Local Anchorage TV Station Fights Citizens United With Free Airtime For Candidates

Jeremy Lansman, the owner of KYES television in Anchorage, and, from what I can tell, one of the few independent and locally owned television stations in the country, sent out emails to candidates yesterday.  He emailed those candidates running for the legislature who have emails listed with the Alaska Division of Elections.

Jeremy is a friend of mine and the information for this post comes from conversations and emails, including a Skype chat I recorded Monday evening July 16, which you can listen to below.

Essentially, as I understand this, each candidate can make video spots of 30 seconds.   Jeremy is allocating 10% of his ad time to this project. That comes to about two per hour.  If he has two candidates send him videos, that air time will be divided by the two equally.  If 30 respond, the available space will be divided evenly among all 30 of them.

This is a new project and there are still some things to work out.  It depends on the response.  He will allow people to turn in more than one video, or new ones as time goes by.   Any changes will be made at the next weekly schedule.   

His motivation comes, in part, from his lifelong interest in using radio and television to promote the democratic process. Jeremy, I've learned over the years, is something of a legend among those who know about community radio in the US.  You can read about more about his past here.

The free tv time is stimulated now by the threat of huge amounts of money anonymously spent on ads to attack candidates that seems to be the most talked about outcome of the Supreme Court's 2010 decision Citizens United.  

Just last night, the US Senate, on a party line vote, The Disclose Act, was voted down 51-43. (It used to be that a seven person margin was enough to pass a bill.  Remember those days?)  The bill would have required the disclosure of the names of people who contributed more than $10,000 to independent groups that air so called issue ads that are aimed at affecting elections. 

There was a late night Democratic telethon for the bill on CSPAN and apparently it will be reintroduced Tuesday.  The picture is a screenshot of Sen. Merkley of Oregon explaining how the Supreme Court has changed the Declaration of Independence opening words from "We the People" to "We the Powerful" in the mostly empty Senate chambers.

While the topic is important, I must admit it was not riveting television.  They had more time to talk than they were prepared to fill well.   Limiting politicians to 30 seconds, as KYES proposes,  while forcing a certain amount of superficiality, will also require candidates to distill their most important messages.


I was hoping to get this up as an audio file, but I'm having troubles doing that.  So it's video format, but just audio.  It's most of a conversation I had with Jeremy about how exactly he plans to make this work.  It gives you a sense of Jeremy's motivation and the experimental nature of this. 

Our Record Snow Still Evident at Powerline Pass

We quickly learned when we moved up here 35 years ago from LA, that if you were going to wait for sunshine, you'd never get out for a hike.  The summers gradually got warmer and longer, but last summer and this summer it seems like we've gone back to the old days.  So despite the heavy cloud cover on the hillside, I set out for an evening hike.  Well, it was 9:30 pm when I left.  (At least the light and dark patterns remain constant, even if the weather doesn't.)



But Glen Alps was not socked in when we got there.  While summer is a little delayed there, the wild flowers were out.

The lupine.

The dogwood.

Humor me.  I'm constantly experimenting with photoshop.  I know this looks like a birthday card for an elderly grandmother.  The yellow is a paintbrush, the blue a wild geranium, and I don't know the white [is Valeriana officinalis, Valerian. (thanks Anon in comments)]

Powerline Pass

This landscape never ceases to awe me.  The sweep of greens surrounded by snowy peaks is always breathtaking and just a 20 minute ride from home.

I played with curves in Aperture (and distorted the colors wildly) to highlight the snow chute you have to negotiate to get to the Ballpark.   That's a lot more snow than I've seen there in recent summers, reflecting our record snow fall this past winter and the record cold for the first half July. 

And my walking companion last night reminds me all the time that the powerlines are the most interesting part of the walk.

I guess the clouds and drizzle kept people away last night.  Even in the drizzle it was magnificent.  Here's the parking lot when we got back, almost 11pm.  A stark contrast to the nights when cars are parked down the road because the lot's full.  For those relatively few times in a year, I think it would be cheaper and better to just have a shuttle bus come up from Hillside instead of bulldozing out more parking lots.  After all, the parking lot looks like this, probably 90% of the time.  (I know, there would have to be a parking lot down below.  Just throwing it out there as something to chew on.) 

