" . . .it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair"

This book was published in November 26, 1859.  It takes place from 1775 through 1793 in Paris and London.   Dickens wrote about a period that began 85 years earlier and ended 67 years earlier.  He himself wasn't born until 1812, nineteen years after the end of the time he wrote about.  

Today, that would be like writing about the period between 1936 and 1954.  There are folks alive today who were alive in that period who could be consulted.  

Looking ahead, it would be like a writer in the year 2093 writing about events between 2008 and 2026.  How much of today's social media posts and videos will be available to that writer?

A Tale Of Two Cities  begins with this single sentence paragraph.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,  it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

 

It does seem to describe the times we're living in.  

And many of us might see similarities between the inside cover illustration and January 6, 2021.

It's still less than a year since that infamous day. But quickly it will be further and further behind us.    Most of us see it as a day of infamy when Donald Trump hoped to overthrow the election and install himself permanently in the White House. A troublingly noisy and large minority see it as a day when patriots tried to overthrow a democratic election.  I'm hoping it's the worst Trump legacy, but I worry there will be more and worse.  

How many years will it take for historians to give the verdict?  And how long will that verdict stick?

"

The National Archive Has Released 1491 Documents Related To JFK Investigation

 There are 150 pages of titles and each title (at least on the pages I looked at) were linkable. These were made available yesterday.  What I saw were reports of investigations on people that someone thought was suspicious.   For example there's a document on a Gilberto Portocarpo Lopez, who had the misfortune to return to Cuba to visit his ailing mother immediately after Kennedy's assassination.   The document seems to clear him of any connection to the assassination.  

page 7 of the document

Also interesting to some, might be 

• the editing notes on the document.  
•  the notes about how the CIA didn't share information because they didn't want to reveal how they got the information.  
• the names and bits of information on the people investigated, questioned, and the investigators might be of interest to people who are related to them

I also looked at testimony by William E. Colby, Director of the CIA before US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activity.  I would guess that most of this is already known or suspected.  This time I was smarter and included page numbers.  

 I suspect there isn't anything too interesting hidden in these many documents.  But I'm not a JFK Assassination buff. 

Here's some questioning about other assassinations.  

I get the sense that Colby is good at evasive answers and the Senators are good at knowing when they shouldn't press for better answers.  Of course I could be wrong, but that's what it feels like to me.  

The next two pages are about a meeting with Robert Kennedy where the CIA was practicing the live editing I felt in the previous page.  

If all this is top secret and being made public for the first time, then was was it marked "Photocopy from Gerald Ford Library"?  But I'm not going to nibble that bait.  

This trove of documents is a rabbit hole I really don't want to pursue any further.  There's a whole JFK assassination industry ready to do that.  But it was a good excuse to put off redistricting board lawsuits.  And to give readers an alternative time waster to Twitter.  And this blog.  

AK Redistricting Board September Schedule AND Links To Public Map Making Software

 I got two emails from Juli Lucky, a staff member of the Board today.  One announcing the September meetings and the other with links to the Map Making software that's available for public use.  

The Board adopted some deadlines in the meetings Monday and Tuesday:

• Constitutional 30 days after receiving official Census data they most have preimimaoy map
• This date was ambiguous this year because Census Bureau sent data August 12 but saw it was unofficial.  Then later said it was official.  So Board is a little behind, and 30 days is September 10.  So they've scheduled map making days leading up to the 10th.
• They also decided that independent map makers (members of the public and some organized groups working on alternative plans ought to have a little more time, so they've given them another week - to September 17 to get their maps in for consideration
• And so the board will look at those maps and decide which ones to adopt as part of the draft plans to share with the public
• They have 60 more days (from September 10) to adopt an official plan which will be November 10.  In the meantime, they will go on the road around Alaska to present the plans to the public and get their input - particularly on local situations that might violate some of the Alaska Constitutional requirements - particularly social-economic integration of districts.  Or that just might make more or less sensible districts. 

So here's the email with that schedule.  I'd note they met Monday and Tuesday at the Legislative Information Office  (LIO) in Anchorage which allowed for statewide video conferencing plus phone in lines.  They've scheduled the LIO again but caution that the legislature has priority for that location and they may end up in the Board's Offices in the University Mall which doesn't have - at this point - video conferencing.  

"The Alaska Redistricting Board adopted the following meeting schedule and announced that public testimony will be taken at the beginning and end of each board meeting. The intent is to have full day meetings at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office, but that is subject to change based on availability.  Meetings times and more detailed agendas will be forthcoming as they are finalized. 

 

September 7 – 9, 2021: Map Drawing Work Sessions

September 10, 2021: Discussion and Adoption of Draft Plan(s)

September 17, 2021: Presentations of Submitted (3rd Party) Plan(s)

September 21, 2021: Discussion and Adoption of Additional Draft Plan(s)"

 

I'd note the first day - September 7 - is also Rosh Hashanah which along with Yom Kippur ten days later are the two holiest days on the Jewish calendar.  

I've posted the link to the mapping software before, but here it is again.  I did play with it at home and again at the Board meeting yesterday.  For what it has to do, it's pretty simple.  But that's like saying Photoshop is simple.  It's easy to use, but takes a while to figure out.  I haven't found the instruction manual yet.  I'm following my granddaughter's way of learning how to use her mother's phone - just press every option and see what it does until I figure it out.  I'm not sure that will make me proficient enough in the time available to do anything useful.  But I'll keep trying and share if i get any great insights or breakthroughs.

We are pleased to announce that our public mapping tool has updated with new 2020 Census geography and population information. 

