As a Long Island homeowner fed up with my high taxes and postage-stamp-size lot, I’m thinking of taking the city of Anderson, Alaska (population 820), up on its offer of free land.
An ordinance passed by that fair city provides anyone above age 18 with a $500 deposit the right to claim 1.3 acres of pristine frontier land in the Northern Lights subdivision. In exchange, the buyer must build an occupied single-family house within two years. The land grab began on Monday, so get online now.
There are drawbacks, of course, not least of which is that the deal is only valid in Anderson, Alaska. Google Maps, God bless it, depicted it as a sheet of roadless white; the alternate satellite view gave hints that there might be civilization, but going in for a closer look gets you, “We are sorry, but we don’t have imagery at this zoom level for this region. Try zooming out for a broader look.” Zoomed out, Anderson just looks green and gray.
The city’s Web site describes it as “located in Interior Alaska, about 55 air miles (76 driving miles) southwest of Fairbanks. The six-mile access road runs west from the George Park’s Highway at Mile Post 283.5.
“Climate: Anderson has a cold continental climate with maritime influences in the summer. Temperatures range from 60 degrees below to 90 degrees above. Average annual precipitation is 12.7 inches, with annual snowfall of 49.3 inches.
“History: The settlement began in 1962 with the construction of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) at Clear Air Force Station. The developed portion of the city, less than a one-half square mile area, lies six miles north of the Clear Air Force Station. About 600 people live in our city and on Clear AFB, with another 1,500 to 2,000 spread on the George Park’s Highway from the town of Nenana, 26 miles north to Healy, 40 miles south.”
South of Healy is Cantwell. According to the Internet, “In the winter Cantwell becomes a fantasyland for snowmachiners and ice fisherman alike. The wide-open tundra covered with deep snow makes this a winter playground.” There were no mentions of the region's golf options. But while Anderson is 55 air miles from Fairbanks, it’s only about 40 from Denali National Park, which is larger than New Jersey and considerably nicer.
Of course, anyone that close to something called the BMEWS should probably read up on the nation’s DEFCON level at all times, since North Korea and whoever controls the Soviets’ old nukes almost certainly has Anderson circled on its maps somewhere.
Reading over the ordinance creating the land grab, the Anderson City Council tried to think of everything: no multiple-family dwellings without a variance, commercial and industrial uses prohibited, no further subdivisions, no utility rebates. This clause is cute: “The City Council may require such information from time to time as it deems appropriate, including but not limited to, plans for the house to be constructed.”
But are they really ready for us Lower 48 types? Nowhere on the Web site is there evidence of a zoning board. Nowhere, in fact, is there evidence of zoning codes at all. The city lies within the Borough of Denali, which does have a planning commission, an extensive code of ordinances and, presumably, the mechanism to enforce them.
But the Denali borough government is responsible for 1,893 residents spread out over 12,000 square miles. How can it possibly keep an eye on each of them? It’s a developer’s dream. Certainly it’s a Long Island developer’s dream. Imagine: More than an acre of free land to do with as you choose in a part of the country where lumber is plentiful.
Sure, the developer would have to dig deep to provide an Alaskan home the type of amenities we Long Island home buyers demand: marble countertops, waterfall Jacuzzis that don’t freeze when it hits minus 60, fiber-optic Internet (to reach, say, Vancouver), a gated, circular, brick-paver driveway with an intercom, Doric columns and hand-crafted roof tiles. Plus at least two chimneys, two satellite dishes and a four-car garage.
But now the developer has room to build the seven-bedroom home we Long Islanders need for our three children. And there’s still room for 300 square feet of open space, to be done, of course, in blond gravel and banana trees.
All in a state with no income tax, where the average per capita property tax is $1,163 and where a fourth of the municipalities collect no property tax at all.
Heating such a home through an Alaskan winter will be expensive, but imagine the warmth generated by the neighbors when we expats inevitably spend a weekend in Anchorage, away from our unsupervised teenagers, our unlocked liquor cabinet . . . and 200 of the kids’ closest friends.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
When Danny Ocean apologizes
In a New York Times feature on the lawyers for Martin Heidgen, published in October, columnist Robin Finn concluded with this observation:
"Whatever the final conviction, two people died because he drank and drove. A bigger mistake is hard to conjure, impossible to repair. According to his lawyers, he is genuinely sorry about that."
