LA Rain

We woke up this morning to the rumbling of thunder and the sound of rain.  Not measurable rain, but in this land of brown lawns, any rain is a big deal. 

Thunder is rumbling again now near 3pm and this time there was, and still is, real rain. 

Earlier I sat outside eating breakfast, watching the scattered raindrops darken the driveway, the dry in seconds.  Now they're sticking.  And the warm humidity of this morning has given way to a comfortable coolth. 


How serious is this drought?  From the July 15 California weekly drought update:

As a result of continuing drought conditions, emergency legislation was enacted in March 2015 that appropriated over $1 billion of additional funds for drought-related projects and activities.
The Administration’s May Revision proposal includes an additional $2.2 billion for programs that protect and expand local water supplies, improve water conservation, and provide immediate relief to impacted communities.

But before our Alaska majority legislators sigh in relief that they don't have this expenditure, they should think about what they're going to need to spend in climate change mitigation - from village relocation due to shore erosion to massive infrastructure reconstruction due to melting permafrost, just to name a couple of the more obvious effects.  This doesn't include the impact on fish and other species due to ocean acidification.  Oh, did I forget fighting forest fires?  The short term income we get from oil (well, now that the legislature has created massive tax credits, and the price of oil dropped, it isn't much) will be dwarfed by the costs of responding to the impacts of carbon caused climate change. 

How Plastics Saved The Elephant

I ran across a Scientific American article on the history of plastic.  It reminded me how much history has to teach us and how much of it we don't know. 

Thai work elephants 1967-8

"elephants, the paper warned in 1867, were in grave danger of being "numbered with extinct species" because of humans' insatiable demand for the ivory in their tusks. Ivory, at the time, was used for all manner of things, from buttonhooks to boxes, piano keys to combs. But one of the biggest uses was for billiard balls. Billiards had come to captivate upper-crust society in the United States as well as in Europe. Every estate, every mansion had a billiards table, and by the mid-1800s, there was growing concern that there would soon be no more elephants left to keep the game tables stocked with balls. The situation was most dire in Ceylon, source of the ivory that made the best billiard balls. There, in the northern part of the island, the Times reported, "upon the reward of a few shillings per head being offered by the authorities, 3,500 pachyderms were dispatched in less than three years by the natives." All told, at least one million pounds of ivory were consumed each year, sparking fears of an ivory shortage. "Long before the elephants are no more and the mammoths used up," the Times hoped, 'an adequate substitute may [be] found.'"

 Plastics.  It's mind boggling to know that humans nearly wiped out elephants 150 years ago, just so they could play billiards!

The savior of the elephants?

Plastics freed us from the confines of the natural world, from the material constraints and limited supplies that had long bounded human activity. That new elasticity unfixed social boundaries as well. The arrival of these malleable and versatile materials gave producers the ability to create a treasure trove of new products while expanding opportunities for people of modest means to become consumers. Plastics held out the promise of a new material and cultural democracy. The comb, that most ancient of personal accessories, enabled anyone to keep that promise close.

There was even a contest to find a substitute for ivory so they could keep making billiard balls when the supply of ivory was gone.

The need for natural material to make combs almost wiped out the hawkbill turtle.  In fact plastics - first made from plant material and then from oil - saved a lot of creaturers.

Celluloid could be rendered with the rich creamy hues and striations of the finest tusks from Ceylon, a faux material marketed as French Ivory. It could be mottled in browns and ambers to emulate tortoiseshell; traced with veining to look like marble; infused with the bright colors of coral, lapis lazuli, or carnelian to resemble those and other semiprecious stones; or blackened to look like ebony or jet. Celluloid made it possible to produce counterfeits so exact that they deceived "even the eye of the expert," as Hyatt's company boasted in one pamphlet. "As petroleum came to the relief of the whale," the pamphlet stated, so "has celluloid given the elephant, the tortoise, and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts; and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer."

 As the human population increases, we make heavier use of critical materials, up to the point that we may use them all up - and in the case of animal based materials, cause extinction.  If we are lucky, we find a substitute to give relief to those natural sources. 

But then we get dependent on the new material to the point of endangering the natural world again.   And the local humans who live in that now destroyed natural environment.

Our petroleum use, which saved the whale a hundred years ago, is now causing climate change.  Today petroleum based sports enthusiasts, like the billiard players, continue their dangerous games.  But the rest of us are guilty too.  We can't get free of our addiction to fossil fuel powered cars and airplanes and electricity.   Some, though, are rushing to create alternative sources of energy and finding ways to wean humans from oil. Meanwhile those companies that have gotten rich off of fossil fuels, are fighting any curtailment of the source of their wealth and we continue to buy their products to fuel our lifestyles which we can't imagine without fossil fuels.

And our search for other natural resources as well as our growing human population's encroachment into forests continues to make the survival of non-human species like the elephant and the tiger and millions of smaller, non-iconic species iffy. 

The whole article is fascinating and has lots more details.

Shell In Seattle, Power, Americans For Prosperity Leading Opposition to Medicaid Expansion [Reposted*]

A What Do I Know? reader in Seattle sent this picture he took Thursday from the ferry of Shell's oil rig. (But I was in Denali Thursday so I just got the picture.)

Think about people used to power, used to getting their way.  People in positions of authority in large organizations that have the money to convince the weak to agree and to destroy those who would stand up against them.

The large oil companies are used to getting their way, whether it's in places like Africa or Asia where they can buy government leaders or US states where they can do the same.  In Alaska, Conoco-Phillips put one of their lawyer/lobbyists into the governorship and two more of their employees into the legislature.  They are so used to getting their way, they  pay no attention to those who disagree with them - including the Democratic minority.

Think about the people who are currently keeping the Alaska Republican leaders from agreeing to expand Medicaid, despite the overwhelming support for its expansion.  NPR had a piece on five states
that have been dealing with Medicaid expansion - Florida, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Alaska.  In all these places the Koch Brothers' supported Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has spent a lot of money in opposition to Medicaid expansion. 

Montana's a slightly different case from the others.  Legislators got angry at AFP for going behind their backs and connecting directly with constituents. 

In Alaska, it seems they've gone directly to Chenault and Meyers, the heads of the state house and senate respectively.  Because they're saying no to everyone else and refusing to make any concessions.  As I said, if you get used to power, you think you can do whatever you want. 

Salon has an article on how Americans for Prosperity "blew up" the Tennessee Medicaid expansion bill.



Context:

Forbes puts David Koch's wealth at $42.7 billion.  They also put Charles Koch at the same amount.  I wasn't sure if that amount was combined or individual.  Bloomberg, though, puts them jointly at $100 billion. 

To get a sense of things, suppose your net worth was $100,000.  If you spent the same percentage of your wealth as the Koch brothers it would be something like:

Koch brothers spend $1 million.
You spend $1.

You spend $200 on a candidate.
The Koch brothers would spend $200 million.

This is why people like Tom Hayden were talking about economic democracy back in the 1970s.  Because without a reasonably level playing field, we lose democracy.

As we see in the Medicaid fight.  And the way Shell can tell Seattle to go to hell, we'll put our oil rigs wherever we damn well please.  

* I'm reposting because Feedburner didn't catch this one to blogrolls. Apologies to those who came here earlier.  I'm trying to figure out a good way to signal you, so you don't come back to a post you've already seen. 