 

Public Mapping Tool: www.akredistrict.org/create

 

The public mapping tool is a user-friendly way to start drawing your own maps using the same geographic and population information as the Board. The tool uses a “paint brush” approach to color in census blocks with real time updates of the population of each proposed district showing how it compares to the “ideal” district population of 18,335. You can also add “data layers” to see existing boundaries such as current legislative districts, school districts and municipalities.

 

The Save Plan function produces a unique URL that can be shared with others and also has a button to start the process to submit your map to the Board.

 

The tool has been verified by our staff and compared to the population counts provided by the Department of Labor on their website (two screenshots are attached illustrating this test).  

 

Executive Director Peter Torkelson demonstrated this tool at the meeting this morning. If you missed the meeting, the video archive will be available soon through the Alaska Legislature’s page at www.akleg.gov under the “meetings tab” or via this link.

 

 

Juli Lucky

Staff, Alaska Redistricting Board

(907) 251-9295

Keeping Busy Doing Nothing - AK Press Club, Seedlings, Bike, Cooking, Redistricting, COVID, Spanish, Grandkids. . .

 Time seems to whiz by.  Suddenly it's Wednesday and I have to take out the garbage again.  How can it be 10pm, it's still light out?  I just paid that bill.  Making it worse, it seems like I haven't gotten anything done.  

But when I try to track what I'm doing, it turns out I'm really doing a lot.  I'm tracking and posting  the Alaska COVID numbers every day.  I'm doing 20-40 minutes into DuoLingo Spanish.

I try to do the Cryptoquote and the Sudoku in the paper every day.

My Seattle granddaughter FaceTimes with us for an hour or three several times a week.  And I've been volunteering in her class, via zoom, listening to kids read books of their choice.  The SF grandkids have a regular two or three hours every Wednesday afternoon.  

This month, the Alaska Press Club has been having Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 8am workshops in lieu of a three day in person conference.  Despite the horrible hour, all the ones I've listened in on (all of them so far) have been excellent.  Yesterday was one on covering Corrections and included a reporter who does cover corrections, an ACLU employee who works on corrections issues and used to work for the Dept of Corrections under Walker, and a woman who started a non-profit called Supporting Our Loved Ones Group - people who have friends and relatives in prison.  One part of the discussion focused on the words that journalists use to describe people in prison. I guess I've had a soft spot for the plight of prisoners ever since I visited a former 6th grade student (he was then probably in the 9th grade) at a juvenile detention center outside of Los Angeles maybe 50 years ago.  Other sessions have been on Climate Change and How to Choose And Write Stories. They also did one on setting up an elections debate commission for Alaska that was very compelling.  You can see the commission proposal here.   I've got notes for blog posts on all of these, but the Anchorage Municipal Election and the Redistricting Board have distracted me.  

I haven't seen much coverage at all in other media about the Alaska Redistricting Board and since I covered it intensely in 2011-13, I realize I know a lot about what it is, what the issues are, and what was done last time.  So it seems I'm stuck doing it again.  Right now not much is happening - setting things up procedurally and getting staff - they've hired a law firm to advise them and they are getting an RFI ready to hire a Voting Rights Act consultant.  They are behind the pace of ten years ago because the Pandemic and Trump policies slowed down the Census Count and the State redistricting numbers won't come out until maybe August this year.  Last time they got the numbers in March.

I've started my summer biking in earnest yesterday, keeping to the trails along streets while the trails through the greenbelts still have snow on them.  I did a seven mile test run south on Lake Otis, east on Dowling, north on Elmore, then wandering through neighborhoods back home.

Here's Campbell Creek from Lake Otis

An aside about snow this year.  I'd asked Weather Service guy Brian Brettschneider, via DM on Twitter, if we'd had more snow days this year, because it seemed like I was shoveling snow all the time.  He responded: 

"Anchorage will finish with about 5" less snowfall than normal. But our snow depth was one of the greatest on record. We basically had 0 melting events throughout the season."

Riding along Dowling, the ice and snow were gone from the trail the whole ride.  

And then Campbell Creek again, this time looking back from Elmore.

My knees have been showing signs of being past their warranty.  Running is out.  Biking was ok last summer.  I'm hoping I can do another 600 km or more this summer, but it will depend on how my knees react.  

We've been zooming in to the Alaska Black Caucus' Sunday panels. (Link to this Sunday's forum is on the upper right of their page.) They've been doing a great job covering a lot of topics from candidate forums (School Board and Mayor, and this Sunday they are going to have the mayoral runoff candidates - Dunbar and Bronson) to discussions on things like body cameras for police and the military experience in Alaska for Blacks.  They've been having 50 and 60 attendees every week.  Really well done.  I've never heard candidates talk so candidly.  But then the 

There was also a Citizens Climate lobby meeting and a few other zoom meetings.

One way to get through all the zoom meetings is to do relatively mindless tasks that allow me to pay attention, but also get something done.  Eating is the most obvious, but I also prepared and baked a bread through one meeting.  

And used the left over dough to make a veggie pizza.  

And I've been planting seeds now that I can see patches of ground through the snow outside.  Trying Arctic Tomatoes this year.  But I've also got arugula, stock, snapdragons, pansies, sweet peas, flax, and a few other seeds growing.  

I suspect that feeling like I haven't gotten anything done comes partially through the fact that zoom meetings let you stay home and so you don't get out that much.  When you physically go to a meeting, it (probably, it's hard to remember) feels more like you've actually done something.  So I have to write things down to remind myself that I've actually been busy and doing worthwhile things.  