Lost Tooth

I was visiting friends on the way home from getting some errands done the other day when the youngest daughter suddenly said she lost a tooth. 

It's been a while since I was around when a tooth was lost.  But I'd been thinking about this milestone, because just a couple days before, while cleaning the garage - yes, that's still happening - I came across our kids' tooth fairy pillow case.  My wife says she thinks that Auntie Esther made it.   The tooth pocket  is at that little rectangle at the bottom with Bambi on it. 

"Come bang me baby. . ."

I found this on a Xanga forum:

What kind of father would do this?  I think it's totally sick.  It doesn't even seem like a good test.  If they've agreed to wait until marriage, the tone and language wouldn't sound like his girl friend.  He'd be totally shocked, and respond as he did. 

At first I thought that its appropriateness might be affected by the age of the daughter.  But the idea of testing the boyfriend of an older girl is perverse and sending an explicit text to the boyfriend of a younger girl is even more perverse.  Is any age appropriate for this?

And what is the daughter's role here?  Is she glad for the $100 and proving to her dad that her boyfriend isn't 'that kind of boy'?  Or does she feel her dad doesn't trust her? Or that he's a dirty old man?  Or maybe she's exploiting his fear and collects $100 with each new boyfriend.  And what kind of power trip is the dad on?  He's going to 'protect' his daughter from all the males on earth trying to deflower her?  Is a burka next? 

Or is this just a hoax?  In addition to the inconsistent tone and language, the father is talking about giving permission to date his daughter, but the boy wrote, "Since we started dating. . ." which suggests they've already been dating.  OK, they could date without the father's permission, but . . .

But now that I've seen it, hoax or not, something about it bothers at me.  

Maybe it's just distraction from meatier topics I should be writing about but that haven't gestated enough to make coherent posts,

141 "Potentially Uncounted Ballots" Found July 11 (From April Election)

The following press release came out this evening:

The email is dated July 13, 2012 6:29pm.  Friday night is typically a good time to bury a story, especially in the summer, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions.  If the ballots were discovered July 11, they've had two days to figure out what they had and how to announce it.

The Record of Inventory Checklist  is a table that came in pdf format.  I'm not quite sure what it means.    There is a column that says "No Zip Tie" which I'm guessing refers to the seals that were on each election sack to show they were sealed.  There are 22 check marks in this column. 

I did try to call the Clerk's office to get more information, but it's after office hours and no one answered. 

The photo is one I took on May 10, 2012 during the recount.  It shows a ballot bag with what I believe they mean by zip tie attached to the tag that identifies the voting location. The arrow is pointing at the clear plastic zip tie.  Conversation I overheard at the time said it was pretty easy to take these off and redo them, but I didn't see a demonstration of that so I can't be sure.


It would seem that in terms of the election outcome, 141 votes won't affect the outcome of any specific race.  But this would seem to be one more example of the general sloppiness of the handling of the election.  The Assembly's attorney has met once with the citizen's group that called for the election recount to go over the many specific problems they raised based on their observation of the recount.  That meeting gave me some confidence that at least the Assembly's Attorney is taking this seriously and I believe that the new Municipal Clerk is as well.  This election has exposed a whole array of potential weak spots that someone intent in stealing an election could take advantage of.  Given that voting is the fundamental means of participating in a democracy, I believe it's critical that every single one of these breaches is fixed before the next Municipal election and that the state Division of Elections is paying close attention.

This Is The Third Friday The 13th This Year

The other two this year were in January and April.  Next year (2013) there will only be two (September and December).  Last year there was only one (May). 

So, is three a lot?  According to Paul Lutus at Arachnoid:

• The probability that there will be a Friday the 13th during any given month is equal to the reciprocal of the number of weekdays: 1/7 or 14.1%.
• The average number of Friday the 13ths in a year is equal to the number of months divided by the number of weekdays: 12/7 or 1.71.

