Is This Really a Story of Importance?

Tribal Fires linked to this TPM Muckraker post that begins like this:

Recently, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) appeared in the news for purchasing property on the Kenai River at far below market value last year from Alaska businessman Bob Penney. It turns out, the plot is nearby one of her more notable earmarks: a three-mile stretch of road that abuts the property of about 50 residents, for which Murkowski has secured $6 million in federal funds since 2003.

If you read closely, you find out:

1. This was a project initiated by local home owners who didn't like the increase summer traffic going to a nearby federal wildlife refuge.
2. This probably wouldn't have affected commuting from LM's returned property or Penney's
3. Penney doesn't seem to be involved. The local advocates caught Murkowski's ear on a lucky plane trip.
4. It all began in 2002, well before, presumably, Penney offered the deal.

So, making a big deal of it - unless there's more to be uncovered - seems a like throwing meat to the lynch mob.

On the other hand, it sheds more light on the serendipitous way priorities are set and money is spent. A group of people living on a fairly remote road, though on or near the Kenai River, are upset about the dust and traffic on their road, that happens to end at a wildlife refuge and the Kenai River.

I can understand, especially in the age of Uncle Ted, their seeking federal money to help fix the road. But who sits down with the map of the whole state, its infrastructure, and the needs, and says, "These are the most critical roads, bridges, etc. that need money, that will give the most bang for the buck"? I know most federal and state agencies are asked to take that sort of approach in their budget planning. So it's the people whose project doesn't come in high on that list, who I suspect jump the queue and go directly to their legislators to get their projects funded. And with no one else to argue why the project isn't as important as those on the list, or should be funded some other way, the Senator can be persuaded and can also look responsive.

And those people are gonna vote for that sort of responsiveness.

One of the benefits of living in Alaska is that you can talk personally to your elective officials if you want. And when our Congressional delegation can slip in money that otherwise might have gone to Tennessee, well, then all the prioritized Alaska projects get funded, plus a few more. The voters of Tennessee should elect more capable Congressfolk. Or so goes the logic. I'd like to think about a legislator who asks, "So have you submitted this proposal to the DOT people who evaluate the state needs? If not, that wouldn't be fair to the people who have gone through the proper channels." That'll be the day.

But the facts presented in the story don't seem to have the taint that the headline and first paragraph suggest. Will this increase the value of Penney's property? Does the Alaska Fishing Classic use this road for their important guests? Maybe there is more here. But without that, no need for the teaser headline and opening paragraph.

Viddler vs. YouTube

Here's my July salmon spawning video as saved on Viddler.




And here's the best quality I could get onto YouTube.




So, which one is better?

Alaska Railroad Video Using Viddler

Yesterday when we got back to the car parked at Indian, we went down to the beach. Just after we got there, a train went by, but I had just enough time to find a good rock tripod for the camera. And then I discovered an alternative to YouTube called Viddler. You'll notice that not only is the video quality significantly better (and judging from other Viddler videos, if I had saved it as higher quality it would be better), but there are some neat features. You can leave comments at specific places in the video for example. Place the cursor on the top edge of the video to see all the options.

The train was at 4:15pm. A short passenger train that we assume



We assumed that this train was headed for Whittier or possibly Seward. So I thought I'd be really clever and check the Alaska Railroad schedule and tell you exactly. The train passed Indian at 4:15 pm or so. The Seward bound trains leave Anchorage at 6:45am and arrives in Seward at 11:05am. So that can't be it. So let's check the Whitter Schedule and we get:

Departure Information:
10:00 AM depart Anchorage Depot, arrive Whittier 12:20 PM

So I guess this is the mystery train running on its own schedule. Or is this one of those trains that goes from the Bill Sheffield Depot at the airport and is only for cruise passengers?

Why I Live Here - Biking in the Rain

The weather report for today in the paper.







Looking out at the sky. Hmmmmmm. Best kind of rain for a bike ride.










We drove down to the the bike trail at Indian on Turnagain Arm. About 20 minute drive from home. And started out past the fireweed.














The trail meanders along Turnagain Arm, sometimes in the woods, sometimes with views of the Arm, and sometimes by the road.


















The Amanitas are popping up now.

The Amanita spp. are a genus of mushrooms containing a few species famous for their toxicity. There are many edible amanitas, but eating the wrong one can get you into heaps of trouble, not to mention the delerium, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, liver failure or death you may experience. Most poisonings tend to occur in people from foreign countries who pick Amanitas that look "just like" those yummy ones they ate at home or to overconfident novice mycophagists (people who wild mushrooms) who have not bothered to properly identify their mushrooms. So, if you plan to hunt the wild mushroom, make sure to arm yourself with the proper knowledge and only eat a wild mushroom in a foreign country based upon identification in that country's field guide, not a North American guide. Be sure that you use a guide and don't listen to any old wives' tales about how to tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones.

