These are 8:30pm results. Probably early voting results. Mostly less than 1% of the precincts.
For the propositions there are two sets of numbers. I took the one from the group that listed the most precincts.
I voted today at my local precinct. I was voter number 76 at about 2pm. That doesn't sound like a lot and it isn't. There are about 1200 voters registered in my precinct.
HOWEVER,
more and more people are voting early
the state is notoriously slow about purging people who have died or moved away
Midnight Sun blog posted the other day that the Municipality is hosting election central at the Denai'na Center starting at 6:30pm (polls don't close until 8pm) with parking available in the Muni parking lot.
"The rule would have required internet service providers (ISPs) to get consent from users before collecting information from their web browsing history for any purpose, including advertising. Other internet companies like Google and Facebook don't have to do the same; though they have more limited access to browsing history, they do use the information they gather to make money advertising to users. Murkowski, Sullivan and Young for the most part said that their concerns about piecemeal regulations outweighed their desire to protect individuals' data. 'So we looked at this one very carefully. Where I came down on it at the end was: What this rule did was it set up basically two standards depending on what the platform was. And that made no sense," Murkowski said after voting in favor of repealing the FCC rule. "It would have created confusion.'"
Their explanation means two things to me:
They value fairness for corporations over fairness for US citizens
There were a number of noteworthy (which literally means worthy of noting) clusters of words in today's Alaska Dispatch News.
Here's the letter that triggered this post's title:
"Teachers should work for less
To go along with the article "Senate education plan could cut hundreds more jobs statewide" by Dermot Cole, teachers statewide should consider taking a reduction in pay during this state of Alaska budget crisis to help save some of their peers' jobs!
— Richard N. Ramirez
Anchorage"
What sort of pay cuts is Mr. Ramirez suggesting? Why should teachers alone take a cut in pay for the benefit of everyone else's children? Why, "during this state of Alaska budget crisis" shouldn't all Alaskans take a cut in pay to help save some jobs? And to help keep the student/teacher ratio a little lower so each kid gets more attention?
But why stop at teaching jobs?
If everyone who works in Alaska (including non-residents) took a cut in pay, no one would have to take too big a cut. There is a way to, in effect, have all working Alaskans take a cut in pay to share the burden. Now that oil isn't paying all our bills, shouldn't all of us pay equitably for the roads and the bridges, for our state parks, for keeping our water clean, for use of the airports, for disease prevention, and all the other, sometimes, invisible, benefits of having a state government? All these things we use and like a lot that we don't notice until they stop working. Shouldn't Alaskans take a little pay cut for what we get, like the people in other states and in the rest of the world?
There's a system already set up to do that. It's called an income tax.
It does exactly what you are saying teachers should do - take a cut in pay. We'll still get our PFD's. Come on all my mighty fellow Alaskans who get all these state benefits for free. Let's stop whining and grow up and pay our fair share. But, let the legislators know, you want them to design a tax that is as easy as filling out a PFD application.
"If having 300 cabs available on the streets to take us from A to B whenever we wanted them actually didn't cost us any more money than having 188, then why stop there? Can we have 1,000? 10,000? Hey, can we have, like, a cab each? Parked outside our houses, with a private driver wearing a chauffeur's hat? He can take us wherever we need to go for the same rates … in fact, it should cost us less, because competition, right?"
Cute, but no one is asking for a cab for everyone.
Let's stick with 300 cabs for a minute. Give us the numbers to show us how many hours cabs have fares and how many hours a day the average cab is riding empty. Or which hours no cabs are available. Show us how much income you get by owning a cab permit, the hours you work on cab stuff, and what that comes to as an hourly wage. Maybe you have numbers that prove your point, but you didn't offer them here. And you didn't mention things like access for handicapped passengers which was improved by the ordinance you want to repeal, or how Uber and Lyft are going to impact the taxi business. Or is this really about how much you stand to lose if your permit loses its value?
There's also a great story in We Alaskans about an Indonesian 17 year old who is an exchange student in Kasilof told from the perspective of the student and her American temporary father. I've spent ten minutes trying to find a way to link to the story for people who aren't ADN subscribers, but I can't. Here's a link to We Alaskans with the other stories in today's edition, maybe it will show up eventually.
Finally, I'd note that Nathaniel Herz' brief interviews with new legislators gives us a chance to see these people as, well, people. Nat got glimpses that add a little bit to our understanding of individual legislators and the legislature as a whole. Rep. Jason Gren has a son named Atticus who's not pleased that his daddy isn't always home to tuck him into bed. Rep. Dean Westlake is part of the R.J. Reynolds Caucus which meets for smoke breaks and gives him a chance to spend time with Republicans. Gary Knopp gets to ride excavators and road graders when he's not in the legislature. Rep. George Rauscher drove about 7000 miles in his Jeep campaigning in his huge Southcentral district. Wasilla's Rep. David Wilson doesn't seem to like talking to the media. Nothing huge here, but reminders that our legislators are not cartoon stereotypes, but real human beings trying to make a difference.