So, almost 2 per year.  But according to Jim Loy, who figured the 1/7 figure as well,

It turns out that this is not quite true. It was shown by Brown (I don't know his first name) in 1933 that the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) repeats itself exactly, every 400 years. In that time, there are 4800 months and 4800 13ths. Of those 4800 13ths, 688 occur on Friday. So the probability of a Friday the 13th is 688/4800 which is .143333..., which is slightly greater than 1/7. In fact, Friday is the most likely 13th, slightly. Of the 4800 13ths, Sunday is the 13th 687 times, Monday 685, Tuesday 685, Wednesday 687, Thursday 684, Friday 688, and Saturday 684.

Bicyclists Getting A Little More Respect This Year From DOT

Last Saturday when I biked over to the Japanese Summer Festival, I noticed that for once, the Department of Transportation was thinking about cyclists and even gave us some benefits cars didn't get.  I knew there was construction on the Campbell Creek trail under the Seward Highway and at Dowling and I decided to take surface streets to avoid that.  But going south on C Street from Tudor, I saw there was a detour at Potter.

BUT, while cars were forced to go right or left because C Street was closed, the bike path on the west side of C Street was open, allowing me to keep to my route.  And it was marked too.  This is something that didn't use to happen.  But clearly someone had to have thought about this and said, "Well, we can leave the bike trail open."  Hey, humor me, I measure progress in very small increments.

On the way home, without having to worry about time, I picked up the Campbell Creek trail at its terminus near Dimond High School. 


The cow parsnip was in full bloom along the path.  This picture of the creek along the trail should give you a sense why I was willing to add a mile to my (now seven mile) trip back to be on the trail instead of the city streets. 

Under Minnesota the creek had flooded and the trail was covered in mud and water.  Fortunately there were some drier spots (on the left.)







But then it was beautiful again.

At Taku Lake  (I posted a video of the beaver I saw there already), there was also this duck dock right near the trail. So much nicer that navigating the sidewalks and intersections. 








But soon I was nearing Dowling and getting curious how I was going to get past the construction.  I needn't have worried.  There was a big sign blocking the path, but pointing out a detour.  In the past, there just would have been a sign blocking the path with no help for the cyclist to navigate around the blockage.  But this detour led to the construction site (Dowling Road) where a flagger got me and a pedestrian past the heavy equipment and around to another flagger who directed me to more signs that led me easily back to the bike path.

At Old Seward Highway, after the Arctic Road Runner near the Peanut Farm, the signs aren't quite as helpful.  There they say the trail is blocked at Seward Highway and direct you to take Tudor or Dowling.  There, you really have to know how to find the bike trail yourself.  You have to wander through the neighborhoods to pick it up after the creek crosses under the New Seward Highway, where they are widening the road and raising the bridges over the creek and where, by the end of next summer they say, there will be a real bike trail under the highway.  Now, from Tudor, looking south, the construction looks like this.

When the trail goes under Dowling and New Seward when this construction is done, you'll be able to bike from Dimond and Northwood to University Lake between APU and the Native Hospital (about 7.5 miles) with only having to cross one street (Lake Otis).  It mostly follows Campbell Creek going under or over bridges at other roads.   And I found this cool 2009 video by MijelRiak that takes you on the trail from New Seward Highway to Dimond and Northwood.  (Where the video crosses the street is Dowliing, where the construction is now.)

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That quote came to mind when I heard that the House Republicans had voted to abolish or amend the Affordable Care Act for the 33rd time.  Brainy Quote credits Albert Einstein with saying that.

If their goal was to appeal the Act, then Einstein's words would apply.  There was no chance of getting what they passed through the Senate.

But while they may tell us that is their goal, we all know that the intent was probably a combination of other things.  If I acted like a House Republican, I'd try, with a straight face, to pin that quote on the House Republicans.  But I don't and I won't.

First, just because Einstein said it, doesn't make it true.  And if it is true, we don't know what results they are expecting.  Clearly, they know their bill won't pass the Senate. 

Presumably they are expecting other results, results they've gotten in the past over this.  They want to force some Democrats to vote 'no' so they can use that vote to campaign against them.  And they want to force some Democrats to vote 'yes' so they can embarrass Obama and make claims for bi-partisan support.  They want television attention on their anti-health care sound bites. 

