Has The Old Man of the Forest Gone FEEble

Screen Shot 2014-08-19 at 8.42.28 PMWell, maybe I have, and I should probably explore this further in a blog post, but for now I will share a few thoughts. A recent HuffPo piece (I know; why does anyone read that horrid crap) by some sniveling snot (Matthew Fray who whines at length on his own blog) suggests that his wife left him not because she was irrational over his insistence on leaving his glass on the counter, but because his insistence revealed that he had no respect for his beloved.  Really. This old fart’s response?

Get a grip! This poor whipped kid thinks that he should do what his wife wanted because she wanted it, instead of doing what he wanted. Forget the umpteen thousand other things he did for her. Sorry – I am not going to wash my glass because I drank out of it, and it will sit by the sink where I set it. Maybe, just maybe, his obsessive (ex-)wife should have loosened up just a bit, instead of following him around and turning lights off…. It’s a two way street, and if you want to spend your interpersonal “currency” on where the dishes go, then you have real problems…. this joker is well off shot of his ex. Now let the claims of misogyny roll in

I don’t have to kowtow to someone because they obsess about something. It is always a two way street, and maybe, just maybe, she should understand that “he’s fighting for acknowledgment, respect, validation, and his love” as well, and it’s not about leaving the glass on the counter?

While The Gift of the Magi is in fact one of my favorite O’Henry stories, the practical result of the piece is that the family screwed itself for “love” because they could not effectively communicate. A relationship needs communication more than it needs silent sacrifice.

There! <shudder>I did a Skwire, lol!</shudder> Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, yes, but let’s face it, the possessions sacrificed, as well as the gifts purchased in the story clearly had value, and the couple clearly had very little beyond that.  It is all very good for the 1% to to romanticize about love, but the couple flushed virtually everything they had down the old toilet. Yes, yes, their love is far more precious than feeble trinkets, but that is not the question here. The question here is whether effective interpersonal communication could have brought them to the same juncture without the sacrifice of the family fortune (while unfortunately depriving us of a fine piece of literature).

main-qimg-168b99b211b02e4e925ec05f2284a2f2

Lisbeth Zwerger’s illustrations for “Gift of the Magi”

I understand that the woo crowd are going to scream, “You have missed the whole point you hormonal moron!” But I think not.  I get maudlin over the story just like I am sure Mr. Fray might.  But the lesson is NOT just that love is more valuable than trinkets. The lesson (though clearly NOT the lesson the master was intending to serve up) is that the couple were so self-involved in their obsessions that they failed to communicate at all, causing what amounts to a tragedy (as well as the joyful discovery the author celebrates). Money is certainly not everything, but one does not get on without it. Fairy tales celebrating poverty are just what FEE peddles, so I think you should lay that accusation at someone else’s door.

OK, if you want to think I have gone over to the dark side, you are entitled to your thoughts, but for me, being self-involved over you want, and being self-involved in Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 9.02.27 AMwhat you think another wants, are two sides of the same bad penny.  You are never going to work things out with “knowing glances”, no matter what Cosmo tells you.

Frankly, Father Oleska (Oleska still teaches a State required cross-cultural education class that promotes deferent communications styles and the inherent value of non-verbal-ness) and the entire non-verbal feminine communication crowd can go chat with themselves in their taciturn stillness for all I care. I am for Horton, who meant what he said and  said what he meant (even if his creator, Theodor Geisel, was attacked for being a misogynist).  The rest of you can go suffer in silence.

Quick! Hands up and count!

While we listened to the Facebook echos of this mornings temblor (which give a brand new meaning to ‘”post” traumatic stress disorder’, some us were laughing about Dermot Cole’s coverage of the exchange between David Teal and Tammy Wilson. I mean after all, why should anyone listen to someone talking about the impact of inflation, let alone a <shudder> Mathematician </shudder>.

