Apparently Lying To The Alaska Legislature Is OK

[UPDATE April 12, 2014:  Follow up post here.]

I got a copy of a letter* that Sen. French sent to Sen. Giessel about this afternoon's Resource Committee hearing.  He asked her to swear in the witnesses from Repsol, BP, and ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, who, he expects:

". . . will be generally trying to establish that SB 21 is 'working' and that negative consequences would result if SB 21 were repealed by the voters in August. "

He goes on:

"There is no issue of greater importance to the economic future of the state than this one. Alaska has struggled since statehood to set a fair oil tax. Our obligation as elected representatives should be to elicit the most reliable and trustworthy information that exists on the topic and to make it available to our constituents. 

AS 24.25.060 gives you, as chair of the Resources Committee, the authority to administer an oath to witnesses appearing before your committee. While this power  is not normally invoked in the Legislature,  it is of course a matter of everyday routine  in the court system.  By this letter I am requesting that you use your authority under our laws to swear  in  the witnesses who appear before the committee at tomorrow’s hearing.

I believe that as citizens and as legislators we have an obligation to seek the truth and to promote it."

I didn't realize that witnesses before legislative committees weren't expected to tell the truth.  I called Sen. French's office and spoke with an aide, Alex, who said that if a witness does not testify under oath, they cannot be prosecuted for perjury.  And thus, if they aren't truthful, it has no legal consequences to the witness.

It seems Sen. Giessel's options are to say:

• "Sure, why not?  They have nothing to hide."
• "We don't swear in most people and swearing them in would be an insult to their integrity."

In Sen. French's press release, he notes:

"The investigation surrounding the grounding of Royal Dutch/Shell’s Arctic drilling rig, the Kulluk, had a role in French’s decision to make the request.    Through a series of problems the Kulluk went aground.  Questions arose about whether Shell took the risky move of a mid-winter tow to avoid paying millions in state property taxes.  A Shell executive told the press that tax considerations had nothing to do with the move.  The same executive later admitted under oath that Alaska tax laws influenced the move."

I covered the Kulluk press releases last year and remember them denying that the tax issue played a role.

In a fair world, Sen. Giessel would  have no choice but to agree to swear them in.  Is there a choice between risking insulting a witness by asking him to take responsibility for telling the truth or making sure the people of Alaska are guaranteed that if the witness lies, he could be prosecuted for perjury? 

In my mind, not swearing them in would be an insult to the people of Alaska. 



You can watch the meeting which starts now (1pm Alaska Time) here.
[UPDATE:  This is the House Resource committee.
The Senate committee starts at 3:30pm. You should be able to get it here.] *No special scoop, it was in a press release emailed to me and zillions of others.

Alaska Dispatch Is Buying The Anchorage Daily News For $34 million

Not sure if you still have time to offer McClatchy (the parent corporation) $35 million.  I suspect not.  


I just got this email from Strategies360 Alaska a firm with principles [principals] David Shurtleff (former KSKA news guy), Ethan Berkowitz (former Demomcratic state legislator and congressional and gubernatorial candidate), and Taylor Bickford (former executive director of the Alaska Redistricting Board).  Berkowitz wasn't on the communication, but a person I don't know, a fourth principle, Aileen Cole.  It's part of a national firm that does research, public relations, and advocacy.  (Bickford seems to be, for example, the spokesperson for the proposition to make marijuana legal in Alaska.)
[Update 5pm:  A close relative seemingly disagreeing with the Supreme Court's belief that corporations are people, suggested they couldn't have principles.  I'm not sure we can't say that a firm with principled leaders has good principles, but what I meant was principals.]

Since I don't know  more at the moment, I'll just give you their press release, it gives lots of the details:

Alaska Dispatch Publishing LLC to Purchase Anchorage Daily News

ANCHORAGE, AK—APRIL 8, 2014—Alaska Dispatch Publishing LLC, the owner and publisher of Alaska Dispatch, has reached an agreement to purchase the Anchorage Daily News from The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI).

Founded in 2008, Alaska Dispatch is an award-winning site at the forefront of the national movement toward independent online news. Alice Rogoff, a longtime supporter of journalism and a former chief financial officer of U.S. News and World Report, became the majority owner of Alaska Dispatch LLC in 2009. Since then, the operation has employed writers, editors, and a full-time sales staff. Rogoff is the publisher and chief executive while co-founder Tony Hopfinger is the executive editor and president.

"We founded Alaska Dispatch to ensure the future of quality journalism in Alaska," said Hopfinger. "We've established ourselves as a leader in investigative reporting, public service journalism, and in offering a variety of opinions and perspectives from around the state, and we've been recognized with regional and national awards. We're proud of what we have accomplished in the last five years, and we couldn't be more excited about this new venture."

