Metaphor of the Day - The Fiscal Cliff, Where Conservative PAC Money Went

You can't listen to any media lately without hearing 'Fiscal Cliff' repeated over and over.

Metaphors, if they are apt, can help us visualize the abstract.  When Winston Churchill called the border between the East and West in post-war Europe the Iron Curtain, he used a metaphor that vividly brought to life what was happening.  It was a metaphor that stuck.

But many metaphors don't capture the situation so cleanly.  Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was intended to portray the policy as a strong military mobilization to end poverty.  It came from people whose idea of war was World War II, who weren't considering Korea, and who still believed they were going to win in Vietnam.  Even more problematic was figuring out who "the enemy" in this war was.  Some began to think it was the poor people themselves.  There is a similar problem with the other main War metaphor - War on Drugs.  Drugs seem to be thriving, it's the drug users that have been the enemy.  But like war, it swallows up money.

And people can get in trouble when they mix metaphors as in this gem from Examiner:

"failure of the super committee to reach agreement also triggered the fiscal cliff"

I'll let you visualize that yourself.


So, the question is, how good a metaphor is The Fiscal Cliff?

It's a powerful visual image.  But does it accurately portray the situation?  What or who is going over the cliff?  The country?  The money?  The Democrats?  The Republicans?

Maybe it's what conservative PACs threw all their money over during the election.    

Going over a cliff isn't always fatal either.

Everyone seems to agree that our debt is too high. They disagree on how to fix it and on the timing of the solutions.   I would argue that very few of  us actually understand economics in general and the economic situation of the US and the world well enough to actually know.  Of course, that's where a good metaphor comes in - even if we don't understand, we can all picture a car driving toward a cliff.  So we all feel a certain amount of tension.  Is it the tension we feel watching a car in a movie?  Or is it the tension we would feel if we were in the car itself?

Let's look at a different metaphor for a second.  Conservatives regularly talk about 'running government like a business." I can talk a long time why you can't run government like a business, but let's focus on one aspect where the conservatives NEVER quite apply business principles to government:  Accounting.

In business accounting you list the company's debits AND CREDITS.  When they talk about government, they never consider all the assets.  And if we were to add up the government's assets - all the land, all the buildings, all the wealth in terms of art, historical objects, roads, bridges, airports, human capital, and on and on - it would show us comfortably in the black.

No, they only look at the debit column.  What would happen to Wall Street if all we saw in the annual reports were the companies' debts but not their assets?  Government money spent on education and infrastructure is an investment in future assets. Back to cliffs now.

How did we get to the edge of this cliff?

The Republicans, from my perspective, were playing chicken with the US economy.  Under Bush, they cut revenues by cutting taxes and added to expenses with two costly wars.  Additionally, they cut regulations setting up the banking crisis.  There's no question, Democrats helped them.  Those Democrats seemed to accept that Bush was president and should be allowed to try his policy.  Ultimately, the Republicans were the drivers who led our country to the cliff.  Once we went over that cliff at the end of the Bush administration and the Republicans handed the car keys over to Obama, they locked into a game metaphor - and winning was the only option.  Say a game of poker.  They were going to force Obama to fold by refusing to compromise on taxes and refuse anything he wanted.  If they blocked all his initiatives, they could make him look bad and win the election and then they could do what they wanted again.  McConnell even told us that their top priority was defeating President Obama. 


Except now we know the winning the election part didn't work.

Congress passed The Budget Control Act of 2011 as a way to force themselves to make necessary budget cuts.  It set up a joint committee to come up with ways to reign in the debt (another metaphor).  If the committee failed sequestration (automatic cuts) would kick in to reduce the gap between  Congress' cuts and the spending limit:

•  These cuts would apply to mandatory and discretionary spending in the years 2013 to 2021 and be in an amount equal to the difference between $1.2 trillion and the amount of deficit reduction enacted from the joint committee. There would be some exemptions: reductions would apply to Medicare providers, but not to Social Security, Medicaid, civil and military employee pay, or veterans.^[4][5] Medicare benefits would be limited to a 2% reduction.^[7]

As originally envisioned, these caps would equally affect security and non-security programs. Security programs would include the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, some management functions of the intelligence community and international affairs from the U.S. State Department.^[8] However, because the Joint Select Committee did not report any legislation to Congress, the act reset these caps^{[clarification needed]} to defense (essentially the DOD) and non-defense categories.^{[9]    [from Wikipedia]}

But the Super Committee did fail to agree and now the Budget Act Reductions plus the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are the Fiscal Cliff people are talking about.

