In the 1890s, Tanana was a bustling town with a military post that was destined to be the center of commerce for interior Alaska—forever—according to a newspaper article of that era. That was a good bet then, given that Tanana was situated at the confluence of two major rivers and water was the main method of commerce.

Legislators are complaining that the 90 day session is too limiting—they don’t have enough time to interact with their constituents. Yet it appears they have time to amend a rather long ethics bill that would allow them to chat, eat and drink with lobbyists—at no expense to themselves—without having to report the meeting—as long as the expense (for immediate consumption) is under $50. Right now the limit is $15 and that doesn’t buy much in Juneau, they say. Well, I guess that depends on your style.

http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill_text.asp?hsid=HB0193C&session=26

A few questions come to mind: why put a dollar figure on what lobbyists have to report when in a few years $50 might be the price of Big Mac? Why do lobbyists need to buy legislators anything? Don’t they get a hefty per diem to cover expenses? Isn’t a meeting in their office good enough? When constituents or citizen lobbyists fly to Juneau, they are lucky to get a meeting in legislators’ offices, let alone a night on the town with them.

Elderly Alaskans know it is nearly impossible to find a primary care doctor who will accept Medicare insurance. Some legislators are grasping for solutions. One proposed legislation would offer grants to set up Medicare-only clinics or for the expansion of community health clinics to handle Medicare patients. While House Bill 335 contains zip for details, some doctors have expressed ideas on how they would implement the grants. If you are a Medicare client, these details are scary.

http://www.legis.state.ak.us/PDF/26/Bills/HB0335A.PDF

Medicare-only clinics raise many questions, in my mind, especially about quality of care, staff oversight and management:

The recent finger-pointing of who knew what, and when, over the union contracts and the city’s financial solvency, goes much deeper than mere numbers. The flaws in the Municipal Attorney’s report and the incomplete financial report waved before the media should cause us to question the qualifications and motives of those who are managing our city.

When the Assembly asked for a legal opinion on the labor contracts that were passed in 2008, why didn’t they ask their staff attorney? Instead, they first hired a law firm, Walker and Levesque—who were not experienced ’employment’ attorneys—to render legal advice. Their opinion was included in the infamous 60-page Wheeler Report, issued by the Municipal attorney, Dennis Wheeler.

At our last community council meeting, we learned that the city is eliminating the rolling closures that have closed our fire stations on rotating days throughout 2009. That is the good news.

The bad news is that several of the Fire Department’s special teams are slated to be mothballed for the winter. The city has several special teams trained for rescues in water, backcountry, trenches, as well as urban search and HAZMAT. The teams that are federally funded, like HAZMAT, will continue, but not the water and backcountry teams.

Maybe there aren’t many calls for mudflat rescues in winter, but it is shortsighted to shelve a team that responds to avalanches and other winter emergencies. Replacing this service with a volunteer organization may not provide the same timely response. It was bad enough to have the team shut down on Solstice—the most popular day of the year to climb Flattop—due to rolling closures at the team’s home station, but to propose a winter closure shows someone does not grasp the fickleness of our weather nor the habits of our residents.

I didn’t know it was so easy to be 10 years younger, an inch shorter or lose extra body parts. But when reviewing my medical records that’s what I found.

This component of health reform hasn’t received a lot of attention. I’ve heard directly from several doctors about the extra time e-records take and their problems finding appropriate software. But there is no doubt electronic records are the future of medical record keeping. E-records should make it easier to get information quickly to hospitals and specialists; it could reduce the need for duplicate tests. Sounds good until you realize it falls to you to ensure a measure of accuracy.

It was a tough decision Thursday evening—spend it outside where it was gloriously warm and sunny or inside Dimond High with our senior Senator, plus nearly a thousand vocal people.

Only a few dozen people got to comment on health reform, while hundreds left unheard. We all left without answers. Even the Senator didn’t get the information she needs before making decisions on our behalf.

The Senator said she was there to learn and it would have been so easy to do so, had she asked US a few questions, first. She said she’d received 5,000 letters and e-mails on health reform, but didn’t say if she’d read them.

Americans zipped through the first billion of the Cash for Clunkers program and Congress didn’t blink before they quickly added two billion more before recessing--and neither did the public. It’s puzzling that we line up for ‘free’ money, but riot at a program that would allow us to pay for affordable health insurance.

