In Argentina, There Was A Love That People Showed For Each Other

I don't have pictures, because these moments came when I didn't have my camera out, and because I'm hesitant to intrude in intimate moments, but let me give you several examples of the caring I saw among people in Argentina.

1.  People greet each other with hugs that include cheek to cheek contact

I don't know the rules of who hugs who like this.  Certainly family members, but also work colleagues, friends, and even we received this treatment from people.  This contact is male-female, female-female, and male-male.  I think this - I want to say intimacy, but maybe it's because my US cultural perspective sees it that way - physical contact breaks down barriers that handshakes can't.


2.  I saw lots of fathers really enjoying being with their young children

Men would have their kids on their shoulders, or mock battle with them, men would become little kids themselves in their play with their children.  And there was an obvious love that sparkled in the eyes of parent and child and showed in the natural smiles they shared.  I'm not saying there aren't cold fathers in Argentina, just that I saw a lot more pure love showing than I see in the US.

3.  Mate bonding

I've mentioned mate in a few posts already.  It's a kind of tea that Argentines (Uruguayans and Chileans) drink from small gourd cups through metal straws. I guess gourds were the original cups, but they also use ceramic cups.  Everywhere you see people with their mate cups and a small thermos to replenish the hot water.

Bus drivers, people walking down the street, teachers, everybody drinks mate and it's a ritual.  People don't toss their mate cups the way Americans toss their latte cups.
But I'm talking about mate again here because people share their mate.  They share their metal mate straws.  The only thing like it I can think of in the US would be people sharing a joint.  

     Here's the bus driver on one of our tours adding hot water to his mate.













And here he's sharing his mate with the guide.

  

4.  Airplane Safety Video

Aerolíneas had an animated safety video - all the stuff about seat belts, oxygen masks, that we see or hear every time a flight is about to take off.  What made this animation different was that when the mother put the child's oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, the mother lovingly and ever so fleetingly (and unconsciously) she strokes the child's cheek.  And when the mother is shown helping the child get on his life rest, again, she reassuringly tousles his hair.

I've never seen anything like that in an airline safety message before.  And while there are commercials that show that sort of thing, I don't think I've ever seen one as natural as this.  I could be wrong, but I felt like the artist just put the love into the animation and no one objected.  Though it's quite possible they spent hours debating this.  But for me, the outcome was one more example of a human bonding that I saw lots of in Argentina.  (We weren't in Chile or Brazil long enough to make such observations.)


OK, that's it.  In this time of great interpersonal nastiness unleashed by the US president, I thought it important to shine a little lot of these acts of love.  I have no illusions that Argentinians aren't capable of evil - they demonstrated that in the 70s and 80s.  But these moments of caring did catch my attention.

Recoleta Open Market

The cemetery is a major destination in Buenos Aires, but while we had passed it, we hadn’t had time to go in.  An added bonus of going yesterday was the Recoleta weekend outdoor market around it on Saturday.  Here are a few pictures to give a sense of it.  Basically it was decorative arts - lots of jewelry, leather work, clothing, paintings, and other odds and ends.

  

There was even a bit of tango in front of the entrance to the cemetery.   The paintings weren’t my style.  A lot of pictures of Argentine themes and then stuff like this.

 

 Mate (pronounced MA-te) is an Argentine tea.  You stick a lot of leaves into the cup and keep refilling it with hot water and drink the tea through a metal straw.  This man is selling mate. Cups and straws.

“Drinking mate is highly ritualised, its conventions and procedures are fixed and never broken. Gringos stirring the tea with the bombilla will, for example, be met with Argentineans diving to recover the mate. It is just one faux pas among many”. [From The Real Argentina ]

This woman below had beautiful painted boxes and other small items.

I couldn’t figure out how to take a good picture of all the booths that make up the market.  So this picture is here just to give you a vague sense.  In parts there are booths on both sides.  This was when we first got there and more vendors kept showing up.

Alaska Dems Join Alaska First Unity Party - Daring or Desperation?

What Just Happened?

Alaska's Democratic candidate for governor Byron Mallot on Wednesday became the running mate for a lifelong Republican Bill Walker who is running as an Independent.  There will be no Democratic candidate for governor and Mallot has taken the number two spot on the Alaska First Unity Party ticket.

Mallot's Lt. Gov running mate, Hollis French, and Walker's running mate, Craig Fleenor, both agreed to withdraw.

The ADN has a page looking at how things got to this point.

So Who Is Bill Walker?

Bill Walker is a Republican running as an independent against the sitting Republican governor Sean Parnell.  From Walker's "Why I'm Running" statement:

 “It is time to pull together in order to move the state forward and seek not what is in the best interests of the Republicans or the Democrats, but aggressively pursue what is in the best interests of Alaskans,”. . .  

“I am not running for governor to advance a political career. I am running to assure that Alaska regains control of our resources and our future without bowing to party or special interests.”

People I've talked to say he's a straight-up guy and that this is genuine, not posturing



So, Daring or Desperation?

First, never accept simplistic binary options like this.  Either/or statements, especially about human relationships, are almost always gross simplifications.  There are lots of options between the two poles of the continuum. And there are other continua you could lay over this situation.

Second, I'd say it was both.  Let's start with the desperation part and then go to the daring.

The Desperation Part
 
Mallot has an incredible resume of service to Alaska:

• life-long Alaskan who's held high level positions 
• in most administrations since Statehood, including Executive Director of the one sacred agency in Alaska, the Permanent Fund, 
• in banking, heading several banks and serving on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• in Alaska Native leadership positions including CEO of Sealaska Native Corporation and President of the Alaska Federation of Native
• in local politics as Mayor of Juneau

But as a campaigner, he's failed to light up audiences. Republicans will claim this abandonment of a Democratic candidate on the ballot just shows how weak the Mallot's campaign is and they wouldn't be wrong.   Polls showed Republican governor Sean Parnell way ahead in a three way race against, it's closer in a two way race.  


The Daring Part

Daring:  : "willing to do dangerous or difficult things"

The Democrats are making a number of unprecedented moves and putting their fate in the hands of a Republican who lost in the Republican primary in 2010. There are a number of open questions:

• What will be the long term effect of not having a Democratic candidate - the first time since statehood in 1959?
• What influence will the Democrats have from the second spot on a team headed by a Republican. [Actually Walker changed his affiliation to Undeclared just before this went down.  But that doesn't change his long held conservative values.]
• Will a Walker/Mallot coalition in Juneau be better than Parnell/Sullivan?  [It's hard to ask that question with a straight face, but it's true the election will be between two Republicans.] 
• Will Democrats field a candidate against Walker in 2018, if the Independents win in 2014?
• Will Walker stick by his non-partisan rhetoric after the election?  After four years?
• How will this affect the next redistricting in 2020 if Walker is reelected?  Will he let his Lt. Gov pick one of the two governor picked members of the board?

