36% of the Vote In - Miller leading Murkowski 51%-48%

[Update 10:27:  looking at the 9:47 count, Anchorage has large percentages reported (58%- 77%) but with some very low ones like the Mt. View district.  Districts with low reporting:
Kodiak 0%; Bethel 0%;  Kotzebue 4%; Nome 11%;  Dillingham 9%;  the giant rural district 6 that includes Tok   3%;  Juneau 20%. Ketchikan 22%.  These probably bode well for Murkowski, but who knows?]

It's not clear which precincts aren't in yet.    No votes from Anchorage District 20 - Mountain View area legislative race.  Kodiak races have nothing. Juneau only has about 2 of 9 precincts in Egan's race.  Some other SE Alaska votes are missing or lower percent than overall.  Some Anchorage races are 58% and 68%.
Below are all the results as of 9:36pm from the election site.

State of Alaska 2010 Primary Election August 24, 2010 Unofficial Results

08/24/10 21:36:00

Registered Voters 487456 - Cards Cast 66051 13.55%

Num. Report Precinct 438 - Num. Reporting 159 36.30%

US SENATOR (ADL) ADL Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 19183/487456 3.9 % Total Votes 13838 Haase, Fredrick LIB 2340 16.91% Kern, Jacob Seth DEM 2528 18.27% McAdams, Scott T. DEM 6867 49.62% Vondersaar, Frank J. DEM 2103 15.20%

US SENATOR (R) REP Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 45740/487456 9.4 % Total Votes 45375 Miller, Joe REP 23251 51.24% Murkowski, Lisa REP 22124 48.76%

US REPRESENTATIVE (ADL) ADL Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 19183/487456 3.9 % Total Votes 15139 Crawford, Harry T. DEM 15139 100.00%

US REPRESENTATIVE (R) REP Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 45740/487456 9.4 % Total Votes 43641 Cox, John R. REP 2679 6.14% Fisher, Sheldon REP 10509 24.08% Young, Don REP 30453 69.78%

GOVERNOR (ADL) ADL Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 19183/487456 3.9 % Total Votes 18222 Berkowitz, Ethan A. DEM 8822 48.41% French, Hollis S. DEM 7446 40.86% Toien, William S. LIB 627 3.44% Wright, Donald R. AI 1327 7.28%

GOVERNOR (R) REP Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 45740/487456 9.4 % Total Votes 44674 Heikes, Gerald L. REP 175 0.39% Hlatcu, Merica REP 248 0.56% Little, Sam REP 721 1.61% Parnell, Sean R. REP 21895 49.01% Samuels, Ralph REP 6140 13.74% Walker, Bill REP 15495 34.68%

LT GOVERNOR (ADL) ADL Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 19183/487456 3.9 % Total Votes 16987 Benson, Diane E. DEM 11102 65.36% Brown, Jeffrey D. LIB 1601 9.42% Moreno-Hinz, Lynette DEM 902 5.31% Powers, J. J. "Jack" DEM 3382 19.91%

LT GOVERNOR (R) REP Total Number of Precincts 438 Precincts Reporting 159 36.3 % Times Counted 45740/487456 9.4 % Total Votes 41864 Burke, Eddie REP 5231 12.50% Lupo, Bob REP 961 2.30% Ramras, Jay REP 13302 31.77% Treadwell, Mead REP 22370 53.43%

Early Morning Election Day

As regular readers might remember, I originally went down to Juneau as a volunteer staffer for Rep. Max Gruenberg.  So when he and his wife invited us to hold campaign signs I thought I needed to say yes.  It is primary election day.  Besides, it would be a chance to chat with them.  Rep. Gruenberg is unopposed in the primary, but he does want to have his name out.  The idea of holding a campaign sign on a street corner to wave at cars going by is low on my list of things I want to do.  Plus it was at 7:30 in the morning.  But I advise others to do things they normally wouldn't, so I should too.  So there we were as the sun was blindingly coming over the Chugach Mountains. 

The weather was perfect - sunny but not too warm.  Drivers waved and I got to talk to some of the kids walking to Clark Middle School and introduce them to their Representative in Juneau. 

Mt. View Community Council member Joyce saw as at the corner and joined us for breakfast at the Mountain View Diner - a Chanlyut project, where Noble's Diner once was.  The food was good and we had a nice chat. 