Because they lost the election.  Rhe Republicans' bluff (no increase in taxes) has been called and they are left with the worst of both worlds - Bush tax cuts ending and what they believe are unacceptable cuts to the military.  (I really thought that the Fox News predictions of a big Romney win were cynical fodder to get the masses to want to join the winners by voting for Mitt, but it's appearing that they believed their own hype.)


So, now the House and Senate both appear to have gained a few more Democratic members and Obama's still in the White House.

One thing Republicans do understand is winning and losing and on this morning's post election interviews, Republicans weren't even spinning the results.  They were admitting they lost, that Obama won.  They respect winners, even winners they don't like.

They declared war on Obama's reelection and they lost. Unlike the economy, the election outcome is clear and concrete.  They didn't achieve their top priority.  As they examine why, is it possible they might figure out that the American public doesn't like the stalemate (a chess metaphor) in Congress?  It sure seems that Republicans have a lot more to lose by driving over this 'Fiscal Cliff' than the Democrats in terms of priorities.

I suspect, but I'm not sure, that we all stand to lose a lot.  But I don't understand all the details enough to know how much pain we'll suffer collectively, who will suffer more and who less, and whether the short term pain might lead to long term improvement.  Not letting the Budget Control Act go into effect would definitely be smoother.  Not letting all the Bush tax cuts expire during an economic recovery would be smoother.  But if we do go over the cliff, I don't know who will end up dead, who will end up injured, and who will get up and walk away ok.

Meanwhile, on this day after the election, the bottom of Fiscal Cliff could very appropriately describe where conservative PAC billions were thrown during the campaign.

It appears that Citizens United has led to the biggest income transfer from the rich in quite a while. 

Forget The Election, Get Some Frozen Yogurt

Chocolate and Pomegranate Frozen Yogurt

Of course, vote.  Then chill.




We've been going to the Thai Kitchen for over 20 years, since it was four tables in the back of the Express Market and Sommai cooked on a kitchen stove but kept her day job cutting fancy flowers out of fruit for first class passengers' food trays on airlines that still stopped in Anchorage between Europe and Asia.






Slowly more tables were added and the more market shelves came down.  I'm not sure we could have stayed in Anchorage if no Thai restaurants opened.  Now there must be a dozen.

Bomby (l) and Beau

Throughout the years, Sommai and Ben's sons grew up serving food and staffing the cash register.  And now, two of them, Beau and Bomby, all grown up, have opened the Yogurt Works, four or five shops east of the Thai Kitchen in the mall on Tudor near Elmore, south of Providence and UAA. 

We've had enough elections.  Go have a Thai dinner and then get some frozen yogurt for dessert. 

Blogger Disclosure:   I don't do advertising.  I don't get paid for posting things and if I ever did, I'd tell you.  But I do post stories that point out places people might like or to just document the changing landscape.   I did get three small free tastes and then we bought two cups of yogurt.

Why Is Jim Minnery Smearing YoYo Ma's Cousin?

Jim Minnery, head of the Alaska Family Council, wrote in a Sunday ADN piece that called for Alaskans to vote against retaining Superior Court Judge Sen Tan.  His crime?  Ruling according to the Alaska Constitution.  Well, Minnery says he's an activist judge (but identifies Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, as NOT activist judges) who substituted his values for the Constitution. However, retired Judge Elaine Andrews points out in a another ADN piece, that the Alaska Supreme Court upheld his decisions.

What Minnery really means is that Tan's decision was at odds with Minnery's values.  Minnery, you will recall, is the guy from the conservative Alaska Family Council who blasted out emails last spring telling people to register to vote before the deadline, three weeks before the election, passed.  Then, after it passed, he emailed them again saying  they could just show up and register on election day to vote.   He had to know, given his earlier email, that you couldn't register and vote on the day of the election.  And he had to know it would cause turmoil at the polls if enough unregistered voters showed up.  And it did, along with the shortage of ballots.

The rule of law doesn't seem to matter to Minnery.  His guide appears to be his interpretation of the Bible.  

