Forbes Tells It Like It Isn't - Bluster Meets The Judge

From a puff piece in Forbes online:

"Gov. Bill Walker and his lawyers plan to argue that Medicaid expansion is required by federal law. Who better to combat that false claim than the very same attorneys who successfully argued the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in the first place?

Gov. Walker Should Walk Away From Obamacare Plan

Walker’s unilateral Medicaid expansion isn’t just bad policy, it’s also illegal. He now knows that lawmakers stand ready to block his actions. It’s time for Gov. Walker to give up his misguided attempt to circumvent the legislature in order to expand Obamacare in Alaska."

That's dated August 25, 2015.  Alaska Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffer, a Parnell* appointee, apparently missed this, because yesterday he ruled decisively in favor of the governor's position and rejected the challenge approved by the Legislative Council.

It was written by 

"Jonathan Ingram, Nic Horton and Josh Archambault—Mr. Ingram is Research Director, Mr. Archambault is a Senior Fellow, and Mr. Horton is Policy Impact Specialist, at the Foundation for Government Accountability."

And who is FGA?   According to SourceWatch:

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) is a right-wing advocacy group based in Naples, Florida. It is run by former Maine legislator Tarren Bragdon. It is affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN), a web of state pressure groups that denote themselves as "think tanks" and drive a right-wing agenda in statehouses nationwide.
The FGA describes its own agenda as developing free market public policies that “achieve limited, constitutional government and a robust economy that will be an engine for job creation across [Florida].” The FGA “believes personal liberty and private enterprise are key to our economic future,” the website states.

 SourceWatch also says there are links to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which means there are Koch connections. 

Is this total BS PR-piece part of the package deal the Council got for our $400K when they hired anti-Obamacare DC law firm Bancroft PLLC?  What else comes with this deal?  What sort of future benefits do the key culprits in this waste of Alaskan dollars get?

Bancroft bills itself as a high stakes player. Chenault and Meyer (Speaker of the Alaska House and President of the Senate and Legislative Council members) have been rolled by these high stakes ambulance chasers.  With our dollars. 


*For non-Alaskans, Parnell was Palin's Lt. Gov and became governor when she resigned.  He lost to Walker, a former Republican who ran as an independent in November 2014. 

Symbolic Protest Against Parnell's Intimidation Of Public Interest Lawsuits

When Alaska Constitutional Convention member Vic Fischer and the wife of the Governor who established the Alaska Permanent Fund, Bella Hammond, signed onto a lawsuit protesting action taken  by the Pebble Mine developers, little did they think they would be hit with a $1 million bill for legal expenses.

People were out to protest the Governor's decision to stick it to Vic and Bella.

The Governor's former Attorney General, Dan Sullivan promised in his confirmation hearings, that he would fight the US government by filing suit against every action that infringed on Alaska's sovereignty (just about any action the feds take in their minds).  The administration sees this as a way to wear down the Feds  and keep them from requiring resource extracting corporations - large and small - to prove they won't do any serious environmental damage while they are taking Alaskan resources to the bank. When they sue the federal government, the administration is using money that belongs to the State of Alaska, that is, money that collectively belongs to all the residents whether they agree with the Governor or not. 

So it's no wonder that when others sue those corporations and oppose what the Administration wants to do, they assume it's the same sort of political tactics they use.  They go into win-lose mode and declare these people enemies of the State (anti-development is one such term) and set up obstacles to do what is their own strategy against the feds.  Parnell and his associates can't imagine or understand that there are people who do this sort of thing out a belief in public duty and public good.  For Parnell it's just a tactic to maintain and increase their power.

But some people use these sort of lawsuits the way they were intended. Not simply as a way to clog up the process or to protect their personal financial stake, but  because they strongly believe it's in the best interest of the future of the state.  Of course, Parnell says he believes that too, but when his actions are always on the side of large corporations - ones he used to work for like being the lobbyist for Conoco Philips - the lines between public and private good are seriously blurred.  A large, multinational corporation that, despite their feel good ads and pocket-change-to-them strategic contributions to the community, really have no interest in Alaska except how our resources will help their company's bottom line. Sure, as individuals, their employees may enjoy Alaska's wonders, but their collective work as employees is NOT for Alaska, it's for the corporation and its stockholders. 

Individuals who raise objections to their projects are dubbed "anti-development" as though all development were good and all opposition to development were bad.  These folks go to court, risking their own money, to fight their case.   Most jurisdictions recognize this sort of public interest lawsuit and protect the folks that undertake them.  But the Parnell administration got legislation passed to prevent such suits that oppose their projects and their corporate backers by intimidating them with the threat of having to pay the State's legal fees.  Now if they sued the state over offering abortions or for the right to buy as many automatic weapons as they can afford, I'm sure he would not think they needed to pay the court costs if they lost.  And I don't think the State of Alaska will pay the Feds' legal costs if they lose any of their suits against the Feds.  And even if they do, it's our money, not the Administration's personal money.  This is part of the stifle dissent campaign that shut down coastal zone management programs.  We're the state with the largest coast and the only coastal state without a coastal zone management program.  No program means no pesky local folks raising objections to corporations developing projects that threaten their community and environment. 

The Feds, in other words, should leave Alaskans alone to do things their own way, but the local communities should simply let the State do whatever it pleases to them.   This inconsistency suggests to me that the issue isn't so much to protect Alaskans' best interests, but to protect the Parnell Administration to do what it wants to protect its corporate sponsors.

I realize that Parnell and Sullivan (the one running for Senate, not the mayor) have converted to the church of commerce which says that whatever corporations do is good, so that their sense of the public good is consistent now with their actions.  We all seek confirmation in ideologies that support what we want to do.  But some ideologies better match what how things actually work in the world. And they make us, sometimes, give up what we want for what is the right thing to do. 

And so I'm sure that Parnell and his backers looked at today's rally with disgust and condescension.  Taking to the streets to protest simply demonstrates your lack of power.  If you have real power, you talk to the Governor privately without inconvenient questions being raised.  You work out your deals and you do what you want as unobtrusively as possible.  But you are always ready to squash any opposition. 

The protestors used all the symbolism of the location they could. 

On the plaza of the Atwood Building that houses so many state offices, with the large faceless building looming over them, they mocked Parnell's "Choose Respect" anti-domestic violence campaign by holding a large sign in defense of two Alaskan icons: the last active signer of the Alaska constitution Vic Fischer; and the wife of the governor who established Alaska's Permanent fund, Bella Hammond.  It read:   "Real Alaskans Don't Bully Their Elders."

They mocked the anti-tax line often used by conservatives, and used by Anchorage Assembly Chair last night, to justify the draconian anti-union ordinance passed last spring, that seniors will lose their homes because they can't pay the property tax.  The other big sign said, "Don't Evict Bella Hammond" (with the attempt to charge her exorbitant court fees.)

These are the same kinds of tactics the Palin administration (of which Parnell was a part) used by charging huge sums for public records requests.  

And behind the demonstrators loomed the huge (and in my opinion, awful) mural of some of Alaska's founders - Ernest Gruening, Bill Egan, Bob Bartlett, and Ralph Rivers.