The Anchorage Daily News, the largest newspaper in Alaska, has a long history of distinguished journalism, winning two Pulitzer Prizes for public service in 1976 and 1989. “We’re excited to add the many talented and accomplished employees of the Anchorage Daily News to our team,” said Rogoff.

“The Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch play vital roles in our great state,” said Rogoff. “By merging these operations, we can serve as a stronger, even more comprehensive resource for Alaskans for their news and information. Our mission is to offer a level of coverage never before seen in Alaska history, and to offer it to readers across the state through a variety of mediums.

"We expect to publish news and commentary for all Alaskans, from oil field workers on the North Slope to Southeast fishermen; from those whose roots go back thousands of years to newcomers fresh off the plane; from our biggest cities to our most remote villages and everywhere in between. We want to provide a true public forum where Alaskans from all walks of life can come together to help build our community.”

The purchase price is $34 million, payable at closing, which is anticipated to occur in May of 2014.

The transaction covers the Anchorage Daily News, their website adn.com, and the newspaper’s real property and operations in Anchorage. After the purchase is completed, the real estate assets of the Anchorage Daily News will be sold by Alaska Dispatch to a private local buyer. The Anchorage Daily News will continue operations as a tenant from its East Anchorage location.

###

Alaska Dispatch was co-founded by Tony Hopfinger, Amanda Coyne and Todd Hopfinger in 2008. In 2009, Alice Rogoff, a longtime supporter of journalism and a former chief financial officer of U.S. News and World Report, became the majority owner of Alaska Dispatch LLC, and the operation expanded to employ writers, editors, and a full-time sales staff. Rogoff is the publisher and chief executive while Hopfinger is the executive editor and president.

Pt Capital, based in Anchorage, serves as the buyer's financial adviser.

I do know that the ADN has been struggling and the Dispatch, which only has an online presence (to my knowledge) has been aggressive and covering Alaska news more comprehensively than the ADN.


[UPDATE 3:22pm:  From Reuters:

The sale of the newspaper to Alaska Dispatch Publishing marks the first time a local news upstart has purchased the local daily newspaper in its market.
Alice Rogoff, publisher of the online-only Alaska Dispatch, said the deal was meant to serve Alaskans, many of whom still read a print newspaper.
"Advertisers still view it as a useful medium," she said.
Rogoff, a former chief financial officer of U.S. News and World Report, said Alaska Dispatch plans to produce more news in print and online with the purchase of the newspaper.

Upstart?  Why not just say "online' publisher?  

The Reuters report also quotes McClatchy's president:

"We weren't looking to sell the Daily News, but after Alaska Dispatch Publishing approached us, we saw advantages to local ownership in this case and opportunities for consolidation that would strengthen both news organizations," Talamantes said.

Local ownership is a great goal, but the person who's been paying for the Dispatch, as I've understood it, Alice Rogoff, lives in New York.  But the co-founders and co-owners are Alaskans.  [UPDATE 4/9/ 2:30pm:  A reader with an Alaska Dispatch email account wrote me to say that Alice Rogoff has gradually moved to Alaska over the last ten years.  And has been a full time Alaskan for a while now. And she lived in DC, not New York (but then the East Coast is all the same thing, right?) Big mistake on my part - my apologies.  The Dispatch has a story about her today.]

Easternization

At the UAA Ethics Conference, Roger Ames pointed out that while we use the term globalization, that really isn't what's happening. I was struck by the fact that I'd never really thought about this term.  I had thought about the concept of cultural exchange being two way.  Globalization suggests that there is movement all over the globe in different directions.  Basically, what we have though, is Westernization.  What we have very little of is Easternization.

In terms of economics and consumerism, that would seem to be the case.  Every country is impacted by the market system, by the demand for more efficiency, by the demand for cheap labor, which draws people from the rural areas to the cities.  This process then undermines whatever social structure exists. Efficiency interrupts a more leisurely lifestyle.   Commodification gives everything a dollar value.   Work trumps family as people move away from home to the big(ger) cities so they can earn and send money back home.  Money replaces face to face relationships.  These folks live in relatively squalid conditions with strangers away from their families. (The housing for workers we saw at the university I taught at in Beijing who were constructing the super modern law building was makeshift, plywood, minimalist housing on campus at the construction site.) And their families back home compete for their wages with others at the work sites - prostitutes, alcohol and drugs dealers, gamblers, and an assortment of scam artists.  Cultural values tend to lose out to the competition for money to buy consumer goods.

