Gov's Rejection of ACA Funds Like The Religious Couple Refusing Medical Care For Their Ill Child

 NPR (and others) reported in April 2013:

A faith-healing Philadelphia couple on probation after they refused to seek medical care for a son who later died has now lost a second child.

Instead of taking $2.9 billion in federal aid to expand medicaid (with a cost of about $250 million to the state over seven years) and taking about 20,000 Alaskans off the uninsured list, our governor instead relies on the "Invisible Hand" of the free market to take care of these people.

To me that's very similar to not taking your sick kid to a doctor because you believe in God's will.

How many Alaskans will suffer and die because of his refusal to take the ACA funding?

This is not to say that the free market doesn't make a very significant contribution to US prosperity, but unregulated, it also makes a huge contribution to the massive transfer of wealth to what's been popularly called the 1% from the rest. 

I've already posted about the study that the Governor himself commissioned that said expanding medicaid would cost the state  $240 million from 2014-2020
and gain the state $2.9 billion from the Feds.    And about 20,000 fewer Alaskans would be uninsured.

Instead the Governor's ideological beliefs in the miracles of the free market, apparently, have led him to not accept the Federal ACA funding to expand Medicaid in Alaska.

I have no doubt that many people will become unnecessarily ill, miss work, even lose their jobs, and many will die prematurely because of the governor's decision.  Just like this child in Pennsylvania died because of his parent's decision to let God, not modern medicine, save their child. 

I'm reminded of this because of  a new study by Chuck Burnham, Legislative Analyst from the Alaska Legislative Research Services  requested by Sen. Senator Bill Wielechowski.  It adds to the previous studies already showing the overwhelming benefits to the state of expanding Medicaid.   Here's the summary:

Summary  

Among the provisions of  the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111 ‐ 148), or ACA, when it was enacted is a requirement that states expand Medicaid programs to cover individuals with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. 1 Pursuant to the June 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius , Medicaid expansion under the ACA became optional for the states. As you know, on November 15, 2013, Governor Parnell announced his intention to reject Medicaid expansion. Although this decision will have far ‐ reaching and, to some degree, unknown impacts, we confine this report to the specific questions you raised.

Mortality

Although we located no Alaska ‐ specific research on the possible impact on mortality of rejecting Medicaid expansion, a significant body of research shows that health insurance improves access to medical care and outcomes related to a wide range of serious illnesses and disease. Recently published research specifically on Medicaid expansion in other states suggests that rates of mortality decrease among those who are enrolled in the program as compared to the uninsured. Due to differences among populations and Medicaid eligibility thresholds, we believe applying specific numerical finding to Alaska’s uninsured population based on these results would be improper and problematic; however, it is reasonable to conclude that some of the specific benefits found elsewhere would generally accrue to newly enrolled Medicaid participants in Alaska.

Impacts on Healthcare Facilities

The ACA requires reductions in certain payments and reimbursement rates to hospitals. These reductions are more than offset, however, by the reductions in uncompensated care and increased revenues that are projected to occur through expansion of Medicaid. Nationwide, the net effect is estimated at $2.59 in revenues for every $1 in reductions. In Alaska, hospitals expect additional revenues of roughly $60 million per year and a reduction in uncompensated care of over 85 1 Text of the ACA can be accessed at http://www.gpo.gov/f dsys/granule/PLAW ‐ 111publ148/PLAW ‐ 111publ148/content ‐ detail.html . Portions of the federal healthcare overhaul are also contained in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111 ‐ 152), http://www.gpo.go v/fdsys/pkg/PLAW ‐ 111publ152/pdf/PLAW ‐ 111publ152.pdf .  L EGISLATIVE R ESEARCH S ERVICES , LRS 14.117 J ANUARY 8, 2014 — P AGE 2 S ELECTED I MPACTS OF R EJECTING M EDICAID E XPANSION percent. However, because Alaska declined to expand Medicaid, hospitals will absorb the reductions implemented by the ACA without the offsetting benefits.

Effects on Health Insurance Premiums

Research suggests that in 2009 uncompensated care added roughly $257 to premiums per privately insured individual Alaskan, or about eight percent of total private insurance premiums. We are unable to isolate the impact of rejecting Medicaid expansion on insurance premiums; however, implementation of the ACA’s health insurance exchanges coupled with Medicaid expansion in Alaska has been projected to result in savings that could reduce the premium increases associated with cost shifting from $301 in 2014 without the ACA / Medicaid expansion to $45 with the healthcare act fully implemented.

Job Creation

One study estimates that additional Medicaid spending under the ACA would result in the creation of over 1,500 jobs in 2014 with annual increases through 2020 when 4,000 new positions are expected. In that year, these jobs could provide approximately $220 million in wages.

Federal Funding

Three studies on Medicaid expansion projected resultant additional federal funding in “mid ‐ case” enrollment scenarios at between roughly $1.1 billion and $2.9 billion in aggregate for the years 2014 to 2020. Increases in state spending in the same projections ranges from $79 million to $240 million. All three reports estimated federal to state spending ratios under expansion would be over $12 to $1

LAPD's Oil Free Vehicles

I've seen mounted police around Venice Beach before, but I was a little surprised to see them as I crossed Lincoln at Rose.  Lincoln's a major four lane urban street - it's Highway 101's route through parts of LA before it gets back to the coastline.  But there they were, closing in on what appeared to be a homeless man with a stuffed shopping cart (upper right.)