While the agreement includes Walker promising not to push for more abortion restrictions, there's no guarantee of what will actually happen if he gets elected.

What I see as significant about this move is the willingness of the Democrats to marry outside their religion - so to speak - in order to defeat Parnell.  Third party candidates have impacted Alaska gubernatorial elections in the past, and with Walker and Mallot likely to split their voters if they compete, people expected that Parnell would cruise to reelection.

So, What Are The Answers?

Were they desperate?  I don't know that that's the right word, but unless something quite remarkable happened, they weren't going to win the election.  The odds for the Walker/Mallot team are much better.  I would say that Mallot has the experience and knowledge and integrity that would be great in a governor, but not the skills that are great in a candidate.  Some of this may be cultural.  Modesty, not trying to bring attention to oneself, speaking slowly and deliberately have all been mentioned as characteristics of traditional Alaska Native cultures.  But modern American electioneering - the self-promotion, the need for snappy sound bytes - don't favor that style. 


Were they daring?   To the extent that they broke with politics as usual?  Absolutely.  They weren't hung up about not having a Democratic candidate running for governor.  They accepted Mallot running for Lt. Gov with a conservative Republican.  (Who changed his affiliation to Nonpartisan just before this happened.)  I was surprised by the reporters at the press conference who harped on Walker's changing to Nonpartisan and on Mallot's 'abandoning' the people who voted for him as the Democratic governor candidate.  Yes, there might be a few people who aren't into daring, but there will always be people who can't handle change. 

I think that the 89-2 vote by the Democratic central committee suggests that they felt it would take them from a certain Parnell victory to a good chance of a Parnell defeat.  And I'm sure they would say that was more important than some hypothetical obligation to primary voters in this instance. 

And it's daring in the risky sense, because if Walker is elected, there's no telling what he will actually do as governor.  Lt. Govs have been left out in the cold before.  I wonder to what extent Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell's speedy approval of this plan was partly in reaction to how he's been treated by Parnell.  And Walker promised that Mallot would be in the governor's office, not 300 feet away. 

People have had time to watch Walker.  Mallot said that on the election trail the last year, he's grown to know and respect Walker, and Walker said the same of Mallot.  My sense is that Walker's zeal is for energy issues and a gas pipeline and he can live without pushing conservative social issues.  But that does remain to be seen. 

I think the most attractive part of this ticket will be the bold action they've taken to break from traditional partisanship.   They aren't just talking nonpartisan - they've done it.   If the people who complain about how bad partisan politics has become are serious, then voting for Walker/Mallot is a way of showing it. 

And while Republicans have a large edge over Democrats in voter registration, more people are registered as Nonpartisan and Undeclared than as Democrats and Republicans combined.  (If you register as Independent in Alaska, that's really the Alaska Independence Party that's at times advocated for Alaska to secede from the US.  Nonpartisan means you aren't connected to any party, and Undeclared means you don't want to say.)


So, I'd say this was a daring act spurred by the belief that there was not way the Democrats or Walker, both running separately, could defeat Parnell.  It will stir up an election already packed with initiatives (legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage, and  protecting Bristol Bay salmon ostensibly from Pebble Mine) and one of the most expensive US Senate races in the country between Sen. Mark Begich and Dan Sullivan.  There's also an Anchorage Municipal referendum to repeal a controversial labor ordinance.    



Below is video from the Tuesday (September 2, 2014) announcement at the Captain Cook Hotel.  First, Mallot, and then Walker.  So you can get a sense of these two candidates yourselves.




Here's Walker.






More photos of the press conference are at this previous post.

Argentina’s Bad-Ass Keys And Other Leftovers

We’re back in Mendoza to get a flight this evening to Santiago.  I was showing Alberto the post I did about his hotel, when I noticed that another post talked about all the missing posts.  So I’ll try to share some pics that haven’t made it up here because of time.


Argentina has some serious keys.  These are the ones we had in San Juan for the eclipse, but we had similar ones in Buenos Aires and Mendoza.  Only the hotel in Port Iquazú had a magnetic card to open the door.
 

 

Eclipse Light - One thing I learned from the eclipse is that the sun is really, really bright.  I thought I’d take pictures of the landscape at different points during the eclipse.  But it wasn’t until the moon was almost completely blocking the sun that there was much difference.

There were se veral pics that looked like the one above.

Eventually it got a little darker.

Then much darker.  The next ones were dark enough that the exposure was so long that they are blurred.  Just take my word for it, the pictures aren’t worth seeing.  Plus, the camera tries to adjust and make it look lighter than it really was.  At times like this I yearn for my old film Pentax camera.

Then the new brightness as the sun came back out.

It was extremely rocky where we watched the eclipse.  Everywhere was like this pic below.

Finally, mate.  Here’s Carlos, our host in San Juan, drinking his mate while we waited for the eclipse.
I showed some mate cups and talked about this Argentine obsession in an earlier post.

Green Party Convention and Other Third Party Presidential Candidates We Missed

While the Alaska blogosphere has been talking about Alaska bloggers going to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, I haven't seen any mention of the Green Party National Convention that took place this past weekend in Chicago. Here was their schedule.

According to CBS

(CBS/AP) Green Party delegates have selected former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia as the party's presidential nominee..
.
McKinney tapped Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist, journalist and activist, as her running mate.

McKinney, 53, entered politics by following her father, an Atlanta policeman who later served in the Georgia State House. She won her first seat in 1988, and later ran for and won a House race in 1992, becoming the first African American woman to represent Georgia in Congress. . .

Clamente, 36, born in the Bronx and of Puerto Rican descent, was raised in one of the nation's poorest communities, and became an activist and journalist angered by the Bush administration's response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I choose to do this, not for me, but for my generation, my community and my daughter," she said of the nomination. "I don't see the Green Party as an alternative; I see it as an imperative."

I also didn't see any coverage of the Libertarian Convention that was held May 22-26 in Denver, where they also nominated a former congress person, Bob Barr. But I can't imagine that there weren't a couple of Alaska blogs that covered this. I just couldn't find any. Barr's campaign site biography begins this way:

Bob Barr is the 2008 Libertarian nominee for President of the United States. Previously, he represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, serving as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. He now practices law with the Law Offices of Edwin Marger, and runs a consulting firm, Liberty Strategies LLC, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and with offices in the Washington, D.C. area. Barr works tirelessly to help preserve our fundamental right to privacy and our other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

For more go to the Barr website.

