Dan Sullivan, Who Called For Bi-Partisanship Last Week, Claims There's A "Biden War On Alaska"

Here's what I started yesterday:

I didn't hear Senator Sullivan's speech to the Alaska legislature.  I only heard Alaska Public Radio's report on it.  I looked for it on line, but couldn't find it, even on Sullivan's own web site.  But there are a couple of quotes that I think can be looked at without hearing the whole speech.    

A little later I wrote:

(Of course, when I get to see the whole speech, maybe I'll find out I'm wrong here.) 

So, I tracked down the speech with help from the Legislative Website.  They have a chat box and someone answered my question immediately and gave me a link to the speech.  I'd ask for a transcript but they said they didn't have one.  

So I typed up my own rough transcript as I listened.  It was pretty rough.  I called Sen. Sullivan's office and someone there said she'd have someone email me a copy.  If I didn't get it within a week, call back.  

Then I got an email from the legislative chat guy with a link to a transcript.

My basic reaction based on the original quotes I'd heard, hadn't changed.  Let's see if I can summarize my thoughts about the speech so that others don't have to take the time to read/listen to it and take the time to think it through.  

But unfortunately, it's difficult to 'simply' critique the speech because it's built on layers and layers of false assumptions and myths.

[I'm putting this up tonight.  But I reserve the right to review it again in the morning and make cosmetic changes.]

I'll start with the original quotes and my responses to them.  Then I'll add a few notes of other issues he's raised.  

There's lots of bluster in these quotes from Alaska Public Media

Here are the quotes I originally got from Alaska Public Media.  They certainly highlighted the bluster.  

PART I:  Biden's War on Alaska

"U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan told Alaska’s legislators on Monday that President Biden’s administration is at war with Alaska over developing resources." 

“This is not surprising,” Sullivan said. “We knew this anti-Alaska agenda was coming if the national Democratic Party took control of the White House, the Senate and the House. Alaska is always the gift that national Democratic administrations give their extreme, radical environmental supporters.”

First,  the issues with his language, style, rhetoric.

1.  Sullivan takes a disagreement on prioritizing values - balancing climate change concerns and economic concerns, in this case development of natural resources, particularly oil - and makes this into a war on Alaska.  

Rather than acknowledging that Biden's administration has legitimate concerns about climate change and debating the facts of climate change and how much oil development and then consumption contributes to climate change - a battle Sullivan can't win - Sullivan accuses the Biden administration of targeting Alaska, declaring war on Alaska.  Good populist rhetoric to rile up Alaskans.  

He also talks about 'extreme, radical environmental supporters.'  Who exactly are these people and what are their extreme radical policies?  He doesn't tell us.  Facts get in the way of his 'war on Alaska' narrative.  When we're at war, there's no debate, no discussion of the issues.  

This is, basically, a red meat speech to rile up Alaskans about how they're being screwed by the Biden administration.  

2.  You can't work out issues if you declare the other side the enemy - which is what you do, in effect, when you say you are at war.  Sullivan has also recently called on the Biden Administration to use bi-partisanship 

"Bipartisan efforts are the key to successful voting rights reform, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week," as hopes for reaching across the aisle in Congress falter and calls for removing the filibuster grow louder." [From ABC News]

But how can you call on your perceived opponent to work cooperatively with you if you say he's declared war on you?  

Second, issues with the facts, which the war metaphor skips over.

1.  Climate change versus oil and gas development.

A.  First, let's be clear.  Dan Sullivan is a Koch brothers product.  He's a spokesman for oil and gas. They, through their various 'think tanks' and institutes, spread climate change denial as widely as they could.  

B.  Oil and gas are significant contributors to climate change - a human caused change to our atmosphere that is warming the planet, including the oceans, and causing widespread extreme weather related disasters - from droughts that kill farming and help set up huge wild fires, to more and stronger hurricane and other storm conditions that flood out farmlands and cities.  The list goes on and on.  Climate change is the biggest threat to civilized human life on earth.  

But it's inconvenient for oil and gas producers who want to squeeze out the last dime of their projects around the world. Oil companies have been subsidized by the US forever and they fought subsidies for companies pursuing alternative energy options. 

C.  Oil has been a bonanza for Alaska.  We saved about $70 billion of that bonanza in the Alaska Permanent Fund. (Though Norway, whose fund began much later than ours, has a fund of over $1 trillion.  Norway didn't abolish its income tax when it set up its fund the way Alaska did.)  Oil money has helped pay Alaska's bills for over 40 years now, as well as a number of boondoggles.   

D.  But oil's day, while not over for a long time, is on the wane.  Currently, we make more money from Permanent Fund earnings than we do from oil.  And the oil tax credit laws Alaska's Republican legislatures have passed have Alaskans paying billions to oil companies, not the other way around. Republican lawmakers continue to block new sources of revenue, especially an income tax.  (Though some see this as inevitable.)   Not only has the Prudhoe Bay production declined, oil's role in climate change is making oil itself a problem.  Electric cars are beginning to replace gas powered vehicles. Major banks have refused to loan money to oil companies for Arctic projects.  Our governor has talked about forcing banks to make those loans, but says mask wearing is voluntary.  The banks aren't 'caving to environmentalists'.  Rather, they see the trends and are making calculated business decisions that these are no longer good investments.  

While it's going to be 20-40 years before most oil is phased out, and Alaska will continue to produce oil and gas during those years, the writing is on the wall.  We need to wean ourselves off oil.  We won the lottery and made a lot of money.  But now we have to learn how to sustain ourselves like most states.  We have to diversify.  But we do have $70 billion saved up which could grow and pay for part of our budget forever.  

