Anchorage's Janice Shamberg Has Art Opening In West Hollywood

Saturday afternoon saw the opening of a show of the flower paintings of former Anchorage assemblywoman.  I would say her years at the DeArmoun Greenhouse had more to do with the subject of her paintings.

There were a lot of folks there when we arrived after seeing Lion Ark nearby in Beverly Hills.  More on that movie - coming to the Anchorage International Film Festival in December.

These are big and bold portraits of flowers Janice has known. 

AIFF2013: Film Festival Schedule Now Available

The Anchorage International Film Festival starts in three weeks - Friday night Dec. 6, 2013.  The schedule of all the films is now up on their website.

You can see a list of all the films in all the categories here.

The festival also contracts with an independent company - Festival Genius - for software for film festival schedules.  The Anchorage Festival's schedule - all the dates and times and locations of the films are there.

Screen shot from AIFF 2013

The blue fg logo is for Festival Genius.  This image is from the AIFF2013 page.  It's a header that rotates with other headers.  Click on the blue logo when you see it on the AIFF website and it will take you to the schedule.  (But the logo on the image here doesn't link.  But I did link the whole image below.)


It takes a little time to get used to, but you can sort by

• event (there are also parties, awards, screen blocks*, and workshops)
• category (to see the Features, or Documentaries, or Animated, etc.)
• country (there are 24 different countries listed that films come from)
• venue (Bear Tooth, Alaska Experience Theater, Museum, etc.)

If you click the image, it will take you to that page and you can experiment with it.

Beware: [Dean Franklin, the AIFF computer guy, corrected this in the comment below.  Just click on the AIFF banner in Festival Genius and you get back to the AIFF pages.  I wonder how long that's been the case.  I know the first year it wasn't.  Thanks, Dean.]  The Festival Genius page - even for the Anchorage International Film Festival schedule - is a totally different website.  It doesn't have links back to the AIFF site.  You can usually use your browser's "go back one page" arrow in the upper left corner.  If you hold that arrow down, it will give you a list of pages.  So if you look at five pages on FG, you can hold that arrow down and find the link back to the AIFF2013 site.  (I know, most of you know that.  But some people don't.)



*screening blocks are groups of shorter films that are shown together in a single program.


[Feedburner Note:  This is the third post in a row to get pinged immediately to blogrolls.  I'm guessing they've figured out and fixed the problem.  But I'll be checking for the next couple of weeks just in case I'm wrong.  I won't leave any of these notes if all is well.  But if there is another problem I'll note it.]

The Case That HD 5 Was Gerrymandered - Part 2

In Part 1, I offered some background information on where things stand now and on redistricting and gerrymandering in general, including four major ways to manipulate districts.  I also included a section on "The current partisan redistricting facts in Alaska" as I see them.

In this post, Part 2, we start looking at the maps to understand in excruciating detail (yet still not enough) why the plaintiffs are challenging the plan.  This post focuses on House District (HD) 5, though the plaintiffs challenge other districts as well.

I thought I'd finish this post (Part 2), but there's definitely more left over for Part 3.  Also, I realize I started all this in an earlier post - Alaska Redistricting Board: Compactness And Fairbanks Districts 3 and 5 - Part 1.  That one looks at the concept of compactness as discussed by different students of redistricting. It's good background for this post.


Some Maps

Let's go from the theoretical to the hands-on and look at some maps.   The Board's map of HD 5 makes it hard to actually see

Note:  House Districts are numbered and Senate Districts are lettered so on maps 5-C means it's HD 5 in SD C. Senate Districts have 2 House Districts.

all of HD 5.    The inset, lower right, shows the whole district, but it's much to small to understand what's really going on in this district. It doesn't show you how much of the district has no population and where there are actually people.

[All the maps except B and E should get much bigger if you click on them]

Map A - whole district in two parts

I  enlarged the inset to better see the whole district.    I've colored in the populated areas in yellow.  I don't know Fairbanks, so there may be a little more area to the left of Chena Ridge that has population along the road, but as I looked at the maps, it looked sparsely populated at best.

Map B - With populated areas in yellow

The populated parts of the district are a small part near the top left (to the west of the City of Fairbanks), a little bit southwest of Fairbanks, and then the part that has been called 'the anvil' to the east of the City of Fairbanks and more connected to North Pole.

Most of the district is what was called 'the bombing range' by the Board.  Actually, it's Tanana Flats Training Area.  The right (below) is a map of the Tanana Flats Training Area - part of Ft Wainwright and unpopulated and inaccessible to the public without a permit - and you can see an amazing resemblance to HD 5. Basically, there's a tiny populated part on top and then the Tanana Flats was tacked onto HD 5. 

