Judge Tom Stewart

Judge Tom Stewart, Secretary of our state's constitutional convention, passed away yesterday in Juneau. Governor Palin has announced that state flags will be lowered on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 in his honor. Flags will be raised to full-staff the following morning.

My friend Dennis Harris, of Juneau, who knew Judge Stewart well, calling him a "true progressive in every sense of the word," wrote the following for Progressive Alaska:

If you think corruption has been bad in Alaska politics, think how much worse it would be if we had elected sheriffs, judges and district attorneys who accepted campaign contributions from the lawyers only rich folks could afford, like in Texas.

But we don't, and we don't have a state constitution cluttered with a lot of trivia that really belongs in statutes that the Legislature can change when needed. One reason why is that the delegates to our Constitutional Convention were able to consult with some of the country's greatest experts on constitutional law and fundamental legal principles. For that, we can thank Judge Tom Stewart, who died in Juneau yesterday, just a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.

It was Tom Stewart who organized all the mechanics of our Constitutional Convention, who rounded up the finest constitutional experts in the country to advise the delegates, who served as the Convention's Secretary, and who helped Bill Egan make sure that the Convention ran smoothly. Because of his hard work and attention to detail, Alaska has one of the best state constitutions in the country.

He went on the become the first administrator of the Alaska State Courts and then was appointed to the Superior Court bench. He was a fair but firm judge. I watched him at trial a number of times, and he didn't let lawyers from either side get away with much. He always sought justice and equity in his decisions.

He and Jane were also avid supporters of the arts, especially since Jane was a musician. I think the saddest part of his life was when she was still alive, physically very robust, but suffering a dementia that meant that the woman he loved had
already departed. I know that he found it especially hard when she began to lose her musical skills; he told me that the thing he missed the most was coming home and hearing her at the piano, practicing for her latest concert or musical production.

Jane and my mother produced the Juneau Centennial Cookbook together, and for years afterward, he diligently sent my mother the quarterly accounting for the book sales, and was most kind to me when she was too ill to understand what he was doing.

He was frustrated the past month as he dealt with his first major health problem in many years. He wanted to be home, not in a nursing facility or the hospital. He told me that his book about the Constitutional Convention was finished, and that all that remained to be done were the minor revisions after he received comments from the folks reviewing his final manuscript.

He was also a survivor of two of the worst campaigns the Army ever fought in World War II, the assault on Attu in the Aleutians, and the 10th Mountain Division's assault on Rosa Ridge in the Italian Appenines. He was a great skier and mountain
climber who put those skills in the service of his country without regard for his own safety and lived to tell the tale.

A truly great man, and a great Alaskan. We are all in his debt.

--- Dennis Harris

Judge Stewart signing the Alaska Constitution

Green Hatred Disorder

Listening to news reports early this morning on the failed and ineptly engineered attempts in the U.S. Senate to push through energy legislation that looked meaningfully toward the future, I shook my head as I drove my VW TDI diesel into town. So often it seems like our country has two major political parties - the We Fuck Up EVERYTHING We Put Our Hands On! Party (The GOP), and the Enablers of the We Fuck Up EVERYTHING We Put Our Hands On! Party (The Democrats).

These past seven years of devastation of public comity, and respect for basic rule of law, by the Bush administration have clearly shown major differences between Bush's hegemony over the GOP, and the basic ideals of the Democratic Party. You know what I mean.

But this past eleven months since the Democrats have had control of Congress have shown us a leadership of the Democrats that fails time and again to push a progressive agenda past the point of being able to say to the folks back home "We tried, but the nefarious Republicans stymied us." Again, you know what I mean.

Every day, at blogs like DailyKos or firedoglake or atrios, you can read hundreds of comments by committed progressives who are so fed up by this they ask "why not go out and start our OWN party?" Or express some similar thought.

I usually write back, if I'm in the mood or it is somebody I know, saying, "We tried that with the Green Party. It didn't work."

It didn't. But we tried. When the Green Party USA and Green Party of Alaska started, it was because the original members were sick and tired of year after year of the growth of corporate influence over politics. Most ideas put forth long ago by prominent Greens in the lower 48 and Alaska are now part of the platforms of any progressive Democrat. But, even with that progress on the individual candidate level, many longtime Democrats seem to hate those who wanted something better, for having abandoned something early Greens saw as corrupt.

If I had a quarter for every time I've read a comment somewhere about how Ralph Nader cost the Democrats the 2000 election, I'd be a millonaire. But the reality of Florida 2000 is that Al Gore won that state. If he had gotten himself a legal team half as good as the prosecutors of OJ Simpson, he'd be winding down his second term now, instead of picking up statuettes and prizes.