It's important to know that Alaska has some of the best judges in the country because of how we pick them.  The Judicial Council surveys all sorts of professionals and jurors - people who see the judge in action from different perspectives - and uses this information to rate judges.  Here's the list of links for Judge Tan's ratings:

• Voter Pamphlet Page (Council summary of the judge’s performance)
• Attorney Survey Ratings (All surveys use a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest rating)
• Peace and Probation Officer Survey Ratings
• Social Worker and Guardian ad Litem Survey Ratings
• Juror Survey Ratings - (No juror surveys were returned for the jury trials that Judge Tan conducted in this two-year period)
• Court Employee Survey Ratings
• Survey Ratings from Previous Evaluations
• Alaska Judicial Observers Ratings (Community-based volunteer court observers)
• Peremptory Challenge Rate (How often a party requested assignment of a new judge)
• Recusal Rate (How often a judge disqualified himself or herself due to a conflict of interest)
• Appellate Affirmance Rate (How often a trial judge was affirmed or reversed on appeal)
• Salary Warrant Withholdings (How often a judge’s pay was withheld for unfinished work)
• Judge Questionnaire (Judge’s response to a Judicial Council questionnaire)
• Survey Ratings for all Judges on the 2012 Ballot

Alaska's legal system is particularly fair because judges are accountable to all these people who see them on a regular basis.  Biased or incompetent people tend not to get nominated in the first place and those that don't do well are identified pretty quickly.  Our judges are good because their eye is on the State Constitution and Law and NOT on politics.  

Judge Tan is, by all accounts, a first rate judge. He doesn't get to the top scores of all judges, but he's up there.   He's particularly respected for how he handles cases involving abused children and gets almost perfect scores from Social Workers and Guardians Ad Litem.  He also gets high ratings from Court employees and the Alaska Bar Association members. His lowest average scores come from Law Enforcement members where he averaged 4.1 out of 5, which is a very strong score.

His average annual rate for peremptory challenges was 11.  The average for all Superior Court judges was 33.  He was the fifth lowest out of 14. 



Minnery targets Tan because of two abortion decisions made over ten year ago.  Decisions that, as I've said, were upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court.  Judge Tan wasn't wrong.  He didn't substitute his personal values for the law.  If he had, his decisions would have been overturned by the Supreme Court.  It's Minnery who is substituting his values for the law.

Minnery has the right to his opinion and to publish his opinion.  The rest of us have the same right and responsibility to correct his errors and urge voters to support Judge Tan's retention.

I would note that Judge Tan has a pretty unique background.  A 2004 article in the Malaysian newspaper, The Star tells us he was born in Malaysia and got his BA (with honors) from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his law degree (JD) at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.

We also learn from The Star that his cousin - his father's brother's son - is the world renowned  cellist Yoyo Ma.  

And he likes to ride his motorcycle.

The article also talks about his early interest in the law:

“My interest in law came from the legacy of books my father left behind. Some of the books discussed the principles of the Rule of Law. I was very interested in law as an organising principle for a fair, just and compassionate society. Thus, I settled on reading law in Britain,” said Tan, whose father passed away when he was 10 years old."

 So, if you haven't voted yet, remember to send Jim Minnery a message and approve the retention of Judge Sen Tan. 

[UPDATE Nov. 7, 1:00am:  Judge Tan is winning retention 53% yes to 46% with 93% of precincts reporting.  Minnery's campaign clearly had an impact - Tan had the lowest percentage for retention of all the judges by a lot - but he didn't defeat Tan.  However, I'm sure he thinks he's sent all judges a message that if they make unpopular decisions, they'll be targets.]

Los Angeles County Voters To Decide If Porn Actors Must Wear Condoms

LA County's measure B, if passed, would require actors in porn videos to wear condoms for vaginal and anal sex.  The measure is supported by doctors and health organizations and opposed by the porn industry, some libertarians,

I ran into this while discussing the elections with my mom when we were in LA last week.  Here's the measure description from Smarter Voter:

Measure B is a citizens' initiative measure that qualified for placement on the ballot based upon a sufficient number of registered voters signing a petition proposing this ballot measure. If approved by the voters, the measure would adopt an ordinance amending the Los Angeles County Code, adding Chapter 11.39, entitled "Adult Films," to Title 11, Health and Safety, and amending Section 22.56.1925 to Title 22, Zoning. To the extent provided by State law, the measure is intended to be applicable throughout the County.

The proposed amendment would require producers of adult films to obtain a public health permit from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (the "Department") in order to engage in the production of adult films for commercial purposes, and to pay a permit fee set by the Department to offset the cost of enforcement. The measure would require the use of condoms for all acts of anal or vaginal sex during the production of adult films, as well as the posting of both the public health permit and a notice to performers regarding condom use. Producers are required to provide a written exposure control plan describing how the ordinance will be implemented. A "producer" means any person or entity that produces, finances or directs adult films for commercial purposes.