Map C:  Comparing HD 5 map to map of Tanana Flats Training Area of Ft. Wainwright

But this map also helped me understand what I hadn't understood before.  On the Board's maps, there are diagonal lines going through HD 2.  They are like the lines shown in most of HD 5.  Looking at the map above I realized that the little 'turret' on top of Tanana Flats is Fort Wainright. (People who know Fairbanks would, of course, have realized this.) And it's right in the middle of HD 2.  The brown outline in the top picture (see below) was in the original.  I added it in to the bottom image to make it easier to see.

Map D: Locating Ft. Wainwright - top map from DODPIF site

Military Bases and Redistricting

Tanana Flats Training Area is technically part of Fort Wainright - a contiguous part. Early in the redistricting process the Board got a letter from the Lt. Governor asking them to keep military bases intact as much as possible. It's something they mentioned frequently when working on Anchorage. The purpose was to not have precincts that overlapped the base and off base. It would be hard for civilians if they had to get onto base to vote and they didn't want to make military have to go off base to vote. It seemed to me at the time that military go off base all the time for other things so going a little off base to vote shouldn't be that difficult, but that was the rationale. Now, in this case, as I understand it, there is no population living in the Tanana Flats other than bears and moose and other wildlife. No voters anyway. So the Lt. Governor's rationale doesn't apply here.  But the principle of keeping military districts intact is reasonable and would have been a good rationale to have the unpopulated Tanana Flats part of HD 2.   Keep this in mind for when we get into the discussion of which district Tanana Flats was put into.


Let's go back and look at the populated parts of HD 5.  I've isolated them in this image so you can see them clearly. (Again, I'm not sure how much population is to the west of the section on the left, but if there's more it doesn't affect my point.)

Map E:  Populated Parts of HD 5 isolated

Contiguity

One of the constitutional requirements for redistricting is contiguity.  That means that all parts of the district are connected to all other parts.  If you live in the small part of HD 5 on the right/east (above), you are among 800 people in HD 5 who are separated from the other 16,900 people of HD 5 who live on the left/west side. The City of Fairbanks is between the two parts - including Ft. Wainwright and HD 1 and HD 2.   But you're in bed with folks in North Pole to the right.  (see maps above) 

Technically, these two parts of HD 5 are connected by the Tanana Flats Training Area.  But, from what I can tell online and asking folks, you need permission from the military to go on that land and there aren't any roads to take you from what I'm calling "East Pakistan" to "West Pakistan" through the Flats.  Instead you have to go through at least HD 2 and possibly HD 1 too.  Or maybe kayak along the river.

I've been told that the Alaska Courts have allowed districts to have isolated communities that are not connected to other communities by road.  But I'd wager that those decisions were made about roadless rural districts, not about urban districts.  If I were arguing this case, I'd be pointing out that this district, for all practical purposes, is NOT contiguous.  Not in any way that is meaningful to the people in it and that this lack of contiguity is not required by geography or lack of population or roadless wilderness.  This is an urban area where the population is dense enough and the census blocks numerous enough, that a few computer clicks could put these 800 people into HD 2 or HD 3 (or half in one and half in the other.)  Then a few more clicks could add 800 more people back into HD 5 and a few more clicks could get HD 2 and 3 within reasonable deviations from the ideal sized district of 17,755.  A few more clicks and all the impacted districts would be fine.  Maybe 30 minutes for someone who's been using the software a while.

The folks at the Board will talk to you about census blocks and ripple effects, but if you sat down with someone who knows the computer program, you'd see it can be done.  That same argument was made in the last trial.  They swore that changing a protrusion from one downtown Fairbanks district into the other would cause endless ripple effects.  A little later, the plaintiff's GIS expert showed the judge just how easy it was to do without causing any ripple effects. These are excuses, not reasons. 




The Anvil and Compactness

The plaintiffs didn't make a contiguity argument in their motions to the court.  Instead they talked about compactness.  And they pointed to what they called 'the anvil' sitting there on the east side jutting into the community just above North Pole.

Let's look at this 'anvil.'  As you'll see, when I tried to find a visual for it, I found another visual that seemed to fit the shape a little better than the anvil.

Map F:  The Anvil in Context

Now, back to compactness with the anvil in mind.  I posted about compactness in relationship to HDs 3 and 5 in October.  That was the conceptual post and there was supposed to be a second one that looked at maps.  I guess that's this one, except I added one more in between.   You can look at that October post to learn a bit about compactness.  Or you can read this explanation which I'm borrowing from All About Redistricting.

