You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

Joe Hill Biography

The first song WC learned to play on the harmonica was “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” the labor organizing anthem popularized by Joan Baez. It’s an easy, simple tune, as a labor anthem should be. But there was nothing simple or easy about the death of Joe Hill. There’s an excellent new biography of Joe Hill out, The Man Who Never Died, by William M. Adler (Amazon Link), that examines the life, times and wrongful death of Joe Hill. It’s a remarkable book and worth a read.

Joe Hill was a labor organizer, political gadfly, and a Wobblie – a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was convicted of murdering a grocery store owner and his son and executed by firing squad in Utah in 1915. He was almost certainly innocent. The only evidence against him was a bullet wound to his chest, which Hill refused to explain at trial. Labor unions from all over the world – as well as Helen Keller and President Woodrow Wilson – had asked the governor of Utah to spare Joe Hill.

What Adler discovered in researching his book was a letter Hill’s sweetheart, Hilda Erickson, wrote saying that Hill had told her he had been shot by her former fiancé, Otto Appelquist. The only explanation Hill ever gave for being shot was to the doctor who treated him, who said Hill told him he has been “shot by a rival suitor.” In Hill’s silence at trial, there was no corroboration. The Hilda Erickson letter closes that open circle.

The police had the man who was likely the real killer. Frank Z. Wilson was arrested near the grocery store. He had a bloody handkerchief. He also had a history of violent crimes – he later was involved in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago. Wilson lied repeatedly to the Utah police but then, inexplicably, he was released. The chance to take down Joe Hill was too useful to someone, WC supposes.

To some extent, Joe Hill was a victim of his own high principles, refusing to drag his sweetheart into a high profile case. And Hill was a victim of the class warfare of the day. As one contemporary noted, “Joe was found guilty of being a Wobblie.”

Hill himself wrote,

Owing to the prominence of Mr Morrison, there had to be a ‘goat’ [scapegoat] and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be ‘the goat’.

Notably, Chief Justice Daniel Straup of the Utah Supreme Court, after hearing Joe Hill’s appeal, wrote  that Hill’s unexplained wound was “a distinguishing mark,” and that “the defendant may not avoid the natural and reasonable inferences of remaining silent.” So much for the Fifth Amendment and the constitutional right to remain silent.

Joe Hill, as a martyr for labor, accomplished far more than Joe Hill, the labor organizer and songwriter, ever could have. “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill,” a poem by Alfred Hayes set to music by Earl Robinson in 1936, immortalized Joe Hill, far more than Hill’s own songwriting efforts – pieces like the title of this post – ever did. Although there’s a lot of irony when you hold Joe Hill’s martyrdom up against the title of his song.

A little bit of fresh light, in the form of a biography well told, should remind us all that freedom and opportunity and equality sometimes come despite unbridled capitalism, not because of it. The Man Who Never Died is part history, part detective story and a very good read. Highly recommended.

Photography Challenges: Fairbanks

Most of Fairbanks is ugly. Part of the problem is the absence of effective zoning. Another part of the problem is the tendency of some locals to leave the exterior of their house wrapped in Tyvek for a few decades. Another part is the seeming sovereign right of Borough residents to have a junk yard.

So when WC was asked to take a flattering photo of downtown Fairbanks, it was a head-scratcher. Very few folks use “attractive” and “downtown Fairbanks” in the same sentence. Unless you take photos from an aircraft at 1,000 feet (and then photoshop out all the blue tarps), downtown Fairbanks is ugly.

Thanks to the hard work of the folks at the  Downtown Association of Fairbanks the area along the south bank of the Chena River, upstream of the Cushman Street bridge, seemed to have some potential. Of course, then it rained most of August, but late last week we had some very nearly sunny days. So WC negotiated some rooftop privileges, with this result:

Downtown Fairbanks © 2011 Frozen Feather Images

Sure it is mostly looking away from downtown Fairbanks, but technically it is a shot of part of the downtown area. Sure, it’s tightly composed to exclude the decrepit pile that is the Polaris Building, and the rusting light poles at First and Cushman, but that’s a photographer’s privilege.

We’ll have to see if the customer likes it.

Bachman Channels Robertson

WC was unsurprised to discover Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R, MN) is channeling racist homophobe Pat Robertson. Bachmann said yesterday in Florida,

I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?‘ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.

It’s admittedly a little confusing. Is God the American people? Is God a Teabagger? Is God speaking for the Teabaggers? Exactly what did Teabagger hotspot and hurricane-hammered North Carolina do to provoke God/Teabaggers/the American People?  But, like Pat Robertson and the Haitian earthquake, Bachmann hastens to blame human misery and natural disasters on God’s motives. Is Bachmann saying God sent Hurricane Irene up the East Coast, killing more than 20 people, to help the Teabaggers’ political campaigns?

