove Mr. Browne out of his mind. Here Mr. Browne had a point. Mr. Potter, another Seattle lawyer, was in fact not likely to provide effective representation, on account of possessing neither a law license nor a pulse.

“I do take offense,” Mr. Browne said, “when I get rated lower than a dead, disbarred lawyer.”