Oh, and watching some of the video of each of the UAA Chancellor candidates.  A really diverse selection.  Not a good time to be a white male in this crowd I'm guessing.  Most looked reasonable, some very good, and our Superintendent of Schools must have been unwell, because she couldn't be still or say more than platitudes.  You can watch them yourselves.  I'd recommend about ten minutes of each to get a sense of them.  Really, these tell us mostly how well they speak in public.  To some extent how much the know about higher education.  But not too much about how well they can run a university.

Alaska Redistricting Board To Get Census Data "By Sept. 30, 2021" Along With All The Other States

The following notice comes from a US Census Bureau redistricting blog via an email from the Alaska Redistricting Board Executive Director Peter Torkelson.  (He offered to email a notice of the next Board meeting when I asked if there were an easier way to find out meeting times than the State Public Notice site.  Thanks, Peter.)

FEB. 12, 2021 — The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that it will deliver the Public Law 94-171 redistricting data to all states by Sept. 30, 2021. COVID-19-related delays and prioritizing the delivery of the apportionment results delayed the Census Bureau’s original plan to deliver the redistricting data to the states by March 31, 2021.

Different from previous censuses, the Census Bureau will deliver the data for all states at once, instead of on a flow basis. This change has been made because of COVID-19-related shifts in data collection and in the data processing schedule and it enables the Census Bureau to deliver complete and accurate redistricting data in a more timely fashion overall for the states.

The redistricting data includes counts of population by race, ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino origin), voting age, housing occupancy status, and group quarters population, all at the census block level. This is the information that states need to redraw or “redistrict” their legislative boundaries.

In preparation for the delivery of redistricting data products, the Census Bureau has been in close coordination with each states’ official nonpartisan liaisons to understand the impacts of the delayed delivery on individual states. Since 2019, states have had access to prototype geographic support products and data tabulations from the 2018 Census Test to help them begin to design their redistricting systems. This is one tool states can use to help minimize the impact of schedule delays. In addition, the Census Bureau today completed the release of all states’ 2020 Census geographic products needed for redistricting. This will enable states to redistrict promptly upon receipt of their 2020 Census tabulation data.

I'd note that this is a significant delay (potentially six months if it takes until September 30) from ten years ago when the Alaska Redistricting Board got its data from the US Census Bureau on March 15.  That post explains some of the rules at the time - like having to have the first plan done within 30 days of receiving the data.  (I apologize for the missing photos on that page.  They weren't mine and some are apparently no longer on the original sites.)  I don't know whether any laws have been changed since then.  Back then I learned about the rules because they were explained at the Board Meetings.  There have only been a few meetings this time round and they've all been COVID kosher.  

So Much To Blog About Yet So Little Time - Zooming, OLÉ, Winter, Justice, Dark Banners, Anchorage International Film Festival, Elitism

 I try not to blog about sensitive stuff quickly.  I want to get it as right as I can.  And now is a time when so many things are happening that most of the media (let alone a single blogger) has trouble focusing on any one enough to get to the root of the many particular problems.  

Zooming

Yesterday I was zooming from morning to night.  Probably the best as as a visiting grandfather resource in my granddaughter's class in the Seattle area.  I got to listen to two second graders read.  They did really well.  Then I had three Olé classes, Thomas Merton, Refugee Resettlement, and Alaska Trees and Shrubs. The last of the four class fall semester.  The last class is Friday's Alaska Native Perspectives.  All the classes have got my head buzzing with ideas.  Then my San Francisco grandkids via Jitsi, my son's preferred video conferencing program.  

I also wanted to give you a look at how incredibly beautiful Anchorage is during a cold spell when all the trees are encrusted white and the sun glows on them.  But suddenly the bluetooth connection between my phone and my laptop has failed.  I have to figure out how I moved photos before I used the Blue Tooth.  

Government At Cross Purposes

The LA Times reports this morning on the dropping of drug trafficking charges of the former Mexican defense chief. 

"The U.S. government moved Tuesday to drop drug trafficking and money-laundering charges against a former Mexican defense secretary, a stunning turnaround in a case that had deeply angered Mexican authorities."

Which makes me think about the last few days' readings in Black Banners.  He writes about how the US government agencies work at cross purposes.  One part doing one thing and then having another part of the government take it away.  His example looks at how the FBI and CIA were at cross purposes in interrogating al-Qaeda detainees.   Ali Soufan, the author is a Lebanese born, native Arabic speaking, who grew up in the US and became an FBI interrogator.  He writes about clashes between seasoned FBI interrogators and a new set of CIA contractors over how to interrogate al-Qaeda detainees.   Soufan's group, which has been tracking al-Qaeda since 1998 or so, believes in 

• developing a relationship with the suspects  
• through convincing the suspects they know all about them so there's no benefit in lying  
• treating the suspects decently which confounds the counter-interrogation prep al-Qaeda gave them
• and they open up and tell the interrogaters lots of valuable information

They've already had great successes with this methods following the USS Cole bombing in Yemen where they've gathered huge files of data on various al-Qaede members and allies along with locations of training camps and networks, and communication, funding, and training methods.  They use all this along with documents  they've captured in raids of al-Qaede safe-houses and hotel rooms.  In Soufan's telling, it doesn't take long to turn the al-Qaede members and allies, once they realize how much the FBI already knows about them and the FBI demonstrates they aren't the weak, stupid, and brutal Americans al-Qaeda has portrayed them as.  As I read this, it's clear that Soufan's Arabic fluency and his good people sense play a large role in their success.  [Here's a link to a Foreign Policy article that counters the campaign against Soufan when the original very redacted book came out in 2011.  The copy I'm reading is much expanded as lots of the material has since been declassified.  I was able to read most of the Foreign Policy  article before the paywall went up.]

