Sometimes A Car Repair Shop Is A Community - Ralfy At Culmination Motorsports

I got my 1971 VW Westphalia serviced by Kurt Schreiber in Wasilla for nearly 20 years until he retired.  Around that time our 25 year old van had holes in the floor and we got wet when we went through puddles.  I worried we might lose a passenger if we hit a bad bump.  Kurt said, "Steve, you've gotten your money's worth.  Time to let it go."

Sticker shock kept us from replacing the old van.  The new one was ten times what we paid for the first one new.  But since I wanted to be in a tent and my wife wanted to be in a hotel, the camper was the compromise that we needed.  It took two years to take the leap.  

Our kids were Outside.  M, at school in Boston said the dealers laughed at her when she inquired about VW campers.  They didn't sell them.  J, in Seattle, found a new one for $5,000 less than the Anchorage price.  He drove it up to Vancouver and we flew down for a family week there, then drove it back to Anchorage.  

Since then,  getting maintenance was more like a business deal than dropping it off with a friend who knew how to fix my car and I knew I could trust.  

But when I called Arctic Imports to schedule a maintenance this year, they said they no longer

worked on VW vans.  But when I asked, they gave me the name to two places who would.  Arctic is a little funkier than most businesses, but at Culmination it seems like everyone cares about you and your car.  

Culmination Motorsports sounded a bit ominous, but their website said they specialized in German cars and did everything from general maintenance to restoration.  Perfect.  

I think this is going to be more of a community than a business relationship.  Listen to owner Ralfy talk about his business in the video below.  Why the name Culmination?   The difference between 'new', 'classic', and 'vintage.'  Who his customers are.  The 'cult' of Culmination.  Why repair shops no longer have brand names in their names.   Toward the end he explains that Eurovans are sort of like the neglected step-child of VW. 

I'd note that I haven't done much video in the last few years (and YouTube has lots more options and requirements than it used to) and I don't often blog about businesses.  Only when I'm impressed.  And, of course, there's no payment from the business in return.  

Can you find the 'bright golden 160' Ralfy mentions in the video?  For people who know where the Fire Island Bakery South Anchorage location was - that's now Rafelito's and Culmination Motorsports.  I couldn't find addresses on any of the businesses on the short stretch of 91st west of King Street when I first went there.  The street turns right and dead ends.  It was the VW vans in the parking lot that told me I was at the right place.  

So, now I'm waiting for other VW vans to honk and wave.  (Well, that sort of happens anyway.)

Odds & Ends: Eclipses, Spring, Printer Cartridges, Private Concerts

 I was in sunny Anchorage yesterday, not in the path of the eclipse.  But in 2019 my daughter invited us to meet her and her family to see an eclipse in San Juan, Argentina.   It was a memorable experience out in the desert.  But at the time I was a bit disappointed that it didn't get really dark, just dusk-like.  My image of an eclipse was that day turned to night for a minute or so.  

My daughter went to Texas to see yesterday's eclipse.  It was cloudy, but the sun poked out through the clouds so they could see the moon covering over the sun, part of the time.  But because it was cloudy, it also got much darker than it was in Argentina.  

So, two things about eclipses: 

1.  Watching the sun covered by the moon.  You can only do that if you have special glasses or other way to darken the image.  Otherwise the brightness of the sun makes it impossible to see the eclipsing moon.  

2.  Experience the change from full daylight to night.  As you can see in the picture (sort of, since the camera's auto lighting affects things a bit) it got twilight in Argentina but not so dark you needed lights if you were driving - as my daughter reported happened yesterday.  So clouds don't completely ruin an eclipse.  You experience more darkness than without clouds.  

SPRING

Anchorage had near record snow for the year - about three inches less than the snowiest winter - so there's still a lot of snow.  But we're seeing larger areas of snowless ground - under the bigger trees in the back yard and along the edges of the snow piles.  Here's Campbell Creek on March 28

And here it is on April 7, ten days later.  Somewhat disappointing that there is now a large piece of trash in the creek.  The trails along the main streets are clear of snow, but the trails along the creeks through the woods still covered.  

The two days of sunshine reminded me that April has often been a wonderful month, but today we have a heavy cloud cover again.  [I just looked up.  It's snowing out.  I really don't need enough snow to set the record.]

PRINTER CARTRIDGES

Lots of people have complained about the printer cartridge scam.  You buy an inexpensive printer, only to be stuck for buying ink cartridges for outrageous prices.  

At Office Depot, to get all four colors for my printer costs $166!!!  

To buy a whole new printer costs $4 more - $170.  They're considerably cheaper online. And then there are kits to refill the old cartridges yourself.  But HP and the others know consumers are too lazy to fill their own cartridges or in too much of a rush to shop around.  Presumably, the market would work if people balked at these prices and didn't buy the new cartridges.  Or is this just a ploy to get people to buy a new printer.  Either way this contributes to waste for the earth and profit for HP.  

What is the cost of a whole printer and packaging compared to four cartridges?  

From Stock Analysis:

"Financial Performance

In 2023, HP Inc.'s revenue was $53.72 billion, a decrease of -14.61% compared to the previous year's $62.91 billion. Earnings were $3.26 billion, an increase of 4.18%."

So they took in almost 15% less total revenue in 2023 than 2022, but increased their profit by 4%.  How much of that profit was from printer cartridges?  

