The Impact Of Modern Day Shaming

“Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” he wrote. “It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.”

This is a quote from  Benjamin Rush, a physician in Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  It's  in Jon Ronson's long New York Times Magazine article on public shaming in the age of social media, How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.

Sacco posted a sarcastic tweet that people immediately jumped on as racist.  In her words, to Ronson,

“To me it was so insane of a comment for anyone to make,” she said. “I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.”

She tweeted from Heathrow just before boarding a plane for Cape Town.  Little did she know about the firestorm that would greet her when she landed.

Ronson, not only follows up on Sacco, but other people whose lives have been turned upside down by people piling on online.  In one case, there was a picture that the person "didn't realize that her mobile uploads were visible to the public."  It took four weeks before the photo was discovered and she lost her job.

In another case, a guy at a tech conference, made a bad joke about computer body parts, quietly, to the guy sitting next to him.  The lady in front of them stood up, took his picture.

"She tweeted the picture to her 9,209 followers with the caption: “Not cool. Jokes about . . . ‘big’ dongles right behind me.” Ten minutes later, he and his friend were taken into a quiet room at the conference and asked to explain themselves. Two days later, his boss called him into his office, and he was fired."

The article is well worth reading.  It looks at how things are taken out of context and people's lives are, at least temporarily, destroyed.  And even if someone's words are in context and inappropriate, the impact of cyber shaming is totally disproportionate to the crime.  If someone went to court for this, it would be a minor embarrassment and cost.   But it wouldn't cost someone their livelihood.

This gets Ronson to look up the history of shaming in the US.  Which led to the opening quote.

"The pillory and whippings were abolished at the federal level in 1839, although Delaware kept the pillory until 1905 and whippings until 1972. An 1867 editorial in The Times excoriated the state for its obstinacy. 'If [the convicted person] had previously existing in his bosom a spark of self-respect this exposure to public shame utterly extinguishes it. . . . The boy of 18 who is whipped at New Castle for larceny is in nine cases out of 10 ruined. With his self-respect destroyed and the taunt and sneer of public disgrace branded upon his forehead, he feels himself lost and abandoned by his fellows.'”

Of course, Tweets, often alert us to something well worth reading, and I thank Mark Meyer, for retweeting about this article.

Something to chew on.  Pause and think when you're about to post a questionable joke or in anger.  Or when you're feeling righteous indignation about something you see posted online.  Find out the truth first.  Remember the golden rule - think how you'd feel if you were on the receiving end.

[UPDATE Feb 17, 2015:  Here's the December 2014 Gawker post by the guy who spread Justine Sacco's tweet to  infamy.  They met, six months later.  Here are a couple things he says about all this:

Twitter disasters are the quickest source of outrage, and outrage is traffic. 

Fortunately, traffic doesn't make or break this blog.  It's good to know people are reading it, but I don't need to stir up fake outrage to boost traffic. 

And, as it turned out, Justine Sacco is not a racist monster. She is a kind and canny woman who threw back cocktails, ate delicately, and spoke expertly about software. She was friendly, very funny, instantly relatable, and very plainly not a cruel sicko. We talked about college, jobs, home, family, and work—she'd recently landed on her feet as the communications boss for a small New York startup, and seemed to be happily rebuilding her career. . .

Sacco was not depressed, or even slightly bitter, and said she bore no resentment towards me at all. She'd only wanted to meet up, she explained, because I owed it to her. I should get to know her before ever writing about her again. There was no catch, no setup, no tricks—she just wanted me to consider her a person, and not a meme.  .  .

 This is the point I try to make over and over again.  We shouldn't take something that a person spent a few seconds of their life doing and use it to judge a person.  We all do stupid things now and then.  Think about the stupid things you wouldn't like to have the world use to write your epitaph.]

DC Still Has Taxation Without Representation And The Structural Imbalance In The US Senate

I got to thinking about this issue again when I heard that Congress is trying to block DC from enacting its recently passed initiative to legalize marijuana.  DC started challenging Congress on this, then a few days ago backed off.      [Note: check date of this post to determine if you should look for more current updates.] 

So, here are some facts:

• Wyoming has an estimated 2014 population of 584,153.  [source is US Census table for all these state population figures.]
• Vermont  has an estimated 2014 population of 626, 562.
• Alaska has an estimated 2014 population of 736,732.
• North Dakota has an estimated 2014 population of 739,482.
• South Dakota  has an estimated 2014 population of 853,175.
• Delaware has an estimated 2014 population of 935,614.

Each of these states has one voting member of the House of Representatives and two US Senators.  

Washington DC has an estimated 2014 population of 658,893.   

DC has one non-voting member of the House and zero US Senators.


Of course, people in California, who have two US Senators, might wish that Alaska, Wyoming, and North Dakota, and a bunch of other states be combined to share their US Senators.

California has an estimated 2014 population of 38,802,500.

California does have 53 members of the US House.

In 1800, not too long after the constitution was implemented,  the largest state (Virginia = 807,683) was 12.5 times the size of smallest state (Delaware = 64,273). [Numbers from Wikipedia.]  The intent of having two senators for each state was to protect the small states from being overwhelmed by the larger number of representatives of the large states.  But today the small states get way more representation in the Senate than the large states. 