Violation of the ordinance would be subject to both civil fines and criminal misdemeanor charges. The Department would be authorized to enforce the provisions of the ordinance, including suspending or revoking the public health permit due to violations of the ordinance, or any other law including applicable provisions of the Health and Safety Code, blood borne pathogen standard, California Code of Regulations, or the exposure plan of the producer.

Suspension or revocation of the public health permit requires notice and an opportunity for an administrative review, unless the Department found or reasonably suspected immediate danger to the public health and safety, in which case the Department could immediately suspend or revoke the public health permit, initiate a criminal complaint, or issue a fine, pending an administrative hearing.

The measure, if approved by the voters, may only be repealed by a subsequent vote of the electors or by an amendment of the Los Angeles County Charter superseding the ordinance. The Board of Supervisors is authorized to amend the ordinance by a majority vote in order to further the purposes of the measure.

This measure requires a majority vote of the qualified voters in the County of Los Angeles who cast votes in the election.

Costs of treating HIV

As I went through the arguments for and against in the voter pamphlet, the For people clearly had more specific and compelling arguments.  Their biggest listed concern is about the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the cost of treating those infected.  For example: 

". . . the lifetime cost of treating an HIV infection is more than $567,000. Since these performers are not provided health insurance by porn producers, this cost is most likely to be borne by taxpayers of Los Angeles County, as health care provider of last resort. The taxpayers are subsidizing the porn business."

The anti-argument was full of tea-party like rhetoric such as:

Safe sex practices are a good idea. However, they shouldn't be forced on adult film actors. Our individual rights have been fading fast since the Patriot Act.
Do-gooders such as New York Mayor Bloomberg seek to create a nanny state where our behavior is increasingly regulated for our own good. Bloomberg decreed that people must buy soft drinks in small cups, because they could become obese if they bought larger sizes. Measure B declares that adult film actors would have to wear condoms during filming. This isn't much different than regulating the size of soda a person can buy. Do you like the idea of busybodies forcing people to do what is healthful for them? If not, vote NO.

Industry Size in LA County

Neither side offered specific numbers such as number of companies involved or the number of actors involved.  Or even the economic impact of the porn industry on Los Angeles County.  Here's what the anti-folks write:

"Measure B would destroy the adult film industry in Los Angeles County, and it's quite a big industry here."

Not too precise there.  Is it over 1% of LA County's economy even?   A 2009 Economist article is also vague:

The adult-film industry is concentrated in the San Fernando Valley—“the Valley” to Angelenos—on the northern edge of Los Angeles, so the slump in porn is yet another factor depressing the local economy. Pornography had been immune to previous recessions, so the current downturn has come as a shock.

Felicia A. Reid at PolicyMic  gives more detail:

As famously depicted in the 1997 film Boogie Nights, the San Fernando Valley has been the epicenter of the global pornography industry since the 1970s, producing an estimated 90% of all American porn. Though the industry's primary business is escapism and pleasure, its products are also extensions of human biology and socialization. As such, it is at the seldom-acknowledged vanguard of social media and technological innovation.

Though figures vary, Americans spend about $4 billion annually on pornography, and the Valley generates some $9-$15 billion each year. To give the numbers perspective: the minimum is more than the 2011 revenues of the NFL, NBA and MLB individually — the maximum, just under their revenues combined.

Presumably the difference between what Americans spend and what the Valley generates comes from overseas.  In any case, the impact on LA County should be noticeable if the pornographers move out.  But City of Los Angeles (not the County) already passed a similar ordinance in January 2012.


Audiences Don't Want To See Condoms

The porn industry says their clientele don't want to see condoms:

Measure B would destroy the adult film industry in Los Angeles County, and it's quite a big industry here. Film producers tried using condoms during the HIV scare of the 1990s, and people refused to watch the movies.

Reid writes that condom use is mandatory in gay-porn.



Worker Protections

Reid also quotes Dr. Weinstein, arguing this is a workplace safety issue:

Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has long supported prevention measures. "Porn is the only industry in California where employees are forced to expose themselves to dangerous diseases in order to work." In a 2010 interview he noted, "In any other job, we require companies to protect their workers even if it costs more money for the employers. Why should the porn industry be any different?" 

