Redistricting Board Agenda For Monday Meeting - Including Questionable Executive Session On History of Alaska Redistricting Cases

Below is the agenda for Monday's (Aug 23) Redistricting Board meeting.  Below that are some of my reactions.  I find the Executive Session to discuss Litigation lessons from Alaska Redistricting caselaw to be an overly generous application of the law Executive Session.  Most, if not all, of this discussion was done publicly by the previous board's attorney.  

[I tried viewing the agenda and copying it in two different programs.  The first ran most of the words together.  The second wiped out a lot of the formatting.  What you see below is the second.]

Date: August 23 - 24, 2021

Time: Monday, August 23: 10:00am; Tuesday, August 24: 9:00am

Place: Anchorage Legislative Information Office, Denali Conference Room, 1st Floor

1500 West Benson Blvd, Anchorage 99503

Live Video/Audio Web Stream: www.akl.tv

Teleconference public testimony dial-in numbers:

Anchorage 563-9085, Juneau 586-9085, Other 844-586-9085

Agenda

1. Call to Order and Establish Quorum

2. Adoption of Agenda

3. Adoption of Revised Travel/Per Diem Policy

4. Adoption of Public Testimony Policy

5. Public Testimony

Dial into one of the phone numbers above and indicate to the operator that you wish to testify

6. Census Data Overview

a. Overview Report on Alaska Population Changes

Eric Sandberg, Demographer, Alaska Department of Labor

b. Legacy Data and Population Change

Peter Torkelson, Executive Director

7. Redistricting Timeline and Schedule for Adoption of Draft and Final Maps

a. Understanding Alaska’s Constitutional Timeline

(including brief Executive Session to obtain legal advice)

Matt Singer, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt

b. Board Discussion: Adoption of Timeline

8. Workflow Process

a. Staff recommendations for workflow process: Possibilities & Logistics

Peter Torkelson, Executive Director

TJ Presley, Deputy Director

b. Regionalization Possibilities

Eric Sandberg, Demographer, Alaska Department of Labor

c. Board Discussion: Workflow process, Adoption

d. Steps forward: initial map drawing, task assignments, public input

schedule

9. Executive Session for the purposes of receiving a presentation on Litigation

Lessons from Alaska Redistricting Caselaw.

Matt Singer, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt

10. Map Drawing

11. Board Member Comments

12. Adjournment

The red indicates logistical information.  The blue shows the substantive part of the meeting.

My Comments:

• #s 6, 7, & 8 - are probably the meat of the meeting for the public.  
• So is #9, however that is scheduled now for Executive Session.  I understand that there may be some issues of strategy for the board.  But there are no cases at the moment and most of the overview should be description of the past cases.  I realize that the attorney doesn't want to tip off potential challengers to the Board's maps on the Board's legal strategy, but I know that the attorney could prepare the presentation so that much of it could be heard by the public.  Part I could be a list and description of the past cases that are important.  Part II could be "lessons from the past cases for the Board" and could be in executive session.  I think it's taking the easy way out to just say, since legal advice from the attorney is allowed to be in Executive Session, so whatever the attorney says to the Board will be.  There were relatively few times the previous Board's attorney required Executive Session to answer the Board's questions.  Most of it was done in public.  Transparency is a key value for all public meetings.  And Executive Session is ONLY for those items that cannot be public by law.  Much of this should be legal history that should be in open meetings.
• #10 Map Drawing - It would be helpful for the Agenda to estimate how long they expect this to take.  Are they going to be doing this individually on their computers?  Will it be done as a group?  I suspect the former so there won't be a lot to see most of the time.  Especially if people are watching online or listening in.  But during these types of sessions last time, the kinds of questions or observations Board members made were often of interest.  
• So, I'd recommend the Board put on the Agenda in the future how long they expect the meetings to take.  Is this meeting scheduled from 10am-5pm?  
• No?  Then how long? 
•  What about Tuesday's meeting?  
• How long do they estimate for the Executive Session?
• And I'd recommend that most of the discussion of redistricting court cases be held in public, if not all of it.  The previous board's attorney held this discussion last time.  

Here's the beginning of the Alaska Public Meeting Act:

AS 44.62.310. Government Meetings Public.

(a) All meetings of a governmental body of a public entity of the state are open to the public except as otherwise provided by this section or another provision of law. Attendance and participation at meetings by members of the public or by members of a governmental body may be by teleconferencing. Agency materials that are to be considered at the meeting shall be made available at teleconference locations if practicable. Except when voice votes are authorized, the vote shall be conducted in such a manner that the public may know the vote of each person entitled to vote. The vote at a meeting held by teleconference shall be taken by roll call. This section does not apply to any votes required to be taken to organize a governmental body described in this subsection.