Today, the largest state (California = 38,802,500) is  66 times the size of the smallest state (Wyoming = 584,153.)

I doubt the framers of the constitution foresaw that increasing gap between the large and small states. But I suspect it's one of the structural factors that skews the congress to theRight (along with gerrymandering).  The largest 15 states are way more Democratic than Republican and the smallest 15 states are slightly more Republican.

Smallest States' Populations	State	Senators' Parties
563,626	Wyoming	RR
625,741	Vermont	DI
736,732	Alaska	RR
739,482	North Dakota	DR
853,175	South Dakota	RR
935,614	Delaware	DR
1,023,579	Montana	DR
1,055,173	Rhode Island	DD
1,326,813	New Hampshire	DR
1,330,089	.Maine	RI
1,419,561	Hawaii	DD
1,634,464	Idaho	RR
1,852,994	West Virginia	DR
1,881,503	Nebraska	RR
2,085,572	New Mexico	DD
18,064,118		D=12 R=16  I=2

Largest States' Populations	States	Senators' Parties
38,802,500	California	DD
25,145,561	Texas	RR
19,893,297	Florida	DR
19,746,227	New York	DD
12,880,580	Illinois	DR
12,787,209	Pennsylvania	DR
11,594,163	Ohio	DR
10,097,343	Georgia	RR
9,943,964	North Carolina	RR
9,909,877	Michigan	DD
8,938,175	New Jersey	DD
8,001,024	Virginia	DD
6,745,408	Massachusetts	DD
6,731,484	Arizona	RR
6,724,540	Washington	DD
207,941,352		D=18 R=12

18 million people in the 15 smallest states have 30 senators. They elected 53% R, 40% D, and 6% I.
207 million people in 15 largest states have 30 senators.  They elected 66% D and 33% R.

Large states have ten times the population and the same number of senators. 

Senators are elected by the whole state, so, once the state boundaries are set, the districts can't be gerrymandered.  But, as you can see, the states themselves, have such unequal populations that the largest states which vote overwhelmingly Democratic, are grossly underrepresented.  The House districts are defined in redistricting and so gerrymandering can effect the outcomes there.  If you look at the voting results of most house districts, you'll see the incumbents win by significant majorities.   All this skews the results in a way that doesn't necessarily represent the views of US citizens. 

In the senate, without significant change to the US constitution, this isn't going to change.  A long New York Times article  (I couldn't find a date, but there's a 2013 © on the bottom of the page) says:

"To be sure, some scholars and members of Congress view the small-state advantage as a vital part of the constitutional structure and say the growth of that advantage is no cause for worry. Others say it is an authentic but insoluble problem.
What is certain is that the power of the smaller states is large and growing. Political scientists call it a striking exception to the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.” Indeed, they say, the Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation."

Can DC get two senators and a representative without a constitutional amendment?   FairVote says yes:

While DC residents did have representation in the early 1790’s, DC residents lost their right to vote in 1801 after the passage of the Organic Act, when Congress voted to take control of the District of Columbia. This occurred just ten years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and a mere 26 years after the famous declaration by Sam Adams--“No Taxation Without Representation”-- a version on the motto remains on DC license plates today.

FairVote firmly stands behind the right of every U.S. citizen to have a meaningful vote. DC residents are no different than all other Americans and should not be treated as such. If Congress can take away voting rights of citizens, then surely it can replace them. Every DC resident should be able to elect a voting member of the House of Representatives and two U.S. Senators.  [emphasis added]

In a more lawyerly piece, in 2006, Kenneth Starr (yes, that Kenneth Starr) and Patricia M. Wald* offer three points in favor of representation of the residents of DC.  First, they argue the representation is a basic tenet of the US and there's nothing in the Constitution to suggest the framers intended to disenfranchise residents of the District, which wasn't created until 1803 out of parts of Virginia and Maryland.  Then they argue that Congress has the power to do it:

Second, Congress's specific power over the District of Columbia is one of the broadest of all its powers. In the words of the Constitution, "Congress shall have power . . . to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the District. In a 1984 case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, on which we both sat, Judge Abner Mikva noted that through this constitutional provision, the Framers gave Congress "a unique and sovereign power" over the District. In that same case, Judge (now Justice) Antonin Scalia wrote that the broad language of the power gave Congress "extraordinary and plenary" power over our nation's capital. And in another case, that same court held that this broad power gave Congress authority to "provide for the general welfare of citizens within the District of Columbia by any and every act of legislation which it may deem conducive to that end." It is hard to imagine a broader, more comprehensive congressional power than this; and it is also hard to imagine that the power could not be used to advance a fundamental principle of our Constitution -- that the right to vote should be extended to all citizens.

But given that DC voter registration is 75% Democratic and 17% Republican,  there's little chance that  Congress is going to give DC two senators any time soon.


*The Wald bio is definitely worth reading.

Snow Chutes and Terrorism

Now and then I suddenly get a spike of hits for old posts that haven't seen much attention for a while.  Here are two good ones from 2012 that have been getting hits yesterday and today.

