Because I haven’t done a photo post in ages, here’s a gull landing among surf scoters in the waters of Gastineau Channel behind my building. It was taken a few days ago.

Looking over my blog, it seems like a database recitation these days. I’m not sure if its the Facebook effect of my sharing links and thoughts in a narrower circle or if it’s due to my recent lack of energy these past few months.

Based on earlier performance, I won’t make any promises about specific levels of photo content. I will try to post more photos from time to time.

Teacher Certification Database – Searchable by teacher first or last name, this database will provide a list of that teacher’s current certifications along with expiration dates. This database does not list expired certifications or any personal data.

Good for a quick check to see if your child’s teacher is certified, although your child’s school should have done that for you. Additional information is available to designated staff within school districts.

This is our last stop within the Department of Education and Early Development. Next week we start up with the Department of Environmental Conservation and begin our explorations with a pesticides database.

Daily K-9 Lessons – From the website, “The goal of the mastery lessons is to focus teacher instruction on the skills needed for students to master the concepts of math and reading. The skills and lessons are based on the expectations of the State of Alaska Benchmarks and the Terra Nova test. The lessons can be used independently or in conjunction with activities already being implemented by the instructor.” Searchable by subject and grade.

Be sure to read the document on the organization and use of the lessons before searching. The lessons could potentially be useful to homeschoolers.

Next week we’ll look in on verifying certified teachers.

This is a 1960 “Meet the Press” interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The interview focuses on the lunch counter sit in campaigns. This was a targeted campaign where a specific group of people performed a particular nonviolent action that opened them up to arrest.  Think of it as a very focused and disciplined version of the Occupy movement.

The interview touched on a number of issues. Here are some approximate timestamps of topics I think will be of interest to readers:

8:30 – Voter registration and the then current “mass of red tape” needed to register.

11:30 – An appeal to moral law as superseding unjust manmade law

14:30 – The inevitable accusation of communism.

15:30 – Discussion of interracial marriage and of Southern fears that integration would lead to more of it. King calls it an individual matter.

If there’s parts of the video that you find interesting or useful in today’s climate, please leave a comment with an approximate time stamp.

Alternative Testing Center locator – Usually assessment tests take place in schools, but under certain circumstances they can be taken elsewhere. Search this database by school district or community to find an approved alternative testing center.

Specify a district, choose a city and search results will appear with the name and address of the alternative testing center. That is the only information offered.

Next week we’ll visit a database of Alaska-specific lesson plans for K-9 students.

I’m disappointed and angry that President Obama signed this law. I’m more disappointed and angry that he attached a President GW Bush style “signing statement” indicating the parts of the law he feels free to ignore or to interpret differently from Congress. This was not a right of the Presidency under Bush and it still isn’t under Obama. Even though his written intentions are in areas I favor, that doesn’t make the signing statement Constitutional. He should have signed it with intention of carrying it through, submitted the law to a court challenge or veto the bill despite its other, possibly more beneficial effects.

This isn’t the first time that President Obama has issued this style of signing statement. Taking actions against civil liberties and issuing unconstitutional signing statements were two things I wrote about often during the Bush Administration. Yet I just don’t seem to be as publicly on top of the Obama Administration’s attacks on civil liberties.

I’ve thought about why this is. It’s not because I think the President is doing a great job overall. While I still would NOT change my vote to McCain/Palin or any other 2008 candidate, I’m disappointed by the President’s performance in most areas except gay rights where I think he has done well and in the area of the economy. There are two factors why I don’t blame the President for our economy:

1. I’m just not convinced that any government can improve or destroy an economy as large as ours. It’s like an ant trying to steer an elephant, regardless of who is President.
2. Even if #1 weren’t true the President has been blocked by Congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats by implementing his full program. You can’t blame somebody until you have given them the ability to solve a problem their way.

I’ve thought about it a lot and I think the main reason that I don’t continue to loudly condemn the rise of the security state is that from 2002-2008, there was hope that the so-called opposition party would change this country’s course. If we pointed out the Bush and Republican abuses to liberty and elected Democrats to Congress and the Presidency, we could get the government out of the business of mass surveillance, indefinite detentions in foreign locations and bring about accountability for torture. I volunteered a lot of hours for President Obama in the 2008 campaign to make this happen.

Now, if President Obama were to be a one-term President and we elected the Republican candidate, we would get a return to waterboarding and other forms of torture and the secret arrest and detention without charge or trial would be publicly embraced. That’s not change I can believe in, as bad as things have deteriorated so far.

So, if you have wondered why I’ve gone silent, it’s out of feeling that we’ve tried all brakes on the car of the State and none of them work. At the moment I’m half-heartedly supporting former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in his Libertarian bid for the Presidency. He’s got great stands on civil liberties, marriage equality and understands that we can’t shoot our way out of problems. If he gets the Libertarian nomination, he will be on the ballot in all 50 states.

I’ve sent his campaign money, but I don’t support his budget and tax policies at all. Plus it seems like there’s a consensus among Americans that the National Security state is just fine as long as they’re not personally carted off by it or if it confines its worst abuses to non-citizens.

