Poll Watching In Anchorage and The List

I was surprised to see that the voting was just in the hallway at the entrance to the school I was sent to.  The whole time I was there people were walking through - lines of kids and other people.  At times the lines blocked voters from getting to the table to sign in and get their ballots.  When I got home, my wife said that's what happened at schools she worked at.  The polling places I've seen, until now, all had dedicated spaces for voting.  At the school today it felt like voting was, "well, if you need to vote, here you can have the hallway, but there will be lots of people going by and lots of noise.  That's the best we can do.  Sorry."  You could look through the windows in the hallway behind the voting table into the library.  I didn't see anyone in there all day.

It just seemed to treat voting as a low priority.  OK, it wasn't terrible.  But because the voting officials couldn't be certain who belonged there and who didn't, if someone wanted to mess with something, it would be easier.


The List (Kathy in Kentucky asked in the comments what the list is.  I've explained it in the comments)

About the list.  I did ask to see it. The had about three pages plus a cover sheet in plastic holders.  There were two columns of names on each page.  It seemed to be roughly in alphabetical order, but in chunks.  I looked for Lisa Murkowski, but didn't see it the first time.  So I asked to look again and then found it.

The polling place had just one list.  The election worker would try to stand to the side (not easy to do in the busy hallway) and show a voter who asked to see the list one page at a time.  It was totally useless.  The voter could not take the list to the voting booth or anywhere else.  Only three or four people asked to see the list while I was there (5 hours - about 200 voters) and it seemed like two just wanted to see it for the novelty of it, not because they needed it.  Another person, when told she couldn't take the list into the booth, just walked out without voting.



Like normal, the election workers were very professional.  When I left at 4:30pm only about 16% had put ballots into the voting machine (which had a counter.)  There were also ballots in another voting box, but these were questioned ballots - people who were not on the list.  From the State Election website:

Voters must vote a questioned ballot if:

• their name is not on the precinct register;
• they do not have identification;
• their residence address has changed;
• during the Primary Election the voter requests a ballot type they are not eligible to receive;
• an observer challenges the voter's qualifications to vote; or
• the voter has voted in another manner during the election.

Voters who vote a questioned ballot sign a questioned ballot register and place their voted ballot inside a questioned ballot envelope before placing it in the ballot box.
The information the voter provides on the outside of the envelope is used to determine what parts of the ballot can be counted and will also be used to register or update the voter’s registration record. When completing a questioned ballot envelope, write legibly.
Questioned ballot envelopes are reviewed by a review board to determine if the ballot can be counted prior to opening the envelope. To protect the secrecy of the ballot, the review board removes the secrecy sleeve containing the voted ballot from the questioned ballot envelope and once the envelopes have been set aside, the ballot is then removed from the secrecy sleeve.

The sun did come out and the ground was messy as I left. 

OK Alaska, Winter is Here, Go Show The World We Woke Up

 The ADN tells us today what we all suspected:

A particularly warm and dry October made the month feel more like September than normal.


The average temperature was 37.7 degrees, well above the normal of 34.1 -- but a bit under last year's even-warmer average of 40.4. \
This was the second consecutive year without snowfall in the Anchorage Bowl on Halloween. Fourteen years ago, a big snowfall of more than 14 inches began Oct.

But after the the watercolor sunset last night, it started snowing.  It's still a bit anemic, but the dream we've been living in, that winter wasn't serious this year, is over.  And we should also wake up from the dreams of tea parties and write-in candidates and show the world that sanity does exist in this remote outpost of the United States. 



I'll be poll watching for part of the day.  Meanwhile, those of you who didn't vote early, go out and show the world there's more to Alaska politically than Sarah Palin. 

About that National Debt

From Wikipedia:

As of October 10, 2010, the "Total Public Debt Outstanding" was approximately 94% of annual GDP, ($13.616 Trillion) with the constituent parts of the debt ("Debt held by the Public") being approximately 66% of GDP ($9.01 Trillion) and "Intergovernmental Debt" standing at 34% of GDP .^[2][3]

A lot of politicians, particularly Tea Partiers and Republicans, but also Democrats afraid to stand up and lead, have been making a big deal about this.  And it is noteworthy, but it isn't the crises the anti-Obama mob makes it out to be.  (And I'll assume that readers here realize that Clinton turned around the debt Bush I left him and gave Bush II a surplus and that Obama has had less than two years to undo the disaster Bush II left him.)


 The National Debt in Perspective 

When the bank evaluates whether it should give you a loan, it looks at what you owe and what you own.  Your net value is the difference between what you owe and what you own.  So if you owe $3000, but you own outright a car worth $5000, your net worth is +$2000.  If they only looked at what you owed and didn't consider your assets, no one would ever qualify for a loan. 