Locally, the most irrational examples of Green Hatred Disorder, are statements that diss Diane Benson because she briefly left the Democratic Party to run as a Green Party candidate. Therefore, so goes the meme, she isn't good enough to run as a Dem against solid candidates who never left the fold. That argument just doesn't hold any truth.

Benson was a solid Democrat when the Sheffield administration scandals unfolded. She was still a Democrat when the Exxon Valdez scraped its guts out over Bligh Reef. She was a Democrat when Tony Knowles put Bill Allen in a prominent position on his gubernatorial transition team. She watched over the years, as our state's Democratic leadership were too often enablers of the Corrupt Bastard Club.

Democrats who are hostile to ex-Greens and current Greens are helping assure the continued decline of their party in Alaska. Young people, Veterans and seniors identify more strongly with stances currently taken by the Green Party of Alaska than with any information one might find on Ethan Berkowitz's issue-free campaign page, for instance. Young people, especially, want to see the corrupt corporate paradigm thrown aside, not tinkered with and tweaked.

Tony Knowles only became governor through incredibly inept gubernatorial campaigns by the Republicans. He couldn't even win a three-way race against a Republican AND a quasi-Republican this past election. The last time a real Democrat, willing to stand up to big oil, won statewide office without the GOP shooting themselves in the foot was when? 1974?

If Democrats don't build a bigger, younger, more open, more forward-looking, less oil-enthralled party over the next ten or eleven months, even Lyda Green will be able to take Don Young's place.

one of my artichokes from last summer

Erin and Hig Made it to Cordova!

Here's to the most amazing trekkers around making it from Icy Bay to Mile 13 of the Copper River Highway since around Thanksgiving. They've updated their blog, Journey on the Wild Coast, with photos and commentary about the current leg of their trip from Puget Sound to Unimak Island.

They're giving a slide show this evening at the Forest Service Courtroom in Cordova.

One of the places they spent some time investigating and photographing was a logging camp at Cape Yakataga. Logging has been going on at various small camps along the eastern portion of the North Gulf of Alaska coast for a long time.

The camp they looked at is winding down their operations, burning buildings and so on. The practices the company engaged in seem terribly wasteful, possibly illegal. Here's Erin's observation:

Logging for your Mental Health: In west Icy Bay, we walked 35 miles of a 50 mile logging road. At the log dump on the shore, piles of logs perched precariously near the surf, explaining the cut logs we’d seen strewn across all the beaches of Icy Bay. In the freshest clearcuts, trees lay piled where they’d fallen - “cull” scrawled on the end of what looked like perfectly good lumber. Apparently, the Japanese will buy only the best. At the logging camp, piles of twisted metal and rubble litter the ground where they’re burning the trailers.

Wasser and Winters Co. are working to take down their camp for good. For now at least, logging is finished here.

Most of the land belongs to Alaska’s Mental Health Trust. Some to the University. But Alaska hardly enters into most of the operation. The logging crew and all their supplies were shipped from Washington. The raw logs went straight to Japan. And in a place so expensive to ship from, and so far from public view, waste becomes part of the operation. Someone who had worked there told us that if a logging company in Washington had been this wasteful and left such a mess, they’d never log again in the state. Here, who’s to notice.

Here's the Trust's home page. Here's how they describe their stewardship, as exemplified in the picture above (!!!). Here's a map of their forestry lands.

I'm hoping to meet and interview this intrepid duo when they make it to where they cross the road system.

these frozen currants in my yard look warm after reading Erin's story!

Markos' Alaska Poll

Yesterday morning, internet organizer extraordinaire Markos Moulitsas announced, under his nom de blog, Kos, that his organization had commissioned a poll from Research 2000 showing Ethan Berkowitz leading Don Young 49% to 42%, and Mark Begich leading Ted Stevens 47% to 41% "if the 2008 race were held today." This is the third published poll showing Don Young losing, the first I know of showing a similar fate for Sen. Stevens.

Research 2000's sample is fairly wide. Their poll is less tainted than Berkowitz's early October Ivan Moore poll, and less analytical in terms of primary candidate comparisons than Diane Benson's mid-November Craciun Group poll. Benson's poll reflects the widest margin of victory over Young yet. But Kos's poll is perhaps unfortunate in that his article about the race we now have is, well - it isn't there.