But snicker all you want, I dare you to count the number of folk who endorse my plan to impose a California style 14% graduated State income tax, which would, I argue, raise close to $3B (I have a Note detailing this somewhere here on FaceBook, lol)?Screen Shot 2016-01-24 at 1.35.13 PM

As I have repeatedly noted (see here and here for you Facebook types), most Alaskans make no net payment for any Local or State Government service (that includes EDUCATION) and can well afford a progressive State income tax with a 15% top rate. And most Alaskans have repeatedly told the right wing demagogues that they don’t have a problem paying more in taxes, as long as they are not getting nothing for something.

Face it. The median family income in Anchorage is some $80K (Alaska wide its some $10K less)! That means that half of our families are bringing in more than that, and some MUCH more than that. The median Alaskan family should be paying some $4K towards their receipt of the services they receive from and through government and our wealthiest families are largely getting a free ride at the expense of the less well of.

Of course, the Chicken Little crowd get front page coverage in the local paper with the claim that everyone who is everyone wants to avoid actually being fiscally responsible. Who are these people?  They are the the people who can buy media coverage, who are speaking up for those who seem to be unwilling to pay for what they get – far be it from be to call them welfare queens, you do your own Maths.

Hey folk!  Pay up or Pack up!

Why the Elephant Appeals to Blind Men

elephantYet another Anchorage Daily News puff piece about Anchorage School District performance produced reader comments prominently featuring the usual suspects on the Distant Right engaged in the obligatory Gnashing of Teeth.  The problem here, as is so often the case, is that folk like David Boyle and Bob Griffin see a piece of the problem, and thereupon assume that they see the whole picture clearly, and therefore can provide a simple and comprehensive solution.  Unfortunately, more often than not, they are just benighted Fellows of the  IBMC (Indostani Blind Men’s Club, see below).

Despite the howling “on the left” the data available appear to make it very clear that Alaska, like most states, was overstating student performance and that new testing regiments are now consistent with the kind of results that were produced by NAEP testing (I have posted before about the Brookings’ discussion of the comparison between typical AYP testing regimes and the NAEP, so will not go into that again save to say that the NAEP is a more comprehensive regime). The result is that we are finally seeing that broadly speaking only a third of our students are really proficient (that is to say, have basic skill mastery) in core subjects.

Yet, as we know, virtually all Alaskan educational institutions identify a letter grade of “C” as representing student mastery (a copy of the Anchorage School District grading system is appended below) and ASD has been increasing graduation (and therefore GPA). There is clearly a gap, and the gap is not a testing artifact nor is it illusory.

Unfortunately, the Fellows of the IBMC want to throw the baby out with the bath water. They are argue that all and sundry have failed, and the only solution is to put education in the hands of parents (who arguably are the real culprits here). Their arguments are the direct result of their (some would claim intentional)  failure to appreciate the complexity of the problems the educational system faces.  They are devotees of the silver bullet, and as I am perhaps overly fond of saying, there is no silver bullet to address out educational woes.

As anyone with a knowledge of high school physics will acknowledge,  just because you can demonstrate that light behaves as a particle,  does not mean that it does not also behave like a wave.  Yes, we have a gap, but if you want to meet the elephant in the room,  you have to become acquainted with something beyond its hind quarters.  Teachers face twice as many students as they could possibly cope with, presenting an educational and socio-economic continuum that we know are critical obstructions to effective instruction. We also face a cadre of parents who dispute the value of education, see education as valuable only through individual ROI (return on investment), and convey their disdain for schools, teachers, and the educated to their children. Of course, we also have inept administrators coupled with a deplorable lack of educational leadership.

I would also argue that we suffer from an appalling number of incompetent teachers, but there are a couple of problems with such a claim: 1) no one can agree on what education is, let alone how it is to be delivered and it is difficult to argue that an educator is not doing their job if you can’t objectively quantify that job, and 2) even if we were to try to seize on some metric, there are so many possibly variable that any rubric would on its face be meaningless (and that of course includes the suggestions that anyone could intelligently employ standardized testing to assess teacher effectiveness).  No, I don’t think that lets teachers off the hook.  Peer review is an excellent start to generating some common language and perception regarding instruction; in other words, teachers need to lead the way, and they clearly are not.

But despite all the problems, it seems that everyone wants to point the finger at someone else! And as noted, since there is ample “fault” to go around, as long as they have their blinders on they feel satisfied that they have the answer. The elephant is the age old foil of the hubris involved.