And Bachmann  made this statement to a crowd of Floridians, who have been thrashed by more hurricanes than anyone else. Oh, an the politicians, like Rep. Bachman, were out of town anyhow, even if there is pressing work in D.C.

WC can’t take much more of Bachmann’s squeaky, fingernails on a chalkboard voice, her pious hypocrisy or her daffy homophobic husband. Can the good people of Minnesota please put both of them back under whatever rock they were under and leave them there?

Celebrating Sandhill Cranes

The Sandhill Crane Festival was August 26-28 here in Fairbanks. For the after-party, WC thought he’d re-post an essay he originally wrote for another forum a couple of years ago, with some new photos for variety.

The Magic of Sandhill Cranes

Each fall, several thousand Lesser Sandhill Cranes stage at Creamer’s Field Migratory Wildlife Refuge as a part of their fall migration. The Refuge, a former dairy, is managed by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game as a working farm and hosts large numbers of waterfowl in both the spring and fall. But it’s in the fall that the Sandhill Cranes arrive in impressive numbers.

Cranes in a Thunderstorm

 

The Refuge is located in Fairbanks, Alaska on the northern edge of the town. While the fractious Alaska residents don’t agree on many environmental issues, the range of beliefs and people that make a point to visit the cranes each fall gives even the most disenchanted environmentalist some hope for common ground. NRA and Audubon bumper stickers are on adjoining cars, and their respective drivers watch and listen to the birds with the same evident delight. Parents bring children, and sometimes you can see the connection between man and nature, between human time and natural time, freshly remade.

The cranes are also the stars of the annual Tanana Valley Sandhill Crane Festival, usually held in the third week of August. Sponsored by the Friends of Creamer’s Field, the Festival also features a special guest, usually a scientist, artist, writer or photographer whose work has focused on cranes and their worlds. Some of the seminars are held outdoors. And sometimes the speakers have to pause while an especially raucous flock of cranes flies overhead, after being flushed by a Peregrine Falcon.

Cranes in a Thunderstorm II

Unlike other stops along their migration, the cranes are reasonably tolerant of people at Creamer’s. They are often within 10-15 feet of the fences that bound the refuge, and frequently cross the public trails on the refuge as well. The photo opportunities are nearly ideal. The long evenings provide sweet light for extended periods. The cranes are active, foraging, dancing, calling and interacting. At sunset, most of the birds move to open water nearby, flying low in a series of small flocks.

And on one morning, each fall, the birds will be more restive than usual, the dancing and jumping a bit more pronounced, and the calls a little louder and mutual. If the wind is from the northwest, the jumping will gradually extend to short flying hops. The calls will become even more responsive. And with no more warning than that, the whole flock, several thousand strong, will launch, spiraling up, in a kettle a quarter mile across, calling loudly the whole time, spiraling up again and again until there are only distant calls, the birds themselves invisible against the autumn sky. And then the calling will move southeast. It is primeval, natural and astonishing if you are lucky enough to be there to see and hear.

Left behind are Canada Geese and puddle ducks in decent numbers, and sometimes an injured crane, with its mate standing close by. But the fields always seem empty afterwards. The wind always seems a bit colder. And the long Alaska winter suddenly much closer.

WC’s Epic Fails: The Riley Creek Solo

In his mis-spent youth. WC did a lot of backpacking, including all of the Oregon Skyline Trail (now part of the Pacific Crest Scenic Trail) and a chunk of the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking is a wonderful way to clear your head. Mostly.

Riley Creek lies in Denali National Park (nee Mt. McKinley National Park), running from the core of the eastern end of the Inner Range through a long arc to the park entrance. Back in high school. WC cross-country skied the creek, coming out to Cantwell. But WC had never hiked it in summer. It seemed like it might be fun. Originally, the hike was to be with a buddy, but the buddy backed out, so WC decided to do it solo. Sure, the gear is a little heavier, and if you get in trouble you are really in trouble, but WC had nearly a thousand miles of solo backpacking under his boots. Which inspired confidence. Overconfidence.

Riley Creek, upstream  of Triple Lakes Basin, runs fast and furious through a narrow, steep-walled canyon. The creek isn’t impossible to wade, just very fast and very cold. The creek careens between the steep rock walls, forcing a hiker to repeatedly – four or five times a mile – to ford the creek. Fording a glacier-fed stream is painful, involving emerging and waiting in agony for the ice-water induced leg cramps to go away. After a while, it gets old.