The same is true with a company.  You look at debits and assets.  Debits need to be balanced with assets, like cash, securities, land, buildings, equipment, even a company's good name has value. 

So when we talk about the United States, why do we only consider the debit side?  If we were a company, we'd also look at all the assets. 

What if we start with the military?  That would include:

• All the military bases in the US and abroad - land, structures, and other improvements
  Wikipedia lists 
• 71 air force bases in the US, plus 35 overseas
• About 300 army bases in the US plus overseas bases which are scattered on different pages so I won't even try to count them. 

Just to start getting some sense of the value (the author says these numbers are highly inaccurate and there are a a lot more bases than officially listed) here's a snippet from an alternet article:

Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it).

• All the airplanes, ships, vehicles.
• Weapons
• And all the other myriad of physical objects the military owns.  
• And then there's the value of all the training programs and other forms of expertise the military has produced

That's just the military.  What about the Department of Interior and all the land it oversees that belongs to the Federal government?  What's Yosemite worth?  Yellowstone?  The Everglades?  And all the national forests managed by the Department of Agriculture? 

There are dams, highways, and other sorts of infrastructure. 



Dr. John Rutledge at Rutledge Capitol discusses this all in detail including what sorts of numbers we capture and what numbers are unknown.

It doesn't mean we need to sell them off, anymore than a Fortune 500 company needs to sell off its assets because it borrows money.  The reason the rest of the world keeps investing in the US is that they know we have more than enough assets - and should worse come to worse, we could sell some off.  Though, the need for that is still a long way off.  

I just want to say, at this point, that I don't think the US can go on spending the way we are spending, especially if people are unwilling to pay more taxes.  My wife and I have avoided borrowing money (except for our house) by working, saving money, and living relatively modestly.  It also helped that we went to college in the 60's and 70's when tuition was low enough one could easily graduate debt free and that our parents could guarantee the loan on our first house. (Note, they didn't pay anything, they simply guaranteed the loan.)  I say all this just to establish that I think being out of personal debt is a good thing.  However, household economics and national economics are different things.  From Wisegeek:

The study of macroeconomics has led to the use of governmental policies to effect economic change, with the hope of avoiding depressions and other economic shocks. The two key tools used to manage national economies are fiscal and monetary policies. Policies developed from macroeconomics have wide effects — as a rule, they are the politics that make the evening news.

I can't justify my personal spending on the grounds it will help stimulate the economy, but the Federal government can.

The frothing about the debt by some politicians strikes me as either ignorance or intentional manipulation of a gullible public, especially since these politicians who want to lower the debt are taxophobic as well.  Basically, they are simply anti-government and use any arguments they can get away with in a vain effort to force the shrinkage of the government.  

Many of the people being whipped up into an anti-debt frenzy have personally made liberal use of their own credit cards.  I'm not saying all.  I'm sure that there are many folks who handle personal finances like my family, and so they expect the government to do the same.  But as I said above, you can't generalize from household finances to national finances. 

And it's the American public, who champion the Free Market and oppose government regulation, who spend their money on products made overseas increasing our trade imbalance.  Inexpensive goods are great, but they are only so cheap because American jobs are being exported to where the labor is cheaper, safety standards for workers are lower, and environmental standards are even lower. 

Blaming government is much more satisfying than looking in the mirror.

As we vote today, I just wanted to raise this point for people who are out to punish all those evil politicians who are spending us into ruin - if you believe Tea Party and Republican rhetoric. 

Alaska 9th Best Voting Rate

I got an email for the Daily Beast about a report they've put up in which Alaska comes out in the Top Ten states for voter registration and participation.  Being in the top ten with just 61% participation doesn't say a whole lot.  But as I've pointed out  our numbers are misleading because they purge our old voter records so infrequently, we probably have a higher percentage than that.  A huge number of our voters have died or moved away.

Anyway, here's part of the Daily Beast story:

The results show that, when it comes to voting, there truly aren’t blue states or red states—just engaged states (where 70 percent of eligible voters exercise their rights) and those that don’t much care (where less than half do).

1, Minnesota
Average voter registration rate: 83.8
Average voter participation rate: 69.8
2, North Dakota
Average voter registration rate: 91.1
Average voter participation rate: 66.3
3, Maine
Average voter registration rate: 83.0
Average voter participation rate: 65.1
4, South Dakota
Average voter registration rate: 77.1
Average voter participation rate: 65.5
5, Wisconsin
Average voter registration rate: 80.8
Average voter participation rate: 62.9
6, Oregon
Average voter registration rate: 75.5
Average voter participation rate: 64.3
7, Montana
Average voter registration rate: 74.0
Average voter participation rate: 64.8
8, Massachusetts
Average voter registration rate: 74.2
Average voter participation rate: 61.7
9, Alaska
Average voter registration rate: 74.2
Average voter participation rate: 61.5

[UPDATE  11:45pm:   It's interesting that all the states in the top 15 are on the northern edge of the country.  Only Idaho, Washington, New York, and New Hampshire are missing from that northern tier. http://www.aa.org/subpage.cfm?page=37

Map from Alcoholics Anonymous

Strange Chemistry in Hillside/ER/Hope/Whittier Senate Race

Image from Giessel website

[Information here is from the candidates' websites, other web information including the Alaska Public Offices Commission.  As part of full disclosure, I have met one of the candidates - Janet Reiser - and was impressed enough that I have contributed to her campaign.  So, this post, like most posts here, is an attempt to present the general facts accurately, though is influenced by my own biases.][Of course that last sentence is true of anything that anyone writes.]