Although he mentions that Mayor Begich hasn't filed for the hypothetical race, he doesn't mention that another candidate, Ray Metcalfe, has. And he fails to mention the interesting three-way race for the Democratic Party nomination for the seat now held by Young. Nor does he mention that a lot of the reason Young has three viable challengers is because one of them, Diane Benson, gave Young a scare last year, even though he outspent her ten to one.

Here are the three matchups:

Moore October 13:
Berkowitz 51%
Young 46.5%

Craciun November 2:
Benson 45.3
Young 36.7%

United 2000 December 7:
Berkowitz 49%
Young 42%


Kos's article has about 90 comments, which is low, considering the national interest in Alaska politics these days. But DailyKos is widely read, and not just on the left. So his poll was picked up by more blogs and small-circulation inside-the-Beltway-type publications than any article so far published about Alaska 2008. Google already has several pages of articles about the Kos article.

I'm glad to see interest grow in both these campaigns. The winners of the August 2008 primaries will have only nine weeks to campaign for the November general election, and in a climate where national interest will be focused on what promises to be the nuttiest presidential election in memory.

The Berkowitz campaign must be very happy about this. About a quarter million lefty bloggers now think that Berkowitz is the only candidate running against Don Young. Plus, some of the blog commenters have promoted him to "Speaker of Alaska House of Representatives." And several commenters were glad that Berkowitz, who "will never open ANWR," is running. Whatever. The race just keeps getting more interesting, eh?

Update - Wednesday morning:

Researching old Ethan Berkowitz polls, I came up with this one from May of 2006:

Governers Poll -
May 1 to May 6
If the election were held today,
who would you choose as the next Governor?

Ethan Berkowitz 30% - 174 Votes
Sarah Palin 25% - 156
Eric Croft 14% - 82
Tony Knowles 14% - 80
John Binkley 12% - 75
Frank Murkowski 5% - 28

photo of Kos by Lindsay Beyerstein

Upcoming Stuff

This is the last week of classes at UAA for the semester - Finals Week! Fairly busy for me, but beginning next week, I'm hoping to get far more busy starting to get this darn blog a bit more up to speed.

Today, I'm adding one site to the Statewide Progressive Alaskan Blogs category: Will Schendel's Alaska Employment Law blog. As Will explained to me, "I try to cover employment issues from both union and management sides, but most readers view the blog as labor-friendly. Several days ago we did an analysis of the ConocoPhillips gasline bid. Today’s posting is on an Anchorage FedEx worker’s wage claim. Tomorrow’s blog posting will be on an Alaskan alongshore worker’s claim."

That's progressive enough for me. Take a look at his blog. I'm a member of two unions, my wife of two others. I hope that when my kids get out of college, their jobs will be union jobs. I'd like to see more progressive features incorporated into the activities of some of Alaska's more prominent unions.

I'm going to be spending time with Ray Metcalfe over the winter break, doing a long biographical article about him for Down With Tyranny! And, I'd like to look over the documents he has released over the years, and create a comprehensive timeline of his muckraking activities since he was in the Alaska Legislature. I'm hoping the combination of review and timeline will put to rest the claims that attempt to minimize Metcalfe's role as whistleblower and muckraker.

I'm also going to expand the lists of progressive organizations, to include more local ones, sub-categorized by region. An example would be the organizations listed yesterday in the entry about Lauren Padawer's company, Alaska Glacial Mud Co. She mentions Cascadia Wildlands Project, Copper River Watershed Project, Eyak Preservation Council and Prince William Sound Science Center as projects she wants to support. I hope to list them in regional categories.

Sitka Totem Poles

Mud Angel

Lauren Padawer and her company, Alaska Glacial Mud Co., won a $40,000 grant from the Alaska Marketplace competition in October. The Cordova Times' Brandy Johnson interviewed Lauren last Thursday. Johnson's interview is very interesting, asking Padawer some excellent questions. The answers show how difficult it can be to market a new product in Alaska. But once success comes to the mud company, Lauren wants to use that to support the progressive causes in which she has faith:

Johnson: How will your business benefit the community?

Padawer: Sales tax generated from retail sales in town help to support city infrastructure. In addition, Alaska Glacial Mud Co. donates 10 percent of profits to four Cordova nonprofits that work to ensure the long-term sustainability of this impressive place we call home: Cascadia Wildlands Project, Copper River Watershed Project, Eyak Preservation Council and Prince William Sound Science Center education programs. Like any business, it takes time to pay debt from start-up costs, but eventually we hope to donate $10,000-$20,000 per year.

More about the Alaska Marketplace.