Senator Sullivan is still hanging out with the oil guys who haven't accepted that the world is changing.  It's Sullivan who is getting further and further into the extreme, while the 'extreme, radical, environmental supporters' are becoming the mainstream.  

Part II - Socialism, Work and Dignity

Another quote from Sullivan's speech:

“They’re tempting America with cradle-to-grave, European-style socialism,” he said. “They’re cutting the ties between work and income, and in so doing, undermining the notion of earned success and the dignity and importance of work.”

In Sullivan's mind, socialism, unlike capitalism, is an evil system.  But capitalism is based on the benefits of greed, everyone for themselves.  Whereas socialism recognizes that people need to look after each other as well as themselves.  But it's not either/or.  We already have a mixture of both.  No one is for abolishing capitalism, just for correcting for the flaws inherent in capitalism that pro-market economists themselves tell us about.  Most notably in this discussion are externalities - the by-products of the industry that society, not the corporations, bear.  All that escaped carbon warming the planet.

But another result of unfettered capitalism is extreme wealth inequality.

"According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth)." (From Forbes)

Once the distribution of money is so lopsided all kinds of terrible things happen.  All that concentrated money give the rich undue influence on politicians and the public.  Oil companies  spread misinformation about climate change and prevented the US from taking action much earlier.  It also allows for the wealthy to 'buy' politicians - something Senator Sullivan knows about, but never talks about publicly.  

Cradle-to-grave is a Republican slur.  I just read in the ADN today about how states and private contractors that they hire, steal social security benefits from foster kids.  How low can people go?  

Is Senator Sullivan really against supporting orphans?  Against helping babies that are abused or abandoned by their parents?   Is he really against affordable health care?  (We know the answer to that - in theory no, but in practice, yes.)  Is he against Social Security for those injured who cannot work and for those who are elderly?  That's what cradle-to-grave really means.  

But let's also look at the part about 'cutting the ties between work and income.'  Sullivan's grandfather started a business - RPM - that made the family wealthy.  Wealthy enough to help fund his campaign for Senator.  I'm not arguing that Sullivan doesn't work hard - his resume suggests otherwise.  But growing up wealthy makes it much harder to see what growing up poor (in that bottom 50%) is like.    

But beyond that, the connection between work and income has been obliterated by the wealthy who own big businesses.  They've jacked up their own incomes to a point where there is absolutely no relationship between the work they put in and the income they receive.  Why?  Because they can.    They did this, in part by paying their employees minimum wage, cutting out employee pensions, and giving them poor to no health insurance, and by moving to lower wage countries, and automation.  People working minimum wage simply don't earn enough to save any money at all.  

The" dignity of work" and the" tie between work and income" are myths that the rich invented to justify why they were rich and the poor were poor. There was no dignity in work, no tie between work and income for slaves, or for blacks in the South after emancipation.  Or, for that matter, blacks in the North and the West.   The 1950s and 60s were a golden age for white (and even for some blacks) where income distribution was far more equal than today. The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay was 21-to-1 in 1965.  It went up to 61-to-1 in 1989, and is up to 320 to 1 in 2019. (from The Economic Policy Institute.  

Issues from the rest of the speech

Sullivan's reverence for the military

Sullivan was in the Marines.  He's still in the reserves if I understand that correctly.  We're all affected by our backgrounds and experience, for better and for worse.  It helps when one recognizes one's biases.  I mention this because Sullivan starts with an anecdote from Korean War (he says he's a Korean War buff.)

"As a U.S. Marine and Korean War history buff, I found some inspiration from the past. One of the most epic battles of the Korean War was the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir where 20,000 United States Marines were surrounded by 120,000 Communist Chinese soldiers. And, oh by the way, it was 30 degrees below zero in the mountains. I have a painting, in my office in Anchorage, of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir reminding me that no matter what kind of day you might be having, it could be a lot worse. The surrounded and heavily outnumbered marines had to retreat back to the sea. When thedismayed marines asked their commanding officer how he would explain the retreat, the first in marine corps history, he remarked, "Retreat? Hell, we're just attacking in another direction." Colonel Chesty Puller, the Corps' most decorated officer, remarked similarly, "The enemy is in front of us and behind us, they are on both of our flanks, those bastards can't get away from us now." Through grit and determination, attacking and counterpunching, and sticking together, the United States Marine Corps won the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir against great odds."

Maybe this helps to explain the "war on Alaska" metaphor mentioned earlier.  He uses this anecdote to say even though Republicans have lost the House, Senate, and Presidency, we need to be like Col. Puller.  

He talks about defeats and wins as though he's still on the battlefield - and I'm sure he'd say politics IS a battlefield.  And that is one metaphor that's often used.  But it's not healthy to say that the President is at war with Alaska.  That's nonsense.  That sort of warlike behavior may have been true during the Trump administration when he withheld benefits from states whose governors didn't kiss his ring, but that simply isn't Biden's style.  Oil production in Alaska may be a casualty of the Biden climate policy, but it's not because Biden hates Alaska and is intentionally attacking the state.

But most egregiously, and the number one issue I've talked to her [the new Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland] about, is through this misguided decision, it will dramatically limit the lands available to those thousands of Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans who were unable to select their land allotment because they were serving their country in a war that many people were avoiding service in. For decades, all Alaskans, Native, non-Native, Democrat and Republican came together to try to right this wrong.

In last year's Congress, or two Congresses ago, I was able with our delegation to shepherd legislation addressing this injustice that we got signed into law and the PLOs, Public Land Orders, were the way in which we were going to implement this law. I called Secretary Haaland immediately when I heard the news of a two-year delay. I told her that as a result of her decision, Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans who served their country admirably, when so many avoided service, and who have waited decades for the land allotments, might not be able to live long enough to get these.