But you get a different view of this from the IamShaman Shop

Amanita muscaria, the highly visible and strikingly beautiful mushroom, also known as the Fly Agaric, is yellow to red in color and speckled with white. Amanita muscaria is probably humanity's oldest entheogen. Amanita muscaria's history has it associated with both Shamanic and magical practices and it was identified as the "Soma" of the ancient (4000 BC) Rig Veda by Gordon Wasson.

So Amanita muscaria has historical use as far back as we have history, and it shouldn't be hard to suppose that prehistoric man, in his activities as hunter/gatherer, recognized that there were mushrooms and other plants that had benefits not related to hunger. Our ancestors must surely have been intrigued by the Amanita muscaria. They appeared magically from nowhere, in strange and beautiful shapes and colors and gave magical visions of the beyond when eaten.

We went came back and crossed over the road to view the people fishing at Bird Creek. I'm sure yesterday (Sunday) this place was a bit more crowded.




Remember, to see this fishing rules or any other pic bigger, you can double click on it.










You can see here the well known geological formation known as the parkinglotriam cut.





And the eagle flying above didn't seem to approve.



















While Joan pushed her bike up the hill, I enjoyed the rain.














I did a whole post on cow parsnips here. These are the seeds.


















We stopped to watch a passenger train go by above the beach where the car was parked, then stopped again at Potter Marsh. Birdwatching wasn't too exciting, but the reeds were nice. Then in pulled up one of these highway scourges. I can't believe that anyone would willingling drive in one of these rolling billboards. My story is that these were Germans who made their camper reservations online. When the arrive in the US, they were horrified to see how ugly their vehicle was, but the ones billboardless ones were $50 a day more and for three weeks that would come to $1,000. So they swallowed hard, and took it. Except that before we drove off, they took pictures of themselves next to the camper. Uggh. Doesn't the Alaska billboard ban cover these moving billboards? The name of the company discretely painted on the side of a truck or van is one things, but this is horrible. (It's more satisfying to vent about this than something like the Dems rolling over and giving Gonzales the power to decide whose phone and internet get tapped. I can't believe it and if I think about it too long I'll get sick.)

Visiting European Education Students

The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is hosting ten students from Europe for several weeks of study of education in the US. They're from Germany, France, Spain, and Denmark. Some are already teaching. One of the themes is diversity education and they're getting a mix of classroom presentations and field trips to schools. I got to work with them last Tuesday and go back tomorrow. Last week we discussed Power and the power implications of lecture and participatory teaching methods. The requirements for the German students was that they had to be immigrants or from immigrant families in Germany. (Last year the group was all Germans.) The other countries made that optional but did require an interest in diversity issues. Here they are in class writing down the answer to "Who was your best teacher? What did the teacher do that was so good?" The responses tended to be combinations of caring about the students, being genuine, and knowing the subject.

You Can't Tell The Players Without a Program - Baseball Cards for Politicians

I lamented recently that we have better stats for baseball players than politicians. Well, the Anchorage Daily News published the beginnings of a program in today's edition. We can make our very own baseball cards for Alaskan politicians. I feel a little sheepish using so much from the ADN, but I've changed it a little. There are no names on the pictures. You have to guess which picture goes with which description. And I've added a picture they didn't have. You'll have to go to the ADN link to get the answers of who's who.

Tried and convicted, awaiting sentencing

- Former Anchorage state Rep. Tom Anderson. In December, he became the first person charged. On July 9, a federal jury convicted him of all counts of bribery, conspiracy and other charges connected with taking payoffs from Bill Bobrick, a lobbyist for a private prison company. Anderson worked as a consultant for Veco, the oilfield services and engineering company at the center of the broader investigation, although none of the charges against him concerned Veco. It was revealed during his trial that federal agents were investigating corruption in the Alaska Legislature as far back as early 2004. He’s awaiting sentencing.

Pleaded guilty

- Longtime Veco CEO Bill Allen pleaded guilty in May to charges of bribery, extortion and conspiracy for his dealings with four legislators: former Reps. Pete Kott, Bruce Weyhrauch and Vic Kohring, and former Senate President Ben Stevens (described in the plea as “State Senator B.”) The first three were charged; Stevens has not been. In addition, Allen admitted to paying a “bonus” in company funds to executives to illegally make campaign contributions in 2005 and 2006 to state and federal candidates. For more than two decades, Allen was a major political fundraiser for Alaska politicians. Resigned from Veco after his guilty plea.

- Veco Vice President Rick Smith, who ran the company’s government affairs operations and worked for part of the year out of a suite in Juneau’s Baranof Hotel that was being secretly monitored by the FBI. In May he pleaded guilty to the same charges as Allen. He admitted, with Allen, to making payoffs to elected officials and campaigns totaling more than $400,000. Resigned after plea.

