Which One?

Amid all the important questions concerning the re-authorization of the subsistence bowhead hunt, the allegations against Ted Stevens, the corruption investigation more generally, whether $50 is enough for a hamburger and so on, the more basic question occupying my time right now is when (not if) I become a major recording artist, which picture should grace the cover of my debut album?
Of course, now I need to learn to write a few songs.

$50 hamburger

It seems to me that our lawmakers are missing the point of imposing new ethical limits on themselves:

In the Senate Finance Committee, Co-chairman Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, pushed for the limit to be raised to $50, "which would cover a reasonable meal, nothing too elaborate."

Sen. Donny Olson, D-Nome, said even a hamburger in his bush district could top the limit.

"Maybe not a $50 hamburger, but you'd be approaching it pretty quickly," he said.

The point of the rule is not to affect a lawmaker's ability to have a "reasonable" meal with a lobbyist. It's that when they have that meal they let everyone know about it.

A "reasonable" meal (and $50 is way over the reasonable limit for me) is exactly the problem here. It buys a lobbyist access to lawmakers to pitch them on whatever they want. The average voter who shows up in Juneau may not get that uninterrupted access, particularly if it is late in the session. If my lawmakers are spending a lot of time with lobbyists, I want to know about it and the $15 rule makes that possible. I won't necessarily judge the lawmakers for eating those meals but I do want to know about them.

If lawmakers are worried that the list of people they eat with would make them look bad in public, then they should really ask themselves who they're eating with and whether it's what they're in Juneau to do.

Also, a note to my good senator, I had a good salmon burger, french fries, and iced tea for less than $15 at Fat Freddie's last week.

By Association

I'm prepared to let the investigation continue and see what links actually end up getting proven between Ted Stevens and Bill Allen even after yesterday's ADN story about the possible link between re-modeling on Stevens' home and Allen.

That being said, at the very least the charges raised in the article taint Stevens just by association. Bill Allen has said he bribed state lawmakers. There's no evidence, of course, Stevens took cash directly from Allen's wallet (nor would he - he's a bit smarter than that) but the fact that Allen "reviewed" the invoices for the project has to at least raise some huge flags, given Allen's admitted behavior. Not only that, Stevens apparently paid for the project out of a separate bank account, which should also raise some flags. Combine this with the payments Allen apparently made to Ben Stevens and it paints a troubling picture of just whom the Stevens associate with and how they associate with them. Everything the contractors in the story say could be wrong except for the link between Allen and Stevens and it would still be a cause for concern.

Again, I'm not saying Uncle Ted has done anything wrong but the story seems to demonstrate that he was associating with people who may not have had the highest ethical standards. That alone raises concern.

Of course, if we judge people by who they hang out with we'd all be in trouble.

Jewelry Stores

I've been very interested by this story out of Ketchikan:

A Ketchikan citizens' group can begin collecting signatures for a proposed initiative seeking to limit jewelry stores in the Southeast town. Sponsors say proliferation of downtown jewelry stores area has resulted in a monotonous retail atmosphere. They want to see a broader array of retail choices.

When I was in Juneau, I was amazed at the number of (seasonal) jewelry stores it was able to support, though I later realized they - like much else in Juneau - was tied to the cruise ships.

Two thoughts I have on this:

First, I'm not sure how successful I think they'll be. All the businesses wouldn't be there if the market couldn't support them. The key to getting rid of jewelry stores is getting rid of cruise ships.

Second, what would a similar petition look like to you? In Nome, it's as if someone decided to protest the number of bars on Front St. That's practically what Front St. is for.

Third, why don't more people in Nome take advantage of the petition process? I think there's a huge group of people in Nome who would be interested in having bars go smoke free. The issue would never make it through the Common Council but I'd give it fair odds of passing a vote in the city. But no one ever seems to organize it.

And that's three thoughts and why I wasn't a math major.

"Frontier of Climate Change"

The New York Times introduces the world to "climate change refugees" with its lengthy treatment of erosion in Newtok in tomorrow's paper:

The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.

Erosion has made Newtok an island, caught between the ever widening Ninglick River and a slough to the north. The village is below sea level, and sinking.

Check 'er out.

Don Young

KTUU has a hard-hitting story on Don Young:

Alaska Rep. Don Young is pushing legislation to bolster the country's eagle population.

Young is introducing a bill that would fund eagle research and education programs. Money for the programs would come from an existing Commemorative Coin Act.

Meanwhile, Don was part of a very small minority that voted against the House of Representative's large-scale ethics reform package yesterday. I have not seen this reported in any Alaska media today.

I wonder what our ethical governor thinks of her representative's vote?

Don Young: trying to save the eagles AND the lobbyists.

(Thanks to a reader for tipping me to this.)