But after 9/11 the CIA, which didn't have interrogation specialists, hires a guy Soufan calls Boris, to coordinate the CIA's interrogation.  They're in a black site in an unnamed country (some things are still classified, though he mentions a cobra in the bathroom which means it could easily be Thailand and the black site link says Abu Zubaydah was interrogated there.)  Boris is a psychology professor who is pushing harsh interrogation methods - what is to become known as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT).  But the CIA at first didn't believe that the captive was in fact Abu Zubaydah, "America's first high-level detainee since 9/11."  So they didn't send anyone to interrogate him, even though Soufan had been told the CIA was in charge.  So this meant Soufan and his partner had about ten days to work with Abu Zubaydah on their own.  And they gained lots of information which was sent back to DC.  So the CIA got interested and Boris arrived.  He was now going to take over by stripping Abu Zubaydah naked, playing loud rock music 24/7, and depriving him of sleep for 24 hours, which would get him to talk instantly.  But they got no information from him in ten days.  Soufan writes, that the CIA interrogator would go in and ask Abu Zubaydah to tell him what he knew.  Abu Zubaydah would then say, "What do you want to know?" and the CIA guy would walk out.  In contrast, Soufan would ask Abu Zubaydah very specific questions that Soufan knew the answers to, and if AZ lied, Soufan would present evidence that he was lying.  In one example, he asks him if he knows the person in a picture.  Abu Zubaydah says no.  Soufan then plays an audio tape of Abu Zubaydad talking to the person.)  After a week of no information, Soufan is allowed to interrogate again and gets lots more information.

But the CIA are in charge and they have bought into EIT as their interrogation method.  And, I guess, if you don't know anything about the person you're interrogating and you don't speak Arabic, torture is an easier approach.  But Soufan argues in the book, that replacing the FBI's technique with EIT meant the loss of valuable information and as the book's subtitle says, this is "How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11."

So, how, you're asking, is the related to the headline about dropping the Mexican drug charges?  Well, it appears that the Bush administration wanted certain information from the interrogations that Soufan wasn't getting.  Like, proof that Iraq and al-Qaeda were working together.  Like proof of WMD's (I guess there might be readers who need me to spell that out - Weapons of Mass Destruction.)  Soufan says he didn't get that information because it wasn't true.  But the CIA got those confessions, according to Soufan, who also quotes a Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility Report to support his personal experience, to detainees telling the CIA interrogators what they wanted to hear to stop the torture.  

So I'm guessing this Mexican case dismissal is due to funding between different departments that have different objectives, just as Soufan so high-value detainees snatched away from him because the intelligence he was getting didn't match the administration's agenda.  One part of the US is working hard to prosecute this drug trafficker and another part has interests that they believe will be harmed by pursuing this case.  And one day, an Ali Soufan of this case, will write a book telling the story.  

Getting Oliver and Jacob to Agree

A recent post  seems to have accomplished something that hasn't happened before - regular commenters Jacob and Oliver are in agreement that I'm being elitist because I mentioned that only 34% of the US adult population has a bachelors degree.  So I need to clarify that too.  

Individualism vs. Communalism and US Culture

And I'm also thinking about one of the characteristics of "United States culture" is a form of extreme individualism.  This issue came up in the Alaska Native Perspectives class where we also agreed in the that American refers to people in North, Central, and South America, not just the US.  That's wording I try to use here on the blog anyway, though sometimes American slips through.   I think it's part of the complex explanation of Trump's appeal and of the anti mask wearing nonsense,  as well as the inability of people to understand how White Privilege works.  

Anchorage International Film Festival

AND this morning pass holders for the Anchorage International Film Festival were invited to a Zoom orientation on how the virtual conference will work and a little tour of the website.  The Festival starts in a couple of weeks - December 4.  The virtual festival will have some distinct benefits over the in person festival:

1. you can watch the films whenever you want during the 9 days of the festival and as often as you want
2. you don't have to be in Anchorage to participate
3. there will be more sessions with film makers because they don't have to travel to Anchorage

So I'd urge Alaskans all over the state to consider getting a festival pass ($100) which allows you unlimited viewing of all the films and filmmaker events  OR pick out a few films you want to watch and buy individual film passes for $10 each.  There are a total of 111 films.  That includes shorts.  I think that for shorts a single $10 pass will get you to a shorts program which is a collection of shorts.  

In any case, people in Alaska outside of Anchorage who normally can't get to the festival,  and in the US, I urge you to check out the festival.  I asked festival co-director John Gamache this morning if anyone anywhere can get pass and he said yes.  There will be no restrictions for US viewers, and few restrictions for overseas viewers.  He did mention that one of the filmmakers was blocking showing of the film in the home country.  And I'd mention for my Canadian readers, that the country of Canada is a sponsor of the festival this year and there are eight Canadian feature films.  Here's the link:

Anchorage International Film Festival 2020

This opens to the main page with a link to buy passes.  But on top is a link to see the films that are showing if you want to check that out first.

John also said he'd put in "COUNTRY" as one of the searchable categories for people who might be interested in films in a particular language.  I'll try to post on what countries have films in the festival when that feature gets added.  

So all this, plus updating my daily COVID page, gets between what I'm thinking about and those thoughts turning into blog posts.   

The Inability Of People To Master The Complexity Of The World - Trying To Start A Conversation About Evil Geniuses

 I want to post about Kurt Anderson's Evil Geniuses, which I got from my local library the other day, at the recommendation of Kathy in Kentucky in response to a post I did about how Sheldon Whitehouse used part of his confirmation hearing time to step back and offer some of the forces that are the context of this most recent Supreme Court nominee hearings.  (Thanks Kathy.)

