Oil Addiction Prevents Alaskan Politicians From Making Good Decisions

Image Screenshot from Video In 2010 Post

Most people don't change their habits unless they have to.

Alaska politicians (and the people who elect them) have been addicted to easy oil money for the past forty years.  The cozy relationship between some of our politicians (i.e.  ex-governor Parnell was a Conoco-Phillips lobbyist (literally, not just figuratively) and two sitting senators are also oil company employees and others get lots of support and advice from the industry) doesn't hurt either.

So our Republican dominated state government (for the last ten years or so) has spent that money like giddy lottery winners.  They didn't listen to warnings of eventual declines in oil revenues from ISER over the years.  It's true, though, that new technologies allowed for oil extraction longer than originally expected and increasing oil prices kept the revenues up even when production started dipping, letting politicians ignore the economists' warnings.

But the politicians in power positions made no serious plans to find alternative revenues or cut spending.  And because oil so dominated the economy, other traditional sources such as timber or tourism would never come close to what oil has brought in.  And as Republicans, they kept new taxes off the table.  And since none of them have the vision,  the guts, or the charisma to inspire the public to new thinking,  they've avoided the idea of tapping the Alaska Permanent Fund for what it was originally intended to do:  supplement the budget when the oil money runs out.  Nor have they been willing to broach reestablishing a state income tax.

And now the oil is hitting the fan.  The oil price decline plus Republican led tax giveaways to the oil companies have put our state budget into crisis.  Instead of planning for the day when oil revenues would no longer pay all the bills like rational, intelligent people do, they've continued to spend until their fingers come up empty when they stick their hands into the state coffers, at least the ones that don't have special locks on them like the Permanent Fund and budget reserve funds. 

OK, some will complain I'm being partisan here picking on Republicans and letting Democrats off the hook.  Democrats certainly have challenged the big tax breaks the Republican majority gave oil companies, but after redistricting, they no longer had the votes to block them.  And even the public was there, losing a ballot initiative to restore the tax by only 4% despite huge oil company spending on the election. And the Democrats have challenged big capital projects like the Susitna Dam and the Knik Arm bridge.  I don't know that Democrats have been particularly better about leading the way to use the Permanent Fund as a trust fund to help support our budget.

But the fact is that Republicans have been in power - both in the legislature and the governorship - and thus we got to our current dilemma on their watch.  So naming Republicans isn't partisanship, it's factual.

All these thoughts came pouring out of my head after reading an AP piece on the impacts of the low cost of energy  in today's ADN.  Oil and coal and natural gas company stock is down, down, down.  And Alaskan's have known for the last year or so that our stock is way down too.  But it didn't have to be if we had looked beyond the short term and prepared.  But we were drunk on oil money and we weren't forced to.


And just the other day we learned that Sen. Murkowski worked to get Alaska exempted from new EPA rules on energy companies that would require them to lower their carbon emissions. 

I get the short term impacts this will have on rural Alaska.  But the actions they would be forced to take would help wean them off the expensive fuels they've continually been using.  And there are Alaskan locations - like Kodiak and villages around the state - who are already breaking their addiction and finding alternative energy sources. Instead, most places, especially in the Capitol building in Juneau, have continued feeding their and our addiction. 

Some addicts just spiral down into self destruction.  Others break from their destructive ways and learn new, healthier habits.  It's what Alaskans need to do.  And we need politicians who have vision and can inspire Alaskans to break from the unsustainable easy way, to the harder but ultimately necessary path.

We are a state of welfare recipients, getting our state budget funded by oil taxes and the federal government, not to mention the actual individual cash Permanent Fund dividend payouts.  We need to think like the wealthy people we still are -  our Permanent Fund has $52 billion and the constitutional budget reserves has another $10 billion - and use the income of our wealth in a responsible way as others have proposed.  We need to supplement that with some sort of taxes - yes, pay our own way, not rely on others to subsidize our schools, state parks, roads, police, health care.  Let's start being healthy, responsible adults. 

How Can People Pay For A Digiplayer When This Show Is Free Out The Window?

Early morning water colors.

Just across the arm to the mudflats of Matsu.  A little after 6 am.

Knik Arm.  We took off about 6:05am, this was maybe ten minutes later.  The official sunrise in Anchorage for today was 5:40am, but with the mountains blocking the sun, it takes a little longer in the valleys.

