Ed Schultz Pep Talk for Anchorage Democrats

It's pushing two am, lots of things going on, so today I was mostly out doing instead of blogging. Will try to catch things up. Last night we decided to go see Ed Schultz the Left's talk show host out of Fargo, North Dakota. He called a 'town meeting' to hear what Alaskans think about Sarah Palin. This was a highly partisan anti-Palin crowd and a number of issues came out. The show will air Monday.

Walking over to the Wendy Williamson Auditorium we passed a couple of Nader supporters.



Schultz definitely got the crowd fired up. It seemed like a lot of these people had also been to the anti-Palin rally at Loussac Library yesterday. Only for this event they had to pay $25. People lined up on the sides to talk and the three hours passed quickly.





Toward the end, Anchorage Mayor and US Senate Candidate against Sen. Ted Stevens dropped in to say hello to Ed and the audience.

I've only heard Ed Schultz a couple of times on Air America. What was most interesting to me was after the filming was over he talked to the audience and said he'd been a conservative, but slowly began to realize that the Democrats owned all the right answers. The audience was there getting lots of inspiration being in the presence of a lot of like minded people.

44,000 (NYE) at Alaska Women Against Palin Demonstration

NYE is a device to help New Yorkers and other big city folks put things into a scale they can understand. It means New York Equivalency. A little more than one-half of one percent (1,400 people) of Anchorage's population demonstrated today.

That would be like having 44,000 people rally in New York City, 20,800 in LA, or 15,350 in Chicago. (Numbers based on 2005 population numbers from Infoplease and Anchorage population of 260,000.)




You haven't seen any pictures here for a week because my camera went missing last Saturday. The withdrawal symptoms have been severe. So today when Jeremy called to say I should come to Loussac Library I took my Pentax with me.




But I only had two or three pictures left on the film and there wasn't any more film.


Sometimes whining pays off. Scott took out his digital camera and gave it to me so you could see that not all Alaskans are enamored by the idea of our governor becoming the vice president. Thanks Scott.



But two of the pictures are from my Pentax. Can you tell which ones? I think the quality of those two is significantly better, but I also know which ones they were so I can't tell if I was just biased.




Afterward, we went to Costco to develop the film and to get a new digital camera. I got a Canon Power Shot SD790IS. (The old one was a 550). They've changed the controls and it's driving me crazy. The symbols are on the screen, but I can't always figure out how to get to them. It's like being just on the other side of the window. I can see the mango and sticky rice, but I can't reach it. But I'll learn.

If you've ever been on the Lanie Fleischer bike trail (the sign's by Goose Lake), well it was named after this woman who helped get our great bike trail system from dream to reality. A savvy Alaskan woman who knows how to make things happen, against the odds, (not someone who was at the right place at the right time). But as much as I admire her, I don't think she's qualified to be Vice President either. But if Obama had picked her as his VP, she would be speaking her words to the media and wouldn't be locked away from all but one or two chosen outlets. If they tried to change her into Obama's attack dog, she'd have told them to take a hike.(bike?)

This sign might not make sense to people not up on all the Palin trivia. This is not about giving rapists free kits. But rather rape victims, free medical kits. This was the state of things in Alaska before Sarah Palin was elected Mayor of Wasilla. After, the budget for helping rape victims was cut and they were billed for the rape kits used for testing. The state legislature had to pass a new law making free kits mandatory, yet Palin's newly appointed police chief still moaned and groaned that the City shouldn't have to pay.









Obviously, McCain's pick of Palin has had the great benefit for McCain of moving the attention from McCain and from the issues and onto Palin. Why do we have to have a demonstration against a vice presidential candidate? We should be demonstrating for fair health care. For intelligent foreign policy that promotes freedom and prosperity. For protecting the environment. For good schools, energy sustainability, and civility and peace at home as well as abroad. But McCain now has his sideshow attraction that brings in the crowds so he can stand in the background.

I'm waiting for the announcement that McCain and Palin are going to switch places on the Republican ticket to reflect their true popularity among the so-called Republican base.

[Sunday, September 14 update: Philip at Progressive Alaska has more pictures and links to several other blogs with pictures. Below are two more pictures that I accidentally cut out yesterday.]






















I asked these guys about Palin's foreign policy experience and suggested that she'd never met with a foreign leader or even spoke another language. They told me she speaks AMERICAN and that's all she needs.

Frank Prewitt's Last Bridge to Nowhere

[Dennis Zaki called me Wednesday afternoon saying he had an advance copy of a book about the trial, could he come by and drop a copy off for me. It had a little note to me written by the author. (He had two other books to deliver, one to Shannyn Moore and one to Philip Munger at Progressive Alaska. (Dennis had exclusive rights to talk about the book until Saturday when the book would be officially announced. I could post about it then. You can see Dennis’ Thursday and Friday posts already at AlaskaReport.com.)

Shortly thereafter, he pulled into our driveway and gave me a copy of Frank Prewitt’s new book Last Bridge to Nowhere. As an amateur journalist, I haven’t studied the protocol or ethics of exclusive stories. Obviously, I’m being used to promote this book. It seems that various people have been told that they have gotten first shot at the book so I guess Prewitt will have different outlets dealing with the book for a number of days in a row. Given that ABC, as I prepare this for a Saturday posting, is also sitting on an exclusive to promote Sarah Palin in as controlled a way as her handlers think they can get away with, I think the whole idea of exclusive stories would make an interesting post in the near future. So read this with a grain of salt. Prewitt knew that I, having sat through the three trials, wouldn’t be able to resist reading this. I did toy with the idea of just posting this intro and not going into the book. So my pay for shilling his book is one free copy. Here are my first impressions.]