The Libertarian vice president candidate is Wayne Allyn Root

Wayne Allyn Root is the 2008 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential nominee. Founder and Chairman of a successful small business, Wayne is a self-made businessman as well as an author and television producer. Wayne's professional life has focused in the realm of business, though he maintains a deep interest in the political sphere in addition to his commercial pursuits. This dynamic has created a political perspective similar to that of the average American, and the air of a true "citizen-politician."

The rest is at another page on the Barr site. It includes a short video too.

Who else are we missing?

MapsofWorld.com offers these other third party candidates (how many third party candidates can you have? Seems like we need to start thinking about 4th, 5th, 6th party candidates, or just other party candidates): Constitution Party, Prohibition Party, Socialist Party.

The Constitution Party had its convention at the end of April, but their last online news update is from early May:

Constitution Party Chooses Baldwin - 5/18/2008
At its April 24-27 national convention in Kansas City, the Constitution Party nominated Florida pastor/political activist Charles O. Chuck Baldwin as its candidate for president of the United States. Baldwin received 383.8 votes to 125.7 garnered by Marylands Alan Keyes and a few given to minor candidates. During the...
After having been named the party’s nominee, he asked the convention to nominate Tennessee attorney Darrell Castle as his running mate, and his request was honored.

The Prohibition Party's website doesn't say a lot. They are against the sale of alcohol. The blog Third Party Watch says their presidential candidate Gene Amondson told a Florida reporter he would probably vote for McCain. One of the commenters noted,

I guess we can rule out that he was drunk when he said it.

From VoteSocialist2008.org, the nominees of the Socialist Party:

For President and Vice President of the United States: Brian Moore of Florida and Stewart Alexander of California.

Alaska Political Bloggers Credited

Phil at Progressive Alaska just alerted me about this post at Media Matters by Erik Boehlert Saradise Lost: How Alaska bloggers dethroned Sarah Palin (another case where the title goes well beyond what the article actually says.)

I'm not suggesting that homegrown bloggers alone were responsible for Palin's "no más" moment, but there's no question that the online activists played a key role. That with their shit-kicking brand of frontier citizen journalism, they drove Palin to distraction and changed the way voters nationwide thought about the governor. So if conservative bloggers get credit for driving Dan Rather out of the anchor chair in 2004 following their Memogate campaign-season tale, then the band of scrappy liberal bloggers in Alaska ought to be allowed to bask in a bit of glory, because they made their own history when Palin announced her exit.

Now, Palin has already credited bloggers in her resignation speech. But I guess we saw that as being made scapegoats. Boehlert's comments feel different.

Even What Do I Know? is listed in the story (thanks to Phil's den mother-like devotion to his digital-campers.) While it's true I have written way more Palin posts than I think is good for my mental health, the real bulldogs in this story are (stand up and take a bow as your name is called):

Alaska Progressive
Mudflats
Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis
Just a Girl From Homer
Immoral Minority

along with

AndrewHalcro.com

who's written some critical posts - such as the stuff on Troopergate which began before the VP nomination. (There are lots of other Alaska bloggers who regularly touch on matters political, but the listed blogs were almost all-Palin, all-the-time.)


I take some pride in being, I'm sure, the first website to link to Progressive Alaska, even before it actually went public, having met Phil at the Kohring (or maybe it was the Kott) trial. From the beginning he had ideas of finding a way organize bloggers into a force to post the important stories that the local newspapers were missing. But, as others have mentioned, the pivotal event for Alaska political bloggers was McCain's announcement of his VP running mate.

While some of this pack of self-taught journalists have been more shrill and less polite than is my preference, I have no doubt that those qualities were critical to their success. We get the vacuous news the MSM gives us because that's what most people want. I used to dispute that, but I can see how many hits I get for different posts, and Palin sells, big!

And this isn't good. Other difficult stories aren't being adequately covered - like what's happening in the fishing wars of the North Pacific. We should be unraveling of the complex legal and financial web, including Uncle Ted's role, of what some say is the North Pacific's version of the destruction of the North Atlantic fisheries.

Alaskan bloggers, though, have had a special duty to cover Palin, not simply as a local politician, but because of her national aspirations.

But I would like to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that had Alaskan bloggers as agents with direct links to the White House. While there is a loose email connection among the larger group, and individual bloggers see each other more or less frequently, this is a pretty rag-tag group, united in their dedication to be Alaska's crap detectors.

To give you a sense of how 'loose' this group is, I remember first meeting Linda of Celtic Diva at the Alaska Democratic Convention last May. Then again at a hastily arranged dinner last September out at Phil's place to meet with journalists from Outside who were here to find out about Palin. . That's when I also briefly met Mudflats and Gryphen (from Immoral Minority). And there was a barbecue at Phil's place too. And that's the last time I think I've seen most of them. I'd met Shannyn Moore already at one of the political trials. I've bumped into some of them at events we were all covering - like the Alaska women against Palin demonstration - but other than that, I've had no contact. When I was taking the computer art class last fall, I sometimes ran into Phil while I was locking my bike and he'd come out from his office (music is in the same building as art) for a cigarette break. (He's quit since then.) And the odd email now and then. I realize some of the others have gotten together more often, but this is not a highly polished get-Sarah machine. It is individuals with computers at home who get too little sleep and drink too much coffee, so they can share what they find out about what is behind the facade.

And there were others who offered us encouragement and inspiration along the way, like Matt Browner Hamlin who was in Alaska working on the Begich campaign and had done political blogging in the East (Massachusetts if I recall right[It's Connecticut.]) He raised our sights about what bloggers could do.

Eric Boehlert has already tipped his hat to this group of bloggers in a chapter in his recent book The Bloggers on the Bus.


So what has this group done?

Followed up on every rumor they heard. They didn't always post what they heard, but they looked through the evidence and

• after getting it from several sources, but without confirmation, reported it as a rumor
• got more information and confirmed or rejected it
• analyzed the data available and offered possible explanations and their reasoning
• sometimes taken too much glee in Palin missteps
• kept a constant vigil on everything Palin said, giving her no lattitude when she stretched the truth, and she kept them very busy
  

They've (I'm not sure what it means that I'm using 'they' instead of 'we' but I'll not worry about it and go on that way) posted lots of videos and pictures, of varying levels of good taste, that related to Palin, and had links to local and national stories on Palin.

They've also been sources of information for Outside journalists. Overall, while some of the group have been louder than necessary and sometimes a little fast with declarative sentences, most of the bloggers have qualified their claims based on how much they actually knew or how solid the evidence was.

One critical contribution was the group's early awareness of what Don Mitchell said last week, that Palin is a celebrity, not a serious politician. But unlike Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin held an elected political office, so she was accountable in a way that celebrities aren't. Now that she's almost out of office, she can take advantage of that celebrity without getting flak for not doing a competent job as governor. However, if she plans to continue trying to influence public policy and democratic elections, there will continue to be an open season on Sarah Palin.