People going to the snow chute post seem to be mostly from the northeast.  I wonder why?  It's got some pictures and video of my using the snow chute I bought from a student long ago.  Her father invented it.  It's so simple,clever, and effective - a combination I love - but I don't think any are for sale now.

The other one - Is Terrorism a Hate Crime? - compares the two concepts.  Not sure what's causing that one to suddenly start getting hits.  Hate crimes and terrorism have been ongoing since I posted it.  The post looks in detail at the contradiction of folks who want to go after terrorists but argue there is such a thing as a hate crime.

"If . . .we start getting blood on the highways, we may have to go back."

So quotes ADN reporter Nathaniel Herz, Alaska representative Craig Johnson, on the reassigning of the Alaska Troopers highway patrol unit to general patrol jobs.

I noticed this phrase because I think language matters.  Blood on the highway.  Sounds like a custodial job, cleaning up stains on the road.  The human beings who are hurt, maimed, or killed are erased and all that's left are blood stains.  It's a minor issue, unless people start spilling fluids on the road.

But the words you use, the details you focus on reflect what you hear, see, and think.  A Psychology Today article begins:

"The closest one person can get to understanding another person's thoughts is to listen to the words that he or she speaks or writes. Certain words reflect the behavioral characteristics of the person who spoke or wrote them."

A Scientific American article begins:

NO ONE DOUBTS that the words we write or speak are an expression of our inner thoughts and personalities. 

But both articles go on to focus more on the grammatical function of words than what I'm addressing here.   Rep. Johnson's callousness about the human cost of accidents is a signal.  No, it's not the only clue we should use, but it's worth putting into the evidence file on Johnson.

Nor am I saying the switch in duties for these highway patrol officers is a bad thing.  I suspect driving up and down lonely stretches of highway is costly and yields relatively little in documentable achievements for the Troopers.  Things that don't happen - like accidents because people know the troopers are around - often don't get measured.  And technology can track people violating the rules very efficiently as I learned in California when I used what I thought was a car pool lane that turned out to be a toll lane.  But Anchorage folks thought having cameras track speeders around schools was 'unfair' and got that policy withdrawn.  While I suspect most drivers would love to have those crazy drivers who pass at high speeds on curves on the Seward Highway caught, they wouldn't like cameras catching them going 75 mph.  But I digress.  This is about language.  And to some extent about gathering evidence so that we don't judge public officials on just one incident.  I did watch Johnson on the State Affairs committee when I covered the legislature in Juneau in 2010.  He's rational as the title quote suggests - it's simply a cost benefit analysis between 'blood on the highways' and redeploying troopers.  I don't recall Johnson displaying much emotional connection to issues.  The most significant piece of evidence I picked up on Johnson that year was in the legislative travel disclosures.

 Johnson reported the, by far, most costly sponsored travel for 2009:

"11-20 10-27 Rep. Johnson  $17,974 Saudi Arabian Government; NCSL requested Speaker of House to send an Oil and Gas representative to participate in a study tour. This was a trade mission to Saudi Arabia with the goal of increasing relations between USA and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; airfare, lodging, meals and ground transportation; Riyadh, Damman, and Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"

I'd also like to compliment Nathaniel Herz whose work I've noticed as he covered the Anchorage Assembly for the last couple years or so.  He does a great job of reporting both the facts and the context.  And he's doing the same in Juneau now.  His choice to highlight this particular quote in this article - I'm sure a lot was said in that committee meeting that isn't in the article - says to me that he thought it as interesting as I do.  And I'm a little jealous of him down their in Juneau with the whole legislature offering him such an array of newsworthy action and a chance to see the lawmakers close up and personal.

And I've been impressed to see articles (such as Jan 19 and Feb 5) with a joint by-line of Herz and Pat Forgey of the Juneau Empire.  I don't recall that sort of cross-paper cooperation before.   Of course, some of the responsibility goes to the owners of the Alaska Dispatch News, which has a lot of reporters covering state and local news.

OK, I can't help adding one more thought about the article.  It mentions that this highway unit was formed in 2009 with federal money.

"It was entirely funded by the federal government at first, though now the state has to pay about half its cost."

One of the key arguments Parnell used against expanding Medicaid was that the state would have to pay part of the costs after the original federal money was gone.  That didn't seem to be a problem when it came to getting  money for law enforcement.  And this shows that the program can be cut if we can't afford it down the line.

What's Putin Thinking?

Ukraine butts right up against Russia.

Ukraine is talking about joining NATO.

I don't have any special knowledge of what's happening in Russia or in Putin's head.  But I have learned a little about human beings and government and power.

So, let's leave Putin for a second and let's go to 1962.  Cuba is 90 miles away from Key West.  The Russians are building missile launching sites in Cuba and Russian ships are en route to Cuba with the missiles that will point at the US.  The US goes into panic mode.  It didn't matter that we had missiles pointing at Russia in Europe and Asia.  When they were pointed at us, 90 miles off shore, we felt mortally threatened.  I remember that everyone was thinking about those bomb shelters people had been building in their backyards in anticipation of nuclear war.  There was a lot palpable tension as Kennedy challenged the Russian ships on route to Cuba.