Sad News

The image above is from a few minutes ago, taken by the Whittier webcam, located in an apartment Judy and I rented there from 1976 to 1978. The view looks down the north shore of Passage Canal toward the northeast. Just to the right of the edge of the picture is where teams are now searching for any signs of survivors from the missing LifeGuard air ambulance.

Judy and I have both had our thoughts with the people involved. The LifeGuard helicopter crews take so many risks. And so have the searchers who have been combing rough terrain in some awful weather since the craft and crew were reported overdue.

I've seen those choppers land at Anchorage's Providence Hospital time and again in windy, rainy, miserably dangerous weather. And I'd wonder "Where did they come from, how bad was it to get here, did they make it in time?" But I've never asked "Why do they do that?"

So many aspects of civilian emergency response in Alaska are dangerous, but I doubt any are more perilous than these helicopter ambulance trips. U.S. Coast Guard rescue operations are even more wildly dangerous, for sure, but compared to Anchorage or Wasilla paramedics, the LifeGuard crews are a breed apart.

To figure out why people go out into amazingly scary weather to bring another person to a hospital, one needs to know some of these dedicated pros. I used to know a lot of them when I was a volunteer firefighter and EMT down in Whittier. Along with Freddie Joiner, the late Mike Livingston and Patrick Johnson, I helped start up the first search and rescue unit in Whittier, around 1978. We saved a lot of lives, brought back a number of bodies, and were lucky enough to make it back ourselves every time.

You don't get called out very often by the Coast Guard, the Troopers or the Elmendorf Emergency Coordination Center when the weather is nice. More often, it is during the worst conditions imaginable. But we'd do it. I think, for me, it was partly because I was so young and craved adventure. It was that more than a feeling of wanting to help others in need. The latter certainly played a part, though. I can still remember the feelings we'd get if we found somebody alive who had gone missing. I've saved a few of the "thank you" notes.

I'm still hoping there might be some "thank you" notes from survivors on this one. But, whatever happens, I'll try to find a way to thank the brave people who have been out along the helicopter's route this past week.

iPhone Dilemma

My cell phone is ancient by standards of the industry. It is a Motorola MicroTAC 650. I got it when they first came out. It has served me well for years. I've made calls on it from Chitina, Kodiak, at the north end of Port Wells in Prince William Sound, Costa Rica, Paris, London and 9,500 feet up Mt. Baker.

I love this thing. Some people call it THE BRICK because it is so huge. You don't want to drop it on your foot unless you've got boots on.

It isn't digital, and Matanuska Telephone Association is converting to all-digital early in 2008. They've got an analog to digital free trade-in deal going on, but Judy and I feel it's time to shop around for a new plan. The one we have doesn't even exist anymore at MTA, so when we convert to digital, we have to sign on to a new plan. I've been calling around and searching the web, looking for something that fits for us.

In today's Anchorage Daily News, AT&T took out a Don Young-pissed-as-hell-sized ad (ie - full-page - on page G-4) for the iPhone, which is finally coming to Alaska. So I started checking some of the links at the ad and on the web. AT&T in Alaska - and elsewhere - is going through a lot of changes. In the Valley, what has been CellularOne will be AT&T sometime next year. The changeover was going to be December, then early January. Now nobody seems to know. If you go to the AT&T web page on the ADN ad, you're directed and redirected until - after you enter a Valley zip code - you end up against a wall: There are currently no online offers in your service area. Please visit the store finder to find the closet store.

So, if you click on that, entering a Valley zip code, and increase the search area to 50 miles, there's still no store. If you go to CellularOne's home page, you get redirected to the same AT&T dead end.

I called a national help number and the local CellularOne store at the Wasilla Wal Mart. Nobody seems to know when the change will happen, or if the iPhone AT&T spent over $8,000 to advertise today will even work out here after the changeover. Weird, huh?

AT&T can't sign me up for an iPhone here, and CellularOne can sign me up for a plan contract that will expire sometime in the very near future, but they can't say when, or what deals I might qualify for at a changeover time.


Robert Dillon interviews Conoco Phillips CEO Jim Bowles about that company's future Alaska plans at an Alaskan Abroad.

When Opportunity Knocks?

One thing Ray Metcalfe brought up yesterday bothered me more than the rest. Metcalfe stated that he sent packets of information about corruption in our legislature to many legislators. He did this long before the FBI raids. One of the recipients was Ethan Berkowitz, who was, at the time, House Minority Leader. Metcalfe says he never got a response from Berkowitz about the issues raised in the correspondence.