[Update July 20, 2009: As I've had time to think more about this, I believe the biggest contribution the so-called progressive blogs was to give Alaska liberals a media presence, a sense of identity and of political efficacy. I've posted an addition to this post today explaining why.]

Sometimes Just One Side is Right

Our mainstream media often like to tout their impartiality by equally reporting 'both sides' of the story. Sometimes they even search out the single person in favor of something (who more likely than not stands to profit from his position) to have a 'balanced' story. We're told that there are always two sides to a story. Often there are three or four or more. When I was a grievance coordinator, it was always important to keep this in mind when a union member was telling me his tale of woe. I always had to think about what facts were being unintentionally left out, or what the person being grieved against would say.

But sometimes there is a right side and a wrong side. One person was the aggressor and did something wrong and the other person is totally in the right. Or one solution is clearly much better than the other. ("You need to take a cab home, you are way too drunk." "No, no, I can drive home.")

So as we get ready to vote on Tuesday (for those of you who haven't voted early), try as I might, weighing everything from ideology to personality, I can't help but conclude that the Obama-Biden team is so clearly the right choice compared to the McCain-Palin team.

Let's look at this from a couple of sides.

1. Ideology - The McCain-Palin ticket picks up from where the Bush-Cheney administration left off. The war. The faith in unregulated capitalism. The anti-government sentiment. The mixing of religion and politics. The McCain people I hear on the radio saying, "Obama scares me" leave me shaking my head. How could Obama scare you more than a continuation of George W. Bush? (I know you can argue McCain's not Bush, but his policies are pretty damn close.)

It just seems to me that Obama's world view is closer to how things actually are, so that he's just more likely to take a cab home when he needs to, and to drive home when he can. McCain was wrong about getting into Iraq. He admits (generally a good sign, except when you're running for president) he doesn't know that much about economics.

Obama has a well educated grasp on the economy and basically on a way of thinking about problems and coming up with solutions. He also has a white and black parent. He is truly bi-racial and can see the world from both the perspectives of a black man and a white man. This makes him much better connected to the current and growing diversity of the United States population. He's not into denial about racism in America, but through his white mother and grandparents, he understands their perspective too. He went to school for a while in Indonesia! That means he probably knows where it and other Southeast Asian countries are on the map, not to mention he probably has some understanding that the people there are just as real and just as human as the people of the United States. Meanwhile Sarah Palin even makes distinctions between real and unreal Americans.

We can debate how we get out of Iraq, how we negotiate with Iran, about how to ensure the most people possible get decent health coverage and educations. But I can't help but feel that Obama's much less blinded by ideology and much more connected to reasoned and practical action. And that he can adapt as conditions change.

And we're seeing a number of high level Conservatives and Republicans, like Colin Powell, who despite their ideological alliance with the Republican Party, who are endorsing Obama. Reasoning Republicans are starting to realize how bad the McCain-Palin ticket could be.

2. Personality

Obama is a black man who grew up in the United States. As I've said before, to get where he is today, he had to learn how to control his anger. Angry black men don't survive, and certainly do not thrive in the white world. We saw, time and time again, how Obama answered attacks and challenges coolly, rationally, in measured tones. In contrast we've seen McCain lurch impulsively through this campaign. His choice of Palin was, we have found out, not preceded by the kind of thorough vetting most presidential candidates use. It was a gut decision based on superficial view of her strengths, but no awareness of the weaknesses. His decision to postpone the first debate so he could solve the financial crisis and then his change of mind all show his unsteadiness. We see him and much more his running mate foment unfounded fear about Obama's loyalty, race, and religion. This is not the way I want to see America go.

As I listen to people opposed to Obama, I hear platitudes - "he's inexperienced" followed by numerical proof that Palin's years as governor and mayor make her more qualified than Obama. Yes, that makes logical sense out of context of all the other factors. It ignores the embarrassing point that George W. had even more executive experience than Palin. Logically, perhaps that means that Obama is better qualified. We heard the ridiculous attempts to justify Palin's foreign policy experience by citing the fact that Alaska is near Russia. These are arguments are so absurd that I can't take seriously the reasoning or rationality of the people making them. These are the kinds of silliness people get into when they are trying to defend the undefendable. There aren't two sides here.

And then there are the people who won't vote for Obama because his middle name is Hussein or because they believe, or want to believe, he's a Muslim, or because he's 'not a Christian,' and because he's, well, you know, um, black. And I forgot a socialist and communist. I was always waiting for someone to ask Palin exactly what socialist means and how that fits in with the "owner state" concept and the government giving out checks to its citizens.

If the only thing you care about is overturning Roe v. Wade, then, well, probably you should vote for McCain. His next Supreme Court choice will probably swing the court. Unless he chooses the way he chose Palin.

If you have more money than you could ever spend in your lifetime and you take pleasure in knowing that most people are comparatively poorer and will never be as rich as you, then McCain might be your better choice. But remember, the current financial crisis has cost most investors way, way more than any capital gains tax ever envisioned would have.

If Obama is elected, the US will finally walk back onto the world stage as a respected world power. There is a chance that we can take on the challenges of the 21st Century, with models of the world that match the new conditions of the world. That doesn't mean an Obama administration will glide through those challenges. In some cases there will be choices that force us to compromise one value to advance another, and we'll fight over which one gets advanced and which doesn't. Obama's team will make mistakes. Some will be corrupted by power. But, overall, the Obama ticket seems so much more ready to take on this task than does the McCain ticket.


Sometimes there is only one right side. This, in my (some would say not so) humble opinion, is one of them.

Beets + (Less) Salt = Better Deiced Roads - True or False?

A friend sent me a link to this video, dated Jan. 7 (presumably 2014) on why adding beet juice (from the left-over pulp from making sugar that used to be thrown away) can be used at colder temperatures and drastically reduces the chloride necessary to deice roads, thus doing less environmental damage.






Of course, I checked to see what others have said and it turns out this isn't really new news. This is from a 2008 USA Today piece

By Terry Kinney, Associated Press Writer

CINCINNATI — A concoction of beet juice and salt that is kinder to concrete and metal is getting mostly favorable reviews from a growing number of states and cities looking for more effective ways to treat ice- and snow-covered roads.

It works by lowering the freezing temperature of the brine that's used to pretreat roads, experts say. And it's made from a waste product that was dumped down the drain before this new use was discovered.

Road crews learned long ago that pretreating highways with brine before a storm helps prevent the accumulation of snow and ice. Then they learned that adding beet juice to the brine could make the treatment effective at lower temperatures.

A commercial product called Geomelt uses the beet juice that's left after sugar has been extracted from sugar beets. The Ohio Department of Transportation is testing it in 11 counties, spokesman Scott Varner said Wednesday.