• Compactness Almost as often as state law asks districts to follow political boundaries, it asks that districts be "compact." 37 states require their legislative districts to be reasonably compact; 18 states require congressional districts to be compact as well.
  Few states define precisely what "compactness" means, but a district in which people generally live near each other is usually more compact than one in which they do not. Most observers look to measures of a district's geometric shape. In California, districts are compact when they do not bypass nearby population for people farther away. In the Voting Rights Act context, the Supreme Court seems to have construed compactness to indicate that residents have some sort of cultural cohesion in common.
  Scholars have proposed more than 30 measures of compactness, each of which can be applied in different ways to individual districts or to a plan as a whole. These generally fit into three categories. In the first category, contorted boundaries are most important: a district with smoother boundaries will be more compact, and one with more squiggly boundaries will be less compact. In the second category, the degree to which the district spreads from a central core (called "disperson") is most important: a district with few pieces sticking out from the center will be more compact, and one with pieces sticking out farther from the district's center will be less compact. In the third category, the relationship of housing patterns to the district's boundaries is most important: district tendrils, for example, are less meaningful in sparsely populated areas but more meaningful where the population is densely packed."
  

Using the standards from All About Redistricting (above), we can see that each one raises

Map A - whole district in two parts

a red flag for the HD 5.

• Contorted Boundaries - There's no question that HD 5 has contorted boundaries.  If you just look at the whole district (Map A inset) without knowing where the population is, it doesn't look bad.  But when you know that a tiny percent of the land in the district has any population (Map B) and that population is separated into two non-contiguous parts (Map E), it's clear there is something fishy here. 
• Dispersion - The central core is west of the City of Fairbanks and then you have is 'East Pakistan" ('the anvil") not only sticking out from the center, but for all practical purposes, it's not even connected to "West Pakistan."
• Housing Patterns -  The anvil is clearly a district tendril which the description above says is more problematic in urban areas than rural areas.  Fairbanks is the second biggest urban area in the State.  There's no need for HD 5 to have an 800 person orphan neighborhood separated from the rest of the 16,900 people by two other districts. They could easily pick up 800 people from neighborhoods current split into HD 4 or HD 1. 

Also, this district does not pass the California test mentioned, because it passes up nearby folks to get the anvil people off by North Pole.  

Redrawing the lines outlines two ways to measure compactness - visually and mathematically.  The first is just to look and see if there are any odd shapes or protrusions.

• "If the districts drawn are too irregular-looking, it may become a signal to the courts that the lines may have been motivated by a desire to engage in race-based redistricting, which may be held unlawful."

This was what I meant when I said in Part 1 that compactness (or contiguity) can be a proxy for, in our case,  political gerrymandering.  And the "too irregular-looking" anvil is one reason this plan is in court.

• "a mathematical formula may be the best way to measure compactness. There are various methods for calculating the compactness of a district including looking at how the population is distributed within the district, measuring the borders of the district, or evaluating the area of the district."

The Board did give the court a list of statistical tests for compactness with scores for each to show that the district  (and district 3) is compact.  But I looked up the tests and what the scores mean.  (The Board just gave raw numbers without interpretation.)  For some tests, the districts in questions scored ok.  For others they were on the suspicious end of the scale.  Which is one of the problems with the tests - different tests tell you different things.

The other problem I have with the Board offering statistics to the court is that I never heard any mention at the Board meetings of using the statistical tests as a criterion to see if their districts were compact.  This is an after-the-fact justification by the Board which wasn't considered by the board while making the maps (at least not in public meetings) and doesn't really tell us whether the districts are compact or not. 

Is the anvil necessary to keep Fairbanks deviations low?

The Board tells us that they needed the anvil so the deviations would work out - that is, so that the populations of all the Fairbanks districts would be the lowest deviation possible from the ideal district size of 17,755.  I would point out that in the previous plans, urban deviations of 1% and even 2% existed.  

But this time around, low deviation became their new mantra and they got Fairbanks deviations down to below a 1/2 %.  Without the demands of the Voting Rights Act (a significant portion of which the US Supreme Court struck down last June), the Board says they can make the deviations much lower.  But why?  One or two percent is already well within legal and common sense range.  In my mind they've gone extreme at the cost of other important values.  Or they are just using the low deviations to justify creating anvils. 

I'd also note that when the Plaintiffs argue that they could configure Fairbanks Senate districts so that their deviations are even lower, the Board thinks the difference is too minor to matter.  I tend to agree with them on that, but I also think the increased deviation that cutting this whole eastern annex out of HD 5 might cause is no big deal either as long as it's still under two percent.  

But the deviation is just one of a cascade of factors, all of which fall the wrong way for the Board.  It's the totality of all these factors that should cause eyebrows to arch when looking at the Fairbanks districts.  And that's where I'll go in Part 3. 

But, before ending this post I do want to point out that there are some legitimate reasons for there to be some odd shapes. 