There's a lot to unravel here. First, I'd note that he mentions twice "when so many avoided service."  This is both ironic and also rather biased.  It's ironic because in the last 20 years their have been two Republican presidents who "avoided service".  Bush did it [got elected] in part by smearing a decorated war hero (John Kerry).  Trump has famously called people who go to war 'suckers.'  Yet, the discipline drilled into Marines to obey their superiors seems to have permeated the Senator who has so loyally supported Trump, even though a Senator's job is not to slavishly obey the President, but to be a check to his power. 

Second, I'd note that history has clearly shown that the Vietnam War was a mistake.  It was bad policy.  While many who avoided the draft back then did so because they didn't want to risk anything, others did it because they had figured out it was a bad war, a war we shouldn't have been in.  

I obviously can't point out every little point like this, but I need to offer some to make the point that there are many more.  Now, back to Vietnam-era veteran allotments.

 It's not an issue I know well, but let's look at what this BLM announcement says:

Applications will be accepted between Dec. 28, 2020 and Dec. 29, 2025 for the Alaska Native Vietnam-era Veterans Land Allotment Program of 2019. The program provides the opportunity for eligible Vietnam-era veterans or their heirs to select 2.5 to 160 acres of Federal land in Alaska under the 2019 Dingell Act. The program is open to all eligible Alaska Natives who served between Aug. 5, 1964, and Dec. 31, 1971, and it removes the requirement for personal use or occupancy mandated under previous laws. Those receiving allotments under previous programs are ineligible. 

 Let's see now.  

• " a two-year delay" - A two year delay gets us to 2023.  There will still be two years to apply.
• "might not be able to live long enough to get these"  It's true there probably will be vets who die before 2025.  And they won't see their land.  But, this is open to their heirs as well, who will.  

More from the BLM announcement:

"The selection period is active until December 29, 2025, for the estimated 2,200 eligible veterans and heirs. Nearly 30 allotment applications are already being processed, and the BLM is poised to receive more." 

•  " to those thousands of Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans" - well, if the BLM announcement is correct, there are 2,200 total which is heirs as well as vets.  This is probably a picky point, but I value accuracy.  If just 1000 vets had two kids each, there would be 2000 heirs.  So I'm guessing more than 200 of the 2,200 are heirs and there aren't 'thousands of Alaska Native Vietnam-era veterans' waiting to enroll.  
• I would agree though, that 30 applications since December 28, 2020 doesn't sound like a lot.  

I'd note that despite the fact that Sullivan says Biden is at war with Alaska, Sullivan has acknowledged in this speech that the administration has responded to a number of Alaska issues

• "I told them to hold off and frantically worked the phones with the brand-new Biden team, saying to them, "It can't really be your intention, in your first month in office, to lay off and give pink slips to hundreds of Alaskan workers on the North Slope. Is that true?" It took some time, but they said "No," and they let the work proceed."  I'd note that 30-40% of oil workers in Alaska are not Alaskans.  The report also says that 77% of fish processors are non-resident. Another industry Sullivan says he's fight hard for is cruise lines.  He also gets more money from the cruise industry than any other US Senator.  And that industry has more non-resident employees than Alaskans.  
• I must admit I was very pleased when Secretary Raimondo called me just a few weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate to tell me she'd be announcing close to a twenty million dollar investment for the construction of a dock, a pier, and an office facility complex for the Fairweather, and that that ship, with a crew of 51 members, would finally be home-ported in Ketchikan by the end of 2021 after a two- decade absence. That is an important victory for Alaska.
• Another victory was the recent announcement by the U.S. Air Force for four more KC-135 tankers to be home-based in Alaska with an additional 220 airmen and their families. You combine this increase with the hundred fifth-generation fighters that are coming to our state by the end of next year; that's F-35's and F-22's. No place on the planet has that kind of fire power for the Air Force, and our state is truly becoming one of the most important centers for air combat power anywhere in the world. This is great for America's national security, but also really great for Alaska's economy.

OK.  Just one more note.  At the end of the speech to he talked about how zoom and the pandemic have changed things and that this is a great opportunity for Alaska.

Finally, one of the benefits of my job when you’re talking about other opportunities is to get a sense of what's going on throughout America and what’s going on in America right now is that the pandemic accelerated, with telework and the reality of things like Zoom, a new way of working, and that dysfunctional and mismanaged cities across the nation are hollowing out.

People have had enough and they're leaving. If you look around at what's happening in the United States, more and more of our smart young dynamic people are leaving places to build businesses in other places that are well-managed and where they can have a lifestyle that they crave like in our great state.

This is pretty much the pitch that Forrest Dunbar made in a debate last week with Dave Bronson in the Anchorage mayoral runoff.  Dunbar was explaining why cutting every agency except the police, as Bronson was advocating, was a bad idea.  

Yet Sullivan has supported Bronson for mayor.  Bronson is in the same mold as Trump (no government experience, talks off the top of his head, doesn't believe in COVID as a serious threat) and comes with the same fervor for cutting government as Dunleavy.  

If you call for bi-partisanship one week and then accuse the administration of a War On Alaska, it's hard to see where there's room for compromise.  But this speech was full of bluster for the Alaska audience, and I suspect the Biden administration allows for Senators to vent for the home crowd.

Sorry to go on so long.  Political speeches are meant to persuade with emotion, not with facts.  And critiquing such speeches requires one to get into the details.  

Blogger Changes, Afghanistan, North Korea's Security Threat

 Blogging Changes:  This notice started popping up when I've opened my blog posting page.  For those of you with an email subscription - blogger says there are 1,342  FeedBurner subscribers - after July 2021 you won't get your emails of new posts.  Here's the notice:

FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner) is going away 

You are receiving this information because your blog uses the FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner). 
Recently, the Feedburner team released a system update announcement , that the email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021. 
After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported. If you’d like to continue sending emails, you can download your subscriber contacts. Learn how

I'm still trying to figure out how to move the email subscribers to a different automated email system.  Although it sounds like they are being helpful - "Learn how" for example - the links aren't really very intuitive.  

