Oyster Round Up
Why is it never good when I say that?
Less than a year after then-Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) quit the government to pursue other projects, Alaska leads the way in its debt-to-GDP ratio when its unfunded pension obligations are taken into account, followed by Rhode Island, New Mexico, Ohio and Mississippi. And although Alaska’s ratio is far lower than Greece’s, it does give the state a debt-to-GDP ratio similar to that of Jordan and Palin’s favorite health care resource, Canada, and a higher ratio than Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, India, the Philippines or Uruguay.
Thanks Feds!
We’d like to interrupt this Alaska Tea Party diatribe about the evils of the Federal government to acknowledge the following $10.8 billion that those darn evil-doersss gave us this year. From an address by Mark Begich today:
“That includes benefits for the military servicemen and women we so cherish in our state, retirement and disability payments to our seniors, and health care to about half our population through the Defense Department, Veterans Administration, Indian Health Service and Medicare,” Begich said. “For every dollar Alaskans send to Uncle Sam in federal taxes, we get back nearly two dollars in return. A pretty good deal.”
Begich highlighted other significant federal investments in Alaska, including receiving more than six dollars for every dollar in federal gas taxes Alaskans pay, which underwrites much of the cost of road construction and maintenance; the $1.6 billion Alaska is receiving from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; and the nearly $2 billion in federal funds Alaska will receive next year in essential services from road improvements and Medicaid payments to school assistance.
Just sayin’.
Alaska Family Council’s most recent e-newsletter from President Jim Minnery said that the Girl Scouts is “the last place you want your daughter to be.”
In case you didn’t know, it’s not your mother’s Girl Scouts any more. While the Boy Scouts of America has remained true to its traditional ideals, the Girl Scouts have gone full tilt into feminism/sexual revolution/GLBT politics. And doing their best to export it internationally.
Yikes. Picking fights with Girl Scouts? Sweet faces, big eyes, cute uniforms, yummy cookies… Hmm. Dangerous territory. The Girl Scouts of Alaska have responded.
It is enormously disappointing that an Alaskan coalition would forward such inflammatory statements without having made any contact with Girl Scouts of Alaska. Girl Scouts is a non-religious values based organization that strongly respects families and makes no statements or stands on girls’ sexuality.
Girl Scouts of Alaska builds girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place. The values that Girl Scouts stand for are what’s stated in the Girl Scout Promise and Law, essentially unchanged since 1912.
Is there some kind of Troop patch for standing up to big meanies?
Drill Baby, Drill! But NOT in Bristol Bay
President Obama’s new offshore energy plan, whether you like it or not, did one thing absolutely right.
“We thank President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar for protecting Bristol Bay, one of the planet’s richest marine ecosystems,” said Marilyn Heiman, director of the Pew Environment Group’s U.S. Arctic program. “Bristol Bay must be permanently protected for future generations as the home of the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon run and part of a region providing more than 40 percent of our nation’s seafood. With fish stocks declining around the globe, we cannot afford to put Bristol Bay’s vibrant fisheries at risk.”
Remember Professor Rick Steiner, who got all kinds of grief for saying (gasp!) that we should be asking ourselves if it is possible to do any kind of “safe” oil drilling in Bristol Bay? Well the University said he was just a big ol’ radical, and he got his funding cut. Well, the country ought to be thanking Steiner for being one of the few voices speaking out to protect this valuable ecosystem that provides almost HALF of the nation’s seafood and to date remains virtually pristine. Next dragon to slay? Pebble Mine.
As if you needed another reason to be against the proposed Pebble Mine, Rio Tinto, the multinational corporate giant with the most experience and partner in the Pebble Limited Partnership, just had 4 employees convicted in China for accepting bribes and stealing secrets. The New York Times wrote all about it.
Thanks for the round up. Never a dull moment AKM.
When my daughter was in Girl Scouts, the things they studied were very relevant to today’s problems, i.e. visiting strip mine sites in Kentucky. They learned where food came from and how to make the best of it, not just s’mores. Girl Scout camp was interesting, different subjects.