Synopsis:

1. Brief Overview
2. Excerpt of what Prewitt expects to happen (there isn't that much new in the book, just more details, like adding color to the black and white)
3. Purpose of the book.
   
4. Will the real Frank Prewitt please stand up?
5. Self-publishing thoughts
6. Fact of Fiction?
7. Conclusions
   

1. Brief Overview

Think of this book as a work of historical fiction, based on real events and people, but with everything skewed slightly to make the author appear to be the person who ran the FBI’s corruption probe with the assistance of Special Agent Kepner who he pretended was in charge. (OK, I stretched the last part a bit to give you a sense of how things seem to be stretched in the book.) This impression comes from the first part of the book, which is heavy on unflattering descriptions of people. Toward the middle and end he gets more into moving the story along and the snark meter blips less frequently. At the very end, the tone changes completely as he quotes the bible and discusses his conversations with God. Basically, most of the things I knew about were accurate, but for someone who doesn't know the stories already, it would be hard to determine where Prewitt is embellishing.

To his credit, there are no pretensions about the book itself here. It's like you are in a bar with Prewitt drinking beers as he's telling you about his experiences as a confidential source for the FBI in Alaska's biggest political corruption case.

2. Excerpts. There's little that we don't already know about people under investigation. What he says about people is interesting if you like catty gossip, but nothing particularly important in terms of public policy. What is useful is the deadlines for when cases have to go to trial :

Crimes committed in 2003 and 2004 ... didn’t technically have to be charged until 2008 and 2009. (p. 136)

So, things need to be wrapped up by next year. So what's left? Here's his synopsis done a little while ago.

The way things were shaping up, I figured indictments or plea deals on John Cowdery and Jim Clark (former governor Murkowski’s chief of staff) were right around the corner, the shoe would probably drop on Senators father and son Stevens by mid-summer or fall and the case building against Congressman For All Alaska Don Young would slide past the August 2008 primary elections, and that was a big problem…

Then there were the cases sitting on federal ice for lack of immediate concern or stature. Alaska Senator Donny Olson, for example, was named in the Kott trial as the senator that John Cowdery could deliver for a mere twenty five thousand dollar contribution; investigations into former Alaska senator Jerry Ward and multimillionaire businessman Bill Weimar had been completed at least a year before; political cash handouts from Alaska fur-trading entrepreneur Perry Green were burning a hole in prosecutors’ pockets; former representative Bruce Weyhrauch’s trial was stalled on a procedural appeal; former representative Beverly Masek’s alleged quid pro quo relationship with Bill Allen and Perry Green was approaching the statue of limitations for prosecution; the lingering charges against the remaining VECO executives were simmering on a back burner; and a small handful of residual affiliations could prove up after the cooperators’ cooperation. (p. 135)

Presumably this is what's left. But he also said early on he had to be careful not to jeopardize ongoing operations, so possibly there are others. There's also a little bit on Palin, but nothing that hasn't already been picked through by the national media on when she decided she didn't like earmarks.

3. Purpose of the book

Why did Prewitt write this book?

• To clear his name - Prewitt tells us that as an undercover agent he was unable to respond to the various people who saw him as a slimeball lobbyist who made some deal with the FBI to escape jail.
  
  
• Revenge - Particularly the beginning of this book is full of acerbic comments about all sorts of people. I get the sense of the smart guy who has had to put up with fools, finally gets to say what's on his mind without concern for consequences. I can just see Prewitt relishing everyone rushing to the bookstore to read all the gossip about well known Alaskans. At one point he even writes,

  And the key to special friends in politics is money, and right about now a lot of Weimar’s former special friends are breathing deep sighs of relief as they read my generic passing reference to their special relationship with the big guy. (p. 49)
  

  
  
• To tell his part of this story - He writes in the Acknowledgement, "I sincerely hope this book serves as a foundation and catalyst for a more definitive work by a thoughtful, research-diligent, unbiased source.. A historic event of this stature deserves no less." And not many people could write this book. Though googling FBI Agent Memoir gives quite a few hits on books written by ex-agents.
  

4. Will the real Frank Prewitt please stand up?

My sense at the trial was that Prewitt was smarter than most of the people in the courtroom, that he'd made a fair amount of money, that there were probably some shady things in his background, and enough specific stuff that the FBI approached him and offered him a deal to help them. I didn't know this, but it was my supposition. The Anderson and Kohring defense attorneys cross examined him on these points. There was something about illegal campaign contributions and something else about a $30,000 loan from Allvest - a corrections contractor - while he was Commissioner of Corrections. I posted the exchange between Anderson attorney Stockler and Prewitt at the time:

Prewitt said he got the loan and paid it back. Stockler: Is there anything in writing? Isn't it true it was a bribe? [Prewitt:] No. [Stockler:] How did you pay it back? [Prewitt:]I worked for Allvest for four months - $7500 per month. [Stockler:] Did you pay taxes on the $30,000? [Prewitt:] No, it was a loan. [Stockler:] But you say you worked for it. [Prewitt:] No, I was paying him back. [Stockler:] So, all of us could avoid paying income taxes by having our employer loan us our pay before, and then we'd repay it by working and not have to pay taxes?

