Time For Everyone To Voluntarily Leave United Airlines

I watched the video of the man being dragged off the plane.  WHATTTTTT????????????  FOR REAL???

OK, Alaska Airlines once removed a passenger for insulting a female crew member.  And more recently they had a woman leave the plane for being disruptive and insulting to the man sitting next to her because he'd supported Trump.  But neither was physically dragged off.  Watch how politely the flight attendant spoke to the unhinged woman passenger.  And in both cases, the passengers were at fault.

From what I can tell (given the sketchy info available so far), United decided to bump four passengers so that four United crew could get to work, presumably, at the destination, Louisville.  In my experience passengers don't generally board until the bumping is taken care of.   In this case the passengers were already on board.

The airline says they offered $400 then $800 vouchers to people who would voluntarily get off.   No one volunteered.  Then, they say, they picked four people randomly.  Presumably they would all get the $800  that was offered to people who voluntarily left the plane, but I don't know that for sure.

Three passengers got off 'without incident.'  The fourth said he was a doctor who had patients to see the next morning.  He also was of Asian descent.

The passenger did nothing wrong except insist that his valid ticket for that flight be honored.  The airline screwed up by overbooking the flight and boarding the passengers first and then insisting that four get off.  They should have thought about their crew members before filling the plane.  Once it was filled, there was no reason why their crew should have precedence over paying passengers. Even before the passengers boarded the plane, there's no reason crew should have precedence.  How did they pick him?  Was he flying on frequent flyer miles? Was it because he was Asian?

If they needed to board sky marshals, I might give them a little more leeway.  But the passenger said he had to get to work the next morning which was no different from the United crew having to get to work.  And crew members are much more interchangeable than a doctor seeing his patients.

I applaud the man for not backing down.  The airline employee used terrible judgment when he forcibly dragged the passenger off the plane.

I can't believe that there wasn't a single person on the plane who couldn't have been persuaded to take the $800 voucher (or move if necessary) to free up one more seat.  They could have even offered to let them wait between flights in the United board room.  There were lots of other options.  They could have even found another crew member to substitute in Louisville.  Surely they do that all the time when crew call in sick.

I understand that an unruly passenger might need, on occasion, to be forcibly removed from a plane.  One who might be endangering other passengers.  I don't know how often passengers are dragged off like this man was.  Here's a story about an abusive United passenger causing a Sydney - San Francisco flight to divert to Auckland, but the video shows him walking off on his own power.  And the passenger was the problem.

But this man was only standing up (or in this case sitting down) for his rights.  The airline overplayed its authority to make these decisions, which they have for airline safety requirements.  Not to fly they screw up and need to fly their own crew around.

I'm guessing the pressure to fly on-time played some role in this.  There was also some machismo in the security guy having his authority challenged.

I have to give a big cheer for cell phone videos that document what happens.  Of course they can be edited to distort what happened, but it seems that most of these get up pretty quickly and are from ordinary folks who aren't editing before they post.

I don't normally write about something like this where all the facts are not clear yet.  Perhaps it's because family matters have made me a frequent flyer over the last several years, but this one hits home.  And I'm ready to eat crow if it turns out the passenger wasn't a doctor and did something, besides refuse to give up his rightful seat, that legitimately provoked his removal.  But it will be hard to justify dragging him out.  But I'm ready to say I was wrong if time proves I jumped the gun.  And my wife and I volunteered, when getting our boarding pass, to bump and when they offered us $400 each on flight that was leaving right away (though with stops on the way), we said ok.  Before we got on the plane.

The United CEO's non-apology letter doesn't help. In fact it suggests that the problem starts at the top of the company.  I agree you should support your employees when they take the difficult, but right, action. I cheered on Alaska for backing up their crewe when they booted the man who demeaned the female crew member.   But not when it's the airlines fault.

I hope lots of regular United passengers start checking out other airlines.  Given the leggings incident a couple of weeks ago, and this saga (video below), I'd say that United has a serious problem.

My Tire Got Screwed

It was pretty easy to see why I had a flat tire.  Fortunately, the car was in front of the house and I have a great neighbor who loves working on cars.

First he unscrewed it.  You can see the grayish mark of the head of the screw and the hole in the middle.  He had a tool to go in the hole and clean it out.