I'm not far into the book.  I'm not even out of the Roman numeral numbered pages yet.  But it's clear that this is one of those books that attempts to explain the bigger economic and political forces at work in the world today.  

We shouldn't feel too bad if this is all new, because only a few people in any society are focused on seeing path the stories and myths that shape a culture while it is actually happening.  And it's not always easy to have access to forces that are working in the shadows.  

But as I thought about what I meant newly understand as I embark on reading this book, I realized that relatively few people actually carefully read long non-fiction work that explains how society really works.  

I think about the simplistic soundbite slogans that are being thrown around in lieu of serious debate. People aren't seeking knowledge and enlightenment, they are seeking only to cement their power, or their perceived power.  But, of course, 'they' lumps everyone together and hides the variety of levels of expertise, knowledge, and understanding of different phenomena that affect our lives.  Even the most educated, who know some area in spectacular detail, can be ignorant of most of the rest of the world.  

So I don't know how our society can best reestablish any sense of good will and trust.  But I do think, based on what I've read so far, that this book offers a much broader view of how the United States has shifted over the last 60 years or so.

I'm not sure how much of this book I can engage here on this blog, but let's at least start with the Table of Contents.  

I used to ask my beginning graduate students in public administration, what they thought we were going to study.  I'd warn them that most of the articles and books we'd read would only be interesting if they were asking the questions that the book answers.  That these works weren't like fiction or even newspaper articles.  In those genres you generally know all the concepts the words represent.  You generally know the basic narratives.  It's just that the specific characters and specific actions and locations change.  But you know all the words.  You know "a man"  "murders" and such words.  But in more academic work, you come up against words and concepts you may not already know.  Or, even more dangerous, you know them in a popular sense, but not in a specifically defined academic sense. 

So one exercise I'd run the students through on the first night was this:

Step 1:  If you were writing a textbook on public administration, what would be your main chapters?

Step 2:  I'd give them time to write out chapter titles, 

Step 3:  We'd share some on the board.  

Step 4:  I'd then read the chapter titles.  

And I'd tease them.  "If your friend had told you before class that the professor would read you the chapter titles and you would all be listening carefully, you would have thought your friend crazy.  If I give you the answers to a crossword puzzle you haven't worked on, it has no meaning.  But after you've struggled with the puzzle, the answers suddenly are very meaningful.  And that's what we've just done.  And I recommend you do similar exercises with everything you read this semester."

So, readers, get out a pen and paper or an empty file and keyboard and write down the chapters you'd write about if you were writing a book called Evil Geniuses:  The Unmaking of America, A Recent History.

I know most of you want to skip the exercise.  Life's too busy.  But if you actually got this far, let me urge you to look away from here and take five minutes to think about the topic and what chapters you might write.  The point is not to see if you can get close to Kurt Anderson's actual titles, but to tap into your own thoughts before you compare them to his. He has 22 chapters

via GIPHY

[The GIF is only ten seconds.  I couldn't quickly find one that goes for five minutes.  Sorry.]

OK, now that you have your chapter titles go through Anderson's table of contents.  For some of you this will make a lot of sense - and you'll have a good idea of where he's going with this book.  Others will also think it makes sense, but their sense will take them in a very different direction from Anderson.  For others it will be mystifying.  But you know other things.  

I hope to post more from this book because:

• I'm hoping it's as good as it looks it will be
• Writing about what I'm reading helps me understand and and remember it
• Relatively few people actually read books like this so I can help others who won't get to read it learn what's in it
• And some of you might be moved to get your own copy to actually read
• If it's as good as I hope  (good here meaning helping to explain the forces that have gotten us to October 2020 in the US and the world)
• Because knowing how something works gives you a chance to be able to fix it in a more nuanced way than just bashing it

Kurt Anderson:  Evil Geniuses:  The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020)

PART ONE:  A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICA

1.  Land of the New:  America from 1600 to 1865

2.  Land of the New:  An Economic History, from the 1770’s to the 1970s

3.  Approaching Peak New:  The 1960s

PART TWO:  TURNING POINT

4    The 1970s:  An Equal and Opposite Reaction

5.  The 1970s:  Liberalism Peaks and the Counterrevolution Begins

6.  The 1970s:  Building the Counter-Establishment

7.  The 1970s:  From a Bicentennial Pageant to a Presidency

8.  The 1970s:  Neoliberal Useful Idiots

PART THREE:  WRONG TURN

9.  The Reagan Revolution

10. Raw Deal:  What happened in the 1980s Didn’t Stay in the 1980s

11. The Rule of Law

12.  The Deregulation Generation

13.  The Culture of Greed Is Good

14.  How Wall Sweet Ate America 

15. Workers of the New World, You Lose

16.  Insecurity Is a Feature, Not a Bug

17.  Socially Liberal, Fisally Conservative, Generally Complacent

18.  The Permanent Reagan Revolution

19.  The 1990s:  Restrained and Reckless

PART FOUR:  SAME OLD SAME OLD

20.  Rewind, Pause, Stop:  The End of the New

21.  The Politics of Nostalgia and Stagnation Since the 1990s

22.  Ruthless Beats Reasonable

23.  Winners and Losers in the Class War

24.  American Exceptionalism

PART FIVE:  MAKE AMERICA NEW AGAIN

25.  Winners and Losers (So Far) in the Digital Revolution

26.  How the Future Will Work

27.  This Strategic Inflection Point

28.  What Is to Be Done?

29.  The Plague Year and Beyond

Hope to share more of this in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year

The Jewish New Year begins at sunset this evening.  The passing or Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes it bitter sweet as we mourn her, and ask forgiveness from those we have done wrong.  The next ten days, according to Jewish tradition, is when people's fates for the next year are written.  

