February 29, 2020
Saturday PM

Al Johnson is correct that there are a myriad of possibilities in terms of lost tourist sales revenue as consequence of the coronavirus. Since last week several passengers on the quarantined Diamond Princess have died and several dozen exposed to the virus were moved stateside. How many more will die on the quarantined ships? In a week’s time the path of the coronavirus has gone from a “possible” pandemic to a pandemic in all but name. That official branding is scheduled for the not too distant future. Carnival, Norwegian, and other cruise ship stocks have tanked, losing more than 25% of their value, which is depression territory, not recession.

The flu virus does indeed on average kill several thousand U.S. citizens every year for an average death rate of no more than .1% of those infected**, but the irresponsible nonsense of the right wing propaganda machine that the coronavirus is no worse than the common cold is defeated simply by the basic statistic that for every 100 million infected by the coronavirus between 2.3 million and 2.5 million will die, and currently there is no vaccine and none that can be developed in less than 12 to 18 months. The magnitude of difference is thousands fold. That is why everyone with at least half a brain is so freaked out.

So in the short term, at least, all this local craziness of Ward Cove and long-term dock leases may essentially be moot, and the chief merchant concern will be buying coronavirus lost revenue insurance if they can afford it. That is not a joke.

I have read Janalee’s piece here in Sitnews, and the rationale seems to be somewhat akin to the pensioner on food stamps who uses the stamps to buy one big jelly doughnut that is oh, so yummy, but lasts for all of two days out of the month. A 30-year lease for $35 million is $1.2 million a year, a 20-year lease a bit more than $1.5 million, which is about half per annum the revenue it is replacing, and I certainly do not get the logic of that. Surrendering control seems even more problematic.

As excuse we are given this massive shopping list of unfilled needs that looks to total $40 million and counting, a spending spree necessitated by what? I was under the impression that Reichskanzler Amylon and his top-heavy administration had all things local under control. How exactly is it that suddenly there is $40 million of deferred maintenance to go along with the World War I-style trench system that is our local pothole dilemma? Was all that conveniently ignored, so you could jam all these dock expansion bonds down our collective throats? And now no one wants to use them.

Sounds to me like some city council folks of limited experience went on a trip or two out of town to be bedazzled by special interests elsewhere, then returned with their New Wave nonsense in tow intent upon changing the world as they know it. Sounds to me like some hicks went on a trip or two out of town and were sold a large serving of sucker bait. I get it. There are no “captains of industry” among you, and you are content to be led by the nose to a corporal’s plate.

Nor do I see anything but a bunch of logistical idiots with a greed obsession for capturing that which is not theirs in this Ward Cove mess. We need to start a naming contest for this theme park planned on the old pulp mill site. My suggestions: Disneyland Southeast, Pollutionville, Superfund Site City, and Pollution Village.

I gather this logistical clown act will commence debarking passengers in Ward Cove this summer despite the fact there is nothing out there yet that is in any sense touristy. For those unaware Creek Street is considered to be among the top 10 waterfront walkways in the world. Yes, we do take it for granted locally. I have to assume tourists debarking at Ward Cove might want to visit Creek Street, and my understanding is that assurances have been made that buses will be made available to take tourists in to town to go visit and shop.

THAT IS AN ABSOLUTE, UNEQUIVOCAL LIE BECAUSE IT IS LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

These bigger cruise ships have a passenger capacity of 6000 to 8000 passengers in some instances, and it is the bigger ships they want to take out there. The distance from Ward Cove to the Post Office is right at four miles; from the Post Office to downtown is another two miles.

At 40 passengers per bus (standing room on a highway should not be permitted) it requires 50 buses to move 2000 people, 150 buses to move 6000 people. Assuming an average length of 50 feet per bus and minimum safe driving distance as 100 feet between buses, or 33 yards, a 150-bus caravan will occupy no less than 22,500 feet of road space.

The problem with this in the first instance is there is only 21,000 feet of road space between Ward Cove and the Post Office, so a 22,500 foot bus caravan does not fit the available road space.

Next is the question of how long does it take to load and unload one bus, let alone 150.

The first obstacle otherwise to be overcome by our erstwhile tourists is how to get up the very steep hill from the waterfront at Ward Cove to where the parking lot and the remaining office buildings are located. The old folks won’t even try.

No worries we are reassured; a shuttle bus will run four times an hour for all of those wanting to go downtown. Which means in an hour’s time a maximum total of 160 tourists out of how many thousands of tourists will get to go downtown. In six hours a total of 960 can be moved, one way.

Janalee insists that maritime law and the Constitution of the United States (currently shredded and used as his personal toilet paper by Mitch McConnell) prevents us from spending head tax money on anything that does not directly benefit the cruise ships. Well, Janalee, for the sake of the safety of their passengers this bunch of greed heads needs to comprehend that they need to pay for the roads their damned buses are rapidly crushing, and will crush even faster if they manage to pick up a little head wind.

No worries we will ferry them all to town by high-speed small boats. Seriously, folks, get counseling. More than a few screws are missing.

