Pennsylvania Computer Nerd Claims Berkowitz Lost Because of 2008 Election Fraud

With the 2014 election climaxing tomorrow, it seems appropriate to look at John Foelster's claims about the 2008 election in Alaska.  Foelster left comments on some Alaska blogs, including this one, last week, with a link to his website  [UPDATE Nov 23, 2016: his website now has restricted entry]  where he spells out the data that underlies his assertions. He writes

The fraudulent vote count would have resulted in Don Young being wrongly seated in a House seat actually won by his Democratic opponent Ethan Berkowitz, and would certainly have changed the outcome of the District 7 Lower House Race so that Democrat Karl Kassel would have beaten Republican Mike Kelly. [Note Kassel lost by four votes.] Democrats Andrea Doll of the 4^th lower House District and Val Baffone of the 28^th Lower House District were also likely the actual winners of the races they officially lost.

At what point do we take assertions seriously?  After all, I had had emails about the National Guard scandal as far back as 2010 and I'd seen Blaylock's long list of allegations on line.  But I didn't write about it for lack of further information and lots of other things to do.

My experience with the 2012 Municipality of Anchorage election (see list of posts at bottom of this post) showed me how vulnerable the voting machines are.  While I tend to think the problems in that election were more related to incompetence and not tampering with the voting machine software, the situation exposed the many vulnerabilities of the procedures and the machines.

I've read Foelster's claims.  They represent a lot of painstaking work, not only in gathering and interpreting the data, but also in how to present it.  He has a series of video tapes that walk you step by step through his hypothesis and the evidence backing it up.  While the conclusion is sensational, his presentation is not.  It's painstakingly detailed, self aware and self effacing, and outlines exactly how he went about getting to his claims.

I've sent the information to a couple of good data people and got a long response from one who knows a lot about elections and the computers. While this person didn't read it all, and raised some questions here and there, he allowed it was a possibility and was concerned about the greater environment of election fraud vulnerability of the nation as a whole.  I've also had some email exchange with Foelster to follow up with questions I had.

Problems with Reporting Computer Crime

Manipulating computer data is the kind of crime that doesn't emotionally effect people like murder, armed robbery, kidnap, and rape.  Television footage of computer code just isn't compelling. Computer crime is all hidden in 1's and 0's inside the computer, in computer code that most people don't understand.  It's also something we don't want to believe is happening because it violates our sacred belief in American democracy.  There are lots of websites that give details on how the voting machines can be hacked.  Bradblog covers all sorts of voting issues including problems with voting machines.  Here are some others.

• Votescam -  large overview of electronic voting issues
• What Really Happened  
• There's a great video - Hacking Democracy - but when I tried to look at the video just now on their site it said it "The uploader has not made this video available in your country."The website is still worth visiting. 
• Even conservatives are now using voting machine fraud arguments.
• How Many Ways Are There To Steal An Election? And Why Doesn't Anyone Care?
  This is a post I did in 2012 when I was covering the Anchorage Municipal election problems. 

I list all these sites just to remind people that there are legitimate and serious issues with voting machines that should be understood by everyone.  Citizens United is one issue, but the vulnerability of the voting machines may be an even bigger one.

So, back to Foelster's allegations.  Here, from his website, is the outline of his evidence:
[UPDATE Nov 23, 2016: his website now has restricted entry]

"The lines of evidence are as follows:

1. The polls in 2008 indicated that the Democrats in Alaska would do much better than they did in the reported results.
2. In 2012, there was a large swing to President Obama, one that was too large to have been caused by Governor Palin no longer being on the Republican ticket.
3. The number of Democrats in the electorate in 2012 was significantly lower than the number in 2008.
4. The report on electorate composition this information can be found in appears to have been reformatted in an attempt to draw attention away from it.
5. The 2008 results are unique in recent Alaska history for having very Democratic Absentee results and very Republican in precinct results.
6. A variation on a known technique for compromising AV-OS machines would have produced the effects described above, and this hack could have been introduced by one person working in Juneau.
7. The size of the above anomaly varies from district to district based on the number of registered Democrats in precincts with AV-OS voting machines.
8. The State Review Board’s Hand Count Audit of the paper ballots could also have been compromised by this same single person."

Each item links to further information.  

As I read this, I see him taking two main approaches:

1. Technical:  The data show anomalies that indicate votes in 2008 were tampered with.
1. In 2012 there was a significant boost in votes in Alaska for Obama than in 2008.  This runs counter to every other state where the support for Obama went down in 2012. This happened because in 2008, a large number of Democratic votes in Alaska were switched over to Republicans. 
2. How the voting machines work and how to hack them to get the results he thinks happened
2. Human:  The narrative of who might have been involved, how, and why

For me, the human narrative part is weak.  But that doesn't really matter.  He doesn't have to prove who did this.  What he has to demonstrate is the problem with the data and technically how votes could have been manipulated.   And that part I think he's done - at least to the point that others with the appropriate expertise should follow up and determine if his allegations have merit.  It may lead to a dead end, but even then it would help expose the vulnerabilities of the process and technology further.

The technical part isn't necessarily flawless.  Perhaps other explanations would account for what he found.  For example, if enough Democrats switched parties to vote in the Republican primary race between Murkowski and Miller, would that accounts for the dip in Democrats that 2008?  I don't know. 


Who Is John Foelster?

Foelster identifies himself as a 'nerd' who lives in Pennsylvania and has never been to Alaska.  He also has Aspbergers. And experience in computers and voting technology. I don't see that he has any particular interest in Alaska politics other than he saw this inconsistency and then obsessively pursued it. My sense of Foelster is that this anomaly caught his attention and he ran with it.    I don't believe he works for any party or has any particular personal interest in Alaska.  It's just a puzzle that came his way and he got deeply into it.  I understand that.  I did something similar with the redistricting board.

Computer crimes are hard to prove - first that they happened and second who did them - without lots of access, patience, and savvy.  

Even if all his allegations proved to be correct, I don't see Ethan Berkowitz being retroactively sworn in to the House of Representatives.  But if this really did happen, we ought to know about it and take steps to do something to protect us better in future elections.  And if it didn't happen here the way Foelster says, there are other possibilities where it might have happened.

Can it happen in tomorrow's election?  Yes, but there were patches made, according to Foelster, in 2011 that would preclude the particular hack he describes as for 2008.


What Next?

I see two things that should be done here:

1. We need a technical election committee that reviews every election in Alaska.  It looks at the hardware, the software, and makes a statistical analysis of voting results to find any suspicious anomalies.
2. That committee could start by reviewing Foelster's work.

I would note that the Municipality had such a committee - though its charge was not quite this thorough - but it was abandoned before the 2012 election.

