Josh Fouts Imagination as the Foundation of the Future

Another of the national bioneers speakers via teleconferencing, Josh Fouts talked about the kinds of work he's been doing exploring imagination as the important commodity of the future (well, we need it now already.)  He gave various examples from the work he's been doing in a variety of situations.
There's no way I can cover this all and keep up with what other things are going on, except to alert you to some of his work through other websites.

He began and ended with this quote:

The creative adult is the child who has survived.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Here's a blog he does with his partner Rita King.

Here's the Bioneer's website's description of the presentation (Rita wasn't there.)

The Emerging Imagination Age

Visionary media innovators Josh Fouts and Rita King call this time “The Imagination Age.” From sudden revolutions in the Middle East to “unimaginable” natural and human made technological and economic disasters, our world is in a state of radical transformation and readjustment. At the same time, powerful new media are emerging that could presage a hopeful new global culture and economy. Josh and Rita illuminate how extraordinary new tools — virtual worlds, games and the worldwide web — can leverage global cultural empowerment and educational reform, amplified by creativity, collaboration, art and music.

About the Presenters:

Joshua S. Fouts, a writer, journalist, gamer and technologist, is a Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, a Next Generation Fellow at The American Assembly, and Executive Producer at Dancing Ink Productions. Fouts has an extensive career on the cutting-edge of journalism, online media, games, culture and foreign policy and a history exploring the impact of new technology tools for media years before they are adopted by the mainstream. In 2005 he was the first person to propose and direct a project illuminating how virtual worlds could be used for cultural relations.

Rita J. King is the Founding Director of Dancing Ink Productions, a company that works with major clients focused on the emergence of a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. King is Innovator-in-Residence at IBM’s Analytics Virtual Center, a former Senior Fellow at The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Then there's Science House

Welcome to

Science House has a simple mission: bring people together to promote and advance science.
We have three primary components:

	NETWORK
The Science House Network brings scientists together with people outside their normal circles - like journalists, film makers or entrepreneurs. We'll be holding informal talks and educational sessions and helping start discussions on all things science.

	CAPITAL
Science House Capital invests in early stage science-driven ventures and provides ongoing support to help create startup companies. From business plan drafting to intro-ductions to potential investors, Science House Capital is here to help.

	FOUNDATION
Science House Foundation helps share the excitement of science with kids all over the world. We fund educational programs, buy equipment, sponsor prizes, competitions and more. Let's talk about helping kids discover the wonder of science!

Something else is happening. There's another day of this tomorrow, and tonight at Wendy Williamson there's a talk. From the Alaska Bioneers website.

October 15th Saturday Evening 7:30pm-9:30pm Keynote with Thomas J. Elpel The New Era of Self-Sufficiency It is easy to be overwhelmed at the magnitude of the challenges we face as a species, when the whole world seems to be careening towards economic and environmental collapse. How can we adapt to a rapidly changing world, build a sustainable civilization, and put the brakes on climate change? Thomas J. Elpel, author of Participating in Nature: Wilderness Survival and Primitive Living Skills, suggests that we can start by taking our shoes off and getting back in touch with the earth. We can rediscover our connection to nature through the traditional knowledge of our ancestors. By living close to the earth we can gain the physical grounding necessary to re-examine the challenges we face as a society and find answers to some of the most vexing problems that face our species. Thomas Elpel is the director of Green University® LLC and Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School LLC in Pony, Montana. (www.hollowtop.com). He has authored six books and produced six videos on topics ranging from wilderness survival and botany to green building and consciousness. Elpel connects the dots from wilderness survival to sustainable living, showing how the quest for survival in nature functions as a metaphor for living that empowers us to see new solutions in the modern world. Keynote with Tamarack Song Remembering: a Key to Weathering the Changes

Paul Stamets - Mycologist Extraordinaire

The afternoon sessions at the bioneer conference are teleconferenced into the national conference.  There have been several speakers and I can't quite keep up.  But the last speaker was Paul Stamets.  

Stamets has a knowledge of fungi that pushes us to think way beyond how we think today to protect fungi that play a critical role in the ecosystem of our planet and offers amazing medical potential for humans. 

The best I can do is offer you this TED video of him.

Sustainable Home Heating (Wood) at Bioneers

I'm at the bioneers conference in Anchorage.  Valerie Barber and Meg Burgett from the Cooperative Extension are doing this workshop.  I went to the Alaska Food Challenge workshop first, but didn't pull out the computer.  I have pictures and notes though and will put it up later.   [I'm not going to proof this carefully so I can get it up and go to the next session, sorry.]

Meg Burgett

This one is on how to be sustainable with a wood stove.  

Natural gas prices make natural gas the cheapest way to heat, but it's a finite resource.
Fairbanks is using a lot of wood, but they also have air quality issues.