I realize that I'm sounding a little ideological myself here.  But how else can you explain what's going on?   With corporations being seen by the Supreme Court as 'people' deserving the constitutional rights reserved for individual human beings (though actual human women, Indians, and slaves weren't originally given all these rights)  like freedom of speech, we now have inordinate corporate money funding pseudo think tanks to pump out studies that discredit legitimate science on everything from evolution to the link between cigarettes and cancer, or the harmful effects of all the chemicals in household products,  to global climate change and they push a corporate agenda that has created the greatest disparity in wealth America has seen for nearly a century.  They're funding the Tea Party members of Congress who shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act.  While they justify this because, they say,  the ACA will bankrupt the US, and they want to keep federal spending sustainable, they absolutely refuse to consider any new taxes to help reduce our debt, even though the tax rates today are the lowest in 50 or 60 years.  And they had no such misgivings about the money to be spent on their (and it was mostly their) war against Islam (well for some that's what it is) which brought huge corporate profits for defense contractors at the cost of countless lives interrupted and ended. 

Not only do they kill in the name of Christ, they promote guns, not helping the poor, and treating foreigners with hostility and deportation.  That's not the Christ I've been told about who said things like:

For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.

As you can see, I'm agitated today.  I can find you links to support all I say, and I'm confident that in 20 years, most sane and rational folks won't see anything amiss in a post like this.  (I'd like to think that's true of sane and rational folks today.)  But I'm also mindful not to fall into the same strident rhetoric of the people I oppose because of their abuse of facts, of truth, of the people they are supposed to represent, of their power. 

But I think my words and actions are moderate compared to the people who support the Governor and encourage him with model legislation from ALEC to pass laws that intimidate publicly minded citizens from legally protesting programs they see as harmful to our way of life.  People like Vic Fischer, Bella Hammond, and the other, less well known, people who expect that Pebble Mine, like most other huge mining operations around the world, will take its money out of state and leave in the state huge environmental degradation.   The history of mining suggests this is not an unreasonable expectation.

I would note that Michael Dingman has a piece in the ADN today that argues in part, that:

"Something happened in court last month that the anti-development folks don't want you to know about.
Rather than focusing on the facts of the court case -- which they don't want you to know -- they are going to show you photos of former State Senator and Alaska Constitution Delegate Vic Fischer and former First Lady Bella Hammond because they are sympathetic Alaskan heroes.
Don't fall for it."

I would argue that my claims about Parnell's pro-corporate stands are much easier to document and much more accurate than Dingman's characterization of Fischer and Hammond as part of the anti-development movement.

Vic Fischer and Bella Hammond and I are not anti-development.  He was part of the constitutional convention that wrote in Article 8:

"It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest. "

And then went on to innumerate how to allocate those resources.  That's not anti-development, but apparently Governor Parnell believes his administration alone should determine what 'consistent with the public interest' means.

Bella Hammond's husband ushered in oil development and, understanding that oil was a finite resource added a program to reserve a portion of the wealth raised for the use of future generations.

Governor Parnell's notion of public interest appears to have been affected by his years arguing the interests of Conoco Phillips before the legislature.  The real problem in Alaska is that people are not at all alarmed by this obvious conflict of interest.  I guarantee you that if the former lobbyist for the Sierra Club were running for Governor, the Right would create such a screech and howl in the election that you'd think Satan himself were running.  Alaskans - and the Democrats play a role in this - would see that conflict, but don't seem to have a problem with the Governor's obvious conflict.  I think we have petro dollars - we know about the Corrupt Bastards Club  before Citizens United - and later Citizens United to thank for this. 

Bella Hammond and Vic Fischer (and I) are for development that will benefit the people of Alaska and is sustainable and won't damage the other resources important to Alaska.  Immediate short term profit for political supporters shouldn't be the standard, but rather the long term benefit to Alaska's current and future residents.  These don't seem to be worries for the Governor and his people.  And that worries me too.  What also worries me is their stifling of channels of dissent where citizens can raise legitimate questions.  To the Parnellites, any hint of a question of their intent brings out a loud charge of anti-development. It's either or.  Development is good.  Any opposition is bad.  It's an almost biblical application of good and evil, and they always see themselves among the good.

[I've been having problems with feedburner lately intermittently working and not working to connect my posts to subscribers and other weblogs.  This one was posted Oct. 23 but has not been linked elsewhere, so I'm reposting it to see if that will help..]

Afternoon At Elliott Bay Book Company - Scary Old Sex, The Life You Can Save, And More

While in Seattle this last time, I got the pleasure of browsing the shelves at the Elliot Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill.  Here are some books to munch on.  I hope this reminds folks that there is more to do than follow Tweets about politics,

Alec Ross - Industries of the Future


You can watch Ross talk about this book at this Ted Talk presentation.  He talks about growing up in West Virginia and teaching in West Baltimore.  He thinks the kids he saw in those place are no less intelligent than kids anywhere.  Those kids didn't fail, the system did.

Premise of the book:  If the last 20 years were shaped by the rise of digitization and the internet, if that's what produced the jobs and wealth, what's next?
The book, he says, mentions a number, but in this talk he flags three.

1. Big data analytics - land was the raw material of the agricultural age, iron of the industrial age, and data is the raw material of the information age.  Background in data analytics will get you employment for the next 20 years or so.  
2. Cyber security - just an associate degree will get you a job starting at $60,000, with college degree, $90,000.
3. Genomics - The world's next trillion dollar industry will be created by our genetic code.  

Question is:  How inclusive will these industries be?  San Jose, for instance, has 4000 homeless people.
How to compete and succeed in tomorrow's world.

Three things we can do now for your kids:

1. Do not rely on the systems to save you.  Because the system fails kids.  Create your own system to save the kids.  
2. Make sure your kids learn languages - foreign languages and computer languages.  
3. Be a life long learner yourself.  

Loss of hope and loss of opportunity is fatal.

The video fills in a lot more background.  I've just given you the barest outline.

[If I do all of these in this much detail, I'll be up way past my bedtime.  I've already decided to do this in two parts.  Each one of these is worthy of a post of its own.  But the point is to just give you a quick look at these titles, like you were browsing in the book store.]

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o - In The House Of The Interpreter

Margaret Busby, reviewing this book in the Independent writes:

"From the first pages of In the House of the Interpreter, strong and memorable themes emerge: the power of education, the rootedness of kin, the need to transform the colonialist narrative. "How could a whole village, its people, history, everything, vanish, just like that?"

This memoir takes place in 1950s Kenya as the Mau Mau are fighting for independence from the British and Ngugi is going to a school.

"Alliance High School is a sanctuary. It is an elitist establishment – the first secondary school for Africans in the country – founded by a coalition of Protestant churches and initially shaped by American charitable funding that aimed at turning out 'civic-minded blacks who would work within the parameters of the existing racial state'".