What is envisioned for Ward Cove is the capture and the retention of 25% to 40% of the existing tourist volume. The developmental efforts of any number of businesses and individuals over a period of 60 years are to be intentionally purloined by these “Johnny Come Lastly” carneys who have no intention of sharing any of what they have purloined.

Who will be the occupants of this theme park? It is safe to assume some of the operators downtown will seek to establish a presence. I hear the Missouri logging show plans to re-locate out there, for example. Who else? What in fact is envisioned here is a completely captured market that goes nowhere near downtown, but rather spends all its money at Ward Cove and in the shops on the cruise ships. Any bus tours will be oriented northward and toward Ward Lake. The Connell Lake dam pipeline will be among their star tourist attractions. (If it all sounds nuts to you, it is because it is.)

Forget Ward Lake, Refuge Cove, Totem Bight, and anything else north of town that might pique someone’s interest. Locals be damned; all of these properties will be absorbed for the tourists. Already proposed is the paving over of Norman Walker Field in order to park all the buses.

Back again to Janalee and the dock lease proposals. I had the opportunity to visit with one of the guys whose company has submitted one of these lease proposals, a jovial and open enough Australian, the typical front-man PR type used for a standard snow job. We would have fun playing golf if he plays; nice guy. So I ask him the key question, “How does your company propose to make money?” Answer: By keeping the docks occupied with even more new cruise ships. In other words to solve the problem of 1.3 million tourists blowing up a town of less than 15,000 population they will take over the rest of the island, then dump another several hundred thousand tourists downtown on top of what is already here.

What is this dock lease proposal really all about? It’s a cop out by local government which does not consider itself capable of managing its own port, is way too lazy and incompetent to develop in-house the skills necessary to do so, and has as its only interest consequences to local government but to no one else. They do not care who they train wreck so long as they get a big wad of money to toy with and spend, while not enduring the distraction of actually having something to do besides sitting on their dead asses in leather chairs.

The last time these grade schoolers got a hold of a large wad of money they blew it on wooden bowls and a tax dodge that due to one Federal judge did not work according to plan.

This time around you will be lucky to even see that jelly doughnut.

Combined or individually there is not a single individual on the City Council who has the talent or the capacity to negotiate a $35 million business deal. I gather that Sivertsen originally intended it all be done behind closed doors with two other hand-picked members of the Council, and no one else. Then it gets expanded to the whole City Council. The dock does not belong to them. The people of this community are paying for these lemming-like bond issues, so they collectively by their vote should decide without the City Council spending big bucks choosing sides.

Nor are they augmented in any particular way by Amylon’s involvement. I actually heard a couple weeks ago about the Ketchikan Internet Service deal where Amylon paid KIS $600,000 to take it over and start KPUNET; apparently that is what a whole lot of people in this town think happened. That’s a lie.
Amylon under false pretenses got confidential information from KIS, then shafted them, and did not pay them a dime. Not the kind of individual I would think of doing any kind of business with. Let him blow your docks, your future, and your $35 million if you want to; I don’t really care; he still won’t invite you into the multi-million dollar mansion he is purportedly building down south.

The obvious problem with bonding yourself to death for 30 years in order to provide dock space for cruise ships is the cruise ships come and go, and there is no guarantee they will come back. Like the oil industry the cruise ship industry has been in perpetual expansion mode, going from the 650- to 1000- tourist capacity cruise ships of the 1970s and 1980s to these monstrosities that bring in 8000 people. If you check out the internet, there is a lot of buzz about cruise ships being the worst way to travel with adamant recommendations against it. There will arrive a saturation point, if it has not already arrived, and like the oil industry there will be a contraction. The cruise ships have assumed very little obligation for these docks and appurtenances, and are obviously prepared to sail away without intent to return. They have shafted their own golden goose in Ketchikan by dumping too many people on top of too many people.

Now they want to spread out. Get away from the crowd. Debark at Ward Cove. And somehow the City Council actually thinks that consigning this mess to some outside agency solves our problem. That truly is nuts. Hire the talent, but don’t forfeit control. It is a loser either way, and trying to get out from underneath that rock by trying to reinforce the problem Norwegian Cruise Lines, et. al, is trying to run away from cannot succeed. The City Council solution is to have some outside agency take charge with the intent of bringing in even more cruise ships and more tourists. 1.3 million is not enough, so let’s try 2.3 million. I mean, what the hay????!

There must be some very sticky stuff on those leather chairs these peckerwoods sit in. They do not seem to be able to get up and move anywhere. Our marine highway system has at least for the moment been completely destroyed, yet when locals launched demonstrations supporting the Marine Highway System, not one elected official showed up. That is pathetic.

What is being proposed in the short- and mid-term for Ward Cove is a business model that in the gaming world is known as “early access.” This business model operates on the premise of Barnum’s Law that there is indeed “a sucker born every minute.” I play computer games, but I spend more time studying the fascinating and variable business models that bring us computer gaming. A whole lot of what goes on is in fact outright systematic fraud.

