Heartland Forum - Chance for Serious Conversation with Elizabeth Warren, Julían Castro, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar

When the Republicans had a dozen or more candidates for the 2016 presidential election, the debates were pretty shallow and demeaning.  Having Trump as a bomb-thrower in every debate didn't help.  And the worst of the Republicans is the candidate that party picked.

And some are predicting the 2020 Democratic race will be the same.  I'm hopeful they will actually be inspiring.  The Democratic candidates I've heard from already all have much more positive messages and programs to address the problems.  I've already posted about two lesser known candidates - Andrew Yang and Pete Buttagieg - and a little on Beto O'Rourke.

Here's a video of four more of the candidates.  They each get about 30 minutes on the stage without other candidates.  They each get to make some opening remarks and then they get questions from the audience.

I can't see a way to embed the video, so you have to go there on your own.

I'm not taking any stands on any of these people.  I'll just note that Elizabeth Warren still impresses me.  She comes from a poor family but made her way to the US Senate.  She hasn't forgotten her roots, yet she has done her homework and understands the problems of extreme capitalism and doesn't shrink from challenging the largest corporations.

I know very little about Julían Castro, a former Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary, but he's smart, articulate, and has a good handle on the issues addressed.  

John Delaney, comes from a business background and is a former Congressman.  Didn't know about him.

Amy Klobochar impressed me in the Kavanaugh hearings.  Her prosecutor background was obvious in her questions.  She was polite, but firm.  In this forum we get to hear her on other issues.

Tim Ryan, Congressman from Youngstown, Ohio who apparently is not yet an announced candidate also appears on the stage.

This is two hours long, but I'd argue it's a good way to start getting to know these candidates and hearing their ideas and programs.  Watch each candidate at one sitting, or while your making dinner, cleaning up, or doing exercise.  This is a better use of your time than watching Netflix.  (I know there are other streaming sites, but I just decided I can't watch all the 'best' shows and Netflix has enough.  And Prime is a way to help Jeff Bezos create a new market place where he gets a cut of every transaction without adding value.

So, start your presidential check list where you keep track of their important experience and education and stands on the issues.

Limits Of Religious Freedom, How Do We Know Who Is Good?, And How Many Wheelchairs Do Airlines Lose Or Break A Month?

The title doesn't necessarily reflect the aim of the authors of these three stories, but it does reflect what I took from them.


1.  Limits of Religious Freedom.   This is as good a description of how I view freedom of religion's boundaries.

From Washington Post article on South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg,  running for president.  The article also offers a way to pronounce his name offered by his husband.

“Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others,” he said. “One of the problems with RFRA* was it authorized harming others so long as you remembered to use your religion as an excuse.”

*Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015

Of course, this still leaves lots of room for debate on what 'harming others' entails.

The article also discusses Buttigieg's own religious faith (it's not uninformed) and his bid to get the religious left more active in the next round of elections.


2.  Judging People In The Era Of Non-Stop Headline News

This next one is about James Comey and it raises interesting questions about who becomes a hero and who doesn't in our modern age.  It seems - she doesn't say this, but it's my takeaway - we often judge people nowadays by one action rather than the totality of their lives.  (And you can also question why we're judging other people rather than working on ourselves.)

From the Bulwark:  Why Do We Love To Hate James Comey?

"Comey has six children, all with the same woman. He has been married to his wife since roughly the Pliocene epoch and in his spare time they serve as emergency foster parents for homeless kids. No, really. He explained to NPR that, as foster parents, they often get more love out of these relationships than they put into them, even. “Little boy who came to us born a month premature in a homeless shelter to a drug-addicted mother and born in very very difficult circumstances so we got him right out of the hospital,” Comey said of one of his many foster children. That baby boy was later adopted, but, as NPR reports, the Comeys still watch him a couple times a week. “[W]e’ve stayed very close,” Comey said. “We’ll look after him his whole life.”
As I said: A good man. A fine human being.
But good people can still be annoying as fuck and James Comey is proof of this."