The LAPD website says their

The full-time Mounted Platoon was established in 1987 as a component of the elite Metropolitan Division and is currently composed of 35 full-time sworn police personnel consisting of 1 Lieutenant, 4 Sergeants and 30 Police Officers. City funds were allocated for the purchase of 40 horses to be used by the officers during the performance of their field duties. Also purchased through funds donated by the Ahmanson Foundation were a fleet of 8 trucks and trailers to transport the officers and their mounts to the various details, and a state-of-the-art police equestrian center appropriately named "The Ahmanson Equestrian Facility."  The two-acre Ahmanson Equestrian Facility consists of:

• A forty-horse barn
• Administrative offices
• Locker rooms
• Workout facility
• Covered riding arena
• Hot walker, round pen, and necessary training equipment 

"Hot" in the last item refers, not to the person walking the horse, but, according to Wikipedia, to

"hot, sweaty horses after a workout, particularly after work on a racetrack."

 In this case it refers to a mechanical walker.

But what were the cops doing in a busy traffic area?  Here are the duties for the Mounted Platoon according to the website:

General duties of the Mounted Platoon

Demonstrations - The Mounted Platoon is used regularly at the scene of demonstrations and unruly assemblies. Over the years, squad tactics have been developed to work in concert with officers on foot, enabling the Los Angeles Police Department to control large groups of protesters in a firm yet professional manner.

Crowd Management - The Mounted Platoon is deployed frequently in crowd management situations where large groups have gathered for festivals and parades. The appearance of the Mounted Platoon at these functions provides visible security and a sense of assurance.

Crime Suppression - The Mounted Platoon provides high-profile crime suppression in targeted crime areas. Mounted officers offer an increased level of visibility to both the criminal element and to the community at large. The officers are deployed throughout the City and at various hours.
Additional Mounted Platoon duties include public park enforcement, public beach enforcement during the summer months, and search and rescue of lost or missing persons in mountainous and dense terrain areas of the City of Los Angeles.

Well, since there was no demonstration, no large crowds, and it wasn't in mountainous terrain, I'm guessing it had to be crime suppression.  So, this intersection I bike through daily when visiting my mom is a targeted crime area?    Were they just patrolling the area on horseback or were they looking for something or someone in particular?

I would imagine there's a different sort of reaction when someone is approached by cops on horseback than there is when a police car pulls up.

 Trying to find out how horses affect the people police apprehend got me to some interesting findings.  KRS-One equates overseer to officer in this video - lyrics of the chorus below.


KRS-One lyrics to "Sound of Da Police"

Overseer
Overseer
Overseer
Overseer
Officer, Officer, Officer, Officer!
Yeah, officer from overseer
You need a little clarity?
Check the similarity!
The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patroling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!
(Woop!) They both ride horses
After 400 years, I've _got_ no choices!
The police them have a little gun
So when I'm on the streets, I walk around with a bigger one
(Woop-woop!) I hear it all day
Just so they can run the light and be upon their way


This article from The Nation's article on the use of horses at Occupy Wall Street seems to demonstrate the lyrics: 

At least a dozen officers on horseback entered the barricaded area soon after demonstrators arrived. For a time, the horses simply stood before the crowd, not doing very much. Then, a so-called “white-shirt”—a high-ranking officer on foot —suddenly removed one section of the barricade and guided a horse directly into the crowd. The mounted officer spurred his horse forward, ramming demonstrators, and the scene quickly descended into chaos. A chant of “animal cruelty” broke out, and people were clearly frightened for their safety: horses can inflict serious harm, especially in volatile, high-density situations.
Video footage of the incident shows that at least one of the horses attempted to turn and retreat, according to Barbara Lynn Sherman, a professor at North Carolina State University with expertise in equine behavior. Professor Sherman examined the footage at The Nation’s request. The animal appeared to either slip or momentarily “spook,” Sherman said, “a common response in horses, particularly when startled in response to fearful stimuli.” In fact, she added, police horses are specifically trained to avoid the “spook” reaction while on duty.
Did the NYPD abuse its horses by bringing them into the situation? Peter Singer, the Princeton philosopher and author of Animal Liberation, a landmark 1975 treatise on the rights of non-human organisms, calls it “unethical.” Reviewing the footage, he says, “At least one (horse) appears to be forced to do something—charge into the crowd—that it tries very hard to avoid.”

Christie's Great Performance

I missed the news yesterday so I knew nothing about the emails from Chris Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly.  They indicate that the traffic study that jammed the nation's busiest bridge for a week and clogged the streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey was not the reason of the jam.

Instead it was done intentionally to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee who did not endorse Republican Chris Christie for governor.

I didn't know any of that when I got up this morning and my mom had on Chris Christie's news conference on CNN.

I haven't watched Christie closely.  I live in Alaska.  New Jersey's far away.  But my superficial knowledge was that he was the sensible Republican among those being mentioned as potential presidential candidates.  He worked with President Obama and praised his hurricane Sandy response just before the 2012 election causing other Republicans explode.  He seems to be able to work with Democrats and won reelection as governor by a wide margin in a Democratic state.  He was, I understood, the most likely Republican to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the question was whether he could survive the Republican primaries.

So that was the background I watched the news conference with.

