Have You Called Your Mother Lately?

My son tipped me off on this new law likely to come into effect in one province of China.

People 'obliged' to visit parents
By Guan Xiaofeng
Updated: 2008-06-06 07:44

A draft law in Liaoning province makes it an obligation for adult children to contact or visit their parents regularly.

It is the first legislation of its kind in the country.

The province's standing committee of the people's congress recently released the draft - Regulation on Protection of Rights and Interests of the Aged - to seek public opinion.

It is expected to become law by the end of the year.

An article says if children do not live with their parents, they should "often send greetings or go home to visit them".

Government employees, who fail to do so, will face sanctions by their respective agencies. (For the rest of the article go to the People's Daily.)

The maps from Google Earth i

BTW, I've noticed in the last few days that I'm getting hits from China again, I hope that means that blogger sites are no longer blocked in China.

Baranof Offer Follow Up - Offer Renewed for July Session

Yesterday I mentioned that the while legislators are camping out in their offices to save money, the Baranof Hotel had offered bargain rates to stay at the hotel during the session. I would note that Representative Myers who was named in the ADN article saying that hotel rooms were more expensive than the per diem, was NOT on the email from legislative staff to legislators.

I've also blocked out names as I was requested to do.

From: XXXXXXXXXXX
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 5:53 PM
To: [23 Senators and Representatives - Kevn Myers was NOT on the list]
Cc: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: Special Session Housing - Baranof Rooms



Dear Members – My office is currently looking for housing for nine members during the upcoming June 3 special session. We also did not hear back from 14 members as to whether they were squared away (Names of the 14.) My office is advertising for furnished apartments or homes or house sitting opportunities during the special session. We will be contacting those nine Legislators with any results.



I received a call today from the Baranof to let members know they will accommodate you during the special session. There is a May 4 deadline if you are interested in staying at the Baranof. Please contact Steve Hamilton at the below number and also let us know if you are taken care of housing wise. Thank you. Pam p.s. please be advised that your daily per diem during this time will be $218 a day (the federal government breakout of the $218 = $129 lodging, $71 meals, $18 incidentals)



From: Hamilton, Steve (HAL)
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4:55 PM
To: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: Legislature



It was good to talk to you this morning.



I want to put in writing to you, that I will ensure housing here at the Baranof Hotel for special session, in case you hear that there is no room here in Juneau for them.

My nightly rate for them is $119 and will include cooking facilities. [Actually this was lowered to $109 I was told.]

To guarantee space I will need to hear from them by May 4th.



If you have any questions, let me know.



Steve Hamilton
General Manager
Westmark Baranof Hotel
127 N Franklin St
Juneau, Alaska 99801
907 463 XXXX
www.westmarkhotels.com

Another email was sent out today offering the $109 rate for the July special session.

From: Hamilton, Steve (HAL)
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 9:45 AM
To: 'XXXXXXXXXXX
Subject: Special Session



June 10, 2008



Dear Legislators,



As I offered to you and your staff for this recent June Special Session, I, once again, would like to extend an invitation for you to stay with us here at the Baranof Hotel for the July Special Session.



If you would contact me personally, I will make sure that you have housing available to you. I am offering a rate of $109 per night, which is below our regular summer $149 nightly rate. And I want to make sure that the rate is well within your $129 night per diem. On a first come, first serve basis, I will upgrade you to an efficiency unit with cooking facilities. Larger suites will be available for a nominal extra fee.



As always, I look forward to having you with us here in Juneau.

If there is ever anything that you need, do not hesitate to contact me.



Steve Hamilton
General Manager
Westmark Baranof Hotel
127 N Franklin St
Juneau, Alaska 99801
907 463 xxxx
www.westmarkhotels.com

There is a part of me that thinks that it is laudable that our legislators are trying to save money by living less luxuriously. But I would note, while they don't have housing expenses,there was no indication that they turned in the part of the per diem that covers those expenses. If thats true, their savings don't save the state of Alaska, rather they money goes into the pockets of legislators.

