Who Pays For It Scam? The Propaganda Campaign

This video is good.  It will take about 30 minutes of your time.  It's better to watch it, but go ahead and listen to it while you are doing other mindless tasks you can do without thinking.  Kneading bread, putting away dishes, working out, or if that's not your thing, baking a cake.  

I'm not even asking you to listen to the whole thing, because I think once you start it you'll watch the rest.  

He takes fairly complex stuff and makes it pretty simple.  BUT, since we all have been so programmed, you do have to think a little bit to understand the programming - Who Pays? - and how the question is only asked for social welfare issues and not for military spending or tax cuts, particularly tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy.  

Some key themes that come up:

• Long term programing through repetition of "Who pays?" and "What about the debt?"
• How this programming evolved - from trying to convince average folks (didn't work) to convincing news media and members of Congress (works).  
• How media then use the fake think tank 'experts' as 'experts' on news programs.
• How news media are either unable to counter these ideas or bought and paid for so the won't.  Even PBS and NPR get caught up in this.  

All done with humor.  Ideally, when you watch or read news, you'll think about this video and not be taken in so easily.  He's talking about the relentless attacks of "Who Pays For It?" for social programs but not other government expenditures.  But you should be thinking about framing on all the other issues as well.  

One thing that emerges in the video is how little viewers actually know about the background of the guests on most media news programs - don't know their past or even current involvement with organizations that have a vested interest in the topic.  So here's Maza's Wikipedia page to start your awareness of who he is.  

OK, Carlos Maza is no Hasan Minaj*, but probably if he had Minaj's budget, staff, and researchers, he might get there.  If you don't know who Minaj is, you can watch his Patriot Act series on Netflix which picks a national issue and gets rid of the smoke and mirrors so you can see the wizards behind each scam he covers.  More recently he did The King's Jester on Netflix - also fantastic.  Maza covers some similar ground, but technically at a much more basic level.   No Netflix?  Here's a bit of The King's Jester on Youtube.  Well, I just watched it so I wouldn't be steering you wrong.  This appears to be a show where he worked with some of the material for King's Jester, but didn't really pull it all together into the show that talks about the importance of standing up to powerful people. And the personal risks.  The King's Jester is terrific.  This Youtube piece is, well, okay.  

*I realize there is some talk online about Minaj not treating some staff well. But the reports are really vague. I'm not saying there is nothing there, but given the kinds of people Minaj takes on, one can also see them doing campaigns like this to cut off his message. Patriot Act was not renewed by Netflix.

ISER Report On Lack Of ASD Maintenance And School Board Election Happening Now

 

ISER* has a new study.  Below is the summary.  This link gets you to the whole report.

A new analysis of Alaska’s K-12 Capital Spending shows that the state is not spending what is needed to maintain, renovate, and renew its K-12 school buildings. The study, authored by ISER research professor Bob Loeffler, reviews historical K-12 capital spending from state and local sources from Fiscal Year 2000 through Fiscal Year 2020.  It details the funding sources Alaska uses for large school maintenance, renovation, and construction projects for both municipal and rural areas. The study illustrates the decline in spending after the current budget crisis hit in 2014, and shows how Alaska’s K-12 capital spending falls short of recommended industry guidelines.

“School buildings are among a community’s most valuable physical assets, especially in Alaska,” said Loeffler. “A building’s upkeep or deterioration can be a reflection of the surrounding community and can also affect the quality of education that happens inside. All homeowners understand that regular maintenance is critical to maintaining the value of your property. The same can be said of our school properties. This analysis takes a hard look at how Alaska has been doing in this regard. In short, Alaska is not spending what is needed, especially over the last six years.”

*University of Alaska Anchorage Institute for Social and Economic Research

In four days the Anchorage Municipal elections will end.  (With mail-in voting it doesn't make that much sense to speak about 'election day' any more. And the Municipality of Anchorage switched to all mail-in voting a couple of years ago, though there are drop boxes and you can vote in person in various locations.)

I put the ISER report and the elections together because we are also voting for a number of School Board seats.  

The League of Women's Voters has an on-line overview of the technical details of the election - how to vote, where to vote, when to vote, plus names of all the candidates and descriptions of all the ballot issues.   Below is a list of the School Board candidates.  