I was impressed.  He sounded sincere.  He didn't seem to be using any notes.  He said the right things about his responsibility - he didn't know anything until yesterday, but he's the governor so he's responsible - and he'd fired the Kelly as soon as he learned about the incriminating emails.

He went on and on - almost two hours.  It was riveting television.  He was good.  He's obviously both intelligent and experienced.  In response to a question about why he didn't ask Kelly about what actually happened before firing her, he said he fired her for lying to him, not for what she did.  Since there were state and federal investigations already announced, if he questioned her it actually might be seen as inappropriate.  He mentioned his own experience as a prosecutor.

He expressed his sadness and disappointment with a close associate he trusted who lied to him.  

But we saw the Wolf of Wall Street the other night. Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street huckster Jordan Belfort makes me pause in my judgement.   Belfort could sell anyone anything.  There's a scene that everyone should see.  Belfort is starting his own brokerage firm and he's teaching his crew how to make cold calls to sell penny stocks - ones where the broker gets 50% commission - that are worth basically nothing.  He's got a client on the speaker phone and smoothly tells him the thickest lies about about the potential of the stock, while his body language to his employees tells the story about reeling in the fish and then screwing him.

Everyone should see this scene and have it implanted in their brain so that it rises to one's consciousness every time a car salesman, a cable tv or phone salesman or a stockbroker opens his mouth.  People should see DiCaprio thrusting his pelvis for his salesmen while he so sincerely assures the client that nothing could go wrong. 

I walked out of the three hour movie telling my wife that as skeptical as I already am, this movie makes it hard to trust any one.

And so that's what I brought to this news conference with Christie.  Christie's performance was perfect.  But I also wondered if he were thrusting his pelvis in his head.  There are so many questions.


Was Kelly the culprit or the scapegoat? 

How could he have a staff person he worked closely with for so many years who would lie to him like this?

How did he misjudge who she was so enormously?

Why would they jam up the 'busiest bridge in the world?' to punish a political opponent who, according to Christie, wasn't even on his radar?   This reeks of the kind of dirty tricks that, while both parties commit them, have become more associated with Republicans since Watergate and then the rise of Karl Rove.  

Politics attracts people who need or want power, power over others.  People who need power, I suspect, feel some inferiority, some lack, that this power will help them overcome, that will show others that they are somebody.  And such people seem particularly vulnerable to using their power inappropriately.  This was truly a petty act of retribution.  Petty only in the sense of inappropriately demonstrating one's ability to take revenge for some assumed slight.  But the impact on people was hardly petty.  I saw petty people like this with giant chips on their shoulders in 2011 when I blogged the state legislature in Juneau. 

Was this even a plot by the more conservative wing of the party to derail Christie's presidential campaign?  Or less likely, but plausible, a Clinton plot?

The biggest question outstanding seems to be whether Christie's performance today was genuine or whether he actually knew about this.  If he knew, and today's news conference was just a giant lie, I don't see how he can recover as a presidential candidate.  I don't see how he could stay in office in New Jersey for four more years.

If follow up investigations support his claims of innocence, I'd say today's performance shows him as a very competent leader.  People will still attack him for letting Kelly into his inner circle.  But lots of people have secrets that they hide from those around them and other politicians have had close aides resign because of scandals.

I would note that CNN had a feeding frenzy over this story, repeating parts of the news conference over and over again.  


[UPDATE 9pm - whatever the outcome, this political cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the NY Daily News is priceless:

click image to go to the source:  Bill Bramhall/NY Daily News

"Did you realize that 'gnu-dung' is a palindrome?" Or Hyenas' Bum Rap

I'm about halfway through Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoirs. Nearby where Sapolsky's studying baboons in southwestern Kenya, Laurence of the Hyenas is studying hyenas.  At first Sapolsky

"had given him wide berth, as I was terrified of him.  He was a large hulking man with a tendency to sequester himself in his tent at length to bellow hideous stark Scottish folk dirges.  Even more unsettling, when perturbed or irritated, he had the unconscious habit of thrusting his chin and heavy dark beard at bothersome males in a manner than any primatologist instantly recognizes as a very legit dominance display." (p. 121)

But eventually, in the midst of thousands of migrating wildebeests* at Sapolsky's camp, Laurence appears with the gnu-dung question.  Sapolsky goes on,

"In fact, I had not.  The ice was broken.  In the twenty years since, he has taught me to bellow Scottish folk songs, made futile attempts to chip away at my ignorance about car engines, tended me during times of malarial attacks and failed experiments and homesickness.  He's the nearest thing I have to a big brother, and he's been damn good at it."  (p. 121)

It's a reminder that we shouldn't project personalities onto people we don't really know.  There are enough people in my life whom I've made wrong assumptions about at first, but eventually, we connected, they turned out to be different from what I assumed,  and we became good friends.  And a few weren't the good folks I thought they were.  But  I've learned that under whatever facade I'm seeing, there's a real human being and if I can connect to that person, things will be fine.  But that also includes no ulterior motives on my part and my willingness to give to that person as much as I get from them.

With Laurence and Robert, gnu-dung broke the ice.

Hyena screenshot from Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom

But I really wanted to get to the hyenas.

Another case of changing one's view of, in this case, a species.  This blog is about knowing and recognizing that we know a lot less than we think.  And a lot of what we know is just wrong, as in this example.   (Of course, we should take the new information with a grain of salt too.)