SWAAY (Sex Work Activists, Allies, and You ) which seems to offer a view of the porn industry from the sex workers' perspective, reports opposition to mandating condom use:  

In June of 2011, a meeting was held with a Cal-OSHA advisory committee in Los Angeles, California. Upwards of seventy adult performers attended the meeting and unanimously voiced their opposition to barrier protection mandates. A new draft of the law was discussed in which some compromises may be made, such as non-barrier-protected oral sex. However, adult industry professionals still maintained the position that they do not want Cal-OSHA's involvement and prefer the right to choose whether or not to have barrier-protected sex on camera.

Porn Industry Already Having Economic Problems

And, it seems, the porn industry has already been seeing declines as the Economist article cited above suggests.  A January 2012 CNBC article on the LA Porn Convention begins:

"Online piracy continues to nip at the earnings of studios . . ."

Jordan Weissmann writes in the Atlantic Monthly that porn producers are having the same problems as newspapers:

". . . the big production companies have seen their profits shrink by as much as half since 2007, as audiences have fled to aggregators such as XTube and YouPorn that offer up a never-ending stream of free naked bodies."

So, the big questions not clearly answered yet seem to be:

1.  What will the impact of the law be on the spread of std's among porn actors and the community at large?  (Presumably they also have sex off camera.)
2.  What will the impact of the law be on the sales of porn?
3.  Will porn studies move out of LA County?  (Perhaps all those vacant houses in Las Vegas could house the new porn center.)
4.   Is the porn industry seeing the same decline that newspapers are seeing due to do-it-yourself porn posted for free online?

 

AIFF 2012: Wolves, Cuba, Skiers, Dislecksia - Some Documentary Topics Coming To AIFF 2012

The Anchorage International Film Festival comes to Anchorage in less than a month - Nov. 30, 2012 is the opening night.   Lots of films come each year and probably most people in Anchorage have no idea that a film on a topic or location of interest will be playing.  So I'm trying to alert people to some of the many topics coming.  I've already done an overview of the feature films.  This one looks at the documentaries.  I'm sure there are some topics for everyone.

I'd note here that the makers and stars of the 2009 AIFF Audience Award winning Paddle To Seattle (the tongue-in-cheek documentary of their kayak trip from Skagway to Seattle) will be back with their adventure traveling the Ganges River in India, though the title - Go Ganges - doesn't have the cache of Paddle to Seattle.

So here's a long table.  Scan through the topics in the left hand column.  Remember I haven't seen the films, I'm just pulling out topics based on the descriptions.  Then mark the ones you'd like to see and check the Anchorage International Film Festival website to see when they will show.  They range in length from 5 minutes (Solar Roadways) to 113 minutes (YERT - Your Environmental Road Trip).  The shorter ones will be grouped together and the longer ones will show by themselves.  The schedules aren't up yet.

Topics	Film	Other
Inuit People - Hudson Bay	‡People of the Feather
Subsistence	‡People of the Feather
Eider Duck	‡People of the Feather
Yukon River	River
Wolves	Wolves Unleashed
Siberia	Wolves Unleashed
Zaire/Congo	Back to Mandima
Cuba	Unfinished Spaces
Art	Unfinished Spaces
India	‡The World Before Her	Go Ganges
Miss India Contest	‡The World Before Her
Iran	Falgoosh (Blames and Flames)
Film Making	Falgoosh (Blames and Flames)
Kenya	Where Dreams Don't Fade
Runners	Where Dreams Don't Fade	The Mountain Runners
Journalism (Mexico)	Reportero
LGBT	Burmese Butterfly	I Need A Hero
Hair Dressing	Burmese Butterfly	‡Cutting Loose
Burma	Burmese Butterfly
Prison	‡Cutting Loose
Scotland	‡Cutting Loose
Extreme Skiing	Tempting Fear
Sweden	Tempting Fear
Palliative Care	Okuyamba (To Help)
Uganda	Okuyamba (To Help)
Piano Prodigy Twins	Toni and Rosi
Nazis	Toni and Rosi
Seniors	‡Ping Pong
Ping Pong	‡Ping Pong
Inner Mongolia	‡Ping Pong
Dyslexia	Dislecksia:  The Movie
Comic Super Heroes	I Need A Hero (couldn't find good link)	I Need a Hero (White Hawk Bourne) a brief history of LGBT characters in comic books and the impact these characters have had.
Model T Race Cars	The Mountain Runners
Aparteid	†Roadmap to Apartheid
South Africa	†Roadmap to Apartheid
Palestine	†Roadmap to Apartheid
Solar Energy	Solar Roadways
Highways	Solar Roadways
Sea Horses	Mission of Mermaids
Oceans	Mission of Mermaids
Environment	Mission of Mermaids	Solar Roadways/YERT
Innovation	‡YERT - Your Environmental Road Trip
Cystic Fibrosis	Breathe Life
Ganges River	‡Go Ganges	Or try this link, which took forever to open.

