A Woman from Alaska Speaks Out: People of America Don’t Let it be Said

[This is a guest post from a friend who feels strongly about the upcoming election.]

People of America,

Don’t let it be said in the annals of history that the downhill spiral - given momentous spin by eight long years of an administration rooted in greed, arrogance, and indifference - was given its final thrust into the chasm we all see today, by its citizens.

Don’t let it be said that the American people succumbed to shortsightedness, shallowness, and prejudice by electing an administration just like the other one, or even more dangerously extreme, that furthered the erosion of what was once considered a solid foundation of declared rights that forged America in 1776.
Don’t let it be said that the beacon of eternal light that graces the hand of our Statue of Liberty glows in vain; that that quality of America that once beckoned to the hard pressed people of the world - our ancestors - was snuffed out by ignorance and self-serving apathy.

People of America, most of us would agree that we stand on an environmental threshold and can still alter the direction of our teetering from into the abyss to out, into a healthy world and vibrant existence, a legacy we can hand down to our children, and our children’s children.

Don’t let it be said that we willingly and mindlessly adorned blinders to the Karl Rovian tactics in evidence right now by the design of the McCain/Palin ticket and campaign, that we fell for a pretty face and the polarizing issues of women, gays, and guns to deflect attention away from the real needs of the people: healthcare, a green environment, real solutions to secure our sustainable energy independence, ending the war rooted in greed, rescuing and strengthening our tumbling economy, and nurturing our civil rights.

People of America, is this the best we can do - more of the same? Elect those who will see to it that we lose our reproductive freedom? Who will continue the chipping away of our civil rights? Who will push more and more of us into desperate situations - with no access to quality medical coverage for its children and families? Who would fall on its knees to individuals who drive Big Business who get fat while slashing our jobs and handing them to people abroad?

People of America, do you see anything wrong with this picture? The time is NOW to take off the blinders and dig deep. Dig into our history to see what ground we stand to lose. The time is NOW to stem the downward slide.
Elect Obama/Biden for a chance to pivot out of the brink of our fall into the chasm.

Stephanie Levine
Anchorage, AK
September 11, 2008

Unlocking My New Canon SD790

While waiting in the Carr's Muldoon parking lot Sunday night to carpool to Wasilla, I fiddled around with my camera as I tried to figure out how to get to the features I was used to on the old camera. Then suddenly, I got one. But how did I get there. Fiddled some more until I finally opened it. It was like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes.

OK, this picture isn't too good. How do you take a picture of the back of your camera? Luckily, I still have Scott's camera. But I didn't know how to do closeups with it and I'm not about to learn either. This pic will do for my purposes. The arrow is pointing at the mystery ring. Eventually, I figured out I could turn the ring - clockwise or counter clockwise - and when the right icon showed up on the screen, I had to push the button in the middle of the ring. Now that I've figured it out, it's pretty cool. But the instructions just said "go to the X icon" without telling me how to use the ring. (Well, maybe if I'd started the manual at the beginning it would have told me.)

And then, voila, all the features are reachable. You can teach an old dog new tricks. So all I needed was something to take pictures of. There really is a picture anywhere you look. You just have to find it. Here are some parking lot shots as I tried out different color features while I waited.

The World/National News v. Political News

There's a stark mismatch between the news headlines and the coverage of the presidential campaign. I've gone through the ADN website sections on World and National news and taken what I thought were some significant stories.

Then I went to the Political news section and took out stories from there. With the exception of the "McCain and Obama on China" story, which came from the World News, not the Political News section, there is nothing on what the candidates think about the key issues of the day. [Skip on down]

News	Political News
Wall Street crisis could have long-term impact	'Rogue' Monegan accused of insubordination
Ike-related storm deaths state by state	Palin converts fence-sitters
Ukraine governing coalition collapses	Will Tina Fey encore as Palin on 'SNL'?
US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,158	Montana governor downplays surge by GOP
Thailand's political crisis faces new challenge	KBYR gives talk show host a week's suspension
UN nuclear watchdog says Iran blocking arms probe	McCain and Obama on China (This was in World News, not Political News)

I will also mention that this is the first post where I have created an html table. It really was pretty easy. The code can be found here.
Can anyone tell me why there is that long blank space and how to get rid of it?

Blogger Bait and Switch

Phil at Progressive Alaska invited several Alaska bloggers to dinner with Salon.com founder David Talbot. Phil lives out in the Matsu Valley on the outskirts of Wasilla so we carpooled out there. When we got there Phil's summer of fishing was evident with various salmon options. But it turned out that Talbot had overbooked himself and wasn't there.







Instead of Talbot there was a British television film crew here working on Palin stuff. So through the evening each of us got interviewed as was our passionate discussion. One topic that dominated the end of the discussion was on Palin's record on dealing with Alaska's top of the charts incidence of violence and sexual assault against women.









Celtic Diva already has a post up on the evening so I'll just put up pictures and link you to her site.
[Update: Monday afternoon: And Mudflats has also done a good post on last night.]

Sitemeter Migration and Return

Sitemeter is a company that monitors hits to websites. This past weekend they upgraded to their new website. For a while stats were not available. But then I went to their site and got the message above. Great. I followed the instructions and went to the new site and tried to log in. It didn't recognize my user idea or my password. But there was a link to get a new password. You had to give them your email address. I did. But I got a message back they had no record of such and email address.


I sent an email and a little later I went back to the main page to see if maybe there was news. There was this announcement that they were rolling back to their previous version. The old version is back up and running, without ads.

I bet there were some really upset computer and management types pointing fingers in all directions.

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]