Alaska taking step forward or backwards in civil rights

Alaskans go to the polls April 3 to vote in an expensive one issue advisory vote regarding benefits for those partners and dependents that are not the traditional married one man-one woman vote.

I want to thank Reps. John Coghill and Mike Kelly for their hard work and willingness to spend a paltry $1.2 million of state funds for the important task of asking all Alaskans if they want to enshrine bigotry against those “unconventional couples” in the Alaska Constitution, denying those couples and dependents from receiving health and other benefits of gainful employment.

Their efforts have brought many of all stripes together to oppose this vote on April 3 and I’ve appreciated the diversity and chance to get together with good folks.

To be honest, I never really paid much attention to their marital status — we were just people. My wife and I have been “conventionally” married for 30 years, but I feel as threatened by the proposed constitutional amendment as if we were (horrors) “unconventional”. I always thought a constitution was to give rights, not take them away.

There is an irony in Rep. Kelly being so eager to deny rights to those who don’t think like him. As one who plays Irish music, I sometimes sing about the discrimination Irish immigrants faced in America — “No Irish Need Apply”. How ready some are to deny others those same rights they had to fight for.

Years later, we will look upon this as we did women’s and civil rights — what were we thinking? I hope a resounding “no” vote from the people will put an end to this.

Here’s a link to HJR 9 - the current legislative language for the proposed constitutional amendment. It’s actually quite a bit different than the April 3 ballot language. Here’s where to keep track of its progress.

I also wrote a blog entry back in December on this issue.

Some articles and opinions

April 1, 2007
Letters to the Editor
Rep. Mike Doogan opinion article
Anchorage Daily News article
Anchorage Daily News opinion

March 31, 2007
News article in the Daily Newsminer
Another news article about the legislative proposal itself, which the proponents aren’t even waiting to see what the advisory vote says.
News article on Rep. Kelly trying to sway the vote, using his legislative office. Interesting that the governor didn’t feel comfortable telling Alaskans how to vote, but Kelly does. His opinion article April 1 says essentially what was in the letter, which you can view here.
Letters to the Editor

March 29, 2007
Letters to the Editor
More Letters to the Editor

March 28, 2007
Letters to the Editor

March 27, 2007
Letters to the Editor

March 26, 2007
Opinion by Mary Bishop
Letters to the Editor

March 25, 2007
Opinion by Jean Laurencelle
Letters to the Editor

March 24, 2007
Letters to the Editor

March 23, 2007
Letters to the Editor

March 21, 2007
Letters to the Editor

March 20, 2007
Dermot Cole idea on banning divorce
Coghill’s opinion AGAIN, for what it is worth. He feels so threatened. I’m not sure that those unconventional couples realized what power they have.

March 18, 2007
Katherine Gouyton opinion
Coghill’s opinion

 

Alaskans are capable of adapting

A friend recently posted the following and I thought I would share it. I’ve recently been in eastern Massachussetts during a Nor’easter (dropping 4″-8″ of snow) that scared everyone so much, they closed all the schools for 1-2 days.
Even Burger King closed. The driving conditions weren’t very bad, as there was more snowplowing equipment than cars on the roads. The next day, front-end loaders, pickup plows, bobcats and the like were hard at work clearing all the parking lots and business approachs.

There were a lot of cars frozen in place where street parked. A couple days later in Boston, residents were chipping their way out. My rental car, admittedly not up to my 4WD standards at home, had to get pushed out of metered street parking twice and I helped others get out. Kind of like City of Fairbanks streets after a snow and a trial warm spell simulating breakup.

So here goes.

60 above zero:
Arizonians turn on the heat.
People in Alaska plant gardens.

50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Fairbanks sunbathe.

40 above zero:
Italian & English cars won’t start.
People in Alaska drive with the windows down.

32 above zero:
Distilled water freezes.
The water in Anchorage gets thicker.

20 above zero:
Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats.
People in Alaska throw on a flannel shirt.

15 above zero:
New York landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Alaska have the last cookout before it gets cold.

Zero:
People in Miami all die.
People in Alaska close the windows.

10 below zero:
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Alaska get out their winter coats.

25 below zero:
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Alaska are selling cookies door to door.

40 below zero:
Washington DC runs out of hot air.
People in Alaska let the dogs sleep indoors.

100 below zero:
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Alaskan drivers get upset because they can’t start the Mini-Van.

460 below zero:
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.)
People in Alaska start saying…”Cold ’nuff fer ya?”

500 below zero:
Hell freezes over.
Alaska public schools will open 2 hours late.

 

Caifornia - leader in energy conservation models

One wouldn’t think California could be a model for energy conservation. Yet, over the past few decades, they have continually looked to reduce their consumption of energy in ways that other states bypass. Here’s a recent article that details some of their efforts.

It seems that a combination of price and regulatory changes have been the most effective. We have certainly been experiencing the price effect, but in Alaska and most other states, not much has happened on the regulatory side.