Unlike most years, it's a small intimate table for two, though we'll do the initial blessings via zoom with friends and then join services via zoom a little later. Shana Tova.  Happy New Year to all.  May we be able to come together again sometime in the next year.  While it will be 2021 on the Western calendar, we move into 5781 on the Jewish calendar tonight.  

Apparently Alaskan Senators Got McConnell To Start Impeachment Hearings On A Good Schedule For Alaskans

We made it home last night and today was the warmest of 2020 in Anchorage.  Thanks!!
The snow on the ground and in the trees is beautiful.
This afternoon, the snow falling was wonderful.
Down south people can't understand how anyone can choose to live here.  That's good, because they won't be tempted to come here.

But, starting the impeachment at 1pm DC time means it will begin at 9am Alaska time.  And we'll be able to see the good parts in prime time tomorrow night.

I have to figure out all the menial tasks I can do around the house tomorrow so I can feel like I got something productive done while I was watching.

McConnell has gotten a lot of things done for his team, so he thinks he can spray legal perfume on the skunk in the White House.  But even Republicans know this is wrong.

Two of the Republicans' ridiculous arguments against impeachment were:

1.  Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 election with impeachment. (See end of first comments by Tamara Keith).   But, of course, impeachment is the remedy the founders put in the constitution to remove a bad president.  And since Clinton got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016, you could just as easily argue that Trump used the electoral college to nullify the election.

2.  Since the impeachment isn't bipartisan, it's illegitimate.  (Scroll down to Robert Ray)  To me, he seems to be simply making this up.  If acts of Congress have to be bipartisan to be legitimate, very little that McConnell's Republican majority in the Senate has done since before Trump was elected has been legitimate.


 McConnell maybe be able to control Senate Republicans.  He may be able to control the rules, but I doubt he can control Trump any more than any of  the others who thought they could.  And he can't control what voters do in November.

El Sueño Americano

The only word in the title that might give non-Spanish speakers any difficulty is Sueño, and the poster on the left should clear that up.

This post is based on an exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.  We went because they have an excellent children's space called Noah's Ark which I've posted about before.

There was enough for four or five posts, and given I still have grandchildren around, I'm just going to focus on one and try to get this done quickly.

Here's the artist's statement.  I saved it in higher than normal resolution in hopes you could read it.

Let me highlight this paragraph:

"These confiscations struck me as wrong.  The cruelty of stripping away such personal items from vulnerable people is dehumanizing, both to those whose belongings are taken and to those who enforce the policy."

Combs and Brushes

A few things here:

• The artist, Tom Kiefer,  started this in 2007, during the 2nd Bush administration, so dehumanizing immigrants isn't something that began under Trump.
• As someone who worked at a US Border Control Facility, he noted that it dehumanized the officials who enforced these policies as well as the victims.

And people are leaving ICE.  From the Los Angeles Times in January 2019:

"In March 2017, McAleenan said Customs and Border Protection normally loses about 1,380 agents a year as agents retire, quit for better-paying jobs or move. Just filling that hole each year has strained resources."

This is from an article that is focused on recruitment:

"In a sign of the difficulties, Customs and Border Protection allocated $60.7 million to Accenture Federal Services, a management consulting firm, as part of a $297-million contract to recruit, vet and hire 7,500 border officers over five years, but the company has produced only 33 new hires so far. " [Emphasis Added]

Some Items Confiscated

A large percentage of ICE agents are Latinx according to this Pacific Standard article by Khushbu Shah.  He reports on the 100 interviews by Assistant Professor David Cortez who examined the relationships these officers have with their jobs and why do their jobs.

"Cortez has found that many of the agents he spoke with drew a distinct line between their empathy and their careers. A Latino agent in Texas recently told Cortez he is aware that he might be on the wrong side of history, but the money was too good to quit. The cities where many of the agents come from in the Rio Grande Valley are some of the poorest in the state of Texas, a state in which nearly one in five people lives below the poverty line. The starting salary, in turn, under Customs and Border Protection is nearly $56,000, well above the region's median household income of $34,000."

This is the inscription plate from a bible with notes on travel through the desert and other dates and notes.

Gloves

These are pain tablets.


It's important to remember that the oppressor is dehumanized as much as the oppressed.
And to connect a few more dots, the breaking of unions has allowed the lowering of salaries for many jobs as well as the loss of health benefits and pensions.  And these conditions make it easier to recruit people into the military and other sorts of occupations where people are dehumanized.

And today is nearly the end of 2019 and we're just seeing these images, which began in 2007, now, 12 years later.  Justice takes so much longer than the original acts of abuse and criminality.  

ACS Tech Help Doesn't Exist After 5pm Saturday Until 8am Monday, But Finally Our Internet Is Working Again [UPDATED]

So, Saturday night, about 10:45pm, our internet stopped.  It's pretty dramatic when you're streaming a movie.

We'd had an interruption just last Wednesday as well.  ACS (Alaska Communications Systems) phone tech couldn't fix it, but the next level was able to do something that got it on again in a couple of hours.

But when I called to report Saturday night, the recording said to call again during business hours.  Business hours do not include Sunday!   I was encouraged to report online.  But I never use the online system and couldn't figure out my id and password for sure, or even if I had one.

I did try to update my password with a user id that did get the response that they had send me an email telling me how to do that.  But I never got the email.  I tweeted ACS, but no response.  But even if you report it on Sunday, nothing will happen until 'business hours."

So this morning I finally got through and within 90 minutes (I only just tried the internet now after having breakfast) it's working again.