Blogger Overload - Things I Haven't Posted From Erin's Law To Shell Arctic Drilling

There is a bunch of posts still listed as drafts in my blog index of posts.  Some will never see the light of day because there are more important things, they've been partly incorporated in other posts, or they are old and the topic's been covered enough elsewhere.

The battle between living and blogging is sometimes easy and sometimes hard.  Ideally, the blog captures bits and pieces of life as I live it.  But my kids have said the grandchildren are off limits for the blog, so reflections on their growing language skills ("The rocket's at my house") and other motor skills (crawling up and down the wheel chair ramp at my mom's house) don't get chronicled here, though I think they are significant, not just for me, but for the world.  This point was made today by someone who spent about ten minutes on an older post about infants learning sign language. 

Some posts are partly or largely written.  Others are just notes.  Here are some examples.

Obergefell
What signs from the Supreme Court hearing on Obergefell are worth attending to get a sense of what their decision might be and the implications for the future?

Shell Arctic Drilling
I did a fair amount of reporting on Shell's previous Arctic drilling plans  (for example) and the later fiasco with Kulluk.  You might look at the link on the plans.  Those were last time.  I've looked quickly at parts of the new ones.  My issue then was that they were more PR than actual operational plans of what to do.  This time it seems there is more detail, but still a lot missing.  For example, there's this sort of reassuring language, that reminds me a lot of the reassuring (but incorrect) language they had in 2013.

"Operational Monitoring:
Operational monitoring is conducted to minimize the potential of penetrating an overpressure
zone resulting in a loss of hydrostatic overbalance.

1. 1)  Flow checks are conducted with the pumps off to confirm the static mud weight over balances pore pressure.
   
2. 2)  Frequent pit drills and mock well control drills are planned and conducted.
   
3. 3)  Drilling Contractor / Shell Staff have relevant and current Well Control Certificates.
   
4. 4)  Shell requires its operational staff to attend and pass its internal Advanced Well Control Training.
   
5. 5)  Real Time monitoring of the well and operational parameters is conducted by the Real Time Operations Center that is staffed by a team of experts. Any anomalous signals or indications are immediately relayed to the rig.
   

This extra set of monitoring provides a secondary team of individuals to monitor the wells status and minimize the potential for loss of situation awareness by the drilling team" [from page 2/6 Well Control Plan which is in a zip file linked at Appendices and Attachments on this page at this Bureau of Oceans and Environment Management (BOEM) page. ]

"loss of situational awareness' was a big red flag for me.  Here's a post I did on that phrase back in 2010:  Euphemism Alert!! What the hell is "Lack of Situational Awareness"?

I understand that there's an art to giving an overview, and I have yet to probe deep enough in all the documents to find out if there are more operational details than this. 

For instance,
1)   how often the flow checks are conducted and where the results of those tests go and how quickly and how quickly do government regulators see them? 
2)  What does 'frequent'?  I'd like to see some numbers - once a week, once a month (I don't know what's reasonable) - and records kept and reported that they happened and what was learned from each drill and what improvements were made based on the drill. 
3/4) should be expanded somewhere to list the job titles of the "Shell staff" and "operational staff" and the names of the people in those positions with a list of the specific certificates they have, when they got them,  plus links to what the training includes and what the certificate guarantees the staff know and can perform. 
5) how about a list of the 'team of experts' including their name and expertise and how their expertise is determined.

It's in Shell's interest that all this rhetoric is backed up, but I know these things are written to get approval.  I'd like to know that BOEM is getting more detail than this.  BUT, it may be in there somewhere, I just haven't had the time to read it all and then find the people I can ask my questions of.  So, these posts are still unwritten. 

Then there's this somewhat disturbing prospect:

The estimated total duration from the initial mooring to well kill pumping through a relief well would be approximately 28 days for a Burger blowout (Table 1). In the event of a blowout, the secondary rig if located at the Burger Prospect, will cease drilling, suspend the well so that it cannot flow, recover its BOP stack and moorings, and transit to the relief well drill site. In this case, the estimated duration of flow prior to drilling a relief well to intersection with the original wellbore and killing the flow is approximately 34 days (six days to mobilize and moor and 28 days to kill the well). If the secondary rig is located in Dutch Harbor, the rig will transit from Dutch Harbor to the relief well drill site. The rig will initiate relief well drilling operations upon arrival and mooring and will remain at the site through plugging operations on both the relief well and the blowout well. The max additional time required will be to unmoor in Dutch Harbor, transit to relief well site, and moor is an estimated 10 days (10 days to mobilize and moor and 28 days to kill the well).  [emphasis added] [Page 2-5 from
Revised Outer Continental Shelf Lease Exploration PlanChukchi Sea, AlaskaBurger Prospect:Posey Area Blocks 6714, 67626764, 6812, 6912, 6915Chukchi Sea Lease Sale 193]

I don't know what sort of damage can happen in 28 days, and I need to check.  But I suspect it won't be pretty. 

But I also know that Shell has huge incentives for everything to go right.  Not only are accidents costly to them in lost time and equipment, they are disastrous in terms of public opinion and the future obstacles that result.  So Shell surely wants things to go well, wants to get oil as quickly as they can with no mishaps.  I don't question their intentions to have no serious problems.  The question is their ability to carry it out.

They have a lot of smart people, but many of them are smart in a narrow area of knowledge.  But I have lots of reading to do, and questions to ask before I tackle this for real.  And I may or may not get there.  

Erin's Law
This bill still hasn't been passed.  I've emailed the representatives who voted against it (only Rep. Tammy Wilson has responded) and I've got what the ADN says their reasons for opposing it are.  But I need to get a bit more information.

Others

Tanaina preschool followup, mayoral election reflections, left over press club conference thoughts, the university searches for a president and Fairbanks chancellor, and it goes on. 
And then there are a dozen posts in my head that haven't gotten into writing even.

And it's essentially summer in Alaska and Denali calls for a visit before the buses are taking the tourists in.

Is This The PSA That Comes Up On The Alaksa House And Senate Majority's Screens?

Things I find on Twitter:





[UPDATE for non-Alaskans:  Pick.Click.Give. is the campaign to get Alaskans to make a donation to a non-profit organization by deducting it from their Permanent Fund Dividend checks each year.  The video is from Alaska Robotics out of Juneau.  They do great stuff.]

Walker Or Chenault? - A Look At the Showdown Players

Dermot Cole's article in the ADN today, outlines the differences between the governor and the Republican leaders in the legislature over gas pipelines.

On the one hand Cole says the legislators see a partnership between the state and the oil companies.

"The ruling Republican majorities envision the state and the oil companies marching forward — more or less in unison — on a shared pipeline vision, capable of working out any disagreements that might derail the gas pipeline partnership."

 The governor, while fine with this partnership with the oil companies, thinks we should have a back up plan in case things don't work out.  

The legislators don't like this approach.

"They portray his plan for a backup export project as a signal to the oil companies that the state is not committed to its agreement."

They think the governor is trying to shake down the oil companies.  

“'You have made clear your desire to have a parallel project to use as leverage against our Alaska LNG partners in order to force changes in existing contractual terms,' House Speaker Mike Chenault and Senate President Kevin Meyer said in a letter April 10."

But the governor thinks the oil companies and the state, while having some overlapping goals, are still two separate entities negotiating a deal.  The oil companies will eventually decide based on their view of their best interests.  The state of Alaska, he thinks, should do the same.   The oil companies have back up plans if they don't like the final pipeline details.  The state too should have such a back up plan.