And I suspect that like abortion and gay issues for some preachers, this is a topic that bumps up contributions among the rabidly anti-ACA.

But they took up two days in the House for this gimmick.  These are folks who  complain loudly about the cost of government.  But they spent two days on what appears to be a PR campaign instead of solving the problems facing the US.  But then, their goal has been to do everything to obstruct solutions - because they don't want anything good to happen on Obama's watch.

A Rollcall article last November calculated that it costs the taxpayers  "roughly $592,000 per legislative day on Members’ salaries."  Just counting member salaries and nothing else, their PR campaign has cost US taxpayers almost $1.2 million.  If we we give them a break on their first two attempts on repeal ACA, that leaves 30 more times they spent time on this.  I don't know how many hours the other debates took, but it does raise questions about how serious they are about saving taxpayer money.

Of course, I'm taking a certain amount of license here too.  After all, I suspect that most of the Congress members were not on the floor of Congress most of those two days.  (Steve, you say, why do you keep poking holes in your argument?  Because this blog is about 'how we know what we know' and I'm simply using my own argument to demonstrate what every citizen should be doing with everything they hear from politicians, corporate spokespersons, marketing in all its forms, and your religious leaders, and teachers.  I'm not saying reject what they say, just keep raising questions until they prove it.)

Besides, when those Congress members weren't on the floor, they were probably on the phone calling donors to raise money for their reelections.  

[UPDATE Friday 13, Turns out that an hour after I posted this, Huffington Post had something up about a story on the cost of the Republican ACA repeal on CBS that is dated four hours earlier than mine.  CBS, using a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $24 million a week to run the House, said the cost of the repeal votes was just under $50 million.  That's a lot more than my estimate, which only included representatives' salaries, and it didn't factor in the issues I raised, such as most representatives probably were doing other things most of those days anyway.  I'm not making light of this as a waste of time and money, but I am trying to focus on the simplistic reporting of such things.]

Anchorage Shots - Grey Summer Days

Glass Sky

Most days this summer seem to be cloudy, so here are a few leftover photos.


This building has Nana Worley Parsons and Alyeska Pipeline signs near the roof.

Cottonwood Cotton

Cottonwood has been in full-fluff for a while now.

I think this was a black-capped chickadee.

Wild Rose

Arctic Slope Building

The Yamato Ya restaurant doesn't seem to have the same traffic it did when it was part of the Sagaya complex up the street on Old Seward. 

This was at a 4th of July barbecue. 

A Mercury Comet. 

"“He is not the pastor of the United States, he’s the President of the United States.” - Not All Baptists Are Against Gay Marriage

Here is Senior Pastor Frederick Haynes III preaching on OBAMA'S "PERSONAL" stance on gay marriage. Not quite what you might have expected. Here are some excerpts, but he says it himself a lot more powerfully in the video.

“Don’t forget he was sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States which was born out of the Declaration of Independence . . . we hold these truths to be self evident that all men, all people, are equal . . . notice it does not say that all straight men are equal . . . he swore on an oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution, not the bible."

 “He is not the pastor of the United States, he’s the President of the United States.”

"We have a President who has dared to use his position to make the democratic promise available not just for a select few who are up and in, but to everybody regardless of their race, their creed, their color, or their sexual orientation."

"Whenever you want to ostracize another person it is because of a fear you have yourself, the fear that you have finds itself rooted in an ignorance of other people or in a projection of your issues."

"You are so outraged over what the president said. . . .Take a chill pill. . . You are not going to lose your 501c3* if you do not marry a same gender, loving couple."

"Why are you so upset? . . . Why were you so emotional that you had to clothe your anger with the bible and justify your bigotry with scripture . . .?"

"Because we got issues with sexuality, we can’t have a healthy discussion about homosexuality. We love to judge other people’s sins because it keeps it off of us as opposed to looking at us."

 I've just finished a novel about Spinoza and then I saw this sermon which was delivered a month ago.  I'm still digesting the Spinoza book, but I hope to get something up here.  It's definitely related to this and to almost everything we're dealing with in the US today.

 *501c3 refers to the section of the tax code that gives tax exemptions to non-profits, including churches.