Perhaps Heidgen should have hired Finn to write his pre-sentencing statement. It might have been as direct and effective as that column. Instead, Heidgen, who was convicted of killing 7-year-old flower girl Katie Flynn and the man driving her family's limousine, Stanley Rabinowitz, delivered a speech obviously crafted by amateurs. It certainly didn't demonstrate that Heidgen was watching the same trial as the rest of us.
"There is really no easy way to begin this," he told Judge Alan Honorof's courtroom last Wednesday, before receiving a sentence of about-a-decade-'til-parole.
OK, young spindoctors out there, what was wrong with his opening? Well, it sounds like he made the assumption that when a child is murdered, the surviving family will find comfort in the fact that the killer was modest and self-effacing. Perhaps we should be grateful he didn't open with a joke...
"I've wanted to take responsibility for this from the moment it happened," he continued.
Better. Make your lawyers the bad guys. That works. It's certainly believable...
Although... That statement doesn't jive with the incident where he tampered with evidence, ingesting a fellow jail inmate's bodily fluids (gag) in order to beat a DNA test...
Nor does it explain his not guilty plea...
And it sure doesn't explain his use of that "Ocean's Eleven" defense.
For those who didn't hear, Marty -- he prefers Marty -- told investigators he was operating in "self-destruct mode" when he ingested 14 drinks and drove his pickup the wrong way up the Meadowbrook Parkway head-on into the limousine carrying Flynn, 7 of Lido Beach and her family after a wedding in 2005. Apparently, he told the police, he was upset by some drama involving his fiancé.
It turns out -- as Marty confided to friends in a letter from jail that was intercepted by the DA's office -- he got the idea for this defense from the George Clooney movie. In the opening scene, a not-terribly-remorseful Danny Ocean, played by Clooney, tells a parole board that he had committed upscale robberies while wearing dinner attire as a way of acting out because he was upset his marriage to Julia Roberts had ended (I hope I didn't just ruin the movie for anyone). Later Clooney smirks and enjoys lighthearted banter with Brad Pitt as the jail doors close behind him. One wonders if perhaps this is the ending Marty has envisioned for himself when this all blows over...
"First and foremost, I am very sorry every minute, every hour, every day for the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz," Marty added. "Your anger towards me is justified and understandable."
This could pass without comment, except that Neil Flynn, Katie's father, has made several statements to the media during the past 20 months that demonstrate, when it comes to the murder of his daughter he doesn't wait for permission to express anger. In this space two weeks ago he said he wanted to see Marty dead.
In fact, about an hour before Marty made his statement, Flynn, addressing the court, pointed to Marty and vowed, "You and I aren't finished." If Marty weren't under the protection and care of the New York state penal system, he might worry, on top of his other troubles, that his life had just been threatened.
And as a bonus, Flynn, an attorney and member of the New York state bar, later stood on the courthouse steps and called Judge Honorof a "gutless coward" because he knocked a few years of Marty's prison sentence. That sounds like he's skating close to contempt, which for a man in Flynn's profession can be criminal. (Presumably Honorof, like all judges, possesses certain political instincts and will let this go.)
So no, it's not likely Flynn was moved by Marty's offer to validate his feelings...
Finally, Marty's self-deluding apology arrived at its big finish.
"I did not mean or intend for this to happen," he said. "I was just trying to go home."
And what? And your damn limousine got in my way?
Maybe Marty veered from the script at this point. Maybe he truly sees himself as a victim in all this. Maybe if he really were a celebrity he would have gotten away with just a trip to rehab and a half-assed apology.
Over the next decade, his cellmates will disabuse him of that. He'll figure out, eventually, that he got what he deserved, and he can use this down time to construct a better apology. And maybe in that time he'll figure out that when he does finally get to tell it to the parole board, it will be Neil Flynn, and not Brad Pitt, who is waiting for him outside, looking for a smirk.
"Whatever the final conviction, two people died because he drank and drove. A bigger mistake is hard to conjure, impossible to repair. According to his lawyers, he is genuinely sorry about that."