PRIVATE CONCERTS

Before the pandemic, someone invited us to a home nearby to hear a concert.  Since then we've been to four or five such concerts.  Usually it's a $20 donation plus a dish for the buffet to attend.  Sunday we went to a jazz performance there - the first one for us that wasn't classical. 

Here's John Damberg on the vibes and Mark Manners on the guitar.  Bob Andrews hand can be seen on the bass, and drummer Eiden Pospisil is hidden in the background.  The second half connected much better for me - I'm not a big vibes fan and Damberg spent more time on the piano and the guitar had a bigger role.  

But it was a wonderful evening with lots of very friendly people - maybe about 40 or so.  [While I called it a 'private' concert, it was noted in the Anchorage Daily News, so anyone could have come, though there obviously has to be a limit on how many could attend.]

More Waste In Packaging

 Waste in packaging is another thing that has become normalized.  Unless it's egregious, we just wade our way through it, without even thinking about it.

I felt this one qualified as egregious.

The pills came in these three plastic bottles inside the box behind.

Each plastic bottle had 14 - FOURTEEN - pills!

When I put them all into one bottle they reached up to the blue line. (That was supposed to be an arrow pointing down to the blue line.)

That's about 1/5 of the bottle.  There were three bottles, so only 1/15 of the bottles' volume was actually needed for the pills.  That's not counting the box the three bottles were packaged in.

So the contents needed about 7% of the packaging (again, not counting the box this was all in.)  So about 93% of the packaging was unnecessary.  

OK, I get that stores don't want to sell things so small that it's easy for a shopper to put something into a pocket or purse without paying.  There have to be more creative solutions to stopping shoplifting.  If humans can figure out how to get to the moon, they can figure out how to not pollute the earth with excessive packaging.  

I'd also note a story in the LA Times Sunday.  Mike Hiltzik wrote a follow up to the big story earlier this year that stores were losing $45 billion to organized crime shoplifting.  

Politicians and the media both repeated the fabricated number without question.  And law enforcement agencies love it because such stories help them get ever increasing budgets to fight crime.  But for them crime means the guy who shoplifts $30 worth of groceries, not companies that steal billions from their employees and customers.

Why do I add all these other issues to a simple story about badly packaged pills?  Cause everything has a context.  Telling stories without the larger context is just relating miscellaneous anecdotes.  There's a lot more context for this pill story, but I'm just adding a little here so that readers at least think about the larger context and maybe even add more themselves.  

.  

Letters To The Editor, Book Reference Sweeney And Termination

 I generally don't write letters to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News (ADN).  I have a blog where I can say what I need to say.  But we're in the middle of a special election to replace our member of Congress who died recently and an opinion piece the other day disturbed me.  

I wasn't planning on making this into a post, until a reference to Tara Sweeny showed up this morning.  So, first, here's my letter (The ADN picked the title, not me.)

No to Sweeney

"Hugh Ashlock (ADN, June 3) would have us vote for Sweeney for Congress because she will support business. Ashlock, a real estate developer, says he knows what qualities entrepreneurs need for success. He points out she’s been a leader of Arctic Slope Regional Corp., “Alaska’s largest privately owned company.” He also cites her “bipartisan cooperation” using her unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate as an example. But that was when the GOP controlled the Senate and Democrats voted for qualified nominees, unlike Republicans, who wouldn’t even let Merrick Garland have a hearing, let alone a vote.

Alaska has never been short of elected officials who support business. We’ve had oil company employees as elected officials. Ashlock says government needs to stand aside and let business do what it does best. The common goal of all businesses is to make a profit. Clean environment? Climate change? Worker health and safety? They see all these as obstacles to profit.

Bipartisanship? Arctic Slope Regional Corporation couldn’t even cooperate with the Alaska Federation of Natives and pulled out of that organization. GOP members of Congress are like the Uvalde police — they fled the insurrectionists and then refused to do their job and hold them accountable.

The age of oil is waning. Even big banks and oil companies are pulling back from Alaska oil. We need realists who see that the future is in a strong Permanent Fund, not in climate-destroying fossil fuels. We don’t need another oil executive (ASRC lives off oil) representing us in any governmental body. We need a candidate who believes health care is a human right and that women should have as much autonomy over their bodies as men, that voting rights and campaign spending limits are critical to democracy; who fights for workers’ rights, not for greater corporate power. Not someone who will join with her party to oppose all of these things in favor of higher profits."

When the letter was published I got a couple of emails from my book club.  One added this note:  

"Yes. Good letter Steve. Louise Erdrich also  lambasts Tara Sweeney in the Epilogue of her latest book “The Night Watchman.”

I got to that part this morning.  The book is a fictional account of how Erdrich's grandfather, in the 1950s learned that their tribal lands were going to be terminated.  Against all odds, he mounts a campaign to lobby Congress to prevent the termination, and succeeds.  I posted about the book recently because, while the fight against termination is the basic story, it's wrapped in the context of reservation life and Turtle Mountain Chippewa culture of the 1950s in North Dakota.  The termination villain in the story is real life Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah who believes 'government handouts' kills the initiative of Indians.  

Here's what the Epilogue says: 

"Indeed, the Trump administration and Assistant Secretary of the Interior Tara Sweeney have recently brought back the termination era by seeking to terminate the Wampanoag, the tribe who first welcomed Pilgrims to these shores and invented Thanksgiving."