Arlene Heyman - Scary Old Sex

From a New Yorker review:

"Consider a character like the retired doctor in the story “Nothing Human,” a grandmother three times over, who takes the opportunity of a cruise-ship vacation to berate her husband for his squeamishness: “We can’t try anal intercourse because you think I’m filled with shit to the brim. You have no sense of anatomy. I can take an enema! You can use a condom!” She knows she’s being less than fair. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s half asleep; she picked a fight over his not washing his hands as he groped his way back from the cabin bathroom, and now she’s turned to nagging to cover her deeper anxieties about the relationship. Was he in there to masturbate, when they haven’t had sex since the start of the cruise? When they got together a decade ago, after her first husband’s death, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She misses that, and she misses her first husband, too. But she’s too wise to indulge in nostalgia. When she dreams occasionally of her first husband, it’s in a detached, friendly way—'like a little visit.'”

This is a description of one of the short stories in this book, stories about older women and sex.  The author, Anne Heyman, is a psychoanalyst in her 70s.  To prove that so called sophisticated magazines like the New Yorker aren't any different from other media, the reviewer spends most of the review on literary gossip about Heyman's early affair with a much older famous author and how that affair is treated in different works of fiction.

Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save 

Singer is a prolific and well known philosopher.  You can actually read this book online here.   In the Preface, he writes about this book:

"I have been thinking and writing for more than thirty years about how we should respond to hunger and poverty.  I have presented this book's arguments to thousands of students in my university classes and in lectures around the world, and to countless others in newspapers, magazines, and television programs.  As a result, I've been forced to respond to a wide range of thoughtful challenges.  This book represents my effort to distill what I've learned about why we give, or don't give, and what we should do a out it."

Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie


I pulled this book off the shelf because Liu is the translator for the Chinese science fiction book, Three Body Problem.

Amal El-Mothar writes about the book for NPR:

"Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a book from which I staggered away, dazed, unable to speak. I have wrestled with how to review it, circled my metaphors like a wary cat, and finally abandoned the enterprise of trying to live up to its accomplishment. I will be honest, and blunt, because this is a book that has scoured me of language and insight and left itself rattling around inside the shell of me."

No wonder he was asked to translate The Three Body Problem.






Neil Gaiman - The View From The Cheap Seats




I know Gaiman from the graphic novel Sandman, a gift from my son.  This is a collection of non-fiction essays.  Kirkus Review writes:

"Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, 2015, etc.) is a fan. Of course, as a writer, he’s created unforgettable worlds and characters, but in this collection of essays, introductions, speeches, and other nonfiction works, it’s his fan side that comes through most strongly. The author writes about the thrill of discovering a piece of art that feels like it was made just for you; the way certain books or songs seem to slot into a place in your heart you didn’t know was there; the way a text can mean different things at different times in your life. If the idea of going on a long, rambling walk with Gaiman and asking him about his influences sounds appealing, this is the book for you."

Jason Heller offers a longer review at NPR.

Charles Johnson - The Way Of The Writer

From a short review in the NY Times:

"Johnson’s book, the record of a single year’s email correspondence with his friend E. Ethelbert Miller, is a piecemeal meditation on the daily routines and mental habits of a writer. Johnson describes his study’s curated clutter, his nocturnal working rhythms and the intense labor of his revisions, alongside a careful outline of a theory, reminiscent of both Aristotle and Henry James, of how plots emerge from a “ground situation.” There is a winning sanity here: Johnson wants his students to be “raconteurs always ready to tell an engaging tale,” not self-preoccupied."

As I read some of this book in the bookstore, it was one I knew I needed to get back to.


I've got another bunch of images of books from that afternoon which I'll try to get up before too long.

AIFF 2010: Features - My Favorites

This is Part 2 of a post started here comparing my favorite features at the Anchorage International Film Festival to those that won.

The Ones I Liked and Why



Fanny, Annie, and Danny

I've already written about this one and you can read about it there.  But the longer it's been, the more I think this is an almost perfect little film.   Just really good characters, really good acting, and a story that moves at just the right pace to bring all the characters together to the climax.  I was drawn right in and assumed I knew what happened when the screen went black.  It never occurred to me that the off-camera conclusion could have been different than the one I 'saw' until someone else was sure of a different conclusion.  This is a film whose characters were still in my head the day after I first saw it and wouldn't let go of my brain. 


The Temptation of St. Tony

Other reviewers had suggested the cinematic homages paid to various high brow film directors would be over the heads of most viewers.  While the film bleakly followed the excesses of Estonia's nouveau riche, often juxtaposing their excesses against the plight of the poor, I found it compelling throughout.  The images were stark and sometimes surreal.  The star of the movie, Taavi Eelsma, told me it was basically about whether it is possible today to be a good person.  Knowing that made it all work for me.  


Hello Lonesome

Hello Lonesome was, like Fanny, Annie, and Danny, about people and relationships.  We watched three lonesome people connecting with other people.  The move weaves in and out of each of the three stories - and all three stories are unexpected, yet very believable.  Excellent acting and all the other basics of good film making made this a poignant movie.  All the people, odd as some were, felt real.  This was simply a good movie.


Two more

22:43 - This Twilight Zone-like Austrian mystery had great characters and stories that moved along on several levels so the viewer had to pay close attention to keep track of them all.  It was an ambitious movie that was nicely done.  It isn't a great movie, but certainly better than much of the formula garbage that comes out of Hollywood.  And it's world premier was in Anchorage at the festival.  You can watch premier audience reactions.


The Red Machine - This movie fits into the category of hip outlaw films such as The Sting.  The lead character is one of those smart criminals who has a strong work ethic, a problem with authority, and a lip. He's hired to help steal, not the Japanese secret code machine - which would make knowing the code useless - but how the machine works in the mid 1930s. 

This film was invited to the festival and thus was not in competition for an award. It's Hollywood slick, but better than average Hollywood smart. Good characters and dialogue throughout, though I was left scratching my head over a couple of points in the film. For example, I didn't get the strong animosity over the guy who was brought back to the team to do the heist. His relationship with the Japanese ambassador was made clear, but not with the other Navy guys. They really didn't like him.

In an earlier post I lamented that the film was shown on Dec. 6 and Dec. 8, but would have been much more appropriately shown on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day.  I also called the movie very slick and irreverent.  The directors left a comment that took me a second to catch.

Argy and Boehm said...

Oh...it would have been cool to have The Red Machine play on the Day That Shall Live in Infamy! Thank you for the thought...

Stephanie Argy (slick) and Alec Boehm (irreverent) Co-directors The Red Machine

That gives a hint of their quick wit throughout the film.


OK, I've got two more I want to at least mention.

Ashes  is in the 'infected' genre and I probably wouldn't have seen it at 10pm when it was playing against a well hyped local feature - Beekeepers.  But I'd met film maker Elias Matar  just after he arrived and he kept inviting me to the film.  I'm not a zombie movie fan.  I don't quite get the attraction.  And I learned from Matar that infected movies are NOT zombie movies.  Ashes was filmed in a real hospital and follows a pretty realistic emergency room doctor.  Matar (here's a video of him talking about the film) explained that his sister is an ER doctor and so many of her stories are meshed together in this film.  All this is to say that the film begins as a serious film about an infection in a hospital before people start going strange as they become infected.  It's possible that the film could attract what I would think would be two different audiences - the serious hospital crisis drama  audience and the infection/zombie audience. Or each might be turned off by the joining of these two different genres.  I would note that the film was marred by the fact that the Blue Ray version stopped about 20 minutes in and we had to first wait, then watch much of the beginning over again until the DVD copy caught up to where the first one ended.  This is something the festival has got to do better in the future if it is going to be more than a funky, way-off-in-Alaska festival.  And I don't recall any of the audience leaving during the interruption. 




