Trump Nominates Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Jody Olsen To Be New Peace Corps Director

Here's from an email I got from The National Peace Corps Association:

"President Trump has nominated Josephine "Jody" Olsen to become the next Peace Corps Director. 

If confirmed by the Senate, Olsen would become the 20th person to lead the agency.Olsen served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia from 1966 - 1968 and was Togo Country Director from 1979 - 1981. She was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as Deputy Director of the agency and later served as Acting Director. 

“We applaud President Trump for nominating Dr. Jody Olsen to lead the Peace Corps,” said National Peace Corps Association President and CEO Glenn Blumhorst. “As a returned volunteer, country director, acting director for the agency—and highly engaged member in the Peace Corps community—Jody knows the Peace Corps experience and the people who have served as well as anyone. Jody's commitment to education and social work and her decades of leadership are a perfect match for a 21st-century Peace Corps poised to grow and improve. We encourage Chairman Corker and his Senate colleagues to move swiftly to confirm Jody as next director. America and the world need the Peace Corps now more than ever. We're excited Jody has the opportunity to lead it."
Click here to read the White House announcement on this nomination. 

A co-founder of the NPCA affiliate Women of Peace Corps Legacy, Olsen was a featured contributor in the Winter 2017 issue of WorldView magazine, writing about the rise of women in leadership roles in the agency and in international development. 

"Today 62 percent of Peace Corps’ 7,300 volunteers are women," Olsen wrote. "Over the years, each group of female volunteers has motivated the next group, and each generation to the next. This extraordinary group of approximately 125,000 females spanning 56 years of service are giving back to families, communities, states, and nations in ways not possible without the Peace Corps experience, one contribution at a time.  

"Today, women’s roles are stronger than ever, particularly here in the United States. Is there a need for further attention of Peace Corps women on behalf of women and girls? Yes. The issues faced by women and girls still need our support…Some of the issues might look overwhelming, but the Peace Corps experience has taught us to work with whatever situation we find, a person, a family, or community." 

Click here to see the list of all previous Peace Corps Directors."

President Ends His Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

From the White House:

Executive Order on the Termination of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

Issued on: January 3, 2018

This was called from the start by some, "the Advisory Commission on Election Fraud" and "on Voter Suppression" by others.

It was suspect from the beginning with Vice President Pence as chair and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach serving as vice-chair. The ACLU has four suits against Kobach claiming in one 

"“Secretary Kobach continues to seek ways to confuse and obstruct voters in Kansas. His flagrant disregard of the court’s findings means that Kansans still face unnecessary barriers to voting. We’re asking the court to immediately block the temporary regulation and to ultimately end this dual system once and for all,” said Sophia Lakin, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project."

The Democratic Secretary of State of Maine, a member of the commission, was suing the commission.  Governing reports:

The suit alleges that the commission's chairman, Vice President Mike Pence, and vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, are in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which prohibits the body from excluding commissioners from deliberations and information. The Executive Office of the President is also a named defendant, as the office is staffing the commission and maintaining its records. 

"Since the Sept. 12 meeting, I have received no correspondence from the commission other than to acknowledge receipt of my information request" of October 17, Dunlap said in a prepared statement. "Clearly, there is information about this commission being created and discussed, but I have no access to that information and it has not been provided upon request."

One of the commission's staffers was arrested for having child porn on his phone.

There were lots of reasons to not even create this commission in the first place.  Objective studies of voter fraud said this Republican talking point was a non-issue at best, an attempt at voter suppression at worst.

Jennifer Ruben wrote at the Washington Post back in September  that the Commission should be shut down.

But it's not like Trump administration to back down and quit because its critics tell it to.  Was it the likelihood of losing the suits?  Maybe.

I'm guessing that the Republicans wanted to have a federal commission that could make their recommendations for voter suppression under the guise of preventing voter fraud.  But it was getting too difficult.  Locking out the Democrats resulted in the lawsuit which they were likely to lose.

And since they couldn't conduct their business privately as a federal commission, they've decided to go back to secret meetings and scheming to do their dirty business of finding ways to keep Democrats from voting.

And how much did all this cost the taxpayer?  I can't find anything on that.

How Long Is A Generation? Let's Be Careful About Words We Use

Communication between two human beings is hard enough, even when they use the same words to mean the same thing.  But when people use words 'creatively' with meanings that don't match the commonly understood meanings, it gets even harder to understand each other.