My son was so totally bored with Cub & Boy Scouts, and I could certainly see why. Still doing the same things that had been done, nothing to do with today’s issues.
Good for the current Girl Scouts.
When I was in Girl Scouts nearly 50 years ago our troop actively helped others. Often we visited Nursing homes and seniors, and Vets in the hospital. We placed flags on gravestones on Veteran’s Day, collected clothing for the needy. We also collected newspapers to recycle. It wasn’t just about camping, knot tying and trail making but was so varied it added much content to our lives. We also learned about different customs, cultures and languages. I will never forget one ceremony we had that was candlelit. We said the Girl Scout Promise in different languages all at the same time, including sign language.
How long ago was this.. well cookies back then were 25 cents a box. hahaha
Oh good. The italiciza virus has not propagated to this page.
The Round Up, as always…great!
Payback! Baby! Payback!
“States that voted for John McCain get to enjoy oil spills and coastal devastation. Not that they’re the kind of people who own swimwear or go to beaches or swim or whatever”.
http://wonkette.com/414557/obama-will-only-ruin-the-coasts-of-red-states
When I was in the Girl Scouts I thought we were doing way too many things with senior citizens. We went to nursing homes and sang song. We brought them candy at Halloween. We made little turkey things for them at Thanksgiving. We gave them homemade pot holders. Besides the tedium of all of that, old people frankly scared me.
One day I raised my hand and asked if it might be possible to do something once in a while that didn’t involve old people. Something more relevant. I was quickly escorted to another room where the two Moms in charge told me that perhaps “I would be happier outside of scouting.”
Thank God “it’s not your Mother’s Girl Scouts anymore.” I’m betting that Mr. Minnery loves the Boy Scouts adherence to their “traditional ideals” but it might behoove them to recognize that we entered the 21st Century about 10 years ago.
What a grump. I bet he yells at kids to get off his lawn.
This is the time of year when our local Girl Scouts came around selling cookies. One of my fond memories of being a Girl Scout was selling cookies, because it meant that our family would be eating them for quite a while after the sale.
When I was expecting my daughter, she was due to be born in March, and the local scouts had called on me. There were boxes of cookies on the shelves, but I was put on a special diet, so the cookies would have to wait until after I came home from the hospital with a new baby.
When I went into labor, the doctor advised eating lightly, saying that I should just have a cup of tea and some cookies. Finally! Thin mints! And, then we were off to the hospital. Years later, when the local scouts came around in March, they found me to be a good customer. Unfortunately, they had to suffer through my story of being in labor and having their cookies before they made the sale. Eventually, it turned into “Yeah, yeah, we heard the story, how many boxes will you be buying this year?”
As a sign of the times, the super scout salesperson is almost ready for college. And, the girls no longer knock on doors. They set up a table in the local mall where they can interact with many more people (and be spared memories such as mine).
It’s no wonder Alaska has a high debt-GDP ratio, because its spending-GDP ratio has been skyrocketing:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1992_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=F0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=l&title=&state=AK&color=c&local=s#usgs302
When did the blowout in spending start? 2006. What happened in 2006, I wonder? Was a particularly fiscally non-conservative governor elected?
How Palin, on that record, is beloved by small-government Tea Partiers is anyone’s guess. I guess if you call yourself a fiscal conservative, love guns and hate gays, that’s good enough for them.
You know, every time I read about the two-for-one dollar exchange between Outside and Alaska, I momentarily think “WTF?” And then, I remember the year I spent in AK.
Calling it “The Last Frontier” doesn’t really capture reality, although it does scan better than “The Last Almost-Uninhabitable Chunk of Resources”. The US has had a number of “frontiers” in its history, and during their frontier periods, they were very challenging places to live. But, in most of the Lower 48, the former frontiers are now just places, albeit some with worse weather than others.