2010 Alaska Proposition 2

[UPDATE 2012:  Here's the post on the 2012 Prop 2 to reestablish an Alaska Coastal Zone Management Program.]


I've been trying to avoid this.  KSKA has done a pretty good job and you can listen to Kathleen McCoy's Hometown Alaska show with guests representing both sides.   And Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News on Friday covered it in depth. 

So I can just step back and leave the details to the others and try to put it into a larger perspective.


The PR characterization by the pro and anti forces:

PRO:  Alaskans for Parental Rights
ANTI:  Alaskans Against Government Mandates

Comment:  The pro forces win here, by being closer to what the measure is about.  The bill would require notification of parents before a pregnant girl under age 18 can have an abortion.  The anti forces seem to have taken a lesson from some of the right wing groups that have stretched the names they use to fight things they don't like.  Many things the government does (including things the anti-forces believe in) are 'government mandates' and yes, this would require doctors to inform the parents, I think this is fairly misleading.


What it's really about:

This is basically an anti-abortion measure.  An earlier law which required parental consent for an abortion for girls was thrown out by the Alaska Supreme Court.  This is an attempt to at least require parental notification.  But is this about parental rights?  Technically, yes, but it sure smells like it's really an attempt to make it harder to get an abortion.


What it's really about 2:

This is also about the balance of power between parents and their daughters.  The pro forces would give more power to the parents.  The anti forces would maintain the daughters' freedom to make these decisions.

The anti forces argue that there are girls whose dysfunctional families make it impossible, even dangerous, for the girls to go to their parents.  90% of the girls, they say, actually do talk to their parents.  Their concern, they say, is the 10% in dysfunctional families, or who may even be pregnant by a family member.

The pro forces say they have taken care of this by including an option to have a judge make the decision.  (Would you trust a random judge to make this sort of decision for you?)
The anti forces are particularly concerned about rural girls and the difficulties they already face.



Types of Parents and Types of Kids

As I see it, we have a continuum of parents from 

1_______________________2___________________________________3

1. Parents who essentially have abandoned their kids to do their own thing - either because they are working so much, or they are dysfunctional and can't control their own lives let alone their kids' lives. 
   
2. Parents who teach their kids to make age appropriate decisions about their lives and encourage them to become independent and think for themselves as they mature and give them the skills and information to do this - including birth control and sexual health information.
   
3. Parents who want to keep a close control of their kids and have very specific expectations for how their kids should behave and what they should do, even if the kid doesn't fit their mold.  

There are more different kinds of parents along the line and I'm sure readers could fill in different types of parents and where they fit on the continuum.

There are also different kinds of kids:

1___________________________2____________________________3

1.  Kids who are physiologically incapable of making many decisions for themselves.  FAS kids, for instance, come with many different kinds of abilities, some of whom really can't make good long term decisions and need protection from being taken advantage of even as adults.


2.  Kids whose families have not prepared them to make responsible decisions or who temperamentally are not suited to making important decisions on their own.

3.  Kids who have good smarts and have been trained or simply had an aptitude  to take personal responsibility and make important decisions about their lives.

I guess what I'm saying is that we can't generalize about the power relationship between kids and their parents.  In some cases the kids are better equipped to make important decisions about their own lives.  In other cases not.

There are cases where good kids make it through bad families, and there are cases where despite the best parenting, the kids turn out difficult.


I would argue that most parents would like their kids to consult them for important decisions.  And I dare say that in most families this happens.  In cases where girls cannot be persuaded by counselors to include their parents in the decision, I would guess that the girls probably have a good reason.  But not always. 

Does it really matter if it passes or not?

In the KSKA debate both sides seemed to agree that there were about 125 girls under 18 who have abortions in an average year in Alaska.  If it's true that 90% inform their parents (and I didn't hear the pro-forces challenge this), then all this is about 12 girls a year.  It doesn't stop them from getting abortions, it only delays it for 48 hours or so.  This may prevent a few girls from getting abortions, or, as the anti forces argued, it may cause some girls to take desperate measures to end their pregnancy.

Anti-abortion advocates will say that each abortion is a murder and so any abortion prevented is worth any effort.  I don't think abortion is a good thing.  No surgical procedure is a good thing if it can be prevented.  Rather than spend all this time and money on trying to change the law this way, it seems to me that everyone's time would have been better spent on serious sex education and birth control to make sure that there are simply fewer unwanted pregnancies and this would decrease the number of pregnancies.