• Geography - there might be mountains or rivers or other natural features that the district line follows and that make sense on the ground, but look suspicious on the map. 
• Population - to get the right number of people into a district, the mappers might have to stretch out to capture a small distant community.
• Odd Census Block shapes - The smallest unit the Board can deal with is a census block.  As I understand it, this is because they have to use the census data for population.  The smallest unit the census data has is the block.  So if a census block  has a weird shape - most likely for the above reasons - the map maker can claim her weirdly shaped district is a result of the census block.
• Governmental Units -  a district line might follow an irregular city border.  

But the first thee are all more likely to occur in rural areas than in urban areas.  And when they do occur in urban areas, there's enough population so that you can usually adjust some adjoining census blocks to smooth out any bad bumps.  The last one doesn't apply to HD 5.  It's not the city borders that are irregular, it's the district borders.


I'm going to end this post here.  It's already way too long for most readers.  There's more to be discussed.  I hope readers remember that I'm only focusing on one House district here (and that will spillover a bit into HD 5's Senate pairing in the next post).  There are so many little details here that it's easy for either side to say what it wants and most observers won't be in a position to know who's blowing smoke.  (They could both be.)  I'm hoping this post might help some people understand the what's happening here. 

Coming up in the next redistricting post(s) are things like:  

• Why put the Tanana Flats in HD 5?  
• The plaintiff's offer to drop the case if the the Board changed the Fairbanks senate district pairings and why the Board said no. 
• Reviewing all the factors that are wrong about HD 5.
• A peek at the other districts challenged in the court case.  

[UPDATE 4:47pm:  I forgot to include this in the post.  It's the legal description of HD 5 that was part of the Board's Proclamation Plan.  It doesn't mean a whole lot to me since I don't know Fairbanks at all, but it might mean something to people in Fairbanks.  Note that in some places it's a bit vague like "north along the boundary to a levee near the Tanana River, east along a non-visible line to the end of Rozak Road."

House District 5–Senate District C–Chena Ridge/Airport

House District 5 is bounded by a line beginning at the intersection of the Mitchell Expressway and the boundary of the City of Fairbanks, south then east then north along the boundary to a levee near the Tanana River, east along a non-visible line to the end of Rozak Road, north along Rozak Road to the Old Richardson Highway, northwest to Durango Trail, north along a non-visible line to Lakloey Drive, north to Bradway Road, east to Benn Lane, south to Ownby Road, east to Woll Road, north to Marigold Road, east to Badger Loop Road, to the intersection of Badger Loop Road and Repp Road, southwest along a non-visible line to the end of Willeda Street,southwest along a non-visible line to the northwestern-most corner of the boundary of the City of North Pole, southwest along the boundary to the eastern bank of the Tanana River,southeast along the eastern bank to the intersection of the Tanana River and the boundary of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, south across the Tanana River to the boundary of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, west then north along the boundary to a jeep trail near the Old Nenana Highway, east along the jeep trail to the Parks Highway, northeast the GVEA Powerlines near Rosie Creek Road, north then northeast to the Parks Highway, north to Townsend Lane, north to Goldhill Road, northeast to Ester Road, east to Tanana Drive, south to an unnamed road near Noatak Drive, northwest to Koyukuk Drive, east to Sheenlek Drive, north to a non-visible line extending west from Kuskokwim Way, east to Kuskokwim Way, east to Tanana Drive, north to the intersection of Tanana Drive and Farmers Loop Road, east along a non-visible line to the headwaters of Pearl Creek, east along a non-visible line to College Road, east to the boundary of the City of Fairbanks, southwest then southeast to the point of beginning.]

Did You Tell Your Kids You Love Them Today?

"I want to tell you that from the moment you were in my belly, I loved you dearly. I love you then, today and always. You are my world, my everything. Without you, there's no me."

That's the letter high school football player Damian Sanchez got from his mom when his football coach sent letters home asking the parents to write down how they feel about their sons in a letter.

Then he had the players bring them back in a sealed envelope.  One day he had them all together for a meeting and passed out the letters.

What happened next took everyone by surprise. For the next 15 minutes or so, wherever Matsumoto looked he saw players sobbing — against walls, in corners, bent over in chairs.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Shalls Jacome, the team's 22-year-old offensive coordinator.

Letters of love

Players read letters their parents wrote to them.

Cesar Orozco, a senior offensive lineman, broke down when he read what his mother had written in Spanish: "You know deep inside I love you. And you're the most important thing in my life. You know I would die for you."
"I don't really get told that at home," Cesar said. "For me to be reading that, it really touches me."
John Mercado, a sophomore lineman, sobbed so hard reading his mother's letter that he had to pause before finishing. He had come close to quitting the team when his parents lost their jobs and needed financial help.
His mother wrote in Spanish: "I'm very proud. You're the nicest kid I've ever raised and during hard times you don't ever ask for anything."