Click on image to enlarge and focus

Here's a link to the Anchorage Daily News' candidates forums.  It lists all the questions they asked of mayoral and school board candidates.  Then below is a list of the candidates and links for each and you can see how they answered the questions.  

To help you out, here are a few of the endorsements from different organizations: [I was going to put this all in one table that was neat and easy to compare, but two things happened:  1) I can't find many organizations that actually have endorsements and 2) an old high school friend who read my blog post on the 1963 UCLA-Michigan basketball game called.  He had watched the 2021 UCLA-Michigan game with another high school friend.  They had been part of the group that went to see the 1963 game together.  So that used up a lot of my time.  But it was good.  So I'm just going to present these as I took them off the internet.  

The Alaska Family Council (Strongly anti-abortion and anti-LGBT, pro-Christian) list of candidate endorsements.

Seat A:  No endorsements

Seat B:  Norton-Eledge and Marc Anthony Cox

Seat C: No endorsements

Seat D:  No endorsements

Seat E: Sami Graham and Nial WilliamsJudy

Seat F: Marcus Sanders and Kim Paulson

Seat G: No endorsements

Planned Parenthood: (Strongly pro-abortion [choice], contraception, sex education, women's health)

Anchorage School Board

Seat B: Kelly Lessens

Seat E: Pat Higgins

Seat F: Dora Wilson

Seat G: Carl Jacobs

        

ASEA/AFSCME Union   (Alaska State Employees Association/American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) (For protecting workers' rights)

Anchorage School Board
Name		Seat
Kelly Lessens		B
Dora Wilson		F
Carl Jacobs		G

The Alaska Center (formerly the Alaska Center for the Environment) makes recommendations on the mayoral race and the Recall election, but not for school board.

The School Board races are supposed to be non-partisan.  The Alaska Democratic  Party seems to be honoring that non-partisan spirit since I can't find any endorsements by the Alaska Democratic Party.  However, the Republicans have weighed in.

Republican Party of Alaska

University Of Alaska President Resigns - Good Time For Board of Regents To Eliminate Statewide

The Anchorage Daily News just announced that UA President Johnson is resigning as of July 6.

 Johnson was making $325,000 in salary so I'm guessing with his 12 years of previous employment at UA plus his five years as president he'll get an annual retirement of somewhere between $70,000 and $110,000.  (It says he's retiring on July 1 and his appointment was announced July 28, 2015, which is just short of five years. I'm not sure if his pay is based on highest 3 years or highest 5 years.  He first worked at UA in 1996 and July 1, 1996 appears to be the cutoff for counting 3 years of 5 years.  But I'm sure the Regents could give him credit for the missing month if they chose to.) And I'm not even considering bonus pay which he appears to have received.  While he says he donated that back to the University, it would still count (at least it used to) toward his highest salaries.   (Calculating pensions is relatively straight forward, but there are some variables you have to know and I haven't been involved for 14 years now.)

Note: COVID tab above for daily updates on state case counts

Why Not Leave Position Unfilled?
 It had occurred to me when he was the finalist for the University of Wisconsin statewide presidency that it would be a good time to rethink whether we even need a statewide president.


Better Yet, Why Not Cut Out Statewide Altogether?
I also wondered why we couldn't just cut back on most of the positions in Statewide and use that money for faculty who actually teach students and do research and service?

The 2020 Alaska State Budget says , if I'm reading it right, that Statewide had 142 employees making a total of $16,385,300 in salary and benefits.  (That's an average of $115,389 per person).

Instead of having a backup bureaucracy in Fairbanks for every administrative function, they could cut back to just do the things that need to be done to coordinate the three campuses as a whole?  Oregon has already done this.  