Perhaps Heidgen should have hired Finn to write his pre-sentencing statement. It might have been as direct and effective as that column. Instead, Heidgen, who was convicted of killing 7-year-old flower girl Katie Flynn and the man driving her family's limousine, Stanley Rabinowitz, delivered a speech obviously crafted by amateurs. It certainly didn't demonstrate that Heidgen was watching the same trial as the rest of us.
"There is really no easy way to begin this," he told Judge Alan Honorof's courtroom last Wednesday, before receiving a sentence of about-a-decade-'til-parole.
OK, young spindoctors out there, what was wrong with his opening? Well, it sounds like he made the assumption that when a child is murdered, the surviving family will find comfort in the fact that the killer was modest and self-effacing. Perhaps we should be grateful he didn't open with a joke...
"I've wanted to take responsibility for this from the moment it happened," he continued.
Better. Make your lawyers the bad guys. That works. It's certainly believable...
Although... That statement doesn't jive with the incident where he tampered with evidence, ingesting a fellow jail inmate's bodily fluids (gag) in order to beat a DNA test...
Nor does it explain his not guilty plea...
And it sure doesn't explain his use of that "Ocean's Eleven" defense.
For those who didn't hear, Marty -- he prefers Marty -- told investigators he was operating in "self-destruct mode" when he ingested 14 drinks and drove his pickup the wrong way up the Meadowbrook Parkway head-on into the limousine carrying Flynn, 7 of Lido Beach and her family after a wedding in 2005. Apparently, he told the police, he was upset by some drama involving his fiancé.
It turns out -- as Marty confided to friends in a letter from jail that was intercepted by the DA's office -- he got the idea for this defense from the George Clooney movie. In the opening scene, a not-terribly-remorseful Danny Ocean, played by Clooney, tells a parole board that he had committed upscale robberies while wearing dinner attire as a way of acting out because he was upset his marriage to Julia Roberts had ended (I hope I didn't just ruin the movie for anyone). Later Clooney smirks and enjoys lighthearted banter with Brad Pitt as the jail doors close behind him. One wonders if perhaps this is the ending Marty has envisioned for himself when this all blows over...
"First and foremost, I am very sorry every minute, every hour, every day for the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz," Marty added. "Your anger towards me is justified and understandable."
This could pass without comment, except that Neil Flynn, Katie's father, has made several statements to the media during the past 20 months that demonstrate, when it comes to the murder of his daughter he doesn't wait for permission to express anger. In this space two weeks ago he said he wanted to see Marty dead.
In fact, about an hour before Marty made his statement, Flynn, addressing the court, pointed to Marty and vowed, "You and I aren't finished." If Marty weren't under the protection and care of the New York state penal system, he might worry, on top of his other troubles, that his life had just been threatened.
And as a bonus, Flynn, an attorney and member of the New York state bar, later stood on the courthouse steps and called Judge Honorof a "gutless coward" because he knocked a few years of Marty's prison sentence. That sounds like he's skating close to contempt, which for a man in Flynn's profession can be criminal. (Presumably Honorof, like all judges, possesses certain political instincts and will let this go.)
So no, it's not likely Flynn was moved by Marty's offer to validate his feelings...
Finally, Marty's self-deluding apology arrived at its big finish.
"I did not mean or intend for this to happen," he said. "I was just trying to go home."
And what? And your damn limousine got in my way?
Maybe Marty veered from the script at this point. Maybe he truly sees himself as a victim in all this. Maybe if he really were a celebrity he would have gotten away with just a trip to rehab and a half-assed apology.
Over the next decade, his cellmates will disabuse him of that. He'll figure out, eventually, that he got what he deserved, and he can use this down time to construct a better apology. And maybe in that time he'll figure out that when he does finally get to tell it to the parole board, it will be Neil Flynn, and not Brad Pitt, who is waiting for him outside, looking for a smirk.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Can hating the sinner mean fewer sinners?
In 2001, back when I was a real estate reporter, a colleague and I went up to Fishkill to interview Abe Hirschfeld, the developer, former New York Post owner and one of the great flakes of New York City, who at the time was an inmate in the state prison there, having been convicted of trying to hire someone to kill his business partner, Stanley Stahl.