Mind you, Tara Sweeny is an Alaska Native woman.  

*The ADN added the title.  While I am opposed to Tara Sweeny, my point was more about the fact that we have enough pro-business representatives.   

Leap Of Faith - Flying To Seattle After Deicing

 March 4, 2020, we returned from a long trip with our daughter and granddaughter and assorted family members.  We'd also been to San Francisco to visit our son and his two kids.  Early US COVID deaths were happening at Seattle area nursing homes.  Our daughter was concerned enough to give us each an N-95 mask and drove us all the way out to the airport. (We usually just caught a train out after the ferry to downtown Seattle.)  After a few days I had mild COVID symptoms, but even though I could check off three symptoms and being the right age group and coming from a COVID outbreak area and testing negative for the flu, I couldn't get tested.  

I was near the end of  Michael Lewis'  The Premonition  on the plane today, a story of 'outlaw' doctors

who on their own came up with a plan for what to do when there's a pandemic.  About that time there just weren't enough tests available.  I wasn't sick enough to get tested.  They were saving tests for people in the hospital.  Premontion  tells of a UCSF lab that created, with lots of volunteer help (Post-Phd grad volunteers) a way to provide free tests, but Kaiser said no because they were afraid they'd lose their contract with their regular supplier (according to the book) and a non-profit said no because they couldn't put $0 for cost in their accounting system.

In any case. there was over a foot of snow in some places in my driveway when I shoveled at 8am.  We watched the cab drive by looking for an address.  We couldn't catch his attention, but he stopped down the block and asked someone who was out.  We caught that guy's attention.  

There was a lot of snow.  Wednesday afternoon there hadn't been any.  

Getting through security at 8:45am wasn't bad.  It felt both odd and familiar as we walked through the airport to our gate.  Soon we were on the plane.  We had an empty middle seat, though the pilot kept saying it was full.  Finally at the very end, someone showed up and I moved to the middle seat as a barrier for J.  (Usually I'm at the window with my camera, but it's COVID.  But my neighbor had a good mask on and I saw a Providence screen, then a UAA screen on her computer, so I'm assuming she has a good understanding of the virus.  But still being that close to so many strangers can be uncomfortable.  But I just dismissed the anxiety - I was on the plane and I could either enjoy the ride or have a miserable trip.  I chose option A.

But we weren't leaving that fast.  We had snow on the wings and had to be deiced first.  But another plane was ahead of us.  

Here's our snowy wing.  And it was really a low cloud cover. 

Finally our deicer is on the way.  Our window wasn't very clear. 

Our turn.

We got to the 10,000 foot level still shrouded in flat opaque gray clouds.  It was a full ten minutes before we emerged above it and saw blue again.  

It turned out that our seat mate had missed her 6:30 flight to Portland because the security line was so long.  So she'd had to wait around for our 10:30 flight which was delayed over an hour and still had to get to Portland.  Which I guess explains why she showed up at the last minute - they had to see how many empty seats there were.  

I'd semi decided that we'd skip the train - we'd been cooped up in a plane full of masked, but potential COVID spreaders, and I didn't need more of that.  And we were an hour late.  And it was raining pretty hard, so we took a cab which we'd never done before.  The cab driver asked what time our ferry left.  It was 4:18 at that point.  "We won't make it - it's at 4:45."  The cab driver assured us we'd make it, and we did.  After eating another of the sandwiches we'd brought along (the food service on the ferry was shut down), I needed to get outside.  But it was raining hard and the wind was blowing.  But I found a protected spot in the back.  (As I typed that I thought do ferries have a front and back - since cars come in one end in Seattle and they leave out the other end on Bainbridge Island?  So, I checked with you know who and got this answer to the same question someone asked at sailnet in 2013:

"Washington State Ferries have a pilothouse at each end, so when the boat is ready to leave the dock, the crew moves to the new front of the boat. Sometimes they do turn around or back in, but that is because they loaded cars at the end of the load that need to be offloaded first. That mostly happens on Lopez, Shaw, and Orcas islands and sometimes on Vashon island. Most of the routes are point A to point B though."

Well, here's the view from the back (for that trip anyway) of the ferry looking towards downtown Seattle.  

What a pleasure to be met by our daughter and granddaughter after all this time.  My son-in-law is off on a business trip in Nairobi, 

Today begins two days of discussions amongst the Africa Eats investees on how to speed up the growth of their solutions, how to fill in the gaps African businesses face, and to make Africa Eats more than the sum of its portfolio companies.#hunger #poverty #Africa pic.twitter.com/WxisPMmsd6

— Africa Eats (@AfricaEats) November 12, 2021

but he's due back before Thanksgiving. 

Here's Something Positive - Bees, Elephants, And Mavis Nducha

Mavis Nducha founded Kalahari Honey.  She died recently.  You can read more about her here. [Note:  the link goes to a site of a relative.]

Or, you can just watch the video.

Afghan Corruption Got Lots Of Help From US

[I'm just writing notes today.  Consider this jotting down thoughts before other things interfere.]

Lots of commentators are listing corruption in the Afghan government and army as one of the major causes for the rapid collapse of the government.  

Westerners seem to wear one-way glasses when it come seeing to corruption.  "Poor" "third world" countries are seen as rife with corruption compared to Western countries.  