"Established in 2011 and vested with its current authorities in 2013, the Higher Education Coordinating Commission is a 14-member volunteer commission appointed by the Oregon Governor, with nine voting members confirmed by the State Senate. The Higher Education Coordinating Commission is supported by the state agency by the same name, comprised of eight distinct offices led by Executive Director Ben Cannon.
The HECC develops and implements policies and programs to ensure that Oregon’s network of colleges, universities, workforce development initiatives and pre-college outreach programs are well-coordinated to foster student success. It also advises the Oregon Legislature, the Governor, and the Chief Education Office on policy and funding to meet state postsecondary goals.
Agency Mission and Values
Agency Mission Statement
By promoting collaboration and coordination between Oregon’s education and workforce partners, as well as through our own programs and policy leadership, HECC staff ensure that Oregonians experience increased access, equity, and success in completing their higher education, training, and career goals.
Agency Values
Transparency, Equity, Integrity, Trust, Collaboration, Accountability, Lifelong Learning"

So there's a volunteer commission and a state agency with 8 offices, each of which presumably has a few staff members.


Growth in higher education administration and administrative salaries is a key factor that many people point to as the reason for the increase in college tuition.  Here are just a few references:

The Reason Behind Colleges' Ballooning Bureaucracies
Universities’ executive, administrative, and managerial offices grew 15 percent during the recession, even as budgets were cut and tuition was increased.

​​​Colleges Must Cut Administrative Costs to Survive This Crisis

There are other articles that say the cost has gone up because of student loan programs or  that for public universities the biggest factor is legislatures cutting budgets.  I'd note that Johnson's here - the UA president he wrote his doctoral dissertation on - was known for going down to Juneau and convincing Republican legislators that money spent on the University was an investment rather than an expenditure, and he reversed cuts.  Johnson was never able to do that.

However, it would appear among the costs universities have direct control over, the biggest factor is administrative costs.  The $16 million figure is just salaries, not any other expenses like upkeep for the buildings they occupy or travel to see what's happening on the various campuses.

If the Board decides to keep the president position, I hope they make fund raising the primary job and let the campuses run themselves with minimum interference.

What The Governor Vetoed And What He Didn't

From an email from my State Senator Elvi Jackson-Gray.
I really am not sure what it all means.  There's not enough total context.  I put it up just to get it into people's consciousness and so you can all start asking more questions.

Senate Bill 205 Operating Budget  I have included a non-exhaustive list of line-item vetoes proposed by Governor Dunleavy below, but you can find a full list at the link: https://bit.ly/2wlvDhF $30 million in Education and Early Childhood Development $36.7 million Regional Educational Attendance Area Deposit $12.5 million University of Alaska $100 million School Bond Debt Reimbursement $4.3 million Pre-K $1.05 billion transfer to the corpus of the Permanent Fund for inflation proofing $15.5 million Alaska Marine Highway $16.2 million AMHS crew quarters $31 million Medicaid $3.4 million Ocean Rangers $2 million Public Broadcasting $1 million Spill Prevention and Response $2 million Behavioral Health Treatment and Recovery Grants $2.7 million Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation $1 million Alaska Recidivism Reduction and Recovery project $3 million Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Weatherization $5 million Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Homeless COVID-19 Response $2 million Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Special Needs Housing $2.7 million Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Teacher Health and Public safety Professional Housing $3.4 million Medicaid Services $4.7 million Designated Evaluation and Treatment $334,000 from Appellate Courts $150,000 Rural Real ID Implementation.

Some Budget Items that were funded $99M to COVID-19 response and relief $135.6M to Alaska State Troopers $14M to Village Public Safety Officer Program $5M to Disaster Relief Fund  $5M to Fire Risk Reduction Funding $34.8M to Pioneer Homes  $54M to the Alaska Marine Highway System $1.26B to fully fund Education Foundation Formula $28.5M to Behavioral Health Programs $7.2M to Homeless Assistance Program $65M for Capital Federal Match Program to Highways and Aviation

Chancellor "Ask Me Anything" Session With UAA Community

It was already standing room only when I got to the meeting with UAA Chancellor Sandeen.  With the governor's budget cuts, and the Board of Regents' declaration of exigency, the university is scrambling.  We still don't know how the final state budget will emerge and then there's the kickoff of the campaign to recall the governor to add to the uncertainty.

There were questions from students -

• why haven't there been support teams to help students cope with working, parenting, protesting, and school work when everything is so uncertain?  
• why haven't we had a Native Students director for the last few years?  
• Will I be able to get my classes and graduate?  
• Will engineering be in Anchorage or Fairbanks and can I finish my degree?  
• I'm a theater major, what's going to happen with the arts?