Then he pulls out this sticky rubbery strip - looked like sticky licorice - and threaded it into another tool and applied the glue.

And then he shoved it into the whole.  The two ends go up as he pushes down.  Then he pulls out the tool and there's just a bit of the two ends sticking out when he's done.  He fills the tire and we're back in business.

Good neighbors make life so much better.  Thanks Roy.

What Does "Pay Their Fair Share" Mean?

Alaska's budget is about $4 billion short.  The legislature is battling to balance the budget.

Republicans, pretty much, want to do it by cutting the budget.
Democrats say it's been cut to the bone over the last couple of years and that revenue needs to be raised.

In a recent blog post I quoted a letter to the editor which called on teachers to take a pay cut to preserve their colleagues' jobs.   I pointed out that it seemed unfair for only teachers to take a pay cut.  Everyone benefits from kids getting a good education.  Everyone should take a pay cut.  And that there was a way already set to do this, and it was done in most other states.  It's called an income tax.

I, of course, knew that this term is like blasphemy to conservatives, particularly to wealthy ones.

Oliver, who comments here once in a while, suggested, in a comment to that post, that we have a sales tax instead.  After a discussion about all the people who would not pay an income tax, including those who make less than $14,000, Oliver concluded that:

"Not what I would call fair or everyone paying their fair share."

I took some time to think about and respond to his comment.  When I tried to post my comment, there was a problem and it wouldn't post there.  I had thought about making it all a new post, but figured the discussion should stay with the original post and comment.  Then I tried again and it said my comment was too many words.  So I'm making this a new post.  You can see the old one and Oliver's comment in full here.

My response:

1.  For the sake of this discussion, I'll just accept the numbers that Oliver offered.  I agree in general principle that as many people should pay the tax as possible.  I would point out that as of 2016, there were 198,617 residents 18 or under, many of whom would live in families that paid an income tax.

2.  It's long been understood that a sales tax is a regressive tax, meaning the poor pay a larger percent of their income in sales tax, and that it 'hurts' them far more than it 'hurts' wealthier people.  Even if wealthier people pay more in sales taxes.  I won't go through that argument here.  That link also discusses the reasons for a progressive tax, like most income taxes, in which higher income people pay a higher percentage of their income. (Assuming there aren't enough loopholes to make the higher rates moot.)

So I would just like to focus here on the idea of "everyone paying their fair share."  More particularly, on the underlying assumption of that.



The Problem Of The Work Ethic In The 21st Century World

The work ethics that most Americans can quote goes something like this:  hard work and diligence are morally good.  There are some corollary assumptions:

• that if you work hard, you will do well
• wealth is the result of hard work
• poverty is the result of laziness

  reminds us that work wasn't always seen as having intrinsic value, particularly manual labor.  The Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans saw work as something to escape, to have slaves do.   It wasn't until the Reformation that work became holy.  Luther equated one's vocation with one's calling from God.  But, with Calvin, according to History of Work Ethic, work didn't make you good, it was a sign that you were predestined to be good.  

"Central to Calvinist belief was the Elect, those persons chosen by God to inherit eternal life. All other people were damned and nothing could change that since God was unchanging. While it was impossible to know for certain whether a person was one of the Elect, one could have a sense of it based on his own personal encounters with God. Outwardly the only evidence was in the person’s daily life and deeds, and success in one’s worldly endeavors was a sign of possible inclusion as one of the Elect. A person who was indifferent and displayed idleness was most certainly one of the damned, but a person who was active, austere, and hard-working gave evidence to himself and to others that he was one of God’s chosen ones (Tilgher, 1930, p. 53-61).
Calvin taught that all men must work, even the rich, because to work was the wil of God."

In any case, today, most of us, at least subconsciously if not explicitly, tend to look down on the poor and give respect to the wealthy.  But despite this general rule, there have always been exceptions:

1. Those who inherit wealth only work if they want to or their families require them to. If they do work it’s often in jobs provided through family connections
2. Slaves worked, but didn’t get paid for their work - their masters took the benefit, and those lost wages are still reflected in our society’s wealth inequality.
3. Women didn’t work outside the house unless economics forced them to.  Married women whose  husbands had enough income to support the family worked at home.  Depending on how much the husband earned, the woman might work hard in the house or might have help to do most of the work.
4. People who were physically or mentally ill or disabled may or may not have worked depending if they could find something that matched their abilities  
5.  Children may or may not have worked - it depended on the family income and where they lived.  Farm kids often worked from a young age.  Child labor outside the house/farm expanded greatly in the industrial age for poor families.  And conditions were often horrendous.