(b) If permitted subjects are to be discussed at a meeting in executive session, the meeting must first be convened as a public meeting and the question of holding an executive session to discuss matters that are listed in (c) of this section shall be determined by a majority vote of the governmental body. The motion to convene in executive session must clearly and with specificity describe the subject of the proposed executive session without defeating the purpose of addressing the subject in private. Subjects may not be considered at the executive session except those mentioned in the motion calling for the executive session unless auxiliary to the main question. Action may not be taken at an executive session, except to give direction to an attorney or labor negotiator regarding the handling of a specific legal matter or pending labor negotiations.

(c) The following subjects may be considered in an executive session:

(1) matters, the immediate knowledge of which would clearly have an adverse effect upon the finances of the public entity;

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential;

(4) matters involving consideration of government records that by law are not subject to public disclosure.

C 1 is the usual item that would be used to cover discussion of litigation against a board or agency that might reveal the legal strategy and cost the board or agency an "adverse effect on finances."  But no one is currently suing the Board.  There are no cases.  This discussion is not about specific litigation, but about legal policy the Board might follow.  Like other policy advocacy, this is the type  of thing the public should hear so they know why the Board is taking a particular path.  And if there is a problem with that path, it's better for the public to hear about it now instead of down the line when there is actual litigation.  

If you scroll down to the Alaska section of this Reporters' Committee on Freedom of the Press page, you'll see an extended discussion on the limits of Executive Session in Alaska.

Afghan Corruption Got Lots Of Help From US

[I'm just writing notes today.  Consider this jotting down thoughts before other things interfere.]

Lots of commentators are listing corruption in the Afghan government and army as one of the major causes for the rapid collapse of the government.  

Westerners seem to wear one-way glasses when it come seeing to corruption.  "Poor" "third world" countries are seen as rife with corruption compared to Western countries.  

I would argue it's like alcoholism among the homeless and poor and among the middle and upper classes.  Homeless alcoholics are drunk in public while people with more money do a better job of hiding their alcoholism.  

I just want to point out that Western corruption in Afghanistan probably dwarfed local corruption.  

Some examples:

From a SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.)

"Gallery of Greed

 U.S. reconstruction activities in Afghanistan, or any other conflict zone, face the constant threat of criminal conspiracies among personnel who rotate in and out of theater, infecting their successors with the virus of corruption.

 Over the past five years, SIGAR’s Investigations Directorate has uncovered and detailed a classic example of this threat—an extended, widespread, and intricate pattern of criminality involving U.S. military personnel and Afghan contractors at the Humanitarian Assistance Yard (the Yard) at Bagram Airfield near Kabul, Afghanistan.

 In June 2012, SIGAR investigators following leads uncovered an unusual pattern of suspect criminal activity at the Yard. They found traces of criminal activity affecting inventories, accounting, issuance of supplies, payments, and contract oversight at the Yard, which serves as a storage-and-distribution facility for millions of dollars’ worth of clothing, food, school supplies, and other items purchased from local Afghan vendors. U.S. military commanders provided those supplies to displaced Afghans as part of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) to meet urgent humanitarian relief needs for the Afghan people."

From The Marketplace:

"At just short of 20 years, the conflict in Afghanistan was America’s longest war. More than 2,000 U.S. service members were killed there. The U.S. spent billions over the years to sustain its troops in Afghanistan and hired military contractors to feed and house them.

Those contractors profited the most from the war, but those systems can lead to fraud and waste. The U.S. military relied on contractors like KBR and DynCorp International for all sorts of things in Afghanistan.

“For cooking, for driving, for delivering supplies — they were used across the board,” said Linda Bilmes, who teaches public policy at Harvard. She said that, sometimes, the Pentagon had so-called no-cost deals with contractors. Whatever a project cost, the government would pay.

“The whole system was set up in a way to enable contractors to rip off the government,” she said."

From the Daily Beast:

"America has spent at least $2.3 trillion in Afghanistan, but very few know that because the U.S. relied upon a complex ecosystem of defense contractors, belt-way banditry, and aid contractors. Of the 10-20 percent of contracts that remained in the country, the U.S. rarely cared about the efficacy of the initiative. While corruption is rife within Afghanistan’s government, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction repeatedly alleged bewildering corruption by American firms and individuals working in Afghanistan. In many cases, American firms even defrauded Afghans. A military member of the International Security Assistance Force explained to Carlotta Gall: 'Without being too dramatic, American contractors are contributing to fueling the insurgency.'”

Here's a Treasury official, reported in the Washington Post,  questioning an American consultant working with Kabul Bank for three years about the bank:

"A second unnamed Treasury Department official told government interviewers that soon after he arrived in Afghanistan in the summer of 2010, he met with an American who had been working on contract as a consultant to Afghanistan’s central bank for at least three years. The U.S. official wanted to know more about Kabul Bank, which unknown to both of them was on the verge of failure.