From today's Anchorage Daily News story on the death of the Alaska zoo's polar bear Ahpun,

"'She’s been a favorite here for generations of people,' Lampi said Tuesday." 

Generations of people?

But the bear was only 20 years old.  

How long is a generation?  Greg Laden's Blog tells us:

Short Answer: 25 years, but a generation ago it was 20 years.
Long answer: It depends on what you mean by generation.

He goes on to explain biological, generational, and cultural, social generations.  

Now, Lampi may have meant that children, their parents, and grandparents all visited the zoo together, and technically that would be three generations together seeing Ahpun.

But normally 'for generations' means something has gone on across many generations.  Two generations by Laden's count (and I checked others who give the same response) would be 40-50 years.  Which would have made Ahpun a pretty old bear.  Seaworld's website says the oldest polar bear in captivity lived 45 years.

Does it matter?  Words are tools for communication.   And poor communications contribute to most problems humans face in the world.  From the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium:

"Almost all conflicts involve communication problems, as both a cause and an effect. Misunderstandings, resulting from poor communication, can easily cause a conflict or make it worse. Further, once a conflict has started, communication problems often develop because people in conflict do not communicate with each other as frequently, as openly, and as accurately as they do when relationships are not strained. Thus communication is central to most conflict situations. . .

Speakers often are not clear themselves about what they mean, which almost assures that what they say will be unclear as well. Even when people know what they mean, they often do not say it as clearly as they should. . . "

Lots of little things combine to create big problems.  

How To Get More Variety From Netflix And Follow Up On Scam Film Festivals

"Netflix is always using algorithms to help you find the best movies based on your taste, but what if you want something completely different?"

So starts an article at Data Hand, which then goes on to list lots of codes that get you to very specific genres.

Hidden Netflix codes to help you find movies Netflix doesn't know you might like.

Here's are a few examples:

Anime Features: 3063
Anime Horror: 10695
Anime Sci-Fi: 2729
Anime Series: 6721
Art House Movies: 29764
Asian Action Movies: 77232
Australian Movies: 5230
B-Horror Movies: 8195
Baseball Movies: 12339
Basketball Movies: 12762
Belgian Movies: 262
Biographical Documentaries: 3652
Biographical Dramas: 3179
Boxing Movies: 12443
British Movies: 10757
British TV Shows: 52117
Campy Movies: 1252
Children & Family Movies: 783
Chinese Movies: 3960

Dramas based on Books: 4961
Dramas based on real life: 3653
Dutch Movies: 10606
Eastern European Movies: 5254
Education for Kids: 10659
Epics: 52858
Experimental Movies: 11079
Faith & Spirituality: 26835
Faith & Spirituality Movies: 52804
Family Features: 51056
Fantasy Movies: 9744
Film Noir: 7687
Food & Travel TV: 72436  

Martial Arts Movies: 8985
Martial Arts, Boxing & Wrestling: 6695
Middle Eastern Movies: 5875
Military Action & Adventure: 2125
Military Documentaries: 4006
Military Dramas: 11
Military TV Shows: 25804
Miniseries: 4814
Mockumentaries: 26
Monster Movies: 947
Movies based on children's books: 10056

Sports & Fitness: 9327
Sports Comedies: 5286
Sports Documentaries: 180
Sports Dramas: 7243
Sports Movies: 4370
Spy Action & Adventure: 10702
Spy Thrillers: 9147
Stage Musicals: 55774
Stand-up Comedy: 11559
Steamy Romantic Movies: 35800
Steamy Thrillers: 972

The numbers are the code you put in, not the number of films in that category.


On another track, though still related to films, back in 2009 I wrote about a copycat film festival that mimicked the Anchorage International Film Festival's name, but showed no films and had no Alaska connection at all except for a post office box that forwarded submissions somewhere.  That post, and a threat from the festival's lawyer for using the word scam in my post, led me to several other posts about legitimate film festivals and more questionable ones festivals.

A recent piece in a German film site - Shortfilm.de - cited one of my posts and went on to talk about the proliferation of festivals that take advantage of film makers.  It looks in depth at the  the “International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema” in Berlin.  Here's the English version.  Or, if you prefer, the original German version.

Famous People Born in 1918 Part I - Politics and Music

Getting perspective is always good.  Looking back 100 years helps do that.  So as 2018 begins, let's look at who was born 100 years ago.  And remember the babies you see this year may be on a list like this in 2118.  Treat them well.

