Disclosures

My first trial blog was June 28, 2007. My first words were:

Disclosure First: Tom was a student of mine a while ago. I don't remember when I talked to him last. However, I have been disturbed by this case since the beginning. I haven't blogged about this, in part, because I can't talk about anything I learned about Tom through our student/teacher relationship which is the only relationship I've had with him. I decided I should go to court and hear the evidence for myself. What I say here is strictly reporting what I saw in court, stuff anyone who went could have seen.

We nodded to each other in the courtroom and shook hands a couple of times, but said nothing more than pleasantries. But I did want to talk to him before he leaves for his incarceration and so I emailed about a week ago. We talked on the phone for a couple of hours and Monday he came over for lunch.

When I started blogging, the separation between my life and my blog was ambiguous, but it really didn’t matter because I wasn’t writing about public topics and hardly anyone was reading the blog. That changed when I started blogging the trials.

At this point, since I have been writing about public events, I do think I need to be open about relationships I have with people I write about. On the other hand, my interest in talking to Tom was not about getting material for the blog. He was my student and that relationship takes precedence over the blog. There may come a time when we both feel that it is appropriate to post something about Tom here. At this point I simply want to be open about the fact that someone I have blogged about extensively and I are having conversations, even though they will not appear in the blog.

With Tom’s permission I’ll just say that I’m convinced that Tom clearly understands that he has broken the law and violated the public trust. He’s still going back through all the things he could have done differently at every step of the way - from saying “No” to Bobrick and flat out rejecting Prewitt, to whether he should have continued to work with the agreement to help the prosecutors. And he’s still frustrated in the disparity in time different players are likely to spend in prison. I think this is probably normal for someone who has screwed up and is now trying to move on. There's stuff you have to work through. I've already commented in several posts at the obvious imbalance of power in court between the resources of the government and those of the defendants. My conversation with Tom makes it clear that even those of us who sat through all three trials only saw a small portion of what all went on before everyone got to court. Perhaps more than the tip of the iceberg, but not all that much more.

As Tom looks to the future, he makes me think of the old Peace Corps ads that went something like: "Optimists see a glass of water as half-full. Pessimists see a glass of water as half-empty. Peace Corps volunteers see a glass of water and say, 'I can take a bath with that.'" In terms of optimism and seeing a positive spin on things, Tom would qualify for the Peace Corps. But I think that his ability to see the good and block out the bad is partly what got him into trouble.

Second disclosure: I've also mentioned very briefly here that I have three UAA honor students who are doing a directed studies class with me. We've been meeting, generally over dinner, with people from different academic fields and different professions to find out how their fields deal with the idea of truth. What meaning(s) does truth have in their fields? What criteria do they use to measure it? How do they know it when they see it? We have a couple of justice students in the small group and so last night our guest was Mary Beth Kepner, the FBI agent who has coordinated the Alaska political corruptions investigations and who has been at the prosecutors' table at all the trials. I had a chance to talk to her during a break in the trial and asked if she'd come to class. What she said last night was focused on the concept of truth more than the cases. We both were clear that whatever she said was not going to the blog. But as I said above with Tom, since I have been writing about the trials and am still writing about topics that arose at the trials, I feel that I need to disclose when I meet with people involved in the trials. Even if I that's all I can put on the blog.

Later, and even later

Here it is out of the oven.



















And after dinner.













The guests have gone. We had a nice night with good friends, one new friend.

Bird Bath

Every time I look at this bird I can't help wondering why we are doing this. Generally we are vegetarian. This started more for health reasons, but was also influenced by a student film I saw long ago on slaughtering cattle. My time living in a Buddhist country also had influences I'm sure, though most Thai people do eat meat.
I tried to think about this in positive terms. This picture is the herbal massage of the bird. Next it will go in the sauna. But that's just the sort of imagery that enables us to ignore what happens to the bird before it gets into our refrigerator. We did buy a free range organic turkey so that is some solace. But I suspect the video below is more typical than not. Turkeys, chickens, pigs, cows are all treated as manufactured products, not as living things whose lives are taken with reverence and thanks. And having taken the life of a living creature, do we use all its parts, so as not to waste the life we have taken?