“We had an hour-long conversation,”  the official said. 'I asked him, do you think this is a financially sound bank? He said, ‘Yes.’ And literally 30 days afterward, the whole house of cards came down. This was one of the biggest misses in my career. A $1 billion bank collapsed, and the U.S. adviser swore to me it was financially sound.'”

You know this consultant was making a ton of money plus expenses that probably were well above the average US income.   His job, it would seem, was a scam itself.  

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone.  No giant expenditures happen in Washington unless there are lobbyists pushing hard for it.  And war lobbyists are among the most effective.

Afghan citizens had to choose a path that would keep them safe from the Taliban and from the US backed government.  Supporting the government made them targets for the Taliban.  Supporting the Taliban made the targets for the government and the US.  For many of them, their petty acts of what we would call corruption, was how they managed to feed their families and stay alive.  

For American contractors it was a way to make huge profits.  

And is there anything more corrupt than the Sackler family working a deal in Bankruptcy Court to make it impossible for them or many other individuals or companies to be prosecuted for all the opioid deaths they caused?  Just because they can pay $4 billion and still have more than that left over?  That's the same kind of deal Jeffrey Epstein worked out with the Alexander Acosta, who then became Trump's Secretary of Labor.

Alaska COVID 2021 Highs And Some Vaccine Numbers

 Today's COVID tab entry:

Wednesday, August 18,2021 - Four new deaths reported today.  That's nine in the last two days.

Current COVID patients hospitalized 148 - that's 127 listed as 'Currently Hospitalized - COVID positive" and 21 more listed as 'Currently On Vent Statewide - COVID Positive or Suspected'.  Or, as I've been reporting 127/21.  That's an increase of one person since yesterday.  The cases dashboard says there are 13 newly hospitalized people.  That sounds about right - four people died and a few others maybe got better and left the hospital.  

28 available ICU beds Statewide.  Three in Anchorage!

633/617 new resident cases.  That's a new 2021 high for one day and the highest since Dec. 10, 2021.  The Cases Dashboard changed.  Instead of 'resident' and 'non-resident' options, we now get 'resident' and 'all' options.  But I couldn't get the all button to get me different data from 'resident' data.  Not sure why they thought this was a better idea.  Every time you change how you organize the data, you making tracking and comparisons harder.  So there has to be a really compelling reason.  And if you change the Dashboard, but it doesn't actually work . . .

About 10,500 tests.  Test Positivity is up to 7.43.  Another 2021 high.  Hasn't been this high since November 23, 2020 when it was 8.13.  

If you get to talk - not shout - with an anti-vaxxer, just ask when their relationship with their parents changed from parent/child to friend/friend.  

 These COVID updates don't usually show up in the main window.  They're at a tab under the top banner. Alaska Daily COVID-19 Count 3  I'm putting this one in here because Alaska's COVID situation continues to deteriorate.  Here's some added info on vaccination rate.

Last week- August 11, 2021:

The Key Numbers As Of August 18, 2021
# of people who have two vaccines shots in Alaska: 324,635. That's in increase of 3,101 since last week (Aug 11) # of people who have had one vaccine shot in Alaska: 36,519 That's an increase of 1,320 since last week.

It took Alaska four and a half months to get 50% of population with one or more shots.

It's taken three months to get the next 8%

And here's today's (August 18, 2021).  

In one week we have gone from from 58.8% with one or more shots to 59.5%.  From  356,823 people to 361,154 or a total increase of 4,669.

From 53% with two shots to 53.5%.  321,534 people to 324,635, or a total of 3,101 increase.

Remember, that the first number is people with one + shots.  So it includes all the people with one AND all the people with two shots.  To find out how many only had one shot, we subtract the two shots number from the one+ shots.

Last week: 356,823 - 321,534 = 35,289 people with just one shot

This week:  361,154 - 324,635 =  36,519 people with just one shot   

That would mean 1320 people got their first shots in the last week and 3,101 got their second shots

Looking at the graph on the bottom of this week's chart, I highlighted as close as I could get to 50% - (50.3%) on May 13, 2021.  

So, it took Alaskans about four and a half months to get to 50% with one or more shots.

And it's taken three more months to go another 9%!

I understand there are people who believe that the vaccine doesn't work, that it injects God knows what into their bodies.  There are people who make lots of money off of conning people into fearing the vaccines.  Those people who didn't vote in Anchorage's mayoral runoff election helped to vote an anti-masker/anti-vaccine guy into office.  Even though over 50% of people over 12 have been vaccinated twice.  People - you have to vote or we get crazies elected to make decisions for us.  