"Rock salt alone stops melting snow at about 18 degrees; Geomelt goes to 20 below," Varner said.  .   .   .

They use it in North Dakota where they grow sugar beets.  In Wisconsin they use cheese.  A report out of Chicago  the other day:

Many places around the country are mixing up strange de-icing concoctions, adding things like cheese brine, molasses, and potatoes.
Here in North Dakota beet juice is the not-so-secret ingredient. .  .

Of course, beet juice is abundant locally, with North Dakota's robust sugar beet industry.

Other places use the same concept, for example, in Milwaukee they use cheese brine leftover from cheese making. [cheese link added]

Potatoes?  We grow potatoes well in Alaska.  Does it make more sense to use them to clear the roads or to eat them?  And will beet or potato residue attract moose to the roads?
The Daily Iowan reported in Dec. 2011:

Effectiveness is without a doubt the most important, because human lives are the primary beneficiary. Cost is also to be considered — many municipalities, especially Iowa City, continually face crippling budget restraints. The third principal factor is the environmental impact of a given substance. For instance, road salt often makes its way into urban and other waterways, compromising drinking water and wildlife — not even to mention the detrimental effects of salt-mining.

One natural substance can make the substances we use more powerful, more cost-effective, and more sustainable: sugar beet juice. Both the University of Iowa and Iowa City recognized the advantages of beet-juice formula — often marketed as either ProMelt (pre-mixed) or GeoMelt (unmixed) — and use it to secure our streets.

"We're on our third season using GeoMelt," said John Sobaski, Iowa City's assistant superintendent for streets and traffic engineering. "We receive 1,500 of the 3,000 tons, and we treated that 1,500 tons right here on site. It doesn't take much to coat it, and we have a two- to three-day residual effect on the pavement. It does reduce corrosion, as well, and keeps the stockpile flowing nicely.

"At a cost of $10 per ton, it's been very cost-effective and beneficial."

Hold on though.   Is this just manufacturer hype that the media have eaten up uncritically?  Have the states who use this stuff  done scientific tests or are they using just anecdotal evidence to justify their expenditures on these products? 

A report by the Western Transportation Institute at the University of Montana for the State of Minnesota  is not as effusive about the  benefits of agricultural by-products (ABPs).

Additives such as agricultural by-products (ABP s) or organic by-product enhancers are also blended with these primary chemicals to improve their performances in snow and ice control. Known additives are corn syrup, corn steeps, and other corn derivatives; beet juice-sugared or de-sugared; lignin/lignosulfonate ; molasses (usually from sugar cane); brewers/distillers by- product; and glycerin. A variety of agro-based chemicals are being used either alone or as additives for other winter maintenance chemicals (73). Agro-based additives increase cost but may provide enhanced ice-melting capacity, reduce the deicer corrosiveness, and/or last longer than standard chemicals when applied on roads ( 74). Furthermore, agro-based additives utilize renewable resources and have low environmental impact. Alkoka and Kandil examined a deicing product named Magic, which was a blend of ABPs and liquid MgCl 2 ( 75 ). The working temperature of the product was found to be down to -20ºF. Pesti and Liu evaluated the use of salt brine and liquid corn salt on Nebraska highways and found liquid corn salt to be more cost- effective because it achieved bare pavement conditions quicker than salt brine and contributed to more significant road user savings (76). Fu conducted field testing in the City of Burlington, Canada of two different beet molasses based mate rials (30% beet juice + 70% salt brine) and regular salt brine (23% NaCl) us ed as pre-wetting and anti-icing agents over nine snow events. The results indicated organic materials for pre-wetting under low temperatures did not perform significantly better. With a higher cost than regular brine, organic materials can reduce the amount of chlorides released into the environment. However, the results from this study are limited to the application rates and the observe d winter conditions (77) . The Swedish National Road and Transport Institute evaluated the fricti on characteristics of three types of mixtures. A brine made with 30% sugar beet flour used to pre-wet salt resulted in no significant friction improvement. Longer term performance was observed with sand mixed with hot water (78).  Fay and Shi (19) developed a systematic approach to assist maintenance agencies in selecting or formulating their deicers, which integrates the information available pertinent to various aspects of deicers and incorporates agency priorities.

This post deserves a lot more research.  But I don't think I need to research everything.  I see one of my jobs as finding interesting possibilities and also asking questions and this issue seems relevant to Alaska.

When Was the Last Presidential Nominee Decided At A Convention? Will It Happen Again This Year?

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pan.6a27874/

On July 14, 1960, a school friend and I sat way up in the highest section (black arrow) of the Los Angeles Sports Arena watching Lyndon B. Johnson get nominated as John F. Kennedy's vice presidential running mate.   Only the day before, had Kennedy clinched the nomination in the first vote with 52% of the votes.

Presidential candidates used to be chosen at conventions. The process for picking them was pretty murky.  From Wikipedia:

Conventions were often heated affairs, playing a vital role in deciding who would be the nominee. The process remained far from democratic or transparent, however. The party convention was a scene of intrigue among political bosses, who appointed and otherwise controlled nearly all of the delegates. Winning a nomination involved intensive negotiations and multiple votes; the 1924 Democratic National Convention required a record 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis. The term dark horse candidate was coined at the 1844 Democratic National Convention, at which little-known Tennessee politician James K. Polk emerged as the candidate after the failure of the leading candidates - former President Martin Van Buren and Senator Lewis Cass - to secure the necessary two thirds majority.

Primaries didn't replace conventions until recently.

A few, mostly Western states adopted primary elections in the late 19th century and during the Progressive Era, but the catalyst for their widespread adoption came during the election of 1968. The Vietnam War energized a large number of supporters of anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, but they had no say in the matter. Vice President Hubert Humphrey—associated with the unpopular administration of Lyndon B. Johnson—did not compete in a single primary, yet controlled enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. This proved one of several factors behind rioting which broke out at the convention in Chicago.

Media images of the event—angry mobs facing down police—damaged the image of the Democratic Party, which appointed a commission headed by George McGovern to select a new, less controversial method of choosing nominees. The McGovern–Fraser Commission settled on the primary election, adopted by the Democratic National Committee in 1968. The Republicans adopted the primary as their preferred method in 1972. Henceforth, candidates would be given convention delegates based on their performance in primaries, and these delegates were bound to vote for their candidate.

As a result, the major party presidential nominating convention has lost almost all of its old drama. The last attempt to release delegates from their candidates came in 1980, when Senator Ted Kennedy sought the votes of delegates held by incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. The last major party convention whose outcome was in doubt was the 1976 Republican National Convention, when former California Governor Ronald Reagan nearly won the nomination away from the incumbent, Gerald Ford.