I would also note that in that election there were lots of sloppy practices - plastic seals on ballot bags that easily broke off, voting machines and ballots being taken home by election workers overnight - that opened up many opportunities for fraud.  Barb Jones, the new municipal clerk (after the 2012 election) and the election official Amanda Moser, have eliminated some of these practices and have been accessible to me as a blogger to exactly how each step of the process works.  But we're still too much in the small town, we trust each other, level that our procedures originally came from.  We're still leaving a lot of windows open and doors unlocked.

2012 Municipality Election Posts To Show Where My Concerns Come From

I have put together a list of posts I did on the 2012 Municipal election.  (The posts were not well labeled and I had to poke around to find them.)  I offer this list to help readers understand my experience with elections and why I'm willing to give John Foelster some attention here. 

The Myth of the Big Election Turnout 

Guadalupe Marroquin, Former Anchorage Election Chief Talks About The Election... (10 minute video on how to tamper with the machines and how they work from the previous election chief)

What Do The Election Percentages and Numbers Tell? Maybe Nothing

Polling Gap - Dittman Confirms It's the Biggest 

Brad Friedman Rips Apart Election Commissioner's Testimony 

Jacqueline Duke, Elections Chief, Fired by Assembly

What's Happening With The Anchorage Election? 

Assembly Exchanges Barbs: Barbara Jones To Replace Barb Gruenstein.

Citizen Group on Election Meeting Now with Assembly Attorney

Hensley Report on Election Now Available - Form Over Substance 

141 "Potentially Uncounted Ballots" Found July 11 (From April Election)
(August)

How Many Ways Are There To Steal An Election? And Why Doesn't Anyone Care?
(This is marginally about Anchorage - trying to link us to bigger national issues)

Condom Law For Porn Films Doesn't Violate Free Speech, But . . .

I reported here last November that Los Angeles Country voters were voting on a law requiring condom use by actors in porn films.  The law was quickly challenged by some film makers.  And less than a year later a court has ruled.   The LA Daily News reports:

A federal court judge delivered a mixed ruling to the adult film industry late Friday, saying that while making actors wear condoms during porn shoots doesn’t violate the First Amendment, enforcing such a law raises constitutional questions.

So, it seems, the health benefits outweigh the First Amendment rights to make sex films without condoms.  However, there are apparently some problems with how the county will enforce the law.

“Given that adult filming could occur almost anywhere, Measure B would seem to authorize a health officer to enter and search any part of a private home in the middle of the night, because he suspects violations are occurring. This is unconstitutional because it is akin to a general warrant,” Pregerson wrote

Conflicts between different values, in this case freedom of speech and reasonable rights to privacy versus health, are what make life interesting, and why we regularly have to find ways to balance the tensions between different values.

My guess is that the film maker's real value is money, not free speech.  That's just the legal concept he needs to get this to court.  When it comes to balancing a business owner's right to make more money against the health of the employees, I'd tend to lean toward the health of the employees.  But even then, the judge is going to have to weigh the amount of money to be lost against the severity of the health risks. 

But apparently there will be appeals. 

“This study is proof enough that sugar is toxic. Now it’s time to do something about it.”

The study is

"The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data" by Sanjay Basu, Paula Yoffe, Nancy Hills,and Robert H. Lustig



Here's the study Abstract:   (A simpler NY Times version is just below)

While experimental and observational studies suggest that sugar intake is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, independent of its role in obesity, it is unclear whether alterations in sugar intake can account for differences in diabetes prevalence among overall populations. Using econometric models of repeated cross-sectional data on diabetes and nutritional components of food from 175 countries, we found that every 150 kcal/person/day increase in sugar availability (about one can of soda/day) was associated with increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% (p <0.001) after testing for potential selection biases and controlling for other food types (including fibers, meats, fruits, oils, cereals), total calories, overweight and obesity, period-effects, and several socioeconomic variables such as aging, urbanization and income. No other food types yielded significant individual associations with diabetes prevalence after controlling for obesity and other confounders. The impact of sugar on diabetes was independent of sedentary behavior and alcohol use, and the effect was modified but not confounded by obesity or overweight. Duration and degree of sugar exposure correlated significantly with diabetes prevalence in a dose-dependent manner, while declines in sugar exposure correlated with significant subsequent declines in diabetes rates independently of other socioeconomic, dietary and obesity prevalence changes. Differences in sugar availability statistically explain variations in diabetes prevalence rates at a population level that are not explained by physical activity, overweight or obesity. 

The NY Times article translates this into less academic language:

Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.
A study published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal PLoS One links increased consumption of sugar with increased rates of diabetes by examining the data on sugar availability and the rate of diabetes in 175 countries over the past decade. And after accounting for many other factors, the researchers found that increased sugar in a population’s food supply was linked to higher diabetes rates independent of rates of obesity.

The Times reported just a few days ago that the Mediterranean diet helped prevent heart attacks and strokes.

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found.

People have known for a long time that fat and sugar weren't good for health.  Dean Ornish's  Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, came out in 1990 arguing for a low fat diet.  The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook  came out in 1994.

It's hard to 'prove' that one political party has a more sensible program than another.  And it takes a certain level of scientific savvy to see why evolution and global climate change caused by humans make far more sense than alternative explanations.

But everyone understands that obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and strokes are not good things.  And it's not hard to understand that sugar and fat lead to those conditions and that the incidence of obesity and diabetes can be dramatically reduced by intelligent diet. 

This knowledge has been around for years.  So I would argue that many of the people who are obese and/or have diabetes probably also eat an unhealthy selection of foods.  Either because they don't know any better or because they don't have enough self control and discipline to resist the call of the junk food industry and buy and cook healthy food.   I also must acknowledge that junk food is often cheaper than healthy food, so some poor folks may eat junk food for economic reasons.  Though smart poor folks find ways to feed their family well. 

So I'd offer this chart of the ten most and least obese US states color coded to show how they voted in the last presidential election. Some might argue that the quality of their choices in food reflect the quality of their political choices as well. 

Most Obese U.S. States	Least Obese U.S. States
State % Obese 1. Mississippi 34.9% 2. Louisiana 33.4% 3. West Virginia 32.4% 4. Alabama 32.0% 5. Michigan 31.3% 6. Oklahoma 31.1% 7. Arkansas 30.9% 8. Indiana 30.8% 8. South Carolina 30.8% 10. Kentucky 30.4% 10. Texas 30.4%	State % Obese 1. Colorado 20.7% 2. Hawaii 21.8% 3. Massachussetts 22.7% 4. New Jersey 23.7% 4. Washington, D.C. 23.7% 6. California 23.8% 7. Utah 24.4% 8. New York 24.5% 8. Nevada 24.5% 8. Connecticut 24.5%

Alaska Supreme Court Orders Redistricting Board "to draft a new plan for the 2014 elections."

I was doing other things when this came out today, but let me get this much up and I'll read it more carefully and add more later.