Abe was always a great interview, and the setting — the visiting room at the state pen — is unmatched for important Journalism-with-a-capital-J. In truth, the interview was hardly a coup: Hirschfeld’s publicist had set the whole thing up. But a month later, The New York Times conducted its own prison interview with him, and the reporter snarkily wrote that Abe cited our trade journal story as evidence of his continuing importance. I was the office hero for a day.
Sitting across from this smelly and half-insane 81-year-old man, I wondered if prison was the right place for him, for here was someone who had long since gone to sea. At one point he claimed credit for President Bush’s victory in Florida, and he shared with us his idea for his next condo tower, which he hoped to build in Midtown Manhattan and that would feature retractable outside walls, you know, for fresh air. I remember wondering if he wasn’t too kooky to be truly evil.
At the time, I was sorry that the interview took place across a table in what looked like a middle school cafeteria: no cubicle, window and telephones; no iron bars in sight. But that gave us the opportunity to observe the other visitors. It was as you’d expect: some little kids, some lawyers, lots of wives. One middle-aged couple near us sat across from each other, she in cheap leisure clothes, he in prison blues, and said nothing to each other for the entire hour. They just cried softly and avoided eye contact.
Back at the office, I read the transcript of Hirschfeld’s trial. Stahl’s widow testified that the stress of the ordeal with Hirschfeld had led to his fatal heart attack. That cast the interview in a different light. Further, since Hirsch-feld had turned his prison’s visiting hour into a press gaggle, he couldn’t have spent a lot of time learning his lesson, and nobody who read our story, or the one in the Times, would have gotten the idea that he was having anything but a splendid time in prison. (He was released after serving two years, and died in August of 2005.)
It was how unrepentant Abe seemed to be — in contrast, perhaps, to the man at the next table — that I kept thinking about as I read the Feb. 11 Times Magazine story about lethal injection. It was a typical Times story: slanted toward abolition, it cited the usual horror stories of convulsing convicts and how valiant doctors now refuse to take part. But the token contrarian, a New York Law School professor named Robert Blecker, argued that the problem with lethal injection, which he compared to the process used to euthanize cancer patients and sick pets, is it’s too kind. “How we kill the people we hate should never resemble easing excruciating pain for those we love,” he argued.
Hate? That’s a word whose meaning has changed significantly. It’s now mostly reserved for racial issues, so it’s a sentiment we’re afraid to express and an emotion we don’t like to confess to feeling. But in hindsight, I imagine it summed up what Mrs. Stahl felt for Abe, and I doubt that reading his jailhouse interviews lessened the feeling.
Last week I asked an expert on both grief and the law about his feelings on deterrence. Neil Flynn, the father of Katie Flynn, the little girl murdered by a drunk driver two summers ago, happens to be a litigator. He said his views on the law and punishment had not changed since he became a victim of one of the region’s most notorious crimes. “There are three philosophies of penology: retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation,” Flynn said last Friday. “We know from years of experience that rehabilitation doesn’t work. Even before I became a crime victim I knew it was nonsense.”
For near-at-hand evidence, Flynn pointed to the man he would be forgiven for hating, Martin Heidgen, who is awaiting sentencing for his drunk-driving murder. As the Herald’s Mike Schnitzel reported in some editions last week, Heidgen’s mother claimed that the case’s notoriety made it impossible for her son to get a fair trial, an idea that, in wrenching testimony, Flynn called insulting.
On Friday, he said that if Heidgen received the maximum sentence — life in prison — it would act as a deterrent that would save lives. “People still drive drunk because they know that for the first offense they’re just going to pay a small fine,” Flynn said.
But while he conceded that he wanted Heidgen’s remaining days to be uncomfortable and few, Flynn said he was not comfortable with calling his feelings toward Heidgen hatred, exactly. “I do want to see Heidgen dead...” he said. “He’s not a candidate for rehabilitation as long as he thinks of himself as a victim, and from everything we’ve heard he’s still complaining that he’s a scapegoat for an overzealous prosecutor … But hatred isn’t appropriate. We’re better than that. Scorn, instead. All good people should turn their backs on people like him.”
