Welcome the New Year of the Horse

We've been in places where there are celebrations of the Chinese New Years often - last year in Seattle.  Today, we're in Anchorage and we have a Chinese teacher living in our house.

From Hanban.com, on this year's astrological symbol:

Chako's 2002 Year of the Horse card

The Year 2014 is considered as the Year of the Horse as per the Chinese Zodiac Calendar which begins on January 31, 2014, and ends on February 18, 2015. 2014 according to Chinese Astrology Calendar. it is the Year of Wood Horse.  Wood is related to tree or green, so it is also called Year of Green Horse. 2014 is the jiăwŭ (甲午) year.The Chinese zodiac calendar comprises 12 animal signs and horse is the seventh among all of them. In Chinese culture, the Horse is a symbol of nobility, class, speed and perseverance.  People born in the Year of the Horse are smart, fabulous speakers who have a gift for getting through to other people. People bearing the horse sign strive towards seeking freedom and happiness. In general, 2014 would be a better year for those people who were born under The Year of the Horse.

The Common Personality of People Born in Horse Year
People born in the year of the horse are extremely animated, active and energetic. Horses love to be in a crowd and like entertainment, they have a deft sense of humor, they love to take center stage and delight audiences everywhere. They are trustworthy, friendly and like to be surrounded by their relatives and friends. They usually have a large circle of acquaintances, but they never rely on their friends too much. Sometimes, the horse is a little self-centered, but it doesn't mean that he will not be interested in any problems except his own. However, a horse person is really more cunning than intelligent, that is probably due to the fact that most horse people lack confidence. Sometimes, they are very independent and rarely listen to advice

I couldn't find any good pictures of horses in my own files.  Moose, yes.  Horse, no.  Tempted as I am to give this year an Alaska flavor, I just can't do it.

I did find a 2002 card that our friend Chako made.  I've played with it modestly in photoshop.

"I want to add your birthday to my calendar" Scam?

I got an email from a good friend with this request.   I'd recently called her, coincidentally, on her birthday and I apologized for not knowing her birthday after all these years.  So she was just getting mine in return, maybe.

But my big brother antennae went, "One more piece of the puzzle to pull all my info together for the internet info scavengers."  I would pass.

Then I got an email from my friend saying her email had been hacked and she hadn't asked for the information.


I looked to see whether spam sites have identified it.  It seems to be a Facebook App that has gone viral.  Business Insider wrote January 3, 2014:

We asked Facebook why this app persisted, attracting tens of millions of users.
"This app is not in violation of any of our policies, and there aren't enough people marking it as spam for it to trigger our detection systems," a spokesperson told us. "If an individual finds the app to be spammy, they can hide or remove the app stories from their News Feed or block the app."
K-Factor Media cofounder Jing Chen did not respond to a request for comment via her LinkedIn profile.

That'snonnsense.com writes that the scam warnings are nonsense:

"This warning circulating virally across Facebook warns users of an apparently malicious application that "retrieves data from all profiles".

The warning is mostly false, clearly written by someone with no understanding of how Facebook Apps work.
At the time of writing there is an application with a similar name spreading across Facebook which is lending credibility to this false message. The application, which goes under the name "I want to add your birthday" or "MyCalendar - Birthdays" is simply an application that posts reminders to Facebook users about upcoming birthdays. In reality the App is totally redundant since Facebook offers an inbuilt service that does that any way, so even though this App is not really that malicious (just spammy) we would still not recommend installing it."

 I look at it this way.  Every time  another bit of personal information gets connected to your name in an insecure place online, it's one more way for any scammer to start gathering what they need to hack into your credit cards, bank accounts, email, etc.  Does that make me safe?  Of course not.  But it's like locking your car door.  A thief would rather steal a car (or from a car) that's unlocked.  As long as others are leaving their virtual doors unlocked, if I don't, I'm a little ahead.  Besides, do you really need to have automated birthday cards sent to you?  Well, I guess in this family-scattered world, some people do.  And others exploit that need.