On a more positive note, I reached Nakorn Sawan the other day and have about 130 km left to get to Bangkok.  (No, I'm not in Thailand.  I'm doing this imaginary ride on the bike trails of Anchorage.  It looks like I'll make the 750 kms in plenty of time.  I can't tell people how wonderful it is to ride through the woods with creeks on one side several times a week.  I may have to do a short side trip after I'm done to keep me going until the snow falls.  

Trying Out My Wife's New Phone's Camera In The Yard

 

My wife just upgraded her iPhone at High Fidelity (a phone repair store) because ATT has told her that her old phone isn't going to work much longer.  My interest was in how much better her camera might be than mine.  

Much.  

Here are some pics I took in the yard today.  

Something took a chunk out of this amanita.  Hope it had a good trip.

These are astrantia.

A small broccoli.

High Bush Cranberries

Lysimachia, or loose leaf.

Snapdragon

Snap pea.

These are sub-arctic tomatoes.  Tomatoes require a lot of work in Alaska - the nights drop down below 50˚ F (10˚C) and the fruit doesn't set.  But these are supposed to set down to 40˚F.   

I've got some inside the house, these in the old greenhouse in the backyard, and one plant out on the deck. There are some tomatoes in all three locations.  The earliest were in the house.  But these in the backyard greenhouse are doing ok.  There are lots and lots of flowers, but not that many tomatoes.  Will the redden before it gets too cool?  This is an experiment.  I ended up with lots of plants because every seed I planted seemed to sprout two or three plants.  That part was successful. I don't think I'll be gathering that many tomatoes in the end though.

These are still very small cherry tomato size.

Without a doubt, J's new camera is significantly better than my old one.

Alaska Redistricting Board Calculates District Gains and Losses - Precint By Precinct

I don't totally understand this yet, but I thought it important to get this email from the Alaska Redistricting Board up for people to see.  (If you sign up with the Board, they will send you updates like this.)

They got the initial data and the staff have been trying to organize it.  You can see all the districts here on the Board's website.

It should come as no surprise that Matsu has the biggest gains.   Here's District 1 in Fairbanks. The cooler colors represent losses of population.  The warmer colors gains.

Population Change

This table compares Alaska's 2010 to 2020 Census population count at the voting precinct level.
Click column heads to sort. Click again to reverse sort order. Monochrome

District	Prec.	Name	2010	2020	Diff	Change
District 1 ~ Fairbanks ~ Map: HD01-A.pdf
1 (A)	446	Aurora	2,995	3,108	113	+3.77%
1 (A)	475	Fairbanks No. 4	1,143	993	-150	-13.12%
1 (A)	485	Fairbanks No. 6	2,483	2,390	-93	-3.75%
1 (A)	470	Fairbanks No. 3	1,872	1,872	0	0.00%
1 (A)	465	Fairbanks No. 2	1,542	1,468	-74	-4.80%
1 (A)	455	Fairbanks No. 1	659	580	-79	-11.99%
1 (A)	490	Fairbanks No. 7	3,010	2,637	-373	-12.39%
1 (A)	480	Fairbanks No. 5	2,885	2,668	-217	-7.52%
1 (A)	495	Fairbanks No. 10	1,137	1,466	329	+28.94%
–– >	9 Ps	District: 1 Totals:	17,726	17,182	-544	-3.07%

"Good afternoon subscribers,

After many hours of data crunching, we have a couple of key reports available for your review. These are:  

1. A table of population changes from 2010 to 2020 at the house district precinct level. This shows how each of Alaska's 441 precincts increased or decreased in population over the last 10 years. District totals are also provided. Click table heads to sort, click again to reverse sort order. Warm colors are up, cool colors are down. Click Monochrome if coloration is not preferred.
   
2. A report of each house district's 2020 population compared to the new ideal district population of 18,335. (733,391 divided by 40). Click title heads to sort, click again to reverse sort order. Warm colors are high, cool colors are low. Click Monochrome if coloration is not preferred.
3. An Excel sheet with the data for your computing convenience. Click to download. Available formats are .xlsx and .xls

See: https://www.akredistrict.org/pop

Here's how we got to the numbers:

The Alaska Department of Labor imported the 2020 legacy-formatted Census data¹ into their demographic software and sent us Excel reports of Alaska's 2010 and 2020 population for all of Alaska's 441 voting precincts. This is the foundation of our population change table.

To verify the 2020 numbers, we did the same thing independently. We downloaded the 2020 legacy data and loaded the lines² which provide voting precinct counts into a relational database. We then overlayed the Department of Labor's 2020 precinct population numbers with ours.

Row-by-row, every precinct population matched exactly.

This is how a voting precinct total appears in the legacy-formatted Census data. (line 7,991, akgeo2020.pl)

To further validate our findings, next we totaled the precinct populations for each house district and compared these line-by-line with the house district summary population values contained elsewhere in the raw legacy data.³ 

Once again, every value matched exactly.