Senate District P

Since this post has a chemical twist, I should remind folks that P is the symbol for phosphorus.  The Jefferson Lab website tells us:

In what is perhaps the most disgusting method of discovering an element, phosphorus was first isolated in 1669 by Hennig Brand, a German physician and alchemist, by boiling, filtering and otherwise processing as many as 60 buckets of urine. Thankfully, phosphorus is now primarily obtained from phosphate rock (Ca₃(PO₄)₂).

Why is chemistry relevant in this race?

Because two of the three candidates in this race have degrees in chemical engineering - undoubtedly a first in Alaska.  The third candidate, a nurse, surely had to take chemistry as well. 

The Unknown Element- Dziubinski

Phil Dziubinski has only been in Alaska for four years and is running as an independent largely with his own money. 


He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Loyola University (New Orleans), according to his website. 

The good news is that he worked as a "compliance and ethics leader".  The bad news is that it was for BP.  It is hard to gauge from his website how well he did his job, or even exactly what it was, but given BP's record here in Alaska, in Texas, and in the Gulf of Mexico, one has to wonder exactly what a BP compliance and ethics leader was paid to do.  


In fact he's worked for BP since 1982 according to his website.

 -Compliance & Ethics Leader, BP Exploration Alaska (2006-2010)
 -Health, Safety & Environmental Director, BP Petrochemical Segment (2004-2006)
 -Health, Safety & Environmental Manager, BP Chemicals (1999-2004)
 -Health, Safety, &Environmental Manager, Coastal Oil Company & BP Oil (1991-1999)
 -European Refining Analyst, BP Oil (1988-1991)
 -Refining Planning & Economics Supervisor, BP Oil (1985-1988)
 -Refining Process Specialist, BP Oil (1982-1985)

Let's see.  It was June of 2006 that BP had a significant spill in Alaska.  We don't know exactly when Dziubinsky took on this role in 2006 and perhaps he was brought in because of the spill.  But he certainly should have had time to prevent the 2010 pipeline corrosion issues.  Here's another report on this problem. 

What exactly did he do for BP?  All he tells us on his blog is that he made them efficient:

Phil has managed business functions with up to 300 employees.  He has established and managed operating budgets of $100 million dollars.  His business success has been accomplished through business simplification and elimination of activities that did not add value.  Phil's management of these business functions significantly reduced business costs and made those functions more efficient.

But wasn't 'efficiency' - saving money - one of the reasons for the pipes getting corroded?

For an MBA, his job description is pretty vague and leaves out any sort of measurable indicators of the quality of his work.  The 300 employees and $100 million describe his responsibility, but not how well he carried it out.  To be fair, most campaign literature stays general like this.  But then if you are the compliance and ethics leader of a company that has significant compliance and ethics issue, thoughtful voters would have questions about his role in all this, questions his website doesn't address.

Looking at his contribution list at the Alaska Public Offices Commission, he looks like the Meg Whitman of Alaska.  Of $155,000 contributions, $152,000 appear to be from the candidate himself.  That means 98 percent of his support comes from his own pocket.  Independents don't have to work with others to get support.  But legislators do. [Note:  I'm not real skilled at using the Alaska Public Offices Commission search techniques.  I almost gave up, but called and got help.  So there well may be other reports that tell other things that I simply missed.  Keep that in mind as you look at my comments on spending.  Here's the APOC page to start searching.]

Dziubinski's website is pretty sketchy on the issues and they all get back to the oil, or at least energy.  For the state budget and taxation, that makes sense, since we are so oil dependent.  But his education is also focused on training people for the oil industry.  I do find his point that so many oil employees are from out of state an important one.  If you fly into Anchorage on a Saturday or Sunday, the plane is full of men coming back to their jobs after a break at home somewhere in the Lower 48.  The other issues he mentions are gas pipeline, natural resources development, and alternative energy.  What does he know about Native issues or health or fishing or other issues facing the state?  He doesn't tell us. 