Yes, there should be more in depth articles about legislation that help spell it out for average folks, but I'm guessing far more readers will read this piece than more penetrating news on what they are and aren't doing in Juneau.
The China's official Xinhua News Agency reports that Qin Shi Huang Construction Company of China, whose CEO's family can be traced back to the emperor who built the original parts of the Great Wall of China, has submitted a serious bid for a one hundred kilometer stretch of Trump's proposed Mexican wall. The plans are said to meet all the threshold requirements (see below*) as well as the objective requirements of the General Services Administration's request for proposal RFP.
Meeting Threshold Requirements
For example, requirements 3 and 4 of the threshold requirements (again, see below*) call for a wall that is impossible to climb and has "anti-climb topping features." QSHCC's proposal includes provisions for detection of contact starting at eight feet above the ground level. "Such contact triggers the release of hot oil from the top of the wall in the section where contact was detected."
Financial Issues
In addition the QSHCC proposal has a number of additional features addressing other issues not required by the RFP, but which have been raised as challenges to construction. There are arrangements, for example, to develop financing from Mexican sources through the Sinaloa Banking Cartel who have worked closely with Mexican and US officials in the past. This could help meet Trump's pledge that Mexico would pay for the wall.
The QSHCC proposal calls for portions of the wall to be sited up to a mile north of the Rio Grande. There will be razor wire fences along the river and the land in between will become an international wildlife refuge that will be populated with pumas, jaguars, wolves, tarantulas and other poisonous spiders, wild pigs, various kinds of poisonous snakes as well as a variety of particularly thorny cacti. There is research included to determine whether alligators can be introduced to portions of the Rio Grande. Not only will this give these animals habitat in which to grow their populations, but it is felt their presence will deter illegal immigrants.
Financing Maintenance Costs
Financing for maintenance of the wall includes a proposal for making parts of the wall into exotic tourist hotels and casinos. While these will be low rise hotels to maximize the wall's intent of blocking the border, there will be some observation towers and possibly restaurants on top. In addition, all rooms will have south facing bullet-proof one-way glass allowing visitors to look towards Mexico and the wilderness area. The Chinese have not named an American partner for the hotels, however, drawings and descriptions of the US wall side showing a hotel would follow the design criteria described in the Xiaodong Ji, Dan Liu, Jiaru Qian article, "Improved design of special boundary elements for T-shaped reinforced concrete walls" in Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration , Volume 16, Issue 1,pp 83–95.
In those parts located in or near populated areas, Amazon has partnered with QSHCC, with a proposal to make some of the wall suitable for warehouse space, with Amazon lockers on the south side where Mexicans could pick up American goods they had purchased on line. This too would help finance maintenance of the wall and offer employment to US border residents.
US Jobs
The plan also includes as partners, Winnebago Industries in Forest City, Iowa as well as the Departments of Labor in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Unemployed coal miners as well as workers from other industries will be hired, have three weeks of initial training, then be transported to Forest City to pick up, eventually, a total of 10,000 newly designed and built Winnebagos (bringing employment for 300) that will be used as housing for the workers. Additional training will be conducted at the construction sites.
Meanwhile, the construction industry in the United States is concerned about a concrete shortage due to the wall, which will sharply raise the cost of aggregates and construction.
The Mexican sports magazine, Tritón, ran an article which noted that the specifications for the wall say "designs with heights of at least 18 feet may be acceptable," In contrast, the article pointed out that world record for pole vaulting is 6.16 meters or just over 20 feet. With springier than officially allowed poles, athletes should be able to 25, possibly even 30 feet. Mexican sporting good stores report a shortage of vaulting poles.
Additional Information from General Services Administration Request for Proposal
*Threshold Requirements [see page 62 of the link]
1) The wall design shall be reinforced concrete.
2) The wall design shall be physically imposing in height. The Government’s nominal concept is for
a 30-foot high wall. Offerors should consider this height, but designs with heights of at least 18feet may be acceptable. Designs with heights of less than 18 feet are not acceptable.
3) It shall not be possible for a human to climb to the top of the wall or access the top of the wall from either side unassisted (e.g. via the use of a ladder, etc.)
4) The wall design shall include anti-climb topping features that prevent scaling using common and more sophisticated climbing aids (e.g. grappling hooks, handholds, etc.)
5) The wall shall prevent digging or tunneling below it for a minimum of 6 feet below the lowest adjacent grade.