On the other hand, it’s a long time till November and I reserve the right to change my mind depending on events of the campaign.

References:

Open Congress Page for HR 1540 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h1540/show)

Administration of Barack Obama, 2011
Statement on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
December 31, 2011
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-201100978/html/DCPD-201100978.htm

The Truth About the New Detainee Policy in the NDAA by Rep. Justin Amash
http://www.facebook.com/notes/justin-amash/the-truth-about-the-new-detainee-policy-in-the-ndaa/296584837047596

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Into Law by Amanda Simon, ACLU
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-law

Waterboarding Produces Another Romney Flip-Flop?
By Beth Reinhard
National Journal November 14, 2011
http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2011/11/waterboarding-produces-another.php

John McCain ‘very disappointed’ with waterboarding support at GOP debate
By Chris McGreal
Guardian (UK) November 14, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/14/mccain-perry-bachmann-waterboarding-row

Alaska State Museum Collections Search – Searchable catalog of the Museum’s 28,000 plus cataloged objects including Alaska Native material, historic artifacts, works of art, and natural history specimens. Alaska Native material, amounting to more than 15,000 objects, is the most outstanding part of the collection. Database may be searched by object name or id. Collection may also be browsed.

If you’re outside of Juneau, this is a decent way to preview the Museum’s holdings. Try searches on Tlingit, Athabascan, Aleut, Eskimo, Inuit, other Native Alaskan groups, gold and guns for some example holdings. To see a detailed record from the search results, click on the right column text. For a larger version of the image (if available), click on the image. You may also get a larger version of the image from the detailed record.

Next week we’ll check out a database of alternative locations for taking Alaska’s High School Graduation Qualifying Examination.

While there are several issues that have bothered me for at least a decade, including the role of women and the handling of several sex scandals, the straw that broke the camel’s back for me is the hierarchy’s recent obsession with fighting marriage equality under the banners of “Defense of Marriage” and “Natural Law.” I find both of these approaches intellectually dishonest.

“Defense of Marriage” – This is the concept that marriage as an institution must be kept undiluted or it will become meaningless and fade away. It is not enough to have a traditional definition of marriage within the Church, it must be maintained on the civil level as well.

I’m all for defending marriage, which does seem to be on the decline in the United States. But actually defending marriage would mean taking a close, objective look at why people actually break up and why fewer people are choosing marriage as a way to live. Then acting on those findings. It seems like an authentic “defense of marriage” would focus on pre-marital counseling, building communication during marriage and finding ways to get people to problem solve during crises instead of divorcing. Then the proportion of married people would probably increase.

“Natural Law” – This is the concept that some things are written into the fabric of nature. For example, no known human society has sanctioned parent-child incest. For more on this concept, see the references below. Natural Law is the Catholic Church’s rationale for interfering with civil law and why an approach of “To each church their own” is unacceptable to them. Cardinal Francis George, speaking as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2010, made the following appeal to Natural Law:

“The misuse of law to change the nature of marriage undermines the common good,” he said. “It is tragic that a federal judge would overturn the clear and expressed will of the people in their support for the institution of marriage. No court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined.”

Thus, the Catholic Church is entitled to have the state enforce its ideas about marriage even if it’s not part of others beliefs in our multicultural, multicreedal society.

But is marriage as one-man/one woman something that nature itself has defined? For this to be the case, one would expect that virtually all cultures had practiced one man/one woman marriages for most of human history, just as practically all cultures ban parent-child incest.

Anthropologists report that this isn’t the case. According to the anthropology department at Palomar College, “In a sample of 850 societies, less than 20% preferred monogamy over other marriage patterns. ” Even the Bible itself has numerous examples of polygamy that appeared to be perfectly acceptable to God. I’ve covered some of those in the series One Man/One Woman Not.

I’m actually a big fan of Natural Law, when it can successfully be untangled from specific cultural mores. Much of my beliefs on immigration and the treatment of terrorism and criminal suspects can be explained by a reliance on my interpretation of Natural Law. I really do believe the words of the Declaration of Independence that “All men (humans) are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain INALIENABLE rights.” I object to interpretations of Natural Law that are clearly contradicted by not only human history, but by the very Bible the Catholic Church claims to depend on.

I still appreciate many things about the Catholic Church, especially their stands on immigration, social teaching and that the Catholic Worker movement has a home in the Church.

I appreciate these things, but the amount of energy, money and in my view, intellectual dishonesty, they are spending on blocking marriage equality is too painful for me to remain. The Catholic Church has every right not to perform same-sex ceremonies. But they don’t have the right to enshrine their particular view of marriage in civil law. To me, this really is the same thing as Muslims, Jews, Hindus or whomever attempting to impose their particular take on a social institution as “God’s Law.” My guiding light is Jesus’ command to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” On this basis, I would not want people of other faiths to enact their sect-specific prescriptions (no pork, no loan interest, lashes as punishment) into US civil law and so I don’t want my church to do so either.