So, it's only 30 some years since the last time the nomination was decided at a convention.  Recent conventions have been more like coronations for the party nominees and a public relations opportunity for the parties to show their candidates in the best possible light to the world.  1976 convention clips begin this C-Span program which includes discussion with supporters of both Ford and Reagan.



2012 Republican Primary Race

But today the majority of the Republican Party appears decidedly unenthusiastic about any one of its candidates.  There are passionate supporters for some, but not enough for any one candidate.  The more establishment members of the party seem to be reluctantly supporting Mitt Romney, but there's little enthusiasm.  I get the sense that he's the pick only because they see the other candidates as worse but they'd love a sexier candidate.

A few folks have begun to talk about new candidates still coming into the race, which seems to be technically more feasible than in 2008.  The Republican Party changed the rules of the primary last year to make the votes from the early primaries proportionate to how many votes each candidate received.  Only after March 31  can a state have a winner-take-all primary. 

From Wikipedia's page on the Republican Presidential Primaries 2012:

Under this plan, elections for delegates to the national convention were to be divided into three periods:

• February 1 – March 5, 2012: Contests of traditional early states Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina
• March 6 – March 31, 2012: Contests that proportionally allocate delegates
• April 1, 2012 and onward: All other contests including winner-take-all elections

By the fall of 2011, several states scheduled contests contravening this plan, pushing the primary calendar into January. These contests are in violation of RNC rules, with New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan set to be penalized with a loss of half of their delegates. As they are holding non-binding caucuses, Iowa, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota will not be automatically penalized, as their contests to bind national delegates are made later.

 The total number of delegates to the Republican National Convention is about 2282.  I can't find total agreement out there - Sabato says 2282, but Green Papers says 2286.  And the Christian Science Monitor says 2422. The calculation is complicated because states get more delegates if their Senators or Governors, or more than 50% of their Congressional delegation, are Republicans.  If the state legislature is Republican, that also changes the count. [The Green Papers site gives all the details of how this works, plus a link to a pdf of the Republican rules.]

As mentioned above, delegates from states with primaries before April must vote proportionally (no winner-take-all) at the convention.  And states can be penalized with the loss of 50% of their votes for having primaries before March, I think. This gets confusing.  In any case March 6 is the first Tuesday in March 2012, which will be Super Tuesday, with 10 states holding primaries or caucuses.  The point is that they've attempted to use these penalties to keep states from moving to earlier dates on the calendar.  Salon gives Missouri as an example of how this changes things from 2008:

The mathematical implications are stark. Take Missouri, for example, which votes on March 17, 2012, meaning its delegate will be allocated proportionally. Back in 2008, Missouri was winner-take-all. On the GOP side, John McCain edged Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in a tight three-way contest, 33 percent to 32 percent to 29 percent. Despite the narrow win, McCain took all 58 of Missouri’s delegates.

Fast forward to 2012. If  Mitt Romney performs as well in Missouri as McCain did in 2008, a big if, he would gain fewer than 20 delegates from the state. More to the point, the candidates collectively known as “Not Mitt Romney” would gain 38, making Not Mitt Romney the big winner.

In any case, a winning candidate has to have a majority of committed delegates going into the convention.   From National Review via CBS:

Even if a dark horse couldn't win enough delegates to win the nomination, he could win enough to prevent his competitors from winning. "I think that a contested convention is a distinct possibility," admits Bopp [Committeeman for Indiana.] "I think the RNC is carefully thinking about that prospect and what needs to be done by the RNC to make sure that the convention is successful."

Late entrants into the race are also faced with issues about qualifying for the primary.  Virginia, apparently has  particularly difficult qualifying hurdles.   But a candidate who comes into the race late and does well in a few of the late primaries, and who looks more electable than the other candidates, might be able to start pulling votes from other candidates if no one wins the first ballot.

I'm still not clear to what extent delegates are bound to honor the results of the primary voters. Fair Vote argues:

As set out in the Rules of the Republican Party, delegates have the ability to vote according to the delegates’ preference, even if that is contrary to the outcome of each state’s primary. According to one source, the legal counsel for the Republican National Convention in 2008 stated: “[The] RNC does not recognize a state’s binding of national delegates, but considers each delegate a free agent who can vote for whoever they choose.” Thus, if a delegate were to challenge his or her ability to vote as a free agent, he or she would have grounds under Rule 38.

 Looking in the Rules of the Republican Party I find this:

RULE NO. 38
Unit Rule

No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.

But the National Review via CBS suggests differently:

The RNC no longer allows unpledged delegates, [new Gingrich consultant Craig] Shirley says, but delegates aren't required to vote for their designated candidate beyond the first ballot. If no candidate wins the nomination on the first ballot, the convention would no longer be constrained by the primary results; it could nominate whomever it wanted.

The Democrats had a rough and tumble primary last year, but in the end, Obama gained lots of debate experience for the race against McCain.  The one candidate in 2008 who hadn't been tested by the primaries was the Republican vice presidential nominee.  This might be a lesson for Republicans to heed in 1012 if there are viable convention candidates who were not tested in the primaries.  But could they resist a Jeb Bush candidacy?

No, No, No - Bill Walker's Not A Progressive - Confusing Rational For Progressive - Updated

This was in a letter to the editor Sunday in the Anchorage Daily News (ADN):

"Instead, the three-way race pits two progressives against each other, encouraging them to battle it out between themselves while the conservative has no real opponent."

The Republican Party has been mean and nasty and obstructionist and focused on narrow partisan hardball tactics, particularly since  Obama was elected.  (Of course, it has nothing to do with race, wink, wink.)  A prime example was McConnell's,

"Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term."

And despite bringing the approval of judges to a near standstill, and blocking even debate on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland completely, they have the nerve to complain that the Democrats want to get documentation before considering Brett Kavanaugh now.  Senators used to refer to each other as the Honorable Senator from ...  Now they make personal attacks:

'I question their sincerity. ... What more do they need to know?'

[I assume I needn't mention the elephant in the White House because everyone is fully aware of his total lack of any kind of social decency or conscience.]

This all leads to how people are now confusing someone being polite and rational as being Progressive.  Maybe that augurs well for Progressives in November, but I would like to point out that being Progressive isn't simply about being rational and well mannered.  It's about policy that include all Americans, about taking care of those who have greater hardships and obstacles, about having access to affordable health care, about focus on the community AND the individual, about breaking down legal and social structures that help the rich get richer and insure that poor stay poor.  It's about America as the democracy that sets an example to the world and recognizes that it's immigrants who have kept the US vital and creative and economically strong.