Ticked Off Trannies With Knives gets my award for best title at the Festival.  The transvestite characters were spectacularly bigger than life, but we also got to see behind the make-up a bit.  And just listening to them and watching them is worth the price of admission.  The sadism and violence in the movie is not something I normally watch, but all the characters were real - which made it even more distressing.  And as I said in a short previous comment on this film, the very ending line asked the same question I was asking, saving the movie, because it was so self-aware. 

My Math Says At Least 2000 Kids Will Be Abused Because Of Dunleavy's Changes To Erin's Law

On May 24, Senator Dunleavy posted a long response on Facebook to the critics of his changes to HB 44, now CS HB 44. 

I've responded to it already here.  But as he continues to defend himself, I thought it would be useful to focus on what I think is the only real issue here:  the number of kids who will be molested because of the changes he made to the Erin's Law.  He argues he hasn't weakened the bill at all.  I truly can't fathom how he has come up with that conclusion.  Well, I've tried and I posted one possible explanation.  Here, I'm going to address this issue about the number of kids.  Then below, I've copied his long Facebook defense with my responses, paragraph by paragraph.

There's only one issue: 

(The only other possible issue is that without the changes, the bill wouldn't have passed.  But since it's already passed the House and the clean version passed the Senate last year unanimously, I think that argument can't seriously be made.)

In my mind, there is only one issue that matters when discussing the changes in Erin's Law that Senator Dunleavy's committee has made:  How will these changes impact the number of kids who will be molested because they did not get taught at school - because of Erin's Law - how to recognize potential abusers and their grooming techniques, how to say no, and that it's not their fault and so they need to tell an authority (parents, teachers, police, etc.) what happened.

Erin's Law, the original HB 44 amended to include teen dating violence awareness education, had the following features:
1.  School districts were required to use this program
2.  It covered kids in grades K-12
3.  If parents did not want their kids to participate, they had to say they did not give permission (opt out)

Now, the Erin's Law section of the Senate Education Committee Substitute for HB 44 has the following features:
1.  School districts are not required to implement the program
2.  It covers grades 7-12 only
3.  Kids cannot get this program unless their parents give them permission (opt in)

Just these changes alone will reduce the number of kids who participate in this program.  We can argue about how many kids will be affected.  Dunleavy tells us that 20+ school districts of 53 are already offering some version of this training.  I've looked at the list and it includes the largest districts - Anchorage, Fairbanks, Mat-Su, Juneau.  Thus while it's less than half the school districts, it's more than half the kids.  So, well over half the students are in school districts that do some of this.  The list doesn't tell us what is content is covered or whether it is K-12 or just 7-12.

Let's do some rough numbers.  Census data tells us that as of 2013 25.6% of the 736,732 people in Alaska are under 18.  That means in 2013 there were 188,600 kids in Alaska.  Of these 7.5% were under five and so not in school.  That comes to 133,348 school age kids and there would be  more now.   For argument's sake (and I'll be conservative with the numbers I offer) let's suppose that 30% of those kids are NOT getting sexual assault awareness training at school now.  That would mean about 40,000 kids. 

Currently, schools have the power to adopt such training or not.  One has to assume that those who are supportive have adopted it.  The others, for whatever reason, have not.  Now that this bill has been changed from mandatory to optional for schools, there's no reason to think that a lot of them will suddenly change their positions on this.  But to be charitable, let's say that 50% of the kids who aren't getting this, will be covered next year because the schools voluntarily adopt it.  And, again being charitable, let's assume those schools offer it to kids in K-12.

That still leaves 20,000 kids who won't get exposed to sexual abuse awareness training.

The numbers that proponents of Erin's Law have cited were 1/4 of girls and 1/6 of boys will be molested by the time they are 18.  ('Molested' a wide array of actions from being flashed to groped to raped.  And these events often continue over years.)  I didn't hear anyone challenge those numbers, but again, I'll be charitable and round it off to one out of ten.  Among the 20,000 kids not getting Erin's Law training, 10% would be 2,000 kids who will be molested because they were not given access to sexual abuse awareness.  I think my number is low because I've been very conservative with my hypotheticals and because Alaska's rate of abuse is higher than the national average.   I acknowledge that Erin's Law education won't prevent all sexual abuse of kids.  But Erin Merryn testified that she's been given anecdotal reports from police where the law is in place that they have been told by kids that it mattered and that statistics on abuse have dropped.  (And given the higher awareness for such crimes, often the numbers go up, not down, because more people report.)

This is the low-ball statistical impact of the changes that Dunleavy has made to the original HB 44.  There is a direct relationship between the changes that were made and this figure of 2,000 kids who will not be prepared to evade molestation because of those changes.  This is just for the first year. Even if the number were 'only' 1000, it would be horrific.  And each of these kids will have emotional and psychological damage that will lead to extra work for teachers, law enforcement, the courts, not to mention their families. 

Despite Dunleavy's claims that other parts of the bill make it a better bill, none of those changes strengthen the original intent or will get a single more kid into sexual abuse awareness classes. One could argue (and I do below) that some weaken it.

Because Dunleavy has insisted on watering down the bill and burdening it with 22 more sections, he will bear responsibility for every molestation that the original bill would have prevented.  He can say what he wants, but there is a very direct correlation between his actions here and the future abuse of a large number of kids in Alaska.  Whether that number is 500, 1000, or 2000, each one is his responsibility. 

Dunleavy has not given equivalent benefits that his changes will cause that would offset the damage to these kids.  He talks broadly about parental rights, but never identifies specific harm passing the original Erin's Law would have caused. 

The only possible way Dunleavy could be excused from this responsibility is if he could prove that the original bill would not have passed the full Senate.  Since it the passed the Senate unanimously last year, I think that proving it would have failed this year would be a difficult task.

From my perspective the impact on Alaska kids is the only thing that is important in this discussion.  What other states do, abstract benefits of parental rights, unspecified unfunded mandates, and the other things Dunleavy offers are just not relevant.

So that's my case here.   If I'm wrong here, show me.  My numbers are conservative.  It's Dunleavy's job, if he wants to refute this, to show how passing the original HB 44 his committee got for a vote , would have caused greater harm because it didn't have his amendments.  I have a good imagination, but I can't see how he can do much more than shuffle words around.  Nothing that changes the numbers.   

Below are Dunleavy's original Facebook Post and my comments paragraph by paragraph.  I've put Dunleavy's words in blue and mine in black. 