So, this is an alert.  I'm not concerned yet.  I have a couple of months to figure it out.  I'll let you know more later.  

Should We Get Out Of Afghanistan?  This is not something I've delved into deeply.  They're my thoughts based on generally following the news plus reading more deeply on various other world events, including the Vietnam war.  Below are links to what others are arguing.  I didn't read those until after I wrote my own thoughts out.

Arguments for getting out:

1.  We've been there 20 years and it's our longest war so far and staying longer doesn't promise conditions will improve

2.  First the British, then the Russians got bogged down in Afghanistan.  Both, particularly Russia, are geographically much closer but eventually saw their wars in Afghanistan as unwindable.  We should recognize that there are some things we simply can't do.

3.  Like Vietnam, we are supporting a corrupt government against a dedicated local army.  Much of the corruption is created by the billions of dollars in aid and equipment the US sends to Afghanistan.

4.  Voice of America reports some 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghan war.  (I'm assuming the site is actually Voice of America, but I'm not sure.)  So our presence hasn't been terrific for the Afghan people anyway.  

4.  There are humanitarian horror zones in a number of countries around the world - Burma, Yemen, for example - but we aren't arguing to intervene there.

5.  There are other security issues that will be compromised because of our military commitment in Afghanistan.  

Arguments for staying:

1.  Terrible things are likely to happen when we leave.  

2.  The status of women in Afghanistan will be worsened by our departure.  

Sunk costs refer to the money (or other resources) one has already spent on a particularly project.  Psychologically, once we started something, we want to finish it, to regain those loses.  It's a bad reason to stay.  Yes, terrible things are likely to happen when we leave, but terrible things have happened regularly to the Afghan people throughout the time we've been there.  And the costs to the US in dollars and in the mental and physical health of the soldiers who have been there is staggering.

Sometimes you have to take the least bad option.  For the US, that seems to be leaving Afghanistan. For the women of Afghanistan, it's not looking rosy.  

Vox staying for leaving

Vox case for staying

Brookings:  The Decision to Withdraw fromAfghanistan is the Right One

Lawfare Blog:  The Logic of Staying in Afghanistan and the Logic of Getting Out

On Kim Jung Il's Threat In Response to Biden

There was a short news blurb in the Anchorage Daily News today:

"North Korea on Sunday warned that the United States will face 'a very grave situation' and alleged that President Joe Biden 'made a big blunder' in his recent speech by calling the North a security threat."

Actually, it seems like North Korea confirmed Biden's assessment of the threat.   

US Race Policy Was A Model For Hitler's Race Laws

An article on Facing South, looks at a German lawyer who spent a year studying business and American race laws at the University of Arkansas.  The article begins with a Berlin meeting, a beginning of the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws to suppress Jews and others and to protect the purity of German blood.

"At the meeting, several Nazi bureaucrats cited the work of a young lawyer named Heinrich Krieger, newly returned from his year studying abroad in the United States at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville. There, he researched how laws across the U.S. segregated and disenfranchised Native Americans, African Americans, and other non-white groups — a legal model the Nazis looked to as a way to control Jews and other minority groups in Germany. Inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws came directly from Krieger's research into American race laws, including prohibitions on interracial marriages.

'He was in Arkansas in the dead middle of the Jim Crow era,' Yale historian James Q. Whitman, author of "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law," told Facing South. 'He seems to have taken an interest particularly in American Indian law.'

"Krieger's research cited at the Berlin meeting was a review of the history of American laws related to indigenous people, who had only recently been declared citizens under Calvin Coolidge’s Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. For centuries the law had treated them not only as non-citizens but as subhuman, subjecting them to the 19th century's violent Indian removal policies; the Trail of Tears (part of which ran through Fayetteville); the separation of indigenous children from their families, communities, language, and culture; and forced sterilization. Throughout the debates in Germany that led up to the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws by the Nazis in 1935, Nazi officials relied on Krieger's observations about the American laws that governed its brutal treatment of non-white people."

"In March 1935, after completing his studies in Fayetteville, Krieger published an article in the George Washington Law Review titled "Principles of the Indian Law and the Act of June 18, 1934." In it he observed, "[The] Indian, though being a national of the United States, was not her citizen." Nazi leaders were inspired by America's ability to treat marginalized populations as less than full citizens while still maintaining a positive global reputation, so they used Krieger's studies of American race laws as a template for their own."

There's more food for thought in the whole article. 

Republicans decry 'Critical Race Theory' as 'anti-American.' It's ironic.  On the one hand they are encouraging white nationalist fears of being 'replaced' by non-whites and non-Christians.

On the other hand, they get upset when people point out that US laws were racist, took Native American land, enslaved blacks and then after emancipation created law after law to recreate a form second-class citizenship.  

Some of these white nationalists use nazi materials as their models.  But, as the Facing South article demonstrates, they needn't.  Because the US was, in many ways, Hitler's model for how to take away citizenship from non-Aryans.  

Of course, all this is based on a human created fiction called race.  In the early 20th Century, race still referred, not only to the black and white races, but to Jewish race, Italian race, Irish race, and other non-Northern Europeans.  

Sure, there are physical differences between people with light skin and people with darker skin, just as there are differences between people with red hair and blond hair and brown hair.  Between people who are taller and those who are shorter, thinner and heavier, hairier and smoother, more athletic and more sedentary, more thoughtful and more prone to impulsive action.  