Reagan even went to war in Nicaragua voicing some sort of domino theory about how communists in Central America threatened our very existence.  His March 16, 1986 speech begins:

"My fellow Americans:
I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States. This danger will not go away; it will grow worse, much worse, if we fail to take action now. I'm speaking of Nicaragua, a Soviet ally on the American mainland only 2 hours' flying time from our own borders. With over a billion dollars in Soviet-bloc aid, the Communist government of Nicaragua has launched a campaign to subvert and topple its democratic neighbors. Using Nicaragua as a base, the Soviets and Cubans can become the dominant power in the crucial corridor between North and South America. Established there, they will be in a position to threaten the Panama Canal, interdict our vital Caribbean sealanes, and, ultimately, move against Mexico. Should that happen, desperate Latin peoples by the millions would begin fleeing north into the cities of the southern United States or to wherever some hope of freedom remained."

Whether Reagan believed this or was just trying to use fear to justify actions to protect American business interests in Central America, or both, I don't know. But surely Putin feels threatened, and Russians feel threatened, by the notion of NATO lapping up onto its borders.

So it's totally understandable that Putin is playing hardball here.  Kennedy did over Cuba and Reagan did over Nicaragua.

I'm guessing also that Putin is in way over his head.  He's gotten control of the Russian governmental and military apparatus, but there's no manual for making it work.  He can't google "What should I do next to keep Europe and the US off my back while keeping the economy alive so Russian people don't start losing faith in me?"   He's like the Wizard of Oz.   He's got to be desperately making decisions as he goes along.  His guiding principle is probably something like, "Don't show weakness."  That's not to disparage Putin's abilities.  Every leader, to some extent, is winging it when things go wrong.  At least American presidents have a graceful escape when their term expires.  Putin doesn't have such an easy, preordained curtain call.  He's got to keep the music playing until he figures out a safe and dignified exit strategy.  It can't be easy.  And he knows there are lots of predators in Russia waiting for him to show signs of weakness.

BMOC During CCL At UAA

Big Moose On Campus

Is that enough acronym for you in the title?

The Anchorage chapter of  Citizens Climate Lobby's (CCL) monthly meeting is at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) campus.  During Saturday's meeting, at the end of the telephone link to all the other chapters, a moose wandered in our direction from the Wendy Williams auditorium where the Top of the World Cheer and Dance championships were taking place. 

We'd just heard from Keya Chatterjee, executive director of the US Climate Action Network.  The Network has about 140 members - groups around the US focused on one aspect of climate change or another. 

What I keep discovering, in  various arenas, is the vast number of people who are working hard to make the world a better place in any number of ways.  While the media focus on politicians, major events, and photogenic disasters, there are millions of people quietly working with little or no media attention to what they are doing. 

The Network's job is to help the many groups working on climate issues to be aware of each other so they can join forces when they have overlapping projects and goals.  CCL's main goal is to get a revenue neutral carbon fee with the proceeds returning back to citizens (sort of like the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend.)  The idea, as I understand it, is to try to tax producers of carbon based fuels and products whose side effects (externalities) are hugely damaging our planet's ability to sustain itself.   The dividend would go back to consumers.  So the increase in carbon products will be offset by the dividend, and alternative energy sources will be more cost competitive. 

This is a market-based solution which businesses prefer to government regulation, because it gives them more freedom.  This approach is gaining ground quickly with conservatives as well as liberals supporting it. 

Stemming from her work on climate change and having a child, Keya has written a book called The Zero Footprint Baby:  How to Save the Planet While Raising a Healthy Baby. 

Brian Williams, Memory, And What It Means For Everyone

An ADN letter writer today wasn't taking any crap about Brian Williams:

"The article about Brian Williams and his “misremembered” story in the paper is an unbelievable spin. The spin is even incorrect. Mr. Williams wasn’t in the helicopter behind the one that was shot at, either he was going in the opposite direction. Get your facts straight. A lie is a lie no matter how you want to spin it to protect one of your own."

I didn't know who Brian Williams was until the other day when reports about his inaccurate helicopter story came out.  I assume the letter writer above was responding to the ADN story (from the Washington Post) about a psychologist saying that memories can get conflated and we believe we remember things we heard about as things that happened to us.

It must be nice to live a world of black and white of the letter writer and to be so certain about what one knows.

Is he, without a doubt, a liar?  Was this a case of lying to bolster his credentials?  Or was it conflation of memories?  The event had enough witnesses that lying about it seems a bit stupid.  Someone would eventually challenge it.  But lots of successful people have a history of getting away with lies, or other abuses of their positions of power, so they may think they'll never get caught.  And they may start believing . . .   oh yeah, that's the point the psychologist was making.

Memory expert Lawrence Patihis said, in a New Republic interview:

In one of our studies, about 20 percent of our participants generated false memories of an event when something false was suggested. [For instance, if Patihis mentioned video footage of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on September 11, one in five participants said they remembered seeing it. No such footage exists.] If we repeated the false suggestion many times over a period of weeks or months, I am sure an even larger percentage would develop a false memory.
In the case of Brian Williams, that misleading information may have been in the form of seeing the footage of him and his film crew examining the damage of the helicopter that was actually hit, and seeing it over and over again.