- Lobbyist Bill Bobrick. A longtime lobbyist at the city level and one-time head of the Alaska Democratic Party, he pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy for bribing Anderson while working for a private prison company, Cornell Cos., and setting up a sham company to funnel him the money. He testified extensively against Anderson.

Charged and awaiting trial

- Former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott of Eagle River. Indicted in May on bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges. Accused of taking payoffs and a promise of a job from Veco for helping steer an oil-production tax favored by the industry through the legislature in 2006. Aside from cash, he’s accused of being paid a “fraudulently inflated” fee by Veco for flooring work. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for September.

- Former state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch of Juneau. Charged in the same indictment as Kott, accused of switching his vote on the oil tax after receiving instructions from Kott and Bill Allen. An attorney, he’s accused of soliciting legal business from Veco in exchange for his vote. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for September.

- Former Rep. Vic Kohring of Wasilla. Chairman of the Special Committee on Oil and Gas, indicted in May on bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges. Accused of taking cash and a loan from Veco executives and the promise of a job for a relative in exchange for supporting the company’s position on the oil tax. Was a member of the Legislature when indicted in May, and later resigned under pressure from constituents and Republican House leaders. Pleaded not guilty, trial scheduled for October.

Others connected with the investigations

- U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. Has represented Alaska since 1968, making him the most senior Senate Republican in history. Stevens has come under political attack recently from fiscal conservatives and others for his use of earmarks to direct programs and money to Alaska. Some of the earmarks benefited his son Ben and a former aide, Trevor McCabe. Veco’s Allen oversaw a construction project in 2000 that doubled the size of Stevens’ home in Girdwood, and investigators have been trying to learn if at least some of that work was an improper gift.

- Former state Sen. Ben Stevens. In his plea agreement, Allen admitted making improper payments of $243,250 to “State Senator B” — an unmistakable reference to Ben Stevens, the former state Senate president. Ben Stevens had has office searched in the August 2006 raid and was later visited again by FBI agents seeking information about his fishery interests and benefits he may have received from legislation written by his father. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars as a consultant for various commercial fishing companies and groups, and chaired a federally funded panel that awarded grants to some of those entities.

- U.S. Rep. Don Young. Alaska’s sole U.S. Representative since 1973, Young has been widely reported to be under investigation over his own ties to Veco and use of earmarks, although details of what is being examined are unclear. Since 1989, he received more than $212,000 in campaign donations from Allen, Smith and other Veco executives, making the company by far his top contributor. One of Young’s aides has pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and Young himself has ties to the lobbyist. Young has come under political attack for adding earmarks to transportation legislation that would benefit a Wisconsin trucking company and a Florida real estate mogul, both of whom contributed to his political campaign. Young recently reported spending $262,000 in campaign funds on unspecified legal fees during the first six months of 2007.

- Trevor McCabe. Seward native and former legislative director to Ted Stevens, he became partner in a consulting business with Ben Stevens, and lobbied Congress on behalf of a Southeast salmon group that obtained federal funds from Ted Stevens. An attorney and lobbyist, McCabe has represented other seafood interests as well. With two partners, McCabe sold property to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward at a price substantially above its appraisal after Ted Stevens provided the money in an earmark.

- Frank Prewitt. Former state corrections commissioner who became a consultant to Cornell Cos., a private prison company that wanted to build a large prison in Alaska (at one time teaming with Veco). Prewitt was being investigated by the FBI in 2004 when he agreed to work for the government to root out corrupt legislators and lobbyists. He passed out money and recorded conversations, providing the foundation for the Anderson case.

- Sens. John Cowdery, R-Anchorage, and Donald Olson, D-Nome, also had their offices searched in August 2006, but have not been charged.

Numpty

My blogfriend at Mirksome Bogle taught me the word numpty just the other day. So here is my own numpty as we were coming back from a numpty of a movie at the Museum. (If you really need to know it was "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.")

Carrie and Kona Arrive in Singapore

I got this picture from my son. His girlfriend and dog had to delay their trip to Singapore - where my son is going to school for a year - because they couldn't get their reservations for the quarantine kennel for Kona on time. But that gave Joel some time to get oriented. So this is Kona's home for a month while she proves she doesn't have rabies.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in Anchorage

Fleck was on my radar enough to know that I should go hear him, but I don't know that I'd heard him before. We were up so high that the seat belt sign was on through the whole concert, but not high enough to be able to use our electronic equipment during the flight. So I took my pictures before, during intermission, and at the encore. I figured that didn't really count as the concert. We were so high up, and it was so dark, it didn't really matter.




