Redux addenda

Another problem, which is a prime motivator for Rex, if I understood the News-Miner article correctly, is that people could get hurt whilst mucking around in a Dumpster. The truck drivers have to worry about people running around the transfer site attempting to get the goodies out before they get hauled off. One concern Rex had voiced the last time this went around was worry that somebody sleeping in a Dumpster could get killed when the trucks scoop up the container. That, of course, is a problem of not having sufficient places for homeless people, or a way to engage their trust enough so that they will come to the places that are available. Unfortunately, the only one available is on a religious mission, which can be a problem for some people, homeless or not, and that one's been in financial trouble lately. Fortunately, it's still operating.

Dumpster Diving Ruckus Redux

and once again, rumor has it that it appears to be driven by a McMansion complex off Chena Pump Road, the developer of same having had the misfortune to fail to note the neighbor's business before he built his little neighborhood of big vinyl boxes. (Said neighbor runs a junkyard/recycling shop.) Charlie Rex, who has been behind this sort of thing before, is trying to make it illegal (or at least fineable) to dive in borough dumpsters, because this apparently has something to do with people piling stuff in their yards and selling it later. Or simply hoarding it. Maybe.

Hoarding is a serious mental problem, and when one's piles of stuff (or one's eighty-seven cats or four hundred dogs) start to stink or affect health and welfare of people and animals, THEN there's a real problem. But there seems to be no good way, legally, to deal with it before it gets out of control. (Perhaps I'm wrong on this--but hoarding as a symptom of a mental disease and sloppy storage of items on one's property are two different matters, and should be dealt with in different and appropriate ways.)

Rex also brings up the bogeyman of identity theft. I say, if you're concerned about people possibly pawing through your trash in a public dumpster (where you chose to toss that sensitive information), then maybe you should get a shredder and shred it first. Or perhaps a burn barrel, or a wood stove, and you can get a few BTUs out of it. People can steal your identity papers anywhere along the dumpster trail, and that includes the dump. So don't toss them in there in the first place! The News-Miner is right on in their editorial on this.

Rex wants people to rely exclusively on the transfer station recycle platforms, but not all transfer stations HAVE them.

The problem here is that people really really want to have access to recyclable and recycling goods, and aside from the transfer stations, they don't.

Back to barking mad

The office refrigerator, for those of you who like to follow Adventures with Appliances, is still barking, but not a constant yap. Just an occasional yip and burble, so I suppose that whatever air bubble was the possible culprit has dissolved somewhat. But I still suspect that the fridge is on its last days.

Back at home, our new Kenmore is making a noticeable difference already in our electric bill: the bill (and usage) actually went DOWN last month (by about $4). Amazing, given that we've plugged the car in a few times, and that Hans has been using power tools at home. Also amazing, given that it's dark outside these days and so our lights are on more.

Conservation is a wonderful thing.

Good question

Rosa Brooks of the Los Angeles Times asks this insightful question:

What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles?

...Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant. But despite their impressive foresight in other areas, the framers unaccountably neglected to include an involuntary civil commitment procedure in the Constitution.

She, like many others in this country, have concluded that Bush and Cheney et al's relentless attempts to bring us to war with Iran is nothing short of insanity. Not metaphorical looniness, but the real thing. Actual certifiable illogic to the point of flaming irrationality.

This is a very, very scary thing in men with their fingers on the nuclear button.

Retire Ted or retread him?

Or both?

The Democrats have created a companion site to DropDon.com, RetireTed.com. Also very good, detailed, easy to use.

Interestingly, they make no mention of his abysmal record on torture. Now, why would they fail to mention that?

Hmmm.

Metcalfe pins "VECO's Dirty Dozen"

This just in from Ray Metcalfe:

The following twelve legislators all have four things in common:
1. Every one of them has taken more than $10,000 from Veco.
2. When Veco owner Bill Allen asked to be relieved of his requirement to register as a lobbyist, they crafted and passed legislation ending Bill Allen's requirement to register.
3. When presented with hundreds of pages of evidence of Veco's bribery, each of them refused to respond.
4. When asked to admit or deny under oath whether or not [they] had taken advantage of the illegal polling, services that Veco's Vice President Rick Smith admitted having provided to over 100 of their favored candidates, every one of the still seated legislators below refused comment.

1. Mike Chenault, $32,000
2. Ralph Samuels, $10,250
3. Mike Hawker, $21,350
4. Lesil McGuire, $17,550
5. Lyda Green, $18,000
6. Kevin Meyer, $23,350
7. John Cowdery, $45,200
8. Con Bunde, $18,650
9. John Coghill Jr, $10,480
*10. Carl Gatto, $12,000 IMPORTANT ADDENDA (10/23/07): Gatto did not fulfil all the requirements for the Dirty Dozen list, it turns out. He did NOT vote to exempt Bill Allen from registering as a lobbyist. (Metcalfe sent this addenda out this morning, with his apology to Gotto. But he forgot somebody else: Richard Foster.) So our real #10 spot is taken by:
10. Richard Foster, $16,750
11. Fred Dyson, $21,700
12. Gary Stevens, $14,275

Watch closely as they go to bat for everything Veco fought for --- and remember them next election.

It'll be interesting to see how many of these legislators are exonerated and how many swept into the corruption investigations. One thing's for sure: Metcalfe's been right so far (although Ben Stevens is still unindicted).

The refrigerator is barking

Not our new fancy Green Star energy-saving Kenmore that we got a week and a half ago from Sears, mind you. No, the high-pitched small-dog yaps are coming from the Blue Behemoth at the Ester Republic/Bad White Dog/Trial Run Studio/flophouse.

Really.

And there's no small canine trapped in the meat drawer, either. I checked.