When is Wood Cost Effective?  Oil about $37/MBTU .  Gas is about 4/15/MBTU
Wood about $15/MBTU, Electricity about $44/MBTU

Other factors to consider
1.  The stove and cost to pay back
2.  Size and quality of insulation in home
3.  Wood fuel availability
4.  Costs, including transportation
5.  Storage space for wood - needs to be stored properly, needs a cover but open on the side to dry out properly

More costs than $ - exercise


Cost comparisons - (gas on chart 2X the chart)  but gas still much cheaper.

Rich Siefert chart -

Availability and costs of wood fuel options
Cords,  chips, pellets - Fairbanks has a factory, most in Anchorage coming from Georgia or Canada?

Why Burn wood:
Can be cost/efficient
Reduces use of fossil-nonrenewable fuels
Supports local jobs and local economy
Reduces impacts from green house gases
Personal choice more independence for you and family - especially off the grid
Enjoy activities


Best Practices
Choose the right applicance for you and your home

Understand how to properly use your appliance
Properly locate and install appliance
Use only high quality food
Clean and maintain your appliance regularly - if using <20% moisture, burns much cleaner

Choose the right appliance
Pre 1991 before regulations
EPA certified non-catalytic
EPA ertified catalytic
Wood/biomass
Masonry stores

Old stoves - less than 20% efficient, safety hazard.  Post 1991, required to meet EPA standards.  All certified stoves labeled.

Catalytic Wood stoves - Large, well insulated fireboxes
Costs more to start - $2200- $5000  - only can burn wood.  maintenance costs up, have to replace every 2 or 3 years, tho less if more efficient.







Non-catalytic - $1800 , not counting the pipe - hot short fires, nice flame for watching, most efficiently with short hot fires.
Wood or Biomass Pellet - good, but you do need electricity.  Extremely efficient @ 90%.  About $2-3000.  No local pellets, yet in Anchorage.  Fairbanks and Delta have them.

Outdooor Woodburners, least efficient, but lower fire risk to burn house.  Buring hot for long periods, large logs, but people burn garbage.  Surrounded by water that goes to house.  Low efficiency.  Up to 12 cords a year and can produce a lot of smoke.  Neighbors not happy at all.  Not good for dense urban areas.

Masonry stoves - hold and radiate heat for a long time.  Massive heavy structures, best to plan building new home and plan house around the stove.  $5-15,000 for the cores and not made here.  Can use brick, cement, tiles, etc.

Locating your stove
Put as close to center of space to heat.
Account for space between stove and walls and traffic patterns
Maximizing the Heat - best against an interior wall with masonry around it.
Avoid exterior walls
Avoid external chimneys, straight up,
Proper installation
Insurance costs more.

High Quality Wood
SCentral - cords most available.
Support local wood collected within 50 miles from harvest
Right moisture content <20%

Cordwood Primer
128 Cubic Feet (not counting spaces in between)  4'X4'X8'  - standard pickup holds 1/2 a cord

Moisture meter

Moisture content - there's a moisture meter - internet - $40, maybe a stove store has one
Split into 6" pieces, stacked off the ground, not rotting bottom.  Cover, tarp isn't great.
In Anchorage about 6 months to get green wood to 20%.  Away from structures - rodents and insects into the wood.

Valerie Barber

Look at wood - lighter in color, feels lighter and should have cracks and splits
Distinctive clank, not a thud when you hit it
Not all trees the same
Best is birch, worst aspen and cottonwoods.  Works ok if dry and in masonry stove.
How Wood Burns in your Wood Stove
1.  All the water in the wood heats up and evaporates off
2.  Wood begins to burn or 'break-down" at around 400˚F and release....

Clean and maintain yearly

Wood's renewable, but only when trees replanted and regeneration is encouraged.

Problems here because of climate change - the warmer it gets the less some of the trees grow.  Related to drought stress.  We can produce new trees, but not natural gas and oil.

We're watching a Canadian movie now on the best way to burn wood in your stove.  The content's really good (did you ever make a knotted piece of newspaper?), but the actors are awful. 

Need to do homework before buying - check emissions to see efficiency.  Lower the emissions, higher the efficiencies.  Catalytic stoves not designed for long fires.  Hot and quick. 

Here's a website they recommended.

Nein - Nein - Nein

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 sound bite budget plan makes a great bumper sticker, but probably not such a good budget plan.

On his website he elaborates a bit, but doesn't spell out the details of how it will affect different categories of tax payers or how much money it will raise.   You can see the expanded version and a few of my thoughts below.