It was a little misty over the mountains as we flew over.

And then there were clearer areas like over this glacier.

There was thick cloud cover over Prince William Sound.  It was so tight and so low, it almost looked like carpet.  I wondered whether there was any space between the cloud bottoms and the land.

And there were similar conditions in Washington state (this was approximately where the Olympic National Park might be) as we headed for the Portland airport.

Keep Moving

Fish was a big topic this week as we had house guests up here to do video of a Homer based village fish processing organization. 






Now we're back at the airport headed out for my son's birthday and then my Peace Corps group's reunion in Portland over the weekend.  I can't remember how long it's been since we got together last. 

The upside of 6am flights is seeing Anchorage early as it's getting light.  It almost seems like our house sitter belongs in the house and we are the house sitters when we're here.  But after the next few trips south to settle my mom's stuff, I think our hectic pace will slow down. 

"Fewer than 400 families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, . .

. . . a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era."


In case you missed that sentence in a New York Times article by Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen, and Karen Yourish, which was republished in lots of other papers including yesterdays Alaska Dispatch, you should go back and read it and the article.

This money is going to be used for marketing research and advertising to try to convince enough voters to support specific candidates, mostly Republicans.  And advertising, done well, works.

If you don't believe it, consider these 36 companies that Business Insider reported spent a billion or more dollars in 2011 on advertising.  They believe that marketing works and the fact that you know their names and use their products proves it.  Before going down to the list,  make your own list of ten companies you think will be on that list.

Really.  Stop reading.  Get a pen and paper or a blank page on your computer and write ten company names that you think spent $1 billion or more on advertising in 2011.  The list is at the bottom of this post.  

Ok, now you can keep reading. 


I'm sure you know almost all their names.  There might be a few you don't because their advertising doesn't go for their corporate name, but for products produced by companies they own.  Like Geico or Colgate.

But it's not hopeless.  Awareness of where the money is coming from helps people understand the motivation behind the advertising.  And if 400 families can raise so much money, think what 50 million families can raise, even if their net worth is 1/1000 of the net worth of the 400.  And then there are the folks at Move To Amend, who are working on a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that made all this money channeling into elections possible.  They want

"to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights."

It's not hopeless.  The Jews escaped from the Pharaoh, the Soviet Union fell, colonial countries around the world gained their freedom.  In the US, our fight is relatively easy.  We have access to information, we aren't downtrodden the way other people are and have been, we generally don't get sent to prison for speaking out. 

We just have to stop being distracted by all the drivel this nearly $60 billion a year in advertising sends our way (the tv shows as well as the ads themselves), and pay more attention to what's really important:  family, friends, and keeping democracy from being dismantled.

Here's the list:
(And, also, is the list of about 65 people (mostly) who have donated $1 million or more to the 2016 campaign from the NY Times article.  Knowledge is power.) 

From Business Insider List of Companies that Spent $1 Billion or More in US on Advertising 2011
36. Apple	$1 billion
35, General Mills	$1.002 billion
34. Google	$1.005 billion
33. Microsoft Corp	$1.033 billion
32. Sony Corp	$1.041 billion
31. Capital One Financial Corp	$1.043 billion
30. Viacom	$1.06 billion
29. Kohl's Corp	$1.12 billion
28. Honda Motor Co	$1.14 billion
27. J.C. Penney	$1.16 billion
26. News Corp	$1.27 billion
25. Unilever	$1.3 billion
24. McDonald's Corp	$1.37 billion
23. Berkshire Hathaway	$1.39 billion
22. Sprint Nextel Corp	$1.4 billion
21. Anheuser-Busch InBev	$1.42 billion
20. Macy's	$1.51 billion
19. Target	$1.62 billion
18. Sears	$1.69 billion
17. Bank of America Corp	$1.7 billion
16. Toyota Motor Corp	$1.73 billion
15. Fiat (Chrysler Group)	$1.770.9 billion
14. Walmart Stores	$1.89 billion
13. Johnson & Johnson	$1.94 billion
12. Time Warner	$2.051 billion
11. Pfizer	$2.072 billion
10. Walt Disney Co	$2.112 billion
9. L'Oréal	$2.124 billion
8. American Express Co	$2.125 billion
7. Ford Motor Co	$2.14 billion
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co	$2.35 billion
5. AT&T	$2.36 billion
4. Comcast Corp	$2.47 billion
3. Verizon Communications	$2.52 billion
2. General Motors Co	$3.1 billion
1. Procter & Gamble Co	$4.9 billion

Barbara Brown Starts New Anchorage Based Blog - About the Third Third

I got an email the other day.  Could I help with some questions about a new blog she was starting.  It was a Tumblr blog and I said I really didn't know that much about Tumblr and I'd seen people posting pictures there more than text.  For example.