3.  The importance of diversity in the legislature.  From the LA Times:

"The largest U.S. airlines damaged or lost a daily average of 26 wheelchairs and scooters used by disabled passengers in December, according to a report championed by a lawmaker who lost both legs while serving in Iraq.
From Dec. 4 to Dec. 31, the 12 largest carriers damaged or lost 701 passengers’ wheelchairs and scooters, according to the first report of its kind from the U.S."

It took a wheelchair bound Senator - Tammy Duckworth of Illinois who lost her mobility in a helicopter crash in Iraq - to require the FAA to report such losses.

It took a disabled US Senator to get attention paid to this problem.  I don't know how many people bring their wheelchairs to the airport each day.  I know there's usually five to ten waiting for passengers when I get off planes, so the total number of wheelchairs might be huge and 26 per day isn't that high a percentage.  But it's HUGE for the person who needs the chair.  Can you imagine being dependent on your wheelchair to get around and find out when you got off the plane, yours had been lost or damaged?


Enjoy your weekend!

Alaska Gov On Koch

Given that our governor got most of his funding from Outside of Alaska;
And that his deputy chief of staff set up the Koch funded Americans for Prosperity Alaska chapter;
And that his budget director is an imported budget cutter who has presented us with a disastrous budget;
He refuses to consider even the possibility of any new taxes;
Or to consider cutting tax credits to oil companies that are almost equal to the gap in the budget


I can't help but conclude:

Hey Dems - Disagreement Is Human, But Don't Cut Off The Supply Of AOC's

"HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP WARNS IT WILL CUT OFF ANY FIRMS THAT CHALLENGE INCUMBENTS"  is the headline of an Intercept article that tells us the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)

"warned political strategists and vendors Thursday night that if they support candidates mounting primary challenges against incumbent House Democrats, the party will cut them off from business."

I don't know if that would have prevented Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez from knocking off one the most senior Democratic representatives last year in the primary.  I don't think they took her seriously or even considered he might lose.  Though the demographics of the district had changed in AOC's favor.

But look at yet one more example of how this young, articulate Democrat is shaking things up among the old white guys in Congress.  And, because of Youtube and other social media, the world gets to see her doing it.




Any one being honest with themselves has to be impressed with her content and delivery.   She's calling out people who have been getting away with murder (if you count all the lives lost because of poor health care access, because of the hundreds of thousands civilians who have died in our war in Iraq to avenge the three thousand or so who died on 9/11.  That's like a hundred eyes for an eyes for an eye.

But let's take heart in the powerful young, diverse, often female voices that are shaking things up in Congress.  I understand that the Democratic establishment is used to doing things a certain way and they have good reasons to believe in things like supporting incumbents.  But do you think you would be watching inspiring videos today if Joe Crowley had beaten AOC in that primary?  Did ordinary people even know who Joe Crowley is?

Competition makes incumbents stronger when they get in the general election.  DCCC back off.  Let the best candidate win the primary.  These young members of Congress will bring younger voters to the polls.  AOC says in the video she will turn 30 soon.  We remember Alexander the Great even though he died in his 3rd year.

The DCCC should be encouraging new young leaders.  It should also be teaching candidates how to run competitively, but fairly and on the issues.  If they must enforce anything, it should be personal attack against other Democrats.  It should help staff and candidates with addiction problems, with relationship and other problems.  Life is difficult in the US these days.  Our moral and emotional support systems are falling apart.  And campaigning is particularly challenging to one's social life and offers lots of temptation to compromise one's ethics.  