I would argue it's like alcoholism among the homeless and poor and among the middle and upper classes.  Homeless alcoholics are drunk in public while people with more money do a better job of hiding their alcoholism.  

I just want to point out that Western corruption in Afghanistan probably dwarfed local corruption.  

Some examples:

From a SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.)

"Gallery of Greed

 U.S. reconstruction activities in Afghanistan, or any other conflict zone, face the constant threat of criminal conspiracies among personnel who rotate in and out of theater, infecting their successors with the virus of corruption.

 Over the past five years, SIGAR’s Investigations Directorate has uncovered and detailed a classic example of this threat—an extended, widespread, and intricate pattern of criminality involving U.S. military personnel and Afghan contractors at the Humanitarian Assistance Yard (the Yard) at Bagram Airfield near Kabul, Afghanistan.

 In June 2012, SIGAR investigators following leads uncovered an unusual pattern of suspect criminal activity at the Yard. They found traces of criminal activity affecting inventories, accounting, issuance of supplies, payments, and contract oversight at the Yard, which serves as a storage-and-distribution facility for millions of dollars’ worth of clothing, food, school supplies, and other items purchased from local Afghan vendors. U.S. military commanders provided those supplies to displaced Afghans as part of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) to meet urgent humanitarian relief needs for the Afghan people."

From The Marketplace:

"At just short of 20 years, the conflict in Afghanistan was America’s longest war. More than 2,000 U.S. service members were killed there. The U.S. spent billions over the years to sustain its troops in Afghanistan and hired military contractors to feed and house them.

Those contractors profited the most from the war, but those systems can lead to fraud and waste. The U.S. military relied on contractors like KBR and DynCorp International for all sorts of things in Afghanistan.

“For cooking, for driving, for delivering supplies — they were used across the board,” said Linda Bilmes, who teaches public policy at Harvard. She said that, sometimes, the Pentagon had so-called no-cost deals with contractors. Whatever a project cost, the government would pay.

“The whole system was set up in a way to enable contractors to rip off the government,” she said."

From the Daily Beast:

"America has spent at least $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan, but very few know that because the U.S. relied upon a complex ecosystem of defense contractors, belt-way banditry, and aid contractors. Of the 10-20 percent of contracts that remained in the country, the U.S. rarely cared about the efficacy of the initiative. While corruption is rife within Afghanistan’s government, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction repeatedly alleged bewildering corruption by American firms and individuals working in Afghanistan. In many cases, American firms even defrauded Afghans. A military member of the International Security Assistance Force explained to Carlotta Gall: 'Without being too dramatic, American contractors are contributing to fueling the insurgency.'”

Here's a Treasury official, reported in the Washington Post,  questioning an American consultant working with Kabul Bank for three years about the bank:

"A second unnamed Treasury Department official told government interviewers that soon after he arrived in Afghanistan in the summer of 2010, he met with an American who had been working on contract as a consultant to Afghanistan’s central bank for at least three years. The U.S. official wanted to know more about Kabul Bank, which unknown to both of them was on the verge of failure.

“We had an hour-long conversation,”  the official said. 'I asked him, do you think this is a financially sound bank? He said, ‘Yes.’ And literally 30 days afterward, the whole house of cards came down. This was one of the biggest misses in my career. A $1 billion bank collapsed, and the U.S. adviser swore to me it was financially sound.'”

You know this consultant was making a ton of money plus expenses that probably were well above the average US income.   His job, it would seem, was a scam itself.  

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.  No giant expenditures happen in Washington unless there are lobbyists pushing hard for it.  And war lobbyists are among the most effective.

Afghan citizens had to choose a path that would keep them safe from the Taliban and from the US backed government.  Supporting the government made them targets for the Taliban.  Supporting the Taliban made the targets for the government and the US.  For many of them, their petty acts of what we would call corruption, was how they managed to feed their families and stay alive.  

For American contractors it was a way to make huge profits.  

And is there anything more corrupt than the Sackler family working a deal in Bankruptcy Court to make it impossible for them or many other individuals or companies to be prosecuted for all the opioid deaths they caused?  Just because they can pay $4 billion and still have more than that left over?  That's the same kind of deal Jeffrey Epstein worked out with the Alexander Acosta, who then became Trump's Secretary of Labor.

"Don’t call them “at-risk.” They’re “at-promise" And 3 Other Articles Of Interest

Let's start off with some good news.  If you're only going to link to one of these articles, I recommend this one.   There are better ways to do things.  For one things, being smaller and close to your people helps.   I also want to disclose that the head of Fledge is a close relative.

Novel Holding Company Africa Eats Has Raised $1.8M For Its Impact Startups (Forbes)

About a year ago, Fledge, which operates about 10 impact accelerators around the world, launched Africa Eats, a holding company with 27 agriculture and food-focused Africa-based graduates of the networks’ programs. The goal: supporting entrepreneurs on-the-ground with an intimate understanding of how best to address hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, the company has raised close to $2 million—and, despite the pandemic, the portfolio companies are doing fine.

Another good news story, where calling attention to labels can make a difference.  Not 'at risk.'  'At promise.'  Most kids want to be good people, they just need support for those dreams.

Caring for the environment helps South King County kids recovering from trauma or hardship find a sense of purpose  (From the Seattle Times)

"This summer, Park, Amine and Tracy are among two dozen mostly South King County youth learning to be stewards of the environment. 