So WC decided to go up over a creek-washed rock face finally, rather than freeze his feet and legs one more time. It looked do-able from below, so WC, external frame backpack and all, scrambled up through the dense alder and onto the rock face, working his way across the face of the cliff, 40-50 feet above the rock-filled creek. The going was pretty easy at first, with decent ledges and cracks. About two-thirds of the way across, though, the face was smooth as a baby’s butt. WC tried a higher line, angling upwards towards a ledge. But the ledge broke off at first touch, leaving WC with his left foot on a teeny, tiny ledge, two hands grasping cracks and his right foot on air. The pitiful little ledge couldn’t hold both feet, so WC just dangled there for a time.

After a while, and some unsuccessful shifting about, WC ran out of ideas.

After a little while longer, WC ran out of finger strength, and careened over backwards, falling 50 – 60 feet into the creek.

WC has no memory of the fall. The next thing WC remembers is the world spinning slowly around, a really, really bad headache, and numb hands and feet. After spinning around a while longer, WC realized he was floating on his back, draped over his backpack, in ice cold water. The world was spinning because he was in an eddy. He had a headache because the back of his head had hit the frame of his pack. And his arms and legs were numb because they were hanging in a glacier-fed stream.

It’s surprisingly hard to get out of that kind of situation, especially when your brain is working at one quarter of normal speed. Eventually, WC washed up into shallow enough water that the pack grounded. WC was able to undo the waist belt and wiggle out of the shoulder straps. The world was still spinning pretty good, but WC was able to drag his pack out of the creek and then he collapsed on the bank. After a half an hour or so, WC decided this would be an ideal place to camp for the night, dug out his soggy sleeping bag, wrapped  himself in it and the soggy tent, and pretty much passed out.

WC woke around 3 AM. His brain was mostly working again. As WC tried to heat water for a cup of coffee and breakfast, WC looked at the creek and where he had fallen. In at least a mile of stream course, there was exactly one pool large enough to fall into as WC had, without hitting a rock and breaking something. And that was where WC had landed. Huh.

The welds on one  side of the external packframe had broken in the fall. So WC had to cache part of his gear and walk out, then walk back in to get the rest of it. And then walk back out yet again. A full day each way. WC  forded Riley Creek each and every time it washed against the canyon wall. And never complained.

Sometimes dumb luck will get you out of your stupid mistakes. But never count on it. At least not twice.

A Crowd of True Believers?

Everyone who really wants to understand the mind set of a true believer needs to read the late Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. Written in 1951, the analysis he brings to the issue of mass movements might have been written about the Tea Party today. For instance:

At August 11′s GOP presidential wannabe debate in Iowa, every single one of the GOP candidates on the stage agreed that they would reject a budget deal that gave $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Even Fox News’s Bret Baier couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He asked again just to make sure the assembled candidates had understood the question.

One of the most astounding parts of the debate for me was when the moderators polled the candidates and asked if they would oppose a deficit reduction package that included government spending cuts to tax increases by a ratio of 10:1. Every single candidate on the stage raised their hand in opposition. No tax increases under any circumstances.

This puts the candidates out of step with the realities of America today, and American public opinion. As a CBS/New York Times poll from last week showed, a majority of Americans — in both political parties – want to see tax increases on the wealthiest Americans in addition to spending cuts. By taking the no-new-taxes-pledge the candidates are even in disagreement majority of the Republicans – the very people who will choose the nominee.

- Juan Williams Essay

But these are politicians, you say. You can’t hold them to the promises they make to get elected. Andrew Sullivan points to the inflexible Christianist character of the leading candidates, Bachman and Perry:

And it is this fundamentalist mindset – in which nothing doctrinal can be questioned, and the real world must be bent to the shape of a rigid theo-ideology – that defines these candidates.

Andrew Sullivan, “The Christianist Takeover,” The Dish

But a democracy is built on compromise. Only in a dictatorship does someone always get everything they want. A refusal to compromise your position, treating your position as doctrinal, is antithetical to democracy. So each of these candidates, in effect, is saying they refuse to accept a fundamental tenet of democracy. And you want to elect them president?

Alternatively, these presidential wannabes don’t really believe the positions they espouse, and are saying what they do purely to get votes. That’s classic pandering, and Dante reserved the 8th Circle of Hell for them.

A pound of feathers or a pound of lead?

Why Rick Perry’s Science Matters

Lysenkoism – the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.