"Hyenas are neither canines nor felines and have doleful beautiful eyes, wet noses, and jaws that can snap off your arm in a second.  They also have gotten an utterly bum rap in the media.  We know all about hyenas:  it's dawn on the savanna, there's something big and dead with a lion feeding on it, and Marlin Perkins is up to his elbows in the gore, filming the scene.  You know the score.  Ol' Marlin is waxing poetic about the noble lion and his predatory skills, said king of the jungle, covered with his usual array of flies, is munching away at somebody's innards, and the camera will occasionally tear itself away from this tableau of carnivory to pan the edges.  And there they are, skulky, cowardly, dirty, snively, skeevy, no-account hyenas lurking at the periphery, trying to grab a piece of the vittles.  Marlin practically invites us to heap our contempt on the hyenas:  scavengers.  Now, it's not entirely clear to me why we laud the predators so much and so disdain the scavengers, since most of us are hardening our arteries wolfing down carcasses that someone else killed, but that is our bias.  Lions get lionized, while hyenas never get to vocalize at the beginning of MGM movies. (p. 122)

(He's having his fun with Perkins, but in the video from which I got the screenshot above Perkins says the hyena is a formidable hunter.)


We learn that a carnivology revolution occurred when the army unloaded some early generation night goggles on zoologists and they could now watch what happened at night.

"Redemption for the hyenas.  It turns out that they are fabulous hunters, working cooperatively, taking down beasties ten times** their size.  They have one of the highest percentages of successful hunts of any big carnivore.  And you know who has one of the worst?  Lions.  They're big, conspicuous, relatively slow.  It's much easier for them just to key in on cheetahs and hyenas and rip them off.  That's why all those hyenas are lurking around at dawn looking mealy and unphotogenic - they just spent the whole night hunting the damn thing and who's eating breakfast now?"   (p. 122)

*from National Geographic:   

The ungainly gnu earned the Afrikaans name wildebeest, or "wild beast," for the menacing appearance presented by its large head, shaggy mane, pointed beard, and sharp, curved horns. In fact, the wildebeest is better described as a reliable source of food for the truly menacing predators of the African savanna: lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and hyenas.

**Ten times their size?  Well I checked.  Adult hyenas weigh about 150-180 pounds (Wikipeda  and National Geographic differ.) An adult giraffe weighs 1800 (female) to 2600 (males) pounds.  But can a hyena kill a giraffe?  Yes, but only young ones says What Eats?  However, I did find a video and some posts that said hyena packs can kill cape buffalo and they weigh up to 1900 pounds. 

[This post, like the previous one seems to be having Feedburner problems.  I thought these had been overcome, but they are back.] 

National Right Wing Context Of Alaska State House Sustainable Education Task Force Report

This is Part 2 on the Task Force.  Part 1 gives an overview of the different contexts of this report and focuses on the task force membership.  All three House members are Republicans and the other members, if not all Republicans, heavily lean that way.  This is clearly a House Majority task force (as the url says) and not a House task force.

In this post I want to look at the national context of this report which includes advocating for school vouchers and charter schools as well as cutting the education budget. 

Nationally the attack on public schools comes from different aspects of the right. 

• There’s the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
• There’s ALEC’s free market educational philosophy and agenda.
• There’s the religious right’s attempts to get vouchers to pay for private religious schools, and ongoing efforts to add prayer and 'intelligent design' to public schools. 

No Child Left Behind - had standards that were guaranteed to label more and more public schools as ‘failing.’  There's plenty out there on this point. You can look at this example in Vermont  or this one about Texas.

Diane Ravitch served as Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush and advocated for NCLB testing and for charter schools.  Since then she's changed her assessment and written a book called:  The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.  Here's a bit of what Diane Ravitch told NPR.

RAVITCH: When I believed that they would work, they hadn't been tried. Once they were tried, I was convinced that they didn't work and, in fact, not only were they failing, but they're ruining American education and they're actually leading the way today towards privatization of public education, which I think would be a disaster.  [In the context of the interview, 'they' refers to 'these ideas,' which seems to refer to standardized testing and charter schools.]

Many people, like Ravitch, believed this would help schools.  But I believe there were others who intended this to label public schools as failing so that it would be easier to get voters to approve voucher systems that would take public money and give it to private schools.  We’ve seen what a monumental failure that was with higher ed where private, for profit schools popped up, helped students apply for federal loans which went directly to the schools, and left the student to pay off the loan whether they succeeded in school or not. 


ALEC - is a Koch Brothers funded organization that focuses on state legislatures.  I first noticed and blogged about ALEC when I attended a lunch presentation they gave in Juneau in 2011.

ALEC has taken as its apparent structural model the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures, whose mission is to:

• Improve the quality and effectiveness of state legislatures.
• Promote policy innovation and communication among state legislatures.
• Ensure state legislatures a strong, cohesive voice in the federal system.

and Council of State Governments which

"fosters the exchange of insights and ideas to help state officials shape public policy. This offers unparalleled regional, national and international opportunities to network, develop leaders, collaborate and create problem-solving partnerships."

While no organization is free of some sort of ideology, the NCSL and CSG have had as their key 'ideology' good government in general without a right or left wing bias.  Both Republican and Democratic legislators are members and attend their conferences.