Today, we still have this moral value attached to wealth and working.  Not working, or at least being poor, is seen in the US as a moral failing.  We may provide services for the homeless, but we tend to blame their homelessness on lack of a work ethic.

A Change In the Nature Of Work

The myth is that the work ethic was useful once in a time when everyone had to work for the family and the society to survive.  That may have been true of families, but most societies in history had workers and those who lived off the work of the rest.
The work ethic was probably a convenient tool when human economies became industrialized and workers were needed in the factories.   But our economy has changed.

Trump has blamed immigrants for taking away American jobs though we know for the most part immigrants take jobs that Americans either don’t want to do, or skilled positions for which employers can’t find enough qualified Americans.

The Real Job Thief Has Been Automation.  

From the time that science was applied to management in the US (around the early 1900s) workers were seen as a problem. Early Management Science tried to make factories more efficient by making people more machine like.  People no longer created a whole product from the beginning to the end.

Instead the process was broken down in to separate pieces, and factory workers did the same 10 - 90 second action over and over again all day.  The joy of work, of having a craft and doing it well, was replaced by tedious, boring work.  First this was with factory work, but then it spread into other fields.  Some of the last fields are education and medicine.  The technology of distance education, for example, reduces teaching into components.  Teachers prepare, with the help of teaching technicians, videos, reading assignments, etc. before the class begins.  Everything is put on line and the teacher may have no role except to comment in discussion groups. And a new teacher could step in and appropriate the work of the teacher who designed the class.   Doctors are no longer working in private practice.  They are now mostly employees of hospitals.

What Will We Do With Our Leisure?

This change was already anticipated in the 1950s and 1960’s when weekly magazines had cover stories with titles like “Automation:  What will people do with all their leisure time?”  They were predicting 30 hour work weeks.

What they forgot was that we have a capitalistic society where profits go to the owners of the companies.  So, as work got automated, some employees did get more leisure - they lost their jobs.  The remaining employees often ended up working more than far more than 40 hours a week.

Companies then used automation to out-source a lot of the remaining work to customers - think about self-service gas and grocery checkout, ATM machines,  skipping travel agents and booking your own tickets on line.  Now we even have to check ourselves in and get our own baggage claims.

Instead of 30 hour work weeks, we have far more unemployed, and a much greater income gap between the heads of corporations and their employees.

Are You Ever Going To Wrap This Up, Steve?

The point of this long explanation is that people are unemployed because our society doesn't need everyone to work to produce the goods and services that we want.  In fact, we do it more efficiently with more machines and fewer workers.

But our value system is still based on a society that needed every able bodied person to work.  I’m guessing that you, like most people, are still thinking in terms of those old values.  But owners of companies have an incentive to automate and get rid of jobs - it’s cheaper and machines don’t have personal lives that interfere with their work.

So that’s why I’m not persuaded by your argument that with an income tax, some people don’t contribute their fair share.  That language implies a moral shortcoming on the part of those who will get something for nothing that echoes the Protestant work ethic.

Most, if not all of those people who don’t earn enough to pay an income tax, also didn’t get a fair share when it came to things like good parents, skills that are rewarded in our school system and job market, good mental and physical health, and other factors that impact who will succeed and who won’t in our society.  Brawn which was marketable in the past, is much less in demand.

The systems we have for allocating pay are also very skewed.   How hard you work is not necessarily related to how well you do or whether what you do makes society better or worse.   Should the people who get rich selling alcohol have some extra responsibility for the people who die at the hands of an alcoholic?   Should a teacher get tax credits for inspiring a student to succeed despite a difficult upbringing? [UPDATE a little later:  When I wrote this, I didn't know that a bill has been introduced in California to exempt teachers from state income tax.0

An important measure of human beings for me is how they play the hand they were dealt at birth.  Those who are given a lot, owe a lot more than those who were dealt a lousy hand.  In my ideal world, people's moral worth would be measured by the ratio between the benefits one receives and what one gives to society.  Ideally, everyone would be at least 1:1.