The Committee Substitute (CS) for HB 44 known as “The Alaska Safe Children’s Act” by some and “Erin’s Law” by others was introduced in the Senate Education Committee that I chair on Tuesday. [May 19] The CS was heard and adopted by the Senate Education Committee and moved out to the next committee of referral, Senate Finance. A Senate Finance hearing has not been scheduled yet but I do anticipate one will be in the next few days. If the bill is passed out of Senate Finance, it will then go to the Senate Rules committee and soon after most likely to the Senate floor for a vote. If approved by the Senate it would go to the House for a vote as well.

Pretty straightforward so far.  He figures it will be scheduled in the Finance committee "in the next few days."  As I publish this on May 29 the HB 44 Timeline still has May 21  referral to Finance as the last date is mentioned..  I can't find where it has been scheduled.  

The CS for HB 44 has been the topic of much discussion this week. The focus of the discussion seems to center on the following:
• The belief that the change from the word “shall” to “may” with regard to compelling school districts to mandate the training will make the law, if not meaningless, less effective, because school districts would not be required to implement the training – it would be optional and give local districts local control
• The concern that the CS has too many new sections and topics than what was in the original HB 44.

Point 1 - There were two levels of concern.   One, as Dunleavy mentions, changing the requirement  for school districts from 'shall' to 'may.'  But people were also concerned that parental option changed from allowing parents to opt out (they were required to say they wanted their kids to NOT participate in the program) to opting in (they are required to give permission before their kids can participate.)  A third significant change was to eliminate K-6 kids from getting sexual awareness education.  These ages are the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves.  They need this the most.

Point 2 - It wasn't simply that there were too many new sections.  If they believed the sections  strengthened the bill, I believe supporters of Erin's Law would not have objected.  In fact they went along with the addition of a new section that mandated teen dating violence curriculum.
The concern was a) that there were so many new amendments (the bill now has 23 sections, one of which is the original bill)  that had little or nothing to do with Erin's Law; b) that some of the amendments (in addition to the Erin's Law section mentioned above) that were aimed at parental rights actually hurt kids' chances of getting sexual abuse awareness education; and c) some of the new sections had controversial provisions such as prohibiting schools from contracting with agencies that provide abortions.  They even prohibit school service providers from having non-school related contracts with abortion providers. (This seems to conflict with the US Constitution's guarantee of freedom of association.) 

Let me explain why the changes to the CS were made. With regard to changing “shall” to “may”, this change was made at the request of school districts that testified at hearings that we had during the regular session. Their concern was that with potential budgets cuts and possible staff reductions, making the training mandatory in law now before we know what the budget will be could put the districts in a difficult spot in deciding how to use their limited resources. As one school official said, “We agree this training will be good for kids, but will we have the funds to implement it?” Another asked, “With budgets being cut, what do we give up to make room for new trainings such as this?”
Another thing that warranted the change was the issue of which curriculum or program to use, and more importantly, which is most effective? While this issue of identifying available, effective curricula is in the process of being addressed, some school district officials are concerned that they need time to review curricula before implementation in schools.

I'm sure that school districts did complain about this. The words 'unfunded mandate' were mentioned in the hearing.  Schools do have a lot of things they are required to do.  But my wife, who taught English to non-native speakers in the Anchorage School District and thus saw what happened in a number of different schools, would regularly tell me about how much time teachers spent on things that were not mandated - like celebrating various holidays.  If teachers want to make time, they will. More on this below the next section.

Currently, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ school districts out of 53 total Alaska school districts that are already doing some form of the training now voluntarily without being compelled by the state. School districts are asking for time to allow them to identify the resources to implement the training properly and effectively. This is part of the reason for the change.
The other stated issue some folks are having with the CS is that they believe there are too many sections to it, and that the number of sections may jeopardize the bill’s passage.
Hundreds of bills are introduced during legislative sessions, with a fraction of them ever getting passed by both the House and Senate and then being signed into law by the Governor. So there is always a chance a bill may not get the required votes for passage, including this CS. While I have had some legislators say they may not be able to support the CS as it is, others have stated to me that with the changes and additions to the CS they are now more likely to support the bill. It is always difficult to say what the final vote will be. However, I do have a sense that it has a very good chance of passing.

Dunleavy rightly points out that a number of school districts (he says 20+) already are doing some form of this training.  Then he cites some concerned about:

1.  Not having time to prepare.  This includes getting appropriate materials and training teachers.

I'd note that all teachers are already, by state law, mandatory reporters.  That means they are required to report suspicions of child abuse that they see.  So they should already have some fairly detailed training so they know how to do this.

Book shared at 5/20/15 Education Committee Hearing

I would also note that I could find no time-line in the bill.  Thus one assumes that like most legislation without a date, it goes into effect in 90 days.  If having time is the issue, then simply giving schools a year or two to get prepared would seem to solve this issue. Leave it mandatory, but give them a delay option. A school district could apply for a waiver and explain why they needed it.  But I don't think this should be an issue.  There are already schools doing this training and they have resource materials.  One person who testified shared books that are being used that even have
adaptations to Alaska Native cultures.  (And I note that there are many different Native cultures so one needs to consider whether these are appropriate for all the cultures.)  There was also testimony that the Rasmuson Foundation had pledged to help provide materials and training. 

2.  The legislative process and the slim chances for this bill.  The original HB 44 already passed the House.  Last year a clean version of this bill passed the Alaska Senate unanimously.  So even if a few people told you they had problems with it, the odds are high that you wouldn't lose half  those who voted for it last year.  If you had simply passed the bill that was sent to the committee the way it was, I think (and you know) it had every likelihood of passing.  But because of the significant changes there are now issues that will cause people who supported the bill to reconsider.  Do they support all the new things you've tacked on and is it worth passing them (things you couldn't get passed in the regular session) to get a watered down Erin's Law?  Furthermore, t's not likely the legislature would go back and add K-6 in a future session.  More likely they'll say, we've already taken care of this issue.
And, if it passes the Senate, because of the many changes, the House has to redebate it.  We're in special session now and the state is close to shutting down if the legislature can't agree on a budget.  Debating all the changes to Erin's Law is not something they have a lot of time for.  Perhaps you thought this would get your pet legislation passed.  But it might get everything sunk. 

So what’s in the sections of the CS? In the Comments below, I will post links for: (a) the actual text of the CS for HB 44, (b) the original version of HB 44, and (c) a sectional analysis of the new CS completed by Legislative Legal. While the Legislative Legal analysis lists 23 actual sections of the bill, these components of the bill are worth noting. . .
Section 16 deals with sexual abuse and sexual assault awareness and prevention efforts in public schools. This is what some refer to as “Erin’s Law.” The other component of this section relates to dating violence and abuse awareness and prevention efforts in public schools. Some refer to this as “Bree’s Law,” named after a young Alaskan woman named Bree Moore who was tragically murdered by her then boyfriend.
Sections 2, 5, 6, 7, and 17 relate to SB 89, known as the “Parental Rights Bill.” I introduced this bill earlier this year in an effort to reiterate in law the inherent rights of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. SB 89 has had several hearings this year in the Senate Education Committee and State Affairs Committee. It was passed out to the Senate Rules Committee where it awaits scheduling for a floor vote.
Sections 3, 4, 8, 9, 19, 11, 12, 13 14,15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 all relate to eliminating or modifying requirements of the state on school districts and educational personnel. The purpose of these sections is to identify items that can be modified or repealed to enable school districts to save resources, in order for them to potentially use those freed resources for academic and educational matters.
Section 23 saves the state money and removes a testing requirement. This section is basically HB 80, sponsored by Representative Lynn Gattis, which passed the House this year. It repeals the mandate from last year’s HB 278 that all secondary students take the SAT, ACT or Work Keys test before graduating from high school. HB 278, which required the state to pay for the test, failed to specify a score that students must receive to consider passing. HB 80 reverses the mandate and funding from the state. In doing so, the state will save $525,000 annually and will give back countless hours to school counselors and administrators who have been proctoring these tests.