They clean urban lakes during kayak patrols, plant trees, learn field mapping skills and test water quality in streams and rivers on state parks and public lands. They’re on water or trails several days each month. They’re paid $15 an hour for the work — enough to keep most of them from having to take other part- or full-time jobs that would otherwise consume their days — and they’re getting leadership training so they can help lead conservation and pollution prevention efforts in the future. . .

Many of the youth involved in Unleash the Brilliance have faced early adverse experiences “on steroids,” says Dorsey. Amine was peer pressured into regularly using drugs in middle school; his grades and relationship with his parents tanked. Park’s family faced bankruptcy. Other youth bore witness to their parents’ addictions, moved around a lot or lived in extreme poverty. Some have a history of being incarcerated, skipping class or facing delays graduating from high school. 

Dorsey sees them for their potential. Don’t call them “at-risk.” They’re “at-promise,” he says."

How much do your peers impact your behavior?  This Atlantic article addresess peer pressure and vaccination.  

The Anti-vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable:  Why targets of deliberate deception often hesitate to admit they’ve been deceived

"Something very strange has been happening in Missouri: A hospital in the state, Ozarks Healthcare, had to create a “private setting” for patients afraid of being seen getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In a video produced by the hospital, the physician Priscilla Frase says, “Several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine.’” Although they want to protect themselves from the coronavirus and its variants, these patients are desperate to ensure that their vaccine-skeptical friends and family never find out what they have done. . .

Shifting from an individual to a relational perspective helps us understand why people are seeking vaccination in disguise. They want to save face within the very specific set of social ties that sociologists call “reference groups”—the neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and friendship networks that help people obtain the income, information, companionship, mutual aid, and other resources they need to live. The price of access to those resources is conformity to group norms. That’s why nobody strives for the good opinion of everyone; most people primarily seek the approval of people in their own reference groups."

Do you know whether your insurance company is insuring coal companies?

U.S. INSURERS FAIL ON CLIMATE ACTION:   Global insurers make coal increasingly “uninsurable”; whole industry fails to act on oil & gas  

LONDON (December 2, 2020)—U.S. insurance companies lag behind their global peers and play a key role in enabling the fossil fuel industry, the Insure Our Future campaign revealed today in its fourth annual scorecard on insurers’ climate policies. 

Insuring Our Future: The 2020 Scorecard on Insurance, Fossil Fuels and Climate Change finds that most European and Australian insurers no longer provide coverage for new coal projects, which has made it harder and costlier to secure the insurance that coal projects need to operate. Coal companies face rate increases of up to 40%. Controversial projects—like the Adani Group’s Carmichael coal mine in Australia—are finding it hard to obtain insurance at all. This demonstrates the insurance industry’s unique power to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels.  

 More useful for most folks is the scorecard here.  

Unfortunately, smaller companies like All State and State Farm aren't listed here.  They are both independent companies.  But Geico is owned by Berkshire Hathaway which is one of the worst offenders.

 

Between Voter Suppression And Supreme Court Activism GOP Is Ripping Apart US Democracy

 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is working hard to shine light on Republican actions to thwart democracy through covert operations.  In this previous post "When You Find Hypocrisy In The Daylight, Look For Power In the Shadows" - Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse At Barrett Hearings  I offered a video of Whitehouse outlining the goals of the new GOP Supreme Court.  (New referring both to GOP and to Supreme Court.)  He identified 80 cases where there was a 5-4 majority (conservative v. liberal) split in the rulings and identified these four key outcomes:

• Unlimited Dark Money - that allows the wealthy and corporations (yes those do overlap) control legislatures that make the rules and even to get people appointed as head of federal agencies that regulate them.  Citizen United is the key decision here, but there are many others
• Knock the Civil Jury Down - The powerful can't control civil juries like they can control Congress.
• Weaken Regulatory Agencies - particularly pollutors to weaken their independence and strength
• Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering - making it harder to vote for citizens who might vote against their interests - Shelby County decision on no factual record against overwhelming support on the other side, that knocked out voter suppression protections and a bunch of states started suppressing the vote.  Same on gerrymandering.  

The goal of all of these is to create a Supreme Court that would strengthen power of corporations and the very wealthy.  He also outlined the Federalist Society's 40 year campaign to create this kind of court, including the creation of a legal ideology - Originalism - that would allow justices to reinterpret the Constitution to meet the conservative objectives.  All supported by dark money.

I'd like to call your attention to a New Republic article - The Supreme Court's Total War on Congress - by Simon Lazarus, Robert Litan/July 8, 2021 that argues the Supreme Court has shown in recent cases that it is now at war with Congress and has moved past its powers to interpret whether a law is Constitutional, to simply invalidating laws they don't like.  Here's one brief quote from the article which they say embody their thinking underlying a couple of cases decided in the last week of the Court's session:

 "If we cannot come up with a credible Constitution-based excuse for striking those provisions down, we will simply turn to the power justified two centuries ago by Chief Justice John Marshall as this court’s responsibility to “say what the law is.” We will use that raw power to ignore or rewrite unwanted statutory provisions, to render them ineffectual, or to produce results directly opposite to what they mean."