Also, consider that if they lived in the same neighborhood, these folks would have been classmates at school.  We don't always recognize famous folks who were cohorts.  I'm grouping them by areas they gained fame and in order of their deaths.  These are just a few of the 1918 birth group who did noteworthy (a non-judgmental term) things.  I'll do one or two more posts with other categories.

Politics/Government

Two African leaders and Nobel Peace Prize winners, but overall a sketchy group.  One assassinated and two others executed.

	Died	Comment
Julius Rosenberg	1953	Death Penalty Convicted Spy
Anwar el-Sadat	1981	President of Egypt, Nobel Peace Prize, Assassinated
Nicolae Ceausecu	1989	Romanian Communist leader, Executed after fall of Soviet Union
Spiro Agnew	1996	Disgraced Vice President under Nixon, forced to resign
Kurt Waldheim	2007	President of Austria, UN Gen Sec.  Nazi past exposed late in his life.
Howard Hunt	2007	Nixon WH plumber, organized dirty tricks for Nixon
Betty Ford	201l	First Lady, Gerald Ford, Betty Ford Foundation Addiction Help
Nelson Mandela	2013	Political prisoner then President of South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize,

[UPDATE Jan 2, 2018:  AKBright reminded me in a comment below that Anchorage's Ruth Sheridan was born in 1918.  She's still visible around town and still fighting for justice.  Somewhere I must have a picture of her, but not sure where.]

Music

Some great ones in this group.

	Died	Comments
Professor Longhair	1980	"rattled the keys with a mélange of boogie-woogie, New Orleans parade beats and Caribbean rhythm."
Leonard Bernstein	1990	West Side Story and so much more
Pearl Bailey	1990	Singer extraordinaire
Brigit Nilsson	2005	Swedish soprano opera great
Marian McPartland	2013	Jazz pianist, NPR piano jazz host
Alan Jay Learner	2014	Lyricist for My Fair Lady and other musicals

Part 2 is coming.

For a longer list, see this page at Biography.

When I first did a post like this back in 2007, I had to work hard to pull names together.  Now there are lots of sites that do this, so I don't think my efforts here need to be as extensive as the original ones.

The Fog Rolled In, I Got A Flat, And We Get Picked Up By A Good Samaritan

The workers were here at 9am and finished up the ceiling.

I got a call from my friend B - he wanted to bike to Palos Verdes, starting around Redondo Beach.  It was sunny and beautiful and getting out of the house so the workers could do their thing without me around seemed like a great idea.


As we cruised around the beach cities looking for a parking spot, we entered the fog.  Low, grey clouds.
Here's a shot of it.

And it was chilly.  A very damp, low 60s. (I know, chilly is relative.) After a bit we needed to get off the beach bike path and head up hills through Torrance.   I stopped partway up the hill to watch the fog roll up from the ocean.


As we got further up, the sun was visible, sort of.







And then as we rode higher, we got above the fog.   There's Palos Verdes above us, visible.





And this, I'm pretty sure, is Malaga Bay.  You can see the wall of fog sitting there waiting over the ocean.   There were 20-30 surfers out in the waves below.

But soon we were in the fog again.  B kept checking the map on his phone to see how much further it was.  I didn't actually know what 'it' was, except "Palos Verdes."  As far as I was concerned, we were already in PV.  Should we go the rest of the way?, B asked me.  I told him I didn't know where we were going or why it would be worth the extra three miles uphill.  I was also thinking about the two foot wide bike path on the other side of the street and the cars whizzing by.  Our side had about ten feet of parking area that was also a bike lane.  Finally B said it was Terra something resort.  Then I remembered I'd just read about them hiring foreign interns and using them to replace their minimum wage workers.  Human trafficking was in the headline.  I didn't need to go there.  B suggested I might interview some of the workers for the blog.  I was thinking about when it gets dark in LA (early - about 5:30pm in late December).  We went a little further and turned around.

We'd gone about nine miles.  After about a mile my bike was getting very sluggish and making a strange noise.  When I looked down I could see my back tire was flat.  We found the nail.  B's repair kit wasn't working - no patches and his hand pump didn't work on my valve stem.   I told B to ride ahead to the car and I'd walk as far as I could and he could pick me up.  We were about eight miles from the car.  He wanted me to turn my bike upside down so people could see we were in trouble, and he'd hitch a ride in a pick up truck.  I'm not sure why I didn't want to.  I guess I was embarrassed that I didn't have stuff with me to fix the flat.