ALEC, on the other hand, uses the NCSL and CSG model and inserts a highly ideological right wing agenda.  ALEC has corporate members as well as legislative members.  Reading their September/October 2013 Educational Edition of Inside ALEC plus what I've learned about them over the last two years, I'm convinced their educational strategy is basically to

• Declare Public schools as failures, and
• Use the language of choice to transfer public education money to private schools

1.   Declaring Public schools failures

ALEC does this subtly in its September/October 2013 Inside ALEC Education Edition.

Traditional US public schools, it tells us:

“are local monopolies with all the attendant inefficiencies and perverse incentives common to such entities.”   The solution to local monopolies “shifted control over the schools further away from the parents and children to distant state and federal bureaucracies.” (p, 9)

Basically they are saying, since the local system didn't work, it got taken over by state and federal bureaucracy which also doesn't work.   Thus, there is no way for public schools to work. - locally run is bad and state and fed run are also bad.  Just like with NCLB, public schools are failures.  The solution is private schools. Of course, there is some truth to what they say because every solution comes with unintended side effects.  However, they fail to acknowledge any such negative side-effects with their solution - the market.  We've seen in the last decade some of the serious problems of letting the market solve our problems. 

2.  Using the language of choice,  their strategy is to destroy public schools by transferring public money to private schools.


Inside ALEC’s Education Edition has a couple of articles that highlight programs that transfer money from public schools to private schools.  For example:

“Educational Savings Accounts

Eligible parents can choose to withdraw their child from the assigned public school if they feel the school is not meeting their child’s learning needs. Arizona deposits 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child in the public school into the parents’ Empowerment Scholarship Account. Parents can then use those funds to pay for private school tuition and a host of other education-related services and expenses.
That flexibility is what makes an ESA unique: the accounts are distinct from school choice options like vouchers or tax credits because they allow a parent to divvy-up their funds and purchase educational products, services and schools in an à la carte fashion.” (pp 10,15)

It's that easy.  We take 90% of the money from the public school and let the parent spend it on private sector options.  The articles raise important issues, but ignore the problems with vouchers.  That's a whole other discussion.  Now I'm just putting the Alaska Task Force Report in context of these national forces. 

Religious Right

I know.  Such labels are tricky.  I'm referring to those members of (mainly Christian) denominations who believe their view of the world is the only correct one,  that everyone else is just wrong, and who fight legislation and court rulings that separate (Christian) religion from state sponsorship such as prayer in school, public displays of religious symbols, religiously based bans on abortion and homosexuality, etc.

These folks send, or want to send, their kids to private religious schools instead of public schools.  Or they run the private religious schools.  In either case, in addition to their religious beliefs, they have a financial interest in spending public funds on private religious schools.  I can understand a parent not wanting their kids to go to schools that teach them values different from what they believe.  But inserting Christianity into public schools does the very same thing to the kids of non-Christians.  As a democracy, public schools should be the place where people learn to respect people of other faiths and backgrounds.  But that's a discussion for another day. 

A number of Christian schools encourage their members to take advantage of existing voucher programs.  For example:

"Many families desire a Christian education for their children; but limited finances have prevented this from being an option – until now!
Indiana’s recently passed School Choice (voucher) program allows qualifying families to receive a credit (school voucher) toward their education at a private school. If you are such a family and you meet financial and admissions qualifying criteria, now is the perfect time to consider Blackhawk Christian School for your child’s education." 

(I find this Christian school's 'brand' interesting. Blackhawk was  Native American who fought with the British against the US.   Blackhawk is also the name of a military helicopter.  WWJS?)

More examples of the transfer of public money to religious schools through vouchers can be seen here.

One school in North Carolina made it a policy to refuse public vouchers.  Their reason:  to maintain the right to refuse students - like the children of gay couples. 

Even Orthodox Jews often support vouchers,  The separation of church and state seems to be less important than financing their religious schools  But Conservative and Reform Jews  whose kids are more likely to go to public schools, do not support vouchers.

But some of the supporters of vouchers in Tennessee and Louisiana had second thoughts when they found out that Islamic schools would also be eligible for public funding.   

These reactions against Islamic schools getting voucher funding demonstrates my points above.  These are folks who, despite the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion,  believe that this is a Christian nation, and those guarantees only apply to Christians.   Their proclamations about religious freedom really are about Christian freedom.


For many, it's less about education than it is about being anti-government and about moving public education money over to private, Christian, schools.



Conclusion

The national trends affect Alaskan Republicans.  Some attend ALEC conferences and use ALEC's model legislation to write their own.  These national ideas get into their Party Platform.   Here are some excerpts from the education section of the Alaska Republican Party platform:

"A. We support parental choice of public, private, charter, vocational and home-based educational alternatives for Alaska’s students.  .   .

B. We support accountability in public education, including measurement of student academic achievement and cognitive ability by standardized testing in reading, writing and mathematics. We support local control of public education provided it does not limit competition or parental choice. We oppose all federal control of or influence on education. We support the parental right to have access to all educational information reaching their child.

Accountability sounds good and some kinds of testing are necessary.  But the language that comes next echoes ALEC's proclamation about local government control being problematic along with federal control.  Notice, they don't oppose state control though.

C. We support daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, including the words “under God,” proper display of the United States and Alaska Flags, and active promotion of patriotism in our schools. We also support teaching the accurate historical Judeo-Christian foundation of our country and the importance of our founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, federal and State constitutions, and other founding documents."