Phase 1 - 9-9-9

• Current circumstances call for bolder action.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan incorporates the features of Phase One and gets us a step closer to Phase two.
• I call on the Super Committee to pass the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan along with their spending cut package.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan unites Flat Tax supporters with Fair tax supporters.
• Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
• It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
• Zero capital gains tax
• Ends the Death Tax.
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Business Flat Tax – 9%
• Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
• Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
• Gross income less charitable deductions.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
• National Sales Tax – 9%.
• This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.

Phase 1 Enhanced Plan – Summary

• Unites all tax payers so we all pay income taxes and no one pays payroll taxes
• Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
• Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc.
• Is fair, neutral, transparent, and efficient
• Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
• Ends all payroll taxes
• Ends the Death Tax
• Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
• Lowest marginal rates on production
• Allows immediate expensing of business investments
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Increases capital formation. Capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
• Capital formation will aid capital availability for small businesses
• Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to revitalize our inner cities
• We all know the Fed has tripled the money supply since 2008. They have been printing money out of thin air to finance the Obama spending machine. While true Fed reform that restores sound money may have to wait for my election, the best thing we can do now is to pursue policies that increase the DEMAND for dollars to help mitigate the risks associated with the increase in the supply.
• Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy

A few thoughts  
 
 1.  How does this impact income to the government to run the various programs we depend on?  Or is the intent to gut government and give corporations free rein? People forget that the phrase "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" doesn't have the word government in it.  When corporations have absolute power - as some are close to having in their sectors - they are likely to be even more corrupt than any democratic government where at least the leaders can be voted out of office.

2.  We know flat taxes are regressive taxes which put a much greater burden on those who make less.  A larger percent of their money goes to necessities.  By making the income tax flat, and adding a sales tax (which is flat), the gap between the rich and poor will grow.  Check out this overview of a national sales taxes.

3.  End the "Death Tax."  If it were really a death tax, everyone would be taxed after their death.  This is an inheritance tax, which reverts a relatively small, yet collectively important, share of wealthy people's money back into the general kitty.  According to Wikipedia, in 2010 you had to inherit $5,000,000 before the tax kicked in.  An inheritance tax is like reshuffling the cards at the end of the game,  and we start out even the next game.  Except that we don't reshuffle the cards.  The heirs of the very rich keep most of the money and the inheritance tax is like throwing a few extra chips to the dealer. 

4.  Eliminates all payroll taxes.  Maybe he can explain how he plans to fund Social Security.  Or maybe that gets eliminated too in his plan. 




 I agree with Cain that the tax code is too complicated.  Lobbyists have gotten tax write-offs for all of their clients.  We do need to eliminate a lot of deductions, but because of the tax code's enormous impact on the economy, it does make sense - at least theoretically - to use it to give incentives that change people's behavior for our collective good.    The home mortgage deduction was instituted to encourage home ownership and has been supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.  Deductions for things like energy saving repairs on your house create jobs and lower overall energy use.  So there is legitimate use for them.  If they can be controlled, which is a big if. 


So, if Cain gives us the slogan 9-9-9, my response is Nein - Nein - Nein.

Frontier Scientists Want To Talk To You About Bears

I got an email from Frontier Scientists today. It says I subscribed to this, but I don't remember doing it. In any case, it's an interesting site. They describe it this way:

Frontier Scientists, an interactive website which connects Alaska field scientists to those curious about Arctic discoveries, has released a new series of vodcasts on the mighty grizzly bears of Denali National Park.

The short videos feature field biologists and interpreters who have the difficult task of keeping Alaska bears unacclimated to humans--and the humans who are visiting the Far North safe from bears. The vodcasts are produced by an award-winning Bend, Oregon videographer who specializes in backcountry nature films.

There are six films up:
Preserving Grizzly Bears and Visitor’s Experience
Front Country Interactions
Backcountry Incidents 
Denali’s Grizzly Population
Denali’s Rainbow Portal (No bears, just rainbows in Denali National Park)
Pat’s Big Bear

These links go to YouTube directly.  The Frontier Scientists site with the videos is here:



I like the idea of scientists setting up a space where the public can talk to them directly about their research.  That's the idea anyway.  Let's see how well it gets carried out. 


Here's the first one.

Wall Street Journal Circulation Scam - Will Anyone Really Care?

Robbery, rape, murder are all easy to understand.  Someone uses violence or the threat of violence to take someone's money, body, or life.  Proving who did it may not be easy, but the concepts can be grasped by most anyone.  It's easy to report and for readers to grasp.

Fraud, on the other hand, if done cleverly, requires a lot more work to detect.  The victim may be unaware, so no one is even reporting a problem.  Think of Enron.  While pulling off the US's then largest fraud ever, they were repeatedly named Company of the Year by top business journals.

How were average citizens supposed to know what was happening if 'freedom's watch dogs' were so enamored?  And everyone knows how hard it is to turn the banking ripoff into evening news sound bites.  While more people are getting the point that the rich guys got richer while the average guy got poorer, I'd bet most people couldn't explain how it all worked.  Or understand that there were some rich good guys and some unsavory average folks.
 