They are specifically looking at the case which essentially invalidated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and a decision which blocks a California law allowing unions to meet with workers on private property in labor campaigns.  Clearly the Voting Rights case fits the last of Whitehouse's four categories - Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering.  The anti-union case probably fits into the Weaken Regulatory Agencies category, though this was a California State law.  

You'll notice that State's Rights are used when convenient - as in the Voting Rights case - and also ignored when convenient - as in the California case.   

Finally, here's Sheldon Whitehouse again responding to these two recent Supreme Court cases in a Tweet today:

This week’s Scheme speech discusses two decisions just delivered by the Court – Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. FEC and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee – that reflect the patterns and purposes of the Court-capture effort. https://t.co/LgkaE3zYkW

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) July 13, 2021

 

Watching this video, I had to acknowledge that Whitehouse is a very slow and deliberate speaker.  But the content is is rich in fact and meaning.  For those who find Whitehouse too slow, I offer this comment by cartoonist Jen Sorenson on the recent Voting Rights Act.

I'd note that the two items in the title - Voter Suppression and the Supreme Court - are only two of the GOP efforts to destroy our democracy.  Trying to overturn elections is another.  Violent attacks on opponents is another.  Keeping democracy is going to require extra effort on the part of those who believe in democracy.  Extraordinary effort to get voters to the polls despite the obstacles the GOP is setting up and the Supreme Court is allowing is one option.  

Alaska Airlines Safety Dance Goes OneWorld

 When I was relatively new to Alaska, I went to a public administration meeting downtown during the annual Fur Rendezvous.  Walking from my car I passed the ice sculptures which included a large structure with a slide.  I couldn't resist.  I went up the ice steps and slid down the slide.  And went on to the meeting.

Sometime later, one of my graduate students, a women older than I, told me that she had seen me go down the ice slide and that was the moment that she knew I was okay.  

Later I read an article about how Japanese CEOs participate in all day company retreats and join in some activities in which they aren't particularly skilled - maybe karaoke or basketball - and that showing their clumsier selves in front of all their employees is a way to humanize them and connect them with the people they work with.  

Those were my thoughts as I watched Alaska Airlines' video welcoming them to OneWorld - an alliance of, now 14, airlines around the world.  I understand the importance of OneWorld membership because when we went to Argentina a couple of years ago, LATAM airlines told me "if you are a OneWorld member" you can get much better prices and services.  

The video starts with Alaska Airlines' president and then he gets welcomed by the heads of the various airlines in the group.  Then at the end they do the Alaska Airlines safety dance, an adaptation of the Virgin Airlines safety video Alaska acquired when they bought Virgin Airlines.  (The Virgin one is worth looking at - an example of how imagination can take a boring safety announcement and make it riveting.)

So below is the second part of Alaska's new OneWorld welcome video - the part that involves a variation on the safety dance, including the CEOs of the various member airlines.  [I'll have to wait until it's actually posted to be sure it starts at the dance.  If not, the dance starts at about 3:16]

Sure, it's a PR video, but with a spirit that takes off the corporate suits and gets seriously playful

NPR: Is Business More Nimble And More Effective Than Government?

How did we get to this point, where NPR asks a "capitalism expert" this question?  The intro was that corporations were cutting off campaign contributions to legislators who supported Trump's big lie about the election and the insurrection. 

"SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: I want to reel off some of the ways that the corporate hammer has been coming down recently. We saw Dominion and Smartmatic sue former President Trump's allies for lying about their voting machines. We saw companies, including American Express and Morgan Stanley, suspending their donations to key Republican lawmakers. The PGA pulled its tournament from a Trump golf resort. I see this happen, and it makes me think that the corporate response to political controversy has been more nimble and possibly more effective than the government one - effective if you disagree with what these politicians were doing. Am I fair to view it that way?"

Here's a link to the whole piece. 

Let's start with the most obvious thing that Sacha Pfeiffer missed here.   The very fact that she points to corporations withdrawing campaign funding from politicians who supported the lies, should have tipped her off to the answer:   politicians aren't independent of their corporate funders.  

Maybe a better question would have been, "Why didn't the corporations let the politicians know they disapproved of the ex-president's lies and fomenting an insurrection before the impeachment votes?"

Sacha Pfeiffer also conflated elected federal officials with government.  They are just one, small, if powerful, part of the vast  federal government. But these are elected officials, not the people who actually carry out government functions.  These corporations got most of the Republican House and Senate members AND the president elected in the first place.  But the career employees of the government - whether in the CDC or other health agencies, or in the State Department, or in the military, or the post office  have been doing their best to keep serving the people of the United States, despite the corporate funded politicians.

And, as I've pointed out here before, there are many, many governments in the US.  From Wikipedia:

Governments in the United States[1] (not including insular areas)
Type	Number
Federal	1
State	50
County	3,034
Municipal (city, town, village...) *	19,429
Township (in some states called Town) **	16,504
School district	13,506
Special purpose (utility, fire, police, library, etc.)	35,052
Total	87,576

For NPR to seriously pose the basic question "Is business more effective than government?' shows us how far to the Right NPR has moved.  This is the argument conservatives have been making for years. It's their argument for making government as small as possible. And yes, corporations can be more nimble than governments at many decisions, simply because one person has the power to decide:  a CEO supported by a Board of Directors who picked him (I use the male pronoun because that's still the vast majority and yes it can be more complicated than that).  The US House has 435 people and the Senate 100 who all have an equal vote in every decision.  And businesses and governments have very different goals.  One goal of government is to provide those things that corporate America can't - like take care of the people who don't have the money to purchase corporate America's products, from food, to health care, to housing.  