"Walker counters that it is not a matter of using leverage against the oil company partners, but of using leverage to protect Alaska. He said the oil companies understand this. Partners or not, many of the key details about the pipeline project have yet to be negotiated and Walker says he is only doing what the oil companies do for themselves — preserving options."

How do we assess which of these positions is sounder? 

One route is to look at the players and figure out their abilities and their loyalities. 

Mike Chenault has,  according to his legislative bio, graduated from Kenai Central High School in  1975. It's not clear what work experience he has.  He's listed as a vice-president of a construction company, he has military service, and has been involved with things like the local chamber of commerce.  He's been in the House since 2001, fourteen years.

You can be smart and learn a lot through experience in the world, without a college degree.  And you can get a college degree and still make bad decisions.  But most people agree that a good college education is worth more in most cases, than a high school degree. People put themselves in debt to get one, and businesses are willing to pay more for employees with degrees, and relatively few people at the top don't have college degrees.

A good college education should help broaden students' horizons by exposing them to a wider range of people than they saw in high school and a wider range of ideas and skills.  A truly good education would also help build a person's ability to reason and use logic as well as introducing them to the field of ethics.  Of course, not everyone who has a college degree got all those benefits.  And I can think of some pretty capable people who didn't get college degrees.  Mark Begich for one.  Bill Allen for another.  (And I don't mean that facetiously.  Allen was a high school drop out who through his own smarts and hard work built a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  This old post gives my impressions of him during the Kott trial.) 

I don't know a lot about Chenault's life beyond the bio mentioned above.  But he seems to have spent most of his life on the Kenai.  His actions this session reflect a man who's enjoying his power and not  having to defer to others. (He kicked Rep. Reinbold out of the caucus.  He's opposed the governor on medicaid expansion and this pipeline issue.  He's let approval of the governor's appointments languish and when the governor set a special session to vote on the appointments, he basically ignored it.  He got a great subsidy for a fertilizer company in his own district, even though the state is suffering from a huge budget shortfall this year and basic government programs are being cut.  Just a few examples.)  Rather than be a statesman who is respectful of those who see the world differently, he appears disdainful and petty.   He recently sent a nasty letter to Washington State saying neither they, nor any other entities, could treat Alaska like a colony.

My response was to posit whether 'other entities' included oil companies.  Alaska has a history of being treated like a colony and the oil companies are just the latest colonizers.  And his behavior here - that we shouldn't do anything to upset the oil companies, that we shouldn't have a backup plan as we negotiate with them - reflects someone who either has made a pact with the oil industry, or doesn't realize he's become their lackey.  His partner in the letter to Gov. Walker, was Conoco-Phillips employee and Senate president Kevin Meyer.  If we don't know for sure where his loyalties lie, we do know where his regular paycheck comes from.  The fact that Governor Walker defeated Governor Parnell (and Conoco Phillips attorney)  in November thus upsetting the easy pass for oil companies in the governor's office, likely contributes to the legislators' animosity towards Walker.

Walker, on the other hand, has a  BS degree in Business Management from Lewis and Clark College and his JD from the University of Puget Sound School of Law (now Seattle University.)  Practicing law you get to see the inner details of how companies operate. It can be brutal and nasty.  Walker understands that the oil companies' loyalty lies with their shareholders, not with the state of Alaska.

Like a few past Republican governors - Hammond and Hickel come to mind - he's not a patsy for the oil companies.  He understands that the state and oil companies are potential partners in a deal now and then, but in the long term, they have conflicting interests.  The state has an interest in getting the most possible revenue from our natural resources and the oil companies' interest is to do the same.  Some level of cooperation might be beneficial for both parties, but there is a point where each party must look after its own interests separately.

I'd also note that the oil companies spend a fair amount of money helping friendly legislators get elected, and then more for lobbyists to help those legislators figure out how to vote.  We saw how all that worked in 2006 courtesy of FBI tapes that recorded some of those normally out of the spotlight transactions. 

We could think of the legislature is the state's equivalent of a company's board of directors. 

I'm unaware of the state of Alaska paying to get its friends on the boards of directors of any oil companies and then pay for lobbyists to help them make decisions favorable to the state of Alaska.  Furthermore,  when we deal with oil companies, the state's books are public information.  The oil companies' books are mostly closed, even to state negotiators.  It's already a very unbalanced relationship.

I have not looked at the details of the various oil pipeline proposals.  I did, in 2008 hear the arguments for the deal with Trans Canada. But I' haven't stayed informed since then.  So I don't really have a clue which deal is the best.  The money to be invested in the back up plan sounds like a lot, but the numbers involved here are a lot.

I also was there when Byron Mallot talked about Walker's character and decency playing a big role in his becoming his running mate.  I don't see those qualities in Chenault.  He comes across, at least in how the media portray him, as more of a street fighter defending his personal turf. 

That doesn't mean Walker is right.  He's been a long time champion for his pipeline option. 
But all things considered,  it just seems to me that Walker has the interests of the people of Alaska more in mind than do Chenault and Meyer.  His stance with the oil companies is more like 'trust but verify' whereas the Chenault Meyer stance seems to be just 'trust.' 

Mike Chenault Doesn't Like Alaska Being Treated Like A Colony

Nathaniel Herz wrote in an ADN article the other day: 

"House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, unveiled a resolution Thursday that takes aim at the state of Washington 'or any entity that would treat this state like a mere colony.'”

My question to Chenault is this:  "Does 'any entity' include oil companies?"

Ideology Is A Bitch

 It allows you to answer all questions with slogans.  It allows you to ignore facts.  It lets you get away without serious analysis and it lets you do horrendous harm to civilization without guilt.

In ideological capitalism, government is bad.  Taxes are bad.  Deficits are bad.  Corporations are good.

Those are part of the mantra of the far wrong.

With these phrases guiding Republicans in Washington and Juneau,  programs that took years to nurture and grow, and which provide benefits not only to the immediate recipients, but to society (and ironically that budget deficit) are being whacked.

The wrecking crews cannot distinguish between the flowers and weeds.  The projects that tend survive are the projects favored by corporate interests. 

There is a commonality between the Republican use of ideology to destroy everything they can that smacks of 'government' and other evils in their interpretation of capitalism,  and the ISIS use of ideology to destroy everything that smacks of idolatry or other evils in their interpretation of the Qur'an.  

So, in the far wrong budget, the military and war and destruction (Lockheed Martin,  Northrup Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and many others) get increased funding.  Programs that grow, nurture, and protect the most vulnerable humans (Headstart, foodstamps, health programs) get dismantled or destroyed. (see NY Times for example.) 

Just like ISIS terrorists who demolish ancient statues that took skill and time to build and, because of their survival for millennia, give us clues to understanding our human cultural origins, the Republicans are attempting to destroy social programs that have taken sweat and ingenuity and dedication to build.  Destruction is easy.  If you've spent time with a two-year old, you know they can knock things down far more easily than they can build things up. They also repeat the word 'no' over and over again.

In Alaska, today's ADN has a front page article about Rep. Lynn Gattis' amendment to scrap WWAMI* - the program Alaska uses, in lieu of a medical school, to grow Alaskan doctors.  The program is a cooperative program with other northwestern states to share medical school investments.  The article says that 14% of Alaska doctors are products of the WWAMI program.  Considering how small the program is, that's quite a bit.  If we consider the costs of just recruiting doctors to rural Alaska, WWAMI is a major investment in lower future costs.  Unlike the ISIS ideologists who condemn the statues they destroy, Gattis at least acknowledges WWAMI and other programs being cut as "great programs. .  .  We just can't afford them."   A variation of the mantra. 