Front page

I occasionally am critical of the Nome Nugget for its front-page layout (well, not just the layout). They always seem to put the insignificant stories above the fold and the substantial (such as they are) items below the fold. It just never grabs my attention.

But once I saw the picture they put above the fold this week... well, let's just say my criticisms will be considerably muted in the future.

"Lower 48 Bias"

My co-worker David has an interesting post on a new sort of news bias he's identified in the mass media: the lower-48 bias:

So you'd think that the problems faced in Alaska - objectively worse, when it comes to gas, than almost anywhere else in America - would merit at least a phrase or two in the AP story that keeps getting such fantastic airplay on ABC News. After all, our state is by far the biggest in the nation; we're as wide as the distance from Tallahassee, Florida to San Francisco, and twice the size of Texas. And plus, we provide a substantial proportion of the national oil; just one region in Alaska (Prudhoe Bay) provides 17% of our domestic production alone. Right?

But I guess AP just couldn't fit us in. Either that, or their conception of "national news" is about the same as they held in December 1958, when the "nation" still meant the 48 contiguous states from Maine to California.

Check it out.

Shaping the news

It should come as no surprise to anyone that politicians frequently try to "game" the news media to produce the best possible coverage for them. Even so, when there's a particularly blatant example of it, it's fun to break it down.

Let's take a look at the events surrounding yesterday's announcement that the Palin administration is putting money into Senior Care on an emergency basis. And since press releases are now sent by e-mail and e-mails are time-stamped, we can get a really good picture of the timeline.

• Tuesday, 4:48PM - House Democrats issue a press release announcing a press conference on Wednesday in which they say they will call on the governor to add Senior Care to the special session call.
• Wednesday, 11AM - House Democrats begin their press conference and call on the governor to add Senior Care to the special session call. There's numerous media here - AP, KTUU, APRN, ADN, etc. No doubt, they are already writing the lead in their head, "House Democrats today called on Governor Sarah Palin to add..."
• Wednesday, 11:50AM - While the press conference is still going on, the governor's press office releases an announcement that says the governor is continuing senior benefits on a short-term basis. The announcement is long on the history of the administration's attempt to add Senior Care funding but short on where exactly the money for this extension is going to come from. There's no mention of the Democrats.
  
• Wednesday, 12:52PM - The governor's press office lets reporters know the governor will be available at 2PM (just one hour away), at a senior center, to discuss benefit programs for seniors. This is a blatant and obvious attempt to comment on the story that will no doubt be the story that political reporters in the state write about today. Even though Democrats aren't mentioned, the timing of the announcements makes it clear that it is in response to the Democrats' press conference.
  
• Thursday - Media coverage of Senior Care almost exclusively begins with reference to the governor's action: ADN, KTUU, News-Miner, APRN, and so on. Democrats are mentioned secondarily, if at all. Governor Palin - depending on the version - looks more or less like the seniors' savior.

As I said, that politicians try to make themselves look good isn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation but it's neat to see how it unfolds step-by-step over time.

Interestingly, something similar happened with the original Senior Care legislation. Nome Senator Don Olson introduced Senate Bill 4 to extend the sunset date, the bill was heard in committee, the Palin administration said, "Of course we support this idea. In fact we're working on a version of our own," a day or two later a press release comes out trumpeting the new plan (similar to Olson's), and media coverage focuses on the Palin plan. You might recall I got up in arms about this some time ago.

Having it all ways

At some point, Sarah Palin is going to have to make a decision. It'll be hard but she's going to have to make somebody upset. I think the issue is going to be aid to seniors.

Here's why:

House Democrats had a press conference today urging Palin to add Senior Care to the special session call in the fall. They're disappointed that their attempts to get a vote on the measure failed on party line votes this year. Les Gara said he's confident the measure can pass if they can get the governor on side and have her start exerting some pressure on lawmakers. It's reasonable to expect - after all, she did make the longevity bonus a center-piece of her campaign.

Meanwhile, Republicans are no doubt stewing about all this. If you ask them, they took care of seniors this year by continuing funding for several programs.

So what's a governor supposed to? So far Governor Palin has responded with a perfectly-timed press release that promises to extend the program for a month while "state searches for long-term solution." She also challenges the Democrats - without mentioning them - by saying the issue can't wait for a fall special session. Essentially, this is kicking the issue down the road a bit. Notice it's the "state" searching for the solution, not the "governor" or the "governor's office." Gotta put a little distance between the office and the starving seniors.

Governor Palin has thus far been touting how her accomplishments have been bipartisan and inclusive. But at some point she needs to do something here. Either, it's going to be to offend the Republican leadership and include Senior Care in the call (to which they would no doubt say, "we have already taken care of them"), not include Senior Care in the call (and offend Democrats), or implement sort of solution by regulation (which might please Democrats but offend the Republican leadership who've already "taken care" of the issue).

Which will it be?