In the previous chapter of this never ending saga, last May the Supreme Court accepted for the August primary and the November election one of many plans created by the Redistricting Board, which was starting to sound very frustrated.  But the Supreme Court did let it be known that this might not be the last plan, but this seemed to be the best available plan ready in time for candidates to file for the elections.

The plaintiffs in the previous lawsuit challenged the plan used in November's election and this decision today does say that they must follow the requirements set out last spring. 

I've added brackets and step numbers [Step 1, etc.] to make it a little easier to see the steps along the way.   Here's the Introduction to Supreme Court No. S-14721 [pdf]:

Earlier in the current redistricting cycle, [Step 1] we issued an order remanding to the superior court with instructions to remand to the redistricting board to formulate a new plan in compliance with our case law. We agreed with the superior court that, in drafting its plan, the board failed to follow the process we mandated in order to ensure that the redistricting plan would comply with the Alaska Constitution and thus may have unnecessarily violated the Alaska Constitution. [Step 2] Upon remand, the board was instructed to follow this process so that we could appropriately judge whether its violations of the Alaska Constitution were absolutely necessary for compliance with federal law. [Step 3] The board then submitted a modified plan to the superior court that changed only four out of forty house districts from the original plan; [Step 4]  this amended plan was similarly rejected by the superior court because, among other reasons, the board failed to follow the process that we required in order to ensure compliance with the Alaska Constitution. [Step 5] The board petitions for review of the superior court’s decision. [Step 6] We accept the petition for review and, because the board failed to follow the process that we ordered upon remand, we affirm the decision of the superior court and require the board to draft a new plan for the 2014 elections. We agree with the board that it is not required to make specific findings about each individual district relating to the requirements of the Alaska Constitution nor to submit a plan to the superior court at each stage of drafting. [emphasis added]

It might be useful to also include the majority's conclusion:

V.    CONCLUSION
Because the Board failed to follow the Hickel process when drafting its Amended Proclamation Plan, we AFFIRM the superior court’s ruling invalidating that plan and REMAND this case to the Board to draft a new plan based on strict adherence to the Hickel process. We REVERSE the superior court’s rulings that the Board must make specific findings on the constitutionality of each house district and that the Board must submit the plan to the court for approval at each stage of drafting.

I would further note:

1.  This was a three to two majority opinion.
2.  Within the majority, Judge Winfree wrote a dissenting opinion, in part, with which Judge Stowers joined.
3.  Judge Matthews wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Fabe.  This dissent is a bit longer than the original decision and concludes:

Today’s opinion sends the redistricting process mandated as a result of the 2010 census back to ground zero. Much new litigation, by new parties as well as those already before us, will result. All the disruptions of redistricting that are necessarily endured every ten years will be repeated in the next two.

The cause of this drastic remedy, according to the majority opinion, is the Board’s use of unchallenged districts in devising a Hickel plan. But the Board did not consider that its hands were tied by the unchallenged districts, and there were practical reasons why the Board would choose to build on rather than toss out the unchallenged work that it had already done. Rather than force a return to the point of beginning, I think we should take the next logical step in this litigation and determine whether the Board’s Hickel plan was based on the requirements of the Alaska Constitution. 

4.  The Redistricting Board knew its plan had been challenged and the board members knew there was a possibility they would be called together to redo the plan after the election.  Presumably they are ready to come back together.
5.  As I understand it, all but one of the staff have been let go.  I know the executive director has taken another job and presumably the others have too. 

How Many Black Members in the 113th Congress?

The answer appears* to be 43 in the House, down from 44 in the 112th Congress.

The US Senate has one African American - Tim Scott, appointed to the position by South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley after Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013.  He's expected to run in the special election in 2014.  Shortly after Scott was appointed he was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.  

[**UPDATE NOV 9, 2014:  After the midterm elections it now appears there will be 45 in the House of Representatives and 2 US Senators.  See the new list for the 114th Congress here.]

[**UPDATE OCTOBER 15, 2013:  African American Cory Booker is a candidate in the special election October 16, 2013 in New Jersey to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died  in January.  Booker is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state running against Tea Party candidate Steve Lonegan.  One recent poll shows Lonegan gaining ground, but the Guardian sees it as wishful thinking by Republicans.  If Booker wins, he would become the second sitting Black US Senator and the only elected Black US Senator. (Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed.).]

[**UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  On March 18, 2013, William “Mo” Cowan (D-Mass.) was appointed to fill Senator John Kerry's seat when he resigned to become Secretary of State.  This is an interim appointment until the June 25 special election.  There are now two African Americans serving in the US Senate for the first time ever.] 


There will be 28[7] men and 15[6] women.  Two members - Eleanor Holmes of Washington DC and Donna M. Christensen of the Virgin Islands are non-voting members.

Six of the 112th's African American House members will not be returning for the 113rd Congress.  Three lost to white candidates after redistricting:

• California's Laura Richardson lost to another Democratic incumbent, Janice Hahn when their districts were merged.
• Florida's Republican Allen West lost to Democrat Patrick Murphy in a close race.
• Michigan's Hansen Clarke lost to another Democratic incumbent, Gary Peters, in the primary in their merged district.

Two were replaced by new African American candidates

• New Jersey's Donald M. Payne died.  His son Donald M. Payne Jr. replaced him.
• New York's Edolphus Towns retired and was replaced by Hakeem Jeffries.

One was reelected and then appointed to the US Senate.

• North [South] Carolina's Tim Scott

There were three new African American members elected from new districts:

• Texas' Marc Veassey. 
• Nevada's first African American member Steven Horsford.
• Ohio's Joyce Beatty.

[UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  Rep. Jesse Jackson resigned and was replaced on April 11, 2013 by Robin Kelly.  This doesn't change the number of black members of Congress, but it adds a woman.]

Tim Scott's House seat is now open, but, according to AP's Big Story site, it requires a special election.

With Tim Scott's move to the Senate, there will be no Black Republicans in the House and one in the US Senate.  [UPDATE April 14: two in the Senate with newly appointed Massachusetts Senator William 'Mo' Cowan.]


For details, below is a table I created to show each district, by states. (Alphabetical order by state abbreviations.) I've also included the percentage of the vote each member received in the November 2012 election. I've done this to help people see how districts have been gerrymandered to make these seats safe, as is the case for most districts. In some California districts,  both top candidates were Democrats. I've included % of minor candidates as well so the numbers should be very close to 100%.

You should be able to scroll it and enlarge it in the Scribd format below. 

Black Congress Members Dec. 2012 [Updated April 14, 2013]

This is a follow up to previous posts on this topic which I created when I found that there wasn't an easy way to get a list of Black members of Congress.