Most somewhat sentient beings in the US have heard about convicted criminals who have been exonerated through DNA testing.  You can watch a 60 Minutes episode of such a case here, where a rape victim tells the story of how she identified this guy, how certain she was, and how mortified she was ten years later when DNA proved it was another, similar looking, man.

OK, recognizing the face of a stranger you've only seen once is hard.  I remember when my wife had her purse snatched in a subway station in NYC. I was looking eye to eye at the snatcher playing tug of war with the purse before he turned with it and jumped from the platform, ran across the tracks and caught a train going the other way.  A light skinned black man with dreadlocks.  Pretty easy.  But when the police later showed me a book of faces of light skinned black men with dreadlocks, I knew it was impossible to pick one over the other with any certainty.

But in the 60 Minutes episode (it's in four parts on YouTube) Leslie Stahl also talks about how the suspect's alibi turned out to be for a different weekend than the one of the crime.  His memory too was faulty. And he had good reason to get it right.  The faulty alibi story hurt him at the trial.  But that's still different from the idea Williams' creating a false memory.

But the last part of the 60 Minutes piece talks about showing people advertisements of Disneyland that included someone dressed as Bugs Bunny.  Then they were asked later about their memories of Disneyland.  A number of the experiment subjects said they remembered meeting Bugs Bunny, and when asked for details, they came up with stories of handshakes and more.  Of course, Bugs Bunny was a Warner Brothers character, not a Disney character and would never have been at Disneyland.  But the fake ad planted a seed that allowed people to remember meeting Bugs at Disneyland.  This is like the Patihis example above. (I wasn't so lucky on my first trip to Disneyland.  I don't remember meeting Micky, Donald, or Bugs.  I did see Richard Nixon, but that's another story.)

And I have a couple of old, old friends who remember things we did together  very differently than I do.  So I'm sure that memory is malleable.

Scientific American has an article that lists four myths about memory that most people believe:

1. Memory works like a video camera, recording the world around us onto a mental tape that we can later replay.
2. An unexpected occurrence is likely to be noticed—even when people’s attention is elsewhere.
3. Hypnosis can improve memory—especially when assisting a witness in recalling details associated with a crime.
4. Amnesia sufferers usually cannot remember their identity or name.

Number 1  is particularly relevant to the Williams case. The explanation notes that

"research . . . has shown events to be recalled based on “goals and expectations,” . . . It also “contradicts the well-established idea that memory retrieval is a constructive process,” too, which can be shaped by assumptions and beliefs"

Not only do we see events and interpret them in a way that aligns with what we want to see, we remember events the way we want them to have been. I'm sure everyone whose been married more than ten years has remembered an event entirely differently from what their spouse remembered. But what does that mean for us beyond the Brian Williams story?

• Does it mean we should be more sympathetic to people whose memories proven fictional?
• Should we be more skeptical of everyone's memories?
• Should we be more skeptical about our own memories?
• How can we verify other people's memories as well as our own?
• How do we distinguish between those who intentionally recreate a false past from those who simply misremember?  

1. I suspect each one of those questions is deserving of its own post, and I certainly don't know the answers to them.  But it would appear to me that a good strategy is to work on how we talk about such things.  Try to be more tentative rather than certain in our discussions.  Instead of "You're wrong" try "I don't remember it that way."
2. Find other witnesses to give their accounts of the same event.  
3. Google can often locate contemporaneous accounts of an old event.  For example, I located online audio of speeches I attended as a student at UCLA in the 1960s.  Let's just say there was a lot I forgot.  

I don't suspect the letter writer will be persuaded by any of this.  I do think that if you know people over a period of time, you gain more insight into whether they are likely to be lying or not.  

I also know that we tend to assume that other people behave the way we would behave.  So people who tell the truth (except maybe when a friend asks "can you tell that I've lost weight?") are more willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt.  People who frequently lie, will more likely assume that someone else is lying.  If you are dealing with a liar, giving the benefit of the doubt puts you at a disadvantage compared to the person who assumes he's lying.  But if you assume everyone you're dealing with is lying, I suspect your life won't be all that happy.  The key, for me, is to maintain a degree of skepticism, and find ways to test for the truth.  

This is one of those posts that jump right in to the basic theme of this blog - how do you know what you know?  If you were looking for answers, sorry to disappoint.  I learned long ago that the more I learn, the less I know.  Not because learning is a bad thing, but because you as you learn, you discover that the universe of things you don't know expands faster than the universe of things you do know.  

Gaining Morning Light

It's February 6.  Not quite seven weeks since the winter solstice.  Even though sunrise isn't until 9:07 am, at 8 today it was already getting light.  It helps a lot that there are not clouds.  Sunset is at 5:21pm and we'll have an hour or so of twilight then too.  Six more weeks until the equinox when the light will be the same all around the world.  Then the north starts getting more and more light.

Dan Coffey Says Housing, Public Inebriates, And Fiscal Problems Are His Top Priority

I got a flier and a robo-call inviting me to Don Jose's for a Dan Coffey for Mayor meet and greet.  Since that's reasonably close and walkable, and since I have never really had a chance to talk with Coffey, and since I'm a blogger, I figured I should go.