So I decided that I needed to find a church that more fully implements this broader view of the Golden Rule. For now I think I’ve found it in the Episcopal Church. I still occasionally attend the Catholic Cathedral. My wife is still Catholic and is a lector, as I once was. I attend when she reads, but I don’t go up to communion anymore because as the Catholic Church itself says, that would reflect a unity that does not exist. My wife is respectful of my decision and I’m not pressuring her to leave the Catholic Church.

References:

US Conference of Catholic Bishops “Defense of Marriage” website – http://old.usccb.org/defenseofmarriage/

Natural Law (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Ethics Tradition in Natural Law (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) – http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/

Cardinal condemns Prop 8 judgment. Catholic Herald, 8/9/2010. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/08/09/cardinal-condemns-prop-8-judgment/

Marriage Rules, Part I (Palomar College Department of Anthropology) – http://anthro.palomar.edu/marriage/marriage_3.htm

Alaska Public Schools Database – Searchable by school name, district name or Alaskan community name, this database provides contact and enrollment information for Alaska’s public schools.

This is best used when you’re looking for quick contact information and very basic enrollment figures. Here’s the entry for Juneau-Douglas High School:

School Name: Juneau-Douglas High School     School ID: 220070

Address:  10014 Crazy Horse Dr
Juneau, AK 99801

Physical Address:  1639 Glacier Avenue Juneau, AK 99801

Telephone:       (907) 523-1500     Fax: (907) 523-1616

School Website: http://www.jsd.k12.ak.us/jdhs/

School E-Mail: 

Contact Name: Ryan Alsup, Principal

Contact E-Mail: ryan_alsup@jsd.k12.ak.us

Lowest Grade: 9     Highest Grade: 12

2009 PE-12 Enrollment: 941

DISTRICT WIDE School Calendar for 2011-2012 School Year

Next week we’ll see how we can learn about objects in the Alaska State Museums from the comfort of our desktops.

I can’t cheer this for two reasons. First, the Democrats “won” by using a Republican talking point – “It’s not fair to raise taxes on _____. What kind of tax hiking bureaucrats are you?” in response to an expiring tax provision. This is how the Republicans in Congress won an extension of the Bush tax cuts even though they are one of the larger drivers of the deficit. This “victory” reinforces one of our current central dysfunctions in the United States today – It is not only impossible to raise taxes, but it is also impossible to pass actual “tax holidays” where taxes are cut temporalily. All tax cuts become permanent regards of any other fiscal condition. I just can’t cheer for that sort of rigid inflexibility. I voted for Democrats at the federal level in 2006, 2008 and 2010 in part so they could break that up-till-now Republican doctrine. It’s just one more disappointment that they are reinforcing it instead, led by the President and his countdown clock.

The other reason that I can’t cheer the Republicans agreement to continue the payroll tax holiday is related to the purpose of the payroll tax itself. The term “payroll tax” encompases two taxes – Social Security and Medicare. Social Security taxes are only levied on the first $106,800 of income. Medicare tax is collected on one’s entire income.

Social Security and Medicare are not funded out of the regular federal budget but out of a combination of payroll taxes and surpluses that have built up over the years. These surpluses are kept in US Treasury notes.

According to the Board of Trustees for Medicare and Sociality Security, both funds are relatively ok for a few more decades, at which time existing payroll taxes will only be able to pay 75% of current Social Security benefits (2036) and 90% of current Medicare benefits (2024).

Buried towards the bottom of the 2011 report summary is this paragraph (Emphasis Mine):

Note two caveats concerning these rates. Public Law 111-312 reduces the OASDI tax rate for 2011 by 2 percentage points for employees and for self-employed workers. The loss of payroll tax revenue due to this one-year reduction will be made up by transfers from the General Fund of the Treasury to the OASI and DI Trust Funds and will thus have no financial impact on either program. Furthermore, starting in 2013, the Affordable Care Act imposes an additional HI tax equal to 0.9 percent of earnings over $200,000 for individual tax return filers, and on earnings over $250,000 for joint return filers.

 Keeping the Social Security and Medicare Trust funds solvent till the 2030 timeframe assumes either the payroll tax holiday will expire OR that we will continue to fund the “holiday” with general funds (income taxes and borrowing). If the tax “holiday” become permanent and Congress loses its will to make up the difference with general funds, then the date when the trust funds get exhausted will be sooner than currently predicted. This won’t help anybody.

Middle and lower income people are struggling. I just don’t think that mortgaging their future to help them pay for the present will help. If payroll taxes should be lower, then look at either removing the income limits or in the case of Medicare, be willing to accept evidence based outcomes and other health cost control measures.

Finally, the President and Congressmembers in both parties ought to start really evaluating what works and what doesn’t in creating jobs, not making political points with a dogma of “no tax increases ever” that will bankrupt this country.

References:

60 More Days of the Same, OpenCongress Blog, December 23, 2011, Accessed December 24, 2011.

The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling. Fallows, James. The Atlantic. July 25, 2011, Accessed on December 24, 2011.

IRS Education Module. Payroll Taxes and Federal Income Tax Withholding. Accessed on December 24, 2011.

Summary of the 2011 Annual Reports: Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. Accessed on December 24, 2011.