The villain, once upon a time, was agreed upon to be the student.  Lazy and shiftless, they were sifted and then beaten into an acceptable shape. Hopefully we have a more sophisticate understanding of minors today than hundreds of years ago. But I think it only fair to acknowledge, as I think most teachers will agree, that students today evidence two major educational deficits that are not of their making.  First, they are not developing their ability to memorize.  For decades, educational reformers have argued against “rote” learning,  but in doing so, have also abandoned memorization, a pillar upon which all classical education relied. We have seen the same kind of results in the whole language and Chicago Math debacles, where an interest in increasing the depth and breadth of instruction essentially resulted practically speaking in the abandonment of effective instruction for almost a generation of students

A second culprit is the shadow of intentional forgetting (both in the technical sense and in a broader lay sense). While many students will demonstrate mastery of a skill, within weeks access to that skill will seem to have disappeared. Many curricular programs have sought to address such problems by including cumulative review in instruction, but this becomes a huge uphill battle, and that battle is inevitably lost in May of every year.  Proposed solutions run the gamut from “turn off the gaming station and take away the smart phone” to implementing a parade of tortures for the child on his way to Paradise Island.  Despite all we do, high school Math students spend some 40% of instructional time relearning what they supposedly had mastered the year before, and they do that without ever having an inling of why.

No silver bullets anywhere, but we do have to understand that if we want our children to learn what we have placed before them, they have to be embedded in an environment that supports their learning.  In fact, we are so busy bickering that we have largely lost sight of this.  No, standardized tests and regular probes don’t hurt the student any more than asking them to learn how to use a pencil.  Increasing homework, where the student is doing the work wrong and developing an antipathy for the work, the teacher and education, is not going to be helpful at all. Attacking teachers, haplessly paid to keep their fingers stuck in the dyke, does nothing to address their training, their resources, or the ridiculous demands made of them.

If you want to see  “the trouble with education” quit groping the elephant and take a look in a mirror.


The Blind Men and the Elephant

It was six men of Indostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant, (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation, Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to brawl: “God bless me but the Elephant Is very like a wall.”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,Cried, “Ho! What have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ’tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands,Thus boldly up and spake: “I see,” quoth he, “The Elephant Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand, And felt around the knee, “What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,” quoth he; ” ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: “E’en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each of his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong!

by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)


Grading System
“A’’ This mark indicates the student has done work in quality and quantity far in excess of the standards set forth for a satisfactory grade in the course.
“B’’ This mark indicates that the student is doing work in quality and quantity above the standards set forth for a passing grade in the course.
“C’’ This mark is a satisfactory passing grade. It indicates that the student is acquiring the necessary information to proceed in the subject. He/she is meeting the standards set for a passing grade in the course.
“D” This mark indicates that the student is not effectively mastering the work assigned but has sufficient understanding of the subject to justify the opinion that more growth will result from advancement than from repetition of the course.
“F’’ Insufficient progress in the subject to merit granting of credit in the course.
“WF ’’ Student has been withdrawn from the course “failing.’’
“J’’ Audit— Principal approval is required. Indicates a student is auditing a course for his/her benefit. This does not count towards credit for graduation and must be approved prior to the 10th day of the course. Students are still required to complete course work.

Anchorage School District 2014–15 High School Program of Studies pg ix

Breveille

Screen Shot 2015-12-08 at 10.13.55 AMI have a history of getting attached to toasters…. except the last one. It was a white thing that had been “designed” by someone who thought kitchens should be white and should converse with their patrons. We never bonded. And it turned out to be a quitter anyways.

Am I somehow at fault for failing to provide a safe place for it? Did I fail to maintain a supportive and fulfilling environment? Was I simply too demanding? Let me answer by suggesting it was tossed in the bin, upside down, and then covered with coffee grounds and gristle (not to suggest any animosity, but that is what happens to things I have no use for.)