Sen. Dunleavy is either being careless or trying to slip some things by us here.  Talking about parental rights could take up half a dozen long blog posts.  I'll just say I see there is a national movement on parental rights.  Their website and rhetoric remind me of other conservative 'think tanks' like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity.  They use a phrase everyone agrees with - parental rights, in this case - to attack government and schools.   Parental Rights in this bill includes the right to keep their kids from learning about sexuality, STDs, birth control, and definitely abortion.  And sexual abuse awareness.

It's interesting that while the language in Section 2 requires parents to object each time they want to withdraw their child from school activities to which the object, the language for Sexual Abuse Awareness (Erin's Law) requires them to actually give permission BEFORE the child can attend. 

I'd note that two of the sections listed - 5 and 17 - have nothing to do with parental rights, at least not as I understand that term.  Instead they are aimed at cutting all school contracts with agencies that provide abortions and agencies that don't provide abortions but have contracts with agencies that do.  Those were just slipped in there, it seems, on the assumption that most people won't check.  While Dunleavy has changed a lot of things to optional, the abortion providing agency blackballing has been made mandatory.  What happens if the abortion providing agency also has the best and cheapest training and materials on STD's or pregnancy prevention?  Schools will be forced to pay more and get lower quality materials.  That doesn't seem to be in the spirit of giving school districts more flexibility and local power.  It seems Sen Dunleavy is able to impose his religious beliefs on school districts which might limit the parental rights of parents who would welcome the expertise that, say, Planned Parenthood, has acquired over the years on these subjects. 

There are also sections I would support.  Section 2.4 allows parents to withdraw their kids from school to observe a religious holiday without penalties to the children and Section 2.5 allows parents to review the content of all classes, programs, performance standard, or activity.  These are good things.  Kids shouldn't be punished for observing the holy days of their religion and parents should have access to all the content used in schools.  But they have nothing to do with Erin's Law. 

In my opinion and that of others, the changes in CS HB44 make it a better bill because it addresses a number of outstanding issues that have already had the close attention of the House and/or Senate but which were not yet passed into law because we ran out of time in the regular session. By rolling the issues into a CS as is commonly done in the legislature, a number of “birds can be killed with one stone.”

 Except. . . . that Erin's Law was as close to a slam dunk pass as there could be, until you added  22 new sections on to it, some of which are truly questionable.  Yes, this sort of horse trading on legislation is done all the time, but this is a special session, with limited time, and the Governor's direction was to pass Erin's Law, not all these others.  And, as I've noted elsewhere, all this leveraging and taking advantage that you say is 'commonly done' may well be part of the reason that politicians' approval rating is so abysmally low. 

Now let me address some of the claims by using facts and data.
“You put this CS together to kill the original bill.” - Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in the CS, I support and in talking with others, many others do as well.

 I suspect this is true.  Rather I see this as a way to piggy back on a bi-partisan bill to get legislation that you failed to get passed in the regular session.  But stuffing this with 22 new sections to the one section of Erin's Law is probably even greedy by normal standards.   And given the news that people are asking you to run against Sen. Murkowski, this would seem a perfect ploy for getting points with the far right of the Republican party in the primaries.  I'm not saying you don't also believe in this, or that the political benefit was part of your calculation, but appearances do matter in politics.  Though you may not have expected the amount of push back you've gotten.  

“By changing the ‘shall’ to a ‘may’ you have effectively nullified the intent of the bill.” - I don’t think so and it is certainly not my intent. If anything, I think we get more support for it by giving school districts more control and more time to identify ways they can implement the training. As stated earlier, many school districts are already doing the training. I am confident that within a short period of time, the remaining school districts will be implementing the training as well.

This really gets to the key point I made at the beginning of this post.  At the top of this post I went through the math, step by step, and it shows that at least 2000 kids will likely be abused without the protection of Erin's Law because of the changes Dunleavy made.

This is a BIG DEAL.  Your intent is not the issue.  They say the road to hell is paved, not by bricks, but by good intentions.  The outcomes are what matters.  Your actions are setting up lots of Alaska kids for abuse because they won't get training on how to recognize abusers and avoid them and report them.  For me, this is the bottom line.  The number of kids who will be harmed because of your meddling with what was a clean bill, certain to pass.  Nothing else matters.  The rest is just noise.

You give no evidence except your 'confidence' that the other schools will follow through.  And even if they did, you've made it significantly easier for abusers to keep their kids out of these classes. 

“Dunleavy, you don’t care about kids. You don’t want Erin’s Law to pass!” - Boy, where do I start? First of all, last year I voted FOR Erin’s law. Read this link: http://www.adn.com/…/alaska-legislature-can-have-impact-abu… Remember, it was also introduced last year and passed the Senate 20 to 0. So I DO support the law. With regard to not caring about kids, seriously, my profession is public education. I care and that is why I support the bill.

I'm sure you care about kids.  I don't doubt that.  But I think you've been able to compartmentalize what you are doing here and you simply don't see the impacts this will have on real kids all across the state.  You can read my post on Hannah Arendt to understand how this might happen.

And since the bill passed the Senate last year unanimously, I'm convinced it would have passed this time if you had simply passed the original bill without trying to tack on a bunch of other things you wanted, no matter how important you think they are.  This is a test of a human being - whether you can help others without taking a cut for your help.  You failed that test.  I understand, because of your time in the legislature, that you consider this standard procedure.  I'm just telling you that it's not part of the ethics I practice.  I challenge you to find a quote from any ethical tradition that tells you to only help if you get something in return.  Show me where Christ tells us to be sure to take your cut when you help others.

“Then why change the ‘shall’ to ‘may’ if you supported it last year? Why the change?” - Good question. Last year we had oil prices well over $100 per barrel. We were not staring at a $4 billion dollar deficit. We were not having to cut school district funding; we were adding to it. The state and school districts were not under the pressure we are under now. Again, the “may” gives districts time to identify resources to implement the training.

A couple of things here.  First, for every kid who is sexually abused, there is more work for the teachers, the school districts, and in many cases police and mental health agencies, and on and on.  Not preventing child abuse is itself an unfunded mandate, because the damage of abuse costs the kids, their families, their schools, and their communities a lot.