The people who camp in the woods along the bike trails would mostly like a decent home and income and only camp in the woods when they chose to.  But their skills and life experiences have gotten them to a point where they really can’t get out of their ruts without some serious interventions.  Our health care non-system caused many people to self-medicate, with alcohol being the legal drug, but lots of illegal drugs have also been available.   American individualism still attributes poverty to the laziness of the individual.  Other countries recognize that the social, political, economic systems play a big role in who succeeds, financially, in life and who doesn't.

I  don’t have a problem paying higher taxes to offset what they can’t pay.  I wouldn’t want to trade places with them.  And I also know that as the percentage of poor gets bigger, the more brutal society gets, even for the wealthy.

I would love a society where people are nurtured as kids and helped to discover and develop their skills and talents so we have far fewer people who can’t make it on their own.  But we also have to figure out how to distribute wealth when there just aren’t real jobs for a large segment of society.

And so "paying their fair share" doesn't mean that everyone pays in money.  Lots of people are paying with abusive parents,  with learning disabilities that weren't overcome because their school saw them as problems kids not teachable kids, with skills that are no longer valued, with trauma from war or crime, and in many other ways.

This Debate Isn't New

And I'd note, these conflicting  ways of looking at the world aren't new.  Hilary Mantel, in Bring Up The Bodies, describes how Henry VIII's chief minister,  Thomas Cromwell's attempt to hire the poor to build much needed infrastructure was treated by Parliament:

"In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law.  It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor;  that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field.  England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges.  Men need work.  It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure.  Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?
But Parliament cannot seee how it is the state's job to create work.  Are not these matters in god's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order?  To everything there is a season:  a time to starve and a time to thieve.  If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it;  for God knows his trade.  It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy.  And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality;  well, are there not hangmen enough?" (emphasis mine.)

I'd note that Thomas Cromwell lived from 1485 - 1540 and Martin Luther lived from 1483 -1546.
John Calvin lived from 1509 - 1584.

Another Reason Not To Have Your Bills Paid By Direct Deposit

From the BBC:

"When the police knocked the door down they found a mountain of mail in the hall and Henry Summers was inside, dead. He had been dead for three years, undiscovered, because all of his bills were paid by direct debit."

The journalist goes on to tell the story of who this man had been.  

Picasso at the Lapin Agile - Einstein Too

I'm sticking this in quickly because this show plays again tonight and tomorrow and I enjoyed it
greatly and want people to know about it before it ends Sunday.

It takes place in 1904 - or as, I think, Einstein pointed out in the play, in the first decade of the 20th Century - in a Paris bar.  It's a night when both Einstein and Picasso show up and talk about how each will change the world.  For having two such illustrious figures, the play is pretty lightweight.  But this Steve Martin authored play was fun, sexy, and a little thought-provoking.

And, it was very well done.  From the stage design to the costumes to the acting, it was a delight and I recommend it to anyone who at least knows who Picasso, Einstein, and Matisse are.  The actors were terrific - and the young Einstein and young Picasso - don't look anything like they do on the cover of the program.  Though casting for the young Einstein was genius.  You know who he is immediately.

A funny, affectionate look at these two characters.  Truly enjoyable theater.

I took this before the performance began.  As you can see it's very intimate.  We got there just before 8 and there weren't two seats available together.  I sat close enough to the stage that sometimes I felt part of the play.  No more than a couple of feet from the actors if they were at the bar.

I'd suggest going online at getting your tickets in advance.  And getting there by 7:30 tonight, if you can go.  Tomorrow it starts at 5, so give yourself time to get a seat.

It's in the UAA Art and Theater building - in the Harper Studio, not the main stage.  It's all well marked in the building.

I Keep Forgetting, There's No Saturday Newspaper Anymore

I went out to get the newspaper this morning.  I looked around, but it wasn't there.  Then I remembered.  There is no longer a Saturday edition of the Alaska Dispatch News.

Probably, lots of people reading this blog gave up paper editions long ago.  While other people, judging by letters to the editor, are miffed that they are paying for a subscription that now skips  Saturday.