To their credit, they also support learning about Alaska Native people.

"D. We support the teaching of Alaska’s history and geography with appropriate acknowledgment and respect for Alaska Native people, cultures, and languages."

But, then they also support Creation Science:

"F. We support teaching various models and theories for the origins of life and our universe, including Creation Science or Intelligent Design. If evolution outside a species (macro-evolution) is taught, evidence disputing the theory should also be taught."

That national context seems to have had its influence on this Alaska task force.  I'd note that one of the co-chairs - Rep. Tammie Wilson - was one of only four legislators to attend (well, to stick around after getting a sandwich)  the 2011 ALEC presentation in the Capitol in Juneau (along with Reps. Gatto and Keller and Sen. Dyson.)

Any person who pays attention knows that American public schools have serious problems.   The left and the right agree on this.  I have lots of issues with the public school system and I suspect that a number of them overlap problems people on the right have.  It's the solutions we seem to disagree on.

The anti-government philosophy of many on the right would destroy public schools altogether.  The Starve The Beast philosophy that arose in the Reagan era is alive and well still today even though the facts would say it doesn't work.  These folks want to move public education money into the private sector. 

In the final installment on this Task Force Report, I'll look at the full two page report and what it says. 

Hong Kong Film Legend Run Run Shaw Dead at 106 or 107

My son sent this link to me.  When we lived in Hong Kong, Run Run Shaw's presence was everywhere.  Particularly close to home for us was the Run Run Shaw auditorium on the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus where we lived and I worked.  My son agreed to go see a traditional Chinese orchestra performance there if I would see the first Die Hard movie there with him. 

Run Run Shaw, Father Of The Kung Fu Movie, Dead At 107

AP Photo / Kin Cheung

KELVIN K. CHAN – January 7, 2014, 9:26 AM EST728

HONG KONG (AP) — Run Run Shaw built a Hong Kong movie and TV empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner."

Shaw's prolific studio helped bring kung fu films to the world but he also passed on the chance to sign one of the biggest names in that genre: the young Bruce Lee.
The missed opportunity was a rare misstep for Shaw, who died Tuesday, according to a statement from Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which he helped found in 1967. No cause of death was given.
His studio gave his age as 107, but his age according to the Western counting method may have been 106 because Chinese traditionally consider a child to be 1 at birth. TVB said he was born in 1907, but would not provide his birth date.
His Shaw Brothers Studios, once among the world's largest, churned out nearly 1,000 movies and gave young directors like Woo their start. He produced a handful of U.S. films that also included the 1979 disaster thriller "Meteor."

 The rest is at TPM.

When It Comes To Clouds, You Have To Be At The Right Place At The Right Time - And Wear Your Bike Helmet!

I think these might be altocumulus clouds.  They were there as I did a late afternoon bike ride a couple of hours ago.  They were gone soon after. 


In the photo below, I liked the way the trees were silhouetted and a little sunlight touched them.  But the way it came out here is very different from what I saved.  I guess you always have to play with the screen - the street should be very much in the shade. 

 J was walking about where I took the cloud photo about 30 minutes earlier. A guy on a fancy bike with biking shorts and shirt came speeding along toward her (he was in the bike lane and she was on the side walk) when all of a sudden he flew over the handle bars and hit his head on the street.  She called 911 on her cell phone and waited until they arrived.   She said he didn't get up, his head was bloody, and he was talking but not too coherently.

This is a flat, recently repaved section with a good marked and separate bike path and little traffic on a wide street (not the one above).  It was light still when he went down, but J said it was dark when the emergency folks arrived.  It was just at that time between sunset and dark.  So even on a day with great weather, on a good smooth, level road, with no traffic around, something can happen.  I'm not suggesting people should stay in bed, but wear your helmet!  J talked to the emergency folks and then walked on home before they took him away. 

Northierthanthou Stopped By

I loved the name.  He's from Barrow, it turns out, so he can get away with it.  He left comments here on pictures (not mine) that I really like too.

I checked his blog.  There's lots of good stuff there.  I'm adding it to my Alaska blog list.  Something I haven't done for a while.  His current one looks at atheism in a way I'd never thought of before:  Silencing the Base Villains and Sending us Back to the Old Narratives: Yep ‘Atheism’ Again

His "About Page" has a long, long list of of comments from people thanking him for leaving a comment on their blog.  When I first started blogging, one of the recommendations for increasing blog traffic was to stop at other blogs and leave comments.  It often got the other blogger to leave a comment at my blog.  In those days when I didn't have a counter the only way I knew if someone had visited was a comment.

I checked out some of the blogs he's visited.  My first thought was to make a snarky comment about living in Barrow and spare time to live on the internet, but people who live in snow-covered houses should throw . . .

And besides, he's visited a lot of interesting blogs.  Here's a brief sample of snippets:

A lot of the blogs he leaves tracks on have lots of images and I don't want to take others images if I can help it.  But I couldn't help it with this one from  Maxpics: 

borrowed from Maxpics

From Jasmine Tea and Jaozi, a reflection on how English speakers say thank you so much:

A year or so ago my teacher Annie told me that I was doing something that most English-speaking westerners do – which is not usual in China – I was saying ‘thank you” too often.
I didn’t really take much notice of  her remark until recently, when I suddenly became aware that I did seem to be saying ‘xie xie’ rather a lot, and it set me thinking.