Second, if your concern was timing, why not just allow districts to apply for deadline waivers if they can show there's a hardship?   But make them explain why they need the waiver, because people testified that the Rasmuson Foundation and others have offered to make materials and training available.  Make them specify their reason for a waiver and then let Rasmuson help them overcome the obstacles.  We'll see if these are the real issues or not. 

“There should be no amendments or new sections to this bill. Go back to the original bill.” - If we were to do that, then there would be no “Bree’s Law” component of the bill, no training for dating violence and abuse, because that component is itself an amendment. The “original” bill did not have the “Bree’s Law” component. It was an amendment just added this spring. That change, as well as the others in the CS, have all gone toward making it a better bill. Go to the following link and you can follow the bill as it was amended in the House. http://www.akleg.gov/basis/Bill/Detail/29…
The House amended the bill. The Senate was in the process of amending the bill in the regular session by identifying mandates that could be removed from school districts to free up resources. This effort was led by Senator Gardner. Senator McGuire also offered an amendment to the bill – the “Bree’s Law” component a few weeks before the session ended. My point is that bills often go through many steps and amendments before they become law.

 Again with this red herring about amendments.  There are lots of reasons to amend bills.  One is to make them better when problems are raised or when new options (like the teen dating violence) present themselves.  Another is to try to piggyback your own pet legislation onto a bill that is likely to pass so yours goes along for the ride.  And sometimes they are added to delay or kill a bill.  Despite what you say about the 22 added sections making it a better bill (the teen dating violence change isn't even one of them), we'll just have to disagree.  I've stated already above my reasons for thinking the amendments weaken and water down the bill.   Yes, bills go through many stages because people have different goals and values.  You were in a position to let this go through and you hijacked it for your own benefit.  By that I mean that you got stuff tacked on that you wanted passed.  Stuff that doesn't in any way increase the likelihood that kids will be protected against sexual abuse. 

“Erin Merryn, the lady behind the Erin’s Law movement, states you have hijacked the law and have changed it from its original version.” – This is what she has said. But she also recognizes that there are different versions in different states. I will post in the Comments below a document prepared by the National Conference of State Legislatures which identifies greatly varying action taken in implementing Erin’s Law in various states. While some states do require schools to provide the education, others simply allow them to, and yet other states create task forces to study potential implementation of the training. I believe Alaska’s CS is a version that will help children.
What’s next? The CS is in Senate Finance waiting to be scheduled for a hearing. Hopefully this will occur soon. It’s time to help Alaska’s children.

I really don't care what other states do.  Alaska has the worst statistics of any state when it comes to sexual abuse, violence against women, and related crimes.  Your responsibility as an Alaskan legislator is to those kids in our state who need the information that the original Erin's Law would provide them.  You sound like a teenager telling his parents, "But Mom, all the other kids do it."  You aren't a teenager, you're a legislator with the power to help helpless kids.  You are responsible for every kid that doesn't get sexual abuse awareness education and then gets molested because of what you've done to Erin's Law.  And the numbers, as I've pointed out above, will be significant. That's not opinion, that's not arguable.  It's based on actual numbers and the stats on rates of abuse.  You took a strong bill and watered it down.  There will be kids who don't get the information and help they need because of those changes.  And you're the person who has made the changes and defends the changes.  

If I'm wrong here, show me.  My numbers are conservative.  It's your job, if you want to refute this, to show how passing on as it was the original HB 44 your committee got, would have caused greater harm because it didn't have your amendments.  I don't think you can. 

Irony -No Smoking, But Guns OK

We went to see Stalking The Bogey Man at UAA tonight.  Get tickets and go.  Not only is it a powerful play, but Anchorage is the locale for most of it, and the topic is one of the most important for our children.  You won't be bored.  You can get tickets here.  There's no one who shouldn't see this play - unless you're a rape victim and can't deal with it yet.  More on it later.   I don't have time to do it justice tonight.

But as we were walking to the theater on campus I was struck by this big sign.

We have a smoke free campus here.  You can't take a break any more and stand outside when it's 10˚F out and puff with your fellow smokers.  You have to actually get off campus.  I'm not sure if that isn't taking things a little too far, but I started pushing for no smoking in class back in the mid 1970s, so I definitely like the indoor ban.

But I was thinking about the headline in this morning's paper as I passed this sign.

I try to be objective and look at all sides of an issue.  Here's the kind of 'rational' article on guns on campus that  I would normally write.  And here's one that explains why guns on campus is a bad idea. But at some point, you have to stop being polite and rational and just say it like it is.

There's no real middle ground here.  There are national organizations, like ALEC  and Americans for Prosperity that are anti-worker, anti-regulation, anti-public school, and other right wing legislation at the state level.  It's far cheaper to influence state officials than national ones.  I don't know that either of these organizations is helping with this drive.  I don't know who's helping Pete Kelly with this bill. But I know the people of Fairbanks are responsible for electing Pete Kelly and the other Republican legislators who have supported this bill are all culpable in this.

My Senator - Berta Gardner - pointed out the other day that while the Senate is forcing the University to change it's concealed weapon policy, they aren't themselves allowing guns in the capital building.  I guess that's next year.  And I'd bet there are a few legislators who have guns in their offices.

The legislature has ignored the warnings about oil and the state budget for years.  And now, instead of seriously working on raising revenue to keep the University strong as well as other important government services, they're refusing to consider raising revenues like responsible states do - through an income tax.  But they do have time to pass legislation to allow concealed carry on campus.  Even the highly corporate Board of Regents don't support this law.    This isn't about safety on compass, it's about power - and what better symbol of power than a gun.

But, in the mean time, concealed carry, or any carry, is not allowed on campus.  But if Pete Kelly gets his way, while you won't be able to light up on campus, you can take your gun when you talk to your professor about your grade on the last exam.

I realize that posts like this will probably cause a group to sponsor legislation to allow smoking on campus.

The Gloves Are Off As Marcum Seems To Be Working Hard To Get Her Libertarian Philosophy A Boost In Juneau (Corrected)

[Note:  Board will meet in their office at University Mall.  9am. You can Zoom in (and it's a better view than the teleconferencing at the LIO, at Zoom link as the work sessions: https://zoom.us/j/9074062894?pwd=VWxjem42YUloTnBFcTlpVWZVS0wwZz09

Zoom Meeting ID: 907 406 2894  Passcode: MoreMaps]

 I stayed home today and watched the meeting via Zoom.  In some ways you get a better view than you would in the audience at the Legislative Information Office.  But without the detailed maps online so you can zoom in and see exactly what's going on.  How many incumbents are paired?  How many incumbentless districts are there?  But you can see what's been done to the Muldoon are of East Anchorage.  The community - one made up of lots of diverse folks including a many of Anchorage's Hmong population - has been sliced and diced and connected on one end, it appears, to Eagle River, despite lots of testimony from both Muldoon and from Eagle River that ER should be its own district.  And the other end looks like it is paired with the hillside - connected over parkland, but not directly by roads.  

This is the Anchorage map Marcum presented today.  East Anchorage is twisted this way and that.  Part of it seems to go to ER.  Part to JBER.  Part to Hillside.  