Long AND short term of course, reducing consumption is a win-win for the consumers and inhabitants of this planet. It doesn’t take much to accomplish effect changes over time, but the longer we wait, the cost of not making those changes could bankrupt us. But I don’t need to preach as much as the policymakers need to take significant action.

 

Women’s Tennis Tops Tie Tongues

It takes a different set of linguistic skills to keep up with current women’s professional tennis. Serena is the apparently rare exception. Excerpted from a recent article.

“Serena overcame Shahar Peer … to next play Nicole Vaidisova who beat Lucie Safarova. Vaidisova was the highest rank after Safarova upsent Amelie Mauresmo and Peer ousted Svetlana Kuznetsova, though Vaidisova lost to Kutznetsova at the last French Open. … Williams’ win over Nadia Petrova … 4th round win over Jelena Jankovic. Pockets of Israeli fans cheered Pee [sic]. Maria Sharapova downed Vera Zvonareva and will play Ana Chakvetadze. Kim Clijsters will play Martina Hingis.

Try saying the previous paragraph fast several times over.

 

Ethanol is the answer?

With the talk that the energy component of the State of the Union will be highlighting making more ethanol, there is little discussion to address that, while ethanol might be a way to reduce our oil consumption, it has a lower efficiency (less miles/gallon) than gasoline and more importantly, depending upon the fuel source and location, costs more to make. Shouldn’t we also consider the impact of diverting a lot of food source options away from food, which impacts the costs of those foods. Seems like the discussion over ethanol needs to be more refined and targeted. An article in the Washington Post starts to address this. The more fundamental answer is to reduce the demand, whether by efficiency or technology.

 

"Nucular" Power

With the State of the Union coming soon, the buzz is that George Bush will talk about enhancing “nucular” power as a means of combating global warming and increasing our energy independence.

Nuclear power has been given some incredibly large incentives in the last few congresses under the Republicans. I ran across an article that explains a lot more than I could.

The push for nuclear energy is compelling except for the fact that accidents are extremely deadly and that we don’t have safe places to put spent fuel that remains radioactive for thousands of years. It takes hubris to think we could be smart enough or know enough about what the future holds for a section of the earththat far ahead. That hasn’t stopped them from trying.

A story more close to home is a plan hatched by Toshiba to put a sodium based nuclear reactor in Galena Alaska, a mostly native village and formerly a forward Air Force base housing a handful of fighter jets. What I find particularly interesting is that this reactor can’t be licensed to be installed in Japan, home country of Toshiba, so they suggest it for the Indians of rural Alaska? Smallpox infested blankets anyone?

I’d be more inclined to support fusion over fission, as that would leave us without the nasty radioactive byproducts. We haven’t figured out how to do this yet, but the sun has. Maybe we could spend a large portion of our nuclear subsidies to subsidize solar energy? Hello? Is anyone there?

 

Alaska on the wrong side of climate change

The state of Alaska is on the wrong side of climate change. We are both heavily favored for major impacts, but the State of Alaska has also taken the wrong side in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case has been argued before the court, with a decision due by June 2007. Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to be the swing vote.

One report out of the Anchorage Daily News recently spoke of the irony of the State of Alaska opposing the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gasses at the same time as our state is most vulnerable from the impacts of those gases in our atmosphere. Gov. Palin is looking toward guidance from the Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission. In a companion article in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, a longer version of the ADN article (not available on line) quoted Tim Beninendi, staffer to Rep. Samuels, chair of this commission, as saying that the commission wouldn’t address any suggestions of CO2 reduction, only the impacts from doing nothing about the cause.

This limited approach is inefficient, costly, and ill-advised. Since prevention is usually more cost effective than treatment, why not expend some effort toward reducing the things that are creating the negative impacts? It doesn’t serve Alaskans to have the Governor look at only one means of addressing this important issue.

Sometimes logic and common sense seems to baffle those who live in a political environment.

 

State House Rep. Mike Kelly goes off the deep end

I find myself deeply disappointed with my State House Representative Mike Kelly. I have always offered him respect even though I disagree with him and he likewise, but in his Dec. 29 Community Perspective, Mike Kelly has gone off the deep end in his righteousness to deny others the same benefits that he receives from his government.

In his grinch-like Community Perspective, Kelly spews hateful animosity in offering benefits to those who live in monogamous relationships not meeting with his approval, despite the Alaska Supreme Court instructing the Legislature and state government otherwise six months ago. That’s right, despite his protestations of not enough time to deal with this legally, he and the other majority members of the Legislature deliberately refused to comply by the ruling of our state’s highest court even after an expensive special session. He doesn’t agree with the Supreme Court, so he suggests we find ways to get rid of the objectionable justices.

Rep. Kelly seems to assume that anyone not in agreement with his view of private relationships is morally corrupt and, like Rep. Coghill, is willing to make this a major effort as a legislator. There was a time when the name Kelly would engender a response “No Irish Need Apply”. I want to think our state has a large enough tent for diversity and humanity to rise above such discrimination in the eyes of the beholder.