I was always amazed when Americans during the Vietnam war disparaged the enemy for not respecting life. Buddhists are human beings as our Christians and Jews and Muslims. Few live the values of their religion all the time, many try, some only give it lip service. But Buddhists very explicitly hold all life as sacred. Not just human life. Killing a mosquito destroys karma. It isn't equal to killing a dog which is not equal to killing a human. People I knew would help flies and mosquitoes out the window rather than kill them. Whereas Americans think nothing of killing non-human life.

I think respect for animal life disappears when people are separated from the raising of the animal and the eating of the animal. If you raise the chicken or lamb, you know how much work has gone into it. You know the miracle of an animal growing from nothing into a living sentient creature and so when you kill it for food, you understand exactly what you are killing. And you do it with mixed emotions. You don't have that understanding when you buy it wrapped in plastic in the supermarket. Maybe that's why Amerians cannot imagine eating dog meat. But we can't understand that Hindus feel the same about beef. The video shows us what happens when modern efficiency rather than humanity rules how meat is produced. Of course I don't know how typical this is or even who this guy is. But it is consistent with other reports on the food industry I've read and watched, starting with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Thanksgiving Morning

Journalism, Blogging, and Perspective

I've got several posts that I'm working on, but they aren't quite ready. One is my reflections on the ethics of undercover investigations - some of the pros and cons that have arisen as I've watched the impact of the surveillance tapes on the three political trials. There are a number of issues that make me - and apparently others - uncomfortable about trading reductions in sentencing for cooperation with the prosecutors, as well as with the idea of video cameras in one's room recording what's going on without one's knowledge. But I don't know how else the evidence for these cases could have been collected. I've got the basics down, but I'm trying to integrate examples from the trials.

Another stems from my belief in the need for journalistic disclosure of one's relationships with the people or events one covers. As the trials progressed I went from writing a blog that my mother and a few others read to someone whose blog was being read by people I was covering. I began to think about how journalists are not simply reporters of what is happening to the public. They can affect the events they are covering. The judge was constantly reminding the jury not to read or watch any news accounts of the trial for example. At one point Kohring defense attorney Browne noticed that witness Bill Allen had a folded piece of paper in his hand and asked what it was. He was told it was a crib sheet with names because of his memory problems. Browne asked to see it and took it to his table. At the next break, he shared it with reporters. The next day prosecutor Bottini complained about this - an account of the crib sheet had shown up in the Anchorage Daily News - and Browne was admonished not to share the witnesses private documents with anyone.
As journalists gather material they develop relationships. In this case, there was six weeks of trial over several months, and the prosecution team was pretty much the same. How does the personal relationship you develop with sources affect how you report the case? Do they begin to use you to get their points across? Do you use them to get stories? Well, of course all that happens, so what information do you give the readers so they can better evaluate what you are writing?

Anyway, that's why I've been quiet. I hope US readers have a great Thanksgiving. And the rest of you also consider all you have to be thankful for. I'm missing my kids far away on this holiday weekend but I'm thankful they are well and pursuing things that interest them.

Was the Tennessee Waltz the Playbook for the Alaska Oil Spill?

From Wikipedia

Operation Tennessee Waltz was a sting operation set up by federal and state law enforcement agents, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The operation led to the arrest of seven Tennessee state lawmakers and two men identified as "bagmen" in the indictment on the morning of May 26, 2005 on bribery charges. The FBI and TBI followed these arrests with an additional arrest of two county commissioners, one from Hamilton County, and the other a member of the prominent Hooks family, of Memphis. Investigators also arrested a former county administrator.

The name of the operation comes from the state song of Tennessee, "Tennessee Waltz."

And a news report from the Nashville Post:

'Tennessee Waltz' FBI Informant: I Paid Off Ulysses Jones

Email | Print By Ken Whitehouse and Richard Lawson

12-14-2005 6:32 AM —

State Rep. Ulysses Jones (D-Memphis) took a bribe from an FBI informant to push through legislation favorable to the government’s fake company E-Cycle, informant Tim Willis has claimed.