Other Issues

It was suggested that this law would make doctors consider their own legal liability when trying to determine what is best for their patient.  Doctors have to deal with informing parents and in some cases getting girls to judges. 

The pro forces have very effectively taken the comparison between parents permission required for schools to give a kid an aspirin to their not even being informed that their daughters are pregnant.

There is a major difference here though.  Schools are not medical institutions and except for school nurses the personal are not medically trained.  These rules are in place to be sure that a teacher or an aide doesn't give an aspirin to a kid who is allergic to aspirin and would have a serious reaction.

Doctors, however, will be making the decisions about whether the child has an abortion.  I don't know how they work out getting the girl's medical record before making this decision.  And some girls may not even have a medical record. 

I did another post the other day that suggested if people didn't read and/or understand the bill, they should either not vote or vote no.  I would advise anyone who hasn't read this bill and doesn't understand it after they read it, should simply skip this measure and go on and vote for the candidates.  Or they should vote no.

Political Signs

Sometimes I have a possible story, but then things happen and I let it go.  Except it keeps coming back. 

About four weeks ago I noticed a Parnell Sign on what I always thought was a government built fence on the right of way at Lake Otis and 36th.  I thought that because when they did the bike trail they put in one fence all the way along the block and then added a flower planter at the corner.  It had flowers the first two summers and has been weeds since.












And there were two little signs on the big red sign. 

One said the sign was authorized by the property owner. 




The other said it was illegal. 




So I called the numbers on the "illegal" sign attached to the sign. 

The State told me that things related to political signs on the right of way were complicated right now because of a US Supreme Court decision and they were reviewing all their policies.

The Municipal planning person said he'd send someone out and check and if it was on the public right of way it would be torn down. 


I know it stayed up for at least another week, maybe two. 

Sometimes seeing something that isn't there is harder than seeing something that is there.  I went by the corner often and I'd get home and think, "Is that sign still there or not?  I don't recall seeing it, but maybe I'm just used to it now."

That  happened again just this last Friday.  I still had my bike out, so I just rode back to check it out.  No sign, and probably there hasn't been a sign up for a while now, which is why I couldn't remember seeing it.  Because I didn't see it. 


Ah, so it must have been found illegal and taken down. 

But today as I headed over to UAA, I noticed it was back, plus another sign had joined it.  Tomorrow is the election.  Campaign underlings often get ambitious and the candidates, especially for a major office, can't keep track of all this stuff. 

Nevertheless, if there were big fines for this sort of thing, maybe it wouldn't happen so much.  Or maybe candidates would put up their opponent's sign so he'd get fined.  Every time you make a rule, someone finds a way to mess with it. 

Race War? Why are you bringing all that up again?

I'm reading Tim Wise's White Like Me.

Here, Tim is talking to his white Southern great aunt who has asked him if he thinks there is going to be a race war.  Rather than answer yes or no, he says,

...we're already in a race war.  It started several hundred years ago when white folks decided to exterminate Native Americans, and then continued when whites opted for the importation of slaves from Africa, ripping people from their homes, their cultures, their religions, their continent and bringing them to the land we were now on, so as to make Europeans wealthier.  This was not what my aunt had in mind, needless to say, when she thought of a race war.

 "No,"  she interjected, "I don't mean all that."

"All that" is the term whites tend to use instead of that other one:  the one people of color tend to favor when speaking of the same thing.  What's that other one again?  Oh yeah.  Genocide.  Far preferable, "all that"  pretty much sums up, in two little words, what most whites think of the extermination or enslavement of nonwhite peoples:  as in, "Why are you bringing up all that." or "All that happened a long time ago;  why can't they just let it go?" (pp. 57-58)

The losers are supposed to let it go.  Like the many American Southerners who have let go of the Civil War.   

Well you might not mean all that, I noted, but from the perspective of black folks, which in her case was who she feared, all that, is the only logical starting point for any discussion about race war.  Fact is, the war is on, we started it, and the only problem most whites seemed to be having was that the targets had decided to fight back.  They apparently had forgotten or never learned the rules:  the ones that said we were always supposed to win, to get our way, to run the show.(p. 58)

Let's see.  Who ended up victorious in most of the Hollywood cowboy and Indian movies? 

Tim Wise will be in Anchorage Sept. 13-15 and will talk at UAA Tuesday the 14th at 7:30pm at Wendy Williamson. 