There's lots and lots of things to discuss on this topic, but trying to focus directly on this particular segment, my last issue is that Sacha Pfeiffer turned to a person she described as a 'capitalism expert."  Why?  Why not have a different kind of economist?  Why not ask a 'government expert?" Why not have more than one person to respond?   I don't know what else her expert said that got cut out, but I would reiterate the most glaring omission:

The corporations can make these decisions faster than the politicians because corporations own most if not all of the Republican Senators and House members (and at least a part of many Democrats.)  

The fact that they can have an effect by withdrawing their campaign funding should make this point obvious.  

The real question should have been: why didn't they tell their political shills what they wanted before the politicians voted on Saturday? 

The 'capitalism expert' probably hinted at the answer to this unasked question when he said, they act on profits, not principles.  I'd guess they didn't know how all this was going to play out.  So they didn't know until it was pretty much over how it all might affect their profits.  It wasn't until they saw for themselves the House Impeachment Team's case.  

So, in fact, they didn't actually respond much faster themselves.  Otherwise they could have leaned on their bought politicians to vote for conviction.  

"Great ideas often come out of tough times"

When I took out the waffle mix Sunday morning, I noticed this on the box:

"Great ideas often come out of tough times, and times didn't get much tougher than 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression.  That year, a few women who traded recipes conjured up an easy-to-prepare pie crust mix and named it "Krusteaz" (crust + ease).  They went for to door, café to café, selling their creation.  A few years later that same entrepreneurial spirit led us create the first-ever just-add-water pancake mix."

Mixing the ingredients - the oil made a happy Rohrschach.













And Sunday was the first day that we ate out on the deck.  Warmly, but not overly so, dressed.

Krusteaz is the original product of what is now Continental Mills.  Here's the introduction to a 2017 interview in Snack and Bakery with the new CEO

We recently spoke with with Continental Mills president Andy Heily for a look into some recent innovations at the company, including its successful moves into a new product category with the Buck Wild tortilla chip launch, as well as a packaging and non-GMO update for its flagship Krusteaz pancake line—making it the first major pancake brand to do so.
As a third generation, family-owned company, Andy is taking the reins from his father and current CEO, John Heily, and undertaking major initiatives to keep an 85-year old company at the forefront of consumer trends and preferences.

For those of you who fly through Seattle, the company is headquartered in Tukwilla, one light-rail stop from SeaTac.

An April 10, 2020 article in Prepared Food tells us they are expanding.

Continental Mills, Inc., the maker of premium baking, breakfast and snack brands, including the beloved Krusteaz speed-scratch mixes and others, purchased a 175,000 square foot facility in Effingham, Ill., located adjacent to its existing manufacturing facility in Effingham. Acquired from Hodgson Mill, the facility will provide Continental Mills the capacity it needs to support continued growth.
The renovated facility is expected to be up and running sometime in 2021.  In addition to providing increased capacity, the Effingham facility offers excellent proximity to Continental Mills' customers in the Eastern US, Midwest and Southeast.

I guess a company that started in the Great Depression is confident in expanding during a pandemic.

Here's a company made video.  It's obviously a public relations film, but the values they emphasize are good ones.  And it's still a small, family owned business.  It hasn't sold out.




This seems like a pretty decent company.  I did look for problems.  There are three complaints  at a Better Business Bureau website - one about a piece of metal in a mix, another about bugs, and a third customer complained that it wasn't GMO free.

Indeed is an online job search site which has a space where people can leave company reviews.  Most of the ones for Continental were pretty good.  There was one malcontent.  (I thought about whether I should use that word.  Given all the other reviews, I'm guessing this person brought the problems with him to the job.)

They've managed to keep out of the spotlight.  They are a privately owned company so they aren't required to make public the kind of information other companies are.  There's not a lot out there on the company.  The expansion of the Effingham facilities was covered by a lot of media.

And they are sponsoring the Seattle Seawolves Rugby team.

George Washington: "Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest."

Screenshot of FB Live Coverage of Michigan Protest

I watched the Michigan protests live last Wednesday and heard people complaining about losing their income and losing their businesses.

I understand those folks whose businesses are going under, whose jobs are gone and whose bills threaten to ruin them financially.  I understand those people who don't know how they'll pay for food. I understand their frustration with the closing off of much of the economy.  (No, I'm lucky that I don't feel it, but I understand it.)  It's rational to want your life to continue on normally, and even not care if some people die because of it.  After all, we allow people to drive cars knowing that some 30,000 or so people will die in car crashes every year.

But we've had 39,000 deaths in the last seven weeks or so and without the self-isolation that's been imposed, that number would be a lot higher.  And the people out protesting without social distancing and without masks are going to make the numbers higher than they should be.

But they have a point - there's a balance between individual freedom and the good of all.  As I believe

Screenshot of FB Live Coverage of Michigan Protest

that there is great deal of difference among Americans in how well they understand how much we all affected - for good and bad - by what others do.