Kevin Williamson, writing in the National Review, has decided that a presidential candidate’s thinking on science doesn’t matter. Gov. Rick Perry’s disbelief in evolution and man-caused climate change, for example, aren’t consequential. Williamson wrote,

The broader question, however, is: Why would anybody ask a politician about his views on a scientific question? Nobody ever asks what Sarah Palin thinks about dark matter, or what John Boehner thinks about quantum entanglement. (For that matter, I’ve never heard Keith Ellison pressed for his views on evolution.) There are lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting, and they are not politicians; they are scientists. In reality, of course, the progressive types who want to know politicians’ views on evolution are not asking a scientific question; they are asking a religious and political question, demanding a profession of faith in a particular materialist-secularist worldview.

WC will answer Mr. Williamson in two ways. First, we’ll revisit Stalinist Russia and its director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, one Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his followers. Next, we’ll briefly visit George W. Bush’s version of Lysenko, Philip Cooney. And then you can decide if presidential anti-science is important.

Lysenko with Stalin

Lysenko had no training as a scientist, but his peasant background and quick “solutions” made him politically attractive to Stalin. He was put in charge of the Soviet Unions agricultural programs. From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko’s direction and with Stalin’s approval, many geneticists were executed  or sent to labor camps. He used his position to denounce biologists as “fly-lovers and people haters.” Lysenok held that that acquired characteristics of an organism — for example, the state of being leafless as a result of having been plucked — could be inherited by that organism’s descendants. Not until Khruschev  was ousted from power in 1964 was Lysenkoism repudiated. His fake science contributed to the famines that plagued the Soviet Union, and set Soviet biological science back by decades.

Among the lessons of Lysenkoism is the clear message that politicizing science can have disastrous consequences.

Probably Philip Cooney

Which takes us to Philip Cooney, the Chief of Staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, appointed by President George W. Bush. Cooney’s credentials for running the CEQ were that he was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry group representing the American petroleum industry. He was caught altering the reports of federally-funded research to minimize and deprecate the evidence of climate change. During a March 2007 congressional hearing, Cooney conceded his role in altering reports to downplay the adverse effects of man-made emissions on Earth’s climate. “My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration,” he told the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. After resigning in disgrace, Cooney went back to work for the American Petroleum Institute. WC isn’t sure he ever left the API.

(Mr. Cooney seems to have been remarkably skilled at avoiding being photographed, or else he hired someone to strip photos of him off the web. As Paul Eaglin has noted, he’s hard to find. But the National Corruption Index came through. WC thanks Paul Eaglin for catching the errooneous photo.)

A number of observers, including WC, think much of the public confusion about anthropogenic climate changes today traces to Clooney’s efforts on behalf of the Bush Administration. It was a kind of modern day Lysenkoism, altering and distorting climate studies for an ideological purpose.

Which is why WC thinks Kevin Williamson is being naive or willfully obtuse when he he claims a President’s attitude towards and knowledge of science doesn’t matter. Governor Perry’s and Rep. Bachmann’s  denial of evolution and denial of man-caused climate change are anti-science beliefs. Politicians act from their beliefs. Where the beliefs are hokum, the results are disastrous.

Which makes Kevin Williamson’s claim hokum, too.

A Few Words on Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs has announced his resignation as Apple, Inc.’s CEO.

Cover of Upcoming Steve Jobs Bio

Jobs is the Henry Ford of the Information Age. He took the technology that existed and repeatedly found ways to transform it into elegant, sophisticated tools everyone can use. Computers, music, movies, games, photography; the list goes on and on. He’s also an arrogant, fierce and seriously annoying human being.

Much of the media is treating Jobs’ resignation letter as a death notice, and are writing eulogies and obituaries. Many of the eulogies are pathetic attempts to get close to the Great Man so that some of his magic can rub off. Some are facetious.

And in a sense the eulogy writers are right: it’s hard to imagine Steve Jobs, who famously bled seven colors (back when Apple’s logo still had seven colors), would quit unless his health was dire indeed.

But folks, the man is still alive. He’s still the CEO of the corporate wunderkind he created. To the extent his health permits, he will still involve himself in the next amazing product Apple produces. His dying words will likely be fierce criticism of a design decision he doesn’t like. There’s still a pulse. Let’s not close the box just yet.

A Bad Week for Great Songwriters

WC can’t speak for his fellow Baby Boomers, but for WC there were certain songwriters who seemingly wrote the soundtrack for WC’s life. Those songwriters would include Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford.

Jerry Leiber was the lyricist half of the terrific songwriting duo, Leiber-Stoller. Beginning in 1950, they collaborated on dozens of Top 40 songs, including Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” (Leiber loathed Elvis Presley’s cover of the song, although it didn’t stop him from writing a string of hits for The King.) Many of the songs were admittedly silly, like “Poison Ivy,”

Measles make you lumpy
And mumps will make you jumpy
And chicken pox will make you jump and twitch
A common cold will cool you
And whooping cough will cool you
But Poison Ivy, Lord she’ll make you itch.