HTML Tables

[‡ = films in competition. There are lots of films here, so not getting into competition doesn't mean it's not a good film.  Update Nov. 25]

Remember, this is just the Documentary films.

How Many Jobs Could You Create For $2 Billion Per Year

That's the amount Alaska's governor wants to cut annual taxes on oil companies.  This will, the governor tells us increase the flow of Alaskan oil, increase our revenues, and create jobs.  But the oil companies make no promises.

The big issue in Tuesday's election for Alaskans is whether the Senate bi-partisan majority will be busted.  This group of Democrats and Republicans blocked the governor's tax cuts from going through.  Members of the coalition are now being targeted by oil companies and their supporters.

There are intelligent people on both sides of the issue.  But there are also a number of prominent Alaskan Republicans opposed to the governor's approach.  And he was a Conoco Philips lobbyist before he became governor.

So, my proposal for you is to come up with a plan to create jobs for $2 billion a year.  The idea would be to create jobs for Alaskans, jobs that would put money back into the Alaskan economy, and ideally jobs that would ultimately make Alaska a better place to live, to have a business, and to visit.   The best plan would create the most jobs at a decent wage and the jobs would add value to Alaska, not take it away.  Add value because what people would do would make our lives better and because they would be Alaskans who would spend their wages in Alaska.   The money wouldn't, for example, be sent to corporate shareholders outside of Alaska. 

The issue won't be over Tuesday, so you have some time to think about this.  If I get ten or more proposals, I'll pass them along to the governor's office, and perhaps I'll post them here too.  Let your imagination run wild.  For instance I did a post (can't find it though) on this theme showing that for $2 billion a year you could hire every unemployed Alaskan and give them each $30,000 a year for their labor.  Not a great salary, but it gives you a sense that there are probably great alternatives to what the oil companies DON'T promise to do.

Consider this a filler activity - something to think about while you're waiting for the light to change, or at the post office or bank, or wherever you spend time waiting.   You can post your responses as comments or email them to me.

 I know. Nobody has time to do something like this, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to give the governor and the legislators other ways to use the $2 billion the governor wants to give to the oil companies.   You've got until November 15 to send it to me. 

"Like termites, they undermine the structure of any neighborhood in which they creep."

"If you turn on your television these days, you hear a lot of old white people talking about this 'real America,' some apple-pie, Bedford Falls [Jimmy Stewart's town in It's a Wonderful Life], Walt Disneyfied idea of a simpler country, a 'time of innocence' that we've lost.  They're right.  It's gone.  We destroyed it so we wouldn't have to share it with black people.  We gave up real neighborhoods in real cities so we could pay more to have 'protection' inside the regional profit silos of HomeServices of America.  We gutted Blue Hills, and now you have to go to Orlando to buy it back.  Only that's the big lie at the heart of the J.C. Nichols dream.  Desirable associations aren't something you can buy.  They're something you have to make." [p. 140]

Blue Hills had been one of those ideal middle class American neighborhoods, in Kansas City.  According to author Tanner Colby, Walt Disney grew up there.  It was, like other nearby communities the kind of place

"where families used to pass their evenings on the front porch and the neighbors would stop by to say hello." [p 75]

 But it was destroyed, according to Tanner, by housing developers, like J.C. Nichols.

"But Nichols's most important contribution to the way we live wasn't something he invented himself.  He just perfected it.  And the thing he perfected was the all-white neighborhood, hardwired with restrictive covenants that dictated not only the size and shape of the house but the color of the people who could live inside.  This idea, the racialization of space, would take root deep in the nation's consciousness, for both whites and blacks alike, becoming so entrenched that all the moral might of the civil right crusade was powerless to dislodge it.  In the South, Jim Crow was just the law.  In Kansas City, J.C. Nichols turned it into a product.  Then he packaged it, commodified it, and sold it.  Whiteness was no longer just an inflated social status.  Now it was worth cash money." [p.82]

Tanner, in his book, Some Of My Best Friends Are Black, traces how private housing forces, concerned about expanding black neighborhoods used practices, like blockbusting, to scare whites into selling their houses cheaply to developers, who then resold them to blacks.  They also sold houses to the fleeing whites in suburban housing developments that had covenants that included phrases like:

"None of said land may be conveyed to, used, owned, or occupied by negores as owners or tenants."[p. 91]

One J.C. Nichols innovation was to move this restriction from individual houses to whole developments.