Today's email said she'd switched to Blogger, which I do know about.  I went over to answer a few questions about getting rid of extraneous, font changing html code and choosing gadgets.  I also pointed out the website I use to create quick html tables.

Barbara's a smart lady.  She's done a lot of things including starting  [directing, it was already started before she got involved] Leadership Anchorage, she's had a radio show, and now she's thinking about the last third of her life and how to make it exciting and meaningful.

She's got great graphics too.  (That was one of the questions which got resolved by switching to blogger - how to size and place them the way she wanted.)  The ones in her first post she painted, then scanned.

So, be among the first in the world to check out her blog whose first post is today:  Our Third Thirds.  It begins:

Identity Crisis #314    [She's got a much more out-there font for her titles and I can't replicate it here and she's got those cool graphics too.] 

So what's the Third Third anyway? My mother is 90. So at 62, I'm looking at things in thirds. First 30 years, second 30, and now: the Third Third. Looking at my life, I see a timeline of decisions debated and decisions made. They're like the points in my life where a life can branch off and generate a whole new parallel universe. The kind where I married that other person or took that other job or moved to that other country. I have crowded the world with parallel universes, but I like where I am so even the bumps got me here.  .  .

  PS - give her some time to figure this out and I suspect this is going to be a very powerful blog.  The first post is pretty thought provoking and visually cool already. 

Sam Daley-Harris, Citizens Climate Lobby, and Japan Summer Festival

Today's Citizens' Climate Lobby international phone meeting (that the Anchorage group calls into from UAA) featured:

Sam Daley-Harris, Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation

How can we maximize the leverage from the media we generate and other actions we take? RESULTS founder and CCL mentor Sam Daley–Harris will join our August call and coach us on best practices to ensure that our actions have the greatest impact with members of Congress. After 15 years with RESULTS, Sam founded the Microcredit Summit Campaign, which he left in 2012 to establish the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation.

As I sit here trying to write, I realize I'm getting blasé about these really good speakers.  They're all so good and the meetings are so efficiently run - the reasons I kept going to meetings - that this has become the expectation.  If the Alaska legislature were 1/3 as efficient and effective, Alaska would be humming with a balanced budget and serious programs for making Alaska a more caring and equitable place.

As we left, they were setting up the Japanese Summer Festival at the Cuddy Center.

The event goes from 12pm to 5pm today and parking's free.  It's on the west end of campus near the Wendy Williamson auditorium.

These two, apparently had their setting up chores done, and were 'going' at it.

There was a table of Ikebana. 















The dining room at the Cuddy has the bazaar.  There was food in various places, music, folks in various kinds of Japanese dress.

And a great sale on Pocky. 


 As I post this, the Japan Day celebration has three and a half hours to go.  And it's a spectacularly beautiful day. 

Why Wasn't I Surprised That The Guy Who Killed Cecil The Lion Was A Dentist?

It's been a while since I noticed the DDS on the ends of the names of people who have trophy bears in the Anchorage Airport. 

These are only two bears representing two dentists over a 40 year period so let's not jump to conclusions about dentists. Yet.  .  .
Not all the stuffed bears at the airport had their shooters identified, but a couple that did were hunting or fishing guides.


Dr. Walter Palmer of Minnesota, is reported to have said of the death of Cecil:

“I hired several professional guides, and they secured all proper permits,” read a statement from Palmer to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted.”
He added: “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt. I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion."

Let's remember that most of us know almost nothing about Dr. Palmer and we're filling in the details to fit our own belief systems.  I think we all have a tendency to believe what we want to believe - those of us reading the stories and Dr. Palmer himself..  He wanted a lion and the guys he contacted said they'd get him one.  How carefully did he look into their credentials?  How would an American hunter even check Zimbabwean credentials?  As for the rest of us, many are blasting some version of the evil hunter killing innocent animals.   Others are praising the good hunters and singling Palmer out as the bad apple that gives all hunters a bad rep.