But he also wrote “Spanish Harlem,” “Walkin’ in the Sand” and “On Broadway.” You can forgive a writer for “Yaketty-Yak” if he also wrote “Stand By Me.” Leiber died August 22 at age 78.

Nick Ashford and his wife, Valerie Simpson, wrote some of MoTown’s greatest songs. Overshadowed by the incomparable Smokey Robinson, they still made their mark with songs like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” The obvious love and passion between Ashford and Simpson when they performed live together was utterly astonishing. They nearly set the stage on fire at the Chicago Opera House in 1973. There really isn’t anything like the real thing, and Nick Ashford proved it.

New York Times reporter Steven Holden reviewed a 2007 Ashford-Simpson concert: “When Ms. Simpson sits down at the piano and begins to sing in a bright pop-gospel voice, unchanged since the 1970s, she awakens the spirit and tosses it to Mr. Ashford, whose quirkier voice, with its airy falsetto, has gained in strength from the old days. Soon they are urging each other on. By the time their romantic relay winds to a close, both are sweating profusely, and the audience is delirious.” Nick Ashford  also died August 22 at age 70.

Musicians are fortunate that their music lives on long after they are gone. But it hurts to know they are gone forever. RIP, Nick Ashford and Jerry Leiber. And thanks for the great songs.

Steve Menard Followup: Lashed with Cooked Spaghetti

WC earlier noted to readers the most recent episode involving Wasilla City Council member Steve Menard. The City Council met – probably improperly – in executive session last night and emerged to administer discipline to its egregiously transgressing member.

He had to apologize. He has to reimburse the City of Wasilla for the expenses of his trip. And he doesn’t get to go on any more junkets this term on the City’s dime.

No censure. Not even a reprimand.

WC understands that council member Menard  may be a recovering alcoholic. WC understands council member Menard may have fallen off the wagon with special zeal while in Sitka. What WC does not understand is why those assumed conditions entitle council member Menard to special treatment. Mr. Menard has managed to reinforce every Valley stereotype there is. Valley trash? You think?

It must be a Wasilla thing.

We all struggle with our personal demons and challenges. WC has had his share of epic fails. But exactly what do you have to do in Wasilla to be deemed to have violated the public trust? At what point does your conduct cross the line? When and how do you become unfit to represent your constituents?

Oh well.

Council member Menard, please bare your wrist and step forward for the ceremonial single lash with an overcooked spaghetti noodle.

Photography in Bad Light

WC is used to photography in bad light; after all, for months during the winter the light is feeble, at best. WC is not used to photography in August in low light, but this has been a grey, gloomy month, and if WC wants to photograph birds before they leave, he has to make do with what is available.

Among the birds that hang around the longest before undertaking fall migration are Dark-eyed Juncos. They are packing on calories in WC’s yard right now and last night, low light or not, WC headed out to see what he could do.

Adult Dark-eyed Junco

While the exposure in this shot is okay and the detail in the head is pretty good, the depth of field – the area that is in focus – is quite shallow, leaving much of the body and the legs completely out of focus. That’s a consequence of low light.

To deal with low light, you can increase the sensitivity of the sensor (“ISO,” what used to be called “film speed”), or increase the amount of time the shutter is open to accept light (risking blur from motion),  or increase the size of the aperture (at the risk of a narrow range of focus). Tradeoffs are among the points of a triangle: a higher ISO, which means more “noise;” a slower shutter speed, meaning more blur, or a distractingly shallow depth of field. For this photo, WC pressed the ISO to 1600, which results in moderate noise in some of the dark areas. WC dropped the shutter speed to 1/160, which resulted in a large number of shots with motion blur. And, as you can see, the aperture was just f5.7, the very minimum that would allow the entire head to be in focus.

The low light dilemma is more evident in this photo of a juvenile Dark-eyed Junco:

Juvenile Dark-eyed Junco

You can see that the shallow depth of field resulted in everything back of the head and chest being out of focus. Effectively, only about half an inch is in focus.

These first two photos have been adjusted in Photoshop. In particular, WC has used a noise reduction tool to minimize the effect of the very high ISO. For reference, here’s a shot of a juvenile White-crowned Sparrow where the noise has not been reduced:

Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow

A careful look at the lower chest and belly shows objectionable color noise, a product of the high ISO setting. The E-5 is pretty good to ISO800, but higher than that, at ISO1600 here, you can see the camera can’t quite cope.

ISO noise varies greatly across camera systems. The Olympus E-5 is built around the 4/3rds system and, without going into technical stuff, one of the tradeoffs is that noise is a bit worse.