So, how difficult is it to understand the Wall Street Journal's circulation fraud?  Not that hard. 



Basic Assumption Needed to Understand

Circulation is the newspapers' equivalent to ratings.  Circulation means everything to the business types in the media.  The higher the circulation the more attractive a newspaper is to advertisers and the more they can charge. 

They don't make money by selling papers.  They make money by selling ads.  They sell ads and set the prices based on circulation.

So if your advertising price is for, say, 75,000 subscriptions per day, but you really only have  44,000, you're essentially charging your customers for a lot more eyeballs than actually see their ads.  Sort of like selling a fake Rolex at real Rolex prices. And at a large newspaper over a a couple of years, that could add up to quite a bit of 'stolen' money.  But for many people it doesn't quite seem like theft.  And while someone who steals $200 from an ATM machine might get a number of years in prison, how may newspaper executives go to prison for scamming for millions?



The Wall Street Journal Scheme (According to the Guardian)

1.   The WSJ sold papers below cost to European companies that gave the papers to students.  In return the WSJ had features which highlighted the companies.  This practice accounted for a whopping 41% of their European circulation.

"The Journal's decision to secretly purchase its own papers began with an unusual scheme to boost circulation, known as the Future Leadership Institute. Starting in January 2008, [remember this date] the Journal linked up with European companies who sponsored seminars for university students who were likely to be future leaders. The Journal rewarded the sponsors by publishing their names in a special panel published in the paper. The sponsors paid for that publicity by buying copies of the Journal at a knock-down rate of no more than 5¢ each. Those papers were then distributed to university students. At the bottom line, the sponsors enjoyed a prestigious link to the Journal, and the Journal boosted its circulation figures.

The scheme was controversial. The sponsoring companies were not reading the papers they were paying for; they were never even seeing them; and they were buying at highly reduced rates. The students to whom they were distributed may or may not have read them; none of the students paid for the papers they were being offered. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation ruled that the scheme was legitimate and by 2010, it was responsible for 41% of the European edition's daily sales – 31,000 copies out of a total of 75,000."

I did find it interesting that the inflated circulation number in Europe was only 75,000 in a market of (in 2010)  857 million people.

2.      A WSJ insider alerted the higher ups about the scheme and its illegitimacy.  The insider was fired.

Senior executives in New York, including Murdoch's right-hand man, Les Hinton, were alerted to the problems last year by an internal whistleblower and apparently chose to take no action. The whistleblower was then made redundant.

3.  When one of the main companies involved wanted to back out, the WSJ sweetened the deal.  Having circulation drop 16% wasn't going to look good.  They even found another company to cover the payments and told everyone to keep quiet.

In early 2010 the scheme began to run into trouble when the biggest single sponsor, a Dutch company called Executive Learning Partnership, ELP, threatened to back out. ELP alone were responsible for 16% of the Journal's European circulation, sponsoring 12,000 copies a day for which they were paying only 1¢ per copy. For the 259 publishing days in a year, they were sponsoring 3.1m copies at a cost to them of €31,080 (£27,200). They complained that the publicity they were receiving was not enough return on their investment.

On 9 April 2010, Andrew Langhoff emailed ELP to table a new deal, explaining that "our clear goal is to add a new component to our partnership" and offering to "provide a well-branded showcase for ELP's valuable services". On 30 April, ELP agreed to continue to sponsor 12,000 copies at the same rate. But that deal included a new eight-page addendum, which the Guardian has seen.
The addendum included a collection of side deals: the Journal would give ELP free advertising and, in exchange, the ELP would produce "leadership videos" for them; they would jointly organise more seminars and workshops on themes connected to ELP's work; but, crucially, Langhoff agreed that the Journal would publish "a minimum of three special reports" that would be based on surveys of the European market which ELP would run with the Journal's help. . .


By the autumn of 2010, ELP were complaining that the Journal was failing to deliver its end of the agreement. They threatened not to make a payment of €15,000 that was due at the end of December, for the copies of the Journal which they had sponsored since April 30. Without the payment, the Journal could not officially record the sales and their circulation figures would suddenly dive by 16%, undermining the confidence of advertisers and readers.

So Langhoff set up a complex scheme to channel money to ELP to pay for the papers it had agreed to buy – effectively buying the papers with the Journal's own cash. This involved the use of other companies although it is not suggested that they were aware they were taking part in a scam.

Of course when the WSJ was bought by Murdoch, who also owns Fox News, pundits immediately raised fears about the credibility of the WSJ.  From the Washington Post in August 2007:

The colorful and controversial tabloid king faced strong opposition during his four-month run at Dow Jones and whipped up worries that he would destroy the credibility of the august Journal.  [Emphasis added]

 If we look at the dates above, this scheme was put into action just six months after the WSJ was bought.