[Conservatives who see her as a threat, well, you should.  Your party is supporting the wealthy at the expense of everyone else and your inability to see that climate change is the biggest threat to humanity because of your personal vested interests, is not only tragic for you, but for all the rest of humankind who will suffer because you've refused to take action.  I'm sorry.  All your arguments on this topic are dead wrong.  Fighting climate change, as AOC says, will be much cheaper than not doing anything.  Actually, a carbon fee with dividend (a bill is already in the House) is the easiest and most effective first step.  Working to develop and support alternative energy not only will create significant numbers of jobs and help keep the US competitive in the post carbon world.  Though that won't have much meaning in a world of endless floods, storms, droughts, heat waves, that will result in disrupting agriculture that feeds the world and the wars that will follow.   You believe in the Rapture, but not Climate Change?  And the delay in countering climate change that AOC talks about is already costing us lives and health and disrupting how humans live.  Just a note - the war in Syria was preceded by a multi-year drought that forced farmers off their land and into the cities where they made up a large pool of unemployed and discontented revolutionaries.  There were other issues, of course, but the disruption of the economic system caused by drought was a big factor. But working together to fight this shouldn't be based on fear, but on the much better world that will come of it.]

Signs Of Our Discontent - Rally Outside Americans For Prosperity's Private 'Public Meeting"

Background:  The Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy introduced a budget that cuts almost everything drastically.  He recently announced public meetings across the state to meet with Alaskans on the budget.  We quickly learned that Koch funded Americans for Prosperity had organized and was running the meetings.  One had to get free tickets online by giving up personal information - name, phone, email, etc. - and agree to lots of stipulations including no signs, no political T-shirts, no recording, need to show ID, and on and on.  More specifics here.  And there was a hearing sponsored by House Finance Committee Sunday afternoon.

Various groups including Senate Democrats and unions called for a demonstration outside the venue where the governor was going to speak in Anchorage tonight.  Anchorage Assembly member Forrest Dunbar acted as the MC.  That was today.  Here's the first of a few posts of pictures of the demonstrations.  I'm guessing there were altogether, about 300 people.  The NYE (New York Equivalent is a metric I came up with a an anti-Palin rally to give people outside of Alaska a sense of what an equivalent crowd would be in New York City.) would be about 9000 people.

This shot I got from the stairs on the side of the 49th State Brewery where the Americans for Prosperity private meeting was held.  (They said they had room for 150, even though various legislators offered larger venues for free if the governor would speak without all the restrictions.)  This picture doesn't show all the people in front of the building, so I took this picture too.

So these posts are going to focus on signs.  There were lots of signs!  Some were printed up and distributed - particularly supporting education.  But there were a lot more home made signs.  I've  grouped them into categories.  Like all such groupings, there are instances that easily fit into more than one category.  But this at least tries to capture what people were expressing in a bit more organized way.

GROUP 1:  COMMENTS ON THE PRIVATE NATURE OF THE GOV'S PUBLIC HEARING

This first group seems to be focused on the fact that this 'public' meeting wasn't public.  That a private organization was staging what the public was going to hear from the governor and limiting what the public could say in the meeting and could even document to tell others.  (An ADN story did quote an AFP person saying that individuals could use their phones to record, so they loosened up, but still people had had to sign a document forbidding recording.)


GROUP 2:  CONCERNS ABOUT SELLING OUT THE STATE TO OUTSIDE INTERESTS

Tomorrow I'll put up more.  There was a lot of focus on raising revenues instead of cutting, opposition to the governor's budget in general, and more specific concerns, particularly cutting education.

Nah. . . Forget Politics For Now - Anchorage Trails Along Streets Are Snow And Ice Free!

So many things nationally and locally to ponder, but I checked out the sidewalk/trails along a loop from Tudor, Elmore, Dowling, and Lake Otis back to Tudor (that being my warm up run until the the greenbelt trails are clear in the spring) and things were snow and ice free.

I actually didn't take any pictures of trail, except for this one on a bridge on Elmore.

I checked on last year's posts and this one from March 22 is the first bike ride I did last year.  I wrote the

 "for the most part the trail was ice free.  There'd been one spot where a thick chunk was floating over a puddle, but there was a bit of room to go around it.  But then, almost home, I got to this hard packed ice near Providence."