I got another request today, so I thought it was time to put this up.

Keystone Name Not Doing So Well These Days

The Keystone Pipeline has been the target of environmentalists for a while now because of the particularly dirty tar sands oil it will carry, the environmental damage necessary to get that oil, and the concern for spills along the route through the US.   TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, of course, touts the line as

"the safest and most advanced pipeline operation in North America. It will not only bring essential infrastructure to North American oil producers, but it will also provide jobs, long-term energy independence and an economic boost to Americans."

Meanwhile, in Alaska, the Keystone Canyon on the Richardson Highway, the only road into the town of Valdez, has been shut off by a massive avalanche.

Alaska Department of Transportation Photo

 Here are two videos from the Alaska Department of Transportation:








 For those who are just thinking of the names here and not the meaning of the word, from the Oxford Dictionary:

• 1a central stone at the summit of an arch, locking the whole together.
  More example sentences

  1.1 [usually in singular] the central principle or part of a policy, system, etc., on which all else depends:
  cooperation remains the keystone of the government’s security policyMore example sentences

So, when there's problems with the keystone, everything else it holds up is in danger too.  


Should other 'keystones' worry?  Not because their name is Keystone.  The title here is to point out how easy it is to generalize from two examples to the universe.  If any of the other organizations named Keystone have problems, I'm sure it's not related to the name.  Though, if there is some terrible scandal related to a particular name, people will think about that name differently when they encounter it.  The name Monica, for example, took a beating in 1998.

There's enough organizations named Keystone that you could probably set up a town and be self-sufficient.  And only a few on this list are in  The Keystone State.  Here is a sampling:  

Keystone Cinemas
Keystone Technologies
Keystone Resort
Keystone Industries
Keystone College
Keystone Electronics
Keystone Symposia
Keystone Credit Union  and Keystone Bank
Keystone Substance Abuse Services (does that include oil?)
Keystone Sporting Arms
Keystone Realty
Keystone Cement
Camp Keystone  and Keystone Camp
Keystone Cafe   (There are lots of these)
Feeney-Hornak Keystone Funeral Homes
Keystone Rugby Club
Keystone Chiropractic
Keystone Church

Clutter War - Recapturing Old Territory For T

Monday T moved in.  He's a teacher at the Confucius Institute at UAA.  He's a warm, curious, bright, and funny young man.  An ulterior motive was that we'd have to totally reclaim the downstairs storage room, a battle, without a strong motive, we had been losing for ten years. 

Here's an image I posted in December.

December 20, 2013

And here's what the room looked like on Sunday. 

January 26, 2014

And now we have to learn how to adjust to having a new member of the household.  But he's making that very easy so far.  And we have to decide how much of a role he'll play on the blog here.  He decided he liked having a photoshopped mask like I've been using on my granddaughter.

Thank You Sen. Gardner and Rep. Josephson

Alaskan Republican law makers - along with the Governor - tell us that we have to cut spending.  Our revenues are declining and will continue to.  (Despite the fact that the Governor got his bill passed last year to return $2 billion a year to the oil companies so that they will increase oil production and the revenues.)  But there's at least one project that nobody in the neighborhood wants, but which was earmarked $20 million at the very last minute in the legislature last year. 

The extension of Bragaw (now Elmore on one end) through the University of Alaska Anchorage campus is a project only the Department of Transportation, the Mayor, and Republican legislators want.

Every public meeting on this project resulted in overwhelming rejection by people in the neighborhood.

Who wants this project?  My guess it's the construction industry.  It seems the one area where the governor has no problem spending money is construction.