 This is more than just a feel good human interest story.  This is a pretty stark and amazing testament to everyone's need for love.  While it makes total sense and I've believed that if everyone had a loving, caring family, there would be no wars, it still was surprising.   It's worth reading the whole thing.  We should always try to find the human being hidden in the bodies, and behind the facades, all around us.  When you find that real person inside  you can have authentic conversation and communication. 

Here's the link to the whole LA Times story. 

[Feedburner note:  This post was up on blogrolls in less than 15 minutes.  The two previous posts took two hours or less to get to blogrolls.  I'm hoping this was a problem that feedburner had and now they have fixed it.  We'll see.]

The Case That HD 5 Was Gerrymandered - Part 1

I'm dividing this into sections so it's easier to find the parts you want or need to read.

Introduction
 
This is the first of two posts on HD 5 in Fairbanks.  The title reflects the implied case that the plaintiffs are making against the Board.  The Plaintiffs argue that HD 5 has compactness problems.  They also want a different pairing of House District 5 to make a better Senate seat - one that would make more likely the election of a second Democratic Senator in the Fairbanks area.  They don't use the word gerrymandering, but, as I mention below, the constitutional standards tend to stand as proxies for the harder to prove gerrymandering.

In Part 1 here, I want to give background.  In Part 2 we'll look at maps and details of HD 5 and the related Senate districts.  Other districts in Matsu and Kenai and rural Alaska are challenged by the plaintiffs, but just looking at this one in close detail will be more than enough to understand what's going on and what's at stake.  And, I hope, help people be able to react to the eventual court decision with facts as well as partisan fervor. 

Purpose of the Post

To make this accessible to people not following this day-to-day.
This isn't that hard to understand, it's just that there are so many details, that keeping it all straight is difficult.  Plus, a lot of stuff is subjective and requires someone who has enough grasp on the facts and the standards to come to an informed conclusion.  For example both sides will talk about compactness and then one side will say moving these people from this district to another will cause a ripple effect.  The other side says, no, they can be put into another district easily.  It takes someone who has watched the map making to have a better sense of which claim is more accurate.

As someone who has been to nearly every Board meeting held in Anchorage and at most of the others via the phone or online, I know that this is complex and that there is more to this than can be presented in the facts.  In this post I'm going to present what the parties have said and also give you my sense of which side is more persuasive.  But I have no special powers and other people who were there a lot might come to different conclusions.

Scope of this Post

I'm focusing on Fairbanks HD 5.  I think I understand this a little better than the other points being challenged - Matsu and Kenai and some rural districts.  Looking at HD 5 will inevitably get us into neighboring districts - mainly 3 and 4 - and into Senate Seats B and C.  I'm hoping, though, that if people get into the details of HD 5, they can get a grasp of the competing standards, and why this is all so difficult to prove one way or the other.  But at least, when the judge's opinion comes down, you'll be able to follow it.  

Background - How We Got Here

1. The Redistricting Board submitted its latest redistricting plan July 14, 2013
2. The Riley plaintiffs - George Riley from Ester and Ron Dearborn from Goldstream, two liberal leaning communities near Fairbanks - challenged the plan.  They also challenged the original plans as well, challenges that ended with the Alaska Supreme Court
1. invalidating the first plan
2. requiring some changes to accept the second plan as an interim plan that was used in the 2012 elections, because there wasn't enough time for a complete new plan, and
3. determining the interim plan was unconstitutional and that the Board needed to make another plan for the 2014 election
3. The Board objected to the plaintiffs challenges
4. More briefs were filed with more details of the complaints.
5. The Board filed briefs to dismiss the complaints
6. The Alaska Democratic Party filed complaints.
7. North Star Fairbanks Borough filed an amicus brief.
8. The judge - Michael McConahy - can make summary judgments on some or all of these motions.  That means he can just decide who is right or wrong and issue an order.  Or he can say he needs more information and allow the two sides to make further arguments in court. My guess is that he may make a few summary judgments and then identify the points he needs to hear more on in court.  That court date is set for Dec. 9 - 16 in Fairbanks. 

You can see all these briefs at the Board's website.  In this post my focus will be on House District 5 to give you a sense of what the court has to decide.  But looking at 5 will mean also looking at the districts around it.  But there's lots there.  Here are the ones I'd start with:

Corrected Copy of Riley Plaintiff's Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary*
Doc 296 - ARB's Response Part 1
Doct 296  ARB's Response Part 2
Doc 296  ARB's Response Part 3

*I can't find this one on the Board's list.  It was sent to me and I think it's a consolidation of previous motions.  It's long, but there aren't that many words on each page. 

Background - Redistricting and Gerrymandering

 These two words go together.  Redistricting is about redrawing the lines of the political districts (in Alaska's case since we only have one member of the US House, redistricting is only about the state house and senate).  How one draws the lines can have enormous impact on which party gets more members elected.  Gerrymandering is the term used to describe shaping districts to favor one party over the other.