But there is nothing about light skinned people that makes them more or less human than people with darker shades of skin.  The power hungry have always exploited these physical differences to divide people who often have more in common with each other than with those dividing them.  

It's time to identify as part of humanity rather than some artificial construct like race.  

That isn't to say that we should abandon the the wide diversity of cultures and languages for one common one.  Each of those cultures and languages represents a group of people who learned to survive the physical and political conditions of the part of earth in which they lived.  Whether it's dealing with heat or cold, tropical or high elevation agriculture, ocean or desert.  Each culture has, embedded in its language and practices, survival techniques that at some point may be useful to the rest of humanity. Or may already be useful, but by designating some group as less worthy, we've overlooked what they know that could help us.  Destroying this huge repository of knowledge would be like burning libraries.  

Humans are in this together.  When we deprive one group, we make it harder for the people of that group to share their talents with the rest of the world.  When we spend our energy fighting each other, we aren't spending it making the world a better place.  Everyone is worse off.

Right now that contrast couldn't be clearer.  We've removed from office the president who has done the most to exploit those differences and set people against people.  Whose mission it was to destroy cooperative efforts among cultures around the world - like walking out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear deal.  

And now we have a president who is attempting to get people to build the infrastructure that makes human life easier and safer.  Who is promoting health and education and meaningful work for all people.  Who sees all people as human beings, not as a hierarchy of more and less valuable beings.  

Kent State, Photo Ethics, How Subject And Photographer Were Affected

[Note to readers:  This post started with one article about a photograph.  But then it seemed like a good place to slip in some book notes on books about photographers.  The ideas are stacking up on my desk faster than I can post.  Sorry if this one rambles.]

When I first started blogging I spent a lot more time pondering the ethics of this medium, including using of images - of others' photos,  of people without their knowing, let alone permission.  I decided that for kids it was taboo.  For adults, if they were part of a crowd in public and relatively innocuous, it was ok.  But it's better if I get at least their oral permission.   (See some links to some of those posts below.)

I thought about that reading this Stars and Stripes article  [Thanks Brock, I think it was you] about the girl immortalized by photographer John Filo at Kent State in May 1970.  Turns out she was a 14 year old who had run away from a bad situation in Florida and just happened to be on the Kent State campus when the National Guard started shooting students.  And the photographer was too.  Below is a snipped from the article, but I recommend going to the link.  

From Stars and Stripes:

"Last May, when Mary Ann Vecchio watched the video of George Floyd's dying moments, she felt herself plummet through time and space — to a day almost exactly 50 years earlier. On that afternoon in 1970, the world was just as riveted by an image that showed the life draining out of a young man on the ground, this one a black-and-white still photo. Mary Ann was at the center of that photo, her arms raised in anguish, begging for help."

Photo from Cincinnati.com  John Filo/Getty Images

It focuses mainly on how that photo affected both the subject and the photographer over their life times, but it also reminds us about another time in recent (for us that were alive and aware back then) US history when the country was deeply divided.  And it shows that law enforcement shoots at white folks too, if they've categorized them as 'the enemy.'

I've also just finished three books about photographers (two were book club books) in which very task oriented photographers took pictures without regard to others.  The Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan examined the life of photographer Edward S. Curtis, who, in the early 20th Century, set out to capture American Indian culture before, as he saw it, it died out.  His was a manic effort to document the 'real' Indians and their culture.  

In Arctic Solitaire, Paul Sauders chronicles his own quest to take the best ever photograph of a polar bear.  He goes to extremes chasing bears for several summers in a small boat in Hudson Bay.  

You Don't Belong Here is Elizabeth Becker's documentation of and tribute to three women journalists who broke barriers in Vietnam by getting out to report from the battle field.  One of the three was the French photographer, Catherine Leroy.  This work focused more on the battles women faced as journalists at that time.  An excerpt:

Chapter One begins with Leory in a C-130 cargo plane.

"Leroy was the only journalist on the plane, the only photographer - she had two cameras draped around her neck - the only civilian and the only woman.  Her US Army-issued parachute nearly swallowed her.  At five feet tall and weighing eighty-seven pounds, she was less than half the size of the dozens of US Army parachutists sitting alongside her."

The shots she took of the parachute assault were printed in newspapers and magazines around the world.  

"With so much riding on the operation other reporters had demanded to be on the ground with the paratroopers.  Many were upset, some even disdainful, when they found out Leroy would be the only accredited journalist to jump.  For over year, Leroy would be the only woman combat photographer in Vietnam and had given up trying to change attitudes.  Eve the great photographer Don McCullin, who admired Leroy's work, was taken aback seeing her on the battlefield.  'She did not want to be a woman amongst men but a man among men.  Why would a woman want to be among the blood and carnage? . . . I did have that issue with Cathy.'"

"There was a horror of assigning women to sports much less war," said Hal Buell, the New York photo editor of the Associated Press who worked with the Vietnam War photographs sent from Saigon.  "Look at the history of photography.  It was male oriented for so long:  the equipment, the printmaking.  We didn't think women could handle it.  Women just weren't part of that pool."

But the readers know she got on that plane because she was the best qualified.

"She had lobbied to jump with the troops ever since she arrive in Vietnam from Paris.  Few other press photographers were remotely qualified.  Leroy had earned first- and second-degree parachute licenses in France while still in secondary school, egged on by a boyfriend who had dared her to try it, where she jumped eighty-four times over the vineyards and meadows of Burgundy." 

The book is very much worth reading.  I'd started to write, particularly for those who were watching the war at the time.  But, of course, it's an important history lesson for readers who weren't even born yet - about the war and about the obstacles for women covering it.  

Here are some of my earlier posts on photo ethics as I was confronting issues as a blogger.