Here's what Cheryl Richardson, head of the Anchorage Citizens' Coalition, and a community watchdog on transportation issues for years and years wrote:

Twenty million dollars to fund the Bragaw Extension showed up in the state’s capital budget at 11 p.m. the night before the session ended, April 14.
Until then, elected officials representing neighborhoods directly affected by the cut through were confident they had protected their constituents’ desire to prevent it. Every community council surrounding this road objects to its construction.
But there it was, a last minute addition of $20 million in a state capital budget that had been slashed from 2012’s $2.5 billion to 2013’s $1.3 billion. In a capital budget where a $2 million project was considered “huge.”
Who has the power to fund such a huge, unpopular project? No one is taking credit at this point.
Charles Wohlforth recently devoted an hour on talk radio to explore the UMed Bragaw cut through. He invited the Municipality who asked for the funding, the Alaska Department of Transportation who is managing the money, and Dowl Engineers who are contracted to produce the design and construction studies to discuss the issue.
Not one person from the state, the muni or Dowl was free to speak on Wohlforth’s program. It was too “controversial.” In decades of building “controversial projects,” this is a first. Not one official representative was willing to go on the record.

I'd note that Dowl, who Richardson says here "are contracted to produce the design  and construction studies" are also the company that conducted the public hearings that invited public comment and presented those findings.  Dowl clearly has a conflict of interest here because their recommendations for building the road, despite public opposition, lead to further income for their firm.  And they subcontract with most of the companies likely to do the actual construction of the road.  The public testimony was overwhelmingly against the project, but not doing the project was not an option. 

If they were instructed to build the road no matter what the public says, then we should know who gave those instructions and what the purpose of the citizens participation was. 



But two Democratic legislators - Sen. Berta Gardner and Rep. Andy Josephson - both representing the area where the road is scheduled to be built, and representing the Senate and House seats where I live, introduced a bill to take back the funding for the road.  They've heard, they say, enough opposition from their constituents, that they have filed this legislation.   (See an American Planning Association reprint of a Sunday Anchorage Daily News report.)

I'm not sure how Republicans can support this road with a straight face.  They complain that we have to cut back education spending and that our revenues are declining and that government spending in general is too high.  But they are supporting the spending of $20 million to build a road no one in the community wants.

No one has identified the people who are so powerful that they got this money tacked on to the budget in the waning minutes of the legislature.  I'm guessing that if we check the campaign contributions to the mayor of Anchorage and to the legislators who added this money into the budget, we'll probably see the names of people and companies that will end up with parts of the $20 million contracts to build the road.  Who else wants it?  Possibly Providence Hospital but my understanding is that the University of Alaska Anchorage, while going along at the end, was not an instigator of this.  And if you had taken a vote of the faculty and students it likely would have been against the road.

At the meetings I went to, the posted evidence for the road, wasn't compelling.  They showed in one display various intersections near the University and showed how many minutes a car would save if the new road were in.  The savings were in prime time.  The most savings were 3 minutes as I recall.  And these are obviously calculations.  So to save  rush hour drivers (rush hour is about an hour, four days a week when the university is in session) 3 minutes, we will destroy an intact ecosystem where moose and other animals can freely travel.  And spend $20 million from a budget which the Governor has claimed was way too high.  Actually, it looks like it's at least $20 million more, not to mention continuing maintenance costs and I'm guessing expansion from two to four lanes not too far down the line.

I think about this as Anchorage's Central Park.  It's large, relatively undisturbed area in the middle of urban Anchorage, and area that is becoming less and less urban every year.  In thirty years, this will be seen - if any of it is left - as an urban oasis.  The fact that it's been preserved this long is fantastic.  Imagine how much it would cost to buy the land to make Central Park in New York now.  It would be simply impossible.  We have that land already preserved, but the Department of Transportation and the people the funnel construction money to want to rip right through it for a road.  I'm not saying the road won't be a little more convenient for some people, but I'm saying the price (in the intact system that will be disrupted) is way too high.  And after they added the $20 million into the law, we learned that it will actually cost another $20 million actually.

They simply want to rip through that land now so they've got the damage done, and then come back to 'clean it up.'  Again from the ADN report reprinted at the American Planning Association website:

Miyashiro said it's likely a two-lane road, less than a mile in length, will be built. He said he expects costs to fall under the $20 million budget, although early, leaked, estimates pinned some routes at nearly double that. 
They're even doing it without federal money so they can avoid environmental impact studies as they go through a boggy wetland.  