Prewitt said in court and in the book that his attorney told him the campaign contribution was past the statute of limits and the loan was not illegal and there were no issues and that he was cooperating voluntarily.

[My attorney] said they [the Feds] agreed there was no basis for federal charges against me and I was under no obligation to continue helping, but they sure hoped I would. (p. 31)

But on the very next page, he says his code name was Patient.

She never said whether the name was due to my status or long-suffering nature, but there was no confusion over the anatomy under her control, when she said to turn my head and cough, I did. (p. 32)

Why would Kepner have him by the balls if there was no basis for federal charges and he was there voluntarily?

In the last chapter, "Author's Retrospective," Prewitt tells us that he talks with God. He opens the bible - an interesting translation - and God talks back to him through the passages such as:

Mocking ballads will be sung of you and you yourselves will sing the blues...

Do chats with God demonstrate his reflective, religious nature? Or megalomania? Or are they there to convince us of his true ethical self? But a good Christian, in my understanding, wouldn't write all those mean spirited comments about all the people in the early chapters.

Prewitt was a lobbyist. He worked legislators all the time. When asked by Kepner whether he would normally attend a fund raiser at Bill Allen's house (so she could use him to wear a wire there),

I said I went to those things all the time, no problem.(p. 37)

How do we know he isn't working us the way he worked legislators?


4. Self-publishing

Self-publishing means you don't have to get your book accepted by a publisher. Nowadays, this no longer automatically dismisses the book from serious consideration. It also means you can often get it out faster. At one point he's talking about July 2008. The book has no index, but it has a list of characters (I would have added the judge, John Sedwick), and a glossary for non-Alaskans. I noticed one citation (Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board) and he has a few newspaper articles pasted into pages.

Sometimes events have dates, sometimes not.

An editor may have done something about the dark and stormy prose such as:

By 2003 this unusual compost of big oil, frontier ingenuity, and isolated lawmaking reached critical mass, seeping lethally into the cracks and crevices of Alaska public policy and under the door of FBI Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner. (p. 18)

There's a certain blog-like quality - impressions, casual language, different styles, an attempt to capture what happened in almost real time.


6. Fact or Fiction?

My take, as someone who blogged the three court cases, is that while he has taken poetic license with some of the stories and dialogues and some of the events are meshed together, the book gives a reasonably accurate overview of what happened and gives us some glimpses into the relationship between a source and the FBI agents.

The author's character is painted as a misunderstood, falsely accused, but publicly minded citizen selflessly helping to right wrongs. This may or may not be accurate. I've never talked to Frank Prewitt, I've only seen him testify in court, and I know what people who have known him say about him. (It's mixed.) So while you get the general picture, and most of the details are consistent with what I heard in court, some I don't know enough to be able to verify, and others have been revised to make for better reading. For example, Prewitt writes:

Next day Kott walks in, “Allen said he appreciated Kott’s work and handed him a thousand dollars in Cash. Kott stuffed the bills into his politically incorrect Carharts and Allen said, “There, that should keep you in broads and booze for a couple of days.” (p. 74)

That's a totally different impression than the court record. My notes have that the $1000 was a reimbursment for a $1000 campaign contribution that Pete Kott had made to the Murkowski campaign. This still is not legal, but it is not as brash as stuffing bills into his pocket for broads and booze.

And he also gives us details of events he didn't personally witness - such as Kepner and Joy's first discussion with Don Young for example. Other stories didn't seem right to me, but I had no way to check.

7. Conclusions

This is a short book - 150 pages - so it's pretty easy to get through. As someone who's followed the trials closely, I knew who all the players were and the book filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge. What we learn about the FBI's working the case is also interesting. Again, we have to be careful about buying into all the details, but overall we get more information on how things work. I suspect the book would be interesting to someone who doesn't know as much, but it will be more difficult to sense where he's stretching things and where he's sticking close to the original script. With so much national attention on Alaska right now, people may be interested in this sordid little tale.

I don't think it tells us very much about Prewitt's thinking. I'd guess that the beginning is a flip facade that he may have developed over the years. The final chapter probably gives us a glimpse of Prewitt that isn't seen in public, though it's only a glimpse.

OK, I know this is ending rather abruptly. I only had the book for two days and I'm trying to get this out. I may come back and edit when I look at it later.

Reading Between The Lines

The following was Part III of a four part post on how to evaluate poetry that I posted on Hungrywriterspoetry.blogspot.com some time ago. Hungrywriters.blogspot.com is open - I think to anyone - but the other parts of the the blog need permission.

This is the long explanation about why it's both useful and personally rewarding to read good stuff carefully and slowly.


The best class I had in college was 17th Century English Literature. It was the hardest and the one in which I learned the most. Professor Clayton, probably in his 30s, seemed much older to my 20 year old self. His gaunt body moved constantly, his eyes darted around lighting first on one victim, then on another. “What did Donne mean in this poem?” he’d challenge. If your answer didn’t meet expectations you might be ignored, or worse, your response was dismissed as, “Rubbish!” If your reply was more than routine, he might lavish you with, “Point.” And if your answer showed actual insight, he might even say, “Point well taken.”