Consequences so far
The Guardian also writes that as word of their asking questions reached the WSJ's executives, Andrew Langhoff, the European managing director of the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones and Co, resigned. 

Personal note
I also have to add that the WSJ's history of selling copies to students didn't begin with Murdoch.  As a faculty member in a College of Business and Public Policy, I regularly got offers from the WSJ for a free subscription if I got students to buy the journal.  [See update below for example.] At least here the students were legitimately buying the journal (for a student rate as I recall) themselves.  But I always wondered how many faculty who made the offers to students also revealed that they would get a free subscriptions themselves.  (I never passed the offer on to my students.  Though I mentioned it a few times when we studied ethics.)

Some Contrast
There was also an Associated Press story I read in the Anchorage Daily News yesterday about boxer Dewey Bozella who is making his pro boxing debut at age 52 two years after his murder conviction was overturned and after serving 26 years in prison for a murder he didn't do.

. . . He was suspected in 1977 of killing Crapser. Bozella was fingered by a suspect in another crime and eventually charged for her death. But a grand jury found there wasn't enough evidence and refused to indict him. . .

Life unraveled in 1983 when false testimony from convicts that granted their freedom cost Bozella his. Bozella was arrested again for Crapser's death and in December 1983 was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. He collapsed to the ground in tears, crying out that he didn't do it.

Murder is easy to understand and there is a demand for a conviction.  It doesn't matter if it's not the right guy as long as we can convince ourselves it is.  But fraud is dicier.

Apparently the folks at WSJ didn't see anything wrong when the whistleblower brought things to their attention a year ago.  Or they thought the risk was worth any possible consequences.  Langhof's resignation would seem to be the cost of doing business and mollifying anyone who is seriously concerned.  If it hadn't been for the leftover sensitivity from News Corps' recent phone hacking scandal, perhaps he wouldn't have had to resign.  And I'm sure Langhof's salary and other perks these last few years will carry him over for a while.

And Bozella gets a chance to get his body battered in a pro fight now that he's out of prison.


UPDATE October 14:  I just got an email offer for students of the type I mentioned above:

For a limited time, we are offering you a free 4-week trial to The Journal.  You'll receive the print Journal every weekday, plus unlimited access to the Online Journal.

The Wall Street Journal now provides more politics coverage than ever, making it an ideal complement to your Political Science textbook.  Plus, our Education program makes it easy for you to integrate our content into your curriculum.

With the Journal-in-Education program, you'll:

• Save time with our faculty-developed tools and integration ideas.
• Engage students and promote debate with The Journal's reliable coverage of U.S. and World events.
• Keep courses fresh with a daily supply of new material and information.

When your students subscribe, they'll receive The Journal in print, online and via smartphone.  Plus, students pay the lowest rate - 75% off regular rates!
Try out The Journal for free for 4 weeks and see for yourself how The Journal will provide you and your students with relevant, real-world content for your classes.

The Wall Street Journal Education Department
200 Burnett Road
Chicopee, MA 01020

This is a commercial message.

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals. Let them make experiments on journalists and politicians."

This quote comes from Brooke Gladstone's The Influencing Machine, illustrated by Josh Neufeld.    I know Brooke Gladstone from her radio show On The Media, so I picked  it up from the new books section at Loussac Library.  The Meet the Author section (plus the cartoon style) caused me to check it out.

Click to get it clearer

 I don't like to pry.  I like to engage people in conversation, but I'm not comfortable at all pushing for more information than someone wants to give.  I want to hear the important stuff, and certainly the complicated stuff.  The personal stuff is important when it helps explain their behavior.  I certainly don't want to make people cry!   But I wanted to read what she was thinking.   Did she have things I should know about, as a blogger? 

 

Being a reporter is a diagnosis?   I do have a compulsion to know why.  I like to take pictures;  it's a way of processing what I'm seeing.  The camera allows me, forces me, to focus in on parts of what's there and it blocks out the other parts.  I get to see things close up, to look at the parts I would otherwise miss when all the data in the scene bombards me.  But I'm not at all comfortable photographing people who don't want to be photographed.  

And I can relate to processing things by writing about them.  But I don't need to post them to the world.  That's an extra that blogs afford people today.  But I was just as happy writing in my private journal where no one could see. 

Well, the book isn't really about her, it's about her take on the history of media. (So, in a way you could say it's about her.)  A basic lesson is that as bad as things might look to some today, even in the US, the idea of freedom of the press has gotten a lot of bruises over the years, and reporters are usually not very popular - particularly in the eyes of those covered, but also among readers.  And often with good reason. 