So I want to salute Gardner and Josephson for their action.  As minority party members I suspect this bill will have little traction, but the majority party will have to hide it in a committee somewhere and it will eat a little bit of more of their souls.  

[A reader called me last week saying that the Governor's proposal on education in his State of the State must have gotten to me because he thought my post showed a little more emotion in my response than usual.  I'm sure that he'll think it's more true of this post.  But I see these actions as doing serious damage to the social and physical fabric of our state.  It's like people going into the Louvre and tossing out the great art and turning the building over to one of their donors.  AND they are going to pay the donor to refurbish the building.

If I sound a bit less restrained than usual, it's because I've been watching what I think is a crime taking place for the last couple of years.  It's politicians transferring public money to corporations for a project that the most directly affected citizens do not want and have made that clear repeatedly.  And not only are they 'stealing' public money, they are destroying a well loved and environmentally sensitive natural area that will be forever scarred by a road cutting right through it.  

I can hear the engineers at Dowl who conducted the public hearings and at the DOT pointing to reasons why this needs to be done.  My response is:  if they are wrong, it can never be undone.  If I'm wrong, the road can still be built in the future. 

"Follow the money" is a phrase popularized by the movie All the President's Men about Watergate.  Deepthroat, the under cover informant repeatedly tells this to the Washington Post  reporters trying to tie the Watergate break-in back to the White House.   

Alaska needs a crew of citizens and journalists doing nothing but following the money.  When a million or ten million is appropriated for projects such as this road - or the indoor tennis courts, or the Knik Arm Crossing - we need to track which companies and individuals actually end up getting that money.  I suspect we'll see that ideology and public good play a much smaller role in Alaska spending than does private gain.  (If it didn't, it would make Alaska unique.)  But unless people can follow the money trail, they can't evaluate 1) whether we're getting good value for our money, 2) whether the project really needed to be done, and 3) which politicians are merely funneling money and other favorable treatment to their bigger financial supporters.

The Corrupt Bastards Club disbanded less than ten years ago. 

For those of you who read this blog, like my caller, because you see it as more objective and even handed than other blogs, I ask your indulgence.  Consider this post as notes, as a draft, as preparation for posts on the topic that will have more hard facts.  On the Bragaw extension through the University land, I assure you,  I've been to three public hearings and read countless documents, and talked to some of the players.  I've given you some links that support what I say (and saw), but a detailed report on all of this is beyond my time constraints right now.    But rest assured, I wouldn't take the strong position I'm taking here if I hadn't looked at this closely and didn't feel confident about my position.

And I want to thank my caller for telling me his thoughts.  It makes the time and care I try to put into most posts worth the effort.  So thanks.]

What Are The Odds? A Good Story About How The Unlikely Does Happen

I was in a Persian grocery store in LA.  I wanted to buy something for Gita who had translated for Pourya and Mona, the Iranian film makers whose film, Everything is Fine Here, got honorable mention for features at the Anchorage International Film Festival.   Here's a short post and video (in Farsi) from early in the festival.

I explained to the clerk that I had a Persian friend in Anchorage and I wanted to bring back something she would like, but probably can't get in Anchorage.  She was having trouble figuring out what I wanted.

Then a young man came up to me and said, "I lived in Anchorage for two years, what do you want?"  I explained the situation.

"What's your friend's name?,"  he asked.
"Gita"
Big smile.  "I know Gita, I've eaten at her house."

He suggested three things that would be hard to get in Anchorage - fresh bread, fresh dessert, and barberries (Zereshk).  But, he said, wait until just before you leave, so they'll be fresh.

And then I asked him what he did for two years in Anchorage.

"I taught at the College of Business and Public Policy at UAA."

It turns out he was there - where I taught - after I retired.  But we had lots of common friends and I walked out of the shop in amazement at my good luck.


People talk about things being destined to explain such things, and I like that notion.  I'm skeptical though. 


What are the odds?