Needless to say, people quickly stopped raising their hands unless they were certain they knew the answer. Being rubbished was far more likely than being praised. But if there were no volunteers, he would select a sacrificial lamb. To avoid humiliation I began to study ferociously. On the midterm, I got a D. The essay part was fine.. But the exam also included a huge table with columns titled: Poet, birth date, death date, meter, rhyme scheme, imagery, line from a poem. Some of the boxes were filled in. Most were empty. And there was a long list, from a – zz, of the names, dates, and other words, that belonged in those empty boxes. We had to put the letters of each answer in the right boxes. That part of the test was unexpected and disastrous.

All the students who got D’s or F’s had to meet with Professor Clayton privately in his office. Much to my surprise, the cold and merciless professor in class, was warm and friendly in his office. This had been a rough semester for me altogether. My midterm grades were two D’s and two F’s. I launched a new study regimen. Class was from 8-11 every day. I worked from noon to five. I was in the library at six till midnight.

We read Paradise Lost in the second half of that semester and I had more notes than there was text. I noted the meter. I noted the rhyme scheme. I noted each character, the images used for each character, and everything the character did. I also noted Milton’s birth and death dates. I did this with every poet and every poem we had to read. I loved Paradise Lost. With this level of effort, I was starting to see patterns. This character was always surrounded by black, that one by fire. I began to anticipate things before they appeared on the page. Suddenly I was part of the poem and felt its complexity, saw the details I had missed the first half of the semester. I began raising my hand in class, and getting ‘Points’ and occasional “Points well taken.”

What I remember of the Final Exam was the mystery poem. The assignment was to identify the poet. I began to check the rhyme scheme and the meter. I found historical references and could eliminate those poets who had died before these events took place. Eventually, I had eliminated most of the poets. The color green was pervasive in this poem and so I chose Andrew Marvell as my likely poet.

I got a B in the class. My A on the final wasn’t enough to make up for the midterm. But that grade gave me more satisfaction than any A I got. Marvell was the mystery poet and I’d figured it out. In hindsight, I realize that this class didn't just teach me how to only read poetry, but how to read anything, to a depth that allowed me to find its heart. It also taught me that by memorizing what seemed like insignificant details, I could know enough to recognize pieces that fit together and ones that were out of place. I could logically figure out the mystery poet in any situation.

Professor Clayton taught me the value of concentrated work and discipline. He taught me that being prepared with in-depth knowledge, enabled me to take full advantage of the clues. While I decided that I would rather apply these skills to what I perceived as more useful areas than the works of long dead poets, this class on 17th Century English Literature was the class that taught me the most useful lessons of all my college courses.


[If anyone knows Dr. Clayton - I took his class in the English Department at UCLA in 1965 or 1966 - please pass this on to him with my most sincere and profuse thanks.]

Landlines and Cell Phones and Poll Bias - Deeper Look

Synopsis:

Overview

• ISER take on Landlines and Cell Only in surveys
  
• There are differences, but one study says not for general surveys

CDC's NHIS Findings - Demographics of cell only vs. landline households

PEW Findings - Implications for surveyors - generally no difference, but significant for some populations.


Overview
A fair number of people have googled their way my post Land-Lines, Cell Phones, and Poll Bias. I really didn't have any hard data when I wrote that post and thought I should see if I could get some. So yesterday I called Virgene Hanna at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She runs lots of the polling and survey work there. I asked her if there were studies about the differences between people who use cell phones only (no landlines) and landline users and, if there is, what if anything they do about it.

She said that there are differences. Cell phone only users, for example, tend to be:

• younger
• in better health
• and more likely to rent

While there are some significant differences between cell only and landline households, one study (see PEW below) found that in general surveys, these differences had no impact.

So far, she hasn't changed how they do their survey research for a number of reasons:

1. Things are changing so rapidly, it's hard to get clear cut answers on how to adjust.
2. Studies of the 2004 election said it didn’t make a difference in the overall outcomes, but use of cell phones only has grown a lot since then.
3. It's really expensive to reach cell phone only people
4. Methodologically more difficult to calculate who falls into their sample design when you include cell phone only users
   
5. Takes longer to reach them

Then she pointed me to a couple of studies that have looked at this.

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) does its National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).

For many years, NHIS has included questions on residential telephone numbers to permit re-contact of survey participants. Starting in 2003, additional questions determined whether the family's telephone number was a landline telephone. All survey respondents were also asked whether "you or anyone in your family has a working cellular telephone." (from Blumberg)

So, Blumberg and Luke, in "Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, July-December 2007" have taken this data to look at related characteristics of the cell only population. While there is important demographic information, the focus here is on health.

Preliminary results from the July-December 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that nearly one out of every six American homes (15.8%) had only wireless telephones during the second half of 2007. In addition, more than one out of every eight American homes (13.1%) received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones despite having a landline telephone in the home. This report presents the most up-to-date estimates available from the federal government concerning the size and characteristics of these populations. Specific findings:

Cell Only Population

In the last 6 months of 2007, nearly one out of every six households (15.8%) did not have a landline telephone, but did have at least one wireless telephone (Table 1). Approximately 14.5% of all adults-more than 32 million adults-lived in households with only wireless telephones; 14.4% of all children-more than 10 million children-lived in households with only wireless telephones...
Approximately 2.2% of households had no telephone service (neither wireless nor landline). Approximately 4 million adults (1.9%) and 1.5 million children (2.1%) lived in these households.