Five minutes, that's all B wanted, then we could go with my plan.

After four minutes I was ready to start walking, then a pick up stopped.  B ran and talked to the driver and soon the bikes were in the bed and we were in front with Steve Lavine who had been out for a walk.  He used to run and bike and hike, but he had various health issues now and it was even a struggle to walk.  We met a new friend who took us all the way back to the car.  He said he was headed our way anyway and it wasn't too far extra.  B was pleased to have been right and I wasn't upset I was wrong.

Oh, and Steve has a second cousin Norm LaVine who lives in Anchorage. Hasn't seen him in 25 years.   If anyone from Anchorage knows him, tell him we are trying to convince Steve to come visit him in Anchorage.

Thanks, Steve, for ending our bike ride with a spectacular show of good will.  Getting a ride back was great, but getting to know a total stranger  who'd stop and pick up two guys with bikes was even better.



I'm not that surprised, but we do get jaded by our media that tends to focus on the tiny number of people who do harm each day rather than on the 350 million other US inhabitants who are like Steve Lavine.

If Alabamans Had Seen "The Shape Of Water"," Doug Jones Would Have Won By A Landslide

The workers came to replace the popcorn ceiling at my mom's house yesterday - we weren't expecting them until Tuesday, but they called Thursday and said, "how bout we start tomorrow?"  So my daughter's family we're getting ready to go back to Seattle.  I was busily packing things and moving furniture to the garage, before the workers came.  I dropped the family at the airport at 2pm (really hard to see my little angel go, but we'll catch up with them in Seattle in a few weeks), and then rushed to meet my college roommate for a late lunch before he went to a UCLA basketball game.  (We did that together in the Golden Age of UCLA basketball in the mid-sixties.)  Then we were free and wanted to let the workers do whatever they were doing without us.  So we checked the films showing at the theater nearby.

I'd seen the LA Times Billboard Critics Choices for Best Films yesterday.  I tend to agree with Kenneth Turan, so I wanted to see his top pick, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.

I've put the six critics' choices into a table.  You can see their picks for other categories as well here.

	Chang LATimes	Turan LATimes	O'Neil Gold Derby	Thompson Indiewire	Sperling Vanity Fair	Whipp The Envelope
Call Me By Your Name	1	8	5	6	3	9
Darkest Hour	2	4	4	4	2	5
Dunkirk	3	3	3	1	1	4
The Florida Project	4		7			1
Get Out	5			7	4	6
Lady Bird	6	10	8	5	5	7
Mudbound	7	5		9
The Post	8	6	1		6
The Shape of Water	9	2	2	3	7	3
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	10	1	9	2	8	2
Phantom Thread		7	6
The Big Sick		9		8		8
Blade Runner 2049				10		10
Detroit			10

[The numbers show the order the critics listed them.  I'm assuming they ranked them with their favorites on top.]

But Three Billboards had already begun, so we went for The Shape of Water.

NOTE:  I'd suggest going to see The Shape of Water without reading anything about it.  Let it unfold without any preconceptions or expectations.

I sat there in amazement through the whole film.  It's was a totally unexpected story, a little bizarre, but I got past that pretty quickly.  I'm just beginning to think about the symbolic meaning of the story.  This definitely goes to on my top movies of the year - though admittedly I haven't seen too many on the list (Florida Project, Get Out, and Mudbound).  This one is so original and powerful and good;  it's why I rely on Kenneth Turan's judgment.  So now I have to see Three Billboards.

So What Does Doug Jones Have To Do With This?

One of the actors is Doug Jones - like the new Senator from Alabama.  And it's no spoiler if I tell you that we never see Doug Jones' face, so it is possible it's the same person.  And if it had been shown in Alabama, I suspect many of the people would have been impressed by the character Doug Jones played, and voted for him.  Though I can imagine some of those folks who take the bible literally might have some serious problems with the Doug Jones character.

While Trump Cites Eastern Cold To Dispute Climate Change, I Submit California Warmth

Aside from getting stuff cleaned out in my mom's house so that we can have some repair work done, we did make it to the beach Thursday afternoon.  So did a lot of other folks.  I went by bike and the bike trail along the beach was like bike freeway traffic.  There's room - between Venice and Santa Monica for two bikes in each direction.  But there were clots of bikes, motorized scooters, skateboarders (with and without motors), Segways, and other sorts of wheeled transportation that made it necessary to pass.  There's separate pedestrian walkways for part of the distance.  At other points, there's just room for single file pedestrians on the edge of the bike trail, though tourists tend not to realize this or that they are standing in the middle of an active bike trail.