Do You Put Your Kids Pictures On Facebook?  Should You?

Photography Is Not A Crime:  Blogging, The First Amendment, And Your Camera

Our Rights To Film Cops In Public

Anchorage Daily News Updated Photo Policy - Icon-Sized Photos Usable

Short, But Very Noticeable Quake In Anchorage -UPDATE "Hey Southcentral, we're working on processing the earthquake at 9:54am. We'll have reviewed information soon."

 The Alaska Earthquake Center website is giving me this message:

Error 503 Backend fetch failed

Backend fetch failed

Guru Meditation:

XID: 90047248

---

Varnish cache server

Depending on how far away and deep the quake was, I'd guess anywhere from 4.0 - 5.3.  

Nothing fell or broke.  These things are common here, but this one was not one you could mistake for a truck passing by.  

[UPDATE 10:02 am:  This Tweet is the last thing up at the Earthquake Center's Twitter Account. It says there was an earthquake at 9:26 am.  The one I felt was much closer to 10am.

click on image to enlarge and focus

That was a 4.1 and it says felt in Anchorage.  I didn't feel that one at all.  So I'm thinking this latest one was definitely 5.0 or more. ]

[UPDATED 10:10 am:  Latest Tweet from Alaska Earthquake Center:

"Hey Southcentral, we're working on processing the earthquake at 9:54am. We'll have reviewed information soon."]

[UPDATED 10:13AM: Earthquake Center website working again and there's a small note:

• M4.9   at 09:54 AM, 8 mi N of Anchorage]
• 
  

 [Last UPDATE 10:30 am - Tweet From Earthquake Center xxxx

We have our reviewed location and magnitude for the event at 9:54am as a M4.8 aftershock of the 2018 Anchorage Earthquake. It was felt widely in Southcentral Alaska.
Yes, it can still be an aftershock more than two years later! https://t.co/kSIVuxngyd pic.twitter.com/VJffWsEkL3

— Alaska Earthquake Center (@AKearthquake) April 27, 2021

This is an image so the link won't work - go here

Alaska Officially Has 733,391 People - According To The 2020 Census - UPDATED

Just got his email from Peter Torkelson, executive director of the Alaska Redistricting Board.  (You can subscribe to these email updates from the redistricting board here. 

"Good afternoon subscribers -- A few minutes ago the US Census announced the total population numbers for each state.  Alaska's official 2020 resident population is 733,391. This means the population target for new legislative districts will be 733,391/40 = 18,335."

Let's take that apart a bit.  Nothing more than 3rd grade arithmetic at most, I promise.  Alaska has forty state house seats.  The state senate is made up of pairings of those forty seats - that is two adjacent house seats make up one senate seat. 

Each house seat should have the same number of people in it as every other house seat.  Of course, that would be quite a feat.  So the goal is to make them within 1-2% of each other.  In cases where this just isn't possible, the absolute maximum difference is 10%.  (This is based on my memory from last year.  Once the Board gets these number broken down by census districts, the Board will get a lot busier and we'll get these details refreshed.)

So, if there are 40 districts that have to have equal population, you have to divide the total population by 40.  Which is what Peter has done to get 18,335 residents per district.  Actually, my calculator says it's 18,334.775.  Which does mean that it is truly impossible to get all the districts exactly equal.  And since the time they recorded everybody, people have moved out of the state or into the state and new people have been born and some people have died.  So the number is always in flux.

The magic number for each district based on the 2010 data was 17,755.  So each district this time will have 580 more people.  Theoretically.  

I'd add that this includes all Alaska residents, not just those of voting age, not even just US citizens, but all the people who live here.  

To put that in context, [see below] people have applied for Alaska Permanent Fund this year.  [I thought I was going to get that number from the PFD office in Juneau.  Chris transferred me to Corey, but he didn't answer the phone. (It is after 4pm now, though it wasn't when I started these calls.)  I'll add the number in when I get it]

[UPDATED 5pm:  Corey got back to me.  They are still entering paper applications into the system by hand.  As of this afternoon at 4:30pm, they have 643,117 applications and he expects 25-30,000 more.]

Meanwhile  here are the PFD's numbers for population and applications since 2020.

 Remember the magic number:  18,335

Campbell Creek From Winter To Spring In One Week

 Breakup used to be in March - when snows started melting, streets got wet, slushy, and muddy and cars raced through puddles spraying anything nearby.  And just when you thought it was done, we'd get an April snow.  But you knew it would be gone fast.  

Well, some of that happened in late March and early April, but then the temperatures dipped again.  By mid April we still had deep snow, though it was starting to evaporate.  Thanks to city and state plowing efforts, sidewalks/biketrails along streets were cleared pretty much by April 15.  

This past week or so has to be one of the warmest weeks ever in mid-May Anchorage.  We've been high 50s and low 60s each day.  Lots of sun.

Campbell Creek emerged from winter in about a week.  From the bridge at Lake Otis.

April 16

April 18

April 20

April 23

AK Redistricting Board Has Short Meeting. - Approve Voting Rights Act RFI With Longer Time Limit

The agenda, as mentioned previously, was mostly procedural - call to order, adopt the agenda, approve minutes, adjourn.  They also allowed for public testimony, but since it was not broadly announced in advance, there was no one who wanted to testify. (Unless you know how to find the Board meetings on the state public notice website or you have signed up to get notices emailed to you, it's pretty hard to keep track of the Board's meetings.)  

The key thing on the agenda was to approve the Request For Information (RFI) for a Voting Rights Consultant.  They chatted a bit about the RFI and approved it with a change in when it would be due (that added a couple of weeks so respondents would have enough time to see it and write up a proposal.)  And they took out the "Alaska Experience" requirement because not very many people with Voting Rights Act experience also have experience applying it to Alaska.  