Demographics

The percentage of U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized adults living in wireless-only households is shown by selected demographic characteristics and by survey time period in Table 2. For the period July through December 2007:

• More than one-half of all adults living with unrelated roommates (56.9%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
• Adults renting their home (30.9%) were more likely than adults owning their home (7.3%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• More than one in three adults aged 25-29 years (34.5%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. Nearly 31% of adults aged 18-24 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 15.5% for adults aged 30-44 years; 8.0% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.2% for adults aged 65 years and over.
• Men (15.9%) were more likely than women (13.2%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in poverty (27.4%) were more likely than higher income adults to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in the South (17.1%) and Midwest (15.3%) were more likely than adults living in the Northeast (10.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Non-Hispanic white adults (12.9%) were less likely than Hispanic adults (19.3%) or non-Hispanic black adults (18.3%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

Wireless Mostly Households

Among households with both landline and cellular telephones, 22.3% received all or almost all calls on the cellular telephones, based on data for the period July through December 2007. These wireless-mostly households make up 13.1% of all households. ..
Approximately 31 million adults (14.0%) lived in wireless-mostly households during the last 6 months of 2007, an increase from 28 million (12.6%) during the first 6 months of 2007. Table 3 presents the percentage of adults living in wireless-mostly households by selected demographic characteristics and by survey time period. For the period July through December 2007:

• Non-Hispanic Asian adults (20.3%) were more likely than Hispanic adults (14.5%), non-Hispanic white adults (13.2%), or non-Hispanic black adults (15.1%) to be living in wireless-mostly households.

• Adults with college degrees (16.2%) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were high school graduates (12.7%) or adults with less education (8.7%).

• Adults living in poverty (8.6%) and adults living near poverty (11.4%) were less likely than higher income adults (15.9%) to be living in wireless-mostly households.

• Adults living in metropolitan areas (14.7%) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were adults living in more rural areas (10.9%).

PEW Study

A Pew study presented in a May 2007 paper, "What’s Missing from National RDD Surveys? The Impact of the Growing Cell-Only Population" by Scott Keeter, Courtney Kennedy, April Clark of the Pew Research Center and Trevor Tompson, Mike Mokrzycki of The Associated Press concluded

Analysis of all four studies produce the same conclusion: Although cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the key dependent variables to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to U.S. Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics. However, certain survey topics and sampling frames may be vulnerable to significant, even dramatic, noncoverage bias if they exclude respondents who only can be reached by cell. This paper concludes with evidence regarding the potential for bias in survey estimates for certain variables among young people.

The four studies were:



The Pew comparison findings were summarized in this chart:


Here are some specific health characteristics of cell only and landline households that the PEW study highlighted:

• The prevalence of binge drinking (i.e., having five or more alcoholic drinks in 1 day during the past year) among wireless-only adults (37.3%) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.7%). Wireless-only adults were also more likely to be current smokers.
• Compared with adults living in landline households, wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good, and they were more likely to engage in regular leisure-time physical activity.
• The percentage without health insurance coverage at the time of the interview among wireless-only adults (28.7%) was twice as high as the percentage among adults living in landline households (13.7%).
• Compared with adults living in landline households, wireless-only adults were more likely to have experienced financial barriers to obtaining needed health care, and they were less likely to have a usual place to go for medical care. Wireless-only adults were also less likely to have received an influenza vaccination during the previous year.
• Wireless-only adults (47.6%) were more likely than adults living in landline households (34.7%) to have ever been tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

[Update: June 2, 2009: Here's a December 2008 PEW report on cell and landline polling in the 2008 election.

This study describes the differences between estimates of the horse race and other political measures that Pew reported this fall with those that would have been derived from surveys conducted only by landline. It also addresses the difference between supplementing landline surveys with a sample of people who are "cell only" vs. interviewing all cell respondents even if they also have a landline phone. In this regard there is growing concern that some people have come to rely so heavily on a cell phone that even though they still have a landline telephone they are virtually unreachable on it. Finally, this report describes the operational and cost issues raised by the inclusion of cell phones.

Download the complete report]

Booker Prize Finalists

I feel a little better about my struggle with Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath her Feet. The Booker Prize selection committee left his most recent and better reviewed book, The Enchantress of Florence off their short list.

The New York Times describes the five finalists:

“The White Tiger” by Mr. Adiga is the dark story of class struggle told by an Indian man who murders his employer. It was published in the United States by Free Press. Mr. Adiga, 33, a native of India who spent part of his childhood in Australia, is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India.

“The Secret Scripture” by Sebastian Barry, published in the United States by Viking Adult, tells of an elderly woman and her psychiatrist who write parallel accounts of their meetings and their tragic pasts in modern-day Ireland. Mr. Barry, 53, was born in Dublin and has been shortlisted once before.

“Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, to be published in the United States next month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is set at the brink of the Opium Wars and tells of a ship full of sailors, Indians and Westerners, who form a bond and begin a long-lasting dynasty. Mr. Ghosh, 52, grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India, and wrote “The Glass Palace.”

“The Clothes on Their Backs,” written by Linda Grant and published in Britain by Virago Press, is the story of family and morality told by a narrator who was raised by Jewish refugees from Hungary. Ms. Grant, 57, was born in Liverpool and lives in London.

“The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher tells of the ties between two families who live in Sheffield in the 1970s and ’80s. It was published in Britain by Fourth Estate and is scheduled to be published in February by Alfred A. Knopf. Mr. Hensher, 43, is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories.