A million to one?  100, 000 to one?  !000 to one? 

There are lots and lots of Iranians in LA and a good place to run into them is an Iranian grocery store.  If he goes to the grocery once a week the odds suddenly don't seem so remote.

The store is open seven days a week, 13 hours a day (12 on Sunday). (I just called and checked.)   So they are open  90 hours a week.  Say he spends 15 minutes in the small store per visit.  There are four quarter hours per hour, so I have one chance in 360 to be in the store when he is in any given week.  That's much better odds than most lottery tickets. 

It's a small store so the odds are good he could hear me talking to the clerk.

The odds that an Iranian who had lived in Anchorage for two years would know Gita are probably very high - there aren't that many Iranians in Anchorage, and Gita's been here a while. That he had worked where I worked?  A little lower. 

I also think about how easy it would have been for us both to be in that store together and not connected.  If I hadn't said anything about Anchorage to the clerk, we never would have met.  Or if did we meet at the checkout - which we did - would we have found out about our one degree of separation? 

And I wondered about how many times we've been right near someone but didn't know it.
The odds of this happening are great enough - at least in people's minds - that if I wrote it in novel, people would find it a little far-fetched.   But it happened.  And Gita came and got all the goodies we brought back right after we got home.  And she loved the story.    

When she gets the translation done, I'll do another post.  We had an interesting conversation.  You don't get to talk to Iranians coming right from Iran in Anchorage every day.

And while we're talking about links and degrees of separation, here's a video of a Kevin Bacon TED talk on how he responded to the Kevin Bacon Six Degrees game by setting up Sixdegrees.org to get people to donate to charities.

What's Wrong with Seattle, Alaska, and the US Olympic Team's New Sweaters?

I took this morning off and stayed in bed and read the first half of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, a book that hovers between trashy and deliciously arch.  Junk food with substance.   Bernadette lives in an abandoned girls reform school in the Queen Anne section of Seattle.  Her husband is a Microsoft star.  Since both my kids spent a fair amount of time in Seattle - and my daughter still lives there - I rationalized this book would fill in some gaps in my understanding of the Emerald City.

Here's Bernadette:

"As much as I try not to engage people at the grocery checkout, I couldn't resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as "cosmopolitan."  Encouraged, I asked, "Really?"  She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over.  "Like where?"  Her answer, "Alaska.  I have  ton of friends from Alaska."  Whoomp, there it is." (p. 132)

Bernadette's neighbor is having a social event and wants her garden perfect, which means getting rid of the blackberry tendrils in her yard.  She calls the guy who had exterminated them recently to come back.  Sorry, he says, those come from your neighbor's (Bernadette's) yard.  Since she doesn't get along with Bernadette, she tries to get him to come over when Bernadette is not home and do the deed.  This book is fiction.  But I know Bernadette's neighbor.

And when I finally got out of bed and looked at the Anchorage Daily News, there was a NY Times story about 'the hideous Christmas sweaters' that Ralph Lauren designed for the US Olympic team headed to Sochi.

Why do people have such strong opinions about what other people do or say or look like?  I know that sounds almost like a naive question, but since we are faced with a seemingly unlimited supply of snark, shouldn't we do more than just accept it as 'the way things are"?  Or figure out how to convert it to usable energy?

This isn't going to be an exhaustive treatise, but at least, let's start with these three examples.

Seattle and Alaska.  Bernadette engineered the move to Seattle after her LA venture went bad.  When Microsoft bought her husband's company, she took the opportunity to escape LA to Seattle.  And when she realizes she doesn't fit in Seattle, it turns out her husband fits perfectly in the corporate playground Bill Gates built.  So there she is.

Her snark bubbles up from the suppressed anger about living in Seattle (and the unresolved LA venture.)   She's more of an introvert and an artist and not very tolerant of superficiality and status.  She's a serious person who has pursued what felt right without conforming to what the world expected of her.  I'd say her snark comes from living in a world that doesn't work for her.  She's impatient with people who (act as though they) love Seattle and, I guess Alaska, in her mind, is Seattle cubed.