Every print newpaper is struggling to find a way to make itself profitable.  The ADN has the best short term model - it's owned by a billionaire.  But that's not a sustainable model, and the readers are at the mercy of the owner's political and social tastes.

As a local blogger for the last ten years, I've seen the improvements in the ADN.  When I covered the legislature in 2010, the ADN rotated reporters to Juneau every three weeks or so and my coverage of the legislature really had no competition in Anchorage.  When I covered the Alaska Redistricting Board, 95% of the time, I was the only media there.  When I called the ADN editor and asked why they weren't covering the redistricting board, he said, "Because Seth is in Juneau." Seth was their one reporter for state news.

Fortunately, the ADN now has a lot more reporters covering state and local affairs.  And they've recently added a weekly Arctic section.  We're lucky to have all that extra content, even it is now squeezed into six days instead of seven.

If only Facebook and Twitter each shut down one day a week.  I suspect everyone's lives would greatly improve.

Warmer Weather and Lots of Snow Brings Breakup to Anchorage

Breakup in Anchorage is when the temperatures start getting into the 40s or more and the snow and ice that are left thaw into puddles and small lakes.  Breakups in recent years have tended to mild and quick, unlike 20 years ago and more when there were deep puddles everywhere.

This year we had a cold, sunny March with lots of snow sublimating.  Then a foot of snow at the end of March.  Now it's hitting high 40˚s F during the day and all that snow means lots of homeless water.


This isn't too big a puddle, but the picture shows the snow that's left still.

Here's the driveway of a church parking lot.  We had to walk in the street to get around this puddle.  We used to wear 'breakup boots' this time of year, but we've had such mild breakups that I didn't even think about it when we went for this walk a couple evenings ago.

Here's a driveway that hasn't completely thawed yet.

 And here's a stretch of sidewalk/biketrail that's on the south side of the street, so it doesn't get much sun and it's still partly frozen.







I finally decided I could wait to get my bike out no longer, even if I did get wet.

Here's a parking lot lake.  (The car was out of the deepest part by the time I got the camera out.)

I went through the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary where breakup is still in the future, though the snow was soft and deep.  If you got off the narrow padded down snow in the middle of the path, your foot would sink a foot.  I walked the bike.
















Here's the hidden sanctuary still looking very winter.

As I look at this picture I'm realizing that this is the part that has a boardwalk.  There was no sign of boardwalk.

Here's a bit of bike trail that was deep enough to make us detour the other evening.  But on bike it was fine, I have a back fender, but I still went through it slowly.  I also pulled out  The Cloudspotter's Guide to check on those cloud above the trees.

"Of all the common clouds, Cirrus must be the most beautiful.  Their name comes from the Latin for a lock of hair, for they are the delicate white wisps of ice that appear high in the heavens. . .
Cirrus are the highest of the common clouds and are composed entirely of ice crystals, typically forming above 24,000ft in temperate regions of the world."

Since Anchorage is not in a temperate region [yet], I don't know how high these might be.

White Tears

"I do not know if I have ever been alive.  How would I tell?  Where in the living creature does life actually lie?  No single part of a cell is alive.  And life itself is just an aggregate of non-living processes, chemical reactions cascading, birthing complexity.  There is no clear border between life and non-life.  Once you realize that, so much else unravels."

I've just spent a couple of days unraveling.   An outsider meets and insider and they create their own inside by taking from another circle from which they are excluded.  And one of the insiders of that group, from another time, comes to claim his due.  Time merges one period into another.

"Time is flattened here in the back room"

At times I was lost, hoping that author Hari Kunzru hadn't abandoned me somewhere on the road, as he abandoned characters. (He always came back to get me.)

Cover (by Peter Mendelsund) close up

Kunzru paints words and sounds onto pages shortcutting conventions, but not shortchanging the reader. An ethereal musician says:

"Since I was a child I could always play, always find the thread of what I was feeing and follow it up and down the strings." 

I just finished the last lines today.

"The needle vibrates, punctures my face just below my left eye.  The tattooist's homemade gun is powered by a motor from an old CD player.  The ink is made out of soot.  Four tears, one each for Carter, Leonie and their parents. I listen to the buzz of the motor and think of what I learned by listening through the crackle and hiss, into the past:  they either add dollars or days and if you don't have dollars, all you have to give is days."