For those who are loudly and self-righteously declaring their personal rights to do whatever they want, I'd like to direct them to the letter of transmittal of the draft US Constitution to the Congress, signed by George Washington, in which he wrote:

"Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be preserved;"

There are options available that include helping out those with small businesses and those who have lost their jobs without jeopardizing the health and lives of other Americans.  Congress has already passed legislation to give out cash to people below a certain level of income.  To help out small businesses.  To postpone the payment of rent and other debts.  If the protestors are concerned that so much of that went to friends and donors of members of Congress and the President, their protests are directed at the wrong targets.

The Bible tells us about Jubilee years where all debts are forgiven and people begin again.  This might be a good time for that.

If that's too extreme for some, we could simply freeze the economy for several months.  Turn it off and then start it up when it's safer.  No new debts would be accrued.  We'd start over again as if April through July (or whenever it's safe) never happened.

As We Examine Hilcorp's Purchase of BP's Alaska Holdings, Looking at the Charter for the Development of the Alaska North Slope Seems Appropriate

Over ten years ago I came across something called the Charter for the Development of the Alaska North Slope.  This post tells that story.  I've been getting hits on the story form various places and organizations in the last couple of months.  I'm guessing that this interest is related to BP's selling it's Alaska interests to Hilcorp  so I thought I should post this again.  So here it is:

Monday, February 02, 2009

Charter for the Development of the Alaska North Slope

When I wrote a post about the Conoco-Philips ads in the ADN some time ago, the "Charter Agreement" came up and I wrote:

I also know that CP makes other contributions to the community such as $100,000 to the Museum in 2007. And there was a $3.68 million gift to the University of Alaska also in 2007. But we need to put an * on that. The University of Alaska press release on the gift also says,

The annual gifts stem from a charter agreement between the oil companies and the state regarding the BP merger with ARCO in the late 1990s. Part of the charter agreement identifies public higher education as a top priority for charitable donations . . .

So a minimum amount of contribution is required by this Charter Agreement that was a condition for the BP-ARCO merger. I called Scott Goldsmith, the author of the ISER report, to find out how to get access to the Charter Agreement.He wasn't sure if he ever actually saw a copy, but said he'd check for it tomorrow. [Update: I also called UAA Advancement and later the UA Foundation called and said they would find the Agreement and email it to me .] On the internet, nearly all references I find about BP or ConocoPhillips contributions to the University have that standard clause in them.

Well, a few days later, I got an email from the University of Alaska Foundation with a copy of the charter. But we were in high gear preparing to go to Thailand and what with the traveling and getting into things here, I didn't get around to posting that agreement. (It's down below) I haven't had a chance to study the whole charter, but I expect there is plenty to chew on.

For the time being, let's just look at the part that discusses community charitable contributions:

D. Community Charitable Commitment. Within three months after the merger is completed, BP and ARCO [what BP wasn't allowed to buy of ARCO because it would have given BP monopolistic power in Alaska eventually became Conoco-Philips if I got this right] will establish a charitable entity dedicated to funding organizations and causes within Alaska. The entity will provide 30% of its giving to the University of Alaska Foundation and the remainder to general community needs. Funding decisions by the entity will be made by BP and ARCO, with the advice of a board of community advisors. BP and ARCO will provide ongoing funding to this entity in an amount that is equal to 2% of BP's and ARCO's combined aggregate net Alaska liquids production after royalty times the price for WTI. Specific entity funding levels will be calculated annually on the same date each year, referencing the liquids production and the average NYMEX WTI prompt month settlement price for the 12 months immediately proceeding the calculation.

So here are some questions I have:

1. Who monitors these contributions to be sure that they are making the contributions required?
2. How do members of the public find this out?
3. Are they contributing what they are required to contribute?
4. Are they contributing more than they are required to contribute? (If not, can either company seriously claim to make charitable contributions? This was simply a business deal, a required cost of doing business in Alaska and not really charitable donations.)
5. Who is on these boards and are the meetings announced and public?

A quick Google search got me to the BP website. Searching there for charter agreement I got a copy of the 2007 annual report on the Charter Agreement for 2006. It is four lines over four pages - for the whole charter agreement. Plus a cover letter to Governor Sarah Palin. The part on charitable giving says this:

COMMUNITY CHARITABLE GIVING

The BP Board of Community Advisors met in February, 2006, at which time they
reviewed 2005 community spend [sic] and plans for 2006.

BP spent more than $10.2 million in support of community programs in 2006,
consistent with the formula detailed in the Charter.

Approximately $3 million was contributed to the University of Alaska Foundation
(1/3 of community investment).

ConocoPhilips's website gave me this message:

Connection to server www.search.conoco.com failed (The server is not responding.)

Why do I think that is the extent of the oversight? Even BP didn't think it was important enough to proof read it carefully. Am I being too cynical? Did the Governor's office demand back up information so they could see how the 2% times the price of WTI? I don't know. What about all the other issues in the Charter? What sort of scrutiny do they get? Just this brief annual report?

Since I'm pretty busy right now in Thailand, I'm going to have to hold off on pursuing these questions. Though I might send them to my representatives in the State Legislature.

Meanwhile, here is the rest of the Charter. I hope other bloggers and non-bloggers start reading it carefully to see whether the oil companies are living up to the agreement. I guess first we ought to figure out which state agencies are responsible for keeping track.

Charter for Development of the Alaskan North Slope

Publish at Scribd or explore others:  Government  Business & Legal  conocphilips  BP