I’d also offer that we WANT people to have health care. It’s better for them, their employers, private enterprise and society. I’d offer that we WANT people to be in stable relationships. I won’t legislate against them after climbing into their bedrooms to see if their private behavior meets with my approval.

Whether to deny those benefits or not will be voted on by Alaskans this coming April in a constitutional amendment, which I will oppose. I think of a constitution as providing rights, not taking them away. I want ALL our state employees to share in the basic benefits of employment. As long as they continue to offer their good services to our state, they deserve no less.

I appreciate the responses from Rich Seifert in his Community Perspective Dec. 30, the Newsminer’s editorial the same day. There was also a short article on the front page.

 

Intelligent Design

Nope, not what you were thinking I might be writing about.

Some of you know I was the telecommunications manager for a large company in Fairbanks. While we had many departments, we went from needing 3-4 operators to an automated attendant system incorporated into the phone system. With over 700 extensions

Any system has to have a goal of getting people through their system to where they need to go as quickly as possible as often, it is through an 800 number and more importantly, because it is good for the customer. Yet many systems seem designed to wear out the caller until they give up.

The University of Alaska Anchorage Computer Support Department auto-attendant, which gets funding to provide students, staff, and faculty with support, manages to violate several of the common rules. First, it takes one over a minute before they give you the choices. Even in November, they tell you in advance about their summer hours. Secondly, once they get to the options, you have to wait until all the options are listed before hearing the option to speak to a representative. Once you select that option, you then go into a queue that tell you which caller in line you are. When I called, I started out as caller #6 and eventually ended up as THE caller. The final coup was to then send me to voice mail to leave a message.

When I mentioned this poor design to the Chief Information Officer, he cc’d an email to the manager in charge, saying I had a bad experience and told him to get in touch with me. Not exactly what I’d call a single bad experience, just poor design. Of course, I never heard from that manager, despite his boss’ direction.

I also submitted a customer service report through their website, but never heard back. The whole reason I called them was to get a contact in their networking group, because there was no directory listing for that individual that worked. Interesting when the department responsible for creating that directory doesn’t even have a functional directory for its own staff.

Another example might be hiding behind FAQ’s and not allowing even direct emails to request customer assistance. I was investigating Google Checkout, their competitive effort to eBay. Google, one of the richest companies on the internet, practices this customer obfucation pretty thoroughly. They won’t reply to direct emails to support@google.com or customersupport@google.com (or any variety of these). They send you a reply to go to their “contact us” on their website. Nothing one can easily find allows you to get anything other than a canned answer to your problem. If you can find a way to submit a problem to them, the reply tells you how much they value your opinion, but because they get so much correspondence, they probably won’t reply. They say they design their system or make changes based upon customer input. Who are they talking to? Any customer who would trust their credit card and bank account number to a company with whom one has absolutely no ability to contact in case of a problem would be nuts. I’m not the only one to notice this as in this
Infoworld article or in this blog. There is an irony in rightfully slagging Google Checkout, when they are now the owners of my blog hosting site AND I used google.com to find sources for this section of my blog.

Amazon merely hides behind email, though does have a toll free number for customer support that is advertised by common folks on non-Amazon sites.

In a voice mail system, the first rule is to always allow a 0 to get to a live human being. Keep your message short. It is a waste of everyone’s time to say “please listen carefully as our options have changed to improve service”. And, as UAA violates, don’t put your troubleshooting tips in the body of the main greeting. Also, don’t bury your options more than 3 deep.

There are more obvious design rules, but this is for starters.

It seems as companies use technology to hide behind when dealing with customers. Some probably figure if they can wear a customer down, the customer will give up. That may appear to be a less costly option, but keep it up and that company will lose its customers. Dell found that out when outsourcing the help desk to India. While they might speak perfect English, I could only understand every 5th word and I consider myself very sensitive to accents. The Indian call centers also had a way of very courteously telling you only their canned responses, not actually in solving the particular problem. As a result of lots of negative attention to crappy customer service, some of their call centers were brought back to the U.S.

Of course, if there are so many problems with a company’s service that they can’t afford to hire enough live operators, they probably are doing something wrong in the quality of their product or core service they are marketing.

Sometimes what it takes to get attention of a company is to search the web for the corporate officers, try to figure out their emails if not obvious and email them. I’ve been successful with Fedex, Alaska Communications Systems, and Earthlink doing this. Dell was a total waste of my time, though I got a call from a corporate flack who refused to put anything in writing or get back to me on a problem. Even his recommendation for a certified letter to their legal office resulted in no response.

I’m sure others have had experienced similar experiences, but when the CEO actually notices, then it might make some difference. Are there any companies that DO a good job at customer service with technology? I’d like to hear.

 

Tuna in a Can

Has anyone wondered why a can of tuna is more like a half-can of water or oil and a half-can of tuna mush? The can still advertises tuna IN water or oil. I can’t even count on making two sandwiches with a single can, even if I add lots of extra stuff, like mayo, onions, relish, celery, etc.

Of course, you can buy solid albacore for 3x times the price, but you give yourself 3 times the mercury as well. Such a deal.