I don't fault the legislators for this. The reimbursement system that allows a standard per diem rather than collecting receipts probably saves more money and certainly time than gathering and checking all the receipts would cost. And legislators have out of pocket costs that they don't get reimbursed for. And legislative pay is not particularly lucrative and for many legislators, the disruption to their normal work can be a significant financial burden.

Camping Legislators Could Have Stayed at Baranof

A June 6, article by Wesley Loy in the Anchorage Daily News reports that a number of legislators are sleeping in their offices during the special session here in Juneau.

[Kevin]Meyer, who works for Conoco Phillips, gets his showers in the workout room in the Terry Miller Legislative Office Building just across the street from the Capitol.

Lawmakers receive a daily allowance of $218 to cover lodging, meals and other expenses, but a hotel room alone could easily chew up that amount, Meyer and other lawmakers said.

When I told Steve Hamilton, manager of the Baranof Hotel, about this story and asked why he hadn't saved some rooms for legislators, he said he did. He said he emailed all the legislators in April that he would guarantee them a room if they let him know by May 3 at $109/night. Of course, the legislators didn't quite know for sure when, if, and where the session would start until later than that. But they could have made a reservation just in case.

Drop in on Legislature

Were meeting for my group in Auke Bay at the home of one of the steering committee members.




But we had a little time between landing coming out here for me to walk the few blocks from the hotel to the Terry Miller Legislative Building where the legislature is having its special session in the gym.

The room is pretty crowded with legislators, staff, and some media. There were maybe 30 seats that seemed to be designated for the media and public (they were on the side as you walked in and there were empty seats. I sat down and pulled out my camera just to get a feel of this. I struggled to find the person who was speaking. I couldn't. Then someone in the room thanked the speaker for being there telephonically.

The voice in the movie is Spencer Hosie of Hosie, MacArthur LLP in San Francisco. There website says:

The lawyers of Hosie McArthur LLP have built a reputation for trying and winning difficult cases. In the past two decades, our lawyers have won over $2 billion in cases involving antitrust, intellectual property, energy and natural resources law and business tort claims.

In the video he's responding to a question about whether it the producers could legally withhold the natural gas because it was economically unfeasible. It takes a while for him to get to the key point: If it wasn't feasible, why have the brought forward the Denali Plan?



Looking down the hill from where the session is being held.

Anchorage - Juneau

I got to the airport at 7:10am and the 8am lifted from the tarmac at 7:56am.



I was in a middle seat for the 90 minute flight, but the guy at the window cooperated.

The Disappearing Anchorage Daily News

This is about the thinnest ADN I've ever seen. Will the print edition have disappeared by this time next year? I hope not.

Frittatas, Hawaiian Music, Apple, People We Don't Know We Know

I once thought I was cooking omelettes, but long ago someone told me I was cooking a frittata. Just to be sure today I checked and by Wikipedia definition, it's not technically a frittata either. Mine never makes it to a grill.

A frittata is a type of Italian omelette that frequently features fillings such as meats, cheeses, and vegetables. Like a traditional French omelette, a frittata is prepared in a skillet. However, whereas an omelette is cooked on a stovetop and served folded, a frittata is first partially cooked on a stovetop but then finished under the grill (broiler) and served open-faced.

This is my normal Sunday breakfast, but we had a friend coming over today, so I made a bigger one. And while I was cooking, Island Style was on the the radio, another Sunday tradition. Hit the yellow button to get a bit of Island Style. This one is half with egg yellow and half with egg white only.

Island Style Hana Guy by AKRaven

And some fruit salad and a few other tasties.



Have you ever met someone you knew about, but you didn't know it was him? At the Alaska Apple User Group (AAUG which meets this Wednesday at 7pm at the Anchorage Museum) there was a man named Guy who was in charge of the products you can take home and keep if you review them.