I'm only partway through the book.

I'm really curious about why she chose to use the cartoon style.  Is that how she envisioned the book?  I can see that if you also do the drawings, but in this case she has an illustrator.  Did she think it would be read by people who normally wouldn't read a book on the media?  I saw at least one 'fuck' in there, so she wasn't writing this for high schools to buy.  How much did she work with Josh Neufeld on the layout? 





Still looking for the quote in the title of the post?  It's in one of the images. 

Why The Anchorage Mayor's Amendment Veto Justification is Wrong

In July at the only Assembly meeting I’ve been to in a while, Mayor Dan Sullivan stood up after the Assembly voted on an amendment to an ordinance they were considering and said, “I veto that amendment.”    This post explains in excruciating detail why, after checking things out since then, I’m convinced he doesn’t have that power.   You can check my original post describing what happened that night and a follow up post with the memo the Mayor used to justify his veto.

Two basic premise of American government are in play here:
Checks and Balances
Separation of Power

Believing that Mayor Sullivan’s veto of the amendment violates both those principles, I got a copy of the memo the mayor used to justify his action and did some research. 

The Memo

The attorney's memo to the Mayor (ironically, it's not Sullivan's attorney, but his predecessor Mark Begich's attorney, Fred Boness, who wrote the memo) traces things back to a memo from Mayor George Sullivan (Dan's father) in 1975 when the City of Anchorage and  the Greater Anchorage Area Borough (GAAB) merged.  The question then Municipal Attorney Garner addressed was whether the new Municipal mayor was a strong or weak mayor.  Attorney Garner justified his claim for a strong mayor several ways including asking Charter Commission members but also citing the state statute 29 which says a mayor can veto "ordinances, resolutions, motions, and other actions." 

Then, in 200?  Municipal Attorney Boness used that to claim the Mayor had the right to veto amendments to ordinances, but only right after they were passed and before the ordinance was passed because the mayor did not have line item veto for passed ordinances except in the area of budgets and appropriations.  

I wrote my response originally in early July, but it's been held up as I tried to find a copy of the Charter of the Greater Anchorage Area Borough (GAAB).  Ultimately, I've concluded there was no charter.  None of the places I checked - UAA Archives and Alaskana collection, the State Archives in Juneau, Loussac Library's Alaska room, the Anchorage Boundary Commission, Community and Regional Affairs, Jack Roderick (former GAAB Mayor), the Anchorage Municipal Clerk's office, and a few other people and place - had any record of a GAAB Charter.  Finally, the Clerk's office could produce the ordinances of the GAAB which included a section on the Mayor's veto power which was much more limited than the State Statute originally cited. 

So, in this post I will explain why I think the attorney’s opinion that the Mayor of the Municipality has the right to veto amendments to ordinances before the ordinances are passed is wrong.  I think it fails for three different reasons which I briefly summarize here and will explain in more detail below.

Overview of the three lines of argument
1.  Using the Boness document which cites the power of the GAAB mayor as coming from Alaska Statute 29,
    a.      There’s a problem with the jump from “other actions’ to power to veto amendments
    b.     It ignores the separation of powers issues by having the mayor interfere with legislative activities before they have completed their work.

2.  The Boness memo uses the wrong sources to identify the veto power of the GAAB mayor.  The GAAB Code specifies the veto power of the GAAB mayor, which is specific and limited and does not include vetoing amendments.

3.    But both of those sources would seem to be moot because the Municipal Charter was amended in 1990 and that amendment affected the section of the Municipal Charter which outlines the Mayor’s veto power very specifically.


Details of the arguments

1.  The Boness Memo

An  earlier post included the memo from former Municipal Attorney Fred Boness to former Mayor Mark Begich.  This memo was offered by the current mayor, Dan Sullivan, as proof that he could veto an amendment to an ordinance before the ordinance itself was passed. 
As part of the documentation, Boness included a 1975 opinion from Municipal Attorney Richard Garnett III to then Mayor George Sullivan (father of current Mayor Dan Sullivan.)

Garnett says he wrote the memo because:
"A question has arisen as to the scope of the Mayor's veto power.    Some members of the Assembly have asserted that the Charter reduces the Anchorage mayor's veto power below that exercised by the mayor of the former Greater Anchorage Area Borough. For a number of reasons I believe that the Charter did not have that effect."
The Greater Anchorage Area Borough and the City of Anchorage were merged in 1975.  They became the Municipality of Anchorage.  This memo was written in 1975 to the new Municipal Mayor - George Sullivan - who had been mayor of the City, which had a weak form of mayor.