The neighbor who's willing to trespass and, in her mind I'm sure, help to clean up Bernadette's unruly blackberries, isn't that different.   Blackberries are the bane of people who need to control.  They symbolize all that is wrong with the world.  Her image of perfection is destroyed by these pesky weeds that spread like some uncontrollable alien creature.  Bernadette is neglectful in not controlling them.  It's almost like a constantly barking dog.  In her mind, trespassing to cut the blackberries is no different from throwing dog biscuits over the fence to quiet the barking dog.  But deep down, she knows what she's doing is wrong, so when she's caught, she attacks.

I think both those examples deal with aesthetics and feeling out of control.  Seattle doesn't match Bernadette's aesthetics for a comfortable place to live and she feels caught there.  Her rants about all the five street intersections in Seattle are not that different from her neighbor's concern with the blackberries.   And in both cases, the problems grate them, in part because they don't have the power to control their environments to put their lives in synch.

And surely the Olympic sweaters are also about aesthetics.  They just don't match some people's notion of what looks good.  Or, turned around, they match the detractors idea of schlock.  Does it matter?  To the extent that the Olympic team represents all Americans, I guess all Americans have a right to express their opinions.

Actually, when I checked online, I found out that the Olympic sweaters are on sale at the Ralph Lauren website for $595.  I'm guessing the snarky NY Times article is just part of the whole Olympic marketing campaign to get people to be aware of the sweaters and other outfits so they will buy them.  I'll have to look at how much Lauren paid the Olympics to get to use the athletes as models on their websites.  (How long will it take for the Olympics to die of their excess?)

But is any of this worth getting all worked up about?  I like Bernadette's advice to the daughter after a confrontation with the neighbor and the daughter gets upset.

"She just held up her hand in my direction.  "It's not worth it."

And ultimately, my concern about people throwing verbal darts at others, goes back to the story of the angry boy I found and posted back in 2007, whose father made him pound a nail into the fence for every tantrum he had.  And then when he finally got over the tantrums, he had him pull a nail out each day he went without a tantrum.  When all the nails were out, the father points to one of the holes left in the fence and says:

When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there." 

That old post does find Buddhist uses for anger too.

Warm, Sunny January Day Ends At Folk Festival

A quick post.  Got up early and had class from 9am-1pm.  Good students, interesting sounding projects.

When I got out after class the sun brightened everything and it felt like spring. A balmy mid-forties made me want to find an outdoor table to have lunch.

But all these warm days have turned the streets to water and ice.

We were able to catch the headliner act at the second week of the Anchorage Folk Festival - appropriately, Mr. Sun.  The Wendy Williamson was packed.  The festival goes on Saturday and Sunday and admission is free - but leave some money to help pay for things if you can.

Alaska Gov Becomes Pro-Choice, Declares Year of Education[Privatization]

In his State of the State Address Wednesday night, Alaska's Gov. Parnell declared the Year of Education and spent the largest part of his speech talking about education.  He was going to make a deal.  He'd raise the money going to education in return for giving parents the choice to take the public money allocated for their children's education and spend it on private schools, including religions schools.

He's opposed to women making intimate choices about their own bodies when they become pregnant.

He's opposed to gays and lesbians making choices about whom they marry.

He's opposed to local communities making choices about the kinds of development that takes place in their communities.  (Local Coastal Zone Management has been gutted, and HB 77, that the Governor is pushing hard, would eliminate lots of local say in development projects.)

What is the real agenda here?  I can't get inside of the Governor's head, but if you take the old political advice from Richard Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, "''Watch what we do, not what we say,'' I'd have to conclude that the Governor's agenda:

• Mirrors a lot of Tea Party agenda - strongly pro-evangelical and anti-federal government
• Mirrors a lot of corporate agenda 
•  remove federal and local obstacles to development (to hell with environmental protection or local say)
• Transfers as much government money to the private sector as possible (the $2 billion a year tax cut for the oil companies, public school money to private schools, etc.