6) The wall shall prevent/deter for a minimum of 1 hour the creation a physical breach of the wall(e.g., punching through the wall) larger than 12-inches in diameter or square using sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torch or other similar hand-held tools.
7) The north side of wall (i.e. U.S. facing side) shall be aesthetically pleasing in color, anti-climb texture, etc., to be consistent with general surrounding environment. The
manufacturing/construction process should facilitate changes in color and texture pursuant to site specific requirements.
8) The wall design shall be able to accommodate surface drainage.
9) The wall design shall be able to accommodate Border Patrol approved design standards for pedestrian and automated mechanized vehicle sliding gates (25 feet and 50 feet).
10) The wall design shall be constructible to slopes up to 45 percent.
11) The wall fittings and fixtures shall be secured on the north side of the wall to shield from external attack.
12) The wall design should be cost effective to construct, maintain and repair.
Objective Requirements
1) It is operationally advantageous that the design of first 12 feet of wall height (as measured from the highest adjacent grade) be adaptable to prevent/deter for a period of time greater than 1 hour 30 minutes up to 4+ hours the creation of a physical breach of the wall (e.g., punching through the wall) larger than 12-inches in diameter or square using sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torch or other similar hand-held tools.
For more information on the Chinese proposal click here.
Data visualization is the art of taking data and presenting it visually so the significance of the data is easy for people to read. I took a class called "Data Exploration and Storytelling: Finding stories in data with storytelling and visualization" at the beginning of this year online. Alberto Cairo and Heather Krause co-taught it.
While 'data viz' isn't tumbling off most people's tongue's, it seems to be a big deal in journalism. Or maybe just among a certain subset of journalism. Cairo and Krause were terrific teachers - they knew their stuff and presented it clearly. But 6000 people from around the world were signed up for this MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) through the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. The assignments were basically to address questions in the discussion forums, not to do projects using data and the suggested software from Tableau.
Having taken the course, I'm seeing data viz all over the place. Sort of like when you're pregnant you notice all the other pregnant women, or if you buy a new car, you start seeing that car everywhere. It also helps that I started following Alberto Cairo on Twitter.
I'm thinking about this particularly now because I filled out a questionnaire about the MOOC yesterday, and I saw this chart on Twitter just now.
1. Story Telling With Data - the link takes you to a step-by-step post on decluttering of a data visualization.
2. Junk Charts - "Junk Charts is made by Kaiser Fung, the Web’s first data visualization critic. I discuss what makes graphics work, and how to make them better. Think chartjunk + junk art."
3. The Functional Art - "Alberto Cairo's weblog on visualization, infographics, and data journalism" And if you've been paying attention, you'll know he was one of the professors for the class I took. This one includes a lot of news about what's happening in the data viz field.
4. Rock the Vizcomm - The link takes you to a post on a 2016 survey of data visualization professionals. He lists these key findings:
"Key Findings
Practitioners are using an incredibly large array of tools to do their work, while some market leaders are beginning to emerge.
“Increasing understanding” is the primary goal of data visualization but after that, the opinions vary.
Good data and trained staff are the keys to success, while “figuring out the story” in the data remains a critical challenge for many.
Those who are measuring their outcomes expect spending on visualization to increase, with nearly one in five expecting significant growth."
5. Our World in Data - I realize this is a post on visualization blogs and so far it's mainly words. So here's a visualization. It had four countries listed. Ethnocentric as I am, I added the US (the upper red line beginning 1900). The cursor will give you specific data.
Surely there are a bunch of doctoral dissertations waiting to be written by people discussing the correlations between the peaks and valleys and the political, economic, and social events in each country. Note the US dip in the 1950s. Is it because all the youngish men were tired from the war (or off to Korea)? Because they were in college on the GI bill? Because the US had the highest income taxes ever? Because economic equity was and hope was high? Lots to chew on.
6. The Perceptual Edge - "Visual Business Intelligence: A blog by Stephen Few" And yes, this one focuses on business.
There were about 10 inches of fresh snow yesterday in Anchorage. Here's our backyard.
And here's our mountain ash tree in front after a gust of wind.
The Figurative Snow Job The Verge compiled a table of contributions from telecom companies to US senators and representatives who voted 'yes' yesterday to grant them the right to sell people's internet browsing information without permission and without anonymizing it. The got the data from Follow the Money.
You can see the whole list at the Verge link. I'm just looking at our Alaskan senators and member of congress.
Senators
Murkowski, LisaRepublicanAK$66,250
Sullivan, DanielRepublicanAK$10,550
Member of Congress
Young, DonRepublicanAK1st$28,650
The Joint Resolution 34 passed in the senate 50 (all Republicans) to 48 (all Democrats) with two Republicans absent. Going through the contributions, Sen. Murkowski was the 21st highest recipient among the Republicans. (They didn't list how much Democrats got from these companies.) Sen. Sullivan received the 3rd lowest amount, which could indicate his lack of influence or that they know his vote is locked anyway. I'd note that one senator received $0 - the newly appointed Sen. Strange from Alabama taking Sen. Sessions seat after his appointment to Attorney General.