As I recall, there were places where there were big puddles and snow was melting from where it was piled next to the trail.  And the bridge over Campbell Creek (at Lake Otis) still had snow on it.

This year the trail was basically like in the picture.  There were wet areas, but no ice or snow that I was riding through.  There's  a picture in last year's post of trail full of ice and snow on both sides near Providence.  But this time I went in the other direction so I didn't go by there at all.  But I suspect it's clear too.

Anyway, here's Campbell Creek, north fork, from the bridge at Elmore.

And a little further down the road, the south fork of Campbell Creek.

Here's what this spot looked like on March 22, 2019 - with blue sky and sunshine.

Then west on Dowling and north on Lake Otis - here I am at Campbell Creek again, but here both the north and south forks have already converged into one creek.

It seemed a bit early to be so snow and ice free this year, even before I check last year's post.  But I also saw a tweet:

Number of days with a min temp of 40°F or lower at Anchorage Intl AP through March 25th. We're 13 days lower than the second lowest year. @AlaskaWx @DaveSnider pic.twitter.com/EqnuQy9ion

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) March 25, 2019

I think this would be clearer if it said "we've had 13 fewer days that dipped below 40˚ than the year with the next fewest days"  it would be clearer.

The End Of The Mueller Investigation - Day 1

Attorney General Barr reduced Robert Mueller's report to four pages [link goes to Barr's report] which he gave key Congressional committees.  In response, Seth Abramson, who's been following all this closely for years now tweeted today:

If these potential pardons occur, it'll be because media misreported today's events and allowed a false narrative to gain stream that gave Trump the cultural capital to pardon co-conspirators. Media has about 24 hours, maybe less, to calm down and properly report today's events. https://t.co/njMkBNZVdX

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 25, 2019

So before people fall for this, "nothing to see, keep moving" interpretation from Barr, here are a couple of others who seem to agree with Abramson.


From Marty Lederman's "How not to think–and what the Mueller Report won’t tell us–about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation "at Just Security today:

". . .That’s why you’re already familiar with many of those acts:  Trump pressured Comey to back off on Michael Flynn.  He fired Comey in order to take off the “great pressure” he faced “because of Russia” (as he said in his contemporaneous boasts to Russian officials!).  He constantly disparaged, and called in into question the impartiality of, Mueller and his team of lawyers.  He insulted countless career and Trump-appointed DOJ and FBI officials of extraordinary integrity.  He said he wouldn’t have appointed Jeff Sessions if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation, tried to get Sessions to reverse his decision to recuse, and humiliated Sessions when he wouldn’t budge.  Eventually he fired Sessions and then displaced Rod Rosenstein as Acting Attorney General with a lackey, deviating from centuries of practice.  He persistently referred to the critically important Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.”  And on and on.

These things have become so regular, so commonplace, that we’ve come to take them for granted.  Make no mistake, however:  They are not things any other president would ever do.  Any other president would–of course–do everything in his power to support, praise and cooperate with his own officials as they were engaged in an investigation of one of the most serious foreign threats to the nation in recent years.  And any other president would abide by the decades-long norms prohibiting presidential interference with, and commenting, on, DOJ investigations–especially when DOJ is investigating the president himself and people in his orbit.
Trump’s behavior with respect to the investigation has been deeply deviant, and inexcusable.  Moreover, it has been–quite obviously–part of a concerted, multiyear effort to obstruct, and undermine the legitimacy of, the Russia investigation.  No serious person would dispute that.  (Indeed, Trump virtually boasts about it.)  And most of it has been out there in plain view already–which is why the Mueller report to Barr is unlikely to contain any great surprises or revelations. . ."