[Disclosure:  I am on the Steering Committee of Healing Racism in Anchorage, the organization that's bringing Wise to Anchorage.]

If You Don't Understand It - Don't Vote or Vote NO!

Most people would agree with the idea that legislators should read the bills they vote on. We can find a lot of self-righteousness on the topic on-line.

From Greta Van Susteren's blog on the Fox News website.

How about reading the #### bill before you vote for it???! What is wrong with Congress? 

CBS reported 

Let Freedom Ring, a non-profit, grassroots organization that supports a conservative agenda, announced an initiative today urging members of Congress to sign a pledge to read and give citizens the opportunity to read any health care reform legislation before voting on it.

From Rand Paul's website:

Once elected Rand Paul has pledged to never vote for a bill he hasn’t read and one of the first bills he will sponsor is the Read The Bills Act.

Maybe it's because the Democrats are in power that the sites I can find quickly on this topic are conservative sites.  But no matter, I think most people agree that there is something wrong when our members of Congress don't read the bills they vote on.

On Tuesday, Alaskans have two Ballot Measures to vote on.  Each is about five pages in the  State's voter pamphlet full of language like this:

(A) No public body, public officer, person in the employ of the state, any of its political subdivisions, any school district, or candidate for public office may, directly or indirectly, direct, permit, receive, require, or facilitate the use of tax revenues or any other public resources for campaign, lobbying, or partisan purposes, including payment of dues or membership fees of any kind to any person, league, or association which, directly or indirectly, engages in lobbying, campaigns, or partisan activity. No candidate, political committee, or political party may accept any contribution from any state, state agency, political subdivision of the state, foreign government, federal agency, or the federal government. A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

Neither of the petitions are easy to make sense of.  In talking to a few people about Prop. 2 it became clear that what they thought a 'yes' vote would do, really needed to be a 'no' vote.

My advice to people is this:  We shouldn't make new laws that we haven't read or don't understand.  If you haven't read the ballot measures, you probably shouldn't vote on them.  If you insist on voting, you should probably vote no - that that new laws don't get added that people haven't read and/or don't understand.

And if you have read them but don't really understand them, the advice is the same.  Either don't vote or vote no.

If a significant number of people who vote for candidates but do NOT vote for the petitions, this will send a significant message to our legislators that we won't copy their behavior and we want them to copy ours.  If you haven't read it, don't vote on it.

Of course, being me, I could argue that there are times when you might want to follow the advice of someone you know who's an expert in a topic and vote as they suggest.

And one could say that this is just a sneaky way to manipulate people into defeating these two ballot measures.  It's true, I don't think either of these is a great measure.  Both are very confusing.  Legislation often needs to be complex to reflect the complexity of society, but the writing can still be clear so that someone willing to read it should be able to understand it.

I truly believe that no great or even minor tragedy will occur if both these measures and the point of passing up these two would have a positive effect.\

You can get the Voter Pamphlet here (it's a pdf file) and read them yourselves.

I'll try to get some specifics up about Ballot Measure 2 by Monday.

ADN Reports Bill Allen Sex Case Dropped by Feds

Cliff Groh at Alaska Political Corruption  notes that Richard Mauer has a long article this afternoon reporting that the Feds have dropped the sex case against Bill Allen.  

This is a longstanding investigation by the feds and Anchorage Police Department of Allen's relationships with underage girls that first came out (if I recall right) during the political corruption trials in 2007.  There have been questions about whether dropping this case was one of the reasons that Allen agreed to be a witness for the prosecution so quickly.  Although the Anchorage Police say that the case was strong, no reason was given by the feds for dropping it. 

The trial attorney, Barak Cohen, CEOS section chief Drew Oosterbaan, and criminal division head Lanny Breuer all referred requests for comment to a department spokeswoman, Laura Sweeney. Sweeney said department policy prevented her and the officials from discussing the reasons for not prosecuting a given case.

"We understand that not everyone will agree with every prosecutorial decision we make but we must continue to assess each matter based on the specific facts, circumstances, evidence and the law," Sweeney said in a prepared statement. "Our trial attorneys, section chiefs and division leadership evaluate these factors and make the decision determined to be the most appropriate given the totality of information before them."

You can read the whole article here.  Below is the end of the article.  Roberds is one of the girls reported to have been involved. 