Feb. 4, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress?  Original Post

Aug. 20, 2008  NPR Reports Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Dies of Aneurism

Dec. 1, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress:  Update

Dec. 16, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress Update 

Nov. 4, 2010  How Many Blacks in Congress:  Post Election Update

Source of most election data:

2012 Congressional Election Results  District by district election results

Virgin Islands Results   These tended not to be part of most coverage.

Congressional Black Caucus Members

National Journal New Faces in 113th Congress - It seems I can only get you to the page with all the new members. There you can sort by "minorities" - which will show all the other new members with ethnic identities other than 'white'.  If you click on the individual  faces, you'll get a profile of that member. 


Information on districts where incumbents will not be in 113th:

Hansen Clark Race  On Michigan's 14th District Race

Edolphus Towns  replaced by Hakeem Jeffries

Donald M. Paine - On death of Paine Sr. and replacement by his son

Allen West race - On West's loss.

Tim Scott Senate appointment

Hakeem Jeffries  On Jeffries' replacement of Towns


New Districts:

Steven Horsford in Nevada's 4th District 

Joyce Beatty in Ohio's 3rd District

Marc Veassey in Teaxas' 33rd District



*Finding all the African-American Congress members is not easy.  That's why I posted my first post on this in 2008.  The Congressional Black Caucus website doesn't change it's list until after the new Congress begins.  I used that as the starting point for this list.  Then I checked the election of each of the current members.  But,  finding new members is harder.  I googled different possibilities which picked up Tim Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, did not join the Black Caucus.  When I thought I was done, I found the National Journal's list of the 113th Congress new members which allowed me to sort "Minorities" which yielded Horsford, Beatty, and Veassey.  I hadn't found them because they were from districts that were created after the 2020 Census.  So, I think this is reasonably complete, but if anyone finds someone missing or other errors, please let me know in the comments or  email me.

Democrat Kreiss-Tomkins Holds Lead After Recount

Jonathon Kreiss-Tomkins, according to the bio in the state elections booklet (pdf), graduated from Yale in 2012.  The 23 year old from Sitka took campaigning seriously and beat Republican incumbent Bill Thomas by 34 votes in the regular election.  The results of the recount today have been posted and while Thomas gained two votes, he still lost by 32 votes.

Photo from Jonathon for State House FB page

The left side (red numbers) are the original tally and the right side (purple) are the recount, which isn't totaled in the photo.  The absentee votes are missing in the whiteboard, but below is the final count from the Division of Elections website. 

This is the second Alaskan Native and third minority incumbent to lose due to redistricting, despite the fact that the redistricting board said over and over again that its main goal was to meet the Voting Rights Act requirements, which required that the districts continue to have the same number of native majority districts.  This district was not covered because of, well, it's fairly confusing, but with definitions of native majority districts shifting, this one was only a slight native majority originally, a category that no longer mattered by the time the board finished in spring 2012.  But the fact is, the Alaska Native presence in the legislature is now diluted by one more.  (We can talk forever about the legitimacy of measuring this way.  I would say in the big picture it does matter, but in any individual election, it may not.)

The Republican dominated (4-1) Redistricting Board did get approval for their plan from the Department of Justice, and clearly they were not trying to bump off a Republican incumbent, but that is the result. The redistricting plan that established the voting districts for the November 2012 election was approved as a temporary plan to be reviewed further by the Alaska Supreme Court. There just wasn't enough time to get a permanent plan approved. The plaintiffs who originally sued have challenged the plan again  after the election, so there is a chance that districts may yet change before the next election.

Alaska Native Republican Shootout Supporter Loses in Southeast Election

[UPDATE Nov. 21:  The final tally had Kreiss-Tomkins ahead by 32.   KCAW reported that Thomas, when asked if he'd ask for a recount, replied

“I’m not going to say because I want the suspense to lay there. The guy was such an a–hole,” he said. “You know, he lied on so many things and he was supposed to run a clean campaign and he didn’t. So I’m just going to wait.”
Thomas also didn’t hesitate to make his feelings known about the results of the election.
“The district just committed hara-kiri,” he said. “They just didn’t realize what they had as far as seniority and leadership position.”

Not a lot of class, I'm afraid.  But I'd wager that he'll ask for the recount.  He's still in the free recount zone.]


Bill Thomas, the Republican representative from Haines,  seems to have lost reelection by 28 votes.  Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka is now ahead with 100% of the votes counted.   Thomas can request a recount.



From the Division of Elections website:

HOUSE DISTRICT 34
		Total
Number of Precincts		15
Precincts Reporting		15	100.0%
Times Counted		8398/13964	60.1%
Total Votes		8207
Kreiss-Tomkins, Jona	DEM	4110	50.08%
Thomas, William A. "	REP	4082	49.74
Write-in Votes		15	0.18%

 Recount?

According to BallotPedia  (They make things easier to find than the Alaska statutes):

There are no automatic recount provisions in Alaska election law, except in the event of a tie vote for two or more candidates for the same office for which there is to be elected only one candidate. A recount may be requested by a defeated candidate or ten voters within a particular precinct or state house district. Recount requests must made by filing an application with the elections director within five days of the state review of the votes . . .

If the difference between the number of votes cast was 20 or less or was less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast for the two candidates for a contested office, the state bears the cost of the recount.  Otherwise the application for recount must include a deposit of $300 per precinct, $750 per state house district, and $10,000 for a state recount request.

The difference was more than 20 votes, but less than 0.5% (which would be 40 votes if there was a total of 8000) so he wouldn't have to pay for the recount.  He has nothing to lose by asking for a recount. 


Thomas and the Shootout

It may be fitting that we learn this the week of the Great Alaska Shootout, because Rep. Thomas put money into the budget to subsidize rural Alaskans' flights to Anchorage to attend the basketball tournament.

KTUU reported in June:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The University of Alaska Anchorage says more than 1,500 people could receive free plane tickets in November -- funded by an appropriation from the state’s capital budget -- from 18 Alaska cities to Anchorage with the purchase of tickets to the 35th annual Great Alaska Shootout. House Finance Committee co-chair Rep. Bill Stoltze’s (R-Chugiak) office confirmed the source of the funds Friday afternoon.

The committee’s other co-chair, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Haines), pushed for the $2.5 million appropriation to UAA. He said the money was meant to keep the Shootout alive, but didn’t come with restrictions on what UAA could do with it.

Dermot Cole had a blistering editorial on this, also last June, in the Fairbanks News Miner.


Loss of Minority Legislators Due To Redistricting

If this vote count holds, it would make the second Southeast Alaska Native to lose after this redistricting. Also, the legislature's only black member, Senator Bettye Davis lost after her district was gerrymandered to take away her base constituents and add much more conservative and white Eagle River into her district.

Meanwhile, Richard Mauer at the ADN has reported that the attorney who represented the parties challenging redistricting has a new filing in to prevent the current redistricting map, which was a temporary fix so there would be something in place for the 2012 elections, from becoming permanent.