Note: I did NOT go back and double check the amounts each candidate received. I did spend a little time on the Follow The Money website, but I wasn't sure how to duplicate the search they did. There are a number of variables that could probably change the amounts. Thus, I also couldn't check to see how much the Republicans and Democrats who voted against the resolution received from the same groups.
Additional more: Several people have started lucrative crowdsourcing pages to get and publish the private browsing of all the members of the US Congress. But Techcruncher and others say this isn't likely to happen. They say that non-anonymized data is NOT available, plus private purchaser can't just come in and buy the data unless the ISP agrees. The Freedom of Information Act only covers the federal government, not private companies. And after giving millions to members of congress to get this done, they aren't likely to turn around and stab them in the back.
This might be a good time for folks to get a copy of All The President's Men Carl Bernstein and Bob
Woodward's book on their investigation of Watergate. It gives sense of how long it took from when the burglary happened (June 17, 1972) until Nixon resigned (August 8, 1974) and what all happened in between. It chronicles how these two reporters had to fight skepticism, how their editor had to protect them, and how public opinion slowly came around.
The details will be different, the timing will be different, but the same forces will be (are) in tension:
president versus the media;
the pressure to publish now versus the risk of losing credibility because there isn't enough publishable evidence;
people's belief systems versus facts that challenge those beliefs;
the pressure on the Republicans to protect their president and their power versus doing what's right for the country.
Some details are eerily similar.
Nixon was brought down by Republicans breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex. The burglars were caught because an observant 24 year old security guard, Frank Wills, saw that there was tape that covered the latch and kept the door from locking. The burglars were caught that night. Then Woodward and Bernstein had to follow the trail that led from the burglars to the oval office.
Today an electronic burglary at the Democratic National Committee is also at the center of Trump's problems. And as with Watergate, the thieves were identified before the election, but Trump won nevertheless. Today, too, journalists are pursuing the question of the connection to the Oval Office.
There are significant differences between the two periods as well. Nixon had long list of major accomplishments from the Clean Water Act, Affirmative Action, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Privacy Act, opening relations with China. But he was being dragged down by the Vietnam War and the anti-war protests. The break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters happened during the campaign for his second term. In 1972, Nixon's approval ratings were at 50% after his China trip and would climb to almost 70% after the Paris Peace accords were signed in 1973. But then his ratings began to plunge to just under 30% by the end of 1973.
Trump's big achievements include:
failing in his immediate push to ban Muslims from the US (I'm using Trump's campaign rhetoric here, just as the judges have when they blocked the implementation.)
failing to overturn Obamacare
dismantling regulations whose whose ultimate impacts are yet to be known
And he comes into office far less popular. His approval ratings according to Gallup are already at 36%, only in his third month in office.
So who will be the next Woodward and Bernstein?
By blocking key media from White House press briefings, this administration is sending them out to do real investigative reporting and the White House loses control of the agenda. And while Trump's tweets do get significant attention, they don't set the kind of agenda those around Trump want set. The Washington Post (Woodward and Bernstein's paper), the New York Times, The New Yorker, even the Wall Street Journal are bringing stories to print on a regular basis.
Woodward and Bernstein were blessed with a very high level informant who they dubbed Deep Throat after the first pornographic movie to be shown in regular theaters. Their informant only outed himself thirty years later. Woodward had cultivated him as a source in 1970 and they basically used him to confirm information they had gathered in other ways.
I suspect this time around, a lot of different reporters will be contributing important stories and things may well move faster now because social media speeds up the spread of news so dramatically. But I'm guessing there are reporters now who, over drinks, are contemplating who will play them in the movie.
If you would rather watch the movie (with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman), it's available as a Netflix DVD and probably in your public library.
It's been days and days of, in the words of Dan Bern, relentless sun. He was singing about Southern California, and we aren't complaining, but it ended during the night and we got a little more than a trace of snow.
And it's warmer. Yesterday we were in the mid 30s (F), and this morning's clouds were accompanied by 31˚F on our home thermometer as I write. We really hadn't been above freezing at all this month with night temps regularly in the single digits. We were cooler than normal. As opposed to last year when we had very little snow, warm temperatures, and I posted this picture of rain drops on March 28, 2016.
And just in case anyone reading this is thinking, "See, it's colder this year, so climate change isn't really anything to worry about," should listen to Neil DeGrasse Tyson in the 2 minute National Geographic video below.