When Berkowitz issued a press release this past week challenging Governor Palin to search her soul in regard to the gas line bid presented by Sinopec, he opened the door on this pretty wide. Here's just one comment from the ADN blog coverage of the issue:

In June of 2005, a substantial packet of evidence re. Ben Stevens' 'consultant work,' etc. was sent to every legislator, including Ethan Berkowitz, as well as those who sat on ethics committees, etc.

Interestingly, many of those legislators who received this information were/are also attorneys, making them 'officers of the court.' Most folks are aware that officers of the court, upon being made aware of a crime/criminal activity, are ethically and legally required to take some sort of action.. No?

This is separate from obligations shared by every legislator in a more general sense, but especially those who sat on ethics committees..

The packets received by the legislators are the same ones that were received by the AG (Marquez), the Troopers (Dept. of Public Safety), the District Attorney, and others. No one ran with the ball, so to speak. The packets were then sent to various sources in the federal government, who, apparently, were already working on these and other issues, mostly unbeknownst to others.

Mind you, few to no persons were aware of the federal investigation at that time. Therefore, it can easily be asserted that for anyone in any positions of authority, receiving that packet, it amounted to at least reasonable suspicion, if not probable cause, that crimes, yet unaddressed in any official capacity, were being committed.

And just as when many doctors investigate other doctors, just as when many attorneys investigate other attorneys, and just as when most cops claim to investigate other cops, nothing noteworthy was done with it..

Maybe that was based in others' knowledge of just how deep corruption in Juneau has run in the past. maybe that was related to not wanting to cause harm to the prodigal son of Uncle Pork, himself.... for a variety of possible reasons.

But in Ethan's case, he was a legislator, an attorney, AND a person who claims to have been active in defining and enforcing ethical standards in the legislature.

Reality might paint a slightly different picture, however...

I'll inquire as to whether there is currently a link to the evidence being discussed here. If not, it may not be too much trouble to establish one.

While Veco wasn't exactly committing genocide down in Juneau, they were truly screwing you and me. Berkowitz has made an issue of his sole complaint during one of the special sessions. It is the closest Berkowitz has come to a positive YouTube-type moment. I've commented very positively about this. But Metcalfe's claim of inaction on the part of Berkowitz has credibility. The sooner Berkowitz clears this up, the better.

Update - Saturday evening: Ray Metcalfe reiterated to me today that he e-mailed the entire packet of information to then-House Minority Leader, Rep. Ethan Berkowitz in 2005. He left more than one telephone message for Berkowitz, to let Berkowitz know the packet had arrived. He followed the same process with then-Chairman of the Alaska Democratic Party, Jake Metcalfe. Additionally, Ray Metcalfe says he hand delivered a print copy of the same packet to Chairman Jake Metcalfe.

Ray says he got no response from either of these gentlemen about the packets. He has no idea what they did with that information in the many months between their receipt of the incriminating material and the summer 2006 FBI raids.

Ray Gets Ready to Slice This Cake...

I had the pleasure of meeting ex-Alaska State Representative Ray Metcalfe this evening in Anchorage. He was at Anchorage's F Street Station, meeting with fishermen who are attending the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting being held in the adjacent Anchorage Hilton.

It was my first meeting with Metcalfe. I've been reading about him and reading articles by him for years. He was dressed up, from having attended the Kott sentencing this morning. He's very forthright and direct. He does ramble a bit, but unlike his potential challenger in the upcoming Democratic Party primary, my BS meter didn't immediately go off. It didn't go off through the whole meeting.

One of the guys there was a hardy, longtime Alaska commercial fisher who has seen them all. Politicians, to be sure. But also bullshit artists of all stripes. This guy - I don't think he wants his name out there - has fished all over the North Pacific. I met him long ago. A few million miles have since passed under the keels of his many vessels. He's contributed to slimy Alaska politicians of all stripes over the years, knowing that to have a stake in fishery policy changes, you have to be a player.

Another described going to GOP fundraisers in Alaska and Washington where the mounds of checks and cash donated by fishery contributors must have been far, far higher than the amounts for those events that eventually showed up on the FEC campaign filing report breakdowns.

These guys despise the Stevens family. They LOVE Ray Metcalfe. As I listened to the stories, most of which have been documented at least partially elsewhere, and watched Metcalfe come back with information that gave even more depth to their accounts, I wondered, "Why is Metcalfe still alive?"

Well, he is, and he's running against the guy these fishers have come to loathe. He convinced them. It turned into an impromptu fundraiser.

Ray Metcalfe says he's going to take this campaign very seriously. He's not going to be a single-issue candidate, and is developing a platform that addresses all the issues important to Alaskans. That being said, Metcalfe says people bring him new information every day. I watched it happen for two hours.