In his filing with the Supreme Court, Walleri said his evidence shows the 2012 redistricting plan "resulted in the destruction of the Senate bipartisan coalition, and the racial gerrymandering in HD 38 greatly contributed to achieving that result." Wallari is a Democrat who has represented Native groups in past redistricting battles in Alaska.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/11/13/2691904/fairbanks-lawyer-accuses-board.html#storylink=cpy

The impact of the redistricting on minority legislators was a topic I've been wanting to write about, but I've been swamped with other things.  I'll try to get to it before too long.  

Extraordinary Financial Gifts

“What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney said during a call with campaign donors Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Republicans are distancing themselves from Romney's comment.  Here's a prime example: 

“We as a Republican Party have to campaign for every single vote. If we want people to like us, we have to like them first. And you don’t start to like people by insulting them and saying their votes were bought. We are an aspirational party,” Jindal said.

OK, but not dissing most of the population is only one reason to pull back from this comment. But whose supporters get the most extraordinary financial gifts?

More likely the Republicans don't want people to start talking about the much more direct and lucrative financial benefits they send their supporters.  After all, corporations would not be meeting their legal obligations to their shareholders if their political contributions weren't investments to increase their corporations' future income. 

And political investments seem to be remarkably efficient and lucrative for those who are skilled at it. 

The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1#ixzz2Chg6Ktk3

The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1#ixzz2Chg6Ktk3

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reports on Pentagon Contractors, – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon:

• The average worker in the U.S. earned $45,230 last year. These CEOs were paid more in an average day than the average American worker was paid all of last year.
• According to a 2011 Congressional Budget Office analysis, the median compensation (including basic pay, allowances for food and housing, and tax advantages) for enlisted U.S. military personnel with ten years of experience was about $64,000. Thus, the Pentagon could afford to pay the salary of 335 soldiers with the money from just one top defense contractor’s compensation package.
• The CEOs of these top Pentagon contractors are also making significantly more than their own workers. According to a Deloitte study, the average wage (just salary, not benefits) for the entire aerospace and defense industry in 2010 was $80,175. For the price of one CEO then, these firms could pay the salary of 268 defense and aerospace industry workers.
• Even compared to other CEOs these Pentagon executives are making an enormous amount of money. An Associated Press study of S&P 500 CEO’s (i.e. the largest publicly traded companies) found that the typical CEO received $9.6 million in total compensation last year. Thus, the top Pentagon contractors could afford two CEOs with the compensation they’re using to pay their current CEOs.

These five CEOs weren’t even the highest paid heads of Pentagon contractors. That honor goes to David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, whose $35.7 million compensation package made him the sixth highest paid CEO in the U.S. last year, according to the Associated Press study.

Now these companies know enough that they have to give to both parties, but they seem, over time, to give more to that party that seems to think that military power is the best way to lead the world and got us into the Iraq war.  The chart below from Open Secrets
shows political contributions by defense contractors:

Screen shot from Open Secrets

And the accumulated effects of Republican tax policies and deregulation have resulted in the greatest wealth disparity in over half a century.  (And they couldn't have done this without the cooperation of Democrats.)

Business Insider offers 15 charts in "15 mindblowing facts about income wealth and distribution in America" starting with one titled,

"The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this great since the Roaring Twenties."

The other 14 charts are of interest too.

And, by the way, if Obama was trying to help the 99%, and minorities in particular, maybe that was good policy.

The Washington Post shows us that minorities were hurt from Bush policies way more than whites in the recession:

Between 2005 and 2009, the median net worth of Hispanic households dropped by 66 percent and that of black households fell by 53 percent, according to the report. In contrast, the median net worth of white households dropped by only 16 percent.

The median net worth of a white family now stands at 20 times that of a black family and 18 times that of a Hispanic family — roughly twice the gap that existed before the recession and the biggest gap since data began being collected in 1984.

So, yeah, I think Republicans, probably are acting rationally, finally, when they start distancing themselves from Romney's remarks.   Oh, that last line of Jindal's "We are an aspirational party."  I don't think you're there yet.  Success used to be much easier for white males because of the all the extra barriers non-white folks and women faced.  While many still exist, many have come down and now white males have to work harder to get what they used to get coasting.  And I suspect that's behind a lot of Republican anger.  See this Jon Stewart riff on O'Reilly and Goldberg complaining about losing traditional America. 

Annonymous Warned Karl Rove Two Weeks Before

OK, if Anonymous could monitor Karl Rove's communication system, they can back date a videotape on YouTube.  But, for what it's worth, as we are learning about Anonymous' letter saying they stopped Rove from stealing Ohio on election night, here's the video they say they posted two weeks before.

Rove shouldn't have been so surprised when FOX was ready to call Ohio for Obama if he had heeded, or even seen, the warning.



[UPDATE Nov 18 10am: Sorry, I was working on a project with someone and took a break and posted this,  then went back to the project, so I didn't realize that blogger ate the link to the video.]

OK, if conservatives say that progressives are gullible to believe this, they'd be right. There's just about the same combination of fact and fantasy that FOX news uses all the time. But what I see Progressives saying on the internet, is not "Yes! This happened," but rather, "If this really happened . . ." The video says that Anonymous will turn over all their evidence to the proper authorities so Rove can be convicted. Well, let's just wait and see what comes next. But maybe someone should confiscate Rove's passport in the meantime. Just a precaution, not nearly as harsh as putting people in Guantanamo for years because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why Boehner Is Wrong About Mandate On Taxes

"In a warning to President Obama, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday night that the reelection of the House Republican majority means that there is “no mandate for raising tax rates” on the American people." [From The Hill]

This seems like a lame attempt to gather some mojo in the coming battle over the so called Fiscal Cliff avoidance.   But it's nonsense.  Here's why.

First, I doubt that the voters were sending any sort of cohesive group message.  Different people voted the way they did for all sorts of different reasons.  But I'm going to focus here on just one tiny aspect -  whether keeping a Republican majority in the House can be interpreted as  the American people rejecting raising tax rates.




First, if any of the races could be considered a mandate on anything nationally, it would be the Presidency.  It's the only race in which all the voters in the US participate.

Second, comes the Senate races.  Each state gets two US Senators.  Every voter in each state can vote for the US Senators.  The district boundaries are the state boundaries.

But, third, when it comes to the House, things change completely.  Except in the lowest population states, like Alaska, which have only one representative, House districts are generally drawn with political intentions.  Each party in each state tries to carve out districts that will give an advantage to their own party. (Don't get me wrong, Alaska does that too, but for state races, not federal.)

We just went through Constitutionally required redistricting using the 2010 Census data so we have new house districts.  And since Republicans held 29 governorships, Republicans had  more control in more states over  how the districts were redrawn.  Given that one could make the argument that if the House stayed the same, it was a mandate against the Republicans.  