While I'm not likely to let this guy off easily, the real issue to me is: what is it that causes grown men, with a good education to want to go out and kill animals, not for food, but for trophies?  (And a follow up question that I won't explore here, is how this sort of killing connected to killing human beings?)   My representative in Congress is known for his wall full of animal heads and hides. He even missed a key subcommittee vote because he was on safari in South Africa.  I had a student once who explained how hunting was a bonding experience between him and his dad.  I get that, and I'm glad my dad and I bonded over other things, like hiking, books, art, baseball, and movies, rather than killing animals.

Some defend hunting as part of their cultural tradition and point out how hunters help protect the environment where animals live.  I think there's merit to those arguments, up to a point.  There are lots of traditions that modern societies no longer openly practice - like slavery, like beating kids as punishment, like cock and dog fighting,  like burning witches, like exorcising demons, or child labor and child marriage.

I look at that picture of Dr. Eberle and wonder what he was thinking at the time.  I too like to shoot animals, but with my camera rather than a gun.  That allows me a connection with the animal, but allows the animal to go on living and for others to enjoy seeing them too.   What causes grown men to want to kill big animals and display them?  Is it some sort of feelings of inadequacy, of lack of power?  Is it part of the DNA  they inherited from ancestors who hunted for survival?

A New Zealand study, done to help a government agency prepare to manage hunting on public estates, looked at lots of previous studies to try to determine motivations and satisfactions of hunters. 

Decker and Connelly (1989) proposed three categories of motivations; achievement oriented, affiliation oriented, and appreciation oriented.

• -Achievement oriented hunters are motivated by the attainment of a particular goal,  which may be harvesting an animal for meat, a trophy or a display of skill.

• -Affiliation oriented hunters participate in hunting with the primary purpose of fostering personal relationships with friends, family or hunting companions.

• -Appreciation oriented hunters are motivated by a desire to be outdoors, escape everyday stress or to relax.

The study goes on to list a much wider range of specifics, that tend to fall into these categories.  It doesn't seem to get into deeper psychological reasons such as the need to demonstrate power (maybe getting a trophy is the proxy for this) or where these needs come from.  Why some people (mostly men) have such a need to kill animals and others do not.  There's lots to ponder here. 

I'd also note that the Alaska Dental Association strongly opposed the use of dental aides to perform basic dental work in rural Alaska.  Most, I'm sure, believed that dentists would give better care and that aides lacked the extensive training necessary to make critical decisions.  They didn't seem to weigh the benefits of many, many more kids and adults getting very simple basic dental care and education that local aides could provide in an area where few dentists lived.    I think their belief was genuine, but colored by their own conscious or unconscious self interests.  As are most all of our beliefs. One such interest was simply the same as all professional licensing - limiting the amount of competition.  Also dentists could fly out to rural Alaska and see patients and also go hunting and fishing on the side.  That is true of many urban, non-Native Alaskans who provide professional services in rural Alaska.  And my saying it shouldn't cause people to question the motives of people who do such work.  But we should be aware of how such side benefits might bias one's beliefs about what's right and wrong, good and bad.

When it comes to endangered species, there are bigger issues  - like resource extraction that destroys habitat, like overpopulation that impinges on wild habitat for housing and food.  And climate change which is changing the landscape world wide.  We should be concerned with individual abuses such as luring a well known collared lion out of a refuge to be shot.  But the bigger environmental trends are much more impactful and threatening to all living things, including humans.  These are the least immediately visible and seemingly the hardest to fight.  But there are ways and many people are pursuing them.  One just has to look, and the internet makes that easy. 

Board of Regents Appoint Jim Johnsen To Be President Of The University Of Alaska

From the University press office:

"With a unanimous vote of all regents participating, the University of Alaska (UA) Board of Regents appointed Dr. James R. Johnsen as the 14th president of the UA system. The vote took place during a special meeting of the board on July 28."  [Note:  the link seems to go to the press releases in general.  I couldn't find a way to link to this specific one.  It's July 28, 2015 if you try to find it later.]

Here is most of the position description the Board put out for this job.  I've bolded those parts that speak to what the president must be or do:

 The board seeks an accomplished, astute and effective leader who can provide strategic, innovative and collaborative leadership for the university.