“A Fraction of the Whole,” by Mr. Toltz, was published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau. It tells of a son whose attempt to understand his dead father takes him from Paris cafes to the Thai jungle to the Australian bush. Mr. Toltz, 36, was born in Australia, but has since lived in Montreal, Vancouver, Barcelona and Paris.

It feels so much better to post on this than on the Vice Presidential race.

Would Your Mother Make a Good VP?

I got asked in a telephone poll yesterday whether I viewed Sarah Palin favorably. How do you answer that? Fortunately, the pollster was pretty loose and accepted my non-responsive answer of, Yeah, I'd like her to stay my governor.

You may love your mom and still not think she'd be a good vice president or president.

Rating Palin as a Person

My first personal interaction with Sarah Palin - an early political talk and question and answer session at the University of Alaska Anchorage being the one in which I actually talked to her - left me feeling both impressed and a little skeptical. She was unpretentious, didn't pretend to know things she didn't know - she just said, "I need to learn more about that" or "What do you suggest on that?" I'm generally a pretty good judge of whether people are genuine and if she wasn't that day, she got past my crap detectors. But it also seemed like she had a long way to go to beat the Republican establishment, and then the former Democratic Governor. But she did both. So I'm cautious about underestimating her now.

But it's possible to evaluate someone differently for different roles. The public person I saw was someone I liked. I don't agree with things she believes, but she listened to others and didn't have any of the facade politicians normally have. I realize that people in Wasilla saw a lot more, if not cunning, at least very focused drive to get what she was after.

All in all, I think she's smart, but has been raised in a limited environment where she was overly influenced by fairly narrow religious beliefs. I personally don't think abortion is a good thing, but I think it is morally much more ambiguous than right-to-lifers would have it. The fewer the number of abortions the better, but ultimately, each woman has to make that decision for herself. But someone who truly believes there's a soul from the moment of conception, probably has a moral duty to stop abortion. But teaching creationism alongside evolution? That's just ignorance in my mind. But I think that Sarah is smart enough and curious enough that she could grow beyond her roots on some of the more stifling beliefs.


Rating Palin as a Governor

Running for governor she took on her corrupt party leaders. It didn't hurt her cause that the FBI raided some of their offices and indicted some of them during the campaign. And then she did stand up to the big oil companies in Juneau. First on the petroleum profit tax increase and then on the Alaska Gasline Incentive Act.

In some ways these were ethical stances - the oil companies had done their best to buy the legislature through campaign contributions, trips to Prudhoe Bay, and other junkets, and through Bill Allen (pled guilty) on the PPT bill and the gasline. She had good advisers on this and stood up to the oil companies. But basically, she wants to drill ANWR (no Alaskan politicians think they can oppose drilling and win), and fought protection of polar bears that might threaten offshore oil drilling. And in recent weeks (is it really only weeks ago this came out?) her firing of the head of the troopers was the first public glimpse of another side of Palin.

All in all, while I didn't vote for Palin, I think by standing up to the Republican party and the oil companies, she probably did a lot more good for Alaska than her Democratic opponent would have done. Up til now, she's been a good governor and that's why she's got such high ratings.

Rating Palin as a VP or President

Most people who eventually run for president have had pretty broad life experiences in their college and early post college years a time in their lives when they are still forming their moral understanding of the world. I don't think Palin had those kinds of experiences until she was in her 40s as Governor, an age when it is harder - though not impossible - to change. Only then did she make her first trip outside the US (not counting Canada I assume), did she deal with people outside of Alaska on serious issues. (There could be other experiences I'm unaware of, but I doubt there was much significant interaction with people different from Palin.)

The Republican spin machine is ludicrously calling black, white in their effort to paint Palin as experienced. Despite their claims that being head of the Alaska National Guard gave her commander-in-chief experience and that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her important international policy experience, any Alaskan who knows anything, knows that's total nonsense. I doubt that Palin could have named more than one or two current Russian leaders before last week, or could have picked out Georgia on a world map. (I'm not sure she could have picked out the state of Georgia on a US map.) Or could tell us about the Russian Revolution, even when it was, let alone who played leading roles. (Most Americans couldn't do that either, but most Americans aren't running for vice president.) When I read Ropi's blog, I'm amazed at what a modern Hungarian high school student studies. In many ways I'd say Ropi's knowledge would make Palin's knowledge of the world embarrassing. That's not to say Ropi is in any way ready to be a US Vice President, but I'd dare say his basic knoweldge about the world, about world history, and even his least favorite subjects like math and biology, are well beyond what Sarah Palin or even most American high school graduates know.


So, as you can see, evaluating Sarah Palin isn't that easy. It depends what you're evaluating her for. I think that socially I'd enjoy her company and conversation at dinner [aside from the fact that she's the VP candidate.] We have different values and beliefs, but she's bright and it would interesting to hear what she has to say about what she believes.

For her performance as governor, I give her high marks so far. The Monehan affair is a sign of her lack of experience in the ethics of organizational protocol, especially governmental organizations, where merit systems are the standard. Whether she would have (under normal circumstances) learned and adjusted in response was one of the things that would have told us whether she was just a fluke who came along at the right time with the right qualities, or whether she had the potential to grow into a serious stateswoman.