The question being addressed then was whether the Charter Commission intended to reduce the veto powers of the Mayor.  That's a far different question from the one addressed in Boness' memo to Begich - whether the mayor can veto an amendment to an ordinance.  Boness' response says the Mayor can veto an amendment, and if he only wants to veto the amendment and not the whole ordinance, he needs to do it right after it is passed, but before the ordinance is passed. (You can read his exact words in the earlier post which includes the whole opinion.)

A.  Extending the language to include vetoing amendments is an unwarranted leap that isn’t justified by logic or by common  sense

This seems like a huge leap from what Garnett wrote (in part):
The Commissioners knew that the mayor of the Greater Anchorage Area  Borough exercised a veto power  over  "any ordinances, resolutions, motions, or other actions of the Assembly" AS 29 -23.170 (a). The form of executive was the most hotly debated issue before the Commission, the "strong mayor" or "weak mayor".    All of the Commissioners, and the public, knew that the choice was essentially between the mayor as he operated in the borough and the mayor as he operated in the city. The debate frequently was couched in terms of "Jack Roderick" or the "George Sullivan" form of mayor.    It is inconceivable that the Commission would have chosen the strong mayor form, but drastically reduced the veto, the key feature of the strong mayor form, without so much as a word of intent or debate on the subject.

Three things to notice in this passage:
"exercised a veto power over 'any ordinances, resolutions, motions, or other actions of the Assembly'"  (from Alaska Statute 29 on Municipal Governments )

Strong Mayor v. Weak Mayor ("Jack Roderick" or the "George Sullivan" form of mayor
"inconceivable Commission would have chosen the strong form, but drastically reduced the veto, the key feature of the strong mayor form. . ."
1.  Extent of Veto Power - [Note, I will challenge using Title 29 to establish the Mayor’s power in the next two lines of argument, but here I will accept it for the sake of argument and outline why Boness’ argument is still questionable.]  Garnett says that the Borough mayor's veto power is over "any ordinance, resolutions, motions, or other actions of the Assembly."  This language comes from the Alaska Statues, not specifically from the Borough  Charter or ordinances.   I can see how Boness could have construed 'other actions' to include anything else the Assembly did.  Does 'other actions' mean 'all other possible actions' or does it mean 'some other actions?' It's ambiguous and could mean either.  To be sure, one has to look for other evidence.  But as I read the Boness memo, this is the only real basis for making his case.  Everything else may be relevant to Garnett's claims that the mayor's power wasn't reduced, but not to Boness' claim that it included vetoing amendments.

Garnett wasn't arguing for power to veto an amendment, only that the mayor was 'a strong mayor' and had the same veto powers of the GAAB Mayor.  

Garnett's memo goes on to argue that there was no weakening of the veto power.  From that to power to veto amendments is a giant leap.  Let’s look at the words:
1.  Ordinance - this is a completed action
2.  Resolution - this is a completed action
3.  Motions and other actions - this is more ambiguous.  One possibility was that they wanted to cover other sorts of motions, beyond ordinances and resolutions, or to avoid having the legislative body use a different name for an ordianance, perhaps a bill, an act, or an appropriation, or a proclamation. 
To say the Mayor can veto ‘any action’ by the Assembly flies in the face of common sense.  Can the Mayor veto the Assembly’s choice of Assembly Chair?  What about their choices for Assembly officials - ombudsman, attorney, etc.? 
But let’s take it further.  If the mayor can veto any action the Assembly takes, then he could veto every motion any Assembly person made and prevent the Assembly from getting anything done.  So, while I acknowledge that “other actions’ could be seen to open the door to anything, common sense shows us that could not be the case.  It would mean the Mayor could prevent the Assembly from doing anything. 
B.   It ignores the separation of powers clause that is the basis for democracy in the United States.  The President of the US cannot interfere in the legislative debate of Congress.  Governors do not interfere with the legislative debate of their legislatures.  Mayors tend to have a closer relationship to their legislative bodies - city councils or assemblies.  Some mayors are members of the council.  But Anchorage’s mayor is not.  While it is traditional for the mayor to be at Assembly meetings and to ask and answer questions, I can’t find anyone who remembers an Anchorage Mayor vetoing an amendment to an ordinance that hasn’t been passed. 
The role of the Assembly is to create legislation.  The Mayor can veto that legislation, but only after it has been passed by the Assembly.  To interpret the language as broadly as Boness did in the memo, would obliterate the separation of powers and give the Mayor the power to prevent the Assembly from doing anything.

2.   The Boness Memo Uses the Wrong Source of Power  - A

The Boness memo follows the Garnett memo of using the Alaska Title 29 as the baseline for the Mayor’s veto power.  But the GAAB Mayor’s veto power was spelled out in the GAAB Code. 

The Mayor can veto ordinances and resolutions  [Get the exact]

The GAAB mayor was a strong mayor compared to the old City’s mayor, but his veto power was spelled out in the code and it did not include the power to veto amendments to ordinances that hand’t yet been passed. 