It takes Wikipedia's entry on Redistricting only 253 words to start talking about gerrymandering.  At All About Redistricting's page What Is Redistricting? gerrymander is the 207th word.   My point is that most people who know anything about redistricting expect the party in power to take advantage of their power.  The only real question is can they make their maps so that they favor their side BUT also stay legal?

Both parties will claim, publicly, their innocence and exclaim the other party's guilt.  "We have done nothing but correct the gross abuse of the other party in the last redistricting."

ProPublica's Redistricting, A Devil's Dictionary identifies several of the typical gerrymandering ploys:

• Cracking: This technique splits a community into multiple districts to ensure it doesn't have significant sway with a candidate. . .
• Packing: When faced with too many unfriendly voters, it can also be a winning strategy to limit the damage by drawing them all into one district. The benefit for you is there are fewer of the voters you don't want in all the surrounding districts. When race is involved, redistricting pros call it bleaching.  . . .
• Hijacking: If there's an incumbent you don't like, you can make their re-election difficult by putting them in a district with another incumbent to contend with. . .
• Kidnapping: Most politicians have geographic political bases; places they came up in politics where they have supporters, political allies, donors and name recognition. But what if their home address ends up in a different district than their base? That can make re-election tough. . .

The ProPublica link gives more explanations and examples with maps.


This is like poker.  People keep as straight a face as they can while they make all sorts of claims.


The current partisan redistricting facts in Alaska are these: 

1.  The Alaska Supreme Court declared the process the Board went through last time to be unconstitutional.  The Board will tell you, and not incorrectly, that the Court found the process, not the product, unconstitutional.  But since the process was unconstitutional, the Court didn't look at each district's constitutionality.

2.  The Board has four Republicans and one Democrat.  The Democrat, Marie Greene, is the CEO of NANA Corporation, an Alaska Native Regional Corporation.  The Board  claims that all their decisions were unanimous and since they had a Democrat, it shows there was no partisanship.  I agree that almost all the decisions have been unanimous.  But my sense was that Marie Greene's main concern was to make sure that Alaska Natives were treated fairly.  She did not raise issues about other Democratic party concerns. 

3. The state Senate,  before redistricting, had a 10-10 split between Democrats and Republicans, with a bi-partisan coalition running the Senate.  After the 2012 election, which used the interim redistricting plan, the Senate had a 13-7 Republican majority.  Two Democratic Senators were redistricted into the same district in Fairbanks. (Note the ploy of Hijacking above.) Alaska's only Black legislator was given a far more conservative district than before (Cracking), and a Republican and Democratic Senator were put in the same district in Southeast Alaska.  There had to be a pairing of two incumbent Senators in SE, because of population decline. It could have been two Democrats, two Republicans, or one of each. 

4.  While the Chair of the Board declared, at the first Board meeting, that he had no instructions from the Governor (who appointed him) and had not even met with the Governor, the Chair of the Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich, was an active observer throughout the whole process.  The Executor Director of the Board had recently worked for Ruedrich as the Republican Victory Director in 2010.  I like the (now former) Executive Director and he was always fair and open with me.  And there is nothing illegal about these arrangements, but the Republican Party was able to share its opinions about the districts more easily than was the Democratic Party.

5.  The Board member who did most of the mapping of Fairbanks, Jim Holm, is a former Fairbanks legislator who was defeated by current Democratic representative Scott Kawasaki.  His original maps of Fairbanks turned out to have what was called by the Democrats "the Kawaski finger."  The house of S. Kawasaki was 'kidnapped' into another district by a small protrusion.  It turns out that the house belonged to Sonia, Scott's sister, but you can't convince the Democrats that it wasn't an attempt to put Scott into a totally different district.  The Board's attorney recently pointed out to me that the Court found, in the previous trial, the arguments of gerrymandering unpersuasive.  And I agree that the evidence presented probably wasn't enough to prove anything.  But being the one who does the maps where you lost your last election smells a bit like conflict of interest to me.

As a blogger, I'm more than conscious that raising these points will likely cause Republicans to declare my obvious bias.  But these are things I observed or heard about and to not mention them would also be bias. If readers are going to get a sense of what was happening I need to include them.  These points, by themselves prove nothing, but they do give the context for judging the outcome.   I also heard Democrats who said they would take the same liberties if they had been in power. 

I should also note that the Board’s rules, drafted by the Board’s attorney, Michael White,  say that gerrymandering is illegal, White has also said on a number of occasions, that no redistricting plan in modern times has been overturned because of political gerrymandering.   

The point is, unless a Board member says explicitly that they have gerrymandered, it’s hard to tell what was going on inside their heads. 