Willis, a one-time Memphis lobbyist, worked for the FBI by posing as a lobbyist for the fictitious Georgia company. E-Cycle was central to the sting operation dubbed “Tennessee Waltz,” a sting set up to nab politicians taking bribes, which led to the arrests of four sitting lawmakers and three other political operatives on May 26 of this year.

And from the Chattanoogan, we learn there was a hero:

Attorney Says Former Rep. Brenda Turner Was Tennessee Waltz "Hero"
posted August 25, 2007

A Chattanooga attorney who supported former Rep. Brenda Turner through her long political career said she was a "hero" in the "Tennessee Waltz" scandal that brought down several prominent politicians.

Attorney Russell King said, "They came to her, offered her money, and she turned them down. She did it the right way. She told them a campaign contribution would be hunky-dory, but she was not doing it any other way."

Will Alaska have a hero or two?



And how could there be an FBI legislative corruption trial without a blogger?



And what do the FBI call this operation? The Alaska Two Step? No, there's more than two steps. How about the Alaska Oil Spill? Allen and Smith did work in the oil industry and they did spill the beans. The PeePee Tea Scandal? But the Anderson case didn't involve PPT and future indictments will get beyond PPT too. Do they have a name for ours? In Tennessee, the name came out in the press coverage of the indictments. I thought maybe the press came up with the name, but its in the DOJ press releases.

At the end of the DOJ Public Integrity Section press release on the conviction of Roscoe Dixon, they include the "operation name."

Operation Tennessee Waltz is an ongoing, active, continuing investigation. The people of Tennessee and their elected officials need to understand that where the public trust has been violated, the United States Attorney's Office will prosecute. This office will continue to aggressively pursue those elected officials who engage in public corruption.

All this "the people of Tennessee. . . need to understand" sounds a little condescending. Maybe someone wised up and they decided the cutesy name and the lecture on public ethics didn't need to be included in the Alaska press releases.

This case was prosecuted by trial attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch, II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigative Division.

Do they have a name for ours, but are keeping it quiet?

And I think I may have cracked part of the Public Integrity Section code. I mentioned in earlier posts that the press releases on Kott and Kohring never mentioned that there were counts for which these men were found Not Guilt.

The jury found Kott guilty of conspiracy, extortion under cover of official right, and bribery.

Following an eight-day jury trial, Kohring, a member of the Alaska State House of Representatives from 1994 to 2007, was convicted of conspiracy, bribery and
attempted extortion, for corruptly soliciting and receiving financial benefits from a
company in exchange for performing official acts in the Alaska State Legislature on the company’s behalf.

But I noticed that in the Dixon press release it says:

Mr. Dixon was found guilty on all five counts of the indictment. [emphasis mine]

So I looked up the Anderson press release, and bingo, it says the same thing:

The jury in Anchorage convicted Anderson today of all seven counts charged in a December 2006 indictment.

So, if the press release doesn't say "all counts" I'm guessing it means they got off on one or more counts. Come on PIN (yes, they abbreviate the Public Integrity Section as PIN, but think about it and it makes sense) you can put on your press releases that you didn't get every count. Don't force the reader to have to look up other sources of information to find that out.

Dan Fagan, Again

I've written a few posts about Dan Fagan's ADN columns. Last week I didn't have much time to even look at his column on the Supreme Court's decision on the Parental Consent Law. It begins this way:

Gas pipeline, who cares? Raise taxes on the oil industry, go ahead. Mat Maid, dogs on ball fields, the IM program, city budget, fireworks ban, irrelevant.

There is only one issue facing Alaskans and it is this. A 13-year-old girl can today walk into Planned Parenthood and get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or permission.

Let me rephrase that. A 13-year-old girl can legally have her unborn baby killed without her parents ever knowing about it.

Either Fagan didn't read the Supreme Court ruling, he didn't understand it, or he just lied about it.

This is a contentious enough issue without totally misrepresenting what was decided. The court did strike down the requirement that the parents must give permission, but strongly affirmed that they must be informed. I posted about this case earlier this week.

But such looseness with the facts is evident again this week. And he seems to have changed his mind about the relevance of raising oil and gas taxes. I don't know how to write about this one without giving you the whole column along with my comments. I'll indent his column and put it in italics so it is clear what he says and what I say. (I would hope that would be clear if I did neither, but just in case.)