Cathy Giessel

Cathy Giessel is the Republican candidate whose values we can know most about.  Her platform has a Tea Party flavor to it - very strong anti-abortion, strict constitutional interpretation - and she was appointed to the Board of Nursing by Sarah Palin.  Her website resume tells us:

Occupation

    * Registered Nurse
    *  Advanced Nurse Practitioner
    *  Business owner - Healthcare consulting business
      

Education

    * Master of Science in Nursing Science - University of Alaska Anchorage.
    *  Bachelor of Science in Nursing - University of Michigan.
    *  Diploma - Lathrop High School, Fairbanks, Alaska

One way to evaluate a candidate is through the company they keep.  Giessel's endorsement page is replete with who's who of Alaska far right political names - Loren Leman, Fred Dyson (who introduced Joe Miller the day Miller handcuffed reporter Tony Hopfinger), Wayne Anthony Ross (Palin's Attorney General nominee, the only one to be turned down by the legislature).

Rebecca Logan's endorsement says, "We need elected officials who don’t play political games and don’t compromise their principles  - Cathy Giessel is that person."  That works if you agree with her principles.  Alaska nurses got very upset with Giessel when she ignored their imput to follow her own priniciples.  Those Alaska Nurses are supporting one of her opponents - Janet Reiser - in this race.  Mudflats gives us a hint at why this might be the case:

The letter talks about an incident in a public meeting when Giessel divulged information regarding confidential complaints made to the Board, and ends with a statement of no confidence in Giessel’s professionalism or ethics.  Giessel maintained her position, and as far as can be determined, Palin ignored the complaint. 

In his attempt to oust Ruedrich, Miller told reporters at the time that the party’s vice chair, Cathy Giessel, should take over. Giessel, now the Republican candidate for a Senate seat from the Anchorage Hillside, wouldn’t comment.
“I remember nothing about it,” she said. “That’s what I’m going to tell you about it — nothing.”

Her issues page avoids, for the most part, hints of her radical conservatism.  There are hints here and there.  She does want a two year budget cycle which I think makes a lot of sense.

But then there is a section on the Constitution and we have a page right out of the Tea Party platform:

I support strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and Alaska Constitution

Specific Constitutional topics:

U.S. Constitution:

Second Amendment - I support the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms.

Tenth Amendment - I support the authority of the individual States to determine issues not specifically delegated to the Federal government.

Alaska Constitution:

I support the individual's right to keep and bear arms

I support our State's definition of Marriage 

Article I, section 1, Inherent rights, including a natural right to life.  I support the right to life, from conception to natural death.

So, she's strongly anti-gay, strong anti-abortion, etc. which is consistent with her endorsements from the Alaska Right to Life and The Alaska Family Action.  That's the lobbying arm of The Alaska Family Council, the extreme right wing group whose questions for candidates includes a measures to make abortion more difficult and to deny any state recognition of the civil rights of gays.  Giessel marked yes to all of their questions, such as this one:

Question
If a bill is introduced in Juneau to add “gender identity” and/or “sexual orientation” to Alaska’s civil rights statute, will you vote to oppose such legislation?
YES __________ NO __________ UNDECIDED __________

And she voted yes to another question which would take away rights of gay public employees.  You can see the questionnaire and how candidates responded here.

Giessel's fundraising is much broader than Dziubinski's.  However, she has filed paper reports instead of computerized reports which are a little harder to go through.  She has a fair number of contributions from individuals varying from $25 to $500.  She's also contributed about $40,000 of her own money out of about $119,000 collected altogether as listed in Geissel's last 30 day report.






Janet Reiser

Janet Reiser is the other chemical engineer (University of Colorado, Boulder.) She's also a Democrat.  She's on the board of Chugach Electric and owns her own company which according to her website

is the sole licensee for patented Radiant De-icing technology, the only FAA approved alternative to traditional jet de-icing. Currently developing project to install first Radiant de-icing facility at Ted Stevens International Airport for winter 2011-2012.

In fact, her career page gives that kind of detailed descriptions of what she's done in various jobs she's had.  

Like Dziubinski, Reiser's issue page is heavily oriented toward oil and energy.  But she does branch out a little more into education and health and public safety.  I was disappointed that her sexual assault message was so heavily aimed at punishment and didn't mention prevention at all.    But at least she recognized it as an important Alaska issue.

Reiser has raised $140,000 from long lists of individuals.  About $9,000 is from various labor unions - including police and fire fighters.  It is probably significant that BP employees (Dziubinski worked for BP for almost 30 years) and nurses (Geissel is a nurse) are both supporting Reiser.    Reiser has contributed, as best as I can tell, $5000 of her own money.

In a bizarre twist in this race, the ADN reports that a flyer from the Alaska Senate Democrats was sent out to the district supporting Dziubinski.  Geissel's website announces
"ALASKA REPUBLICANS APPLAUD DEMOCRATS FOR WITHDRAWING THEIR ENDORSEMENT OF JANET REISER"  but Democratic Chair Patti Higgins says the Democrats still support Reiser.   Was this an attempt to split conservative voters between Geissel and Dziubinski?  It sounds pretty clumsy.  All part of the strange chemistry in this race.

