If wedding bells chime, but nobody...-Republican Reps Lesil McGuire and Tom Anderson announced at a GOP function they wed earlier this summer. Best wishes to the both of them. Their decision is a bit more complicated than it is for most couples-when two become one, which house district will they claim?

Impending state/fed clash?-One of the interesting public policy battles is coming to the fore. Iraq and Katrina/Rita are focusing attention on who controls our National Guard forces. The Guard role is bifurcated. They are under control of the governors and mustered for state disasters and missions but they also supplement Defense Department forces. Montana's governor is complaining the "over there" mission is making it difficult to deal with local emergencies like forest fires. Illinois' governor says the feds exceeded their authority when they transferred fighter jets from Illinois to Indiana. Oregon's governor worries the National Guard is becoming a federal program. Here in Alaska many of us, including guards men and women, expected the primary role is floods, earthquakes and other disasters. But call-ups for Iraq are changing that and may complicate recruitment and in-state response.

Go figure-The conservative American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, reports that President Bush the younger and the GOP-led Congress boosted total inflation-adjusted discretionary spending by more than the architect of the Great Society and overseer of the Vietnam War escalation-LBJ. The AEI budget watchdogs note President Bush boosted discretionary spending by 35.1 percent while LBJ boosted it 33.4 percent. On the home front, this year's state budget was about 50 percent higher than the average of the last ten years. That's a state budget that made it through the GOP governor's office and the GOP-led legislature.

More on the health front-The National Conference of State Legislatures reports Kaiser Permanente, a major health care provider, is experimenting with the establishment of food markets that sell healthy foods including whole-grain pastas, organic fruits and veggies, frozen buffalo and grass-fed beef, and other food products. They began with one market two years ago and have expanded the markets to 14 other Kaiser facilities. All the inventory is approved by Kaiser's top physician. They've begun the program because they estimate annual medical expenses attributed to obesity were about $75 billion in 2003.

Phone: (907) 465-4947
Fax: (907) 465-2108
Mail: Sen. Elton, State Capitol
Juneau, AK 99801
Email:
Senator.Kim.Elton
Jesse.Kiehl
Paula.Cadiente
Web: http://elton.akdemocrats.org

   "Say yo' business!" Linda Tillery of The Cultural Heritage Choir had the Saturday-night crowd in the JDHS auditorium shouting the colloquialism back at her before the music even began. 
   Her business that night was heart-soarin', foot-stompin' music. My business today is less elevating. I say my business today is to promote a sober statewide discussion on childhood obesity. I'll begin with a few facts:
     · The Centers for Disease Control say obesity-related ailments kill 1,000 Americans a day;
     · The science of the neurobiology of preference proves we all have an inborn preference for sweet and fatty foods;
     · Overweight kids have a 70 percent chance of being overweight adults;
     · 16 percent of America's kids and adolescents are overweight;
     · The youngest generation today may be the first generation to have shorter life spans than their parents;
     · The incidence of overweight kids has spiked 45 percent in the last decade:
     · One third of America's kids drink three or more sodas per day;
     · About 85 percent of the snacks in school vending machines are of poor nutritional quality; and
     · Food and beverage companies spend between $10 to $12 billion per year to persuade kids and adolescents to buy their products.
   The most startling statistic is the first: 365,000 deaths a year blamed on obesity-related diseases-diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure and others. A healthy lifestyle doesn't eliminate risk but can dramatically reduce risk. And the risk-reduction role for government is limited. Government can't do much about the pressures on families to cut food costs and minimize food preparation times, both of which lead to higher consumption of less healthy convenience foods, and government can't legislate away the couch potato syndrome.
   But even if there is a limited role for the government in obesity risk reduction, there is no need for government to participate in risk elevation. And the most dramatic example of governments promoting risky behavior is the chips, candy bars and sodas in school vending machines.
   I hate to sound like my parents, but when I was a kid you couldn't buy candy or pop in schools. Now school boards and administrators make decisions to allow fatty, sugary foods to be sold on school campuses. It's not even intuitive anymore to suggest that's one of the reasons four times as many kids are fat now than when I graduated from high school. 
   When school boards allow, and in some cases even promote, the sale of unhealthy food and drink in our schools, then that important element of local government is making a bad decision. They are promoting an epidemic that too often leads to an early death and if not an early death, that often leads to depression, anger, anxiety, and other mental health problems that interfere with socialization and learning. This bad decision by school boards and government officials like school administrators is often driven by a good goal-receipts from the sale of candy bars and sodas typically are used to support student activities ranging from debate teams to music programs to sports teams for a small percentage of students. One inelegant way to put it is to say the students who participate in these vending machine-supported activities are living off the fat of the land.
   At the end of last session I introduced SB199. The bill shows some restraint. It doesn't ban a bad vending machine decision by local government school officials but it does encourage good decisions. Simply put, the bill gives an incentive to fill school vending machines with nutritional food and drink. Take out the junk and sell healthy alternatives during school hours and you get an extra four bucks per student to help student activities. Nothing in the bill bans the Frito/cheese pies and sodas sold after school hours at school events (again, that took some restraint-I didn't want the bill to be too nannyish at the outset).
   I introduced the bill at the end of the session and over the summer have shared it with school officials in every district across the state and with public and private health professionals. The responses from them will lead to some minor tweaks.
   So far, the major concern from school officials is that the $4 offset designed to encourage healthy government decisions will not be enough to supplant lost vending machine revenues. Research from other jurisdictions where good food replaced junk food, though, shows that school vending machine revenues barely fall off, if they fall off at all, when healthy food replaces junk. The $4 should give them more for student activities-a bigger pie to divide.
   There also have been a few who say the state ought not tell districts what to do. I'd remind them this bill isn't a state mandate-they can continue to make local government decisions that encourage risky health behavior. If they do, there will be no penalty. But neither will there be a reward.
   Do I expect this is the only answer to the obesity epidemic? No, of course not. But it is one, important, step. It fits in with steps others are taking-Sen. Ted Stevens is promoting physical activities in schools, our borough assembly has adopted health incentive programs for borough workers.
   These steps, when added up, not only chip away at negative health consequences that sap families, they make us better stewards of public dollars. They cut insurance costs, they cut lost days of worker production, they lessen the out-year costs of health care provision.
   These government steps, punnily summed up, are healthy steps.