The anti-oil populist movement is not new to Alaska. The so-called “backbone” folks have always been with us. But now they are in charge. And that has led us to an all-out war with the oil industry.

“Anti-oil populist movement” what exactly does that mean? They are against oil? They are against oil companies? Populists are politicians who speak and work for the people as opposed to those who speak and work for the the power elite (like big oil companies.) So it would seem that being a populist isn’t such a bad thing. Though some have used the term to mean people who PRETEND to speak and work for the poor but really are working for the rich. I’m sure we have a number of fake populists in the legislature. Certainly Pete Kott, the hardwood floor installer (who happened to also be pulling Air Force retirement and had a masters degree;  I see nothing wrong with either of those things, but he was more than a blue collar working eking out a living) and sheet rocker Vic Kohring both offered a populist stance, but were working for their rich big oil friends. And Dan Fagan who talks on the radio like the salt of the earth, warts and all, is writing these articles that make big oil into a deity being abused by legislative ingrates, certainly seems to fit into that pseudo populist category.

"Now they are in charge." And whose been in charge for all these years until now? Finally people not owned by the oil companies are in charge. Why am I having a problem with Fagan's logic?

“All out war with the oil industry.” Come on Dan. You believe in the free market. As I said in a previous post, in an ideal free market there is a buyer and a seller. The state here, as the owner of the oil, is the seller. The oil companies are the buyers. They each negotiate the best deal they can. If the state blows it by taxing too high, the oil companies can walk away. If the people of Alaska are willing to support legislators who stand up to the oil companies a little bit more than our previous governor because they saw tapes of oil industry representatives giving money to legislators to vote for the oil industry’s preferred tax level, then the oil companies have only themselves to blame. They didn’t play their hand well. This is not war. This is simply the give and take of your sacred free market system. True, it does happen that one of the players is a government body, but each of the big three oil companies made net profits that were higher than the Alaska state budget last year. The oil companies are not victims. You even wrote a column about standing up to bullies. I would think most Alaskans see Sarah Palin as doing just that.

The first attack: The governor gets legislation passed shutting out the producers from the process of building the gas pipeline. This will end up hurting us more than them because the oil industry can go other places to get gas to market.

I’m not quite sure what action of our governor he is referring to since he only gives generalizations and no specifics. Even if Fagan's assertion is the true, is that worse than how the previous governor worked out the original PPT bill “in closed-door negotiations with the three major oil companies on a contract for fiscal terms for a pipeline” shutting out the legislature and the public?

But the governor’s second major offensive in her “Operation Oil Companies Bad” campaign will hit the industry hardest.

High school students make less slanted arguments than this. To see how another journalist writes about the Governor’s strategy team, read Tom Kizzia’s piece on Marty Rutherford, apparently one of the governor's ‘oil companies bad’ lackeys.

After the industry has already invested $50 billion in infrastructure in our state and pumped close to $80 billion into state coffers, the governor has cut them down at their knees.

Let me get this straight. Exxon’s annual net profit for 2006 was $39.5 billion, BP’s annual net profit for 2006 was $22 billion. And Conoco-Phillips’ was a mere $15.5 billion. Three of the largest corporations in the world have been cut down at their knees by a 43 year old former mayor of Wasilla, first term Republican governor who still hasn’t been able to oust Randy Ruedrich from the chair of the Alaska Republican party? I can see them hobbling around on their bloody stumps right now. Yeah, right Dan.

According to Tim Bradner in the Alaska Journal of Commerce “Wood Mackenzie, a prestigious London-based consulting group, has ranked Alaska 99th out of 103 petroleum-producing regions surveyed in terms of political stability in fiscal terms on oil and gas. Only Venezuela, Russia, Bolivia and Argentina ranked lower than Alaska” If this is true, then the oil companies have 98 other petroleum-producing regions to get their oil from. Cut off at the knees? Do you even believe that Dan?

The tax increase coming out of Juneau last week is enormous. It proves the governor’s strategy is now abundantly clear. Higher taxes, bigger government are the keys to our economic future.