[UPDATE Jan 16, 2014 - Here's a follow-up post on the too much thank you theme - this time in southern Sudan.  See also the comments below.]



Here's a very insightful (that means I agree) thought from NotebookM:

"As I have said before in other posts, digital communications – the Internet, apps, etc. – represent wonderful technology but also serve as the biggest con since Ponzi. The con amounts to this: Give us everything we need to effectively and dramatically market you and we will tell you who won the 1976 World Series, the best way to make waffles and the number of Academy Awards won by Robert Di Niro."

Really, people worried about the evil of 1984's tv monitoring every move in their room.  But, hell, that was nothing compared to the iPhones people pay for themselves and voluntarily use to let the world to track their every move.



A View From My Summer House:

On the morning that I had to return the trailer I simply forgot it was there. I put the car into reverse and backed out of our driveway as I had done a million times before to do the morning school run (rushing as usual) except that this time a sickening thud, both felt and heard, stopped me in my tracks. I hardly dared look in my wing mirror but as I did so I could see the jack-knifed trailer nicely embedded in the side of my brand new Suburban.

Ouch.


From Simply Sustainability:

As a matter of fact there is a Dutch research project on this: Playing with Pigs. The project is an outcome of research on “Ethical room for manoeuvre in livestock farming”, a collaboration between the Utrecht School of the Arts, Wageningen University and Wageningen UR Livestock Research. Within the project, a game which allows interaction between pigs and people was developed; see it in a clip on vimeo here. The researchers say one of the things they’ve discovered is how much pigs like to play with light.

You get the picture.   I don't need more distractions, but Dan, thanks for stopping by and leaving your thoughts.  Let me know when you're passing through Anchorage. Maybe we can share a meal together. 

The Membership And Context Of The "State House Sustainable Education Task Force Report"

They say that context is everything.

Others say it's all in the details.  I'd say that without the context, the details mean nothing.  But context with no details is also problematic.  We need both. 

This started with this Dec. 31 Anchorage Daily News story:  

"Task force members clash on education funding"

There are so many contexts to examine here. 

[Before getting into them, let me just say, this post grew on me and I'm going to focus on the first context in this post - task force membership - and give a brief overview of the other contexts.  I'm hoping I'll be able to write followups a couple of the other contexts.] [Here's the follow-up]


1.  The political context of this Alaska task force.

The report is identified as coming from "State House Sustainable Education Task Force."
However, it's available at

http://www.housemajority.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Final_Report_Sustainable_Education_Task_Force_20140101.pdf  (empahsis added)

And it looks like most if not all of the members are Republicans.  The ADN article identifies the members:

"The panel includes three lawmakers, Republican Reps. Tammie Wilson, Lynn Gattis and Charisse Millett. The resolution setting out the task force also called for one member representing a regional Native corporation, in this case, Andy Baker; two educators, Jerry Covey and Nees; and two representatives of the business community, Halcro and Keithley. Wilson and Gattis are co-chairs. "

The three members of the house are all Republicans.  And, given this is an Education task force, I guess it's not surprising they are all women.   Apparently no male legislators thought it important enough to get on.  But all the outside members are men.  What does that mean? 

I'm only vaguely familiar with the others, but here's a little of what I found online.

Andy Baker is listed as vice-president of Baker Aviation in a 2007 Bienniel Report, a company his parents created in 1964.  However, the state of Alaska has a Certificate of Involuntary Dissolution/Revocation on file for Baker Aviation dated June 11, 2013.  In 2007 he was listed as a lobbyist for Teck Cominco AK.

Jerry Covey is an Anchorage based consultant and former teacher and Commissioner of Education appionted by Gov. Wally Hickel in 1990.

David Nees is a math teacher, has been an Anchorage school board candidate, and, according to the Anchorage Press, is a Republican who was supported by Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan.

Didn't know much at all about Brad Keithly before reading this article, but apparently I should have.  He is an oil industry consultant/attorney who has stopped writing his Alaska Business Review column because, as his says on his website

"I have suspended that column while some talk about me running for Governor (ABM’s policy understandably is to discontinue any “writings” by formally announced, or potential candidates)." 

He's also been banned by the University of Alaska Anchorage from being involved in UAA Athletics and some women he's dated are pretty pissed at him (I'll leave it at that and not link to the site.)  In trying to confirm he is a Republican, I found another Amanda Coyne piece that reports some Republicans saying he's a stealth Democrat from Texas who might run for governor as an Independent.  

Andrew Halcro is a bright former Republican state house member and Indepndent gubernatorial candidate and runs (has run?) the family Avis franchise and is the new president of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce.  He does things his own way and frequently ruffles feathers as he seems to have done on this committee by being the lone dissenter. 

This is clearly a House Majority task force set up to come to fairly predictable conclusions.  There are no House Democrats and most of the outside members seem to be chosen more for their support of budget cutting than their educational expertise.  Only Halcro has not gone along with the script. 


2.  The larger partisan political national context which might influence the study. 
This was what I was originally going to write about - the general right wing movement to cut government spending in general, and in education, to push vouchers and other ways to get hold of public school money and move it to private schools.  When I first reported on the Koch Brothers supported ALEC, which champions the free market as the cure for everything,  Rep. Tammy Wilson attended the presentation along with Reps. Wes Keller and Carl Gatto, and Sen. Dyson.  I'll try to add this context in the next installment.