Answers were basically -

• we don't have many answers ourselves, we're trying to cope ourselves and just getting ready to respond,  this meeting is the start
• we were ready to hire when positions were frozen, 
• we're going to make sure all students are able to graduate, either here, or elsewhere, and 
• they're focusing on work preparation degrees, but I believe arts programs are work preparation and Anchorage is the arts center of Alaska, so I'm pushing hard to keep those programs.  

There were questions from faculty and staff -

• what happens when UAA and UAF each have grants that stipulate only one per institution if we combine into one institution?  
• what sort of structure can we expect for administrators?  
• what do we tell prospective students who we've been working with when they ask if UAA will have the programs they want?  
• will faculty be involved in the restructuring?

There was even less certainty here.  (Here's what I heard, though I didn't take careful notes since I was in the standing room section.)

• we don't know.  We'll have to work with the agencies as we transition.
• the HR department has already gone through this and if it's a model, the services will be centralized, fewer positions on campus
• things will work out, there will be places for them somewhere, but right now we don't know any details
• the president's plan calls for making restructuring proposals first and then allowing participation afterward, maybe those will be tentative proposals [don't hold your breath, the President has been trying to make one unified university since he got here and now he's got his way to do it]

Chancellor Sandeen was impressive.  She's only been here less than a year, but she was warm, caring, and listened and she sounded honest and sincere.  The audience, at one point, stood up and applauded her work so far.  She said that she hasn't for one iota of a second regretted her decision to come here, that she loves the community here and we'll work through this.

Alaska Now Is Like a Home Invasion - What Do You Do When Your Governor Is The Terrorist Destroying Your State?

Imagine people in your house hauling out your furniture, setting off bombs in different rooms, and tearing out the wiring, plumbing, and foundation and nobody can do anything about it.

If someone physically destroys university property, he can be arrested.  But if the governor destroys the university through line-item vetoes, and he's got 22 legislators on his side, we're just screwed.

It's like watching a terrorist in slow motion, like in a dream in which you can't move. This is what's happening in Alaska.  The governor is systematically destroying the state.  This is no hyperbole, no exaggeration.  And we're struggling to figure out how to stop him.

Brother Francis Dunleavy

"JPMorgan Chase JPM  agreed to pay $410 million to settle charges with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for manipulating electricity prices in the same markets Enron used to play its dirty tricks." And who did the dirty tricks for them? "Saddled with loss producing assets, the team at the Houston-based principle investments unit developed several bidding strategies which turned out some juicy profits.  Reporting directly to Masters, [Francis] Dunleavy and his team showed how “asset optimization strateg[ies]” managed to  turn out tens of millions of dollars in profits from units that lost millions at market rates."  From Forbes.

Our governor got elected with considerable financial and other backing from his brother Francis and from the Koch brothers (via their Alaskans for Prosperity).  And now he's making our state defenseless in the face of Outside resource extractors by destroying the independent expertise at the university that can challenge rosy corporate reports that assert 'no harm will be done.  The environment will be better when we are finished.'  And destroying the government's ability to monitor what they do.  And setting up a brain drain that will set the state back to Territorial days.

Once in office the Kochs gave him Donna Arduin (who practiced trashing states in Illinois, California, Kansas and Florida) to start taking apart those government structures that people most use - education, health, the Alaska ferry. The university is taking a 40% hit (which will cost much more in federal and private grants.) Even normally conservative Republican legislators have joined with Democrats to put the money back into the budget. But enough Republican legislators (22) held with the governor and the legislature couldn't get the necessary 75% of the legislature to override the governor's vetoes.



There have been protests in the streets, at the legislature. People have overwhelmingly testified against the cuts at every legislative hearing. People have called, emailed, and mailed legislators and the governor.  People are reading the parts of the constitution that talk about impeachment and recall and trying to figure out if the language covers his actions.  The constitution does require the state to " establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the State, and may provide for other public educational institutions."  The University Board of Regents has already declared financial exigency.
The constitution also says "[t]he legislature shall provide for the promotion and protection of public health."  The Mayor of Anchorage has already declared a Civil Emergency in anticipation of the impacts of the governor's budget cuts on health and safety and homelessness.