Well, at least the governor does something right - she has a clear strategy. Is that bad? I think “higher taxes, bigger government” was Vic Kohring’s scare chant too. He’s the guy you accused of selling out in a column two weeks ago about which I said your writing had improved.

The governor has allies in the Legislature made up of three camps. There are those like the governor who believe some consultants who say higher taxes do not influence investment. The problem is these consultants come from the world of theories, not real life.

Dan, please give me the name of one legislator who believes that higher taxes do not influence investment. Just show me one quote where the governor says that. Show me the quote from the consultants you say said that. They don’t exist. They all know that taxes affect investment. They just don’t believe the sky-is-falling rhetoric that oil companies and their friends, like Dan Fagan, are spreading. They are looking at more than the investment climate rating and seeing that those other 98 places all have their downsides too. Fagan is now an expert on real life?

Politicians who fall into the taxes-don’t-affect-investment theory believe they are doing the right thing but are not real bright. The second camp is made up of pure socialists, those who think “corporate America bad, government good.”

How about some names here Dan ‘McCarthy’ Fagan? Who are the pure socialist legislators? Do you even know what a pure socialist is? Again, show me some evidence. And even if there were such simple minded legislators, how is that any less simplistic than your own chant of “Business is good, government is bad?” There has to be a balance between those two sectors, plus room for other organizations and individuals who don’t fit in either camp. Reasonable people understand this and they may debate about where the appropriate balance of power is. But they don’t chant either extreme.

Rep. Les Gara said on my talk show he thinks we should tax the oil companies at 80 percent.

Under the former PPT plan, the industry paid about 63 percent to government. The governor’s new PPT plan raised the rate to about 68 percent. But on Friday the Legislature’s version of the governor’s bill raised the government share to more than 70 percent. That leaves only one branch of government, the judiciary, to make Gara’s 80 percent rate dream come true. With this Supreme Court, anything is possible.

Huh? Can you explain how the judiciary can raise the rate proposed by the governor and set by the legislature? Why would you even say this? Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t imagine any scenario where the Supreme Court could raise the tax. Please, spell out how this could happen. Can you say red herring?

The third camp of tax-and-spend politicians is the one that bothers me the most. They do it to increase their power. These panderers know the billions of extra cash they are transferring from the private sector to government will allow them to make the media and big labor happy by growing the operating budget even more.

Wait. Originally there were just “allies in the Legislature made up of three camps.” Now you are saying there are three camps of ‘tax and spend” spend politicians. It’s really hard for me to not get sarcastic here. In fact I've failed utterly to keep an objective tone. I’ve been criticized by a few for being too even handed and not explicitly spelling out my conclusions. It’s hard to not make those judgments here about what was written, but I certainly have nothing that would allow me to conclude what Dan Fagan’s motivation is. I can only make hypotheses based on the evidence. Does he truly believe what he’s writing? Is this simply talk show hyperbole to jack up ratings? Is he getting favors from the oil companies for these free screeds in the ADN now that the Voice of the Times is only on the web? I only know that this is as one-sided, simplistic, and full of unsubstantiated allegations that totally distort reality as any thing I can remember reading. That's pretty strong language for me, but that is why I'm going through this paragraph by paragraph. And now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me finish the rest of this.

This special session will end up being a windfall not for the public, but for the state’s public employee unions.

For the average Alaskan going to work every day, trying to support a family, hoping their kids’ kids will have a future here, this massive tax increase represents a huge risk.

Here’s Dan the populist coming out. It's those nasty state public employees who do nothing for the public. Who are these average Alaskans? Oil industry employees who might lose their jobs or get transferred to a part of the world with a more stable investment climate? Like Nigeria? Or Myanmar? Well, only about 3.5% of Alaska employees work in the oil and gas industry according to the Alaska Department of Labor. (Well you have to work the numbers, but they say there were 333,100 non-farm employees in September 2007 and of those there were 11,600 in the oil and gas industry. Go here then in the drop down window get "Alaska 2001 to present (excel file).")

What’s a huge risk for you Dan? Do you think the evidence that the oil companies will abandon Alaska because of the tax increase is greater than the risk of global warming due to human causes? If so, could you show me how you analyzed both?