That’s why the process of redistricting is so controversial.  The Courts now use the more objective criteria of compactness, contiguity, etc.  as a proxy for gerrymandering.  They don’t call it gerrymandering, but if a district looks strange enough, it can be ruled not compact and thus unconstitutional.  No need to use the G word. 

So, the assumption by many, if not most, is that the Republicans are going to do their best to take advantage of their  4-1 majority on the Board to nudge the districts here and there to favor Republican candidates. 

And the Board members are going to deny this, because if they acknowledge gerrymandering, they would then have their plan thrown out.  So even if a Board were completely unbiased, there would be suspicion of gerrymandering.


And In The Board's Defense

I would also note that the Board meetings were all very accessible for anyone, like me, who had the time and was in Anchorage.  And most meetings, after the first few months, were accessible online or by phone. Most of the Board members and all of the staff were always willing to answer questions in detail during breaks and after meetings.   The Board had a difficult task before them balancing different criteria to map a huge state with a sparse population.    Strangely large districts are inevitable.  Compared to what's happened in some states, this Board has been transparent and did not get greedy.  I think some of the new districts also reflect the split within the Republican Party between the traditional leadership and the new Tea Party activists.  The court's decision is not going to be a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination.  

The question the Court will have to address is whether the issues that the plaintiffs raise are violations of the Alaska constitution, or whether the anomalies they allege are simply the by-products of balancing many factors to map a huge state with a sparse and scattered population. 

Part 2 will look at the maps and the details of HD 5 and neighboring house and Senate districts to help folks understand what is happening and why.  

[UPDATE Nov. 15, 2013:  Part 2 is now up here.]


 

The Inventor of the Japanese Zero Presented Exquisitely In The Wind Rises

Kenneth Turan at the LA Times gushed about the Wind Rises last week.  He billed it as Japanese director/animator Hayao Miyazaki's final film.  We were dazzled by one of his previous films, Spirited Away, so we waited for the weekend crowds to die down a bit and saw it tonight.

It's spectacularly beautiful, a visual massage, about a young boy, Jiro Horikoshi, who dreams of flight and building beautiful flying machines.  We watch him grow to fulfill that dream as the designer of the Japanese Zero, the plane that attacked Pearl Harbor.  A basic theme is the conflict between achieving such beauty and how that beauty is used.

I loved the movie because of its beauty.  I realized, though, driving home, that the characters had no real depth.  Although Italian aircraft designer Gianni Caproni talks with Jiro, in dream sequences that come and go throughout the film, about war and the killing use of these beautiful machines, the on-screen Jiro remains the child-like designing genius throughout the movie, as you can see in the image of him below when he's an adult designing planes for the Japanese military.   The characters all remain, literally, cartoon characters with no complexity at all.        

Screen Shot From LA Times Video Review
  Click to See Video

Maybe that's what he appeared to be to the people who knew him, for when his bosses find out he's engaged, they can't stop laughing as they exclaim, "He's human after all."  

Miyazaki tells his story in his own rich (a term that seems too poor for this film) visuals and I feel guilt raising questions about character.  Some might even argue that it was there in the imagery and I just missed it.  I think my wish for more nuanced characters stems from a point in the movie when I forgot I was watching an animated film because the story was so real.  And afterward when I examined that thought, the simplicity of the characters seemed to detract.

But definitely go see this film.  It's more than amazing.

11/12/13

Humans like patterns.
Some people like to extract extra meaning into coincidental patterns.
I think it's of note that today is the 12th day of the 11th month of 2013.  But I don't think it means anything.
Especially since people in other parts of the world note the day first and then the month, which would make today 12/11/13.
And in cultures that use the lunar calendar it's totally different.  In each of those cultures it's totally different.

So enjoy the accidental pattern, but I don't think it means much more than a nice shadow on the wall.

Eating Ethiopian On Fairfax

After the eye doctor today, we went via Fairfax on the way to the LA County Museum.

I asked someone if they still had the Ethiopian restaurants on Fairfax.  They do.  I'm not sure about the economics of having so many in one block, but if you want Ethiopian food in LA, try Fairfax between Whitworth and Olympic.

Power Profiling: Trusting People Who Wear the Right Clothes, Have The Right Titles, Sound Certain

We hear a lot about racial profiling, where innocent people are harassed because they "look" like they are trouble.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is what I would call POWER PROFILING where we trust people who dress right,  have positions of authority, and act like people in power.  Some of these people use their facade of respectability to hide their misuse of power and outright crimes.  Most people tend to trust them because they have the aura of respectability.

An important avenue of study would cover:

1. Distinguishing between those who legitimately use their authority from those who abuse it.
2. Learning what's special about the people (politicians, activists, victims, journalists) who are able and willing to see through the facade and challenge the abusers and how to distinguish them from people who falsely challenge those in power
3. Learning more about those who refuse to accept the truth and/or even cover it up - those in power above the corrupt ones and those who watch from the side.  