So, even though one could argue the exchange is two-way because goods go from less economically developed countries to the rich countries, those goods are the supply for the Western generated market demand, and even China became capitalist to meet that demand.

There is some Eastern (and Southern) influences on the west.  We can dine on food from Asia, Africa, and South America.  We can go to Yoga and Tai Chi classes and even get acupuncture.  But much of this tends to get infected by market pressures so we get things like Power Yoga!  And to the extent that any of these is acknowledged as having any health benefits, they get bent and twisted to conform to insurance company rules.

In the Saturday session of the ethics conference, a professor from China who teaches in Los Angeles, said that Chinese women do not want to be the consumers of Western feminism, but want to be the producers of a Chinese feminism. The context of Western and Chinese culture, she said, require different strategies for dealing with the unequal treatment of women. 

By the way, I did ask about whether the papers would be posted online.  Yes, but later in the summer when they are all compiled into a book format. 

You Get What You Pay For

I'm paralyzed - there are so many things to write about I don't know where to start. I'll  never catch up.   But the genius of being an unpaid blogger is that if I don't post today, my readers can't cut my pay. 

Here are some things I'm not ready to post about:

Kid's Count Report - headline on the email:

No Child Left Behind—Except 73 Percent of Alaska’s 4^th Graders

Shocking New Numbers Rank Alaska 45^th in Nation for 4^th Grade Reading Proficiency; Show Troubling Racial Disparities in Learning Outcomes

Ervin Kaplan, artist

• Some art exhibit pics still from LA.  Here are the museum custodians playing tic tac toe on the Mondrian at jna gallery in Santa Monica.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Thoughts on the ADN's new sections on Science, Technology, Health; some of their headlines;  and the end of the Ear and what Amanda Coyne has done with its reincarnation, or as Hollis French might say, "pourquoi?"
  
• Book club meeting on Tom Kizzia's Pilgrim's Wilderness. 
  
• The Coast Guard's Kulluk report which seems to support the frustration this blog had with their press releases last year which tended to say how great Shell was doing and withhold everything else. 
• Impact of the Koch "dump Begich" campaign.
  
   
• Easternization and Confucius Meets Feminism -  followup from the Philosophy conference last weekend.

Or how nice a day it is today and why I should go out and enjoy the sun and snow and ice free surfaces (including in front of my house, but not yet everywhere.)

Bloomberg Says: Putin Wouldn't Dare Take Alaska

Bloomberg also reports that the Mayor of Yakutsk, Russia, has 

"petitioned President Vladimir Putin, the heads of both chambers of the Russian Parliament, and the Russian Foreign Minister requesting the return of Spruce Island to the church.”

He claims documents found in Juneau by a Russian who fled the Revolution in 1917 show the island was given to the Russian Orthodox Church when Russia sold Alaska to the US.
Bloomberg disputes this claim.

But NPR reported (on April 1, but claiming it was not an April Fool's Joke):

A recent petition written in clunky English on the official White House Website seeks Alaska seeks Alaska's secession and return to Russia.
So far, it has generated more than 37,000 signatures — or more than a third of the 100,000 needed to get the Obama administration to formally respond.

While the Alaska Independence Party has long called for Alaska's independence from the US, there's nothing on their website about being annexed by Russia, and even they aren't so detached from reality to exchange the US for Russia.  

A Moscow Times article, which gives a long history and quotes a Kenai College history professor, says they didn't get a response from our governor on this issue.

Alaska's official policy regarding Russian claims on the state remains unclear — the offices of the current Alaska Governor Sean Parnell and former Governor Palin did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

 I'm pretty sure the governor's position is very clear.  I think annexation to Russia is one thing both Republicans and Democrats would unite against.  And I suspect that the US military presence in Alaska is a wee bit stronger than the Ukrainian force in the Crimea. 

Bad Survey Design

I got an email survey about a Credit Union I have an account in.  Here's the first question:

I haven't used any of them in the last 30 days, so I clicked on the 'next' button and got this:

So, my choices are to 1.  click here and go back to the first page or just quit.  I have no option to say, "I haven't used any of them in the last 30 days."   Perhaps they are only interested in the last 30 days, but then there should be an option to say, "None" and then they could thank me and say the survey is done and not left me in a catch-22 loop.  And if the survey has more general questions than just the last 30 days, they've lost my input. 

Spanish (U.S.)