I got to talk to Dan with the camera running and so I want to share our conversation.  I've done a rough transcript of the video so you know what's on each section.

Quick Summary

Key Issues: (he told me and then repeated to the gathering)  Housing and public inebriates. And the fiscal problems that have arisen recently. Others he mentioned to the group:  Labor costs, developing Fairview, and fixing Title 21.

The video (with rough notes below) [The video is taking forever to upload to Youtube so I can embed it here.  I'm going to post this now and add the video when I get up in the morning.]




The Main Issues 00:00 - 2:25
What Do I Know?  You’ve had a successful career as an attorney so I presume that you’re comfortably well off. So why would you want to be mayor?
Coffey:  I’ve been here a long time, I know the challenges we face.  Things like housing,
Housing,  chronic public inebriates - we’ve talked about it a long time. I have a lot of . . .
I don’t want to say solutions. That’s the wrong word. I have ways that can be ameliorated. And we can be humane and we can save money.
Housing First works - I’ve spent about two years looking into this. Housing first saves substantial amounts also humane.
None of these folks started out at age ten saying “I’m going to be a street drunk.”
Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s just necessary because the impact they have on the community is devastating. I don’t condone their behavior and I don’t condone their action, but I sure as heck know we need to take steps to deal with it. Housing first seems to be the best possible alternative, but other things are involved. I know about these things because I made a study. I’m qualified, capable, and ready to take that action.
Then we need to build housing, and I don’t say affordable because I don’t mean subsidized. I say workforce housing. What is workforce housing? It’s for people who work for a living. They don’t get government help, but they’re capable of paying reasonable rent and housing themselves and family and so on. OK, we have to build more and more of that. I’ve spent a long time in the business of development of housing, commercial property, and subdivisions as an attorney. So I have a depth of knowledge. Those are the real qualifications and they happen to be the real challenges.
What Do I Know? : So those are the two big issues?
Dan Coffey: And the fiscal situation. What has come on since I started this in October of 13 is the fiscal situation. I’ve run businesses. I’m still in business. I run the Express Lube with my partner Terry. I used to on Dollar Rent A Car. And we own the Anchorage Aces. I’ve got lots and lots of business experience. That gives me business and managerial experience. The city is a billion dollar enterprise, so you want somebody who has at least some concept of what we do and how we do it in the mayor’s office. So there you go.


Respect Your Workforce And Coffey's Business Experience  2:25-3:05
What Do I Know? : But government is different from business. . .
Dan Coffey: Of course it is. But management of people is not.
What Do I Know? : No.
Dan Coffey: You respect your workforce. You train your workforce. You rely on your workforce. You run a cooperative enterprise that’s meant, in our case, provide services. In the city that’s 85% of what we do, provide services of all sorts.

Snow Plowing, Out of the Office Listening, Community Councils  3:30 - 7:05
Then I Complained about snow plowing today. I moved the car when I heard the plow, but he’d already done my side of the street and when he came back on the other side and saw my car in the driveway, he didn’t pull over and remove the big berm behind where my car had been.   Coffey at first didn’t have much sympathy for me. The guys in the plows are rushing to get all the neighborhoods.That happens to us all. Do you really think that’s a mayor’s job? (Introduces his wife.)

I counter that this happens all the time. People have to park on the street in my neighborhood and we never know when the plows are coming so we can move our cars. We have technology now to notify people Dan: Now you’re talking about making it work better and that is the Mayor’s job. We’ve got to do a better job of providing the services because we’re going to have less money to provide the services. Then I suggested notifying people better - using robo calls say - when plows are coming. Coffey liked that idea and then goes on to say that there are lots of ideas out there and that he’s not going to spend his time on the 8th floor. He’s going to be out there talking to folks and getting good ideas. He can’t go to every community council meeting, but he can stop in every three months or so and listen.


Road Through The University - $20 million could be saved  7:05- 9:45
So I brought up an issue for the community councils in the area - they all strongly oppose the road through the university land. He countered but there were others who like the idea - Providence, UAA, and APU. I talked about how Central Park was in the news lately and I saw that land around Goose Lake as Anchorage’s Central Park in the future. He said, well APU is going to develop all that. Well, just on the east and north - he rightly corrected me - on the south. Then he asked what I thought about the bridge over Seward Highway at 36th. We agreed that probably didn’t need to be built and he had to run to someone else. And my camera battery light was blinking hard that it was just about out of juice. When he came back to me he said his job is to work for his client - the people of Anchorage. I said that was easier if you only have one client instead of a whole city of clients with different ideas. That’s the job of the mayor he said - to listen to people and then make a decision.