In this internet era,  how can an internet service have a 38 hour period where there is no one to restore someone's interrupted internet service?  Before I got my smart phone - which was only last December - I had no backup if internet went out.  And blogging on my phone is painful.

It turns out that you can't (have an internet service with a 38 hour help blackout period.)  ACS has this announcement on one of their webpages:

"We know how important it is to have a reliable internet connection. That’s why we are committed to keeping you connected with our reliable, dedicated business internet services that include a 24-hour repair guarantee. In the case of an outage, it is our priority to fix your internet within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support. If we are unable to fix your internet connection within 24 hours, you will be eligible to receive a $100 account credit.
In the instance that we don’t meet our 24-hour repair guarantee, simply call our Account Support team within 30 days of the outage to claim your credit."

Let's see if this works.  I see two potential problems for me:

• This is on a page for business customers, not residential customers
• It says within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support, but you can't get tech support between 5pm Saturday and 8:00 am Monday.  They didn't answer my initial call, but I made it around 11pm on Saturday night and service was working at 11pm Sunday night, or even until around 9:30 or 10am Monday.  

There are caveats below  including that it only applies to business customers.  But there is a different phone number that I'll try next time I have an outage during non-business hours.   

Alaska Communications Tech Support at 855-565-2556.

I'm less interested in the $100 than just getting my service back. (Though if I'm paying for service they don't provide, I should have a refund, right?  But $100 is way more than one 40 hours blackout.)

I have left a message at their corporate number.

[I'd note that when people have problems like this with a government agency, the reaction is often to rant and rave about how bad government is.  So I'd note that if that is a reasonable conclusion to make, then it would be equally justifiable for me to rant and rave about how bad business in general is.  But I think neither is a sensible response.  My problem is with a specific business, just as people having trouble with a government agency is a problem with a specific agency.  And with government, we are all the owners.  If we don't elect competent representatives, that's our problem.  And if we complain about having bad choices, that's also our problem.  In a Democracy we have to work to keep it working - even if that means finding and supporting good candidates to run.  Or even running for office ourselves.]


It's nice to have these little, eventually solvable problems, in these times of huge seemingly unsolvable ones.  But the House is working on impeachment, and there are things we can do about climate change - a carbon fee and dividend,  non-fossil fuel sources of energy; changing our eating and agricultural habits.  Solving little problems gives encouragement for the bigger ones.

And not having internet for a day, well, before the 1990s, I didn't have internet every day.  I finished a book yesterday and did household chores and had brunch with friends.

But still.  ACS, please get your act together.  I like having a local internet carrier rather than some conglomerate.  But I'm sure you can devise a work schedule to take care of problems between Saturday night and Monday morning.

[UPDATE October 28, 2019:  Over the weekend I also send a message to ACS via Twitter.  The Twitter reader apparently was off until Monday morning too because I got a message this morning telling me to call in today.  I responded with a brief summary of my issues and a link to this post.  I just got another Twitter message from ACS:

"Hi Steven, we're sharing your blog post with our tech support manager. Thanks, for your thoughtful comments. We are sorry for the trouble with your service this weekend. We appreciate you."]

Blog maintenance takes up a certain amount of time and is generally not visible to most readers.  Most technical things are pretty static now.  Every now and then I try something new - like I have a post with a gif I made on my iPhone ready to be posted, except I'm not sure it it's working right and it appears I'll have to actually post it to find out.  I also had a lot of issues trying to post from my new iPad while in Argentina this summer.  It didn't get along with Blogger at all.  I thought about post for others with similar problems - tricks I learned to make it better, but my basic advice is don't even try if you can help it.  It's a pain.

Then there are updates to old posts.  I can't do this all the time and I really hope that people look at the dates of posts they read online and realize something six years old might be out of date.  But some things seem worth updating.  Here are a couple of recent updates.


Juries  - The LATimes had an article today about a US supreme court case challenging Louisiana's former majority rule for juries.  (The voters overturned that in favor of unanimous decisions in 2018, but the case was 2016.)  I updated a 2017 post on whether hung juries reflect the US cultural divide, which mentioned that Louisiana and Oregon both had majority rule juries.  So I've updated that post.

Hong Kong - I also added a link to an article by a Chinese Human Rights worker to my recent post on Hong Kong.    I also got messages from one former Hong Kong student and one former Beijing student saying my post on Hong Kong was generally accurate, but they didn't want me to quote them.

And then there is following up on comments by readers.  Often there really isn't anything for me to add.  Do the commenters want me to acknowledge their comments?  Or do they look at my follow up comments as my trying to have the last word on something?  If I don't have more to add, I just leave it, especially if I'm particularly busy.

But some comments are particularly welcome because they add information I didn't know about.
For example, a comment by Dennis on my post the other day about whether the airport couldn't get the runway finished faster, gave details about how the grooves in runways have to be 3mm wide and spaced about 25mm apart.  But then he was vague about how long it would take - "a long time."  My comment asked for specifics of 'a long time.'  

And I realize now, as I'm writing this, that I probably should have put a link in that post to one I did last year about the widening and repairing the north-south runway.  So I'll do that now.

Airport Runway Repairs Update

[Last year I reported in some detail on the repairs and widening of Anchorage Airport's north-south runway, diverting jets to take off over Anchorage last summer and this summer.  This post is something of a follow-up]

I'd been meaning to call the airport and find out where they are on the fixing and widening the north-south runway.  After all, we've had almost no rain this summer (none in August, normally a rainy month) and so it seemed they should be ahead.  I got a couple of people who passed me on to Jason Lamoreaux and I left him a message yesterday afternoon.

He called back today.