Sitemeter tells me many things about the people who visit here.  One line in each report says Language.  It's the language the computer is set at.  There are lots of different English settings, for example:

Language         English (Australia)
                         en-au
Language         English (U.S.)
                         en-us
Language         English (U.K.)
                         en-gb
Language         English (Ireland)
                         en-ie
Language         English (New Zealand)
                         en-nz
Language         English (Canada)
                         en-ca

Not to be confused with

Language         French (Canada)
                         fr-ca

And the same is true for Spanish. Most common for me is Spain (España), but South and Central American countries show up too.  Each has its own Spanish designation:

Language         Spanish (España)
                         es
Language         Spanish (Unknown) [the location said Venezuela]
                         es-41
Language         Spanish (Mexico)
                         es-mx
Going back a few days I found a couple from Columbia and one from Argentina, but they were just the plain Spain Spanish - es.  I've been guessing that when something like that happens (or a US English from Turkey) it's because someone is traveling with his computer set to his home country's language.  Like this one from Columbia:

Language         Spanish (Argentina)
                         es-ar

But today I saw one I hadn't noticed before:

Language         Spanish (U.S.)
                         es-us



Maybe this has been around a while and I just never noticed.  But it's probably an acknowledgement that something has changed.  There now is something called Spanish - US. I know that Spanish language television networks are doing well in the US and Hispanics are regularly hailed as the important new voters in national elections.  And now I see that someone who can do these things on the internet has recognized something called Spanish (U.S.)

If you click on the Sitemeter numbers in the right hand column (below "Blogs of Friends and Acquaintances" and above "Labels"), you should be able to see the reports and see the kinds of information Sitemeter reports.  I leave that publicly available because I believe in transparency. 

Another National Retailer's Security Breached By Credit Card Hackers

At least that's the story that Visa is telling me explaining why I can't see my new bill on line, why it says I didn't pay my last bill, why they sent new cards yesterday.  But we're leaving town again Monday when the cards are due here, and while our houseguest will get the mail, I don't want to be traveling without a working credit card.

They won't tell me who was breached, only that it's a major national company and they found out in the last 48 hours.

It's taken me a while to figure out the online payment system.  For a while I'd press pay and think I was done, but they required I hit another confirm button. I only learned that when I got the next bill with late payment and interest fees when I thought I'd paid.  They would take the charges off when I called, and I did figure out the problem.

I've got that down now and just pay as soon as it comes up online.  Fortunately, they let you schedule the payment date.  And I've learned to take a screen shot when it says "Payment Successfully Scheduled" with the date and amount.  That was very helpful today.  I could tell them exactly how much I paid, when it was scheduled, and it even had a confirmation number.  It probably has all that in the email confirmations they send, but I know exactly where I save these screenshots. 

They're FedExing our new cards so we get them before we leave.  And she's transferring me to the Fraud division to find out which retailer was breached. .  .  . The Fraud folks, it turns out, take care of several different credit cards and she said she didn't know which vendor it was.   They said someone called us, but there's nothing on either the land line answering machine or the cell phone.  I only called them because the online bill wasn't working.  Not sure how many people were affected.  Maybe not enough for us to hear about it in the media.

[UPDATE:  This came in an email last night (4/3/14) with an 11:38pm time:

We have learned that your xxxxxxxxxxx® credit card information may have been compromised at an undisclosed merchant or service provider. This does not mean fraud has or will occur on your account, but we are taking precautionary steps to help protect your account.]
 

Conservative Intellectual Yoga

Rooster Pose image from Martin Brading

It seems to me that some conservatives seem to be incredibly adept at intellectual yoga, in which they can twist their logic and the facts into very bizarre ways in order to support their  logically contradictory positions.



Point 1:  Hobby Lobby objects to paying for health insurance for employees that includes contraceptive coverage for women, saying the business owner's religious beliefs should trump a woman's right to non-discrimination, privacy.  Basically, they are saying they should not have to pay for a woman's contraception through their health care.  What about paying for treatment of STD's resulting from an employee's adultery?  Will women have to research company owners' religious beliefs before applying for a job to be sure the health care will cover her reproductive health needs?
And what about the company money paid to an employee that the employee uses to buy reproductive health care?  That's the company's money used for the same thing, just not through insurance.  Will companies be allowed to not hire women if they use contraceptives or might possibly have an abortion in the future and would spend part of the salary to pay for it?

Point 2:  The Georgia legislature passed a law that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons into bars and churches.   In this case, it seems that the rights of owners and churches who are pacifists for religious reasons would be superseded by gun owners' rights to bear arms.

So the same people (business owners and churches) whose rights are asserted in point one are ignored in point two for the higher right of bear tools designed to kill other human beings.  

Original yoga image from CNTV

It seems they are getting closer and closer to merging their heads and their nether parts.