Lawyers are, I'm told, working on lawsuits to stop this madness.

Not unlike at the national level, Alaskans are trying to figure out how to stop invaders, who got into the governor's mansion via election,  from destroying the state as we know it.

Our instincts tell us to keep within legal bounds as we watch him cut vital organs out of the university and kill the Alaska Marine Highway - the only 'road' that goes to many communities.  Imagine a governor bombing major highways so they are totally unusable.  That's what he's doing.

Everyone would love to physically remove the governor from our house to stop the damage.  Or twist the arms of enough (8) legislators until they vote to override the vetoes.  When is a coup justified?  We're too used to the rule of law, we don't know what to do when our elected leader, violates all norms of public participation, is set on destroying key institutions, and is immune to the pleas of the overwhelming majority of the population?

Letters to the editors use logic and reason, but our governor's logical assumptions are rooted in the orders he gets from the Koch brothers and their representatives, not the residents of Alaska and their representatives.  His mantra is "balanced budget, $3000 Permanent Fund Dividends, and no taxes" an unworkable formula.

When the dust settles, we'll probably find lots of legal violations on the governor's part.  One of his first moves was to privatize the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and turn it over, in a no-bid contract, to an Outside company with ties to Donna Arduin.  I'm sure there are lots of other acts like that.

While people continue to do battle some of us need to be working on the emergency recovery plans, but I don't think FEMA helps out with human caused disasters. (Well, they do help if someone causes a forest fire, but if your elected officials are the vandals?)

Obviously this is not just an Alaskan dilemma.  The White House has similarly been invaded.  But the attack on the university and its research capabilities is particularly troubling and a warning to people in other states.  This war on public education and science is, at least partially, aimed at making it harder to fight corporate 'expertise.'  This is going to happen in other states if it hasn't already.

Will Dunleavy’s Budget Lower Alaska’s Carbon Footprint?

Alaskans use more energy per capita than residents of any other US state.*  Much of the total energy use comes from the development of oil and gas, which is part of the total divided by the population to get average/person.  However, Alaskans are also dependent on most food and goods being shipped in from Outside.  So the transportation costs for those goods mean we use more energy than others in the US.

So, with Dunleavy’s massive cuts, there is surely going to be an equally massive out-migration from the state.  For people losing their jobs, an extra $1000 in PFD isn’t going to pay the mortgage, rent, or other expenses.  Most will not find equivalent jobs in Alaska and will find much better opportunities Outside.

So Alaska’s carbon footprint is likely to go down.  

That’s the silver lining, thin as it might be.

While the blog has focused on Argentina lately, I have been paying attention to Alaska’s summer of heat, fire, and dire budgetary actions.

I watch with dismay [unlike a number of politicians and social media agitators, I tend to understate things] as Alaskans throw logic on the Dunleavy fire, thinking that will make a difference to him.  Logic has already turned those Republicans in the legislature who are not immune to it, and the same for everyday Alaskans.


But it’s my sense of all this that logic has no effect on Dunleavy.  Well, not the logic that starts with assumptions that Alaska matters.   He’s solely listening to his Outside financiers whose agenda is to exploit the resources of Alaska (and anywhere else with exploitable resources) with no concern for the impacts on the state, the climate, or people.  Their Ayn Randian beliefs are that their personal self-interest is all that matters.  They assume their wealth can shield them from the worst of the remnants of a once civilized society.

So, destroying the university is a good thing for them.  It means that there is no independent intellectual, scientific base in Alaska that is capable of raising questions about resource extraction policies, or to question industry reports saying that ‘no harm will be done.’

Cutting government watchdog agencies is good too.  The fewer government employees watching over corporate compliance, the more corporations can get away with.  The cruise ship on-board inspector program, which cost the state nothing, was vetoed out of existence.  So cruise lines can illegally pollute all they want without anyone watching.

Today’s Anchorage Daily News says the department that oversees the  development of the natural gas pipeline is cutting half its staff.  Let’s see how well they’ll be able to spot problems down the line.  Remember when Shell included stuff on manatees in their Chukchi Sea environmental impact statements?  They’d just lifted the language from EIS from Florida.  And it got through the first round of regulators as I recall.