3.  The context of past studies of education and education funding in Alaska.

Alaska education reports are a dime a dozen.  The legislature has its fair share of reports.  I remember one being set up in the legislature when I was blogging it in 2010. It would probably be more productive to have a task force simply review the findings of the last ten legislative reports on education and identify:

• all the recommendations made
• how many times the same recommendation is made in different reports
• which recommendations have actually been followed
• which recommendations have not been followed
• why some were and weren't followed through on

Here are some that are just reports written for the legislature:
2001
2007
2011



4.  The context of the Anchorage Daily News coverage.

I won't spend much time on this, but I thought it interesting that the ADN focused on the clash in the committee.  The title is about the 'clash,' and the first sentence focuses on the clash as does the last sentence in the first paragraph:

"The disagreement came over whether to include proposed language that, in the current budget environment, state education funding needs to be reduced as well. "

From what the article reports, Halcro was the only member opposed.  While I think the issue is important, I wonder if Halcro hadn't dissented, would it have even been reported?


5.  My own context.

I'm preparing to teach the UAA MPA capstone class in which students show their understanding of what they've been learning in the program by doing a management research project and reporting on their findings.  I've taught this class numerous times over my career and this is the first time since I retired in 2006.  So, I've been thinking deeply about reports that analyze government programs and policies and how to research and write reports that come as close as possible to objectively finding useful data and interpreting and presenting it so that the reader can understand

• what theoretical models were used to organize the study, 
• how data were collected, 
• how the researchers interpreted the data and came to their conclusions

It's also important to see the data.  Not necessarily the raw data, but enough of the data that the knowledgeable reader can see how the researchers got from the data to the conclusions.  If the data are there, the reader who disagrees with the conclusions, can still use them to follow other possible implications. 

When I look at the full two page report itself - which you can see here - I'll use my own training and experience in what a good policy report should cover to review this report.

Here are Some first, quick reactions: 

This report is a bit thin.  The URL hays "Final Report" in it,  but the two page document calls itself an initial report.  The ADN article reports:

The panel was created by a House resolution last April and charged with "examining the efficiency and effectiveness of public education delivery." It faced a Wednesday deadline for submitting its recommendations and findings to the governor, Legislature and state education department. The panel is scheduled to expire Jan. 1, 2015.

So, they've had the interim in the legislative session to prepare a report - about seven months.  Despite being an 'Initial Report' it manages to reach conclusions without reporting any supporting evidence for the conclusions. My students will only have about three months to come up with much more substantive findings.  They'll have no staff and no budget.  But they'll come up with real reports with support for their findings. 


6.  The context of Alaska's difficult educational environment.  Alaska has many small towns and villages scattered across a huge geographical area and a few 'urban' areas most of which would not be recognized as urban in the rest of the United States.  So many small populations, off the road system give Alaska challenges significantly different from what other states face.  Added to this is the mix of Alaska Native culture and the dominant non-Native culture and the lack of serious cross-cultural understanding.  

This context is worth several books and I won't try to do more here.  But I did want to mention this as a critical context.  And you'll note that the Task Force says they have traveled the state and taken testimony.




Again, this post focused on the membership and the various contexts of this issue.  I'll  write more about the national political context of this topic and then focus specifically on this Report. 

AIFF 2013: The Words I Love Director On Anchorage And His Film

I still have film festival video and other posts to put up.  One film maker I almost didn't record was Thanachart 'Ben'* Siripatrachai. 


The irony is that Ben stayed with us for several days of the festival and so I guess I thought I could get him any time.  Finally, I decided as we were having lunch downtown between films, I better do it.

His film The Words I Love  won honorable mention in the short docs category.  It was a film that caught my attention when I first saw the description and turned out to be a very unique film, Ben just doing seemed right to him, not following any preset rules for how to tell his story.  The audiences responded well with frequent laughs and chuckles.

Here's video we did. 






*If anyone is interested:

His nick name is 'Benz' like the car.  But in Thai, there is no final 'nz' sound, so it just becomes Ben.  So I've decided to just write in 'Ben'.  On his website he writes it in Thai (see image on top) as a final 'n.'  There really is no letter for a 'z' in Thai, though in Thai 'Benz' would  have a final 's' [เบนซ์] that wouldn't be pronounced (the squiggly line above the 's' on the end [ซ์] makes the 's' sound silent.  But in English he writes Benz.  But when he pronounced it, he said Ben.  In the image the first letter [เ] is the vowel sound 'eh'.  Then comes [บ] the 'b' sound, and finally the [น] 'n' sound. The squiggly mark on top appears to be a high tone mark [ป็], though at first I thought it was a 'Mai Dtaikhu' which shortens the vowel sound and would be found in the Thai word เป็น which is the word for 'to be.'  

So we have - เบ๊น- the way Ben spells his name in Thai.
We have -เบนซ์ -  the way Mercedes-Benz is spelled in Thai.
And - เป็น  -  the common word for the verb 'to be.'

[Update Jan 5, 2013:  I don't write Thai very often these days and I forgot a small detail.  There are two different Thai letters that represent two slightly different sounds that English uses the letter B for.  I think it's pretty easy to see the difference between ป and  บ. The first one is unvoiced and the second one is voiced.  I won't even try to explain that but if you are interested here are two sites that explain it - one in writing and one with a video. ]