Of course, this starts a slippery slope.  If parents can transfer public money from public schools to private schools because they don't like the public school program, some people are going to want to take their share of the federal budget that supports war and transfer it to support programs that encourage peace and cooperation.  Others are going to want to take their part of the budget that supports things like the Knik Arm Bridge and spend it on things like better maintenance of existing roads.  

By using a Republican majority in the legislature (enabled in the Senate by playing with just enough districts by the redistricting board to break the bi-partisan coalition) to force a conservative, pro-corporate agenda on Alaskans rather than find ways to work with the opposition (that does still represent a significant portion of the Alaska public), the Governor is rejecting civilization for force and balkanization.  

He would give us an education system where kids go to schools that indoctrinate them into their parents' ideology instead of public schools where people meet with other students and with teachers who don't necessarily share the same world view.  In a democracy, that's a good thing.  In fact it's the only possible way.  

He would give us a state in which corporate profits (most of which leave the state) would trump the will of the people who live in Alaska and consider it their home.  This would take us back to the days before Statehood, when Alaska's resources and landscape were trashed for corporations which had no long term stake in Alaska or its people.  

Fortunately power isn't forever.  When you abuse it, when you don't hold it as a responsibility to improve the lives of all,  when you listen only to your ideological colleagues and your corporate sponsors, you get isolated and think everyone thinks like you.   The natural world finds equilibrium.  When things go too far in one direction, they eventually snap back.  Humans are still part of the natural world and those rules apply to humans too.   When things go too far, nature  pulls things back into balance.  Even the powerful Soviet empire overextended its power until it snapped.  The Middle East has seen unthinkable recent shifts in power.  Revolution doesn't always work out the way the revolutionaries want.  It doesn't cure the underlying ideological or economic divisions.  But it does stop the momentum and offers a chance for a realignment.  It would be much easier if those in power respected the interests of those out of power, if they didn't use their power to force their agenda on others.  Precisely what they complain about Obama and ACA.  Though I would argue that Obama is more in alignment with the population.  Without the constant Fox lies and meanness, things would have rolled out much more smoothly.    The Republicans in Juneau don't even realize how extreme they are, how far from the average Alaskan and from the spirit of the Constitution.

I'm afraid that the Republicans have picked up where they left off when the Corrupt Bastards Club was exposed by the FBI.  There was a short break in the oil companies' total rule of Juneau.  But it seems it was only a small bump in the road and now that they have a former Conoco-Phillips lobbyist in the governor's seat, they have a smoother ride.  

But I suspect things are being stretched too far in their direction and people who normally don't pay attention are being negatively impacted.  There are 20,000 people the governor has prevented from getting medical insurance by not expanding Medicaid.  There are many folks who are finding their local communities have no say on corporate development projects in their communities.  

Let me say also, that capitalism isn't 'the enemy', but capitalism with no checks on its failures can do serious harm.  The free market's most popular proponent, Milton Friedman, identified flaws in capitalism, which he said justified three needed government functions:  "government as rule-maker and umpire, technical monopoly and neighborhood effects, and paternalism."    The problem I have with those who would whittle down government to nothing and 'let the market take care of things' is the problem that these folks have with government - power.  Power is a human issue and corporations are run by humans.  As they become more and more powerful, they make rules and decisions that take away our liberty.  Without a counterbalance, they become the new government.  A government, though, where people have no say in who's in charge and what the rules are.  What we need is much better accountability of government and more balance between the public and private sectors.  Declaring that government is bad and the market is the cure of all ills is simple minded.  As simple minded as saying that corporations are all evil and government should have all the power.  

I'd also say that our current education system has lots of flaws.  First, it's way too oriented toward academics from early on.  It sets up kids as failures if they are not ready to perform at an arbitrary level from the first grade on.  There aren't adequate options for kids with non-academic strengths (except sports).  Its mass production assembly line tends to reject kids who don't arrive at school without the specs the curriculum requires.  They don't get thrown out like a bad part would, but they fall further and further behind and are taught they are failures even if no one says it out loud.   Our system demands kids adjust to the system, not the system adjust to the needs of the kids.  