They also announced the hiring of Star Assist to do the minutes of the meetings.  

Below are my rough notes on the meeting.  Don't rely on them for complete accuracy, but they should give you a sense of the Board's discussion.  The audio should eventually show up here. [April 20, 2021 - audio is now available at the link]

Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting April 16, 2021 2:30 pm

Agenda Adopted

First, item is public testimony. We're going to do this at meetings, 3 minutes for general comments.  Anyone who has signed up to testify? 

Peter:  We have listeners on line but no one who has signed up for public testimony. 

John:  Were minutes in our packet?

Peter:  Yes, still tracking some down.

Budd:  I have some format issues with the  minues so I'd defer to Mr. Presley to go first.  Want to comment on format of minutes.  

Presley - Hired minutes service, we now have Anmaly as  our minutes contractor.  Owner of Star Assist started her own Minutes taking service.  Lots of clients 

Inmaly:  Thanks so much.  Thanks to the Board to give me the opportunity to work with the Board.  

John:  I haven't had a chance to review all the minutes provided.  I'd like to hold off to the next meeting to approve.  

Budd:  I did see them in the packet and went over them.  I don't object to deferring them, but have comments about way minutes presented in the future.  Three things, minor, 

1.  Under heading under AK Redistricting Board - should be titled Minutes of Such and such a date, to see the date of meeting in bold at top

2. Every agenda and minutes - section about the agenda.  Minutes should have whole agenda at the top, so you don't have to hunt around to find copy of agenda.  Maybe just personal preference.

3.  Whenever someone has made a motion, currently minutes say, Ms. Marcum motion to choose AP proposal.  In my mind 'motion' not the right word - should be the verb 'move' or 'make a motion'.  

John:  All good suggestions and I would agree.  Anyone else?  Maybe good to go back and get them all in that form.  [others agree]

John:  We have RFI, Peter?

Peter:  VRA passed by congress in 1965.  All states must comply.  Very technical..  I've been to various redistricting conferences and the all say to hire a consultant.  First we have to analyze the elections since last time and that can start now.  With our attorney's advice - Mr. Singer.  We're hopeful we can get several bids and bring them before the Board.  Basically using the previous RFI with some changes.  

A few points:  1.  I choose May 3 for responses, that's just two weeks, maybe make it a little longer.

John:  Questions?

Bethany:  Quick Q:  Clarification on the travel.  Understand that Board would be responsible for funding the travel?

Peter:  Yes.  But limited to approval of project director.  Can't just travel willy-nilly.  It's likely the person from out of state and we want them to know they may have to take a red-eye to get here.

John:  Other Qs?  

Budd:  I thought substance fine and appreciate work done by staff and counsel.  As Peter suggested I'd rather see a longer open time.  At least another week or even a month.  

John, you said that rather specialized and not that many people?

Peter:  May 10 or even 14 is reasonable.  Also curious about number of contractors.  Talked to Association of ??? to see if they have a list and they'll send that to me.  

John:  Why not put 14th in but allow for making it possible to lengthen it.  

Budd: Fine

John:  Ok, lets do that  it.  And allow for a possible extension.

Peter:  guidance?  We ask for , see page, we mention Alaska experience in two locations.  That language from RFI ten years ago.  Of course we'd like that, but hope that doesn't imply we want only Alaskan experience.  Last time, wasn't able to officially confirm this, the contractor last time was the only one to apply.  

Matt:  Good suggestion.  Board benefits from casting a wide net.  Anyone who has Alaska experience would be foolish not to highlight it.

Budd:  I agree

???:  I agree.  Should create a pool of contractors instead of just having one.  

John:  Ten years from now hopefully there's someone around with that expertise.

Peter:  With understanding the Board consents, will strike it out.

???:  Mr. Chair I move we adopt the RFI with two amendments - strike Alaska requirement and extend the due date.

???:  Second

John:  Any objections?  

???:  Can we receive the link to RFI once it's posted publicly.  

John:  Motion to adjourn.

Nicole:  I move we adjourn

Bethany:  Seconded

John:  Any objection?  Hearing none, We're adjourned.

Dave Bronson Cancels Appearance At Alaska Black Caucus Because Of "Last Minute Conflict"

 Attending the Alaska Black Caucus Sunday meeting.  They had confirmed RSVPs from both Mayoral candidates - Dave Bronson and Forrest Dunbar.  

But when the zoom meeting opened, Celeste notified us that Dave Bronson would not be at the meeting - "he had a conflict."   Later, explaining to those who got to the zoom meeting late and wondered where Bronson was, she said it was a "last minute conflict."

Here's Forrest Dunbar answering questions from people representing the Black, Alaska Natives, the Latinx, and the Asian-American communities.

So I went to Dave Bronson for Mayor Facebook page.  I was trying to find out how I could go to a meeting so that I could hear Dave Bronson.  A second thought was, where is he tonight, what was the conflict?   Here's his Upcoming Events page.  "No Upcoming Events."  It's hard to believe he's not campaigning and having events.  But there's nothing here to help us find where/how to hear what he stands for and to interact with him.  

I did double check on Dunbar's FB page.  Tonight's panel is on his main FB page and again on his Events page.  

However, before I posted this, I double-checked on Bronson's website.  He does tell us how to meet with him on his webpage.

I'd note, for those of you who do not keep track of local Anchorage affairs,  that these are the two diners that defied the initial lock down orders and stayed open in August 2020.  The court rejected their arguments.

Do I really want to enter a restaurant that doesn't care about its customers' health in order to meet Dave Bronson?  