Later, he talked to the crowd and repeated some of what he said to me almost word for word. So those will be some of his talking points I’m sure.
Dealing with the public inebriate issue and more housing. The inebriates are a big nuisance, but they are ill and many are mentally ill.
He talked about the unions. Dan Sullivan inherited a problem from Begich who gave the unions too good of a deal. Not the union’s fault - their job is to look after their members. But we can’t afford those contracts.
Develop Fairview - once we get the inebriate problem taken care of. Does that mean gentrification and moving out the present residents and building more expensive properties close to downtown? He didn’t talk about it like that.
He did say that they built Karluk Manor (the residence for homeless inebriates) too close to Fairview to they go back to their old friends.
Fixing Title 21 was another issue he raised. Coffey had been hired by Dan Sullivan to review Title 21 and make recommendations. There was a big battle over that. After years of developing Title 21 with broad public involvement, the developers got together with Sullivan and then Coffey to rewrite it more to their liking. At least that was how I saw things. So I asked what specifically he had in mind in changes to Title 21. That was one of the first things he had in mind with changing Title 21.
The only one he mentioned was the R4 - highest density areas, up to 30 units per acre - had a height limit of 3 stories. I’m thinking of a four plea in my neighborhood that is on 1/4 acre and is two stories. four like that, with three stories could have 24 units. And if they were designed better without the space between the lots, they ought to be able to get 30 units of mixed sized apartments on an acre.




My impressions? I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him before. When I watched him present his Title 21 recommendations he seemed to be an attorney presenting his case and swatting down any opposition. That’s what an attorney is supposed to do. But he was paid by the city - by all of us - to make those recommendations and the sense that I got was that he was reflecting the construction industry and not the rest of the folks in Anchorage. Tonight he was charming and he looked me in the eye. Was he really interested in what I had to say or was I just a fish nibbling at his election hook? I have no idea. He said he’s worked as an attorney for construction of residences, commercial property, and apartments. He may well believe that construction is both good for Anchorage and for his own pocketbook. Win-win.  And to a certain extent it is. But it’s not everything. What’s the interest in Fairview? To help the people already there to have a safer neighborhood?   Or are developers saying, “There’s lots of cheap real estate near downtown where we could buy up existing homes, tear them down, and rebuild it as a much more upscale neighborhood?”

While he talks about respecting his employees, he's set on taking on the labor unions.  The US did well in the 50s and 60's when taxes and union membership were highest.  But now the wages of executives have gone way, way up.  In part, they do this by cutting benefits, making jobs less secure, and holding down wages.  That results in a lower standard of living for today's workers than for their parents.  And a huge income disparity between the middle class and the rich.  And it increases the power of the relatively few rich over the rest of us.  A robust middle class keeps the economy humming.  Are there issues with some labor contracts?  Sure.  Letting some police and other workers  double their salary through overtime is a problem.  Especially when it greatly increases their retirement.  But that's a supervision problem, not a union problem.

I’m glad he’s talking about the illness of alcoholism and the mental health problems of the street people. But from what he said tonight, if they weren’t a nuisance to other people, if they didn’t cause problems in Fairview, where he’d like to do some development, then they wouldn’t be his top priority.

Can he get things done? Probably he can. Are they the things I’d like to see get done? That’s a bigger question. As I fly back and forth between Anchorage and LA to spend time with my mom, I look at the craziness of the building there. The density, since I left LA pushing 40 years ago, has increased dramatically and traffic is horrendous. Neighborhoods that were single family homes now have high rise condos. Areas that were wetlands and open space are masses of four and five story apartments. All the extra people driving the same old roads raises the stress level of everyone who has to drive. The Costco parking lot near my mom is a nightmare and the traffic inside the store makes our Costcos seem like vacation resorts.

Where I see green space and a chance to save $20 million (land at UAA and Goose Lake), he sees a chance to develop.  It's easy to think we don't need the in town green space because we're surrounded by the nature.  But kids need to get to parks by foot and by bike.  We shouldn't have to drive every time we want some natural space.  It's what make Anchorage so livable.

I think about Pete Zamarillo who figured out how to make lots of money building strip malls. And when the economy tanked, he continued to make strip malls, because that’s what he knew how to do. I’m afraid that what has worked in the past for Coffey - helping developers get their projects done - needs to be countered by preservation of open space, views, and making sure the population density doesn’t begin to overrun the infrastructure. He understands the parts of Title 21 that irritate builders. But does he understand why the non-builders want the builders to have restrictions on what they can do? Does he understand that we don’t want a schlocky city created by builders who cut corners to increase their profit and then they retire to Palm Springs?

[Updated 6:00 am:  A couple more thoughts on the video as I watched it again to get the times for each section.  I like, a lot, that he recognized that we don't get solutions for things like public inebriates, but rather we can ameliorate the situation.  I've heard very few politicians who have voiced that important distinction.  I'm concerned a bit that he declares himself an expert "because I studied the problem."  I think studying helps, of course, but I've studied issues for years and recognize that there is so much more I still don't know.  I'm better informed than most, but humility about one's level of mastery is the best way to keep open to the many subtleties still to be grasped.  But studying the problem at all is more than many politicians do.]

I don’t know.   He said he has five or six more of these community meet and greets scheduled. Go talk to him yourself and let me know what you think.

Ida Plus Academy Award Nominee Shorts - Docs and Live Action

Picture from IMDB

First we saw Ida.  A beautiful black and white Polish film that I could connect to in a variety of ways.
1960 or so.  Ida is a teenaged sister in a convent.  She's preparing to be a nun.  But first she's told she must go visit her aunt, the one who hadn't bothered to come visit her ever.