Doug Miller is editor of the Long Beach Herald. Comments? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
Abe was always a great interview, and the setting — the visiting room at the state pen — is unmatched for important Journalism-with-a-capital-J. In truth, the interview was hardly a coup: Hirschfeld’s publicist had set the whole thing up. But a month later, The New York Times conducted its own prison interview with him, and the reporter snarkily wrote that Abe cited our trade journal story as evidence of his continuing importance. I was the office hero for a day.
Sitting across from this smelly and half-insane 81-year-old man, I wondered if prison was the right place for him, for here was someone who had long since gone to sea. At one point he claimed credit for President Bush’s victory in Florida, and he shared with us his idea for his next condo tower, which he hoped to build in Midtown Manhattan and that would feature retractable outside walls, you know, for fresh air. I remember wondering if he wasn’t too kooky to be truly evil.
At the time, I was sorry that the interview took place across a table in what looked like a middle school cafeteria: no cubicle, window and telephones; no iron bars in sight. But that gave us the opportunity to observe the other visitors. It was as you’d expect: some little kids, some lawyers, lots of wives. One middle-aged couple near us sat across from each other, she in cheap leisure clothes, he in prison blues, and said nothing to each other for the entire hour. They just cried softly and avoided eye contact.
Back at the office, I read the transcript of Hirschfeld’s trial. Stahl’s widow testified that the stress of the ordeal with Hirschfeld had led to his fatal heart attack. That cast the interview in a different light. Further, since Hirsch-feld had turned his prison’s visiting hour into a press gaggle, he couldn’t have spent a lot of time learning his lesson, and nobody who read our story, or the one in the Times, would have gotten the idea that he was having anything but a splendid time in prison. (He was released after serving two years, and died in August of 2005.)
It was how unrepentant Abe seemed to be — in contrast, perhaps, to the man at the next table — that I kept thinking about as I read the Feb. 11 Times Magazine story about lethal injection. It was a typical Times story: slanted toward abolition, it cited the usual horror stories of convulsing convicts and how valiant doctors now refuse to take part. But the token contrarian, a New York Law School professor named Robert Blecker, argued that the problem with lethal injection, which he compared to the process used to euthanize cancer patients and sick pets, is it’s too kind. “How we kill the people we hate should never resemble easing excruciating pain for those we love,” he argued.
Hate? That’s a word whose meaning has changed significantly. It’s now mostly reserved for racial issues, so it’s a sentiment we’re afraid to express and an emotion we don’t like to confess to feeling. But in hindsight, I imagine it summed up what Mrs. Stahl felt for Abe, and I doubt that reading his jailhouse interviews lessened the feeling.
Last week I asked an expert on both grief and the law about his feelings on deterrence. Neil Flynn, the father of Katie Flynn, the little girl murdered by a drunk driver two summers ago, happens to be a litigator. He said his views on the law and punishment had not changed since he became a victim of one of the region’s most notorious crimes. “There are three philosophies of penology: retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation,” Flynn said last Friday. “We know from years of experience that rehabilitation doesn’t work. Even before I became a crime victim I knew it was nonsense.”
For near-at-hand evidence, Flynn pointed to the man he would be forgiven for hating, Martin Heidgen, who is awaiting sentencing for his drunk-driving murder. As the Herald’s Mike Schnitzel reported in some editions last week, Heidgen’s mother claimed that the case’s notoriety made it impossible for her son to get a fair trial, an idea that, in wrenching testimony, Flynn called insulting.
On Friday, he said that if Heidgen received the maximum sentence — life in prison — it would act as a deterrent that would save lives. “People still drive drunk because they know that for the first offense they’re just going to pay a small fine,” Flynn said.
But while he conceded that he wanted Heidgen’s remaining days to be uncomfortable and few, Flynn said he was not comfortable with calling his feelings toward Heidgen hatred, exactly. “I do want to see Heidgen dead...” he said. “He’s not a candidate for rehabilitation as long as he thinks of himself as a victim, and from everything we’ve heard he’s still complaining that he’s a scapegoat for an overzealous prosecutor … But hatred isn’t appropriate. We’re better than that. Scorn, instead. All good people should turn their backs on people like him.”
Doug Miller is editor of the Long Beach Herald. Comments? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
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