Unless there's a wholesale change in the House, as there was in 2010, not much of a message is being sent.  And even then, it's hard to know exactly what the message was.  Besides, in many House races local issues and the personalities of the candidates are often more important than national issues.

Keeping the status quo - keeping the Republican majority in the House - doesn't mean much.  Since the House districts are set up to heavily favor the incumbents,  it's hard not to keep the House the same.


But the House didn't stay the same.  The Republicans lost two seats to the Democrats.

And there are six more seats still too close to call.  In five, the Democrat is ahead. The one Republican who's ahead is only ahead by 36 votes. 

State	District	Numbers	Margin
Arizona UD 11/18 Dem won	2*	Rep:125,223 - 50% Dem:125,187 -50%	36 votes
Arizona [UD11/14: Dem won]	9	Dem:88,331 -48% 104, 506 Rep: 84,236 46% 98,006 - Lib: 11,729 - 6% 13, 835	4,095  6,500
California [UD 11/16: Dem won]	7	Dem:105,245 119,726 Rep: 103,466  115,902	1,779 3,824
California [UD 11/16: Dem won]	52	Dem:110,825 -50% 124,746 Rep: 109,491 -50%  122,086	1,334 2,660
Florida UD 11/18 Dem won	18**	Dem: 166,890 - 50% Rep: 164,448 - 50%	2,442
N. Carolina UD 11/18 Dem won***	7	Dem: 167,590 - 50% Rep: 167,057 - 50%	533 655
*Gabrielle Giffords' old seat     **One of two Black Republican incumbents -found conflicting final numbers in this race, so I'm just leaving these ***Recount still possible

HTML Tables

I put the table together with data from Boston.com's election results.

I said above that House seats districts are drawn up to retain the incumbent.  Let me give you an example.    I've been working on an update of an old post on the number of Black members of Congress .  (I updated for the 2008 election, but somehow missed the 2010 election.)

In going through each Black members' election numbers I was struck by the large majorities.  I knew this was the case, but it always surprises me.  Here are the percentages for each of the winning Black Congress members.  (In some cases there were more than two candidates.)  I've sorted them from the lowest percent win to the highest.

60% -37%-3%
60%-17%-11%-10%-1.6%-.06%
62%-35%-2%
63%-23%-13%
63%-37%
64%-36%
67% - 31%-1-0%
71%-25%-3%
72%-25%-3%
72%-28%
74%-26%
74%-26%
75%-23%-2%
75%-23%-2%
75%-25%
76%-21%-3%
76%-24%
77%-21%-2%
78%-20%-1%-1%
79%-19%-2%
80%-20%
81%-19%
83%-14%-2%-1%
84%-15%
86%-14%
86%-14%
87%-11%-%1-1%
87%-12%-1%
88%-11%
88%-12%
89%-9%-1%
90%-10%-1%
90%-9%-1%
91%-6%-3%
94%-6%
100%
100%

In this case - the African American districts - I can't help but wonder whether they were packed into districts to make the nearby districts easier for Republicans to win.  After all, if you win by 90%, you could trade 40% of the Democrats for Republicans from a neighboring district and probably win that one as well and keep the first one.

And to be sure the African-American districts weren't skewed compared to the rest of the House*, I went through Bostom.com's first of four pages of results:

Under 55% of votes =	24 races
55%-59% of votes =	24 races
60% - 69% of votes =	33 races
70% - 79% of votes =	32 races
80% - 89% of votes =	7 races
Page 1 of Boston.com election results - Alabama - Florida

HTML Tables

So, of 120 races (435 House seats total), only 20% won by less than 55% of the vote.   

Don't believe me?  Here's from a Washington Post story about a FairVote report, Monopoly Politics 2012, on the effect of redistricting on Congress.  They say it will be more partisan because more House seats are solidly Republican or solidly Democratic.

"(A side note: the Fair Vote study also shows the inherent advantage Republicans have in the House, with 195 districts leaning their way, compared with 166 that leans [sic] Democrats’ way. A big part of this is because Democratic voters are more concentrated in urban areas.)"

Not all House races were blowouts.  There were some close ones.  For example,  the six in the table above.  And Michele Bachman  just barely won reelection. 


So maybe, we could take a Presidential vote as a mandate for something if there were a resounding victory for one candidate and the race boiled down to one issue.  The Senate may also tell us something.  The House races are much trickier to use as a barometer of voter intent.

Of course, you can just ask people.   The Associated Press did an exit poll that claims to interpret the message people were sending with their vote.  Here are two short excerpts:

WASHINGTON — The voters have a plan: Consider raising taxes on the wealthy, but not everybody else. Shrink the government. Work harder on creating jobs and holding the line on prices, because economic worries are more important than cutting the deficit right now.  .  .

— Most voters aren’t that focused on taming the deficit. A strong majority say the economy is the most important issue. The deficit was picked by only 15 percent, coming in behind health care but ahead of foreign policy.
— Taxes don’t top the list of people’s financial troubles. The biggies are unemployment and rising prices. Only 14 percent of voters ranked taxes as the biggest economic problem for people like them.
— When the two go head to head, taxes trump the deficit. Sixty-three percent rejected the idea of raising taxes to help cut the nation’s budget deficits, even though they’ve been hitting about $1 trillion per year.

It seems we aren't as concerned about the  deficit as the economy in the short term and that we are okay with taxes, but not to cut the deficit.  I'm reading into that, that we don't want to adversely affect the slowly recovering economy.  A less charitable interpretation might be "we should deal with the deficit, but not in a way that negatively affects me."


On Wednesday, I'd note, Boehner said that "if there was a mandate in yesterday's elections, it was a mandate to find a way to work together on the solutions to the challenges we all face as a nation." [From ABC News.] That's a little more positive. If the first quote above was aimed at the President, probably this one is aimed at this Republican House colleagues.   I'd say his mandate here probably comes from opinion polls more than from the election. 


But the real questions seems to be whether, as another ABC piece ponders,  Boehner can pull his Republican majority members together or whether they will pull him, and the party, apart.  


*The African-American races had considerably higher margins of victory than the cumulative Alabama - Florida races.  No winning African-American  candidate was under 60% and a bunch were in the 90 percent level. 


[Note to myself:  This was supposed to be a quick short post given using data from a different post, but once again I let myself get carried away.  Sorry self.]

Odds and Ends

I've got a backlog of things I want to post.  Here's a preview of what I'm hoping to get up:

Election night I was an observer when they brought the voting machines and materials to election headquarters.  I've got pictures and some video plus comments on how things went.  Generally it seems well organized, but there are lots of places where unscrupulous people could mess with the system if they wanted to.