Because it was spelled out in the ordinances, there was really no need for Garner to go to Title 29 of the Alaska Statutes.  The GAAB Ordinance was the

3.  The Boness Memo Uses the Wrong Source of Power  - B

In 1990, the voters of Anchorage approved charter amendments which included new language concerning the mayor’s veto power.  The  intent of the original charter commission at that point became moot.  The new language spells out the veto power of the mayor.  It’s clear, precise, and doesn’t include the power to veto amendments.

"If a 2 g shrew has a reasonable volume of blood to support its metabolism, say 0.1 g, a 2 ton elephant will require 100 tons of blood, an obvious impossibility."

Just reading this announcement, I know I have absolutely no idea what it means. Well, I might get a vague sense of what it means, but clearly the little description of why means nothing.

So, some choices are:

1. Do something else that night
2. Go, and laugh at how ridiculous the talk is because, well, because I don't understand it, so obviously it isn't worth knowing anyway, after all I got this far without understanding it
3. Go and understand as much as a I can and be reminded how much I don't know and appreciate that humility is appropriate here
4. Go and pretend I understand so others will be impressed
5. Go and stretch my mind as far as it will go

As I'm reading this, and thinking about the quote in the title, which is from a 2008 article in the online Journal of the Royal Society Interface on which Dr. Moses was the lead author, some of it is making a little sense. 

OK, here's what I'm guessing:

It's about scaling.  How big things are, and can be.  Things can work at one size, but if you make them too big using the same scale for things, like the shrew/elephant example, it won't work.   And it sounds like she's applying this to organizations and humans.  Is there going to be a lesson here about if organizations that worked when they were shrew sized keep the same scaling, they'll get unworkable like the elephant with 100 tons of blood? 

And are there implications from that about banks that are 'too big to fail?"  Or maybe "too big to succeed?"  Am I reading too much into this? 

I guess I have to go on Thursday night to find out.  

Since Thursday evening at 7pm is a public lecture, my guess is that it will be aimed at the general public and not at an audience of computer science/biologist types.

The Complex Systems group at UAA has been presenting lectures that deal with complex systems for at least seven or eight years.  People from all disciplines present an application of complex systems relevant to their own fields.  I went to the first ones with some trepidation.  But I quickly saw that if I paid close attention - taking notes helps - I could get the gist of things if not every detail.  And the ideas of one field could transfer into another field.

 I made a map to the Theater Arts Bldg. for Sunday's concert.  A friend was coming from Tudor and Bragaw (the red line).  You could get to that turn off (east end of Prov or just past the UAA library) from Lake Otis and 36th/Providence too.  You can click the map to enlarge it.

Alaska Redistricting Board Gets Pre-Clearance Approval from DOJ

I just talked to Alaska Redistricting Board Executive Director Taylor Bickford who told me the Board was notified today that their Voting Rights Act (VRA) submission to the Department of Justice Voting Rights section has been approved. While I've been critical of the Board now and then, it was usually on publicity and participation issues, not their efforts to comply with the Voting Rights Act. People can quibble about whether they made the best districts possible, and I've fussed that they seemed to use the VRA requirements as a way to mess with some Democratic incumbents in Fairbanks. But from what I learned this spring, it seems like this approval was deserved and getting it is a good thing. It allows the State to move on toward the 2012 elections without having to go through a massive and expensive process to find even better districts. There should be more information up on the Redistricting Board website later today.

Both of you out there who were holding your breath over this can exhale now. :)

[UPDATE 4:50 pm:  While I was out raking leaves, this email came in:

U.S. Department of Justice Approves
Alaska Redistricting Plan

Anchorage, Alaska - The Alaska Redistricting Board announced today that its final redistricting plan for the redrawing of Alaska's state legislative districts has received "preclearance" from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, a number of states - including Alaska - are required to submit new redistricting plans to the U.S. Department of Justice for review in order to ensure that the proposed change is free from discriminatory purpose or effect and will not result in retrogression. An Alaska redistricting plan is retrogressive if it is drawn in a manner that worsens Alaska Native voting strength as compared to the previous district configurations.

Alaska Redistricting Board Chairman John Torgerson issued the following statement this afternoon:  

"Receiving preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice is validation that the Board was successful in drawing a redistricting plan that maintains and protects the ability of the Alaska Native community to participate in the electoral process. This is an important milestone for the Board and a necessary step before Alaska's new legislative districts can be implemented."

 

A copy of the preclearance letter is available for public download from the Board's website.  Detailed information about the Section 5 review process can be accessed at http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/sec_5/about.php. ]

Below is the letter.  Note the last line.  It "does not bar subsequent litigation to enjoin the enforcement of the changes."