A motion picture with a first weekend box office of $30 to $100 million is a very big deal. Several years ago when the game Grand Theft Auto 5 was released pre-sales and first day sales totaled $850 million. Sell 10,000 units of a game title at $60 a pop, and you just made $600,000. With worldwide international sales that is easy to do, indeed many time over often enough.

Computer games at least used to first go “alpha,” by which is meant a very select group of experienced test players would be given the game in its early very rough state to start identifying the bugs. This used to be a job, then these guys found out idiots would do this for free for them. Then came “beta” testing, where a more diverse group of testers, gamers more than programmers, were tasked to find more bugs and to recommend corrections or additions. The full game would normally be released within 90 to 120 days thereafter.

“Early access” is the stage of game development where there is just a framework for a game. Nothing has really been fleshed out. It precedes ‘alpha’ and ‘beta,’ and is clearly still in developmental stage. Then they discovered there are enough idiots out there willing to buy this unfinished junk, so today my estimate is 75% or more of the computer games for sale never go beyond “early access.” They just take the money and run. It Is fraud, and the billions of dollars involved in computer gaming will ultimately lead to a reckoning that will engorge a whole new bevy of lawyers. In the meantime the gamers are not stupid, nor are they inattentive, and the programmers or teams that provide the worst of this junk are well-known and shunned.

THE POINT HERE IS THAT THIS WARD COVE FIASCO IS K-TOWN’S LOCAL EXAMPLE OF “EARLY ACCESS” BULLSHIT.

There is nothing out there right now, so anything done in Ward Cove for the time being is going to be jury-rigged as hell. Do not make the mistake of thinking these cruise line people are a bunch of bright boys and girls; they are not. I have worked in their offices and on their ships, and they get up in the morning and use toilet paper just like you do. Whoever is selling Norwegian Cruise Lines this bill of goods is doing no one here any favors. They are about to have the most disgruntled passengers in history, which will not play well for them or their declining stock position; nor will it play well for our local economy because their bad news, their tar, becomes ours immediately.

I will leave it to the north enders to deal with the details of the quality of life issues out there, and, ultimately, even how much it concerns them. I intend merely to skim the surface and point out the obvious:

The City Council plan with this dock lease deal envisions the prospect of more ships and more tourists to replace those going out to Ward Cove.

How much more gray (read ‘brown as hell’) water can this community stand?

The intent in debarking passengers at Ward Cove specifically is to prevent them from shopping in Ketchikan. It is a logistical impossibility to move more than a few tourists from Ward Cove to the downtown area, one in eight to one in 16 on average.

The lack of facilities at Ward Cove (until something is built out there) will piss off cruise ship passengers and thereby degrade all of Ketchikan as a tourist destination.

The impact on infrastructure, particularly local transport, will be tragic. Bad wrecks will occur due to a level of congestion, all buses, that consumes all the highway space, and then some.

Thousands of tourists daily will flood the north end, so Ward Lake, Refuge Cove,
Totem Bight, and anything else you can think of out there will be consumed by tourists.

How many port-a-potties will be provided for the tourists debarking at Ward Cove?

Who will pay for the horrendous road damage this many buses will do in a very short time?

How will locals get in to work? Or home again? Where will emergency responders be located?

Where will 150 bus drivers be found competent enough to avoid grenading a gear box and having a runaway down Pulp Mill hill?

All of this requires local government response, and action. There are major safety issues here, but it seems they are all glued to their leather chairs. The silence is deafening, for this particular “early access” endeavor is about to make one hell of a mess locally.

**In the United States 16.5 million to 66 million individuals contract the flu virus annually. Of these 8200 to 20,000 die. If the assumption is that the higher death count of 20,000 should be associated with the lower count of infected, 16.5 million, then the mortality rate from the flu would be .0012 or 1/10 of 1 percent, .1%. If the more likely lower mortality count is correlated with the lower count of infected, the mortality rate is .0005 or 5/100ths of 1 percent, .05%. If the higher mortality count is associated with the higher count of infected, the mortality rate is .0003 or 3/100ths of 1 percent, .03%; if lower to higher .0001 or 1/100th of 1 percent, .01%.

Thus the statement “no more than .1%” is a very high estimate of the mortality rate, which is actually roughly half that.

Where 20,000 might die out of 66 million infected with the flu, at a mortality rate of 2.5%, which is the established current rate for the coronavirus, a total of 1.65 million will die if 66 million Americans are infected with the coronavirus.

To put perspective on that number, 1.65 million dead exceeds our battle dead (including disease) in all the wars this country has fought in our history by somewhat more than 500,000.

A report today indicates the virus’s mortality rate outside of Wuhan, China, is one-third the 2.3% to 2.5% mortality rate in Wuhan, which is still 3300 times higher than the flu’s mortality rate.

I do hope you right-wingers pull your heads out of the sand (or elsewhere), and get this is real stuff; scary, too; and start planning for it. I would not bank on miracles.

David G Hanger
Ketchikan, Alaska

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Editor's Note:

The text of this letter was NOT edited by the SitNews Editor.

Received February 28, 2020 - Published February 29, 2020

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