The Institute for Social And Economic Research (ISER) has been predicting the decline in oil revenue for 30 years.  Technology changes and the increase in oil prices have delayed the inevitable to some extent.  And the legislature has at times heeded that warning, and set up rainy day funds.   The Alaska state budget has tripled since 2000, most significantly in latter years when the Republicans have had their greatest power in Juneau.   They funded all sorts of capital projects for the benefit of their contractor supporters - the Knik Arm Bridge, renewed studies for a Susitna dam, a road from Juneau to a mine that Sen. MacKinnon's husband has significant (in terms of money if not percentage) interests in, a loopy program to save orphaned moose.   In my own neighborhood a road has been given $20 million in last minute maneuvering in Juneau - a road that all the community councils in the area have strongly opposed.

While some legislators are raising the politically sensitive issues of increasing revenues (sales taxes, income taxes, marijuana taxes, and dipping into the Permanent Fund), most are either ideologically opposed to such measures or too timid to be leaders.  Instead they will destroy programs like WWAMI.  Dr. Tom Nighswander is quoted in the ADN article,

" . . .  it took years to build the program's capacity to keep students in Alaska for the first two years. He said he fears that if the program disappears, it would not be able to bring back all of the clinical faculty it currently prizes.
“If you dismantle the program, you can’t restart it again,” he said. "

Ideology is a bitch.  It allows you to answer all questions with slogans.  It allows you to ignore facts.  It lets you get away without serious analysis and it lets you do horrendous harm to civilization without guilt

NOTE:  This is more of an opinion piece than I normally do, but sometimes stuff gets so thick, you have to stand up and call it out.  I realize that the ISIS metaphor will attract criticism, but I'm focused on one aspect of ISIS - their ability to use ideology to justify everything they do.  You can kill directly, immediately, using violence and personally drawing blood and you can kill in the long term by destroying institutions that nurture humans, maintain health, and save lives. 

*Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho

Seattle's Politicians, Unlike Alaska's, Don't Fawn Over Shell And Arctic Drilling

The Stranger has an article that says Seattle Mayor (and the city council is also on board):

". . .  directed the Seattle Department of Planning and Development to investigate the Port of Seattle's decision to make Seattle the homeport for Shell's Arctic drilling fleet.

"Any project of this apparent significance to our industrial lands must go through the appropriate review," Murray said in a statement. 'It's important that the public and surrounding businesses are informed of all the possible impacts of this lease—both economic and environmental—and that these impacts are sufficiently disclosed and evaluated. This is why I’m directing DPD to conduct a thorough review of the Terminal 5 proposal and determine if the anticipated activities at the terminal involving the Shell drilling fleet require new permits before it can proceed.'"

Did you get that?  'It's important that the public and surrounding businesses are informed of all the possible impacts of this lease."  Our former governor was doing everything he could, along with his then Attorney General/Commissioner of Natural Resources, now Senator Sullivan, to prevent local communities from knowing and having a say about anything. 

Some politicians, it seems, think beyond the short term possible job bump, to the bigger issues. 

Are we now going to start hearing about Seattle overreach from some of our Alaskan politicians? 

Thanks S, for the link. 

"If . . .we start getting blood on the highways, we may have to go back."

So quotes ADN reporter Nathaniel Herz, Alaska representative Craig Johnson, on the reassigning of the Alaska Troopers highway patrol unit to general patrol jobs.

I noticed this phrase because I think language matters.  Blood on the highway.  Sounds like a custodial job, cleaning up stains on the road.  The human beings who are hurt, maimed, or killed are erased and all that's left are blood stains.  It's a minor issue, unless people start spilling fluids on the road.

But the words you use, the details you focus on reflect what you hear, see, and think.  A Psychology Today article begins:

"The closest one person can get to understanding another person's thoughts is to listen to the words that he or she speaks or writes. Certain words reflect the behavioral characteristics of the person who spoke or wrote them."

A Scientific American article begins:

NO ONE DOUBTS that the words we write or speak are an expression of our inner thoughts and personalities. 

But both articles go on to focus more on the grammatical function of words than what I'm addressing here.   Rep. Johnson's callousness about the human cost of accidents is a signal.  No, it's not the only clue we should use, but it's worth putting into the evidence file on Johnson.

Nor am I saying the switch in duties for these highway patrol officers is a bad thing.  I suspect driving up and down lonely stretches of highway is costly and yields relatively little in documentable achievements for the Troopers.  Things that don't happen - like accidents because people know the troopers are around - often don't get measured.  And technology can track people violating the rules very efficiently as I learned in California when I used what I thought was a car pool lane that turned out to be a toll lane.  But Anchorage folks thought having cameras track speeders around schools was 'unfair' and got that policy withdrawn.  While I suspect most drivers would love to have those crazy drivers who pass at high speeds on curves on the Seward Highway caught, they wouldn't like cameras catching them going 75 mph.  But I digress.  This is about language.  And to some extent about gathering evidence so that we don't judge public officials on just one incident.  I did watch Johnson on the State Affairs committee when I covered the legislature in Juneau in 2010.  He's rational as the title quote suggests - it's simply a cost benefit analysis between 'blood on the highways' and redeploying troopers.  I don't recall Johnson displaying much emotional connection to issues.  The most significant piece of evidence I picked up on Johnson that year was in the legislative travel disclosures.

 Johnson reported the, by far, most costly sponsored travel for 2009:

"11-20 10-27 Rep. Johnson  $17,974 Saudi Arabian Government; NCSL requested Speaker of House to send an Oil and Gas representative to participate in a study tour. This was a trade mission to Saudi Arabia with the goal of increasing relations between USA and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; airfare, lodging, meals and ground transportation; Riyadh, Damman, and Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"

I'd also like to compliment Nathaniel Herz whose work I've noticed as he covered the Anchorage Assembly for the last couple years or so.  He does a great job of reporting both the facts and the context.  And he's doing the same in Juneau now.  His choice to highlight this particular quote in this article - I'm sure a lot was said in that committee meeting that isn't in the article - says to me that he thought it as interesting as I do.  And I'm a little jealous of him down their in Juneau with the whole legislature offering him such an array of newsworthy action and a chance to see the lawmakers close up and personal.

And I've been impressed to see articles (such as Jan 19 and Feb 5) with a joint by-line of Herz and Pat Forgey of the Juneau Empire.  I don't recall that sort of cross-paper cooperation before.   Of course, some of the responsibility goes to the owners of the Alaska Dispatch News, which has a lot of reporters covering state and local news.

OK, I can't help adding one more thought about the article.  It mentions that this highway unit was formed in 2009 with federal money.

"It was entirely funded by the federal government at first, though now the state has to pay about half its cost."

One of the key arguments Parnell used against expanding Medicaid was that the state would have to pay part of the costs after the original federal money was gone.  That didn't seem to be a problem when it came to getting  money for law enforcement.  And this shows that the program can be cut if we can't afford it down the line.

The Mysteries Of Gas Pricing And Our Reactions - Stock Market To Drop When Prices Go Up And When They Go Down

I just filled my mom's car in the nearby Costco here in LA.


$2.39.