But this post is about the warmth.  It wasn't hot yesterday (in the 70s), but it was just comfortable to lie in the sun and Z and I spent a lot of time playing in the surf.  I had on trunks, and she had on a bathing suit, but for the most part I kept my trunks dry, but I had to pick her up out of the incoming surf a few times to keep her from getting drenched above her thighs.  That's not us, but you get the idea.

And considering it was a Thursday, there were a fair number of folks enjoying the rays.

AND OF COURSE, the cold in the Midwest and the East  and the warmth in LA prove nothing about climate change.  The anecdotal temperatures are weather, not climate.

From NASA (you know those elites who send missions to the moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc. based on so called science):

"The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere "behaves" over relatively long periods of time."

There's a lot more at the NASA link.

As Stephen Colbert pointed out -

"Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: World hunger is over because I just ate."

Unintended Consequences

Two of our current president's goals are to lower immigration and renegotiate NAFTA and he just got a tax bill that greatly reduces taxes for corporations and the wealthy.

But in this world everything is interrelated.  NPR reported a drop in the Mexican peso.

"The fear south of the border is that with corporate taxes lower in the U.S., Mexico won't look as attractive to businesses. A possible drop in foreign investment here sent the peso tumbling this week to its lowest level in nearly 10 months. Mexico's central bank tried to perk up the peso by selling off an additional $500 million in a foreign currency auction. The tactic usually gives the peso a boost, but there was no such rally this time."

If unemployment in Mexico rises and the value of the peso drops, there will be much greater incentive for unemployed Mexicans to come to the US and work for US dollars that they can send back home where their value will be much greater than working for pesos.

Graham v MOA #5: A Much Better Overview Of Why This Case Is Important

Graham v MOA - Overview of Why It’s Important

[This is an overview to explain what I see as a major problem.

MOA = Municipality of Anchorage AFD = Anchorage Fire Dept

 My evidence in this post is minimal.  This series of posts will offer detailed evidence.]

1. There was a wrongdoing.  Jeff Graham was intentionally and unfairly denied promotion.   This was proven in court to the satisfaction of the jury.  
2. The problem is structural and individual.
1. The exam process did not follow the MOA Charter requirement that it comply with ‘merit principles’.  Instead the oral exam (particularly) was so subjective that graders could give whatever score they wanted.  The only remaining evidence was the sketchy notes of the graders.  No recordings, audio or video.  This subjective exam was abused to prevent Jeff Graham from promoting.
2. The exam was part of a good-old-boy system that demanded loyalty and punished those who didn't toe the line.
3. The wrong doing was aggravated by the response to Graham’s protest of the exam.  It was not taken seriously, there was no investigation.  Constructive critiques of the exam by two other firefighters were also ignored.
4. In court, evidence was presented (and not refuted by the Municipality) that the head of the training academy said he would never let Jeff Graham promote.

 ******************************************

After Jeff Graham was told he had failed the oral exam, he filed a complaint.  The complaint was never followed up on by AFD beyond a quick rejection.  In addition, two other fire fighters also filed more generalized constructive critiques of the exams that also were ignored. 

The correct response, in 2012,  to Graham’s complaint about the exam would have been to look into the complaint, to look at the exam.  Anyone with professional testing and training knowledge and experience would have recognized the problem with the test immediately.  

Another correct response (given AFD demographics - about 2% female and about 85% white) would have been to seriously examine why the demographics are so different from Anchorage demographics.  They could have, for example, hired objective outside experts to meet with people of color and women in the department to find obstacles to entry and promotion so that more underrepresented groups could get into and promote within the system.  

Instead of investigating and correcting the problem, the department saw Jeff Graham as the problem and the department pulled all its forces together to fight him when he got no response and finally sued the MOA.  Organizations count on their greater resources to keep people like Graham from taking them to court.  But Jeff Graham felt seriously wronged and wanted to correct the injustice he had suffered.  

Why did this happen?