The oil industry as a whole paid $1 billion in production taxes in fiscal year 2006. With the new PPT plan the industry will next year pay $4.5 billion dollars in production taxes.

Let me ask you a simple question. Would a 400 percent tax increase affect your ability to invest your money? This is not brain surgery, folks.

Everything is simple to you Dan, isn’t it? It also depends on how you play with the numbers. 400 percent is pretty impressive. But there are other ways to think about those numbers. How about comparing their tax burden (I’ll accept your numbers for this exercise) to their net profit last year? $1 billion divided by $77 billion. That’s just the big three. I know you’ll complain that I didn’t isolate their Alaska profits from their worldwide profits, but you know where that will lead, don’t you? To the fact that Exxon won’t tell us their Alaska profits. But since you’re so cozy with these guys, maybe you can ask them for the rest of us. Besides, this is NET profit, what they made AFTER taxes. OK, this isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I can do for the moment and it is close enough to make my point. So their taxes will go from 1.3% ($1 billion tax on $77 billion net profit) to 5.8% ($4.5 billion tax on $77 billion net profit). Looking at it that way it’s only a 5% increase. Now I’ll grant you that their Alaska gross income might not be $77 billion, but even if it were only $30 billion their tax would go from 3.3% to 15%. A 12% increase is certainly not anything close to a 400% increase. We can all play with numbers. And I have no idea where you got the $1 billion and $4.5 billion figures to start with. We do know that the PPT tax this year was raised from 22.5% to 25%. That is a 2.5% increase in the last year. So, Dan, there are lots of ways to figure out the percentage increase and each side will come up with numbers that make their argument sound better. But the wisest heads will know which ones are pure whimsy and which ones make some sense.

But the worst part of the new PPT plan is the standard deduction. It severely limits the industry from deducting expenses, making future projects far less attractive. But that’s not what this is all about anyway: future investments. It’s nothing more than a money grab. With this new plan, the state is expected to bring in a total of almost $8 billion in revenue from the industry in fiscal year 2008.

You think the governor is popular now, wait until she starts divvying up all those billions to those with their hands out. Public employee unions may erect a Sarah Palin shrine. They can place it next to the one the media built.

Of course when the oil industry bargains in private meetings with the former governor to come up with a plan they like and then buys legislators to push the plan through the legislature and blankets the state with misleading advertisements that's not a money grab. That's, what, Dan, just doing business? And how about all the private sector company employees that work on contract for the state, building roads, bridges, schools, doing oil forecasts, unsuccessfully lobbying Congress to open ANWR year after year,etc.?

But I believe history will prove this shortsighted tax-increasing frenzy will lead to real pain and heartache down the road. I know this is a radical concept anymore in America, but the truth is that taxes do deter investment. Taxation is the power to destroy. I am confident we will someday reverse what was done last week in the Legislature. The only question is, will it be in time to save our economy?

Well, Dan, at least here we partially agree - in a few years we’ll be able to see whether your dire predictions come true. Maybe. There are lots of factors that go into this that have nothing to do with this tax plan. Ultimately, we will not be able to parse out what would have happened if.... But we will see if the oil companies pack up their marbles and leave Dodge.

Sky Visits from Juneau

Sky and his parents spent the night last night. They're visiting from Juneau. Sky's mom was nominated to be Alaskan Nurse of the Year, but someone else was picked last night. But at our house, she's nurse of the year.




It was fun having a three year old spend the night - big smiles, runny nose, mercurial changes from happy to not. But he was very careful with the nick nacks and was a good eater.

The Alaska Supreme Court Decision on the Parental Consent Act

Last week the ADN had the following headline:

Supreme Court's abortion ruling angers GOP lawmakers

SEEK CHANGE: Coghill, Dyson want Alaska Constitution amended so state can require parental consent for underage girls.

By STEVE QUINN

Radical Catholic Mom argues strongly that pro-life legislation is the wrong way to go in Alaska:

The ONLY method is a Constitutional Amendment. That is the only way. Until there is a Constitutional Amendment, no pro-life bill will be able to survive the AK Constitution.