Here are some examples of people in power who successfully hid their wrong doings because people didn't challenge them or didn't believe the challengers.  These have been sitting in a draft post for a while and are from 2010, but new ones pop up every day.

Belgian  Bishop Abused own nephew.

Behind an aggressive investigation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium that drew condemnation from the pope himself lies a stark family tragedy: the molestation, for years, of a youth by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges; the prelate’s abrupt resignation when a friend of the nephew finally threatened to make the abuse public; and now the grass-roots fury of almost 500 people complaining of abuse by priests. 

Diabetes drug maker hid evidence that their profitable drug was dangerous:

"In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.

Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.
But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover them up, according to documents recently obtained by The New York Times. The company did not post the results on its Web site or submit them to federal drug regulators, as is required in most cases by law.
“This was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar,” Dr. Martin I. Freed, a SmithKline executive, wrote in an e-mail message dated March 29, 2001, about the study results that was obtained by The Times. “Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK,” the corporate successor to SmithKline."

In BP’s Record, a History of Boldness and Costly Blunders

Time and again, BP has insisted that it has learned how to balance risk and safety, efficiency and profit. Yet the evidence suggests that fundamental change has been elusive.
Revisiting Texas City in 2009, inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found more than 700 safety violations and proposed a record fine of $87.4 million — topping the earlier record set by BP in the 2005 accident. Most of the penalties, the agency said, were because BP had failed to live up to the previous settlement fully.
In March of this year, OSHA found 62 violations at BP’s Ohio refinery, proposing $3 million more in penalties.
“Senior management told us they are very serious about safety, but we observed that they haven’t translated their words into safe working procedures and practices, and they have difficulty applying the lessons learned from refinery to refinery or even from within refineries,” said Mr. Michaels, the OSHA administrator.
BP is contesting OSHA’s allegations, saying it has made substantial improvements at both facilities.
Accidents have also continued to plague BP’s pipelines in Alaska. Most recently, on May 25, a power failure led to a leak that overwhelmed a storage tank and spilled about 200,000 gallons of oil — the third-largest spill on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Philosophers call the study of how we determine the truth epistemology and the questions I raise fall in that category.  But there's no need to wait for people in power to do this study.  You can look around you.

• What stories have you not believed that turned out to be true?  
• Or believed and turned out to be false?   
• To what extent, in hind sight, did you believe or doubt because of how it aligned with what you wanted to believe or doubt?
• Who are the people around you who question those in authority?  
• Do they tend to be right or wrong in the long run?  
• What distinguishes those who are generally right from those who are generally wrong?
• Do the ones who have been generally wrong know they were wrong?  
• Were there signs in people who have betrayed your trust that will tip you off sooner in the future?

 

 

Healing The Heel

I've noted here now and then that I'm having problems with my right heel.  It's swollen up on occasion and I stopped running about eight weeks ago and decided it was time to go to the doctor.  He sent me to a podiatrist.  (The referral system through Providence didn't work well at all.  It took three weeks and three follow up calls on my part just to get an appointment and I'm not sure I actually got to one of the four doctors that my doctor said he would recommend.)

The doctor said it was my tendon and that the minimalist shoes don't help.  Like the NYTimes article I posted about recently, he said that landing on the balls of your feet put more pressure on the tendons than other shoes

Image from Marathon Rookie

  He offered a whole array of possible actions.  I chose physical therapy.  This time I was able to get an appointment quickly - the day before we left for LA.

She set up a program of exercises that will strengthen the


The physical therapist gave me a set of exercises to strengthen the muscles in my calf to take pressure off of the tendon.

There are a lot of things to do.

I think I understand these exercises - and there are a few more - but I need to check one more time on how often I have to do them.  I know at least twice a day, but four lengths of the room (that only makes sense if you are in that room, which I was when she showed me what to do, but feet would also be helpful) four times for the heal raise and then there are three more where I have to walk on my heel - straight, on the outside of my heel, and on the inside of my heel.

There's also a protocol for getting back into running.  Starting with walking for 40 minutes for two days, then alternately walking for 4.5 minutes and jogging 30 seconds.  Then each day shorten the walking parts a bit and adding to the jogging.  All the while doing the exercises.  She said I could do the exercises during the walking parts.

This is the second time I've gone to a physical therapist.  The first time was when I dislocated a finger.  I was very impressed with her knowledge and my finger is almost completely normal.  It's not quite as straight as the other fingers, but barely noticeable.

And this time, her knowledge of the how the muscles interacted and what motions I needed to do to work particular muscles was eye-opening.

I think everyone should probably go to a physical therapist every now and then to make sure we aren't slipping into patterns that are causing damage.