WC will anticipate a question: why not use flash? Several reasons. First, flash doesn’t work well with the feather structures. It looks funky and obvious. Second, with birds you then only get one photo. The flash spooks them. Not only are your chances of a good photo reduced; you’ve interfered with their normal behavior, which is WC’s book is a no-no. And third, to get the flash to produce enough light at the distances involved you have to use a flash extender, which is unwieldy.

So WC lives with shooting in low light. If WC has done a good job on this blog post, you’ll have a better idea of what that means.

Miracles, Myths and Empirical Facts: Perry Exposed

Texas Governor Rick Perry seems to be confused about the differences between miracles, myths and empirical facts. In an effort to be helpful to a self-admitted Texan, WC offers the following analysis to aid Governor Perry in understanding the distinctions:

A “miracle” is something that can occur only through supernatural means; it’s something that happens in defiance of natural laws. You recently and famously called for mass prayer to relieve the drought plaguing the American southwest, including Texas. If that had worked, if rain had fallen despite the high pressure ridge over Texas, out of a clear sky, that would have been a miracle. Of course, it didn’t happen. That’s the problem with true miracles; they happen so very rarely. And never when it is politically expedient.

A “myth” is something that may be believed by large numbers of people, but is in fact untrue. Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox Babe. King Arthur really existed. The Texas economy has created jobs for the middle class.

You see, many of the people moving to Texas are retirees in search of warm winters, or middle-class Latin Americans in search of a safer life, and they bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, that rapid growth in the Texas work force has kept wages low. Almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average . Those low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State. Creating tens of thousands of minimum wage jobs isn’t WC’s idea of the American Dream. It’s the Koch Brothers’ dream perhaps.

And then there are the empirical facts. One in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation. It’s those minimum wage jobs again. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act. And Massachusetts  has a lower unemployment rate than the “Texas Miracle.” Unlike a miracle or a myth, these are hard facts and real.

Most of the new jobs created in Texas were in fact stolen from other states. A U.S. President doesn’t get to steal jobs from one state and give them to another. Another hard fact. You can steal them from other countries, but that would involve paying U.S. workers the same wages that are paid overseas. That’s below minimum wage, of course. Or imposing tariffs on imported goods, and pulling down the world economy. More hard facts.

Because when you don’t have real miracles, you have to fake them. And that’s what Governor Perry is trying to do.

Michelle Bachmann’s Enemies

Presidential wannabe Michelle Bachman explained to a crowd in South Carolina last night why she had worked for the IRS:

I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is ‘know your enemy,’

So a President Bachmann (shudder) would regard a critical part of the government as “the enemy”? She is involved in a “war” with the IRS?  Seriously?

Previously, she had told voters her four years as lawyer for the IRS as a basis for understanding why the tax code needed to be reformed. WC doesn’t think Rep. Bachmann’s inability to understand the tax code necessarily means it needs reform. But that’s a very different thing than calling the IRS “the enemy.” That’s quite different than declaring war on a federal agency for which she wants to be CEO.

 

(GASP) A Republican Makes Sense!

WC’s readers are aware he holds the current Republican ideology in contempt. Captured by the Teabaggers, and forced by the grossly distorted primary system to toe the Teabagger line, even candidates who might pass for “normal” – at least in a dimly lit room – are forced to claim they’d let the country default on its debts before agreeing to increase taxes.

So you can imagine WC’s surprise when Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and President Obama’s former ambassador to China, and presidential wannabe, started making sense. On climate change:

The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem.  We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.  When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.

On raising the debt limit:

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily trust any of my opponents right now, who were on a recent debate stage with me, when every single one of them would have allowed this country to default.  You can imagine, even given the uncertainty of the marketplace the last several days and even the last couple of weeks, if we had defaulted the first time in the history of the greatest country that ever was, being 25 percent of the world’s GDP and having the largest financial services sector in this world by a long shot, if we had defaulted, Jake, this marketplace would be in absolute turmoil.  And people who are already losing enough as it is on their 401(k)s and retirement programs and home valuations, it would have been catastrophic.

And on Governor Perry’s threat to “lynch” Fed Chair Ben Bernanka:

And this just kind of perpetuates the name calling and the finger-pointing and the blame game where we want solutions.  We want to look to the future, we want somebody with vision.  We don’t want to look back.  We, as Americans, are the most optimistic, blue sky people the world has ever known.  We want to look forward and we want solutions.

And every time we have these sideshows take place, finger-pointing and name-calling.  It takes us that much farther off the ball, which is fixing our core in this country, is getting our economy fixed and creating jobs.