We never question our addiction to cars even though bailing out Detroit goes against all logic for achieving our energy independence, reducing our carbon footprint, and—yes—even factors into meaningful health reform.

We are far from being the healthiest population in the world. Many countries with national health care systems live longer than we do and they are healthier; keep in mind there’s a difference between longevity and health. Sure the US has marvelous and expensive health care for when we are sick—really sick, but little is being done to make us a healthier population, which could ultimately translate into health care savings.

One good point about having a gullible population is that it keeps our market economy running. People insist on the latest brand name drugs rather than generic; scam artists have no trouble selling us products to increase various body parts. We race to destroy a perfectly good car for a newer one, even though that carbon footprint won’t be reduced until we’ve driven it for five to eight years. The downside of being gullible is that it costs us money and wastes limited resources.

We do ourselves a disservice when we don’t teach logic in school. Certainly Congress and the media should be required to pass a logic test. The health reform debate is the latest casualty of our ineptness.

It is hard to compete with a famous musical performer and a maverick politician. But health insurance reform—not to be confused with heath care—is too important to neglect, because it impacts us all. It’s not just about money. Health reform reaches places few citizens can imagine.

Congress is holding hearings and endless committee meetings; but they haven’t invited me, nor others from the waiting room, who know first hand what’s wrong and who have no-nonsense solutions.

Last year, well before Reform was a popular term, I repeatedly tried to get our Alaskan delegation to respond to my practical solutions for fixing Medicare—beyond that of simply adding money. One did respond, but without conviction to tackle the biggest stumbling block to Reform—the lobbyists.

Downtown Anchorage caught my visiting brother-in-law’s attention. We have one. His town, Virginia Beach, doesn’t. I’m proud to take visitors to town to view the flowers, the independent stores, the museum and the green spaces of Town Square and the Park Strip that complement the urban spaces.

However, each time I travel Outside, I encounter town after town desperately trying to remain viable with little more than antique stores and coffee shops holding their core areas together. My thoughts always bring me back to Anchorage. Could we end up like these modern-day ghost towns?

The progression from being viable to something less, is subtle. Can anyone point to one action that started these towns’ decline? Many blame shopping malls. But Anchorage’s many malls haven’t diminished our core downtown. So how are we different?

The best physics lesson anyone could ask for is often available at the neighborhood elementary school. The best application for this knowledge is sometimes as close as the back yard.

Physics is really simple—literally—as in the six simple machines. You know: the lever, pulley, wedge, inclined plane, wheel and screw. We use these machines every day, constantly, as we go about our tasks of opening cans, climbing stairs, playing tennis or brushing our teeth. Rube Goldberg machines are the ultimate, fun examples of these simple machines.

Sure, I learned this in high school physics. But I really learned to apply the principles in my child’s 5th grade class. Yesterday I got a real-life refresher course.

During the cold war era, conversations with a Fairbanks friend centered around two issues: communism and its threat to the US and guns to fight invaders. Years later after we learned details of the economic conditions in the Soviet Union, I asked him why he thought communism posed a threat to anyone—the Soviets couldn’t even supply shoes for their troops.

The recent North Korean missile and nuclear tests remind me of those long ago conversations. Today, the fear is the same. I feel it in the news stories and in politicians, who immediately ask from more defense money. And the accompanying logic is the same--it simply doesn’t compute.

Mid-May, 2009. Anchorage. It rained and even snowed a little the other day. I was happy. Sure we needed the rain, but I was happy because at least for that day, I was relieved of guilt.

On such days, I’m reminded of the late ADNews columnist, Suzan Nightingale. She wrote what I consider one of the best pieces the News ever printed. She was on the mark as she described our summer sleep deprivation and guilty feelings should we waste one ray of sunshine. Yes, she prayed for rain so she could occasionally watch her ‘soaps’, but I need the rain to fulfill my civic duty.

Our democratic society includes the right to participate in our government. It’s called ‘public process.’ Although some of our elected officials don’t quite grasp the concept, our local government provides the best opportunities for citizen input—LOTS of opportunities. These aren’t the highly visible, single focus events like moving our Town Square bricks, cutting trees in parks, building roads through neighborhoods illogically, or bridges to nowhere.