This is how a house district total appears in legacy-formatted Census data. (line 4,496, akgeo2020.pl)

On April 26, the Census reported that the total resident state population was 733,391. When we total all 441 of our individual voting precincts the result is: 733,391. When we total all of our 40 house districts the result is: 733,391.

After these and other validation exercises, we conclude that the reports published on our website today faithfully interpret the findings of the 2020 Census. Of course, we will re-verify these numbers again using the fixed DVD media we expect to officially receive from the Census Bureau on September 30.

Have a great evening,

Peter Torkelson

Executive Director

Alaska Redistricting Board

1 – You may download the legacy-formatted data here:

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/01-Redistricting_File--PL_94-171/Alaska/

2 – See lines 7,989 - 8,444 of the legacy-formatted file titled 'akgeo2020.pl'. The precinct name appears three columns to the left of the population value. There are more than 441 lines used to report precinct populations as some precincts are reported in multiple parts, one part on each line.

3 – See lines 4,495 - 4,534 of the legacy-formatted file titled 'akgeo2020.pl'. The district name appears three columns to the left of the population value."

Afghanistan Takes Over NPR's Morning Edition, With Brief Nod To Haiti Earthquake

Afghanistan has been a disaster waiting to happen for the last 19 years or so.  The English has to give up and leave Afghanistan and then later, so did the Russians.  

The US didn't learn from these examples, or from Vietnam.  We think of ourselves as exceptional and above history.  

Now NPR is struggling to figure out what is happening today. The line up of stories today was pretty much all Afghanistan, plus two segments on the Haitian earthquake.  It's what you'd expect of coverage in the middle of a crisis - lots of random comments, some blame game activity, and lots of opinion, most of it focused, without context, on right now..  The basic impression is disaster, failure, catastrophe.  

Of the NPR segments I heard two people who seemed, at least in part, clear headed:

• Former U.S. Ambassador To Afghanistan Comments On Developing Situation In The Country Ronald Neumann served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007   He said, in various ways, "I really don't know enough to say."  That's probably what many others should have said more.  He also said that Biden's decision to pull out was a correct decision, but the execution of that decision has been absolutely disastrous.  I think that's probably the clearest and most accurate assessment I heard.  

KEITH: The Biden administration has essentially indicated they don't see this as all their fault. You know, this was two decades in the making. The Afghan military was trained by the U.S. and equipped. And in a way, it's like President Biden does not want to own this. Do you think that that is possible?

NEUMANN: Short answer is no. The long answer is you need to distinguish between the decision to withdraw, which I didn't like but is arguably correct, and the manner of implementation, of execution of that decision, which has been an absolute disaster from beginning to end. They could have taken more time. They had no plan how to support the Afghan military that they were leaving. We built an air force that depended on contractors for maintenance and pulled the contractors. Supply system - ditto. And we profoundly shocked the Afghan army and morale by pulling out and pulling our air cover when we trained them.

[I'd note that Neumann served as the Ambassador to Afghanistan under Bush/Cheney.] 

But the US has been training the Afghan army for 20 years.  How we're getting out is, the problem, but is there a different exit available.  Neumann complains that we pulled out the contractors who maintained the equipment.  Should we have left them in there?  Many of them were highly skilled whites from around the world.  Others were low skilled laborers hired on the cheap from poor countries.  Why hadn't we trained Afghans for those positions?  Surely in 20 years we could have.  There are many highly educated Afghans.  They aren't incapable of learning those skills.  

The specific disaster he and others are speaking of is the failure to get out all the interpreters and others who helped the US.  And all the women who are in jeopardy of a Taliban patriarchal dictatorship.  But the Trump State Department and Homeland Security had been holding up those visas for years.   Biden announced, in the end of June, that he was relocating tens of thousands of Afghans out of the country.  But bureaucratic obstacles have held many of these up.  

But realistically, how many Afghan women would the US take and how long would that take?  My sense is that this was a disaster that was going to happen eventually and up to now, no president was willing to let it happen on their watch.  

If, indeed, the women of Afghanistan have the most to lose from the Taliban, maybe the US should have trained an all women Afghan army that would have fought as hard as the Taliban.  

But maybe even that wouldn't have been enough.  

The other interview that I thought made the most sense was an Army vet. Mike Jason.