This is a fairly high res image, so click to enlarge and focus

There's a great similarity to Marcum's very first map - Board Map v1 - which was roundly criticized by everyone because it paired lots of Democrats and linked East Anchorage to Eagle River.  Nicole Borromeo tried to improve it overnight and came up with v2.  But it's hard to start from a bad mad and make it a good map overnight.  Both v1 and v2 were so criticized that the Board tossed them in favor of v3 and v4.  Below is the Anchorage area map v1, listed on the Board's website under Obsolete Plans    

From  bottom left of this page

Well, the obsolete plan - see below - has been resurrected.

Board v1 map go to link for better view

For the most part, I try to report this factually.  I only slide into interpretation when I think the facts pointing toward my interpretation are pretty straightforward.  

Early on I was concerned about Bethany Marcum.  She's the executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum.  From Source Watch:

"APF is an affiliate member of the State Policy Network. SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of January 2021, SPN's membership totals 163. Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that the revenue of the combined groups was some $80 million, but a 2019 analysis of SPN's main members IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the combined revenue is over $120 million.[8] Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.[9]"

From the Alaska Policy Forum's website we can see their Vision, Mission, and Goals.

VISION

Our vision is an Alaska that continuously grows prosperity by maximizing individual opportunities and freedom.

MISSION

Our mission is to empower and educate Alaskans and policymakers by promoting policies that grow freedom for all.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF SOUND PUBLIC POLICY

1. Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
2. What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
3. Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
4. If you encourage something, you will get more of it; if you discourage something, you will get less of it.
5. Nobody spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
6. Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
7. Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

While taken totally out of context, these might seem like things many would embrace, this is a strongly anti-government, pro-Libertarian agenda.  What does #1 mean?  The Constitution doesn't say all people should be equal, but merely they should have the same opportunities and that they are equal before the law.  And with all the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers calming their liberty is being violated, well, this is one part of the Conservative far right agenda to push individuals and to ignore collective responsibilities.  

But my basic point is that Marcum's job, what she gets paid to do when she's not on the Board, is to push Libertarian, anti-government values and legislation.  And it would be naive to believe that Dunleavy didn't know that when he appointed her to the Board.  And it is totally natural for her to be doing that on the Board.  And it appears that map v1 and the latest map she presented Thursday were intended to help shape a legislature that will be amenable to the Alaska Policy Forum's model legislation.  

I don't fault her for that.  But it is up to the rest of the Board to fight for maps that don't have a strong pro-far right bias.  So far, Board member Nicole Borromeo has been the one to strongly challenge Marcum.  

Marcum left and Borromeo right

Isn't it odd that after spending time making the first maps and getting maps from four other groups, that the Board is working from scratch to create an Anchorage map.  There are lots of examples of how to fairly redistrict the state.  There are reasonable Anchorage maps with low deviations and decent compactness, socio-economic integration.  There were weeks of traveling around the state to get feedback from the public, and Marcum has offered us a map at the last minute that looks a lot like the rejected v1 over all those other maps.  I'm guessing those that got her onto the Board are leaning on her to produce  better maps for them.  It's just a guess, but she was fighting hard today for  "an obsolete plan."

It's late.  There are other examples of things Marcum has pushed on the Board that show her moving in this direction.  But tomorrow the meeting starts again.  They'll be back at the Board's office at the University Mall, not the Legislative Information Office as originally scheduled.  At 9am.  

And here's someone else I don't know at all who seems to see the same things that I see.

PLEASE PLEASE TESTIFY tomorrow for redistricting! Please support Nicole's map because it is more compact, respects individual neighborhood boundaries, and does not split up East Anchorage into Eagle River and South Anchorage districts. pic.twitter.com/8uCLoGfvr8

— AKroadweed (@AKroadweed) November 5, 2021

It's my understanding that all redistricting plans have been challenged in the courts.  So we can expect the same this time.  This time the process has been more open than in the past and the general public has had phone and online access to all the Board meetings.  And there's been a lot more coverage by the mainstream media and social media than in the past.  And the third party groups were much more prepared.  

Season One - "The Board Approves A Plan" ends next week - by Nov 10.  Then comes Season Two - In the Courts.  There will be a bit of a break, but the courts don't dilly dally with redistricting challenges because if the maps aren't finalized by around June 1, the division of elections won't have time for candidates to know what districts they're in.  {Correction:  So the old map, in that case, would be in place until 2024.  [The challenged map will be the map used in 2022, not the old map.] Thanks to TB for catching that error.)

Alaska is now the 30th state to accept Medicaid expansion

An email this afternoon from my Alaska State Rep, Andy Josephson says:

"Today, Alaska Governor Bill Walker announced plans to take advantage of federal funding to expand eligibility for Medicaid in Alaska. This action is supported by the Alaska Independent Democratic Coalition, which made Medicaid expansion a priority during the First Session of the 29th Alaska Legislature. Medicaid expansion comes with tremendous benefits including over a billion dollars in new federal revenue over the next six year, the creation of 4,000 jobs, and $1.2 billion in additional wages and salaries. Studies suggest Medicaid expansion would result in $2.49 billion in increased economic activity across Alaska.

There are multiple legal opinions showing that the Governor has the authority to expand Medicaid. Medicaid expansion is supported by the public and, I believe, a majority of lawmakers but that did not sway the Majority leadership, which refused to allow an up or down vote on the matter. I believe the Governor’s decision is justified based on the merits of the argument and the inaction of the Alaska Legislature. . . ."

The Republican leadership in the House and Senate in Juneau refused to pass this and fortunately Walker has found a way to do this administratively.  They have been and still are wrong on so many issues:  climate change, medicaid expansion, oil taxes, big construction projects, passing budgets that ignored warnings about declining oil revenues year after year, etc, etc. etc.  Influence from major donors/lobbyists (oil and construction particularly) or national far right wing pressure like the Koch's ALEC keep them from getting it right, from making decisions that benefit Alaska in the long term.   One can make micro-level arguments for many of the things they did or didn't do, but the long term evolution of things has proved their blindness to the larger issues.  

I make that fairly sweeping statement in light of this example of the Alaska Republicans who spearheaded the move for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman and who fought the addition of lgbt folks to Anchorage's anti-discrimination ordinance:

"On Thursday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unanimously ruled that sexual orientation discrimination is already illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner reports, the EEOC's groundbreaking decision effectively declares that employment discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers is unlawful in all 50 states."  [From Slate]

I guess the Anchorage ordinance has been effectively amended, at least in employment.  

And in light of Obama's visit to the Federal Correctional Institution El Reno near Oklahoma City to highlight the horrendous outcomes of the simplistic War on Drugs and Three Strikes You're Out programs which gave non-violent drug offenders long prison sentences.  This resulted in (Obama's stats) the US, with 5% of the world's population having 25% of the world's prisoners.  In ripping apart families, huge costs of prisons, and so many lives wasted behind bars.  And the Right's solution of privatizing governmental functions including prisons, meant there was now a new industry with a vested interest in expanding the prison population.  This is also in light of the legalization of marijuana in a number of states - both medical marijuana in many states and recreational marijuana in a few.