"They told me that the case as [sic] denied -- they decided not to prosecute Bill Allen," Roberds said. "They were saying they were pretty upset about it. They were explaining to me that we basically had all the evidence that we needed to prosecute, and they themselves didn't know why it got denied, so they couldn't give me a reason."

Her attorney, Kenneth Roosa, a former state and federal prosecutor who has represented the victims of priest abuse and other sex crimes for years, said he also was surprised. It would be one thing if the Justice Department said the evidence was bad, or they found Roberds to be a liar. But that wasn't the case, he said.

"For Paula, and certainly for me, the fact that they did this for what appears to be pretty clearly political reasons or some self-serving secret federal reason, it's pretty shocking and it's pretty disgusting," Roosa said.

"I'm not blaming the detectives," Roosa added. "But certainly, the attorneys in the Department of Justice have mishandled this case so badly that there ought to be an investigation of those guys as well. For them to allow a wealthy Alaska businessman to repeatedly sexually abuse an Alaska teenage girl and then get away with it, with the evidence and the documentary evidence as clear as it is in this case, is unfathomable."

A Slice of Wednesday in Anchorage

This isn't even everything I ended up doing, but it's a few snapshots of some things that were happening in Anchorage yesterday.

An Alaska Common Ground committee was planning for their September 18 public forum on Corrections at the Bagel Factory. 

Someone lost their cockatiel. 

New Student orientation tours were happening at UAA.

Senator Ted Stevens was memorialized at the Anchorage Baptist Temple. 

Some bicyclist were enjoying the sun at Goose Lake.

As was a grebe.

Even this amanita found a little sun.

The UAA Masters of Public Administration (MPA) program had a reception for new students.

A family rode their bikes for pizza at the mall on East Tudor.

And this bull moose strolled along the perimeter of McLaughlin Youth facility.  (I know, I already put him in, but this is a different picture.)

NY Times and Stevens Eulogies Point Out Ideological - Reality Gap

Leery of Washington, Alaska Feasts on Its Dollars, says the NY Times headline.  It begins talking about Carl Gatto, an outspoken anti-government state rep from Wasilla:

Mr. Gatto, 72 and wiry, smiles and shakes his head: “I’ll give the federal government credit: they sure give us a ton of money. For every $1 we give them in taxes for highways, they give us back $5.76.”

The New York Times doesn't mention that Gatto was born in New York City and graduated from  Brooklyn Tech High School and got his BA from Brooklyn Polytech.  Nor did they mention that most of his professional life has been spent working for government - in the military, as a teacher, as a paramedic/firefighter, and as a legislator.  

. . . Alaskans tend to live with their contradictions in these recessionary times. No place benefits more from federal largess than this state, where the Republican governor decries “intrusive” federal policies, officials sue to overturn the health care legislation and Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, voted against the stimulus bill. 

At the memorial services for Sen. Ted Stevens yesterday, everyone agreed - both the speakers and the audiences with their applause - that Uncle Ted's legacy is largely due to the fact that every part of Alaska has monuments to Stevens' ability to get federal dollars to Alaska.  One speaker even said, and got loud applause, that if Heaven has committees, we all hope that Stevens gets on the Appropriations Committee.

While we have this strong anti-government ideology and rhetoric of tough independence,  the facts are that we live off the largess of the Federal government and international oil companies who pay royalties and taxes for oil that, through no effort on our part, lies beneath our land.  And we all get annual individual checks from the State Permanent Fund just for living here.  A person getting all the checks since 1982 has received almost $31,000 payout from the state.  Alaskans still complain, without irony, about how the state spends "my tax money" even though individuals pay no state sales nor income nor property taxes. 

From the same New York Times article:

Victor Fischer, who helped write the state constitution in the 1950s, shrugs.
“There’s all this verbiage that says we’re the frontier, rough and ready,” says Mr. Fischer, lithe and sardonic in his mid-80s. “The Feds paid for everything, but the conflict runs through our history.”

Chugach Views and McLaughlin Moose

I was busy today and lots to post, but I was busy so this is filler and maybe I'll catch up.   I'd forgotten how beautiful Anchorage is in the summer, because it's all been shrouded in clouds for so long now.

It's like this in Anchorage.  We were riding home from dinner when J kept saying something about "to the right."  I biked right past this huge moose and didn't even notice it until J finally said 'moose.'  It was walking along the fence around McLaughlin.