Bill Walker was a Republican until the day he filed as an Independent to run for the Alaska governorship.  He did this to avoid running in the Republican primary where he'd lost the primary four years earlier.  Compared to Dunleavy?  Walker is definitely a better choice, but for a Progressive there can't really be a question between Begich and Walker.  Walker told us in 2014 he was running for Governor to get his gas pipeline put in.  That's been his focus.  And he has seemed often to be the only adult in Juneau.  Though the other Republicans have refused to take the state's financial dilemma seriously and the Democrats didn't have the power to get other revenues sources.  But Walker is also a pro-life Republican.  And  even with his dedication to the pipeline project, it hasn't happened and more and more people are skeptical it ever will.  His Chinese 'partners' are known to be corrupt.  And even with Trump pushing coal, alternative energy is the future, and not the distant future.  Close enough that the cost of the pipeline is likely to be unrecoverable by the time it's built.  The Chinese are sending their first experimental cargo ship to Europe through the Northwest Passage because global warming is making that viable.  And I'm pretty sure that tankers will be able to take North Slope LNG directly from Prudhoe Bay by the time any pipeline is finished.

If I had to pick a Republican to be Governor, Walker would be probably one of the least harmful.

But he's not a progressive.  He's about as progressive, as Richard Nixon, under whose watch we got The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, The Environmental Protection Agency, the opening of China, and the Privacy Act.  And Roe v Wade was decided by the Supreme Court while Nixon was president.  Nixon didn't talk publicly about Roe v. Wade, but when his office tapes were released much later, he'd acknowledged the need for abortion at times (in case or rape or a black and white baby.)

Decency and rationality are important qualities in politicians.  When I watched the Watergate Hearings live back in the 1970s, all the members of the House Judiciary Committee displayed those characteristics - whether Republicans or Democrats.

The attention to John McCain's various memorials this past week reflect this same hunger for decency and rationality on the national level.  It didn't used to be a Progressive monopoly.   If McCain had died on the campaign trail in 2008 after selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate, I assure you Democrats wouldn't have been fawning all over McCain.  It's only now, seeing McCain's principled stands in contrast to a truly awful Republican president, that his passing has been honored so lavishly.  Democrat after Democrat has said, "I honor him as a genuine human being and statesman, even though we disagreed on most issues."

I asked Tom Begich (and to Mark) in July why Mark decided to run.  Their polling data at the time showed Dunleavy winning in a head to head race with Walker, so jumping into the race, as they saw it, wasn't 'giving the election to Walker.'  Tom was hoping that after the primaries, they could look at the polls and decide which one should run.  So rather than splitting the vote, Begich felt his entering the race was the only way to block Dunleavy.  That post with video is here.  

The deadline to withdraw a name from the ballot is any day now.  But if both stay in the race, no one should be confused about there being two progressives.  There are two decent candidates, two conservatives, and one progressive.

[UPDATE a little later:  Jeanne at Mudflats spells out Walker's conservatism in much more detail.]

[UPDATE Sept 4, 2018:  And the idea that Begich and Walker are both progressives is exactly the message the Republicans want Alaskans to believe.  This, from Must Read Alaska, the blog of Suzanne Downing*:

"Begich and Walker both occupy the same space in the electorate — the progressive, Bernie Sanders Democrats and others on the political left. Dunleavy has the political right locked down."]

* Downing is identified in some older opinion pieces as the Communications Director of the Alaska GOP, but I can't find any mention of her on the current AK GOP website.

Fare Enforcement

I took the newish Seattle light rail from downtown to the airport Friday.  It was my first time on this new way to get to the airport.  M complained about it because it used to take 30 minutes to get to the airport from UW on the express bus and now it takes 90 minutes because that bus has been replaced by the light rail which meanders out there.  From downtown it took 40 minutes. 

I asked the man I sat next to what he thought about it.  His complaint was that everyone rides for free because they never have people checking tickets.  It's like the Berlin subway in that you buy a ticket but you don't have to go through any gate.  They enforce it by having people randomly board a train and check tickets.  He thought they were going to go out of business because so many people didn't pay. 

As he was saying this we stopped at a station and these guys got on.

My seat mate was pleased.  It seemed that most people had tickets, but they did take one person off the train.

Meeting the Press

Started my first Monday as a legislative blogger by reading the Health and Social Services Budget late last night and more over breakfast. The hardcopy is about 388 pages (it's too bulky to carry around with me) and it's got seven or eight pages of ACRONYM glossary, about 365 terms. You can check it out yourself online.I'm not ready to write about it yet, I'm just telling you what today's been like.

I also got a copy of the Department of Law's budget. It's MUCH thinner, just charts and numbers. Not much explanation of the programs and goals.

Rep. Pete Petersen had suggested I come up to learn more about HB 187 "An Act requiring insurance coverage for autism spectrum disorders, describing the method for establishing a treatment plan for those disorders, and defining the treatment required for those disorders; and providing for an effective date." If that seems like a long title, it's because the bills are required to have a title that clearly explains what all is in them. I'll give you some background on that when I write about HJR (House Joint Resolution) 8, which I worked on when I was still a staffer for Rep. G.  
The Health Budget notebook is about this size.  I didn't want the whole notebook.  For now I just took copies of the Bill, the latest version of the Committee Substitute, and two studies of the costs of this.


The thing I wanted to do today was check in with the Press folks. There's a House Minority (Democratic) press office (half a room in the minority leader's three room offices) and there's a House Majority (Republican) press office that's got at least two rooms for itself.





This is Frank Ameduri of the Minority press office.   Don't get the wrong impression.  That's not his office.  His office mate had two guests in his office, so we moved into the Minority leader's office to talk.    I had heard that bloggers weren't being given press credentials.  That's not a big handicap - the main privilege is getting on the floor with the legislators when they're in session and something about being able to ask questions at press conferences.  Since those events are likely to already get the most coverage, that's not essential.  But, on principle, I think bloggers should get credentials if need be, so I had decided today to check out what it means to get a credential, how one goes about it, and who makes the rules and the decisions.

Frank also sent me to Sen. Coghill's office to see a staffer who had worked on these issues  when then Rep. Coghill had been House Rules Chair.  She said she had recommended that the press police themselves.  But she didn't know if that recommendation had been taken up.

Note, the Minority Leader's office is on the fourth floor of the Capitol.  Sen. Coghill's office is on the fifth floor.  There's a stairway in the middle of the building where you see people coming and going.  The staff don't need stairmasters because they're walking up and down all the time.  (There is an elevator, but lots of people use the stairs.)

From there I went to the Republican press room on the first floor.  Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures there.  I sort of met some of these folks while I was a staffer because they're right next to the copy machine Rep. G's office uses.  Besides learning how things work, I also wanted to let this office know that I'm hoping to cover Republican legislators as well as Democrats and to get advice on that.