It should be completed on time.  They have to (sorry my notes are sketchy) do some coordination of flight checks before the runway is back up.

Q:  But since you're a bit ahead now because of no rain, can't we get this done early so we can stop the noisy planes flying over Anchorage?

A:  FAA folks who do the checking come from out of town so hard to coordinate.

He told me I could sign up for the update emails, but I said, since the update video was from early 2018, I wasn't sure waiting for updates was better than just calling the airport.

The rest that needs to be done is some paving and painting and electrical which are weather dependent, so we can't predict finishing early.

So, basically he said it would be done by end of September and by beginning of October planes can use the north-south runway instead of taking off to the east over Anchorage.

I did look around on the website before calling to get as much info from there as I could. I did get to the runway project page. But the "Construction Update Video" appears to be the one they put up at the beginning last year.  It's pretty pictures and PR talk.  No real details at all.  And no updates.

The FAQ link goes to a bad link.

There's two maps - last year and this year, without much detail about the work.

These maps made more sense later, but they still don't show much.  The talk last year was that they were going to widen the runway so bigger planes could use it.  There's still only going to be one runway I guess.

So after looking around the site I finally found a number related to the project that I could call.

Today I took my son-in-law to the airport.  He's got to go back (but my daughter and nieta have more time here, yeah!).  So I decided to go see if I could find out what they were doing and how far they'd gotten.

Across the road and over the fence, past the tractor but in front of the plane, is the north-south runway.  We're looking northward.  (Yes the smoke from the various forest fires north and south of Anchorage totally obscured the mountains.)  So this part is in.

And here's the runway looking north.  It looks like it's paved all the way.  Lamoreaux did say it needed painting and electrical.  But there were parts that had stripes and little things sticking out of the ground that looked like they might hold lights.

And there didn't seem to be many people working.

This tractor was digging something.  This is another track of pavement that I thought, at the time, they still had to finish to the north end.  But when I got home and looked at the maps (above) that didn't seem to be the case.  Just one runway.  This must be a road or taxi way.  This was very close to the exterior fence.  (*You can see it on the map with the green and yellow markings below.  It's on the far left side.)

And here in the middle it was shiny - wet asphalt?  water?  something else?  I don't know.
There was equipment here and there, but I didn't see any movement.

So now I had more questions.  It doesn't look like the noise over Anchorage is much of a priority.  They've got until October and they seem not to be in much of a hurry.  OK, I can't make a judgment like that from one short visit to the airport.

But when I got home I went poking around on the website again and this time I found a little bit more.

I found the document library.  There's another map there and there are three 2019 updates.  One from January, one from March, which doesn't say anything they hadn't said before:

"2019 Construction
In 2019, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities will rehabilitate and widen the remaining portion of the North/South Runway. The magnitude of this construction effort will require a full runway closure in summer 2019. Operations and noise levels will return to normal upon completion in October 2019."

And one from August 16, 2019 which says a little bit more.

"The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) North/South Runway Renewal project is progressing well through the final phase of construction. Active work on the runway started in April.  As of today, the construction work effort is about 75% complete.  All paving south of Taxiway T is complete.

Currently, the contractor is grooving the runway.  This will provide traction so that airplanes can come to a stop on the runway when it rains. Grooving the runway takes about 45 days to complete. Next up, the contractor will begin work on painting runway markings.
We recognize that construction has resulted in increased aircraft noise in different parts of Anchorage. The construction team is working hard to keep construction on schedule in order to minimize those impacts and complete the renewal work as quickly as possible.  We anticipate the runway will be open early October 2019, and the airport will return to normal aircraft operations."

Now I have a bunch more questions.  Mostly they have to do with why it takes so long.  How does it take 45 days to put grooves in the runway?  Really?  In China they build ten story buildings in three months.  I'm not sure I want to live in one of those, but putting grooves in the runway seems a lot less complicated than putting up a building.  

Besides, 45 days from August 16 gets us to the end of September.  That would mean it will NOT be the beginning of October.  (I'm hoping this is wrong.  It's not what I heard from Lamoreaux.)

It says (as of August 16 when the memo is dated) they are 75% done.  Counting just this summer, they had used up 75% of their allotted time.  But what about work?  Are they really only 75% done?  

What does completed mean here?  That the green part is all paved?  Because from what I saw today, the yellow part is paved too.  Does it mean the green is paved and grooved?  Surely it can't take 45 days to grove the yellow part.   Does it really need to take 45 more days to paint the lines and put in the electrical?

The website is treating us like children.  It's not giving us much information at all.  Lamoreaux didn't even mention grooving.  He just talked about painting and electrical.  The amount of time has more to do with scheduling.  There's work the FAA needs to do and their contractor will apparently only come as scheduled originally, not early if, because of the good weather, they ready for them ahead of schedule.  And the same is true with the FAA inspectors.

My sense is there's no need to rush - from the airport administration's perspective.  They really don't seem concerned about relieving us from the noise of jets taking off over our houses and whatever jet fuel exhaust is added to our air.  They've set what appears to be a fairly comfortable schedule and they're expecting to be able to say it was done on time and - we'll see, or not- within the budget.

*As I look at the map with the green and yellow, the tractor that was actually working today when I was there, seems to be at the end of the pavement on the left of the green/yellow markings.  So that stretch of pavement doesn't seem like it's going any further.

I expect that asking all these questions, at this point, probably won't make any difference.  They're scheduled to open the north-south runway at the beginning of October and until then we (depending on how close you live to the pathways of the jets) will continue to endure 24 hours a day of jets taking off over us.

But maybe we can find out when the runway needs to be repaired again, so we can start earlier to  get more consideration of noise in their planning process.