". . .in 1909, J.C. Nichols broke ground on Sunset Hills and Country Side, the first of his developments laid out on land unencumbered by earlier deed restrictions.  Here, he attached the racial covenant, not to the deed for the lot, but to the plot for the entire subdivision.  Thus it became harder for one person to break."[p. 92]

Colby says Nichols was the celebrated leader in the development field, appointed to the National Capital Park and Planning Commission by President Calvin Coolidge and reappointed by Presidents Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman.  Hoover, Colby reports, was a dinner guest at Nichols' home. 


Colby then discusses Nichols' friends, a group of prominent developers from around the country who were the 'brain trust' of National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB). 

"Not by coincidence in 1924 NAREB made racial discrimination official policy, updating its code of ethics to say, 'A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood members of any race or nationality . . . whose presence will clearly be detrimental to the property values of that neighborhood.  Like termites, they undermine the structure of any neighborhood in which they creep."

But government got drawn into the discrimination as well.  Colby tells us that Hoover created the Federal Home Loan Bank in 1932 to stimulate home building using government backed loans.  Roosevelt extended this program and then added the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

"J.C. Nichols was so intimately involved with the formation of the FHA that he was called to consult privately with FDR in the Oval Office.  When America's housing policy was drafted, whole chunks were lifted straight out of the Nichols Company handbook, practically word for word."

 He goes on to explain how using the Nichols Company handbook led to official government redlining:

"Through the HOLC (Home Owners' Loan Corporation) the federal government developed a four-tiered classification system for neighborhoods:

• high-end, all-white neighborhoods were given the highest rating;
• white working- and middle-class neighborhoods were given a secondary rating;
• Jewish and ethnically mixed areas were rated third; and the lowest possible rating was given to 
• black neighborhoods

 -regardless of the quality of the housing stock or the income of the inhabitants.  Then HOLC went through every block on every map of every city in America, giving each neighborhood a color-coded designation.  Black neighborhoods were coded red." [p.96]

This was supposedly a way to set up a metric for assigning the proper rate of interest.

". . . but black neighborhoods were not simply assigned higher interest rates. They were not assigned anything.  In a process that became known as redlining, the FHA cordoned off black neighborhoods and designated them wholly ineligible for federal subsidies and mortgages.  This was a policy based on nothing more than the say-so of the men who stood to profit from it." [p.97]

I'd read about the federal creation of redlining in Buzz Bissinger's  Pulitzer Prize winning A Prayer for the City.    So this wasn't new.  But Colby puts it into the context of Kansas City.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect was the perpetual discrimination clauses that are legally impossible to great rid of and continue to exist today. 

The early covenants expired in ten to twenty years, Colby writes.  In 1911, Nichols made them 25 years.   Then in 1913 he made them perpetual:

"He wrote all his property restrictions to be self-renewingevery twenty-five years unless a group of owners controlling the most street-facing footage opted to change those restrictions five years prior to the auto-renewal date.  It was the first use of self-perpetuating racial covenants anywhere in the country . . ."

Essentially, blacks couldn't get into these white suburbs (and the covenants were copied by most developers) and they couldn't get money to buy in black neighborhoods, which became more and more depressed.

If you live in a subdivision, you may actually find the clause.  While they may no longer be enforceable, getting them out of covenants may be difficult because of  Colby's work.  Here's a history of housing discrimination in Seattle.


I was a little skeptical of Colby's book when I picked it up at the library new book shelf.   But despite the lack of an index and a bibliography of the many works he says he consulted, Colby does a very good job of what he sets out to do:  find out why he doesn't have any black friends.  As a student of Birmingham, Alabama's premiere white school, Vestavia High when it had court ordered integration, Colby goes back to his old high school to peel back the layers to find out what had really been going on around him then, and reveal the underbelly of the 1960's civil rights movements, integration, and school busing.

He also has a section on Kansas City - where the quotes above are taken - and two more which I haven't read yet.  One on Madison Avenue and the other on churches.  These investigations were, he tells us in the preface, to understand why he didn't have any black friends.  His answer is that the US was structured in many ways to keep blacks and whites separate, even after Jim Crow laws ended.

Colby does something that is hard to do - he explains in very understandable terms, the power structures, private and public, that continue to enforce racial discrimination.  He finds some successes, but also serious problems, including the unanticipated consequences of forced school integration and housing policies intended to undo redlining.