Clearly, Bronson's message on COVID and other issues reflects his support of the former president of the US.  In a television ad for the general election he said "here in Anchorage a bunch of idiots are tearing up our city" with a picture of the Anchorage Assembly (city council) in the background.  

So was it just a weak moment when Bronson or someone at his campaign agreed to the Alaska Black Caucus mayoral forum?  Or did he know all along he wasn't going and thought this was a way to mess with the Black Caucus' weekly meeting?  

The professional thing to do is to decline in the first place.  

Bronson was the candidate with the most votes in the general election.  But there were more strong progressive candidates running for office than strong conservative (that's not even the right word for him) candidates.  My sense is that the votes are their for Dunbar, but if his coming in second scares people into voting, that's fine with me.

Keeping Busy Doing Nothing - AK Press Club, Seedlings, Bike, Cooking, Redistricting, COVID, Spanish, Grandkids. . .

 Time seems to whiz by.  Suddenly it's Wednesday and I have to take out the garbage again.  How can it be 10pm, it's still light out?  I just paid that bill.  Making it worse, it seems like I haven't gotten anything done.  

But when I try to track what I'm doing, it turns out I'm really doing a lot.  I'm tracking and posting  the Alaska COVID numbers every day.  I'm doing 20-40 minutes into DuoLingo Spanish.

I try to do the Cryptoquote and the Sudoku in the paper every day.

My Seattle granddaughter FaceTimes with us for an hour or three several times a week.  And I've been volunteering in her class, via zoom, listening to kids read books of their choice.  The SF grandkids have a regular two or three hours every Wednesday afternoon.  

This month, the Alaska Press Club has been having Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 8am workshops in lieu of a three day in person conference.  Despite the horrible hour, all the ones I've listened in on (all of them so far) have been excellent.  Yesterday was one on covering Corrections and included a reporter who does cover corrections, an ACLU employee who works on corrections issues and used to work for the Dept of Corrections under Walker, and a woman who started a non-profit called Supporting Our Loved Ones Group - people who have friends and relatives in prison.  One part of the discussion focused on the words that journalists use to describe people in prison. I guess I've had a soft spot for the plight of prisoners ever since I visited a former 6th grade student (he was then probably in the 9th grade) at a juvenile detention center outside of Los Angeles maybe 50 years ago.  Other sessions have been on Climate Change and How to Choose And Write Stories. They also did one on setting up an elections debate commission for Alaska that was very compelling.  You can see the commission proposal here.   I've got notes for blog posts on all of these, but the Anchorage Municipal Election and the Redistricting Board have distracted me.  

I haven't seen much coverage at all in other media about the Alaska Redistricting Board and since I covered it intensely in 2011-13, I realize I know a lot about what it is, what the issues are, and what was done last time.  So it seems I'm stuck doing it again.  Right now not much is happening - setting things up procedurally and getting staff - they've hired a law firm to advise them and they are getting an RFI ready to hire a Voting Rights Act consultant.  They are behind the pace of ten years ago because the Pandemic and Trump policies slowed down the Census Count and the State redistricting numbers won't come out until maybe August this year.  Last time they got the numbers in March.

I've started my summer biking in earnest yesterday, keeping to the trails along streets while the trails through the greenbelts still have snow on them.  I did a seven mile test run south on Lake Otis, east on Dowling, north on Elmore, then wandering through neighborhoods back home.

Here's Campbell Creek from Lake Otis

An aside about snow this year.  I'd asked Weather Service guy Brian Brettschneider, via DM on Twitter, if we'd had more snow days this year, because it seemed like I was shoveling snow all the time.  He responded: 

"Anchorage will finish with about 5" less snowfall than normal. But our snow depth was one of the greatest on record. We basically had 0 melting events throughout the season."

Riding along Dowling, the ice and snow were gone from the trail the whole ride.  

And then Campbell Creek again, this time looking back from Elmore.

My knees have been showing signs of being past their warranty.  Running is out.  Biking was ok last summer.  I'm hoping I can do another 600 km or more this summer, but it will depend on how my knees react.  

We've been zooming in to the Alaska Black Caucus' Sunday panels. (Link to this Sunday's forum is on the upper right of their page.) They've been doing a great job covering a lot of topics from candidate forums (School Board and Mayor, and this Sunday they are going to have the mayoral runoff candidates - Dunbar and Bronson) to discussions on things like body cameras for police and the military experience in Alaska for Blacks.  They've been having 50 and 60 attendees every week.  Really well done.  I've never heard candidates talk so candidly.  But then the 

There was also a Citizens Climate lobby meeting and a few other zoom meetings.

One way to get through all the zoom meetings is to do relatively mindless tasks that allow me to pay attention, but also get something done.  Eating is the most obvious, but I also prepared and baked a bread through one meeting.  

And used the left over dough to make a veggie pizza.  

And I've been planting seeds now that I can see patches of ground through the snow outside.  Trying Arctic Tomatoes this year.  But I've also got arugula, stock, snapdragons, pansies, sweet peas, flax, and a few other seeds growing.  

I suspect that feeling like I haven't gotten anything done comes partially through the fact that zoom meetings let you stay home and so you don't get out that much.  When you physically go to a meeting, it (probably, it's hard to remember) feels more like you've actually done something.  So I have to write things down to remind myself that I've actually been busy and doing worthwhile things.  

Oh, and watching some of the video of each of the UAA Chancellor candidates.  A really diverse selection.  Not a good time to be a white male in this crowd I'm guessing.  Most looked reasonable, some very good, and our Superintendent of Schools must have been unwell, because she couldn't be still or say more than platitudes.  You can watch them yourselves.  I'd recommend about ten minutes of each to get a sense of them.  Really, these tell us mostly how well they speak in public.  To some extent how much the know about higher education.  But not too much about how well they can run a university.