Maintaining Alaska is a reasonable objective for the rest of the United States. If I had the ability to alter history, I’d opt for having kept it as a Territory. Quite a few problems have arisen because of such a huge region being entrusted to the electoral care of such a small number of people. But done is done, and it’s still reasonable for the rest of us to subsidize our brethren (and sisteren) in almost-uninhabitable-land.
At least, in Alaska, they combined the whole region into one state. The biggest error (in my opinion) of the let’s-turn-territories-into-states thrust in the late 19th century was that both Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and maybe Idaho should have been just one state; and so should Nebraska and Kansas, although I’m less militant about that one.
Just think how much more representative the Senate would be if we only had 45 states. That would be 90 total Senators, including two for DMWI and two for Kansbraska). Those two hypothetical states would have 4.4% of the Senate’s votes, although they’d still have only 2.6% of the country’s population, so they’d still be way ahead of the game. In reality, of course, the real states have 14% of the Senate’s votes, although they still have only 2.6% of the population. In my darker moments, I think that this will prove to be the downfall of the US experiment.
Now, admittedly, Alaska gets 2% of the Senate for 0.2% of the population, but there wasn’t any way to reasonably connect it to anything else. I still wish it were still a territory, but at least they didn’t divide it in two.
Ah, I still (well finally again) get Girl Scouts at my door to get my cookie order. I am a most faithful (and prolific!) orderer, having been a scout since I was 9. This year’s (and forever on till they’re out I suppose) pair got a huge order from me on one form and a much smaller one from DH on the other. They (the cookies) keep very well in the freezer too, in case anyone was wondering…!
Bristol Bay protection is good–something to build on.
Two antlers up to the Girl Scouts.
A hard hind kick to Jim Minnery and Alaska’s “Family Council”.
I was disappointed to hear of the off-shore drilling, though I’m glad that Bristol Bay will be hands off. Like you said, they got at least one thing right.
I was in Brownies for two years and then we all “flew up” to Girl Scouts. But only two in our troop continued. The leaders quit and no one else would take on 25 of us. The option was to join the troop across town, which the two girls did. Across town really wasn’t that big of a deal in a town of 10,000, but it was foreign territory to most of us, I guess.
My girls went all the way through Camp Fire USA. I liked the smaller group sizes (6 to 10, usually) and that it was boys and girls. I also loved that the focus was on service to people (not just building things and calling is service – my apologies to the Boy Scouts for that snark). The service was varied, from doing things for old people, to helping in and around schools, speaking out about social issues such as drug and alcohol use and addiction and AIDS education. And camp for my girls was great – and for me, as an adult. I loved going with them to weekends at Camp Sealth, one of the most beautiful spots in the Puget Sound. I also loved all the time the girls and I spent at day camp. Some of the activities were traditional, but most of it just gave kids a place to be kids and to enjoy being with other kids in the outdoors, something most urban kids don’t get to do often.
But good for the Girl Scouts speaking up to this narrow-minded group. I’m glad to hear that they have changed to meet the needs of girls today. It’s too bad the Boy Scouts haven’t figured out they might need to join the rest of us in the century we are living in.
Hmph on the Scout thingy.
We’ve hosted father/daughter Girl Scout projects at the hardware store.
Older Girl Scouts have built a trail shelter with their mothers and done many other civic projects we’ve donated to or supported.
Hope that twit Minnery doesn’t visit this part of Alaska- we’re right proud of our Girl Scouts here.
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Good on Senator Begich for reminding the folks who love to flap about the fed about the services we receive from the fed. Getting awfully tired of the rhetoric surrounding our relationship with the fed.
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Bristol Bay news is good news. I’m sorry Mr Steiner suffered for his stance on the issues there but thankful he and a few others stood right up and did what was right.
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Gonna go eat the last of my Girl Scout cookies. Didn’t know they would freeze well InJuneau… will buy more next year!
Ideology and drilling for oil.
Ideology is a superb compass for pointing us in the direction we want to go, but a compass, no matter how superb, doesn’t take into account the obstacles we may encounter in that direction. Any change in a complex system will more often than not bring about a tension, or outright conflict, between current realities and long term goals.