The new toaster (a Breville, from an Australian manufacturer battling with US firm Cuisinart for my attention on my local vendor’s appliance shelving)  sitting as it does on the counter just overlooking the bin, seems unfazed. I suppose I would expect no less from something from Oz.

This morning the toast was just fine.  No conversation expected or exchanged. I think we will get along just fine….

Mending the Hole in Medicaid

Screen Shot 2015-11-19 at 2.18.46 PMI was concerned about Alaska’s response to persons seeking to take advantage of the Medicaid expansion and so wrote to the lead on the project. I received a prompt response from Chris Ashenbrenner, and a follow-up e-mail from Sean O’Brien at the Division of Public Assistance (the note from Chris appears second so that the reference to it as “below” by Sean isn’t confusing).
Bottom line?
  • If it you have a medical situation or condition you believe requires immediate attention call 1-844-231-7880.
  • If you have not yet applied for Medicaid expansion, apply for Medicaid online at MyAlaska (under “Services for Individuals” click on “ARIES Self-Service Portal”) or go directly to ARIES at https://aries.alaska.gov/screener/.
  • The federal government has set a 45 day limit for the qualification process.
Yes, there is a backlog. Specifics? They were not forthcoming. Problems? We have a desperate need for competent Social Workers as the welfare safety net becomes too complex to navigate.

The letters:
Good morning Mr. Grober,

I apologize for the delay. To add on to Chris’s information below, there are a number of variables regarding the speed of which applications are processed as she indicated. As she indicated, if there is special expediting needs related to the more immediate health needs of the individual which would be identified in the application, it would be processed more quickly. If not, the federal government has set a 45 day period for us to complete Medicaid eligibility determination. In addition, applications that are submitted electronically, either through the healthcare.gov or our DPA ARIES websites, generally go through faster than paper applications given the increased speed staff are able to process them. Based on what you indicated below, it sounds like one of our Anchorage offices is checking on this particular case. I’m also including our lead on constituent concerns, Jason Burke to check into this as well. I’m cc’ing his supervisor, Aimee Olejasz so she’s informed as well.

I hope this information helps you and your client in this particular case.

Sincerely,

Sean O’Brien, MA, CRC
907-465-5847
Director, Alaska Division of Public Assistance (DPA)
Alaska Department of Health and Social Services
350 Main Street, Suite 304
Juneau, AK 99801

_______________________

Good morning, Mr. Grober.

There is a Medicaid application backlog right now – the applications that are being processed the quickest are those that don’t require any additional information to determine eligibility. However, for a full answer to your questions, I’ve asked the Division of Public Assistance to respond to your questions. One thing you might want to relay to your client is that the Division of Public Assistance has established a process for prioritizing Medicaid applications. Here is the information from their website at http://dhss.alaska.gov/dpa/Pages/default.aspx
Medical Emergencies
Please call 1-844-231-7880, if you submitted an application for Medicaid and someone is experiencing an emergent need for medical assistance such as:
  • Medical procedures to address a life threatening illness or injury
  • Travel for high risk medical procedures
  • Prescriptions that need to be filled
Hope this helps for now – you should hear back for Public Assistance before too long.
Chris
Chris Ashenbrenner
Medicaid Redesign and Expansion Coordinator
Alaska Health and Social Services
Alaska Office Building Room 425
(907) 465-5808 – office
(907) 343-9550 – mobile

Pot Luck

Screen Shot 2015-11-18 at 8.48.40 PMA Primer: You have never been “safe” from terrorism. You can never be safe from terrorism in anything remotely resembling an open society. Increasing arms does not increase safety, nor does it decrease terrorism. When I was a young man we argued that if you were not part of the solution you were part of the problem, which was a “hip” way of arguing that there were no “innocents”; everyone has someone’s blood on their hands.  That means you.  It also means your children and their children. The US is one of the longest standing purveyor of regime change extant in the world today, and to the extent that regime change is terroristic behavior (are you really going to argue that it isn’t), a state sponsor of terrorism. In a world where everyone sees themselves as a victim, where so many see themselves in a position where they have nothing to lose, where it is easier than ever to obtain social validation of what others might see as an extreme perspective, and where arms are easily obtainable, it is likely that terrorism will increase.