The discussion on her blog caused me to look up the ruling which can be found here. Below I've excerpted some sections of the decision so you can see the general logic of the court in the decision. The basic question is whether the law - which requires parental consent for girls under 17 to get an abortion, with exceptions for girls who are deemed competent to make the decision on their own (if they are married, in the military, legally emancipated, etc.) or getting parental consent would not be in the interest of the girl. On the face of it, telling parents, whose consent is required for getting a shot, that they do not have veto power over an abortion, seems contradictory. The court does weigh this parental responsibility to look after the interests of the child because children are recognized as not yet mature enough to make many decisions against the constitutional right of a woman to have control over her body. The question then is whether the Parental Consent Act (PCA) is the least restrictive means to achieve the balance between the two competing rights. The majority decides it is not.

Justice CARPENETI (appointed by to the Supreme Court in 1998 by Governor Knowles) wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justice Matthews (appointed to the Supreme Court in 1977 by Jay Hammond.) They believed that the PCA did maintain the balance.

[p. 4] II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
In 1997 the Alaska Legislature passed the Alaska Parental Consent Act
(PCA). The PCA prohibits doctors from performing an abortion on an “unmarried,5 unemancipated woman under 17 years of age” without parental consent or judicial authorization. The Act subjects doctors who knowingly perform abortions on minors6 without the required consent or judicial authorization to criminal prosecution. The7 parental consent requirement can be met through written consent from a parent, guardian, or custodian of the minor. The Act also includes a judicial bypass procedure whereby8 a minor may file a complaint in superior court and obtain judicial authorization to terminate a pregnancy if she can establish by clear and convincing evidence either that she is “sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion” or that being required to obtain parental consent would not be in her best interests. If the court fails to hold a hearing within five business days after the9 complaint is filed, the court’s inaction is considered a constructive order authorizing the
minor to consent to terminate the pregnancy. 10


[p. 6] The State appealed, and on November 16, 2001, we issued our decision in
Planned Parenthood I. In that case, we concluded that the privacy clause of the Alaska11 Constitution extends to minors as well as adults and that the State may constrain a pregnant minor’s privacy right “only when necessary to further a compelling state interest and only if no less restrictive means exist to advance that interest.” We also12 reversed the grant of summary judgment and remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the PCA actually furthers compelling state interests using the least restrictive means available.13


[P. 8] As we have previously explained, the primary purpose of this section
is to protect Alaskans’ “personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusions by the State.” Because this right to privacy is explicit, its protections are necessarily more22 robust and “broader in scope” than those of the implied federal right to privacy. 23 Included within the broad scope of the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause is the fundamental right to reproductive choice. As we have stated in the past, “fewthings are more personal than a woman’s control of her body, including the choice of whether and when to have children,” and that choice is therefore necessarily protected by the right to privacy. Of course, our original decision concerning the fundamental24 right to reproductive choice specifically addressed only the privacy interests of adult women, but because the “uniquely personal physical, psychological, and economic implications of the abortion decision . . . are in no way peculiar to adult women,” its25 reasoning was and continues to be as applicable to minors as it is to adults. Thus, in26 Planned Parenthood I, we explicitly extended the fundamental reproductive rights guaranteed by the privacy clause to minors. 27


[P. 9] In the case at hand, the PCA requires minors to secure either the consent of
their parent or judicial authorization before they may exercise their uniquely personal reproductive freedoms. This requirement no doubt places a burden on minors’ fundamental right to privacy. As such, the PCA must be subjected to strict scrutiny and can only survive review if it advances a compelling state interest using the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. 28

They agree that the state’s interests are compelling.

[p. 10] B. The State’s Asserted Interests Are Compelling.
The State asserts that the PCA works, on the most generalized level, to
advance two interrelated interests: protecting minors from their own immaturity and aiding parents in fulfilling their parental responsibilities. We agree with the State that29 these are compelling interests.

We thus echo the United States Supreme Court’s statement that, “[u]nder
the Constitution, the State can ‘properly conclude that parents . . . who have [the] primary responsibility for children’s well-being are entitled to the support of laws designed to aid [in the] discharge of that responsibility.’ ”38

But,

[P.12] C. The PCA Is Not the Least Restrictive Means of Achieving the State’s
Compelling Interests.