• A Vet Formerly Deployed In Afghanistan Shares His Perspective On The Chaos In The Country   -  "JASON: We're all trying to process that, right? Like, 20 years - $89 billion, 300,000-some odd Afghan security forces. How is it collapsing as we watch? And so all I can write is my own little corner of the global war on terror. You know, Afghanistan - righteous anger and indignation over the 9/11 attack. And we went in with a light footprint and took the country over, like, lightning quick. And then what? What was the next step? And all of a sudden, we turn around, and two years later, we're in Iraq, and resources start flowing over there.                    And the question is, what was the strategy and policy for what the military should be doing with regard to security forces in both theaters? We didn't fight a 20-year war. We fought 20 individual wars incoherently, kind of without a policy strategic direction. So at the same time, the Afghans who are the recipients of this training, advice and equipment also know the clock is ticking and making their own calculus for their own safety and the safety of their families, while never really tackling, you know - all this cash is flowing in, the corruption, the drugs, the morale, the logistics. Why weren't we able to ever address these really problematic institutional issues?                  We voted - we, the American people - we voted for four sequential administrations that campaigned on getting out of this operation. The intent was clear. But I look back on the presidential debates over the last several elections. I mean, Afghanistan may have gotten seconds or minutes of debate. It was always in the background. But why didn't we debate it more? Why didn't we discuss it more forcefully? Why didn't somebody make the case to the American people clearly and forcefully why we should stay or go and why the sacrifice is or is not worth it?"

His take makes a lot of sense to me, as a former Peace Corps volunteer, who knows how much being able to speak to the people in their own language matters. It means you don't have to depend on interpreters, and it means you have a much better understanding of the culture and the differences between yours and theirs.  Your struggle with their language means you understand your own ignorance and appreciate when they speak your language much better than you speak theirs.

I also did research in China, using my own Hong Kong students to help me out with interpretation.  They would tell me when the official translation was not what the Chinese speaker had actually said.  They told me about unspoken cues such as when the Chinese speaker's response was a non-sequitur:   it meant, "Drop this line of questioning because I don't want to answer these questions."  My students even took advantage of my foreignness and apologized for my ignorance and sometimes were able to get answers they themselves, because of culture, would never had asked.  In other situations I had just one Hong Kong student acting as my interpreter and I could negotiate with him to ask the question a different way that sometimes gave us break throughs.  I learned a lot about the politics of translations. Interpreters are human beings with egos.  My students had to be sure they were respectful to the official interpreters and avoid making him look bad.  And my Peace Corps experiences in Thailand helped me understand that I knew nothing and which made it easier to be humble and respectful. 

I'm sure, from the fervor some US vets are showing in their efforts to get their Afghan interpreters out of the country, that many of them, if not most, had very close bonds with the interpreters.  But I also suspect there were interpreters whose motivation for being their friend was a visa to the US, while others were passing on information to the Taliban.  We all want to be liked and even knowing the culture and language, we get taken in by people who see us as a ticket to their freedom - whether that be financial, political, or professional.  

We Didn't Learn From Vietnam

The basic justification for getting into Vietnam was the Domino Theory, based on how the Soviet Union took over the countries of Eastern Europe after World War II.  The politicians and the military leaders in the 1950s and 1960s had been part of WWII and didn't want to repeat the mistake of trusting the Soviet Union.  Thus we had to hold Vietnam lest China and the Soviet Union use Vietnam as the stepping stone to take over the rest of Southeast Asia.  One domino falling after the other.  

It was the wrong model.  In Vietnam we were fighting a battle of independence from colonial masters.  The French threw in the towel, but the US stepped in to take France's place.  The US backed the Catholic (learned from their colonial conqueror) faction in the South and spent years trying to train the ARVN- the South Vietnamese army - so it could defeat the North.  In that war, we had a conventional military mentality fighting against an army that used guerrilla tactics.  The US troops never really knew who was one of our Vietnamese and who was one of theirs.  We were fighting on Vietnamese land against an enemy that wanted to rule its own country.  We were supporting the remnants of the colonial rulers.  And we had the same problems with corruption because of the massive amounts of supplies and money coming into the country.  

You'd think that the military and political leaders - again, many of whom had fought in Vietnam - would have learned from that war.  But again, we went into a country that had thrown out two world powers - first the British and then the Soviet Union.  Again, most of our soldiers knew nothing about Afghan culture or language.  Again, there was an assumption that "the greatest country in the world" knew better.  There was an assumption that modern weapons would defeat a guerrilla army.  

A couple aspects of Afghanistan today are quite different from Vietnam in 1975.

• Afghanistan has been fought with an all volunteer army and extensive use of contracted labor.  Since only those who wanted to serve (or saw the military as a way to get a job and education), the rest of the country could ignore the war.  With all 18 year old men eligible to be drafted, the anti-war movement had a much more vocal and aware support to end the war.
• In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military had more control over what battle field footage the US public saw in the evening news.  Embedding journalists with units had much different results than the way journalists and photographers were assigned in Vietnam.  (See Embedded Journalism and the Forward of The Military and the Media 1962 - 1968)
• As Kabul falls, modern technology - phone cameras and social media - mean that we're seeing civilian created content and people are talking by phone live today and putting video on social media.  For Vietnam we only saw or heard what the news media offered us.  