Bill Clinton and Rex and Sharry Miller Called Me Sunday

First there was another  a robo poll

• Q1: If you've already voted, push 1;  If you are highly likely to vote, press 2, etc.; 
  
• Q2:  Which of the following candidates are you most likely to vote for:  Undecided, press 1, Lisa Murkowski, press 2, etc.)

Then I got robo calls from Bill Clinton (vote for McAdams) and from Rex and Sharry Miller (Please vote for our son.) (Isn't the sabbath supposed to be a day of rest?)

Neither George W. Bush nor Frank or Nancy Murkowski have called to tell me to vote for Lisa Murkowski.

But we have gotten daily glossy 9X11 fliers in the mail from her and her corporate Native supporters.

The messages that  symbolize the candidates for me are:

Miller:  I'll cut the deficit and restore the Constitution and save America.  And I'm not as bad as they keep saying.

Murkowski:  I have seniority.  Miller's a disaster.  And a vote for McAdams is a vote for Miller.

McAdams:  Vote your values not your fears.

Given the political use of the polls in this race, no one has any faith in any of them.  And they don't really know how to deal with a write in candidate.

Tea Party people know they're voting for Miller no matter what the media say he's done.

The Alaska Republican establishment are voting for Lisa Murkowski.

Independents will go all different ways depending on what their individual issues are.

Most Democrats seem to be ready to vote for McAdams on the grounds that maybe McAdams does have a chance, and Murkowski won't vote much differently from Miller anyway.

But the 'practical' Democrats are mulling over Murkowski's pitch that McAdams can't win.   They're thinking that Murkowski is better than Miller and can overcome the write-in odds. 

Of course, that assumes that enough people will

1.  Want to vote for Murkowski
2.  Remember to spell her name close enough to be accepted as a Murkowski vote
3.  Remember to fill in the oval next to her name
4.  Remember which office she's running for

My guess is that there will be quite a few votes for Murkowski for Governor, for US House, for Lt. Governor, and various state house and senate seats.  

And a lot of Alaskans aren't even going to vote.  

Attorney Don Mitchell, who worked closely with Sen. Ted Stevens, is the author of two huge, highly acclaimed volumes on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and a Democrat, has boiled it down to whether Democratic and left-leaning Independent voters should vote for Alaska or vote for the USA.

After giving that "I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if don't" conundrum considerable thought, the way I come out on it is that undecided Democratic and center-left independent voters have to decide whether they are Alaska patriots or national patriots.
For an Alaska patriot the decision is easy. He or she should vote for Lisa Murkowski. Because an Alaska patriot would be a dumbbell to give up the seat on the Senate Committee on Appropriations that Alaska has held since 1973 and the seat on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that Alaska has held since statehood (when it was called the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs). Lisa holds both seats, and if she is reelected she will continue to hold them.
But if an undecided Democratic or center-left independent voter is a national patriot, then that voter should vote for Scott McAdams, knowing when he or she does so that casting that vote may help elect Joe Miller. Because having Joe Miller in the Senate is a better result for the nation than reelecting the same old Lisa. [You can read Mitchell's whole piece here.]

 So, as you can see, everything is illuminated here in Alaska the day before the election.  And with a write-in candidate, it could be Wednesday, Thursday, or even longer before we know the results of this race which has made all the other Alaska races nearly invisible.

Hint of Winter

I remember back in the late 70s and early 80s when Halloween meant waist high snow berms while walking with the kids for trick or treat.  Friday night we had hint of winter as we walked to Loussac to see the movie Blood Done Sign My Name about Ben Chavis Jr. (who was there) and it started to hail.



As we got to Seward Highway the sunset was putting on a fiery show.  It was almost 6pm.  Sunrise today was 9:35am.  We're losing about five and a half minutes of daylight each day now.

And yes, the movie was good.  Ben Chavis, in the movie, was a young teacher in a still all black school in Oxford, North Carolina when a returning black Vietnam Vet was shot and beaten by a white store owner and his sons and found not guilty.  As he walks out of the school to take his class to the courthouse, the whole school follows him.   This eventually led to an economic boycott of the white shops in town by the black population and slow changes in how things worked.  It was neat to have the real Ben Chavis there after the film to answer questions.

You'd think that in times of economic stress, more people would take advantage of free events like this where you get to see a recent movie (2009) and even talk to one of the players in the civil rights movement in the United States.

Elitism, Intelligence, Sarah Palin, Joe Miller

[I've been trying to write a concise, coherent and insightful post dealing with the attacks on educated people.  But as I read more, the attack seems not against just the educated, but the Elite.  But Palin's notion of  "The Elite" doesn't simply mean 'smart' and certainly doesn't mean 'upper class.'  Let's just call this a first draft on the theme.]