Of course, recent polling shows Huntsman has a poorer chance of getting the Republican nomination than, say, WC does, which likely prices WC’s first point. But WC is so pleased to find a Republican presidential candidate making sense that he cannot help but point it out.

Tales from Wasilla: Steve Menard

The Wasilla newspaper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, reports that city council member Steve Menard, while attending a meeting of the Alaska Municipal League in Sitka, thoroughly trashed his hotel room.

According to a bill sent to the city from the Westmark, damage to Menard’s room included two mattresses and a chair had been urinated on, vomit on the carpet, removal of a screen from a window, a burned mattress, all bedding was ruined and there had been smoking in the room, which was prohibited. The room was out of service for three days while staff cleaned and made repairs.

WC has a passing familiarity with the Menard family, back from his criminal defense days. It’s sad.

But the purpose of this post isn’t to lament Wasilla voters’ poor choices. That unhappy record is already known. Rather, WC wants to know why the city council is reportedly going to consider l’affair Menard in executive session, rather than in public.

Secret meetings are strongly disfavored under Alaska law. By Alaska Statute, city council meetings are to “be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.” The grounds for executive session – secret meetings – are narrow and are to be narrowly applied.

There are only four, narrowly construed exceptions where executive session is permitted:

(c) The following subjects may be considered in an executive session:

(1) matters, the immediate knowledge of which would clearly have an adverse effect upon the finances of the public entity;

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential;

(4) matters involving consideration of government records that by law are not subject to public disclosure.

The only exception that may be remotely applicable is (2), but, seriously, what can be disclosed at a public meeting that is more damaging than the reported story? Why does the balance between the public’s statutory right to know and the reported outrageous conduct weigh in favor of secrecy? How does conduct that might, for example, serve as a basis for voter recall, deserve executive session? Exactly how is the presumption of the public’s right to know being overcome?

WC, happily, doesn’t live in Wasilla, and WC’s opinions are just part of the background noise. However, the abuse of executive session is something that affects all Alaskans. The city council and Council member Menard need to sort this out in public.

P.T. Barnum Award, August 2011

The P.T. Barnum Award goes monthly to the most outrageous email WC receives proving Barnum was right, that a sucker is born every minute. This email requires repeal of the laws of thermodynamics and the utter suspension of credulity. And spelling, And grammar. Surely not too great a task for some.

[Note: you follow the links in messages like this at your peril. WC will not be responsible if you infect your computer with ghastly forms of malware by following these links.]

Dear Friend,

Can Water Really Power an Engine?

http://t3ig.com/SimpleWaterFuel

Im sure you already found out the rumours that water might be used to power up a car…

It sounds extremely promissing. But is it true?

Well, I just found out about a website that actually gives you the instructions on how to do this yourself:

http://t3ig.com/SimpleWaterFuel

I read the website, watched the videos, and boy…this stuff really got me all curious. It seems  there are already 10,000s of people who are actually using a device like this.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought their package. I couldnt resisted… It sounds too good to be true, yet if this turns out to be real, then this is BIG.

Im so enthusiasted about this, that I thought to just send you a link so you get to see it for yourself:

To check out this opportunity, please visit:

== http://t3ig.com/SimpleWaterFuel

To bigger gas savings,

Cindy Price

PS: there are many voices that say that this is not working. But I figured that they have a 60-day guarantee, so I might as well give it a shot.

Note for pedants and other scholars: WC is aware that Phineas Taylor Barnum probably never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” WC is also aware of the impressive scholarship devoted to tracking down the real source of the quote. None of which stops WC from calling this the P. T. Barnum Award.

 

What You Do When No One Is Looking

Gryphen at Immoral Minority picked up this 2008 blog post. It’s a sweet story, and worth a look. WC’s Norwegian isn’t good enough to confirm the tale, but it appears to be authentic.

WC is waiting for a report that Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann or Mitt Romney did something similar 20 years ago, when no one important was watching, just because they are fundamentally decent human beings.

The Craziest Person in the Room

WC has posted an intermittent series of blog entries on the Republican presidential wannabes. After posts on Mitt “Multiple Choice” Romney and Rick “Just Lynch ‘Em” Perry, it’s time to visit with the person who sometimes styles herself “Dr. Michelle Bachmann. Not many lawyers call themselves “Dr.” Rep. Bachmann does.

But instead of providing others’ views of this candidate, let alone WC’s own, we’ll let Ms. Bachman speak for herself.

‘Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch.”