 

Impedementia

The only impediment to the Governor accepting the Federal funds on offer (since statutes adopted by a previous GOP controlled legislature makes it very clear that he may accept and spend federal funds on 45 day notice to the LB&AC) is the suggestion that those funds are for an additional optional group. However, Sibelius seemingly did not make expansion optional, it just found unlawful the remedy for failing to expand. Hence, it would appear that as the ACA still requires expansion, it would appear the Governor could either defy the law, or comply with it. It would seem that as the majority of the people in this State have made it clear that they wish him to comply with the law, and in as much as it would seem there is no legal impediment, there seems no reason why the Governor would not move ahead. Moreover, since the litigation to be brought by the Legislative majority would have to make it to the Supreme Court, and the State would have to pay both sides of the attorney fees, it is likely that this case could well cost Alaska millions, all for what the majority claims is not an attempt to block expanding Medicaid, lol. Really?

Of course one of the interests of the ACA is to provide a seamless continuity of coverage from all from poverty up. That means, that as you make more money, your insurance will begin to gradually cost more as you can afford it. The suggestion that someone would refuse to work simply to be able to obtain Medicaid smacks of the thinking of GOP apparatchiks who have historically failed to understand that if one drops supports completely at any threshold one undermines and renders the effect of the supports useless.

And as we all know, if Ohio Dan and Murky focused on sustaining the elevated Alaska rate and effected parity between Medicaid and Medicare, the minor issues the current disparity there raise would be resolved to the satisfaction of all… but of course, as long as they fail to resolve this, it provides a basis for their base to make noise about the repercussions of their sloth.

It is also ludicrous to complain about a lack of providers. There are a lack of providers because Medicaid and Medicare put downward pressure on otherwise unchecked provider costs. In fact, Alaska pays better than 48 other States and it is high time that medical providers checked their costs. Medicaid and Medicare are not the only insurers refusing to pay what providers are demanding, and other major insurers in the State are rejecting outrageously high medical fees. Ken Arrow demonstrated that Welfare economics do not respond well to market forces without a bit of arm twisting, and won a Nobel for that wink emoticon

Lastly, a comment about Alaska Policy Forum (the Boyler) If you are going to claim how easy it is to just “google” the support for the Medicaidclaims you make, then google them up yourself and offer a URL. Otherwise, any rational person will recognize that you are just shooting your mouths off (much as you did with the bogus testimony regarding the Medicaid Reform Advisory Commission that you pandered about as fact from the State. Alaska Policy Forum claims tax exemption as an adult education program, rofl…. and yet you can’t even manage to offer the URL which you claim you already know…. You are SUCH an embarrassment!

The Coffey Has Gone Cold

Dan Coffey recently posted (in a discussion of Art Chance’s comments https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=396096857245236&set=a.132633106924947.1073741826.100005347745909&type=1&comment_id=396360150552240) the “rational” conservative approach to public employee unions:

George meany (head of AFL-CIO when Eisenhower was President) cautioned against public employee unions “because there is no one to bargain with”. There is nothing inherently wrong with Unions. We have had “Guilds” for centuries.  What we haven’t had in recent times are elected officials who put the public interest above their own.  These elected officials don’t bargain for the public, they bargain for union support in their next election. The results: See Detroit, the state of Illinois, Riverside County California, Stockton, California and the Mark Begich 2008 APDEA and IAFF and IBEW contracts of 5 year duration, with huge pay and benefit increases and work rule changes passed on votes of 6-5, 7-4 and 6-5 respectively. In my campaign I told many of the union folks I met with about what George Meany said. Most of them did not know who George Meany was. I also told them “I would bargain”with them openly and honestly, but that my job was to guard the public purse.  Of course I was not elected. Now we’ll see what happens when a Union supported candidate is elected. The AMEA contract is on the table so we’ll see shortly.