Sept. 4, 2009 (MSNBC)

“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment,” Palin said. “And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. . ."

October 24, 2008 (WN)

Q:  Who is a member of the elite?
Sarah Palin: . . . just people who think they are better than everyone else. . . John McCain and I are so committed to serving every American, hardworking, middle class Americans who are so desiring this economy getting put back on the right track. . .  [Emphasis added]
Q:  It's not education, it's not income based?
Sarah Palin:  Anyone who thinks they're better than anyone else.  
John McCain:  I know where a lot of them live.
Q:  Where's that?
John McCain:  In our nation's capital and New York City. . . I know who these elitists are, the ones she never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown. . . They think they can dictate to America what they believe rather than let Americans think for themselves.

[Note:  Merriam's Online dictionary shows that while her definition is vaguely in the ballpark - an outsider's view of 'c' maybe - it doesn't convey the standard usage of that term.  McCain's is close to 'd.' 

a . . .the choice part : cream <the elite of the entertainment world> 

b  . . .the best of a class <superachievers who dominate the computer elite — Marilyn Chase> 

c . . .the socially superior part of society <how the elite live — A P World> <how the French-speaking elite…was changing — Economist> 

d : a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence <members of the ruling elite> <the intellectual elites of the country>]

January 2009 Anchorage Daily News:

The dinner was held in the heart of Washington, D.C., at the Capital Hilton within sight of the White House. Palin's invitation to the Alfalfa Club was "a coup," said Letitia Baldrige, who served as the White House social secretary and chief of staff to Jacqueline Kennedy.

"It's something that everybody who's anybody in politics wants to be invited to," Baldrige said.

If a roasting by the most powerful people in America is a sign you've made it, then Palin had clearly arrived. Or, at the very least, was acknowledged Saturday night as one of the most interesting women in American politics.

November 23, 2009, From Talking Points Memo

O'REILLY: Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?
PALIN: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the the [sic] kind of spineless... a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fat resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that has to be me.

So now the elite are spineless and propped up with an Ivy League education and a fat resume - that doesn't reflect hard work or private sector/free enterprise principles.  So the wealthiest of the wealthy who have made their money through free enterprise aren't in the elite?  

October 25, 2010 Right Wing News - Kathleen McKinley:

. . .These Ivy league schools have gone from being training grounds for Christian missionaries and ministers to propaganda factories for every leftist radical failed ideology known to man. Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, communism, multiculturalism, relativism, naturalism, positivism, socialism, liberalism, egalitarianism, feminist studies, gay studies, transgender studies, transvestite studies, outcome-based education, and radical environmentalism are not only taught, but celebrated. 

McKinley says this without a trace of irony given that Yale (she starts out mentioning Yale) was among colleges traditionally reserved for the sons of the economic and social upper class of this nation (often known as the elite), which had quotas for Jews and African-Americans, and didn't admit women at all.  No irony at all, even though both Presidents Bush graduated from Yale as well as William F. Buckley, and Clarence Thomas.

And Joe Miller.


Palin argues that elitists "think they are better than anyone else."  Is this as opposed to people who think they know more than anyone else?  After all, Palin, and her protege Joe Miller, talk as if they have a monopoly on the Truth, and everyone else is simply wrong.  Their statements are strong, declarative statements.  There are no qualifiers.  They leave no room for the possibility that they might not be 100% right.  Their opponents are 100% wrong.   It's clearly black and white.  Look at Miler's issues page, for example:

The only answer [There is only one option and I know what it is, if you disagree, you're wrong] is to return our federal government to the limits prescribed by our Constitution. Federal powers not specified in the Constitution are reserved to the States by the 10th Amendment.

I support the repeal of ObamaCare. First and foremost, there is no Constitutional authority for it. [The Constitutional authority isn't just flimsy, it flat out doesn't exist.]

I am unequivocally pro-life and life must be protected from the moment of conception to the time of natural death. [There's nothing you can tell me or show me that will change my mind.]

The problem here is that social truths aren't that easy.  Conception is one point on a continuum of when life could be said to begin.  Another possible point on the continuum to mark the start of life is birth.  There is no way to prove it.  Different communities define these 'truths' differently.  Unless you believe that God has defined all this.  But then, different gods have said different things.  And even different Christians interpret the Christian god differently.  And what is natural death?  Is dying in a motorcycle crash  or from a gun shot a natural death?


What makes Palin and Miller think they have a monopoly on the Truth?  That they know better than everyone else?  Why has Palin tapped into some clear need among many members of the US public?