I'll write more.  But first I need to let it sink in.  I may even reread it before I try to write more.  This is just an appetizer.  This is no ordinary book.  The inside of the dust jacket tells you beautifully about the story and yet it tells you nothing.  How this book even arrived at my door is a story in itself.  More soon.

While Dutch Men Protest Gay Couple Attack Hand-in-Hand, Anchorage Protests By Electing Two Gay Men To Assembly

Last summer,  already campaigning at PrideFest, Christopher Constant told me (off camera, but his poster didn't hide things) that if he won his seat on the Anchorage Assembly (city council), he'd be the first openly gay member.

He won yesterday, but he wasn't exactly right.  Because another openly gay candidate, Felix Rivera, in mid-town, won a seat as well.  Here's the video I took of Chris last summer. You can see he's not coming onto the Assembly without experience and knowledge about the neighborhoods he will represent.

I took some liberty with the headline.   I doubt any Anchorage voters even knew about the Dutch hand-holding protest when they voted.  I'm guessing that most people who voted for Christopher Constant or Felix Rivera didn't even knew they were gay.  It didn't really come up in the election until the very end when one of Rivera's opponents sent out a last minute attack ad, and even that used coded language rather than say he was gay.  And Rivera got 46% of the vote in a four way race. The next highest opponent got 29%.

No, Anchorage elected two gay men, not because they were gay (though perhaps some voted against them for that reason) but because they were the strongest candidates in their races.


As understated as gender was in the race, it is a big deal in Anchorage.  After years and years of fierce opposition from an evangelical pastor, Anchorage finally added LGBTQ to its anti-discrimination ordinance in 2015.  There was an attempt to put an initiative on yesterday's ballot to block parts of the 2015 change, but it didn't meet the legal requirements for an initiative.    Mayor Ethan Berkowitz won his mayoral race in 2015 by a landslide supporting gay rights against a rabidly anti-gay opponent.

Felix Rivera at candidate forum March 2017

So this is a milestone after a lot of bitter history over this issue.

And here's Felix Rivera at the AFACT candidate forum a couple of weeks ago.





Dutch Hand Holding Protest

While there was no direct connection between the Anchorage election, and the Dutch protest, there are a lot of indirect connections.  The article says that after the attack on the married couple who were walking home holding hands, the prime minister condemned the attack.  But two lawmakers took it a step further.

"Alexander Pechtold, who is the leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, arrived hand in hand with his party’s financial specialist, Wouter Koolmees, in support of Vernes-Sewratan and Sewratan-Vernes. “We think it is quite normal in the Netherlands to express who you are,” Pechtold said, according to People."

Then lots of Dutch men posted pictures of themselves holding hands in support of the couple.  One picture in the article shows a group of men who work at the Dutch embassy in London walking along the street holding hands.


Jay Brause, Gene Dugan, and Out North

Which gives me a bridge to mention Jay (Jacob) Brause and Gene (Eugene) Dugan, a gay Anchorage couple who sued the state of Alaska when they weren't allowed to get married here way back in 1994.  They won their case!  But then the state (led by that pastor) amended the constitution to define marriage to involve a man and a woman only.

Jay and Gene ran Out North, a small theater/art space that regularly brought acts that challenged conventional thinking.  They played a huge role in giving Anchorage a space in which to stretch its mind and continue to reexamine long held assumptions.  I'm sure Out North played a role in preparing Anchorage for this day, when two openly gay men have been elected to the Assembly in a race where their sexual preference was almost completely a non-issue.  For those of you who think I've gone off in a totally different tangent, Jay and Gene now live in London where those Dutch Embassy colleagues held hands.  Jay and Gene they got fed up living in a state that vigorously denied their right to get married and moved to UK.  But they did come back to Anchorage to get married here after that became possible.


Holding Hands In Thailand 

I'd like to make one more connection to the idea of men holding hands.  When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, one of the American values that was deeply embedded in me was that men do NOT hold hands.

But in Thailand they do.  It's no big deal.  It happens all the time.  Dealing with my own visceral response when men wanted to hold hands with me in Thailand, helped me understand the idea of biases that our cultures teach us without us even knowing that they are biases.  Instead we think that they are 'truths' about nature.  In this case, that it is unnatural for men to hold hands.  But in Thai culture it isn't and a gradually became comfortable when someone took my hand as we walked somewhere.  