And then I went down to the ground floor  to find the press room.   There I found Pat Forgey of the Juneau Empire who's in this first photo.   The other two in the front room were Bob Tkacz of the Fishermen's News, and Sean Cockerham of the Anchorage Daily News.  I knew Sean from when we covere of the trials in Anchorage. 

They seemed to be interested in a blogger being credentialed and said someone from Juneau had applied and been turned down.





I forgot to take pictures until after Bob had left, but Pat thought his desk would be a good stand in.  

And here's Sean.  He says the ADN will rotate reporters down.  I think he said Lisa Demer and Rich Mauer would be down later in the session. 

There's also a backroom and I met a couple of folks from KTUU Anchorage in there - Ted Land and Daniel Hernandez.

Then I went off to finally nail down an internet option for the apartment.  Juneau Electronics, on the Juneau end of the Juneau Douglas bridge, has an agreement with ATT which let's you get a box to get the signals without having to either get a two year contract or buy the gadget for $200.   They also have Apple parts.

Consequences For Unruly Airline Passengers

I was reading a twitter thread about a journalist who got harangued by her Trump supporting seat mate on a plane ride.  She had the window seat and felt trapped as he ranted about how the media lied and wrote fake news and were the enemy of America.  Fortunately, the flight attendants responded quickly when she rang the alarm button and got her another seat.

But as I thought about it, why she should she have to move?  He's the one who should be inconvenienced for his bad behavior, not her.  He should be moved.  Maybe there should be some 'time-out' seats for such passengers like there is for kids who can't behave.

OK, I understand that airlines aren't going to leave seats unused in this seat-squeezing era.  And often trying to make the belligerent passengers on the plane move can cause them to become more hostile and dangerous.

BUT, such passengers should be guaranteed that they'll get off the plane with a 'no-fly' penalty.  It's something the FAA should enforce across all airlines and the length of the penalty should be appropriate to the disturbance and the passenger's record.  And refusing to move when asked to would surely increase the length on one's ban.  And important people shouldn't be able to get their penalties waived, though if they're wealthy enough they can probably hire private planes.

Are there due process and other legal questions involved here?  Due process surely.  We don't want passengers arbitrarily punished.  Passengers witnessing such a situation should get their phones out and record the incident because sometimes the victim can't while it's happening.

I would guess that being banned from planes is something that doesn't have to go to the courts, but I'm not sure. Not being able to fly might jeopardize some people's jobs, but that seems to be a good  incentive.  But they wouldn't be deprived of 'life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness" as they would with a jail sentence.  Well, maybe it would hinder their pursuit of happiness a bit.  But it seems that people who harass others probably are already having difficulties in their pursuit of happiness.

I'm sure some attorney would find a way to sue on behalf of such a client, but attorneys for the airlines and FAA should be able to  draft a workable policy.  It would include some descriptions of unacceptable behaviors.

The basic violation would be:
Physically or verbally disturb another passenger or passengers after being told to stop.

Then examples of what that looks like and levels of severity would be listed along with the consequences.

Other passengers would be encouraged to record such incidents and to alert flight attendants before it escalates.

These problem passengers would then be added to the no-fly list (probably more reasonably than others have been put on that list.)

After writing this I checked online whether such consequences already exist.  A 2010 NBC article cites a woman who was banned from a flight for using her phone after being told not to (she says was turning it off) :

“The airlines keep their own lists,” Bresson added. And those multiple no-fly lists create “a lot of confusion.”

That uncertainty is shared by officials at the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a labor union representing more than 50,000 flight attendants at 22 airlines.
“Our (internal) air safety people aren’t even sure if those who have been charged with flight crew interference are even on the list,” said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the AFA. “We would be interested to find out if people who have been charged — not found guilty but just initially charged with flight crew interference — even get on an airline (no-fly) list.”

A 2014 ABC  report says:

"American Airlines spokesperson Josh Freed said the airline has its own no-fly list -- separate from the government's -- that unruly passengers could potentially be added to.
'When we handle cases of disruptive passengers, one option is denying future travel,' Freed said. He stressed that that rarely happens. .  .
Delta Airlines and United Airlines, two other airlines involved in recent flight diversions, did not respond to ABC News' request for comment."

[I'd note that declining to comment sometimes happens because people weren't given enough time before the story aired.  That said, I emailed the media folks at Alaska Airlines on Wednesday May 1, and held up this post hoping I could add their policy on this, but I've heard nothing back.  If I do, I'll add it here or in a new post.]

"BP president disputes governor's claims on oil tax"

That was yesterday's (Saturday) headline in the Alaska Dispatch.

I want to note it here, because under Sean Parnell, the oil companies never had to dispute anything with the governor.

I don't know yet that it means anything substantive, but it's refreshing.

There's been a lot of talk about Public Private Partnerships.  So much so that some people just say P3.

Governments have always bought goods and services from private companies.  Partnerships tend to go further and tend to mix governmental and private sector roles.  Theoretically, this can work out well.  Often though, this can be a ploy for the private sector to acquire government assets at low prices, chanting the mantra of the private sector being more efficient than the public sector, and then raising prices and profiteering from the arrangement.  The privatization of parking meters in Chicago seems to be a good example.

Government has a role to perform those functions that the private sector can't or won't perform.

When two people, two businesses, or a government and a business, decide to go into partnership, both sides need to vigorously guard their interests.  The term 'trust, but verify' has been used in diplomacy a lot lately, but it's also a good term for business relationships.

Unfortunately, corporations have a record of gaining leverage in their government partnerships through their support of candidates in elections.  Throughout the world, including the US, large corporations buy key decision makers who then give away government assets and interests.  I have no doubt that banker Frank Murkowski, as governor, was a willing partner with the oil companies and not a strong, cautious, demanding partner.  For whatever reasons, Sarah Palin was much more adversarial with the oil companies.  But her running mate Pat Parnell had been a Conoco -Philips attorney.  Instead of bargaining for the best deal for the state and people of Alaska, Parnell gave the oil companies what they wanted.  Whether he knew he was doing this or whether he has lived in the oil world so long he believed the narrative, I don't know.

But I do know that when businesses work with each other, it's like playing poker.  Each side wants to get the best deal it can from the other.  There's bluffing, there's careful calculation, there's distraction, and eventually there's an agreement, or not.  The positive spin of the word partnership may be the ideal, but competent government representatives know that the other side is out to get the best deal and if they can do it at the expense of the government they will.  Often, government partnerships happen when the private sector companies aren't willing to take the risk themselves and want the government to cover their losses.  The State of Alaska has a history of funding such risky operations - from dairy deals to barley to fish processing, just to name a few.  It was hard for legislators to say no when money was flooding into Juneau.

So this headline brings a little hope that our new governor is willing to stand up to the private sector.  It's only an early sign.  We have to see what the follow up is.  There will be a lot of pressure by the private sector to play the anti-government card.