I think the Blue Beast is finally dying. It's burbling a bit, too, grumbling and yapping to itself incongruously. It's been producing a LOT of waste heat this summer, making the office hot and uncomfortable at times. I mentioned it to the landlady, Hillary (owner of the Golden Eagle Saloon with her spouse Doug), and recommended that they think about getting a more efficient fridge when this thing finally goes (she'd been worrying about the electric bill, which was mondo--I suspected the Beast was at fault).

I wonder what she'll say when I tell her about the uncontrolled barking?

Buy local, buy Alaska-owned

The Buy Alaska website has recently undergone a revision, and boy does it look good! I've revised my listing in light of the fancy new options. I recommend that everybody who's got an Alaska-owned business sign up for this--it's a quick and easy way for people to find products and services that are locally owned, and to help keep our money in the state.

I note that Alaska Airlines is on the site, though. My impression was that they were no longer an Alaska-owned business; they merely have their corporate license here. But I'm not sure about that.

The Case of the Mysterious Disappearence of the Bouchercon Bag

Mom and Peter recently went down to Anchorage for Bouchercon 2007, the World Mystery Convention ("Bearly Alive" this year). There were literally hundreds of people attending. They brought me back a nifty tote bag, black, with Edgar Allen Poe and the convention name on it in white. So I've been carrying this bag around with me, hauling the signature book for the Clean Elections Initiative, my checkbook, my wallet, a letter for Neil Davis c/o the Republic, my various pens and notes and keys (ALL my keys). On, lessee, Monday, I had it with me when I went to pick up the Republic with Amy. On Tuesday, I could have sworn on a stack o' Harry Potter books that I took it with me when I went down to the office to meet with Neil Davis.

But now it's gone. Poof! it's not at the Eagle, it's not in Amy's car, it seems to have vanished from the house, it's not anywhere in the Clubhouse (a.k.a. Bad White Dog and Ester Republic office), it's not in the library, it's not in the Green rana-machine, it's not at Gulliver's or DateLine, or even lying around on the porch or the drive or the yard.

It's GONE. Vanish-ed.

Helpity help!

The EVFD in knots

I've been feeling frustrated lately with the EVFD; they want support from the community for the station expansion, they have as their strategic goals "standing room only at the annual meeting and a waiting list for volunteering and for the board", but they don't seem to have a clue about how to engage and interest the community enough so that more people will get involved. I've been practically BEGGING them for years to write a regular column with substantive information. I get a very irregular column that is essentially a list of announcements and exhortations to "Be Careful!" and "Join the Department!" It's just not a very inspiring column. Different people have written it over the years, some with more zip in their writing than others, but it's still pretty limp, and doesn't seem to be terribly high on the priority list.

I can, of course, understand this, because most of these people are volunteers, with full lives. Their time is limited, and they're already spending a heck of a lot of time training and being firefighters and medics. Still, to fulfill the goals they've got, they need to engage people's imagination, get people outside the department excited, not just grateful. It's the firefighting they need to tell people about, the nuts and bolts of it: what people actually do.

For example, at Muskegger, I found a little blog entry on starting out as a trainee volunteer at the EVFD, and learning how to tie knots. This would be a GREAT topic for a Firebreak column! An actual column on what a would-be firefighter actually learns!

I think the best of the Firebreak columns have been those that were personal, where people described why they became firefighters in the first place, or talked about what they did during the tests to qualify at different levels. An accident or incident report would be good to have as news, but this other kind of information would help people connect to the department in a personal way. And that personal connection (aside from having people in the department rescue you from calamity) is a good way to get them to want to find out or do more. Or at least, that's what I think.

So I'm going to try a different tack. I still really want to help the EVFD achieve its goals, but it really looks like the people there don't have the time or the inclination to write for the Republic. I'm going to try to reach firefighters and EMTs around the Tanana Valley, and see what they can offer me. (If the News-Miner takes up this idea, I'll KNOW they're copying me, and I'll have to take it as a compliment!) We'll see how it works out.

New election or funding for the fire department?

The recent election for mayor of Fairbanks has resulted in neither of the top two contenders (both women, I'm happy to see) gaining the required 40% plus. This means Fairbanks will have to have a new election, an expensive business. Given that Fairbanks is having a few fiscal worries these days, it seems reasonable to me that the city should adopt Instant Runoff Voting. Saves a lot of money in a situation like this.

And that money could have gone to pay for raises to keep up with inflation, or firefighter health benefits, or other cuts they took back in 2003.

They don't call it Home Despot for nothing

Good old Stand 'n Seal, that nastily poisonous tile sealer that's killed and sickened people even after the major recall, was replaced by a reformulated version that had a "a pungent chemical smell"--but still contained the poison. And good old Home Depot left this dangerous stuff on the shelves. The New York Times has exposed this in a recent article. See, the problem is, there's no premarket testing required here--plenty of unwitting consumers to play the guinea pig.

Um, wasn't medical experimentation on unwilling or unknowing human subjects outlawed by the Nuremberg Code?

Clean Elections petitions

I've taken to carrying around a Clean Campaigns Initiative petition book, courtesy Alaskans for Clean Elections. Haven't been very agressive about getting signatures, but I figure that they will gradually get filled up. (I've got ten petition books.) All I have to do is bring them down to the Eagle. Blasting our state legislators is a favorite pasttime down there.

Given the extent of the Naughty List these days, I'd say the Time is Ripe! Actually, it's been smelling pretty fishy for a long time; the wonder is that it took so long for the stink to get unbearable to the Feds and Alaskans alike, Ray Metcalfe's valiant efforts notwithstanding.

But perseverence pays off eventually, hey, Ray?

Darrow's Trifecta of Greed

Well, it's official: Ted Stevens, Lisa Murkowski, and Don Young are all on the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's Most Corrupt List for 2007.

Lovely.