One day something came up and in my head, finally, Hana Guy on Island Style, and Guy at the AAUG merged into the same person. Hana Guy is on the right (Kalihi Boy and Honey Girl) and in this picture from the Island Style website.

Do You Have a Check Coming from Chugach Electric?

Do you know:

Adgerson, Jimmy
Gjendem, Pat
Grube, Wayne
Hunt, Scott
Marfin, David or Sarita
Security Pacific Natl Bank
Yerkes, Charles?

Chugach has money for them and about 13,000 more people.

Chugach also has information about this on their website. There's a little more information in the letter online than the one in the newspaper.

Last December the Chugach board of directors authorized the return of nearly $5 million, the last of the retail capital credits on the books from 1988, and a portion of the credits earned in 1989. A similar action by the board in 2006 authorized the return of $2.4 million of the 1988 capital credits.

Chugach mailed checks to members of record from 1988 after the board authorized retirements. Postcard notices were mailed to members who had not cashed a check from an earlier retirement. Many of the checks were either not cashed or were returned as undeliverable. In all, about 13,000 members of record are still eligible for their share of about $1.3 million in unclaimed capital credits.

That comes out to an average of $100 per person. Then there's this interesting bit:

State law makes a provision to prevent the unclaimed capital credits from going to the state, and preserves them for members of record who might make a claim on them in the future.

Capital credits from these retirements that have not been claimed by Dec. 31, 2008, will be retained by Chugach Electric Association. However, members of record may continue to claim their unpaid capital credits beyond this date. Questions may be directed to Chugach's Capital Credits section at (907) 762-4643 or to Customer Service at (907) 563-7366.

It's easy to jump to conclusions and wonder why Chugach keeps the money and doesn't turn it over to the state. Or who got that sweet provision into legislation? Since banks and other such institutions have to turned over unclaimed assets to the state after a period of time, why shouldn't Chugach?

That would be easy if we didn't read carefully and think things through a bit.

Chugach is not a regular private for profit corporation. It's a member owned coop. Wikipedia says

A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "capital credits", which are essentially dividends paid on a member's investment into the cooperative.

Each customer is a member and owner of the business with an equal say as every other member of the cooperative, unlike investor-owned utilities where the amount of say is governed by the number of shares held.

And that's what this money is. The newspaper section and the website say:

Capital Credits are a member's share of the cooperative's margins for a year in which revenues and other operating income exceed fixed and variable expenses.

So, who's on this list? Well, these dividends are for 1988. I'm not sure why the wait 20 years to pay the dividends. This list makes the voter registration list look up-to-date I'm sure. No wonder people they can't find anyone. (We used to get dividends from Chugach until our part of town came under ML&P.) I checked a few names on Google. I emailed three people who could be people on the list and for whom I could find email addresses without much trouble. (I chose less common names).

• One works for Early Head Start Enhanced Home Visiting Project
• Another is a landlord in Oregon (who got a great recommendation by one of his tenants)
• Another works for the US Department of Agriculture.

Some others whose names popped up on Google:

• Was listed on the F/51st COMPANY ROSTER "died peacefully on his houseboat on April 19, 2008, in Silver Point, Tenn." (Lived in Alaska once.)
• Complained about a late delivery from Amazon.com.
• Served in WW II, his 85 year old brother died last year and has relative in Craig, AK
• Came up on the Permanent Fund dividend attachment list
  

What's the PFD attachment list you ask. From a State of Alaska website:

What's Included

Only information about dividend attachments in October and November 2007 is listed. The list includes both successful and unsuccessful attempts to take people’s 2007 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends (PFDs) to pay debts. It contains information about the following:

1. dividends seized by writ of execution
2. unsuccessful attempts to seize the dividend by a writ of execution
3. PFD assignments (in which a person voluntarily signs over his or her PFD to the court)

It does not include assignments to other government agencies, writs issued by the federal courts or attachments by the IRS (taxes), CSED (child support), the Commission on Postsecondary Education (student loans), DHSS (public assistance overpayments and court-ordered treatment reimbursements), or the Department of Labor (money owed under the Employment Security Act).