As a potential Vice President, and thus a potential President I have to assess her against very different criteria. A gifted ice skater who's sent to the Olympics without a lot of training and competitive experience could do well, but the odds aren't good. Our Olympic tryouts wouldn't let that person in. Palin hasn't tried out. She hasn't competed beyond the Alaska championships. We're a state with fewer than 700,000 people! That means she really hasn't been tested at all in the big leagues. And we're talking about one of the most important jobs in the world. Scary is all I can say.

The Peace Corps, at least when I was in training, had a category called "high risk - high gain." It meant they thought the trainee could either be a super volunteer or a total washout. In Sarah Palin, at this point, I see the high-risk part, but I simply don't see the high-gain part. (Yes if my life was dedicated to fighting abortion and gay rights, and bringing back SUV's, God into schools and government, I could see the high-gain label, but that isn't me.)


What Happened to the Fighter Who Stood Up to Her Corrupt Party Leaders?

One more observation. The one thing most Alaskans would agree on about Sarah Palin is that she stood up to her corrupt party leaders, at a time when that really was risky, and declared her party chair unethical. She resigned saying she simply couldn't continue on the Oil and Gas Commission under the circumstances. That was a gutsy thing to do and bought a lot of credibility for her among Alaskans.

But what happened to that Sarah Palin? Now we see a Sarah Palin who is compromising those brave acts by following the orders of the likes of Karl Rove and his Orwellian soulless-mates. The Palin who spoke of cooperation and who worked with Democrats in Juneau, is now throwing mean, baseless accusations at Obama (Making "community organizing" into an epithet is consistent with the Republican game plan of poisoning every word that describes their opponents.)

The openness that impressed me so much when I first saw her has turned to deception about her record in front of the national audience and a week in hiding from the press. The old Sarah Palin would have giggled at the claim that her position of governor gave her serious commander-in-chief experience or that she was a Russian policy expert. Rudy Ruedrich (the Alaskan Republican Party chair she outed as corrupt) must be wondering how that strong-willed Sarah Palin has turned into the docile, obedient student of the even more corrupt Karl Rove and gang.

One explanation is that Sarah Palin is a superb actress and brilliant strategist and her fight against the Alaskan Republican party was a devious Machiavellian plot, and Lyda Green has pegged Palin right all along. (A great example of Palin's amateur status is her giggling on the radio talk show when the hosts called Lyda Green a bitch (hmmm, I never thought I'd cite Dan Fagan as a reference, but he paints the picture of the audio I heard when it was available) instead of telling them they went way over the line. That YouTube tape now has this message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by a third party.")

A more likely explanation is that Palin is absolutely no match for the level of play in national Republican circles and that being on McCain's ticket has her totally compliant to the Rovian team that sold George W. Bush to the American public. Twice.

Former Doolittle aide pleads not guilty in Abramoff inquiry

Let's see if this McClatchy piece gets into the ADN tomorrow. [Update, Sept 9: There's a two paragraph excerpt, less than I have below, in News Digest in Section B today] Or maybe it's only in the Sacramento Bee because Roseville is just outside Sacramento.

By Marisa Taylor and Rob Hotakainen - McClatchy Newspapers

Last Updated 6:28 pm PDT Monday, September 8, 2008

WASHINGTON -- A former top aide to Republican Rep. John Doolittle pleaded not guilty Monday to public corruption and obstruction of justice charges in an indictment that provides new details about links between the California congressman, his wife Julie and convicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Roseville congressman and his employees were showered with free lunches and tickets to concerts and sporting events, according to the indictment. In exchange, Doolittle provided legislative favors to Abramoff's clients, including work on a $16 million appropriation and a bill to provide statehood to Puerto Rico, the indictment said.

In addition, Abramoff provided Doolittle's wife with a job in which she received $96,000 working for a non-profit group, according to the indictment. It said Abramoff sent an e-mail to a consultant of the company, saying: "I want her to help, but not be overburdened with work." For the whole article.

Don Young's Abramoff related former aide has pleaded guilty and presumably is talking to prosecutors about his former boss. From an April 20, 2008 ADN story by Rich Mauer:

Last year, Mark Zachares, whom Young hired as a top aide on the House Transportation Committee, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from Abramoff and agreed to help investigators. Before going to work for Young, Zachares, originally from Alaska, had been a labor and immigration official for the Mariana government. Prosecutors said Abramoff placed Zachares on Young's committee, and Zachares used his insider spot to help Abramoff's clients. Since Zachares' plea 12 months ago, Young has refused to explain what he knows about how Zachares got his job.

Thanks Chris.

What's a Political Blog?

Julia O'Malley, a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News asked if I'd talk to her about about Sarah Palin and Alaska blogs. So we talked this afternoon briefly. I'm not sure we covered the things that are really interesting to me. For instance:

What is a political blog? I think there are a lot of ways of categorizing them. Here are a few:

1. Partisan political blogs
   These blogs explicitly support a particular political party. They tend to post things that support the candidates of that party and oppose the candidates of other parties. They choose what they post, in part or in whole, on whether it supports their candidates.
   
   
2. Ideological political blogs
   These have a particular political ideology and post things that advance that ideology. There may be overlap with partisan politics, but these blogs need not be tied to a particular political party. Note, the blogger may write from a particular ideological perspective and not even know it. Bloggers may be so totally conditioned by their culture (however narrowly or broadly you want to interpret that) that they assume their world view is the only true world view.
   