Finally, Jason mentioned $89 billion.  There's another way to look at this war. 

💯As @attackerman has written, the GWOT was a historic transfer of public wealth to private hands. https://t.co/YqgFW2PF1K

— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) August 14, 2021

Turns Out Evictions Are More Complicated and Venal Than I Realized

 

This On the Media segment on Eviction is worth listening to.  The issue of housing segregation and evictions is not about how hard people work, but techniques designed to keep people unhoused.  

"It isn't as much about poverty as it is about extracting wealth from the poorest people."

Around 12:30 in the audio, Matt Desmond — Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and founder of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University - begins.  Be sure to listen to him.  

Some things I learned in this episode. 

• Rents in poor neighborhoods are not that much lower than rents in much nicer neighborhoods, but for poor people, especially people of color, they can't rent a place in those areas. 
• Landlords renting in poor neighborhoods have a higher profit margin than those in better neighborhoods
• All of this traces back to the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North.  
• Presence of children increases the odds of eviction.  

I recommend you listen while your doing some mindless task, like cleaning the bathroom, kneading bread, shredding old paperwork, etc.  

What I heard on the radio was apparently taken from several of the segments you can find them all at the link at the beginning of the post.  

There Are No Available ICU Beds in Anchorage According To State Hospitalization Dashboard

Here's the link to the State Hospitalization Dashboard.  [I have to move from Safari to Chrome to get to the Dashboard.  Also the link goes automatically to Statewide.  On top in the middle is a drop to to select a region.  That's where you can see Anchorage.  And remember, the dashboards change daily.

"Friday, August 13, 2021 - Slightly better than yesterday.  No new deaths 20 new hospitalizations.  Ten fewer hospitalized COVID patients, but one more Vent- 116(9).    Available ICU beds up two to 26 statewide.  BUT there are none available in Anchorage.

For Anchorage 8/13/21

I think this is the first time we've been here.  So don't have a heart attack, serious stroke, car crash, or any other event that would require an ICU bed in Anchorage today and probably over the weekend.  

313/313 new resident cases. (I always like it when my calculations match the State's number, but if they don't match I don't worry about it.  My number always = today's #-yesterday's #.  There were 25 new non-resident cases.

About 5700 test.  Test Positivity down ever so slightly from 7.1 to 7.01.  

Be firm, but patient with the anti-maskers.  They've attached some sort of emotional and/or ideological symbolism to the masks.  And once they've joined that club, there's a lot of peer pressure not to defect.  They even are willing to risk their children's lives to stay members of the club.  

Thursday, August 12, 2021 - Bad numbers today.  Three new deaths.  22 new hospitalizations.  (This makes more sense than yesterday's 4 - I guess they're catching up.)  Hospitalizations are 123 (8) - the eight are on Vents and listed as 'COVID -positive and suspected.'  That's a combined increase from yesterday of four (not 22).  We're down to 24 available ICU beds in Alaska. 

376/378 new resident cases.  We have to go back to January 8, 2021 to get a higher number (403/403).  (There are some higher numbers since then, but they represent two or more days.)  New non-resident cases = 29.  

There were about 9900 tests and our Test Positivity is down slightly to 7.1.  That means 7.1% of people tested were positive."

In addition to blogging regularly, I've also been tracking a half a dozen or so Alaska COVID numbers as they are posted.  The numbers were posted every day.  Then down to weekdays as things improved.  Then down to three days.  And now it's back to five days.  It should be back to seven days because the numbers are like those back in January 2021 and earlier.

These COVID posts don't appear here.  They are on a tab [Alaska Daily COVID Count 3] just under the WHAT DO I KNOW? banner on top.  There are three different COVID tabs because the pages were getting so long they were really slow.  But the chart with the numbers goes back to March 15, 2020.  So you can scroll through it to daily changes.  

The state's numbers and mine often are different.  Not that I'm making mine up.  For new cases and newly hospitalized COVID patients, the state offers a number.  They also include totals.  I subtract the previous total from today's total to get my number of new resident cases and new hospitalizations.  That number isn't always the same as the one the state offers.  

Checking Alaska's Proposed Election Regulation Changes

My wife had the section of the ADN that I wanted to read on Sunday.  So I picked up the Classified Section.  It had a long notice:

"NOTICE OF PROPOSED CHANGES TO IMPLEMENT BALLOT MEASURE 2 AND MAKE CLARIFYING CHANGES IN THE REGULATIONS OF THE DIVISION OF ELECTIONS"

This link gives you that notice posted on the State's public notice site.