From "Trump Aided and Abetted Russia’s Attack. That Was Treachery. Full Stop. The scandal may not be a crime. It’s a betrayal."  by David Corn in Mother Jones today:

"On Sunday afternoon Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress noting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The message also noted that Mueller could not exonerate President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice, but that Barr himself had decided that the evidence Mueller developed was “insufficient to establish” that Trump had obstructed justice. Trump proclaimed it was “complete and total exoneration.” And Trump champions popped the cork and declared case closed, nothing to see, end of story, no need for further investigation, Trump did no wrong.
Well, that is fake news."

There's so much more that we've seen that Trump has done and as some are telling us to move on now that the report is in, while they didn't say that while Trump demanding Obama present his birth certificate and that we should "Lock her up!"  

When I think back to when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes he'd recorded of all the meetings in the oval office, times were really different.

• First, it was pretty clear that the tapes showed that Nixon had lied.  There had been a cover-up and it went all the way up to the top. 
• Second, the idea that the president had lied about this mattered.   
• Third, the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate - but Nixon didn't have the hold on the congressional Republicans that Trump has.  

Well, here's a later tweet from Seth Abramson:

Yes—but the tide is changing.

Media had a *bad day* today. I predict there's a better week ahead for them. https://t.co/toToFpwAGR

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 25, 2019

Legislative Info Office Hearing on the Budget [UPDATED]

Given that the Governor's 'budget roadshow' is being handled by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch funded group, and requires one fill out a form online with more personal information than I want to add to AFP's data base, the House majority caucus is having its own hearings around the state.

It was jammed today with people testifying (mostly) against the Dunleavy budget and for reinstating an income tax.  I did hear two folks (one after the other) say they wanted their full PFDs and the state shouldn't subsidize lazy people.  But everyone else were ready to reduce their PFDs for public education, health care, etc.

If you click on this image it will get much bigger and clearer

I'll add to this later.

LATER:


There was a line that went out the front door, and I didn't get there until about an hour into the hearings.

There was an overflow room with a video of the session in the next room over.

And there was another overflow room.

And the hallway was full of people from the line that went out the door.  This was really the only big sign that I saw and did not seem to reflect the sentiment of most people testifying.

The control room was between the hearing room and one of the overflow rooms.  It had dark smokey windows.

Anchorage's Temple Beth Sholom Get's New Alaskan Rabbi

Rabbi Abram Goodstein, at his installation last night told this story. (Loosely paraphrased.)

My bar mitzvah was right here at this bimah.  Afterward, we went into Rabbi Rosenfeld's office and I said, " It's over!!"
And the rabbi said to me, "No, this is just the beginning."
And here I am now at the same bimah, and that office is now my office.  

The synagogue was packed with members of the congregation and many community fans.

If you look closely, you can see the children's klezmer band playing "mazol tov".

This was a joyous occasion and bodes well for Anchorage.   And, of course, there was a lot of food.  This is the dessert table.

Big Bright Vernal Equinox Moon Greets Us After Move To Amend Panel

After attending a  panel discussion on "The 28th Amendment" we walked out to see this giant moon pushing up over the mountains and not quite out of the clouds.

Here it's a little higher and we're out of downtown.

I'm still fighting my camera when the auto settings can't figure out what to do.  The manual settings just aren't intuitive and I use them so rarely.  The moon wasn't - as I remember it - so yellow.  

The panel was interesting and very civil.  The basic concern is with the impact of Citizens United and the problems of unlimited money from corporations and other non-human entities on elections in the United States.  The key objection I heard was that by limiting constitutional rights to human beings (Citizens United ruling was based on their First Amendment Right to free speech) organizations will be stripped of important rights, such as due process.  In response, Dr. Sharman Haley (standing at the mic in the picture) argued that such organizations are created and sanctioned by states and it is there, not in the constitution, that their rights should be established.  At least that's what I understood.  

To learn more, check out  Move To Amend.  

Another idea that was raised to make elections less contentious was ranked voting.  Dr. Haley argued that first, this would eliminate the need for primaries.  And second,  if candidates want to win, they have to be listed second on a lot of ballots.  Thus taking an extreme stand will likely lose them the election.   There's more on ranked choice voting here.