   
3. General political blogs
   These blogs take the view that everything is political. They can look at anything and write about the political implications. Here, politics is used in the broadest sense of how power is distributed in society. It looks at knowledge as a form of power, assuming that as people become aware of the side effects of what they do, as they become aware of alternative ways to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, that people then can free themselves from the culturally, economically, religiously, socially conditioned ways of seeing the world that limit their options.
   
   
4. Ostensibly non-political blogs
   These blogs appear to avoid politics altogether. But in a bigger sense, everything affects the distribution of power - including someone's cooperative compliance with unethical orders or someone's simply ignoring the unethical actions of others. Thus, in this sense, everything is political. And blogs that do not address the actions of politicians, government officials, and business leaders are accepting the power status quo. Their lack of protest is taken as a tacit sign of approval. For an excellent discussion of this, see Vaclav Havel's "The Power of the Powerless." This is a discussion of ways the Soviet Union and the Communist government of Czechoslovakia gained power by making citizens comply with meaningless regulations. (It's always easier to see these things when the 'enemy' does them than in one's own culture. But once you see it there, you can start seeing it at home.)
   

So, when Julia raised the issue of political blogs, it wasn't easy to answer. I'd like to think that I am definitely not in #1. Mostly this blog is #s 2 and 3. Sometimes #4.

I think most personal blogs mix several of these.

And then there's style:

1. Carefully considered opinion supported with facts, references
2. Loose and unsupported opinion
3. Basically facts with some interpretation

And tone used:

1. Humorous
2. Serious
3. Snarky
4. Respectful

And the media used:

1. Words
2. Pictures
3. Audio
4. Video
   

Again, I think blogs tend to mix all the styles, tones, and media, though most lean more in one direction or another.


Does any of this matter? Why not just say it's political or not? The more you know about something, the more complex it gets. At one level, we could just talk about cars. But, if you want to buy one, you have to get more and more specific - types of cars, models, features, etc.

The same is true about how we think, how we know things. But the categories that we use shape how we understand things and are much more amorphous than categories of cars. We could come up with lots of ways to categorize political blogs. We just need to shuffle until we find categories that closely reflect what's out there and are useful for communication. And we need to always be testing our categories.

Think about how the rest of the world is labeling our governor, and how, based on those labels, people think they understand all about her. So, ultimately, the words we use play a large roll in how we think, what we know, and what we think is possible and impossible, and the decisions we make.

I'm NOT saying complicated is good. The better we understand something, the simpler we can explain it. Yet some things are inherently complicated. But somethings are unnecessarily complicated because:
1. The speaker/writer hasn't thought it through enough and it's still confused
2. The speaker/writer doesn't want others to understand
a. so that the writer looks smarter than everyone else (since the writer understands it)
b. because knowledge is a form of power when you have it and others don't

And when we deal with intangibles like power, interpersonal relations, it is difficult to prove something true or false, so it gets even more complicated.

So that's why we need to understand logic, to use words in their agreed upon meanings (or clarify exactly what we mean by them), and to think through the arguments we hear. A good case for this was in this Leonard Pitts column.

"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals." -- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

And you can see how one thing leads to another, so I'll end this in mid....

McClatchy chief executive Pruitt quits 4 family trusts

How long will it take the ADN (McClatchy owns the ADN) to tell its readers about this? Or maybe this isn't important enough to publish? When I Searched the ADN site for Gary Pruitt to make sure I didn't miss something, the last piece on Pruitt I found was dated June 16. This is from the Miami Herald.

Posted on Sat, Sep. 06, 2008

McClatchy Co. (MNI) Chief Executive Gary Pruitt resigned from four family trusts that control about 41 percent of the newspaper company's voting power.

The trusts hold 12.5 million Class B shares, the Sacramento, Calif.-based company said in a regulatory filing Friday. Pruitt holds 1.2 percent of the Class A shares that have one-tenth the voting rights.

The 51-year-old executive's departure as co-trustee could be a sign that the founding McClatchy family plans to review its options for the company, said Ken Doctor, an analyst at media consultant Outsell in Burlingame, Calif.

McClatchy, which owns The Miami Herald, has lost 93 percent of its market value since March 2006, when Pruitt announced the $4.1 billion acquisition of Knight Ridder.

''They've got to be looking at some kind of a financial restructuring,'' said Doctor, who worked at Knight Ridder before McClatchy bought the company.

McClatchy climbed 20 cents, or 5.8 percent, to $3.66 Friday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has dropped 71 percent this year.

The family may be looking at a range of options, including a change of leadership, diversifying its holdings or a going- private transaction in which Pruitt may even participate, Doctor said. Pruitt isn't a family member, he added.

''You can't be on both ends of the transaction,'' Doctor said.

McClatchy Watch carries the article above and speculates on what it means. Essentially, he (and the commenters) say the family has watched Gary Pruitt bleed the company dry and only a wholesale removal of all the officers has a chance of success.

What will Alaska look like without a major newspaper? While McClatchy may have done things to speed the decline, the general prognosis for the newspaper industry isn't rosy. Will TV news expand to cover more local stories?

This is not a minor event. What will inherit the mantle of 'journal of record' for the state? We may not agree on the ADN's choice of stories to publish or not publish, however, it is a source that gives us a common set of stories every day, and keeps an eye on local, state, and federal elected officials, as well as businesses. Often people don't appreciate what they have until they lose it. Wait until television, weeklies, and blogs are covering the news to find out what all we take for granted from the ADN.