The Koch brothers are making a hostile takeover of Alaska.  This is about power.  The ability to get done what they want.  Logic plays no role.  Well, that’s not quite true.  Their logic is about what they can get away with.  It has completely different assumptions than the logic of most Alaskans.  Their logic is about making as much money as they can, with no concerns about Alaska.  The appeals of all the Alaskans hurt by the cuts are irrelevant to them.  They’re reveling in their power a)  to destroy Alaska as we know it and b) to then exploit it freely.  

And as for Alaska’s carbon footprint?  With increased oil, gas, and other mineral extraction, there may well be an increase despite the people who leave the state.


*The assertion that Alaskans have a larger carbon footprint first came to me in an article by a close relative that looked at the alliance of some environmental groups with anti-immigration groups based on the logic that when poor immigrants come from Central American use more carbon in the US than they did at home, and thus they shouldn’t be let into the country.  That, of course, begs the question about US residents’ moral entitlement to use more carbon than their southern neighbors.  The article also raised the issue of Alaskans using even more carbon  than average US residents.   The link unfortunately only goes to an abstract - I haven’t found free access to the whole article.  People with UAA or Loussac library cards should be able to get access to the article.

API Contract Awarded - NO BID - To Wellpath by Alaska Gov. Dunleavy

At the bottom of this post is a copy of the contract I found posted at DHSS today between the State of Alaska and Wellpath, for the latter to take over operations of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute.  Before we get there, I'll just highlight what I see in the contract.  There seems to be a fair amount of boiler plate (standard contract wording) and then specifics.

I see two phases:
Phase 1 - Startup  when they will figure out how they're going to pull this off

("contractor shall take all actions reasonably necessary for API to be in full operation and capable of serving patients by June 30, 2019. . .")   

It's not clear what's happening in the mean time.  Is the current state staff doing the work?  I haven't heard about the place being shut down and patients sent elsewhere.  But I would imagine staff is all looking for work somewhere else.  It does say that

"Wellpath shall provide sufficient staff to effect a transition of existing staff and all services to assume complete operation of API no later than July 1, 2019." (p. 6/21)

Phase II - Beginning July 1, 2019 is when they take over.

"Commencement of Phase 2 will begin on the Operations Date, upon acceptance of completion of Phase 1.  Upon commencement of Phase 2, Wellpath shall be authorized to manage and operate all aspects of API. . . "

Appendix C is Description of Services.

Then there are Exhibits:

Exhibit 1 - Staff Planning
Several pages listing positions and number of people to fill them.  Note there are only

12.5 positions listed under Healthcare
130 positions under Nursing
48.5 positions for "Treatment/Mental Health"
34 positions for "Safety"

28 of these are for "Therapeutic Safety Technicians."  When I looked up what that meant, I found a LinkedIn job announcement from Wellpath for this job posted 'one week ago."  They are no longer accepting applications.   It requires a minimum age of 19 and a high school diploma.

Here's the contract's summary of the Staffing Plan:

ARNP refers to Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners.

Appendix D:  Payment for Services

Phase 1 Startup Billing is for $1 million.   This is to figure out how they plan to take over operations. If this were a a competitively bid contract, it would seem to me this work would have been done by the companies doing the bid on their own dime.  I could be wrong, but I know companies put in a lot of prep work in their bids for contracts.

Phase 2 Operations Budget is for $1,383.82 per diem for 80 available beds.  Or $110,705.60 per day.  Or over $40 million for a year.
Phase 2 Estimated Annual Pass-Through Expenses:  $3,266.525.

So, as best as I can read this, the bill will be for about $43 million a year.
Looking back at previous budgets, I see API listed at around $33 million a year.

[NOTE:  Budgets were never my area of expertise.  I only occasionally try to get into them to find things, so I'm making preliminary observations here, waiting for others to jump in and clarify all this more accurately.]

0619-131 API HospitalAdminS... by on Scribd

[UPDATE Feb 22, 2019 9:00pm - I forgot to put up this image for people who would like to see who these people are who are now taking over API.  Wellpath CEO Jorge Dominicis, Correct Care Solutions co-founder Jerry Boyle, Wellpath President Kip Hallman.]

Image from Bizjournals.com