An admittedly simplistic analogy would be the long term goal of building a bridge over a river, with the idea that the bridge will confer a number of invaluable benefits over the current state of fording the river.
The rigid ideologists state that not only are they not going to cross the river until the bridge is in place, but nobody else should cross the river until the bridge is built, regardless of their needs to get to the other side.
The ideologists who are realists state that the bridge over the river is their long term goal and they will work unceasingly toward that goal, but meanwhile they understand that folks still have to cross the river even if it’s slower, muddier, and sometimes dangerous.
I can understand PO’s decision for drilling, but I also want to see vigorous and unceasing work toward developing alternate energy sources at the same time.
Very good news about Bristol Bay. Hats off to Dr. Steiner for presenting an excellent case which showed that the short term gains of drilling for oil in Bristol Bay were far outweighed by the potential long term adverse consequences. That’s how decisions are done right. I’m much happier to have PO making the difficult decisions on balancing short and long term goals than the horrific specter of what a McCain/ Palin administration would have done.
Well said, Lee323.
Never been prouder of my Girl Scout past! A lot of people assume that Girl Scouts are a sister organization to the Boy Scouts, but Boy Scouts have a very strong religious component that the Girl Scouts never found necessary. You don’t need religion to be moral or values-promoting! My nephew joined Boy Scouts and one of the first badges he was encouraged to earn was the “God” badge. My sister had no idea they were a Christian organization when she signed him up (she assumed they were more like Girl Scouts!), and now she has to tread carefully lest they find out that her family is not and her son is no longer welcome. I’m sure there is a variation in how much emphasis each troop puts on Christianity, but his troop seems to be quite serious about it. I think she’s hoping he’ll get bored of it and quite sooner rather than later, but it doesn’t seem likely right now.
Thin Mints freeze particularly well, seemingly indefinitely, so I always buy an extra box to stash. I remember when they went up to $1.50 and my mom, our troop leader, was concerned that we’d sell fewer boxes because the prices was so high! LOL They are $4 a box now!
Okay, I was a Girl Scout leader for three out of the last five years. I haven’t read his full article, but I have no idea what he is talking about. We never talked about the sexual revolution or GLBT Politics. Not even once. We never talked about feminism either, however, we did take the girls to the Women of Science and Technology Seminar at UAA every year. They went to classes where they were taught subjects like robotics, biology, veterinary medicine, geology, and engineering, by Actual Women Scientists. I guess that might qualify as “radical feminism” if you come from a background where women are not allowed to show their faces in public or drive a car.
My husband was a boy scout, and their troop must have been unusual; there was no religious subtext. They were a group of city boys who relished a weekend in the country, camping, sitting around a camp fire, learning to tie knots and whittling. Corny, yes, but many of them have remained good friends to this day.
Our other experience with the Boy Scouts came much later. We were driving to the East Coast to visit relatives, and never thought to make a reservation at a motel. We just counted on finding a vacancy, and if one place was filled, the next place would be just as good. Except for one little detail. Every motel was filled, and there wasn’t going to be a vacancy, no matter how far we drove. The problem was the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. In addition to the boys, the entire family came along. They all slept in motels, even the Boy Scouts. It seemed to defeat everything that my husband had enjoyed in his scouting experience. We ended up wrapped in our coats, camping out, sleeping in our station wagon. Thank goodness we had our real scouting experiences which had taught us how to cope in a tough situation.
I’ll add one more Girl Scout memory; I hope that you all have the same memory of s’mores!
Lee 323: I like your post very much. Well thought out. And I might add that not drilling here (although I am against it as a long-term strategy) where there are stringent regulations (which don’t compensate for human error) means off shore drilling in places like Brazil where there are no regulations at all and we still end up polluting the world’s oceans. It is a very complicated dance when put in a global perspective.
I love Mark quoting Julia O’Malley’s article headline ‘To the Feds, we loathe you, send us money’ in his speech to the legislature.