We recognize that the legislature has made a serious effort to narrowly
tailor the scope of the PCA by exempting seventeen-year-olds and other categories of pregnant minors from the Act’s ban. It is true that the PCA is less restrictive than many other state statutes in terms of the scope of its coverage. But scope is only one of the important criteria that determine the extent to which a parental involvement law restricts minors’ privacy rights. The method by which the statute involves parents is also central to determining whether the Act’s provisions constitute the least restrictive means of pursuing the State’s ends.

By prohibiting minors from terminating a pregnancy without the consent
of their parents, the PCA bestows upon parents what has been described as a “veto
power” over their minor children’s abortion decisions. This “veto power” does not39 merely restrict minors’ right to choose whether and when to have children, but effectively shifts a portion of that right from minors to parents. In practice, under the PCA, it is no longer the pregnant minor who ultimately chooses to exercise her right to terminate her pregnancy, but that minor’s parents. And it is this shifting of the locus of choice — this relocation of a fundamental right from minors to parents — that is constitutionally suspect. For a review of statutory schemes enacted around the nation reveals a widely[p13] used legislative alternative that does not shift a minor’s right to choose: parental notification.

[p. 14 ..... But the State and its supporting amici fail to effectively rebut the trial court’s express findings to the contrary. According to the superior court’s findings, the PCA’s bypass procedures build in delay that may prove “detrimental to the physical health of the minor,” particularly for minors in rural Alaska who “already face logistical obstacles to obtaining an abortion.” The trial court found that judicial bypass procedures “will increase these problems, delay the abortion, and increase the probability that the minor may not be able to receive a safe and legal abortion.”

In fact, they argue, the parental notification, ultimately promotes the dialogue between the pregnant minor and her parents more than does a consent requirement.

[p. 15] Ultimately, because the PCA shifts the right to reproductive choice to minors’ parents, we must conclude that the PCA is, all else being held equal, more restrictive than a parental notification statute. The State has failed to establish that the “greater intrusiveness of consent statutes” is in any way necessary to advance its compelling interests. In fact, in its briefing before us, the State has not focused on the PCA’s benefits as flowing directly from the parental “veto power”; instead, it has consistently suggested that the PCA’s benefits flow from increased parental communication and involvement in the decision-making process. According to the State, the PCA protects minors from their own immaturity by increasing “adult supervision”; it protects the physical, emotional, and psychological health of minors, “[p]articularly in the post-abortion context, [by increasing] parental participation . . . for the purposes of monitoring . . . risks”; it ensures that minors give informed consent to the abortion procedure by making it more likely that they will receive “counsel that a doctor cannot give, advice, adapted to her unique family situation, that covers the moral, social and religious aspects of the abortion decision”; it protects minors from sexual abuse since “once appr[]ised of a young girl’s pregnancy, parents . . . will ask who impregnated her and will report any sexual abuse”; and it strengthens the parent-child relationship by “increas[ing] parental involvement,” “parental consultation,” and open and honest
communication.

[p. 16] The dissent suggests that where a minor forgoes judicialbypass, parental consent guarantees “a conversation.” But it guarantees no more than a one-way conversation and “allows parents to refuse to consent not only where their
judgment is better informed and considered than that of their daughter, but also where it is colored by personal religious belief, whim, or even hostility to her best interests.”44

While the decision is 16 pages, the dissent is 31 pages. The real difference is in the section of where they discuss whether the PCA is the least restrictive option. The dissent argues that it is. In the link to the decision this section begins on page 33.

The dissenting opinion is worth reading, but we have visitors from Juneau and you can read it at the link.

Fun Time at Central Middle School

KS, an Indian Ed teacher in the Anchorage School District invited me to meet with some of his students to talk about the Peace Corps. What do you say to 7th and 8th graders in 30 minutes? Well, I grabbed some pakimas, a farmer shirt, some Karen hill tribe shirts, a yellow King's polo shirt, and a pink polo shirt from my school in Kamphaengphet along with some books and pictures.

We had a good time learning how to put on a pakima (the blue and the red checked men's sarong like cloths) trying out the different shirts and looking at pictures of my 7th and 8th graders 40 years ago. Time went by fast and the kids were great.