The Presidency of the University of Alaska is an outstanding opportunity for a leader who enjoys the challenge of moving a  complex  academic  organization  to  greater  levels  of  achievement.
The  board  seeks  a  highly  experienced,  politically savvy leader  who  understands  how  to  advance  agendas  in  higher education  and  to  manage  a  multifaceted  university system.
As  one  of  the  most  influential  and  visible  leaders  in  Alaska,  the  President  of  the  University  of  Alaska  must constantly draw the connections between higher education and the state’s economic viability.  He or she must be a tireless, persuasive advocate willing to travel widely within Alaska to encourage support for education and training beyond high school. The  president  should  be  a  visible  participant  in  national  higher  education  issues  and persuasive  with  federal agencies.
He  or  she  must  be  a  coach  for  chancellors,  a  wise  counselor  for  the  board  and a  trustworthy  resource  for  the legislature. He or she should work effectively with University of Alaska Foundation leaders.
The next President should think  creatively,  develop  collaborative  and  innovative solutions  to  challenging  issues and  be  technologically  informed.  With an approachable style and a genuine respect for others, the next President should be dedicated to earning public and private support for the University of Alaska.

A lot of bureaucratic jargon, not much that's specific.  I mention this because the press release also says:

"The new president’s contract is for five years and provides for an annual salary of $325,000 for the duration of the contract.  An annual performance bonus of up to $75,000 will be tied to mutually-agreed upon metrics which are to be determined by September 30."

Exactly how are they going to get from that job description 'mutually-agreed upon metrics'? 

This sounds like an agreement that says, "If you do these things, you'll get a bonus."  And it can be up to 23% of your base pay.

Let's compare that to what faculty get (as outlined in the United Academics contract):

15.5 Merit Bonuses
In addition to the base salary adjustments provided in this Article, the University may, in its sole discretion, award nonrecurring bonus payments to unit members for extraordinary performance far beyond expectations. If the University determines that merit bonuses will be awarded, the dean/director shall recommend to the provost those unit members whose exemplary performance may warrant a bonus. The provost shall then determine the recipients and amounts of merit bonuses.
The University may provide up to one percent (1%) of the total base payroll for merit bonuses each fiscal year. The one percent (1%) of the total base payroll will be calculated as of July 1 of each fiscal year.
There shall be no merit bonuses during the term of this agreement after December 31, 2016.

Faculty bonuses are not based on mutually agreed on metrics, but at the sole discretion of the university, and they have to be 'extraordinary performance far beyond expectations.' 

It will be interesting to see the process for coming up with the metrics and to see whether they too reflect 'extraordinary performance far beyond expectations.'  Maybe like increase the university revenues by 30% per year.  But fund raising isn't even specifically mentioned in the job description.  It's only hinted at - good relations with the UA Foundation and the legislature.

In any case, we have a new president.  I offer my congratulations to Dr. Johnsen and wish him and the university community all the best.   I'm reasonably convinced he wants to do an outstanding job.  My hope is that a) he is able to do that and b) his definition of an outstanding job overlaps closely with that of faculty, staff, and students.  I wish Dr. Johnsen and the university well. The future of Alaska in many ways depends on how well the university performs.  I will do what I can to assist, including reporting on what I think needs attention.  

Anchorage Felt Earthquake 6.2

Felt an earthquake just a little bit ago.  I've been checking and think this is the one:

From USGS

Click the image to see it better.  It says it was 69 KM SSW of Mt Redoubt Volcano.

I felt it ever so slightly, then after about 15 seconds it began to rumble very clearly and the lamp moved a bit.  And then it slowly faded.  I'd guess it went on for 30 seconds.  The time is UTC- 2:35 am July 29 which would be 7:35pm Alaska time July 28. 