–Rep. Michele Bachmann, in a recorded message for a campaign event hosted by Sarah Palin to support Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, Oct. 28, 2010

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, March 15, 2008

‘‘I’m very concerned about the international moves they’re making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, making false claims that the Obama administration was considering “abandoning the dollar for a multinational currency,” March 2009

‘‘It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world! You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, muddling her American history while speaking in New Hampshire by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution (the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the shot heard round the world took place in Massachusetts), March 12, 2011

‘‘But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.’

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, speaking at an Iowan’s for Tax Relief event, Jan. 23, 2011 (The Founding Fathers did not work to end slavery, and John Quincy Adams was not one of the Founding Fathers)

”Before we get started, let’s all say ‘Happy Birthday’ to Elvis Presley today.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), while campaigning for president in South Carolina on what was actually the anniversary of Elvis’s death, Aug. 16, 2011 (Elvis was born on January 8)

”The President of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, grossly exaggerating the expense of Obama’s trip, which cost a fraction of that ($200 million is more than the entire war in Afghanistan costs per day), Nov. 3, 2010

‘‘We now have a total Gangster Government. They don’t even pretend anymore. It’s total in-your-face cronyism.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann on the government bailout of GM, June 2009

”I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, accusing the Obama administration of plotting to divert money from Republican to Democratic districts and planning to tax the wealthy to fund the windfalls, Feb. 2009

”This is an earthquake issue. This will change our state forever. Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.”

—Michele Bachmann, on gay marriage, March 2004

”There’s a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it’s on that proportion. There’s marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked about was there is water everywhere.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, likening visiting Iraq to visiting the Mall of America in Minneapolis, July 2007

”Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, suggesting that gay singer Melissa Etheridge should repent after getting cancer, Nov. 2004

”Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth’s lifecycle. And yet we’re being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in Earth.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann, speech on the House floor, April 22, 2009

”I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist.”

—Michele Bachmann, September 2003

---

WC thinks we can all agree with the last one, Rep. Bachmann.

Buffet to Teabaggers: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Warren Buffet is the second richest man in America, with a net worth of some $45 billion. He has an opinion piece in August 15′s New York Times in which he calls on Congress to stop coddling the super-rich.

Buffet wrote:

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

The current tax code is a sucker bet. If you are rich, and can earn money from money, you get a tax rate of about 17%. If you are a wage slave like WC, and earn money by the sweat of your brow or just by sweat period, you pay taxes at the rate of about 36%.

If you think that’s fair, WC has an investment opportunity for you involving Cushman Street Bridge in downtown Fairbanks…

Fracking and Tainted Water

“Fracking” is slang for “hydraulic fracturing,” a process by which natural gas is extracted from rock. It involves injecting massive quantities of water, sand and a secret brew of chemicals into rock formation as extremely high pressure. It’s providing a lot of natural gas from areas that otherwise would be unproductive or marginally productive.

But there are questions about the safety of fracking, and one of them is whether it is contaminating folks’ well water.

The oil and gas industry has steadfastly denied that fracking contaminates water wells.

“There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one,”

- Rex W. Tillerson, CEO, ExxonMobil, testimony to Congress

Alaskans’ to their sorrow, are deeply skeptical of anything Exxon says. Thank you, Captain Hazelwood. And you’d be right to be skeptical this time, too.

There is at least one published case where the EPA found fracking had contaminated a well.  There may have been many incidents of contamination. But while there are dozens of cases where a property owner has sued a fracker for trashing their water quality, there isn’t a reported decision that WC can discover. There aren’t any reported decisions where the fracker  was determined to have not caused water contamination.

There are a very substantial number of cases where there has been a settlement, and in each of those settlements the terms of the settlement are confidential and the settlement is under seal. That means that federal agencies – and private citizens – can’t find out if there was contamination, and how much the fracker  may have paid.

The frackers  would have you believe there’s nothing special about sealed settlements:

Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, dismissed the assertion that sealed settlements have hidden problems with gas drilling, and he added that countless academic, federal and state investigators conducted extensive research on groundwater contamination issues, and have found that drinking water contamination from fracking is highly improbable.

“Settlements are sealed for a variety of reasons, are common in litigation, and are done at the request of both landowners and operators,” Mr. Wohlschlegel said.

Any litigation attorney would break into laughter at such a claim. If there was no basis for the claim, the frackers would shout it from the rooftops to discourage other claims. No, the only reason settlements are sealed is that someone coughed up dough. And the one that wrote the check doesn’t want anyone else to know. It might give other folks ideas. A property owner whose tap water was ruined and got some satisfaction has only one reason to agree to keep silent: they got paid to keep quiet.

Secret settlements of lawsuits involving public interest issues are a bad idea. In this instance, it  allows Big Oil to push the Big Lie. And allowed Exxon’s CEO to skate perjury. Again.