A Mother Jones report shows how truly twisted things get:

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

And under the 'be careful what you wish for' category,  Mike Papantonio raises the question of whether the giving the religious belief of the owner import here would threaten the legal separation of the owner from the corporation opening owners to lawsuits for misdeeds of the corporation. 

At the heart of this, what you have is, you have Hobby Lobby saying, “We’re a corporation but we’re a devout Christian corporation. … If you follow that rationale, the separateness that usually distinguishes the owner of the corporation from the corporation [itself] is then destroyed. …

[Note:  I modified both images in Photoshop.  I also used Google's search by image to try to get to the original source of the photos.]

Election Mechanics At City Hall Go Smoothly As Assembly Power Appears To Have Shifted

Last year I worked in a polling place for the Municipal election and reported on the election from that perspective.  Things went fairly well until we tried to take the ballots to city hall where things were terribly backed up.  This year I worked at city hall.  Things went much more smoothly.

Station one was at the guard's desk - people signed in (and were marked off on a master list of precincts) and got a checklist that they took to the other stations.

Station 1 near entrance from parking lot

I think this is the first precinct to arrive - Elmendorf's Mt. Spur.  They're fairly close to downtown and they said they didn't have many voters.  They were there about 8:30 pm - 30 minutes after the polls closed.








Station 2 was at the other end of the lobby in City Hall.  Last year there were people lined up outside in the cold waiting to get in (see picture here).
  This year there was much more room inside the building to go to Station 2 where they cut off the metal seals from the Accu-Voter machines and removed the card with the data on it.  The workers wrote down the number of the seal on the checklist and initialed that they'd been checked in.
 

The picture shows them setting up with Station 2 by the third elevator bay.  From there they take their cart back and down a long hallway - which kept things from backing up outside.

Station 3 was the door to the room where the contents of the bags were checked.  I think they took the black bags with the voted ballots and got them stacked up. 

Station 4 was right at that point as well.  At 4 they took the box with the unused ballots.

Finally Station 5 was where they checked and sorted the contents of the big blue bags and the green and red bags inside.  This included things like the tally of the number of voters, number of ballots used, any spoiled ballots, and left over ballots.  All the numbers are supposed to match.  The people at the desks were not asked to check all the math, but to see that things were filled out.  Other items included payroll sheets for poll workers and miscellaneous items like death certificates for people who needed to be purged from the rolls.  (I saw that one had been brought in by someone.)

Station 5 getting ready

Station 5 once things began

Station 5 when things got busier

I worked mainly in the room with Station 5.  There were five desks (two workers per desk) where people could check in their materials. A sixth desk was opened when it got crowded.  But even then I don't think anyone had to wait more than 30 seconds to 45 seconds.  The flow was pretty fast.  None of the long lines from last year.  People were in a good mood, though some were clearly tired from having worked since about 7am.

By about 10:15pm there were only six precincts still out - mostly from the Hillside.  The Alaska Zoo was one.  I think Rabbit Creek was the last one in.  Aside from being far from city hall, they had seven or eight different ballots for people in different road and other districts.  So counting through all their stuff took longer.  By the time I went home - about 10:45pm, all the precincts were in.  All the ballots in the black bags had been moved to the vault upstairs.  All the white boxes with unused ballots had been transferred into the downstairs 'vault.'

It all went smoothly.  There were no rumors about precincts running out of ballots.  No long lines.  That doesn't mean all the paper work is actually correct, but there were no signs of problems that emerged, and I'm guessing there won't be any serious issues.  

And The Results?

While we were busy, we had no news about how the election was going.  It wasn't until I got home that I heard some results.  Even now, a little after 1am, I am only getting results marked 10:23pm.  It says 122 precincts reporting out of 124 (98%).  [UPDATE 6pm: I need to check with the election folks on how to read these reports.  Nathaniel Herz in the ADN reports there were only 122 precincts altogether.  And that there are 6000 outstanding early and absentee votes to count.] Of the two Assembly seats that seemed to be in play, Pete Petersen is ahead of incumbent Adam Trombley by about 300 votes and Bill Evans was about 200 votes ahead of Bruce Dougherty in the south Anchorage seat.  You can see all the Assembly and School District results details here.   For the propositions, you can look here.   If the numbers hold, the conservative 6-5 edge over liberals would be flipped to a 6-5 liberal edge. 

Everything seems to have passed except Proposition 3 which would have fixed the steps and entrance to Loussac Library and done work around Mulcahy stadium.  That was behind by about 300 votes.  It would have added just under $2 per $100,000 property value per year.  The library was packaged with the sports complex at Chester Creek and improvements to the Anchorage golf course.