So, I'm all for serious education reform.  But not simply transferring public money to unproven private organizations that have no responsibility to take on all the children, including those that don't fit the ideal mold (social problems, physical problems, etc.)  I also see inclusive public schooling as the incubator where people learn to get along with all their fellow citizens, a necessary part of democracy.  And public schools also don't necessarily do that good job of this either. But at least the ideals of tolerance of other people and other ideas is taught.   Perhaps the biggest conflict is whether schools should teach kids how to think or to teach kids what to think.  I don't think the public schools do a great job yet in teaching how to think (though some do quite well), but I have grave doubts about it happening in most religiously oriented private schools.   Do you really want public money paying tuition at Jerry Prevo's Anchorage Baptist Temple?  And does Prevo want public money to pay for Muslim school tuition?

There's lots more to say about the State of the State.  Most of it was generalities about how things have gotten better the last year, but there was no evidence I heard that would connect those benefits to the things the governor did.  And it seemed to me significant things were misrepresented.  If everything has gotten as rosy as the governor suggests, then why is the Anchorage School District being forced to cut teachers next year?  I need to go through it more carefully and see if I can figure it out.  

Laurie Hummel Announces Bid For State House Seat - Laurie Who?

I get emails.  Today one told me that Laurie Hummel is running for the Alaska State House in  northeastern Anchorage District 15.

I first 'met' Laurie Hummel when she was interviewed by the Alaska Redistricting Board with two other finalists for the executive director position last year.  I put 'met' in quotes because I was listening in by phone from my mom's house in LA.

The result of the interview was one of the more effusive blog posts I've written.  She had all the qualifications for the position and more.  A PhD in cultural geography which meant she knew all about mapping.  When they asked her if she knew the software program they used to do the mapping, her response was, "Well, I've never taught a class on it."  That wasn't a cheeky answer.  She'd explained that she'd taught classes in GIS in general just before.

Laurie Hummel

What about her experience with Alaska Natives?  At that point the federal Voting Rights Act section that required Alaska to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department hadn't yet been struck down by the US Supreme and so knowledge of Alaska Native regions was important.  Her answer - she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the military on Alaska Natives. 
What kind of experience did she have in dealing with sensitive situations?  Well, while in the army (she retired as a colonel), one of her projects in Afghanistan was to help integrate women into the Afghan military. 

She was ready for every question with a perfect response in a very modest and respectful tone.  For specific Alaska administrative procedures she hadn't worked with - like travel rules - she checked online and had the regulations.  I couldn't believe the Board had found such a perfect applicant.  I was  blown away with how amazingly she handled the interview.  Apparently the Board was too.  So much so that soon after they announced they decided not to fill the position.  My guess is that they were afraid of someone so well qualified, head and shoulders above most of the members of the Board to do this job.

So I found her email and asked if she'd talk to me when I got back into town.  I wanted to meet this woman.  We had a very pleasant conversation and I went away convinced that my first impression was right.  We talked a few more times over the phone and by email.  I learned that she was being recruited to run for office.  That was not in any of her life plans she said.  She was particularly turned off by the idea of asking people for money.  In the end, it seems like the appeal to service got to her.  If she thought politics was so bad, didn't she have a responsibility to do what she could to make it better?   Is Juneau easy compared to Afghanistan?

I don't know her views on many issues, but I do know that she's a well educated candidate with significant military and Alaska experience. She's spent a good part of her military career in Anchorage where she served as the Alaskan Command’s Chief of Operations Intelligence.  She's been on the West Point  faculty (her alma mater.)

People who complain about the lack of good candidates should check out Laurie Hummel.

Norm's on Bragaw and Debarr noon to one Thursday, January 23, 2014

    The email I got also said that she's talking at the      Bartlett Club tomorrow at noon.  I think I've been to one or two such meetings in the last 30 years, but I'm planning to see how she does.