There are 1011 pages of names (30 per page) - 30,330 minus duplicates, I calculate* nearly 24,000 people whose PFD checks are attached, not including all the ones excepted above. So the PFD last year paid about $40,000,000 to pay off creditors of Alaskans. (Not all of it actually got captured from what I can tell.) Think about it. We paid to cover $40 million worth of bad debts with Permanent Fund money. I wonder how much of that went to collection agencies or credit card companies? I'm sure there are situations where this makes good sense. Especially people who are working on paying off their debts and assign the money to their creditor. Except that probably also includes the Pay Day loan companies who pay people a fraction of their check's value in advance if they sign the check over to them.

I'm not interested in the state baby-sitting people who can't handle their money here (though that is a serious issue that we all pay for), but I'm just mulling over the idea of our paying off creditors to the tune of $40 million when we have villages with honey buckets still.

I know, there are creditors who are Alaskan businesses who are barely making it, for whom even a piece of this money is helpful. But it would be interesting to see a study of

• how many people/entities got money this way and
  
• how much each got.

Surely the PFD data base could spew out this information fairly easily. Then we'd know if this was something to try to work on or not.

Enough.

*Note: There are 1011 pages of names (VOLUME 5 (SEUBE through ZYWOT), pages 810 - 1011 - same link as above) with 30 names per page. But there seemed to be duplicates. Checking ten random pages the duplicate names ranged from 3-8, with 8 being the median number (most frequent). It averaged about 21% duplicates (I guess the duplicates represent more than one claim per PFD check.) So 30 names/page * 1011 pages = 30,330
- 21% = 23610

Where's Summer?

It's greening up and there are some flowers, but it's chilly and slow. What's chilly for June in Anchorage? Highs in the 50's F and low 60s (13-16C) and lows 40's and sometimes down into the 30s. (2-9C).

So after J came back from her Tai Chi, we went to get a few more plants (we got back too late from Chiang Mai to start seeds this year) and to recycle.

Innumeracy - Do People Really Pay $45,000 for a Halibut Charter?

Innumeracy.com, defines innumeracy as

A term meant to convey a person's inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives.

The New Literacy, linked on the site, by Lynn Arthur Steen expands:

...Innumeracy hurts in other ways as well. For example, public policy issues may increasingly move beyond the intellectual grasp of citizens who lack appropriate skills in quantitative reasoning...

Listen to this excerpt from an APRN report on a lawsuit over Halibut Charter allocation cuts in Area 2C. I think it is a good case of innumeracy , not only with the person giving the numbers, but also the reporter who doesn't question the them. (Click the yellow button)

APRN Report on Halibut Charter Cuts excerpt by AKRaven

In this audio Charter Halibut Task Force spokesperson Kimberly Tebrugge says:

Eleven people filed affidavits with the lawsuit saying that they’ve had cancellations and the total for that just eleven people were half a million dollars.

My ears perked up immediately. Eleven people. Half a million dollars.

[LATER: MPB comments "I think the reporter might just be a poor writer-- do the numbers add up if the "11" refers to the collective losses of the 11 plaintiffs rather than 11 clients?" I think she got it right. Actually, this was a radio piece, I did the transcribing. But this makes more sense. There were a few more examples that I didn't add in here and so it probably adds up to half a million for those eleven. The sentence is not the greatest but I should have caught it after listening to it a couple of times and writing it out. So I apologize to Ms. Terbrugge and the reporter. And thanks MPB for catching it. I've put this comment here because it totally changes the things. I'm tempted to take the whole post down, but I guess it's a good warning to me to be more careful. And to my readers to not assume I got it right.]

Ten people would mean $50,000 each. Don't even need a calculator for that if you are numerate. Eleven people would be $45,454 each.