1. People in charge of testing and promotion were not qualified.  There is a state certification program. The test makers only had Level 1 certification and thus were not certified to make a test, only to administer a test created by someone with Level 2 certification.
2. Accountability systems - like the Human Resources Department - did not do their work to insure the exams complied with merit principles.
3. The system has aspects of a good old boys system where if you fit in with the crowd and you stay quiet and loyal, you might get ahead.  This is not unusual, and we are currently seeing nationally the consequences of such systems in the sexual assault scandals.  If people are afraid to speak up, wrongs go on forever.  

Therefore, the highly subjective oral exam allowed the good old boys to select who they wanted to promote and in Graham's case, keep out the ones they didn't want to promote.  And this promotion exam was the only passage way up the ladder from the position of fire fighter.  

Why should you believe what I say here?  Lots of reasons.

1. My expertise.  I have academic training and practical experience in the field. I have a PhD in public administration, with a masters level specialization in personnel management.  I worked as special assistant to the director of Employee Relations at the MOA for two years (1982-84).  I was chair of the University of Alaska Anchorage grievance committee for two years and I was later the campus and statewide grievance rep for my faculty union. I sat on numerous search committees.  I taught public personnel administration for 30 years.  I’ve also published in this field.
2. My access to the case - I served as an expert witness for the plaintiff.  This allowed me to see much of the documentation of the testing and other activities.  I also attended the trial so I was able to hear the evidence offered by the MOA.  
3. The demographics of the Anchorage Fire Department compared to a) the rest of the MOA and b) the population of Anchorage are abysmal.  The AFD - according to the deposition of the Deputy Chief - has about 2% women and about 85% whites.
4. A superior court jury, after a three week trial, found the MOA guilty of bad faith and unfair treatment in Jeff Graham’s case.  They awarded him $660,000.  (The judge later approved additional legal fees.)
5. A fire fighter eyewitness testified at the trial that the head of the engineer promotion and testing academy told him and some others that “As long as I’m in charge of promotion, Jeff Graham will never promote.”  The city did not refute this testimony in court.  
6. The PowerPoint used to prepare fire fighters for the oral peer review covered slides which point out - unintentionally - some of the problems with the test:
1. “Is This A Popularity Contest?”  - they say they talked about this to dispel rumors, but obviously the rumors must have been pervasive enough that they felt the need to officially address them.  Their proof that it wasn’t?  They simply asserted it wasn’t. And blamed sore losers who'd failed the exam for the rumors.
2. Candidates were told to expect ‘skeletons’ to be brought up at the oral exam.  I'd note the MOA has disciplinary procedures with proper investigations for dealing with behavior that violates MOA regulations.  There were no disciplinary issues with Jeff Graham.  The promotion exam is not the proper place to raise unfounded and unproven "skeletons" against people. 
3. Candidates were told to prepare ‘nuggets’ or stories about themselves that would prove their character and that the nuggets could be ‘irrelevant’ to the job of fire fighter.  I'd note again, that the merit principles require that all criteria for selection and promotion be directly job related and predictive of success on the job.  
7. The oral exams were not validated even though the national fire safety instructor training manual the department uses says that high impact exams such as promotion exams should be validated professionally.  
8. Merit principles require tests that predict who will be good at the job, or what is technically known as 'valid.'   A valid test in this case would mean test takers who score higher will be more successful engineers and those who score lower will be less successful.  There are technical ways to validate a test.  Another key factor is reliability - that the conditions of the test - location, time, graders, etc. - don't bias the outcome.  Tests need people with technical training to ensure a test is valid and reliable.    A number of key people, including the test makers, were unable in depositions to explain:
1. merit principles
2. validity
3. reliability
9. Aside from not being validated, the oral exams were so obviously subjective that they allowed graders great leeway.  There are too many serious problems with the exams to address them here.  But I will in other posts.

As I said at the beginning, a wrongdoing happened and was compounded by the fire department uniting to fight Jeff Graham instead of investigating the problem professionally.  They strongly supported the people who caused the problem and fought against the victim of the problem.  The dynamics of this are the same as the dynamics that have kept so many women (and men) from reporting sexual assaults and even rape.  Fear of retribution kept many fire fighters silent about problems, even though they signed statements that required them to report any violations of the integrity of the exams.  

Thus closing this particular case doesn’t solve the problem.  It’s a systemic problem that still exists.  