The Citizens Climate Lobby had its monthly meeting Saturday and heard from Dr Wendy Hill on the health consequences of global climate change.  Then on Thursday I went with CCL Anchorage coordinator Jim Thrall to meet with the news manager and meteorologists at Channel 11 to discuss how they cover climate change issues on the air.  We also had an Alaska climate expert from Fairbanks there by phone.

Chinese class continues to consume lots of time.  I do want to write about some of this.  Particularly how much easier it is to study Chinese in 2012 than it was in just 2003.  Take a look at Yellowbridge.com to see part of the reason. 

I've gotten a new page up on top here for the 2012 Anchorage International Film Festival.  It's a guide to the festival including links to some old posts - FAQ's for the festival and Film Festival for Skeptics.

And Sitemeter is down again.  Not a good sign.  Something is going wrong there and the comments on my recent post about Sitemeter do show that people aren't very tolerant of problems.  It would help if Sitemeter would reach out and let people know what's happening.  They have their users' email addresses.  I'm starting to check with Google Analytics, but I really don't like their layout compared to Sitemeter.  Someone recommended StatCounter in the comments and that looks good.

Oh yeah, I was at UAA earlier this week and was reminded of all the things going on there - particularly speakers who are available to the public.  Here are some posters - two are already over and two are still coming.










Sorry, this one is over already, but I thought I'd put it up anyway.  Same with the next one.

Sorry, this one is a little small (it's just an 8X11 sheet) but it hints at why it's good to have universities around and people researching different options that can help create new energy options and jobs.

Click any of them to enlarge them a little.

This one is coming a week from Monday.  This is through the Confucius Institute at UAA and our Chinese teacher said he's a really great calligrapher.  

And this one is this coming Monday.  Fallows is one of our (the USA) best journalists.  (The link goes to his Atlantic Monthly blog which is very entertaining and this latest post raises similar thoughts to the ones I raised about the Fiscal Cliff.)  He spent a lot of time in Japan and wrote very insightful articles for the Atlantic.  He's also spent time more recently in China.  I have a book club meeting Monday so I'm going to miss this, but it should be outstanding and it's free to the public (free parking too.) 

Deborah Fallows is here too and they will both be at   the UAA bookstore on Monday at noon.




There was one more that I forgot:

Other things I probably won't post about:

Met with some of my new UAA faculty group over lunch and we'll meet again next week with two faculty union reps.

The Alaskan Apple User Group met Wednesday night.

Reviewing a paper for an academic journal.

Trying to help a few people connect with the right people to get out of their jams.

And there are always the clutter wars here at home, though I've generally neglected them lately.  I did clear this morning's snow from the driveway and sidewalk.  And I'm a little sore from taking a spill on the bike this afternoon.  I guess mountain tires aren't enough.  I need to get studs.



UPDATE:  Thanks to reader DH for the editing help.  Sometimes I do get tired and lazy.

Metaphor of the Day - The Fiscal Cliff, Where Conservative PAC Money Went

You can't listen to any media lately without hearing 'Fiscal Cliff' repeated over and over.

Metaphors, if they are apt, can help us visualize the abstract.  When Winston Churchill called the border between the East and West in post-war Europe the Iron Curtain, he used a metaphor that vividly brought to life what was happening.  It was a metaphor that stuck.

But many metaphors don't capture the situation so cleanly.  Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was intended to portray the policy as a strong military mobilization to end poverty.  It came from people whose idea of war was World War II, who weren't considering Korea, and who still believed they were going to win in Vietnam.  Even more problematic was figuring out who "the enemy" in this war was.  Some began to think it was the poor people themselves.  There is a similar problem with the other main War metaphor - War on Drugs.  Drugs seem to be thriving, it's the drug users that have been the enemy.  But like war, it swallows up money.

And people can get in trouble when they mix metaphors as in this gem from Examiner:

"failure of the super committee to reach agreement also triggered the fiscal cliff"

I'll let you visualize that yourself.


So, the question is, how good a metaphor is The Fiscal Cliff?

It's a powerful visual image.  But does it accurately portray the situation?  What or who is going over the cliff?  The country?  The money?  The Democrats?  The Republicans?

Maybe it's what conservative PACs threw all their money over during the election.    

Going over a cliff isn't always fatal either.

Everyone seems to agree that our debt is too high. They disagree on how to fix it and on the timing of the solutions.   I would argue that very few of  us actually understand economics in general and the economic situation of the US and the world well enough to actually know.  Of course, that's where a good metaphor comes in - even if we don't understand, we can all picture a car driving toward a cliff.  So we all feel a certain amount of tension.  Is it the tension we feel watching a car in a movie?  Or is it the tension we would feel if we were in the car itself?

Let's look at a different metaphor for a second.  Conservatives regularly talk about 'running government like a business." I can talk a long time why you can't run government like a business, but let's focus on one aspect where the conservatives NEVER quite apply business principles to government:  Accounting.

In business accounting you list the company's debits AND CREDITS.  When they talk about government, they never consider all the assets.  And if we were to add up the government's assets - all the land, all the buildings, all the wealth in terms of art, historical objects, roads, bridges, airports, human capital, and on and on - it would show us comfortably in the black.

No, they only look at the debit column.  What would happen to Wall Street if all we saw in the annual reports were the companies' debts but not their assets?  Government money spent on education and infrastructure is an investment in future assets. Back to cliffs now.

How did we get to the edge of this cliff?

The Republicans, from my perspective, were playing chicken with the US economy.  Under Bush, they cut revenues by cutting taxes and added to expenses with two costly wars.  Additionally, they cut regulations setting up the banking crisis.  There's no question, Democrats helped them.  Those Democrats seemed to accept that Bush was president and should be allowed to try his policy.  Ultimately, the Republicans were the drivers who led our country to the cliff.  Once we went over that cliff at the end of the Bush administration and the Republicans handed the car keys over to Obama, they locked into a game metaphor - and winning was the only option.  Say a game of poker.  They were going to force Obama to fold by refusing to compromise on taxes and refuse anything he wanted.  If they blocked all his initiatives, they could make him look bad and win the election and then they could do what they wanted again.  McConnell even told us that their top priority was defeating President Obama. 


Except now we know the winning the election part didn't work.

Congress passed The Budget Control Act of 2011 as a way to force themselves to make necessary budget cuts.  It set up a joint committee to come up with ways to reign in the debt (another metaphor).  If the committee failed sequestration (automatic cuts) would kick in to reduce the gap between  Congress' cuts and the spending limit:

•  These cuts would apply to mandatory and discretionary spending in the years 2013 to 2021 and be in an amount equal to the difference between $1.2 trillion and the amount of deficit reduction enacted from the joint committee. There would be some exemptions: reductions would apply to Medicare providers, but not to Social Security, Medicaid, civil and military employee pay, or veterans.^[4][5] Medicare benefits would be limited to a 2% reduction.^[7]

As originally envisioned, these caps would equally affect security and non-security programs. Security programs would include the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, some management functions of the intelligence community and international affairs from the U.S. State Department.^[8] However, because the Joint Select Committee did not report any legislation to Congress, the act reset these caps^{[clarification needed]} to defense (essentially the DOD) and non-defense categories.^{[9]    [from Wikipedia]}

But the Super Committee did fail to agree and now the Budget Act Reductions plus the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are the Fiscal Cliff people are talking about.