We all know that gas prices have been dropping and that Alaska is lagging behind in that fall.  Anchorage Gas Prices reports the lowest prices in Anchorage right now are $.45 higher than the lowest price in LA.  (And Alaska has an $.08 tax per gallon while California has $.41 tax per gallon.  Without the tax, the price difference is $.33 more.

Screenshot from Anchorage Gas Prices 12/23/14 11am Alaska time

I find it interesting that the Dimond Costco is $.04 cheaper than the the DeBarr Costco.  Is that because one was checked one hour ago and the other two hours ago?  I decided to call DeBarr Costco and the person who answered the phone checked with the manager and said that the two stores do price differently and they try to match the prices in the neighborhood.  She couldn't tell me whether the two Costco's order gas separately, or not, but her answer does imply that the price of gas reflects, not what they pay, but what gas costs close by their location.  But this is all really an aside.

I did start a post on gas prices back in October and this seems like a good place to add those thoughts in too.

Large Drop [In Oil Prices] A Boon To Consumers But Could Pose Long-Term Economic Problems 

That was the subtitle of an AP story published in the ADN in October this year.  I couldn't find a linkable ADN copy of the article, but here's the headline for the same article at The Great Falls Tribune:  "Why drop in oil prices has downside for US economy." 

If you're scratching your head about this, that's good.  It means you're thinking, and possibly somewhere in your subconscious you've stored old headlines from another time.  Like this one from CBS-DFW in February 2013:  "Fast Rising Gas Prices Could Hurt Recovering Economy."   


Dropping prices are bad and rising prices are bad.  So, would slowly rising prices be ok?  What about stable prices?  Are the people writing these headlines just using the knowledge that bad news gets more readers?  Are they reading the articles?  

Notice that both headlines include qualifiers - "could" and "may."

The October article says the lower prices are good for consumers, for big energy consumers like airlines and manufacturers.

"But a sharp fall in energy prices often results from weakening economic growth, and the benefit of lower fuel costs ins't enough to offset it."

That sounds like the falling energy are CAUSED by a weakening economy, NOT the CAUSE of it.   It seems to me, except for oil companies and oil producing states like Alaska, a drop in oil prices has to be good for most businesses and thus for consumers, which should help the economy down the line, though stockbrokers who don't like uncertainty sell when anything changes.  Or maybe these kinds of headlines means they can churn the stocks in their portfolios.

Conclusions I can draw from this:

1.  Despite the assurances from the oil companies and our former governor and other oil company supporters, the oil companies squeeze as much out of us as they can and Alaska is simply a place to get oil and they'll tell us whatever they think people will believe.

2.  Costco also isn't your friend either.  Their prices don't reflect their costs, but what they think they can get away with.  So don't assume it's cheaper because you're at Costco.

3.  The media generally either do not have a clue about economics and/or they don't care what's true, they care about headlines that sell copy.

Of course, none of these conclusions should be a surprise to anyone paying attention - but unfortunately, in Alaska anyway, not enough people who vote are paying attention.

AIFF 2014: Documentaries In Competition - From Seeds and Shields to North Dakota,Coney Island, Mala Mala, Water, and Dismantling Dams

This is an overview of the documentaries the jury selected to be in competition.

How Do Films Get Selected? 
First the films are selected from all those submitted.  Then a certain number from each category is  chosen to be 'in competition'' meaning these are the finalists eligible for an award in the category.

How Many Docs Are There?
The documentary category has, if I counted right, 20 selected films (5 under 30 minutes and 15 over 30 minutes)  and 7 are 'in competition.'  Five are longer documentaries (77-89 minutes) and  two are shorter (20 and 35 minutes).

Most of the documentaries are from the US.  There's one identified as Puerto Rico/US, one as Switzerland, and two as Canada.  Not all that international this year.  


My Goal Here: I haven't seen the films.  So I'm just trying to give you a sense of what the films are and how they are scheduled.  I'm trying to find  interesting info on the films, but I'm also recognizing that time is ticking and there are other categories and films to cover.  And these are just the films in competition.

The documentary category has been very strong in recent years.  Even though films aren't in competition, it doesn't mean they aren't worth seeing.  

So check them all out. Here's a list of all the documentaries selected for the festival.

1)  Coney Island: Dreams For Sale

Alessandra Giordano

USA√

80m

Fri. Dec. 12  7pm    Alaska Exp. Small

Sat Dec.  13 12pm  Anchorage Museum

From the Brooklyn Daily, here's the start of their article on how this film was made:>

"The movie is the first feature-length work by filmmaker Alessandra Giordano, who originally intended to make a five-minute short. Giordano, who hails from Italy, was taking a film course at New York University in the summer of 2008, when the fight over Coney’s future was raging, and a friend suggested that she should visit the area.

“They told me it was a place I would enjoy, a place that’s different and interesting and quirky,” said Giordano.

On that trip, Giordano met one of the main characters of her film, Coney carny Anthony Raimondi, owner of the now-defunct Jones Walk booth Gangster Cigars."

And the trailer:

Adapted from images in Divide In Concord press packet

2)  Divide In Concord

Kris Kaczo

USA√

82m
Fri. Dec. 12  3pm Bear Tooth

Sat.Dec. 13  3pm Alaska Exp. Small

From the film's press packet, here's part of the synopsis:

"Jean Hill, a fiery 84-year-old widow and mother of four, wants to ban the sale of bottled water from Concord. Her path begins when her grandson tells her about the disastrous environmental effects of the empty plastic bottles.
Jean presents a bylaw to ban the sale of single-serve plastic bottles at the 2010 and 2011 Town Meetings. After losing by seven votes in 2011, she vows to continue the crusade with neighbor and Harvard Law Grad, Jill Appel. If enacted, the law would be the first of its kind in the world.
But all are not in agreement with the ban. Merchants are wary of the bylaw. Philanthropist, mother, model and celebrity publicist Adriana Cohen takes the fight to the spotlight, calling the ban an attack on freedom. With billions of dollars at stake, The International Bottled Water Association sends in the cavalry."

 The site also includes words from the director, Kris Kaczo:

"The entire documentary was self-funded. It was tough; our van was broken into and died the day of Town Meeting, our hotel almost burnt down and we had two eerie ghost experiences at the Colonial Inn. But we battled on and feel that we honored the story and the town.
Concord is the home of the American Revolution as well as significant literary and environmental movements. Residents are expected to know about Thoreau. A favorite quote became “Heaven is under your feet as well as over your head.” The film is a tribute to Concord. We do not take sides on the ban. Both sides have compelling arguments. "

I'd note that anyone who would like an answer to Adriana Cohen's question, might want to check out the documentary Tapped which was in  AIFF 2009. 



3) Mala Mala
Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini
USA√ 
87m
Mon. Dec. 8,   8pm Bear Tooth
Wed. Dec. 10  7:30 pm  Alaska Exp Small

From their Kickstarter page:

"As a trans person in Puerto Rico, not only does your experience beg the question “am I Puerto Rican, am I American, or am I both?” but also “am I a male, am I a female, or am I both?” This vagueness, this in-betweenness is what most fascinates us as filmmakers, and with this project we hope to share the stories of people who's voices may not otherwise be near enough to reach your ears.

At its core, this film is a people piece.  We are interested in the relationship between the internal and external being, the dynamics between performance and gender, and the power of self-discovery." 

Excerpt from an interview with the designer/fashion website Oak:

"OAK: What do you think was the biggest revelation, or biggest thing that you learned about the trans community and yourselves, when you reflect on the entire experience?