Found the following in my wee-hours of the morning ramblings on the tubes…
As if there was any further ‘proof’ needed of the differences between the POHNs and the Dems:
“GOP, Dem websites reflect glaring differences in the parties” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100331/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1382;_ylt=AhSrLM66QWhWJ7KPGuyutTC2GL8C;_ylu=X3oDMTM0OGtpY3ZkBGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwMzMxL3luZXdzX3RzMTM4MgRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzUEcG9zAzUEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNnb3BkZW13ZWJzaXQ-
With such totally *different* ways of viewing the world (and ‘reaching out’ to others) is there any hope the two sides’ll ever see eye-to-eye over *any* thing? Sheesh ~ how can a group of people (the POHNs) be so continually angry and negative about every . single . thing? Don’t they *ever* get tired of being poster children for Temper Tantrums and Grizzled Grumping? What poops! beth.
When I was in Girl Scouts, back in the 1950′s, our two leaders were mainly into homemaking “arts” so we all dutifully got merit badges in sewing and embroidery and cooking and child care and first aid. I don’t recall a single community project! Sounds like today’s Girl Scouts are a lot more involved and having a much better time.
Back in the 60′s I was a Brownie leader for my daughter’s group in Florida (Cape Kennedy area). Due to a shortage of adult volunteers, I was brand new and on my own – didn’t have the heart to turn down anyone so had a large group of 23, including 2 black girls, one Cuban refugee girl and one little girl from somewhere in Eastern Europe – and my 2 month old younger daughter in a port-a-crib! I never gave it a second thought, but found out later that my little Brownie group was the first racially integrated one in the state. I do recall one of the black Moms came and observed an entire meeting the first time her daughter came – making sure this would be a positive experience for her child.
At the end of each meeting, we’d sit around in a discussion circle. One meeting I had everyone say what their favorite flavor of ice cream was. And then what color their family car was. And what color their favorite dress was. Then I said what if you could only have vanilla ice cream, and people could only drive blue cars, and all dresses had to be purple? What if all the dads looked just the same and moms had to fix the same dinner every night? Nobody liked those ideas at all. I ended talking about life being so full of differences and that’s what makes life so interesting, and the world so beautiful.
Penn Lawer:
“I ended talking about life being so full of differences and that’s what makes life so interesting, and the world so beautiful.”
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And THAT, is what Girl Scouting is all about! ; )
grinning @ akbatwoman! My mother was my Brownie leader. Brownies was my first exposure to the Appalachian trail, and helped make me a lifelong hiker, gardener, and lover of the wild. I moved on to another troop for Girl Scouts, and it helped make me the well-rounded woman I am. I didn’t love selling cookies, but I do love the Girl Scouts. Every badge I earned represented a series of accomplishments. Thanks once again to Mr. Steiner. We need people like him to keep our wild places wild.
Health and peace.
I cannot attest that Girl Scout cookies keep well in the freezer, but they are delicious Cold. Happy is such a cookie monster, they just don’t last around here, even in the freezer.
My best friend and I have daughters the same age who are also friends. We were scout leaders from daisies through 4th grade. Camping at Kolomoki, visiting the planetarium and the aquarium and the ballet and museums and the local waste treatment plant, lots of arts and crafts and folklore, swimming and kickball and orienteering, coastal cleanups and Earth Day festivities, jamborees, and, yes, singing for (and With) the old folks at local nursing homes…and Cookies!!!
Girl Scouts are like any other organization or group. You get out of it what you put into it.
The more the merrier, say I. I am not afraid of folks because we have differences. That’s the fun part, that’s what makes us interesting, eh? It makes our lives richer.
Dear AKM,
I just want to thank you for this wonderful blog that has become such a bright spot in my life. I can’t get thru the day without looking in on Mudflats.
As a former long term Alaskan, I am celebrating with you on the saving of Bristol Bay fishery. No matter how much I hunger for salmon, I will NEVER buy farm raised salmon or any other seafood.
Anyway, just wanted to say thank you for brightening my day.