Given that lots of State Legislatures are busy passing laws intended to disenfranchise voters, this seemed like something I should look at a bit more carefully.  This is definitely one of those places where "the devil is in the details" applies.  

I've taken some time in the last couple of days to mesh the proposed changes into the body of the current regulations.  I've put the proposed changes in red so it's easy to find them.  The whole thing is at the bottom of this post.  

Things To Know About The Proposed Changes

• The announcement lists all the changes to be made.  To be clear, it tells us what needs to be done, but it doesn't tell us the new language, so we don't know what they intend to actually say.
• Most of the changes seem to be apolitical technical changes because of 
• passage of Proposition 2  which (1) changed the primary to be a single election with all candidates for each position running against all the others, and (2) changing the general election to ranked choice voting
• State is no longer using Accu-vote machines, so all references to those machines are to be deleted
• US Supreme Court Decision   Shelby Co v. Holder to no longer require preclearance of changes in election laws for Alaska and 15 other states.
• Some changes appear to be substantive and while they are simply spelling out the steps to determine the practical implementation of Prop 2, in some cases the wording could potentially directly or indirectly impact the elections, such as:
• Add 6 AAC 25.071 to specify when and how votes for write-in candidates will be counted.
• Add 6 AAC 25.072 to define duplicate rankings and determine how they will be counted.  
• Change 6 AAC 25.225 to determine the process for filling a vacancy in the candidacy for lieutenant governor.
• Change 6 AAC 25.240 to remove the specific number of petition booklets that the division will issue. [Current number is "500 or less."  Minimally they should change  'less' to 'fewer.']
• Change 6 AAC 25.683 to update a statutory reference; allow someone with a power of attorney to cancel a voter’s registration; remove a reference to selecting a primary ballot; and allow a special power of attorney to include the power to cancel a voter’s registration.  [Currently someone with power of attorney can register folks and help with absentee voting.  I understand the need to remove deceased voters from the rolls, but my sense is that this could also be used badly.  Think Brittany Spears.  I haven't heard the arguments, but at this point I think Vital Statistics should share deaths with the Registrar.  Given this political climate, I can see people with this power disenfranchising people they disagree with politically.  I don't know, just raising questions here.]
• Many changes I'm still trying to figure out what they mean such as 
• Add 6 AAC 25.069 to determine that the general election ballot will include space for one write-in candidate per race, except that the races for president and vice-president will not allow write-in candidates.
• Some I have a giant "WHY?" for.  There are probably good reasons but it seems odd.  For example: 
• Add 6 AAC 25.195 to specify that ranked-choice tabulation will begin the 15th day after the election, with only first-choice results reported before then.  [I'm guessing this has to do with the need to know the last place candidates in each race, because then the second place vote for the last candidate is given to the next ranked candidate. They may be assuming that you need all the absentee votes in before going to this process.  And that may be true in some or even most cases as they need to know the losing candidate before reassigning the 2nd place votes.  But I suspect in some cases you'd know before every last ballot is in.]

I'm not saying that there is anything underhanded going on.  I'm just trying to make sure there isn't.  I  haven't had time to think through and raise these kinds of questions for all the changes yet.  I'm hoping also to clarify some of my question with the Division of Elections.  

But in the meantime, I thought I'd put this up so other people don't have to duplicate this effort and can just jump in and look at what's there.  It would be nice to break this down so different people are looking at different parts.  Not everyone needs to look at everything.  

Some Notes On My Method For Doing This

• Most changes apply to a single section only, but some apply to several (such as every time they mention Accu-vote they need to delete it.) I repeat the red changes for all the sections they apply to.
• When there are multiple changes to a single section, I give each a bullet so you know there are more than one.
• Some are changes to a section ("Remove"  or "Change") and some are actually newly numbered sections ("Add")  I put the ADD where it would go.
• I've put the proposed changes in red so it's easy to find them.  

The Proposed Changes Embedded in the Current Regulations:

Remove repealed statutory authority in 6 AAC 27.035 and 6 AAC 27.150.

Alaska Election Code Propos... by Steve

The World Offers Little Miracles All Around US

Some of the tiny beautiful worlds in the yard.  The astrantia from a distance doesn't look like much, but close up it's amazing.

Then there are some purple perennials whose names I can't remember, but come up each year showing that there are so many ways to be a flower and to attract bees.

Well, this stock isn't a perennial.  When I planted the seeds earlier in spring, I didn't realize they were all purple.  Nevertheless the bees like them all the same.

And these little mushroom villages surely suggest that pixies or other sprites might be hiding nearby.

This salpiglossis I can't take credit for.  It was calling out to me on one of my visits to the botanical garden.  $3 for a little pot that I know will give me more of these beauties into October.  

 And some flowers come inside where we can enjoy them a little more.