The movie is about the relationship between Ida, Wanda, her aunt, and the revelation of their past - her family was Jewish and killed in the woods, except for Ida.  How did it happen?  The aunt takes her to the village they came from to meet the family now living in their old home.  The movie also explores Ida's identity crisis described well by her aunt who ironically asks, "A Jewish nun?"

The village reminded me of the farmland along the East-West German border near Göttingen where I was a student only four years after the time in the film.  And I too searched my mother's parents'' graves in the Jewish cemetery in Köln.  And my step-mother has talked about coming home from the labor camps to find new people in her home and much of the family furniture among the neighbors  In 82 minutes, Ida, which seems to move so slowly, richly fills in the history of these two women's lives.  We feel like we know them intimately.

A remarkable movie.  The New Yorker review gives much more depth than I have time for.  You can see the Ida trailer here.  (Don't be put off by the ad.)  Ida is up for an Academy Award for best foreign language film.


Then we saw the Academy Award nominated short documentaries and tonight we saw the short live action films. (This just means fiction or narrative films.)

There's so much going through my head.  It was good to see the Anchorage International Film Festival's best documentary - White Earth - in the running.  The films were all good, yet I couldn't help thinking, "These are the best shorts in the world?"

I would love to introduce Aya - an Israeli woman - who while waiting to pick someone up at the Ben Gurion airport, is given asked to hold a passenger sign for a few minutes, while the chauffeur who's there to pick the person up quickly moves his car.  She ends up taking the passenger to his hotel in Jerusalem and charming her Danish passenger once he decides she's not going to kidnap him.  I think she enjoy spending time with Wanda and Ida.

I think Universal Love which won the Founder's Award at the AIFF in December, but none of the short film awards, was good enough to fit in with this group of shorts.  But they were all good.  The Phone Call about a woman at a suicide prevention center talking to an older man whose taken enough pills to take care of things and won't give his address would have seemed much better if we hadn't seen real live phone volunteers in the short doc, Crisis Hotline:  Veterans Press 1,  talking to a series of vets the night before.  That was powerful too, but felt more like a promotional film for the hotline. It focused - as a crisis hotline must - on the immediate emergency at hand.  It didn't look, as a movie could have, at the larger political and economic reasons why these soldiers were sent to war zones that caused their suicidal conditions.

There were two more Polish films, both very personal family films.  Joanna was a follows a terminal cancer patient's months of leave taking from her son and husband.  Our Curse gives us a husband and wife grappling with the news their newborn son has Ondine’s Curse (also known as Congenital Central Hypoventilation Syndrome or CCHS) and breathe on his on while  asleep.   They talk through their frustration that the baby is still at the hospital,  their fears for his and their futures, and they struggle with the equipment when he does get home.  These two are powerful films and with two very young grandkids I found Our Curse very hard to watch.  

I'd seen White Earth twice already in December at AIFF.  It stood up well the third time - a beautifully film shot in the oil patch of North Dakota.  Why I picked it my favorite in December was its tight editing, stunning photography, and ability to tell the story through the voices of the people in the film, not through a narrator.  The other AIFF documentaries were all compelling, but needed editing.

La Parka (The Reaper) source

My favorite Monday night was the Mexican documentary about the slaughterhouse worker.  Such an exquisitely filmed movie!  The visual story seemed to be told in reflection and shadows.  Lots of gritty still life geometrical patterns of walls, chains, ropes, floors, amplified with loud crashes and clangs,  We see blurred animals, feet of animals, carcasses, but relatively few whole beasts.  And we hear the slaughterer talk about how he's made peace with the notion that he kills 500 bulls a day.  He doesn't sound quite convinced.  I haven't seen American Sniper, but it might be good to see it paired with La Parker (The Reaper).  

La Parka - screen shot from trailer

The camera sat on this picture as the cat walked from the truck until it was hidden by the steps.  

The film starkly yet subtly raised the ethical dilemmas of slaughter houses.  

La Parka screenshot from trailer

And it paused on the shot below a few long seconds too.  

I'd also like to introduce the character Parveneh to Ida.  Pari is an Afghan woman sewing in Switzerland trying to send money home to her mom to pay for her dad's operation.  Although she's traveled far, she seems as sheltered as Ida was in the convent.  A sweet film.

And as I move to my favorite, I can't skip the most delightful of the films - Boogaloo and Graham.  With armed soldiers walking down the Irish streets in 1978, Dad brings home two baby chicks for the boys.  This was the funniest of all the films.  The only other one that offered some good laughs was Aya.  The boys were priceless.  

Butter Lamp source

Butter Lamp took the honors for me with its original concept and fine execution.  We watch as a traveling photographer takes photos of Tibetan families in front of an ever changing set of backdrops.  Charming.   

But I wouldn't be upset if any of them won- particularly Aya or Boogaloo and Graham.

Below are the two lists with links to the trailers.  

Live Action

• Aya
• Boogaloo and Graham
• Butter Lamp
• Parvaneh
• The Phone Call

Documentary

• Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
• Joanna
• Our Curse
• The Reaper (La Parka)
• White Earth

The New York Times also has a review (including the animated shorts).