What we see here an attack on labor generally, thinly veiled as being “in the public interest” by way of the purported innoculatory claim that “there is nothing inherently wrong with Unions.” The argument is that our elected officials put public union support before the public interests; that has been a war cry for the “right”, frankly, since the “right” discovered that much of the “left”s campaign funding comes from public employee unions. In the fight for the public square in which Citizens United has been center ring (though the key case is really ATP), the real battle has been over total campaign dollars. Amazingly enough, however, despite the “right”‘s claims that the unions own government, lol, we see unions back=-pedaling everywhere, and stories of unions voluntarily tightening belts to assist in addressing the impact of the economic nightmare produced in 2008 are everywhere.

Research shows that the claims made by the right as far as cost of public employee unions as opposed to private sector are dubious (Miller 1996),  while analysis  (Tax Burdens Comparison 2013) reflects that Anchorage, even without consideration of the impact of “personal revenue sharing (the PFD) has one of the lowest tax burdens in the entire country. Add in consideration of the PFD and as has been noted over and over again,  most in Anchorage make no net payment for any State or Local service.

In other words, though a tenet of so called “conservative” myth is that public union contracts are unaffordable, that they are the means by which “liberal” politicians “buy” elections, and that these contracts are over funded and unearned, there is virtually no factual basis to any of that.  Indeed, in Anchorage the subsequent behavior of Dan Sullivan made this all too clear by virtue of the facts that he declared a budget surplus despite the contracts, the emergency ordinance he demanded never was implemented, and subsequent contracts  were not all that inconsistent.

To put that all in a nutshell, all the gnashing of teeth was a costly political ploy that blew up in the right’s face, resulting in the election of allegedly the most liberal Mayor in Anchorage’s history with less than a third of Anchorage’s registered voters casting ballots.Screen Shot 2015-05-18 at 8.13.54 AM

Enough is enough. Negotiations with public unions has always been tough in Anchorage.  AEA members continue to accept reductions in total compensation packages while public safety and other unions continue face claims that they are thugs despite the fact that numbers of employees should be doubled in order to obtain the most effective results and provide the kind of quality of life that those living in Anchorage have demanded.

In the last Mayoral election the community was able to obtain some actual quantification of the number of people in Anchorage who are under the spell of that kind of mythology, and we are talking about something close to 30,000 people.  It is high time that the rest of the community wrested control of our destiny from  this vocal mean-spirited and ill-informed minority.

 

 

Miller, Michael A. “Public-Private Pay Debate: What Do the Data Show, The.” Monthly Labor Review 119 (1996): 18. http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/month119&id=376&div=&collection=.

“Tax Burdens Comparison.” Accessed May 17, 2015. http://cfo.dc.gov/page/tax-burdens-comparison.

Pretty Please (with a wooden bridge on top)?

I recently received two rather pleasant replies to my letter to the Anchorage Assembly regarding the ongoing obfuscation by MOA Parks and Rec Superintendent Spoth-Torres concerning trail bridges in Anchorage. The link to the local story is well worth the read if you get a kick out f people treading on their tongues.  Of course, Jennifer Johnston is not “my” Assembly person. I am represented by an ex-cop frightened of marijuana who thinks the solution to the Anchorage homeless problem is to push the homeless out of his neighborhood, and an ex-State-legislator that doesn’t care about issues unless they specifically negatively impact him personally. I have regularly asked the Assembly Chair to request that IT check the status of MOA mail because it appears that these two fine fellows can’t manage to respond to e-mails, though Assembly members from the other side of town can,  but that is a rant for another day.

Jennifer is a very pleasant woman (click here for a recent pre-election recap regarding the folks discussed here) from Hillside (don’t confuse Hillside with the East side)  who has been a voting member of the “cripple Anchorage by supporting the Mayor’s attempts to collapse the Anchorage budget” caucus.  In other words, if there is any basis for the contention that the bridge collapse is directly attributable to the shoddy attempts of some of our right wing budget hawk “conservatives” to take credit for the Anchorage “lifestyle” while not paying for much of anything, she is neck deep in that cesspit.  Of course, as the note suggests,  she will of course come out smelling like a rose but she didn;t ask anyone to skimp on construction or maintenance now, did she?  But to be fair, she DID ask John Rodda to provide the necessary information to me, although that is very unlikely to ever happen — we shall see.