Remedies

1. The most basic remedy already exists.  In fact the MOA Charter requires it be used. The Charter requires the application of merit principles in all personnel decisions.  Unfortunately, no one in the fire department involved in the case knew anything about merit principles.  Thus, the first recommendation is to train all the top level executives and all the employees involved in personnel actions where decisions are made about employees (selection, promotion, discipline, etc.) in merit principles and how to apply them.   
2. The MOA needs to hire enough professionals skilled in testing, to 
1. review selection and promotion testing in all departments to be sure tests are valid and reliable and there is accountability if they are not 
2. develop new testing procedures in those departments where tests are not valid and reliable, starting with those most out of compliance
3. train relevant people in the departments 
4. have professionals investigate complaints and suggestions about testing procedures
5. establish procedures to record all oral exams
3. Get demographic data for all departments to determine how close the MOA reflects the demographics of the working age population of Anchorage.
1. This should include age, gender, ethnicity, at a minimum, at all levels of each department
2. Departments below a to-be-determined percent of the general population demographics must develop plans for making their departments more welcoming and for developing pools of qualified candidates for future openings - if necessary, this could use the UAA ANSEP model where recruitment goes as far as preparing  high school students to develop the skills needed in key areas.  
4. The merit principles required in the MOA Charter need to be resuscitated by
1. extensive training of employees and the public on what merit principles are and how they work,
2. reviewing how many current executive level positions should actually be civil service positions with civil service protection from arbitrary firing.
5. Departments need to be much more open to their employees’ suggestions and complaints.  If necessary this means publicizing the role of the ombudsman office more and increasing the ombudsman staff skilled in administrative investigation.  Or setting up an investigation team in Human Resources.
1. This includes the legal department, which should be reviewing the meaning of ‘duty to client’ when they are government employees.  Is their duty to the employee in the department who has the authority to call them in?  Is it to the MOA as a whole?  Is it to the public?  What should they do when these duties conflict?  If the legal department had considered the fairness of the system and what happened to Jeff Graham instead of whether they thought they could beat a discrimination case, this never would have happened.  I'd note this case followed closely a discrimination case in the Police Department that the MOA also lost. Department heads who have done wrong or have allowed wrong to be done on their watch, shouldn’t be able to use the MOA attorneys to cover up their mistakes and persecute employees who are the victims of the wrong doing.  
6. It would also be nice to promote Jeff Graham.  He actually passed the test back in 2008, but a day or two later he was told he hadn’t been eligible to take the test.  It’s true he hadn’t been a fire fighter for the required five years, but he had been a mechanic in the fire department for eight years (and the duties greatly overlap with engineer)  and the HR department and Fire Department waived the requirement because of ‘equivalency’ as they did for other fire fighters.  And in 2012 he passed the written and practical tests with high scores.  But a third exam - the subjective oral exam - was added.  If you fail any one of the three exams, you can’t promote.  Graham failed the oral exam by one point after a ‘skeleton’ in the form of a rumor he’d never heard about before was sprung on him in one question.  (Each question had about four minutes to be addressed.) [UPDATE May 21, 2018:  Jeff retook the exams recently and passed.  That puts him on a list of people who will be promoted if engineer positions come open in the next two years.  Read more here.]

Jeff Graham initially filed a racial and age discrimination complaint.  Those are hard to prove.  It was the only legal grounds he was aware of for such a complaint.  He didn't know anything about the merit principles in the Charter.  The MOA claimed there was no racial discrimination, but in the trial, these other issues came out and the jury found the MOA violated its obligation of good faith and fair treatment.  

The beauty of the merit principles is that they protect everyone from discriminatory practices - whites as well as people of color, men as well as women.  They require tests to, as much as possible, discriminate solely on whether someone is likely to be successful on the job.  

My Goal

My goal in these posts is to raise awareness of the problems that this case has raised.  It got almost no media coverage and many of the issues are 'invisible' in that they are very detailed issues of policy and administration.  I hope to be able to make them visible and explain them and their significance in these posts.  

Ultimately I hope the MOA will seriously review the internal structures that increase the likelihood that employees will be treated fairly, like the merit principles in the charter require. Hiring and promoting employees based on their qualifications for the job and not their connections, generally leads to a more effective and efficient government.  So does an administration that takes complaints seriously instead of punishing the complainers.  

This is the overview.  The other posts will fill in the details.  As I post them, I'll add links to them here.  

You can see an index of all my posts about this case here - or at the Graham v. Municipality of Anchorage tab just below the "What Do I Know?" banner on top of the blog.