First, her elitist language can clearly be seen as taking on the insiders on behalf of the outsiders.  "People who think they are better than anyone else" and who live in the nation's capital and New York (we all know these as power centers) and have parties that people like Sarah Palin aren't invited to are the Insiders.  All the rest of us are outsiders, in our own democracy.   What Palin has done so well, is create her own clique, her own inside, of which she is the center.

Second, is to attack those insiders as not being as smart as they think they are.  Hey, I taught at a university.  I can tell you a lot more than Palin can about PhD's doing dumb things.  I've worked with them up close.  I've done dumb things myself. But I can also offer an explanation of why many PhD's might look dumb at times. 

Howard Gardner came up with the concept of multiple intelligences.  His  basic argument is that IQ is just one of different ways that people can be intelligent.  In 1993 he listed seven intelligences and later added the last one:

• Linguistic Intelligence
• Musical Intelligence
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
• Spatial Intelligence
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
• Interpersonal Intelligence
• Intrapersonal Intelligence
• Naturalist Intelligence  

You can get his FAQ's regarding multiple intelligence which explains all this with a lot more complexity and nuance.

In his book Extraordinary Minds, Howard Gardner defined intelligence* as

"the ability to solve problems or fashion products that are valued in at least one cultural setting or community."

Of the eight listed above, the linguistic and logical intelligences are those most favored in school examinations. These are the 'smarts' that IQ tests recognize.

But people who have these kinds of intelligences may or may not rank high on the other intelligences - such as interpersonal or bodily-kinesthetic.  We can see 'smart' people, with fancy degrees, who are physically clumsy and awkward and don't read interpersonal signals well. 

So, it is easy for an athlete who barely graduated to make fun of a famous scholar who trips over his shoelaces and is awkward when dealing with the opposite sex.  We all do better in the setting where our best intelligences are rewarded.  

What is critical is that we recognize and appreciate where people are 'smart' and where they aren't.  If I go in for surgery, I want a doctor who has linguistic, logical, and kinesthetic (good eye-hand coordination) intelligence.  If I go to a concert, I expect to hear someone with, minimally, good musical intelligence. 

Sarah Palin, it would seem to me, is shaky in terms of the two key academic intelligences (linguistic and logical-mathematical), but very strong on interpersonal and bodily-kinesthetic.  But people with higher linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, while being able to see Palin's strengths, will judge her more by their own strengths, and thus not be impressed. 

Joe Miller, on the other hand, as a West Point and Yale graduate, has strong linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences.   For some, Miller's elite Ivy League education at Yale might seem to disqualify him in the eyes of  Palin followers because he's clearly part of the elite who got trained in "every leftist radical failed ideology known to man" (from Kathleen McKinley above).

So he's both an elitist insider and all the evil things that means to Palin supporters.  But only people strong in logical-mathematical intelligence get too hung up on consistency of principles from one situation to the next.  Besides, one could argue that he went to Yale as a subversive, to learn what the enemy was teaching.   But Miller hasn't made that point himself to my knowledge.

But he does seem to think he's pretty smart.  As mentioned above, he states his positions with authority and certainty.  There's no question in his mind about his correctness.  Wickersham's Conscience pointed out:

Miller claims he [sic] “He quickly mastered the law.” Shucks, WC has been a lawyer for more than thirty-four years and can’t claim to have “mastered the law.”

A lot of this goes back to Socrates and the notion that a wise man is one who knows what he doesn't know.  I suspect that some of the anger at people with certified intelligence (degrees from elite universities or in respected fields) is aimed at those who assume that their intelligence in their specialized field transfers to other fields.  "Because I have a degree in one field means I must be smart in every other field." 

I think Joe Miller has slipped into this category. He isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is.  I'm not going to use examples of where I think he's philosophically wrong because those things are impossible to prove.  Instead I'll use more tangible examples, starting with his fiddling with the other attorneys' computers in Fairbanks.   

• He thought he was clever and knew that he could hide his use of the computers by erasing his tracks.  But he didn't know nearly as much as he needed to know and by clearing the caches, he probably caused the discovery of his antics much faster than had he just left the caches alone, because he erased everyone's passwords for databases they used every day.  He was smart enough to know about caches, but not smart enough to know he only knew part of what he needed to know.**

• He also wasn't smart enough to understand that having a private security guard was totally out of the norm in Alaska politics and would make him look silly.**
   
• And he wasn't smart enough to understand that having his body guards handcuff a journalist would resonate poorly.  He probably thought that people would see it as a legitimate blow against the 'lamestream' media.  And his supporters probably do.
   
• And he didn't understand that lying about his departure from the Fairbanks North Star Borough was going to be worse than getting it out of the way early in the campaign.  He seems to have thought that it was protected by personnel rules.  He hasn't been in Alaska long enough to have read about the Supreme Court, in the newspapers, deciding that people applying for high level policy jobs do not have the same privacy rights as regular employees.  And even though he's an attorney, he didn't look it up.