The other note I received was from Amy Demboski, another Republican, this time from Chugiak (where people in Anchorage live who hate Anchorage) whose debut issue as a candidate for Mayor was to opt Anchorage out of BoldAmythe State wide marijuana initiative which required that Alaska regulate marijuana like alcohol.  Her campaign resulted in  the appearance of some rather tacky graphics (an example appears to the left) and quite a bit of outrage (except from the supposedly “liberal” East side ex-cop, who is of course not liberal at all, except perhaps in Anchorage, where axe-murderers might be described as local celebrities.)  The measure failed 9-2 and demonstrated that Amy has the pulse of the people (the State-wide measure passed in Anchorage by a very impressive margin) and knows when she has support so as not to waste the time of the public or the Assembly.

But enough ad hominem — Amy thanked my for bringing “this topic” to light, which is all very good until I started parsing “this topic”.  Amy certainly is SO clueless that she means the collapse of MOA bridges because there was no maintenance.  Well, to be totally honest (a trait we really don’t see much down at City Hall of late), there wasn’t even a maintenance schedule, thanks of course to Spoth-Torres who has been the Parks Superintendent for, well, frankly too long, thanks in part to her feckless supervisor, John Rodda, the guy who turned a bunch of teens loose to whack our nicest urban forest because some people called John – John could amazingly remember no names, no numbers, no nothing – and told him the scawey twees fwightened them, and yes, the same guy Jennifer suggested should be pleased as punch to provide me the records that demonstrate he has been totally irresponsible in performing his duties. Roger that.

Whoops,  back to Amy. What then could she have meant by “this topic”.  Would it be the fact that the bridges examined by the MOA contractor were only the bridges on the Coastal Trail, only one of the major trails in Anchorages trail system and home to only a portion of the bridges in Anchorage, most of which are low clearance bridges crossing the many creeks draining the Chugach Mountains and running through Anchorage to the Inlet we foul because we don;t fully process our sewage.  Crap, another tangent.  Amy!  Or did she mean just the fact that the current Mayor seems to have installed a bridge that his staff have identified as inappropriate for the community?  Beats me what she meant; for all I know she will introduce a measure seeking to opt Anchorage out of bridges!

In any event,  here is my note (typos corrected) and Jennifer’s response.


John, could you provide Mr. Grober with background information? Thank you, Jennifer Johnston
________________________________________
From: Marc Grober [marc@interak.com] Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 3:38 PM
To: WWMAS Assembly Members
Subject: Bridges

Dear Assembly,

Remarks by Ms. Spoth-Torres quoted in the local paper of record,

Spoth-Torres said the parks department has tried to research how the bridges were originally designed. It’s still not clear why those decisions were made, she said.

“But what we do know is, we would never do that now. Or even 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” she said.

Wooden bridges have an aesthetic edge in Anchorage, Spoth-Torres said. People love how they look.

But she acknowledged that in a coastal winter environment, materials like steel are far more durable.

suggest that the Department, a) claims that wooden bridges were built at some point because the public likes how they look, and b) in a coastal winter environment, steel is more durable.

This raises a number of questions for residents on the East side, and I ask the Assembly’s assistance in obtaining answers (in that the Department is rarely forthcoming in providing responses.)

Specifically, on the East side we have a number of wooden as well as steel bridges, Most anyone I have asked has indicated that the steel bridges are well designed, elegant and preferable over the rather clunky wooden bridges that the MOA has placed, so the first question would be to determine if the Department in fact ever obtained data as to what type of bridge the public prefers, or whether Spoth-Torres was making things up as she went (again.)

Additionally, it appears that the MOA has very possibly placed wooden versus steel bridges simply because the administration at the time didn’t want to have to bear the expense of appropriate construction (in other words, cynically figuring that the bridge would collapse on another’s watch.) Of course, we would not be able to determine if that were accurate unless we had data (preferably in a spreadsheet) of when the bridge was built, designed, funded (not to mention specifics of the bridge design as far as load, recommended maintenance schedule, etc.)