Because they lost the election.  Rhe Republicans' bluff (no increase in taxes) has been called and they are left with the worst of both worlds - Bush tax cuts ending and what they believe are unacceptable cuts to the military.  (I really thought that the Fox News predictions of a big Romney win were cynical fodder to get the masses to want to join the winners by voting for Mitt, but it's appearing that they believed their own hype.)


So, now the House and Senate both appear to have gained a few more Democratic members and Obama's still in the White House.

One thing Republicans do understand is winning and losing and on this morning's post election interviews, Republicans weren't even spinning the results.  They were admitting they lost, that Obama won.  They respect winners, even winners they don't like.

They declared war on Obama's reelection and they lost. Unlike the economy, the election outcome is clear and concrete.  They didn't achieve their top priority.  As they examine why, is it possible they might figure out that the American public doesn't like the stalemate (a chess metaphor) in Congress?  It sure seems that Republicans have a lot more to lose by driving over this 'Fiscal Cliff' than the Democrats in terms of priorities.

I suspect, but I'm not sure, that we all stand to lose a lot.  But I don't understand all the details enough to know how much pain we'll suffer collectively, who will suffer more and who less, and whether the short term pain might lead to long term improvement.  Not letting the Budget Control Act go into effect would definitely be smoother.  Not letting all the Bush tax cuts expire during an economic recovery would be smoother.  But if we do go over the cliff, I don't know who will end up dead, who will end up injured, and who will get up and walk away ok.

Meanwhile, on this day after the election, the bottom of Fiscal Cliff could very appropriately describe where conservative PAC billions were thrown during the campaign.

It appears that Citizens United has led to the biggest income transfer from the rich in quite a while. 

Why Is Jim Minnery Smearing YoYo Ma's Cousin?

Jim Minnery, head of the Alaska Family Council, wrote in a Sunday ADN piece that called for Alaskans to vote against retaining Superior Court Judge Sen Tan.  His crime?  Ruling according to the Alaska Constitution.  Well, Minnery says he's an activist judge (but identifies Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, as NOT activist judges) who substituted his values for the Constitution. However, retired Judge Elaine Andrews points out in a another ADN piece, that the Alaska Supreme Court upheld his decisions.

What Minnery really means is that Tan's decision was at odds with Minnery's values.  Minnery, you will recall, is the guy from the conservative Alaska Family Council who blasted out emails last spring telling people to register to vote before the deadline, three weeks before the election, passed.  Then, after it passed, he emailed them again saying  they could just show up and register on election day to vote.   He had to know, given his earlier email, that you couldn't register and vote on the day of the election.  And he had to know it would cause turmoil at the polls if enough unregistered voters showed up.  And it did, along with the shortage of ballots.

The rule of law doesn't seem to matter to Minnery.  His guide appears to be his interpretation of the Bible.  

It's important to know that Alaska has some of the best judges in the country because of how we pick them.  The Judicial Council surveys all sorts of professionals and jurors - people who see the judge in action from different perspectives - and uses this information to rate judges.  Here's the list of links for Judge Tan's ratings:

• Voter Pamphlet Page (Council summary of the judge’s performance)
• Attorney Survey Ratings (All surveys use a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest rating)
• Peace and Probation Officer Survey Ratings
• Social Worker and Guardian ad Litem Survey Ratings
• Juror Survey Ratings - (No juror surveys were returned for the jury trials that Judge Tan conducted in this two-year period)
• Court Employee Survey Ratings
• Survey Ratings from Previous Evaluations
• Alaska Judicial Observers Ratings (Community-based volunteer court observers)
• Peremptory Challenge Rate (How often a party requested assignment of a new judge)
• Recusal Rate (How often a judge disqualified himself or herself due to a conflict of interest)
• Appellate Affirmance Rate (How often a trial judge was affirmed or reversed on appeal)
• Salary Warrant Withholdings (How often a judge’s pay was withheld for unfinished work)
• Judge Questionnaire (Judge’s response to a Judicial Council questionnaire)
• Survey Ratings for all Judges on the 2012 Ballot

Alaska's legal system is particularly fair because judges are accountable to all these people who see them on a regular basis.  Biased or incompetent people tend not to get nominated in the first place and those that don't do well are identified pretty quickly.  Our judges are good because their eye is on the State Constitution and Law and NOT on politics.  

Judge Tan is, by all accounts, a first rate judge. He doesn't get to the top scores of all judges, but he's up there.   He's particularly respected for how he handles cases involving abused children and gets almost perfect scores from Social Workers and Guardians Ad Litem.  He also gets high ratings from Court employees and the Alaska Bar Association members. His lowest average scores come from Law Enforcement members where he averaged 4.1 out of 5, which is a very strong score.

His average annual rate for peremptory challenges was 11.  The average for all Superior Court judges was 33.  He was the fifth lowest out of 14. 



Minnery targets Tan because of two abortion decisions made over ten year ago.  Decisions that, as I've said, were upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court.  Judge Tan wasn't wrong.  He didn't substitute his personal values for the law.  If he had, his decisions would have been overturned by the Supreme Court.  It's Minnery who is substituting his values for the law.

Minnery has the right to his opinion and to publish his opinion.  The rest of us have the same right and responsibility to correct his errors and urge voters to support Judge Tan's retention.

I would note that Judge Tan has a pretty unique background.  A 2004 article in the Malaysian newspaper, The Star tells us he was born in Malaysia and got his BA (with honors) from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his law degree (JD) at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.

We also learn from The Star that his cousin - his father's brother's son - is the world renowned  cellist Yoyo Ma.  

And he likes to ride his motorcycle.

The article also talks about his early interest in the law:

“My interest in law came from the legacy of books my father left behind. Some of the books discussed the principles of the Rule of Law. I was very interested in law as an organising principle for a fair, just and compassionate society. Thus, I settled on reading law in Britain,” said Tan, whose father passed away when he was 10 years old."

 So, if you haven't voted yet, remember to send Jim Minnery a message and approve the retention of Judge Sen Tan. 

[UPDATE Nov. 7, 1:00am:  Judge Tan is winning retention 53% yes to 46% with 93% of precincts reporting.  Minnery's campaign clearly had an impact - Tan had the lowest percentage for retention of all the judges by a lot - but he didn't defeat Tan.  However, I'm sure he thinks he's sent all judges a message that if they make unpopular decisions, they'll be targets.]