Hello StatCounter, Goodbye Sitemeter (Including How To Add StatCounter And How To Delete Sitemeter)

I've been chronicling my problems with Sitemeter for a while.  My Love/Hate Relationship with Sitemeter and Sitemeter Out of Control  are two examples.  I suspect all the younger more tech savvy folks have abandoned Sitemeter long ago.  It's a story that highlights one of the downsides of capitalism -

Step 1:  clever entrepreneur following his passion creates great product and services his customers well
Step 2:  clever entrepreneur gets a great offer for his product and is tired of all the work he's created for himself, so he sells
Step 3:  new company doesn't really care about the product, just the potential money it can make, or wants to eliminate a rival,  and stops servicing customers and basically ruins the once good product

Sitemeter was created by David Smith, who sold it (as I understand) to My Space who sold it to someone else.  Here's the page that I really liked about Sitemeter and made me reluctant to give it up even when it was slow and then buggy.  It consolidates a lot of information about individual visitors.  It's not that I was trying to pry, but I was trying to get a sense of who was visiting and connecting location, sometimes organization (when it showed in the domain name), what they looked for on google, what post that took them to . . . all that helped me understand what an individual sought and sometimes told me that an agency or company I'd posted about was looking at what I posted about them.   

When I first saw all this information that was gathered on each visitor I was shocked.  But I came to understand that Sitemeter merely reformats the information that my computer has already gathered about visitors.  I like to show this page to people to let them know what kind of tracks they leave when they visit websites. 

But the recent problems - shutting down for nearly a week and selling of client websites and their readers to third parties, like x-vindicosuite - started to bring things to a head.  I quoted this before from a google forum:

x.vindcosuite.com seems to be "passive DNS replicator", which may be performing a genuine function; but apparently buggy software at sitemeter results in pages with sitemeter counting code on them getting redirected there.

In the screenshot below, you can see the message in the lower left, that things had been sent to this mysterious site.  It was like it was sending stuff through x-vindicosuite before I could see the next Sitemeter page, often slowing things down terribly.  

When I posted about this recently, commenters suggested StatCounter as an alternative, but I had lots of things vying for my attention,  so I procrastinated.  But I finally went there to check how difficult it would be to add StatCounter.  It turns out not difficult at all. 

Here's the StatCounter page that tells you how to put the code into your blogger template  It's pretty straightforward and took me less than five minutes.  

After poking around at StatCounter for a week, I see that the kind of information that I got from Sitemeter is available in different formats, and as I'm getting more familiarized, I think it probably gives me most of the same information in better (ie faster to go through) templates, and it allows me to drill down to more information on a specific visitor if I choose. 

For example, here's an example of one of the pages that tracks visits on Sitemeter.  This one tracks by search word:

StatCounter has several pages that do a similar list, but with a lot more information.  Here's one, for example:

click to enlarge and focus

And I can drill down (magnifying glasses in second column next to "Page Visits" to get more information on any of the specific visitors.

There's actually lots and lots of reports and I still have to figure out all that I can get and what I need and want.  And it shows me how Sitemeter was left to stagnate, while StatCounter found new was to display available data. 

And I also found out why so few actual 'search terms' are visible these days compared to four or five years ago.  StatCounter had a link next to 'search term unavailable' that led me to a 2011 Google page that says: 

"As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users. Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate to https://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account.

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won't receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you."

OK, I'm only four years behind the times, and StatCounter is what is getting me a little more up-to-date.  And even if they can't tell you what the search words were, they can tell you if you ranked high in the search.  For example:

Of course, this will depend on the exact words they used on google.  Other visitors to that page must have used other terms to get there and What Do I Know?  didn't rank high enough to get a note on StatCounter.  (What you see is just the little balloon with the #3 on it, but if you hover the cursor over the #3, you get the popup that says "Your page ranked #3 on Google for the query."

A blogger forum gives instructions on how to remove sitemeter from your blogger template.  It is technical, but not that hard.  They highlight the key script in yellow, so scroll down. 

I've still not deleted Sitemeter, but because of the x-vindicosuite problem, I must.  But I need to copy some of the summary pages for when I left to document the number of hits they say I have had.  I don't know how accurate it actually is, but it's something.  So you can look for the sitemeter logo and tracking numbers (well it just shows a black box now)  in the column on the right above "About Me" if you read this today, but I'll try to delete it in a day or two.  You can check back then to see if I was successful.   Here's a summary screenshot I just did saying there's been 811,778 total unique visits and 1,245,231 page views since I first installed Sitemeter. 

I tried to figure out when I first added Sitemeter to the blog.  My email shows a message from Sitemeter in Feb 2009 thanking me for setting up an account.  But I have a post about my 10,000th visitor in December 2008 based on Sitemeter stats.  I'm guessing I set it up in 2007 sometime.  I started the blog in July 2006. 

Goodbye Sitemeter.  Hello StatCounter