Lastly, having had numerous years in which to plan and implement a bridge replacement in RJSP (one of the wettest locations for a bridge in Anchorage) the Department installed a wooden bridge in a locale known to be constantly wet. Is Ms. Spoth-Torres telling us that a wooden bridge was selected though she knew better because people on the East side are too stupid to know the difference, because there is something different about this wood design than that used elsewhere, or that Stantec included the new RJSP bridge in its analysis? Certainly, it would have made a great deal of sense to determine if the bridge that the Sullivan Administration just installed a few months ago suffered the same defects as the MOA’s contractor says produced the disaster downtown.

In as much as my requests for similar data have resulted in months of having to threaten the Department of Law with litigation, and in as much as this is really a city wide concern rendered so much more distressing by the State of the MOA presentations the Administration has produced, I would appreciate it if the Assembly would act in concert to get to the bottom of this issue, and at least as far as those of us crossing a new wooden bridge are concerned, satisfy our curiosity as to why the MOA would install such a bridge if Spoth-Torres knew that it was inappropriate.

Thank you,

Marc Grober

p.s. In as much as people on the East side seem to have a devil of a time communicating to east side Assembly persons via e-mail, I would certainly appreciate an undertaking (or not) that you are willing to pursue such an investigation.

Generosity of Spirit

I recently saw a  post about an apocryphal Anchorage police officer who would let drivers off a drunk driving arrest if they could recite the names of Santa’s reindeer.  As the potential source of such a libelous contention, I thought I had better set the record straight.

It was the day of Christmas eve 1978 if I recall correctly, and I was defending a DUI in the old Anchorage State Court House (the one that has recently been plucked from existence that used to stand in front of the red brick ‘tower of justice’.) I was pretty harsh on the arresting officer (I had only been practicing law for a year, was full of piss and vinegar, and had the facts at my back) and got an acquittal for my client. I left the Courthouse and went across the street to celebrate. Several rounds later I picked up my girlfriend and we went out on the town. After partying for hours, we walked to the car and I started to drive home. It was dark and the streets were largely empty. I got confused and I turned the wrong way down Fifth Avenue. Before I could pull a U-turn a police office had sighted me. I pulled over, dug out my license and registration, rolled down the window and waited. It was not going to be the night I had planned.

And then, just as I thought things could not get worse, who should approach the car but the officer I had eviscerated just hours earlier. We exchanged polite greetings, and the officer very generously told me that he understood that we both had a job to do, that I had done mine, and that perhaps, had he done his a bit better things would have turned out differently, but that he had no bad feelings over the situation, and it being Christmas eve and all, if I could name 6 of Santa’s reindeer he would consider that an adequate field sobriety test as he had seen no other evidence of intoxication.

Screen Shot 2014-12-17 at 8.16.00 AMI was overwhelmed with this guys spirit, but being very Jewish and not a little under the weather, I realized that my mastery of Clement Clarke Moore was as shady as his claim of authorship — I could not recite the necessary lines! I stumbled over Comet and Dancer, and catching my lady friend’s dirty looks I chirped Vixen and Cupid. Uhhhh, Blintzes (“I mean Blitzen, Officer”). And I was done. I mean I was done, my goose was cooked. I could see the officer getting irritated (he would have to stay long after his shift doing paperwork on an ingrate) and I would be lucky if my girlfriend had two words for me. Stick me with a fork.

Just then I happened to look in my rear view mirror where I saw the traffic light behind me turn red. It came to me (yes, in a flash), and I blurted out (it felt like I screamed it) RUDOLPH!!. No one was going to take issue with that (however off color the response may have been) and heaving huge sighs of relief all the way around, we all took our leave of each (the office vouchsafing my U-turn, lol.)

I tell people this and other tales of Anchorage in the 70s because they convey a sense of who we were, and who we have become. I never heard of any officer doing this as a regular schtick — the officer with whom I spent a few minutes that evening certainly had not offered that to my client, or I would have been a fee poorer, — but it would not be the first time that I heard one of my stories come back to me.

illustration

“Twas the Night Before Christmas – Project Gutenberg eText 17135”. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_17135.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_17135.jpg

Happy holidays, where ever you find them….

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”