DS: One thing for me personally is that I feel so much more confident in terms of how I understand my own gender. I’ve started to look at certain aspects of myself as maybe being a bit feminine, and I love those parts of myself now. And thinking about myself along those lines puts me in a more complex and interesting position than someone who identifies as something that exists inside a box. I think I’ve learned a lot about the ways we can play with, and grapple with, and fuck gender. Deconstructing gender gives us more room to play with it and understand it and have fun with it.

AS: For me, throughout the project, I think [our subjects] didn’t realize we were watching them living [over the course of 2 1/2 years]. It was like studying. I don’t think we normally do that to other people, so it was kind of a privilege being [so present] in these private lives. One thing about it was that we were seeing their transformations. They had something they desperately needed that was either going to lead themselves to killing themselves, or total depression, or to [becoming who they were]. And we were able to meet them on the other side, and see them about to become what they wanted to become. That power of choice was something I really didn’t understand fully until I met them.

DS: During one interview Ivana told us that in school people would ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she would always say a police man just to get by. What she actually wanted to say was that she wanted to be a woman when she grew up. That really reminded me that the trans experience is universal in a sense that it’s achieving a goal, and becoming what you want to be. It’s no different than that."

4)  Seeds of Time
Sandy McLeod
USA√

Adapted from images at Seeds For Time website

77m
Sat Dec.6  1pm  Anchorage Museum
Thu Dec. 11  5:30pm  Alaska Exp. Small

From the California Academy of Science about McLeod's visit there:

. . . It began in 2007, when McLeod discovered an article in the New Yorker about Cary Fowler, Senior Advisor to the Global Crop Diversity Trust. McLeod was immediately hooked on the story. For the filmmaker, it was time to buckle down and learn about agriculture—both pre- and post-industrialization. “You immerse yourself in the subject,” she explains. “You come to it like an audience member, not knowing much and learning all the time. It was a great learning experience.”

McLeod challenges the audience to think about the industrialization of our food system. “We don’t grow for nutrition to begin with: why? Everything nutritional is taken out, including the antioxidants. Taking out the nutrients can cause the food to go rancid, so then you have to add preservatives. If you just took the whole grain and milled it with all that good stuff still in it, we would have all the nutrients.” She points out that vitamin companies profit from the ‘enriching’ process of reintroducing vitamins, and also reminds us that the entire processed foods industry is not about creating nutrient-rich foods, but about monetizing food production.

These discoveries made McLeod an advocate of sustainable agriculture. She champions the concept of seed vaults—the process of cataloging information about the variety of seeds on the planet and saving physical samples for perpetuity. She discusses the idea of a seed library from which users could ‘check out’ seeds, cultivate the plant, and then re-file the next generation of seeds. “Growing the same things in different environments will help to get some diversity back.” She is also a proponent of citizens getting involved in policy changes that protect seed diversity, limit the amount of food processing, or otherwise help us return to a more robust food systems model. “Resilience is what you need. We cannot sustain this, it’s not sustainable, how do we get it to a place where it supports itself.”

A movie about saving earth's genetic kitchen in the face of climate change.  Nothing too serious here.  You can see the trailer here.

Here's a bit from the director's statement:

"When I met Cary Fowler a whole new world opened up to me. I realized that, although I thought I knew a thing or two about food, the issues that he was grappling with were entirely new to me. And that those issues, largely concerning food security, are issues that anyone who likes to eat should not only know about, but have a say in too.

Cary Fowler is a guy who has almost single-handedly created something of great value for the Global Community. I can’t think of many other global projects that have that kind of absolute value for all of us that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds."

More on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault here.




5)  Shield and Spear
Petter Ringbom
USA√
89m
Sat. Dec 6  5:30pm Bear Tooth
Sun. Dec 7 1:00pm  Alaska Exp. Large

Excerpt from OKayafrica just before the African premiere of the film in Durban, South Africa July 2014.

". . . In gaining that trust, Ringbom has tapped into many of the important dialogues taking place in South Africa, the result being the coherent and incisive conversation central to Shield and Spear.What do you think?

“In some ways the outsider-ship can work both in your favour and against you,” reflects Ringbom. “I think people are more comfortable opening up to a complete outsider. But there’s a duality to it also, where you encounter that question of why are you coming here and taking our stories? It’s something I thought about a lot. It comes with a responsibility not to be exploitative essentially.”What do you think?

Remaining firmly behind the camera, Ringbom has allowed his accomplished cinematography to tell one story, leaving the rest up to the earnest dialogue of his subjects. Together the two combine effectively in capturing the paradoxes present at the heart of any discussions pertaining to freedom in South Africa.What do you think?

“Something which surprised me the most was how emotional this project would be for me,” admits Ringbom. “Maybe it was due to how inspiring, genuine and open the people I met were. All I know is that I haven’t felt this emotionally overloaded in any other project I’ve worked on.”

6)The Strong People
Heather Hoglund
USA√
35m
Sat. Dec. 6  3:30pm Alaska Exp Small   (with White Earth, and other short docs)
Fri. Dec. 12 5:00pm Alaska Exp. Large (with White Earth, and other short docs)

From The Strong People website:

"The Strong People is an award-winning documentary chronicling the largest dam removal project in US history on the Elwha River in Olympic Peninsula, Washington. It is told through the eyes of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe that has long resided in the area, looking specifically at how these dams have affected the life ways of their people. 

The indigenous Klallam have long had their way of life impeded by the dams’ existence. The disruption the dams caused to the river’s salmon runs were not only an economic disaster for the tribe, who relied on the fish for commerce, but also wreaked havoc on the Klallam’s cultural beliefs, of which the salmon are an integral part."

From what I can tell, Heather Hoagland is working at Wander, Wonder, Wilderness in Boston.  Here's what their website says about Hoagland:

"Heather graduated from Emerson College in 2013. She is currently a freelance documentary filmmaker in Boston. Her senior thesis project, The Strong People, documenting the largest dam removal in United States History, has picked up numerous accolades at film festivals and events worldwide. Heather’s passion lies in creating cross platform projects concerning environmental issues. An avid runner and cyclist in the city, your only chance of seeing her is in brief glimpses as she zips around the city to her next destination." 

Here's the trailer:






7) White Earth
J. Christian Jensen
USA√
20m

Sat. Dec. 6  3:30pm Alaska Exp Small   (with The Strong People, and other short docs)

Fri. Dec. 12 5:00pm Alaska Exp. Large (with The Strong People, and other short docs)

This film won  a  2014 STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD Silver Medal in the Documentary category.

From a review by Whitney McIntosh in the Stanford Arts Review:

"Although he initially wanted to interview workers in the oil industry, he met resistance in a suspicious bureaucracy of permission-giving and media-anxiety. He thus “shifted to looking at the way that these industrial processes existed in the landscape,” a landscape both natural and emotional. He said that he “wanted it to be a nuanced, intimate exploration of people, and children,” spurring more prevalent themes of juxtaposing industry against environment, technology against nature. The male oil workers exist in the background, while what are normally peripheral voices of children and family members are brought center stage, and express themselves with remarkable clarity. 