When talking about race, there is always the problem of what 'racism' means.  Most people use it interchangeably with prejudice, but those who study the issue more closely, distinguish it as institutionally supported discrimination, rather than individual prejudice.

It's the institutionally supported discrimination - like redlining - that Colby does an excellent job of explaining.

But not only does a book like this explain what happened in the past (and have continuing effects), but it also should make people wonder what those people with access to power today are doing to make their lives more comfortable and profitable and at whose expense.  

It's Cold!

We got to Seattle fine, but the flight to Anchorage was delayed 90 minutes.  We went straight from the airport to our Chinese class, got there at the halfway point.  Then a classmate took us home where it was, well, chilly.  40˚F (4.4˚C) inside.  (About 25˚ outside.)

We'd been having trouble with our water heater and had warned our house sitter about it and how to fix it.  It was in error mode when we got home.  I fixed that, but the furnace didn't kick in.

Fortunately we have a wood stove and lots of wood.  And now by the wood stove it's comfy, but getting the rest of the house warmer is taking time.  We've gotten it close to 60˚ degrees upstairs. 

I left a message with the plumber.  The housesitter was here last night and reset the water heater then and all was fine this morning when he checked out. 

Maybe we'll sleep downstairs. 

Dealing with Spam Comments

I get a fair number of comments that are simply spam, people getting links back to their sites.  SEO companies flooding the internet with links to their clients.  I'm not sure how much good it even does since Google and others take this into account.  And most of these get caught by bloggers spam filter, so they never get posted.  Some slip through. 

I think the last time I posted about this it was the dentist office spam where I actually contacted his office.  Since then, every now and then I copy and paste some spam to think about how I decide what is acceptable and what isn't.


Blatant spam.  Comments have nothing to do with the post.    Just getting their links up on my blog.  Examples (I've gotten rid of their links and left the ones to the posts they commented on):

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Although they all try to flatter the blogger, they are completely generic and make no comment that couldn't be applied to any blog.  The English is better than earlier ones, though some interesting English still slips in now and then.


Do mention something related in your post.

Matching word:  Some go to posts that have words or topics relevant to their client, like this one:

Excel Glass and Granite, Inc. is providing the best service and quality commercial and retail glass related products to their customers.they are focused on their customer’s satisfaction. on Do You See The Employment Glass 92.2% Full Or 7.8% Empty?

Got it?  Glass was in the title of my post.  The next one takes the title and incorporates it into the comment:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Anchorage Crime Map":

I usually do not write a bunch of comments, however i did a few searching and wound up here "Anchorage Crime Map". And I do have a couple of questions for you if you tend not to mind. Could it be simply me or does it look as if like some of the responses look like they are left by brain dead visitors?
:-P And, if you are writing on additional social sites, I would like to follow anything new you have to post.
Could you make a list of all of your community pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?
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Engages, barely, the topic:

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I left the Finland comment up.  But not the next one.

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This was a recent comment on an old post on Alaska Bloggers. The comment has nothing to do with the post.  The only connection is "Alaska." But it does purport to tell the salary of Ultrasound technicians in Anchorage. I could leave it.  But the delete decision was sealed when it abbreviated Alaska as AL. Sorry, we aren't Alabama.


Each comment gets emailed to me.  That way I know about comments on old posts like the last one.  They also show up on the Overview page for the blog.  There they are divided into published and spam.  Sometimes good posts get caught up in the spam filter.  Most of the spam does get caught.

They do take time to remove and I get two or more every day.  It's one of the reasons I leave the sign-in process for comments.  At least the spam has to be put up by a real person who has to sign in and get past the captcha.  But I've had comments from real readers who had trouble posting comments because of all that.  I did read in a forum that some bloggers have opened their comments  and that the Blogger spam filter catches most of their spam.  I've been thinking about experimenting to see what happens if I cut out the security for comments.  We'll see.  Now I have enough to keep me busy.

I'm at LAX now and if all goes well, we'll make it to our Chinese class in Anchorage at 6 tonight. In addition to the vocabulary and dialogues to know, I have to write an email in Chinese.  So I've got things to keep me busy on the flights. 

Happy Halloween California Style

Some of my mom's neighbors seem to really get into Halloween decorations.  Most of these are from one yard, though many others had decorations. There were some in San Francisco as well.  As the day ends, here are some pictures. 

Click any of these pictures to see them clearer

 

This is a small car sized cat whose head moves back and forth every now and then.

These two (above and below) are from San Francisco.