The Other Winning Assembly Candidates

Here are some pictures of the other winners last night.





Suzanne LaFrance at the AFACT candidate forum March 12.  She's won the south Anchorage seat 6 that tends to be conservative.  But not always.  Janice Shamberg held this seat.   Suzanne LaFrance was supported by Berkowitz.  In fact all the winners were except Dyson.

Pete Petersen was reelected to his east Anchorage seat 5. Not only are there now two gay men on the Assembly, Petersen is one of two returned Peace Corps volunteers on the Assembly.

Fred Dyson Introducing Joe Miller 2010

Fred Dyson won in Eagle River's seat 2.  He wasn't at the forum, but I had this picture from 2010 when he introduced US senate candidate Jim Miller.  That was the meeting where Miller famously said, If the East Germans could build a wall, we could.  And it was the same meeting where journalist Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by Miller's 'security.'






Tim Steele also missed the March 12 forum and I don't seem to have a picture of him in my files.


I realize this post seems to wander all over the place, but society is complicated.  Lots of things are interrelated and if we look at everything as an isolated event suitable for a Tweet, then we don't get all that interconnectedness.

Taxi Change and Transit Go Down, Assembly Picks Up One More Liberal, [UPDATED]

[Updated at midnight with 23:23 election results.  99% of the voter for School Board and the Propositions is in.  Assembly seats all are missing 1 precinct.  I'm guessing that may be absentee ballots and questioned ballots.]

In the Muni wide vote (School Board and Propositions) there are 2 precincts out still.  Here are the results as of 10:45pm.  On this round, I'm only doing the numbers for the close races.



Assembly winners so far look like
Christopher Constant in District 1
Fred Dyson in District 2
Tim Steele in District 3
Felix Rivera in District 4
Pete Petersen in District 5
Suzanne LaFrance is leading in District 6 (South Anchorage).  It's been close, but this last tally with only one precinct out looks like it seals it for LaFrance.

School Board
Don Donley in Seat C
Seat D is too close to call - Holleman is ahead of  Schuster by 80 votes, with two precincts out.

Propositions Passing
1.  ASD
3. Parks
4. Roads/Sewers
5. Fire
6.  APD expansion  is the closest that is likely to win
7.  Park District Expansion

Failing
2.  Public Safety and Transit
8.  Taxi ordinance repeal




**Latest (23:23) data

3737

District	Votes	Percentage
Assembly District 1
SWANK, Albert
COX, Chris
CONSTANT, Christopher	**1316	52%
MARTINSON, Mark Alan
DUNSMORE, David
WEST, Warren
Assembly District 2
BRASSELL, John L
DONNELLY, Patrick
DYSON, Fred	**2797	48.84%
WEHMHOFF, Gretchen
Assembly District 3
STEELE, Tim	**4622	61.33%
NEES, David	**2830	37.55%
Assembly District 4
ALLEVA, Ron
SANDERS, Marcus D
SMITH, Don
RIVERA, Felix	**3063	46.74%
Assembly District 5
JONES, Don	**2821	42.63%
PETERSEN, Pete	**3755	56.74%
Assembly District 6
FOGLE, Albert	**4654	46.87%
LAFRANCE, Suzanne	**5212	52.49%

Seat	Votes	Percent
School Board C
SMALLWOOD, James
HILDE, Alisha
HOTCH, Tasha
DONLEY, Dave	**15075	42.96%
JAMISON, Christopher
School Board C
SCHUSTER, Kay	**15889	44.68%
HOLLEMAN, Andy	**15947	44.85%
BERKE, Albert	**3310	9.31%

Prop	Yes	No
Prop 1 ASD	23481   56.62%*	17993
Prop 2 Pub Safety Transit	19170	22228   53.68%*
Prop 3 Parks	22217  53.55% *	19270
Prop 4 Roads Sewers	23653   57.57%*	17431
Prop 5 Fire	22626  54.73% *	18716
Prop 6 APD	20815    50.39%*	20496
Prop 7 Parks Service Area	21579   52%  *	19539
Prop 8  Taxis	16456	24052  *   59%

*  winners  99% of the vote is in