Although Jensen had made plans to focus on a single family, a week before he was to start production, Jensen received a call from the father explaining changed family circumstances and their inability to continue with the film. He recalls, “I had to sort of pivot really quick to do something else. And fortunately I had cast a really wide net when I was doing my research, and I had met a couple children, and there was one child in particular, whose name was James that I met by chance.” We meet James, an adolescent boy living with his father, from the outset of the film. His commentary is unusual and compelling, as he is sharply conscious of the central paradoxes of the circumstances of the town of White Earth, which is slowly growing, but without the infrastructural capacity for this growth."

>


Scheduling
It's often hard to figure out how to see all the films in competition in a category.  At least the documentaries aren't scheduled at the same time (except the two shorter ones  - White Earth and The Strong People which play in the same program so it's easy to seem them both.)

I've made a calendar of the documentaries in competition.

Click to enlarge

This makes it look easy.  But there are lots of other documentaries you might want to see.  And then there are feature films, animated films, shorts, etc.  But this is a starting point.  Once more, here's a list of all the documentaries selected for the festival.

Alaskans Need To Act Like Grown Ups And Sit Down With A Competent Financial Planner

Instead, we will probably stay willfully ignorant and go on spending until the money runs out with a battered Permanent Fund our only nest egg for the future.  We have lots of excuses:

• "My vote doesn't make a difference"
• "The politicians are all corrupt"
• "The cut in oil taxes will produce more revenue"
• "Don't interrupt, I'm in the middle of the game."

And our legislature is only slightly better informed because they have to attend hearings where experts speak.  But they are skilled - as we all are - in hearing only those things that reaffirm what they already believe.  And the Republicans don't have to listen to anyone else anyway because they have big majorities in the state house and senate and they have the governor's mansion. 

Alaskans have been wallowing in oil money since a decade or so after oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay in 1968.  Our population two years later - from the 1970 census - was 302,853.  The 2010 census put us at 710,231. 

That means that over half our population came after the oil boom began and doesn't know the times when Alaska had an income tax, tight budgets, and no Permanent Fund (whose $1884 dividend checks this year are making their way to every Alaskan as I write.)

But the oil revenues are going down and our spending is going up.  Despite the rhetoric of our so-called fiscally conservative Republican dominated legislature and governor, they've passed the biggest budget deficits in Alaska's history.

We have serious issues to face, such as:

• What is the range of potential future state oil revenues?    
• What have been the drivers behind the increases in the state budget over the past decade, what upward pressures are likely in the future and what are the constraints to cutting state spending?    
• How might big-ticket capital projects like the proposed large-diameter natural gas pipeline/LNG export project, the Susitna-Watana hydroelectric project and the Knik Arm Crossing affect future state spending and revenues?    
• How much revenue could Alaska raise from new taxes, and what are the pros and cons of different taxes?    
• What is the Permanent Fund for? How are our uses of Permanent Fund earnings including dividends related to our other fiscal choices?    
• What would a sustainable fiscal system look like, and how could we get to it?   

These issues will be discussed Saturday, October 4, 2014 at Loussac Library from 9am-5:30pm in a public forum hosted by

Alaska Common Ground, a non-profit whose mission is:

To cultivate Alaska’s common ground for “government of the people, by the people, for the people” by engaging diverse citizens in active pursuit of informed mutual understanding and agreement on vital issues of public concern.

and UAA's Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) - the foremost social science research unit dedicated to studying current issues in Alaska.


My guess is that between 100 and 200 people will attend.  The crowd will be predominantly white, over 50 years old, and already politically active. 

Where will the other 224,000 registered Anchorage voters be?   They'll have plenty of excuses because they don't want to think about this stuff.  This is grown up stuff and Alaskans like playing with their toys - their guns, their snow machines, their video games, their fancy running shoes and $2000 bicycles.  Hey, life is good, don't disturb me. 

The LA Times had an article Sunday about a 67 year old retired school teacher whose annual income from her pension and investments is $58,000, but she has been spending at a rate that puts her in jeopardy of being homeless in seven years.  The article discusses her shock after having her budget examined by a financial adviser.

Alaska  is that school teacher - we've had money to burn for the last 40 years and we've gotten accustomed to doing just that.  We aren't poor and we could easily live within our means, if we have a heart to heart with a good financial planner and follow the prescribed path.

But we're so busy coming up with ways to spend that money - with lobbyists in Juneau concocting all sorts of bridge and dam projects to get state money spent on mega-projects that will benefit their construction company clients - that we aren't seriously looking at what we're going to do when all the reserve funds run out and we find that our schools are lacking and our state - like the school teacher - can no longer pay the rent. 

Unlike the teacher who can make all the decisions necessary to secure her future on her own and who will have to live with the consequences, Alaskans have to get together and talk this stuff through.  And just as many Alaskans came here for the jobs oil wealth made possible, many will leave when those goodies are gone.

We have an opportunity to be grown-ups and make the hard decisions we need to make.  But I bet fewer than 200 will take the time to start facing the future on Saturday. 

And Alaska Common Ground, whose members I admire and who have good hearts, is going to have to figure out new ways to reach out to Alaskans.  An all day face-to-face forum is a great way to learn.  But that won't make a dent unless they have a plan of mobilization for after the forum.

They need to start involving more than the same old people.   Common Ground needs to get young folks to help plan how to use social media and popular culture to reach the people whose future will be most affected.

We need to develop a Grand Theft Alaska game to teach Alaskans how to save the oil wealth for future generations of Alaskans. 

So Predictable

August 20, 2014  (after Prop. 1 which would have repealed the big oil company tax break lost):

"Gov. Sean Parnell says it’s now time for the oil industry to increase its investment in oil field projects that create jobs for Alaskans."

September 8, 2014

"ExxonMobil told state regulators again last week not to expect an increase in oil production on the North Slope, arguing it is a “reasonable approach” to conclude that a long-term decline is continuing."*

That this was going to happen was so obvious that 89,608 Alaskans voted "Yes" on Prop. 1 on August 18.  That's only 10,147 fewer than those who voted "No" despite the stars being lined up for the "No" campaign:

• There were no real contests on the Democratic ballot to get Yes votes out.
• There were a number of interesting contests - particularly the Senate race - on the Republican ballot

Thus many more Republicans were likely to vote

• The "No" campaign spent 30 or 40 times more money than the "Yes" campaign

So Gov, a question.  What are you planning on doing when the other oil companies do not increase their investments in oil fields?   You going to say you need more proof like you did with the National Guard?  Even if you have proof, what will you do?  Being loyal to your friends is a virtue, Gov, but only if you have better quality friends. 

*To be fair, the article also said that Tesoro challenged Exxon's prediction. 

Vampire History of Alaska - Why You Should Vote Yes on Prop 1 - UPDATED

[UPDATE Sept 25, 2018:  This November there is a new Prop 1 on the Alaska ballot.  This one would restore the public's ability to have input on projects that would impact them and the environment.  Input that was taken away, in part, when Republicans eliminated the Coastal Zone Management projections that every other coastal state still has.  Naturally (not the best choice of words here) the mineral and oil extraction industry is strongly opposed to this Proposition.  This post explains the historical patterns of non-Alaskans exploiting Alaska resources and taking most of the profits out of the state, so it's appropriate for understanding why we are having this battle yet again.  Mining and oil (particularly) companies - most headquartered outside of Alaska - don't want to have to deal with pesky locals who don't want their water and air and fish messed with unless there are careful reviews and guarantees that the project will be done right.