In fact, these two shots during the encore give you a much better sense of the music. It was definitely the kind of music I like - sort of a combination of electronic, jazz, with banjo. The guitarist and (Fleck on) the banjo pushed those instruments about as far out of their normal ranges as Hendrix pushed on the Star Spangled Banner. Not the same way he did, but that far. Often it was like a where's waldo, and every once in a while there'd a shadow of be something I thought I recognized - Norwegian Wood, Amazing Grace (well that was more than a shadow), Come Together, Chopsticks, etc. But mostly it was combinations of sounds and silences that one doesn't normally hear put together.


And in his final banjo solo, Fleck had the spirits of all the great pickers of stringed instruments of the US hill country, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia helping him.



I obeyed the written instructions on the program and didn't record. But you really can't report on these guys without some sound, so I found this video on Youtube. It isn't our concert. All four performers we saw are in it, though we didn't see this number.






And when the concert was over almost three hours later at 10:30pm, we spilled out into a balmy evening.

Are You One of the Four to Six Thousand Alaskans Who Matter?

In this morning's NPR piece (sorry, you have to go NPR and then listen to their ad before this plays) on Senator Stevens, Anchorage attorney, and author of Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971, Don Mitchell, explained why Stevens' friends benefiting from federal spending doesn't prove wrong doing:

If you accept that there are only four to six thousand Alaskans in Alaska who matter in the political and economic sense, a large number of that relatively small number will be former Stevens staffers or personal friends of the senator. That goes with the turf of a very small state.

I have to think about this a while. Can it be true that less than 1% of the population of Alaska "matter politically or economically"? What exactly does it mean to "matter politically and economically?

We should note here that according to the author blurb on his book Sold American

Donald Craig Mitchell is a former vice president and general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives, organized by Alaska Natives in 1967 to fight for their historic land claims settlement. In private practice since 1984, he has been intimately involved, both before Congress and in the courts, in the development and implementation of federal Native policy. In 1997, he represented Senator Ted Stevens before the United States Supreme Court as amicus curiae in Alaska v Native Village of Venetie, which upheld Mitchell's view that Congress did not intend land conveyed to Alaska Native corporations to be "Indian Country."

So, I guess that since he represented Stevens in the Supreme Court, Don must be one of the Alaskans that matter. but let's put that thought on hold for a bit.



In the same NPR piece, former Anchorage borough Mayor Jack Roderick says

Bill Allen was the Outstanding Businessman of Alaska, so what do you do? You deal with them.

I couldn't find anything about "Outstanding Businessman of Alaska," but an ADN article on Veco says Bill Allen shared the Alaskan of the Year Award with former Gov Jay Hammond in 1994. I wonder if Hammond thought the award a little tarnished sharing it with Bill Allen. Just the other day I raised the question about who picks these awards and at least found out there's a non-profit called Alaskan of the Year, Inc. (It's mentioned in the first paragraph after the opening quotes and then in the *footnote) Trying to check on Allen's honor, I found that the State Chamber of Commerce give s this award. How are they connected to Alaskan of the Year, Inc.? Are they all part of the Alaskans who matter?


OK, it is true that we are a relatively small state in terms of population and people do tend to know each other. But friends of the Senator shouldn't get signficantly greater benefits from projects than the general public. And the general public's money shouldn't be steered to projects in order to benefit friends of the senator. I already posted about how Stevens earmarked $28 million for the Bill Sheffield Railroad Depot at the Ted Stevens International Airport that is only used by passengers of (mainly) Carnival Cruisea and other Carnival owned lines like Princess and Holland-America. Is that just the natural consequences of so few people who matter?

And what about Trevor McCabe, former Ted Stevens aide, and business partner of Ben Stevens (the son), and former SeaLife Center Board member? How did he happen to buy land in downtown Seward in 2003 that suddenly became so critical for a multi-agency center that Stevens earmarked money to buy that very land as reported in Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News? Just a matter of the Senator having too many friends so someone or other of his 4000 former staffers or friends will just happen to benefit? Why did he buy that piece of land? Why did Stevens earmark money to go to the SeaLife Center instead of the City? Why did the SeaLife Center buy McCabe's land with the earmarked money? Why not the City of Seward, which owns the SeaLife Center? I guess it was just a coincidence since the Senator has so many friends it's bound to happen now and then.

Stevens has brought many, many projects to Alaska. As people look closer and closer into each one, I suspect we will have many surprises, and maybe discover more and more of the 4000-6000 Alaskans who Matter. Maybe Don Mitchell can publish the list of the Alaskans that matter and the rest of us can just stop playing like we matter at election time.

But, I still have to think about what this means. If it's true, then maybe that explains why Mitchell is opposed to Native sovereignty - those folks simply don't matter. Or maybe he'd like to believe it is true. If it isn't true, why would Mitchell say it? And if it is true, does it have to stay true? And again, what does it even mean?