Bells and whistles should sound for anyone who is thinking. $45,000 to go halibut fishing for a couple of days?!



In this audio Charter Halibut Task Force spokesperson Kimberly Tebrugge says:

Eleven people filed affidavits with the lawsuit saying that they’ve had cancellations and the total for that just eleven people were half a million dollars.

My ears perked up immediately. Eleven people. Half a million dollars.

Ten people would mean $50,000 each. Don't even need a calculator for that if you are numerate. Eleven people would be $45,454 each.to go halibut fishing for a couple of days?!

A quick Google search got me to the Charter Halibut Task Force website with links to the lawsuit they filed. Here, from their very own Memorandum of Support of Plaintiffs' Motion for aTemporary Restraining Order and/or a Preliminary Injunction

The evidence of serious and ongoing harm to Area 2C charter operators is irrefutable. Larry McQuarie, an Area 2C lodge operator, states in his affidavit that 26 regular clients have already canceled existing reservations for the 2008 season because of the one-fish limit, and that 10 additional clients chose not to book with his establishment for the same reason. The 26 cancellations alone represent a loss of $98,970.00 in gross revenues. See Exhibit 1. Scot Van Valin, also an Area 2C lodge operator, has already lost even more. Mr. Van Valin has had 40 regular clients cancel their 2008 reservations because of the one-fish rule. He had refunded $147,800.00 to those clients. Thirty-two additional regular clients have also decline to book respectively.

So, if "26 cancellations alone represent a loss of $98,970.00 in gross revenues" that's more like $3,800 per person, a number that sounds a lot more reasonable than $45,000.

How could Terbrugge give such an outrageous number, especially when they had the more accurate numbers in their Memorandum of Support? Why didn't the reporter question the outrageous number? I would argue "Innumeracy," We just say and hear these numbers without thinking about what they mean.

If she had said each charter cost $45,000, people would have perked up and said, "That can't be right." But when eleven people are lumped together to get $500,000, people don't do the simple division that would result in the $45,000 figure and don't say "That can't be right." Innumeracy. Think how much we miss when it takes more than one mathematical operation.
For example. Do you know how many acres Potter Marsh is*? People talk about acres all the time. A wild fire burns 30,000 acres. ANWR is 19,049,236 acres. How many people have a clue how big that is? But we just let it pass by without even thinking. And so people can use totally ridiculous numbers and we have no idea. Innumeracy.

The second part of the audio gets into the economic impact to the Southeast and other parts of Alaska. Terbrugge talks about all the other businesses that will be affected and the story's implication is that all this money will be lost to Alaska. But wait a minute. If you read their legal documents, you find out that the fishers aren't canceling their trips altogether, but rather they are moving from Area 2C to Area 3A.

The experiences of these Area 2C charter operators are corroborated by the affidavits of their colleagues and competitors in Area 3A, who have received booksings from clients lost by Area 2C operators. Rex Murphy states that he has booked three clients for this year who have told him that they moved from Mr. McQuarrie’s Area 2C Sportsman’s Cove Lodge because of the one-fish rule. See Exhibit 8. Finally, Donna Bondioli has had three groups of fishermen book with her in Area 3A buisness for the first time. These new clients stated that they had moved from Area 2C to Area 3A because of the one halibut limit.

So, where are Areas 2C and 3A? Another Google search finds an old UAA Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) report with a map of the Halibut Management Areas.




Assuming the areas haven't been changed since this report came out in the 1990s, it looks to me like they are moving from one part of Alaska to another, so Alaska isn't really losing all that money. Though the businesses in Southeast are.

So, when you hear numbers being thrown around and words like acres, don't just space it. Ask yourself, "Do I know what this means?" If not, write it down. And then figure out how big it really is. What the numbers really mean. Ask if it makes sense. Before long it will become a habit. Get numerate!

*Potter Marsh is 450 acres.