Go ahead and read this.  Once again the right response, from my perspective, is to vote yes.  Construction companies along with the extraction industry are making doomsday predictions how this proposition will stop all development dead.  Same arguments they made against environmentalist fighting the original oil pipeline.  All the environmentalists did was make the pipeline safer, though even that hasn't stopped oil spills here and there, not to mention Exxon-Valdez.  THIS POST"S DISCUSSION AT THE BOTTOM IS FOR THE 2014 PROPOSITION 1.  BUT THE VAMPIRE HISTORY IS STILL RELEVANT TO THE 2018 PROPOSITION 1, ]

[UPDATE Feb 21, 2018:  Note, this post is dated 2014 and this is a very different Prop 1 than we have an the ballot in April 2018.  Definitely Vote NO on this year's Prop. 1.]

Everyone knows vampires don't show up on photos.

"According to many tales a vampire will cast no reflection when in front of a mirror; in addition, a vampire's image can not be caught on film. So what then of digital cameras?

Before we tackle that question, we should first know why the myth exists in the first place. Mirrors were thought to show a person's soul. As a vampire has no soul (unless he is Angel) we must logically conclude that there will be no reflection. The same hold true for film and photographs - they too were thought to be creating an image of the soul. (Interestingly enough, some people were even afraid to have a picture taken of them, for fear of having their soul stolen!)

Based on these assumptions we must then conclude that a vampire would not show up in a picture taken by a digital camera for any mechanical device that reproduces an image of a being is actually only capturing their essence or soul. "  (From Everything2)

But I  frequently warn readers not to believe everything they read online.  In fact, this post is made possible by recent advances in vampirology and in technology.  It's been discovered that vampires actually have a negative soul. (Sorry, the link keeps crashing, and as you read on, you'll understand why.)  That vampire knowledge along with new technology that can find the vampire traces left in old photos,  allows historians to reprocess historical pictures (and even drawings) to reveal the vampires who were actually there all along.  This process is not yet available to the public, but through a friend of a friend,  I was able to give them five photos and one picture. That's all I can tell you.

Timber Vampires

The most successful of the ones I submitted has to be this Timber Vampire picture.  I used an historical photo I got from
AlaskaNativeStudies.  Other images came back looking like shoddy photoshopped work.  But the technology is in its infancy.  Additional sources for this and the other images are at the bottom. 


Of course, we all know that famous phrase, often attributed to Churchill, "History is written by the victors."  And so it is, that while vampires have been involved in much of world history, they have done a great job in scrubbing their malicious presence from the history books.  Of course, vampires do not die of natural causes, so they live a very long time.  That gives them a great advantage over humans.  They understand the rhythms of history.  They understand the weaknesses of human beings.  And they exploit them with deadly precision.

Currently Alaska is under a massive vampire attack as they use every trick in their arsenal to get Alaska voters to vote no on Prop 1.  This proposition would overturn SB 21 that gives oil companies a huge tax break and cuts the benefits Alaskans would get from their ownership of state oil.  It's vastly complicated and in this post I just want to put this particular human/vampire encounter into the context of the vampire history of Alaska. 

The basic pattern of vampire invasion of Alaska goes like this:

• The vampires sense an Alaskan resource is currently worth exploiting.
• They use any means necessary.  Earliest attempts used great violence, but that was before Alaska was well connected to the world and before media covered what was happening.  

Their schemes became more subtle as mass media and communication evolved.  Typically,

• they use the legal process to lay claim to resources
• they disguise themselves inside corporations 
• they infect a select and useful group of Alaskans such as legislators, business people, Republicans, and media to work for them
• they brain wash as many of the remaining Alaskans as possible to believe the vampire corporation(s) is 
• creating jobs, 
• bringing wealth to Alaska, 
• retrieving natural resources critical to US security
• that anyone opposing them is a communist, liar, environmentalist, or a combination of all the evil terms their focus groups discover, and 
• those evil opponents' agenda is to destroy Alaska and the civilized world
• they cause discord between urban and rural, Alaska Native and Non Native, public employees and private employees, etc.
• they deviously convince the poor and undereducated that the interests of the rich are their interests
• they destroy the land, the water, the flora, the fauna to get what they want as cheaply as possible
• they get their infected legislators to pass laws to restrict citizen participation, to hamper environmental protections, to build infrastructure needed to exploit the resource
• they sprinkle crumbs from their bloody profits on public buildings and on arts and charities leaving them indelibly marked with their corporate logos
• and they send the blood of Alaska back Outside to their vampire bosses

Some examples of vampire invasions in the last several centuries of Alaska history:

Seal Hunter Vampires

Among the first vampires to come to Alaska were those from Russia who killed seals and otters and Aleuts to enrich themselves in the fur trade.


Vampire Miners

Gold Mining Vampires

Minerals have been a favorite target of vampires in Alaska.  Above are some gold mining vampires.  Remember we can trace the pattern of blood sucking listed above in each of these waves of vampire.

Vampire Miners

Copper mining is another example.  In the case above, JP Morgan and the Guggenheim family vampires managed to mine $200 million (1930 dollars) of copper blood out of Alaska.  I'd note that I discovered, doing this post, that there's a whole special class of vampire miner  that tend to look more like computer game icons: 

Vampire Miners appear in cavern-level biomes and follow the Fighter AI. They wear (but do not drop) a Mining Helmet, which provides a small amount of light around them. This light can sometimes reveal sealed caves, much like blooming Blinkroot. Vampire miners can break down doors. Vampire Miners also have a brighter hue of red.  Vampire Miners are immune to the Poisoned debuff.

Fishing Vampires

Then there are the fishing vampires who have sucked the fish blood out of Alaska and sent it all Outside.  They infected some Alaskans, but many were - and still are - brought in from Outside. 





Timber Vampires

Getting the government to build roads, they clear cut forests, destroyed salmon streams, and generally sent raw timber away to be processed elsewhere. 










Oil Vampires

The largest current vampire invasion has been ongoing for over forty years.  The most visible damage of this invasion happened in 1989 in Prince William Sound.

Exxon Valdez Oil Vampire Work

Alaska's Current Vampire Threat Level

Image from here.

You can also see and hear the vampire handiwork today in newspapers, on television, on radio, on lawn signs as they use their huge corporate profits to convince Alaskans that if they don't vote no on Prop 1

• Alaskans will lose their jobs, 
• the oil companies will leave the state, 
• oil production will collapse, 
• income and sales taxes will be law
• everything that is good in Alaska will disappear.  

By Tuesday they'll be telling people Prop 1 will cause guns and penises to stop firing.

Just vampire business as usual in Alaska, as well as in their corporate colonies around the world.

Image from here.

The TRUTH?

If Prop 1 passes, none of those things will happen.  ACES will get revised in the next legislative session so that the tax rate at the high end will be adjusted.  And there will be enough money in the state budget to support schools and even reformed vampire support groups.  Sean, there's a way out.  The first step is

"admit to [your]self that something is seriously wrong in [your] life."

And where does Sarah Palin fit in here now that she officially supports Prop 1?  All I can say is there is a big difference between vampires and zombies.


Image sources:

Timber Vampire:
AlaskaNativeStudies
MLP Wikia
The Loneliest Vampire

Seal Hunter Vampire:
St. John's College, Cambridge

Gold Miner Vampires:
Media-Cache-AK

Copper Miner Vampire:
AlaskaDigitalArchives
Needcoolshoes
Zazzle

Fish Vampire:
Carmelfinley

Oil Vampire:
NOAA
AntiqueImages