Only when he was up against the wall - with his own words that he lied in the computer incident and that he lied about it in the campaign, exposed - does he acknowledge his wisdom may not be absolute:

Miller has maintained the journalist was acting inappropriately, and he has never disavowed the handcuffing, but he says that other issues in his campaign were the result of naivete.

"Alaskans get to understand that, hey, they're electing someone like them. I've gone through trials, I have not always had a silver spoon, I've had challenges in life," Miller said at a recent debate. (from the Anchorage Daily News)

Naivete.  That just isn't Miller's style.  If he's naive about these things, what about his beliefs concerning the Constitution? 

But he is able to play Palin's outsider theme when he does this.  I'm like you regular Alaskans.  Flawed.  And, implied, an outsider. 

But if you go to the doctor, do you want someone just like you, or do you want some with specialized expertise and skill in medicine?  When you take your car to be repaired, do you want someone like you, or someone getting on-the-job training?

And when you elect someone to the US Senate, do you want someone just like you or someone with expertise and skill in public policy, power, and working with others?  As well as a developed sense of ethics?

I believe that the institution of the Senate forces people to play the game or become irrelevant.  Republicans, in recent years, have been more disciplined in keeping their members in line than the Democrats.  That means Republicans will have a harder time representing their state interests when they conflict with the party interests.

But individuals who use their intelligences well are able to play the game more successfully than others.  Some have the ability to block legislation.  Others can work out deals because they have empathy and can understand other people's needs and values and show respect for people with whom they don't agree.  They have the ability to actually create new legislation that improves people's lives.  No matter what, whoever gets elected to the US Senate becomes an insider compared to most other people.  They are in a club limited to 100 people.  Within that club, it is true, there are also insiders and outsiders. 

I think that's enough for now.  Just a note that this is just one possible line of interpretation of all of this.  I'm trying it out to see how it fits. 


*From the FAQ's Gardner defines intelligences differently:

an intelligence refers to a biopsychological potential of our species to process certain kinds of information in certain kinds of way. As such, it clearly involves processes that are carried out by dedicated neural networks. No doubt each of the intelligences has its characteristic neural processes, with most of them quite similar across human beings. Some of the processes might prove to be more customized to an individual.

The intelligence itself is not a content, but it is geared to specific contents. That is, the linguistic intelligence is activated when individuals encounter the sounds of language or when they wish to communicate something verbally to another person. However, the linguistic intelligence is not dedicated only to sound. It can be mobilized as well by visual information, when an individual decodes written text; and in deaf individuals, linguistic intelligence is mobilized by signs (including syntactically-arranged sets of signs) that are seen or felt.

**A newer story in the Alaska Dispatch cites Fairbanks co-workers saying Miller was paranoid about his personal safety and possible computer attacks on him and even requested a security detail.

Traditional Values Movie Loussac Tonight at 7pm Free

The Tea Party talks about restoring traditional American values. The Anchorage chapter of the NAACP and Out North are showing a film tonight at Loussac Library that shows us what things used to be like the US. 

Come be reminded what traditional values mean before you vote.

 From Out North's website:

Based on the book by Tim Tyson, the movie recounts the small town murder of Henry Marrow, a 23 year-old black Vietnam veteran, who was shot and beaten to death by a prominent white businessman and his grown sons. In response to the crime, and the sham trial that followed, many young African American men took to the streets, engaging in riots and vandalism. However, Ben Chavis, Marrow's cousin, decided that the best way to protest the injustice would be to organize a peaceful march on the state capitol.Starring Nate Parker, Rick Schroder , Lela Rochon. Running time: 128 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for an intense scene of violence, thematic material involving racism, and for language).

Post movie discussion with renowned African American civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Jr. Dr. Chavis is known as one of the Wilmington Ten. Because of Dr. Chavis' scientific background, in 1981, he was the first person to coin the term environmental racism: “Racial discrimination in the deliberated targeting of ethnic and minority communities for exposure to toxic and hazardous waste sites and facilities, coupled with the systematic exclusion of minorities in environmental policy making, enforcement, and remediation.” Since 2001 he has been CEO and Co-Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, which he cofounded with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

Miller and Murkowski Trade Halloween Cards

From Lisa Murkowski:

 From Joe Miller:





As I put these up, I thought it would interesting to have a national political ad archive where people could compare what ads are being used in all the states.  (Well, you'd need a a lot of space to fit all the Murkowski mailouts that have been coming every day. The money probably could have funded ten teachers for a school year.) Murkowski's could easily be reused by other campaigns - just replace the word Alaska and put another face on the zombie Miller.   I wonder what the religious right think about this celebration of a pagan holiday by the two Republican candidates.  (Yes, I know that Murkowski isn't the official Republican candidate, but she assures us she's still a Republican and will always be one.)