Entries from February 2008 ↓

Do you have a household budget? Do you manage a budget where you work? Either way, or both, it’s not always an easy task and it becomes more complicated when there is a larger number of people, or more money, or both, are involved.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann submitted Honolulu’s 2009 budget to the City Council. In short, more spending, no new taxes. Yet.

One feature of the budget reveals what may become a future election issue. It’s what the Mayor calls “post-employment benefits.” He also calls it a “nagging concern.” Post employment benefits are expenses the city must pay each year for retirees in the form of pension and health requirements. In short, the city pays people to retire, stay retired, and stay healthy while they’re retired.

Does your company do that?

Budgets are interesting reading. The 2009 city budget has a few hundred million dollars earmarked for the proposed fixed rail mass transit system, but barely 25-percent of that amount to work on current roads. Almost $100-million goes for the aforementioned ‘post employment benefits.’ There’s almost $16-million for parks improvements on Oahu, and almost $7-million for the Honolulu Zoo’s new elephant facility.

It would be interesting to know how many people visit the elephant facility each year and what it costs to run the facility. I’m not saying we should not have or pay for elephants in the zoo. After all, taxpayer money goes to pay for dinosaurs who run the government.

My beloved and long-lived Beretania Street pothole has been filled up. He’ll be back. The filling won’t last.

Old potholes never die, they just get covered up by election year street repaving only to rise from the grave like asphalt zombies whose only purpose in death is to destroy automobiles and terrorize drivers.

Maybe it’s just me, but has anyone else noticed that our rubble-filled streets often seem to get paved when an election is near? Somehow politicians think that annoying voters with road construction and street repair will remind them that their elected officials are acting in an official manner by funding long-overdue repair work.

Every locale has seasons. In Minnesota there are four seasons; snowing, still snowing, more snow, and road construction.

Hawaii has notable seasonality, too. Elections, scandals by elected officials, elected officials in session, money spent by elected officials.

Sekiya’s Restaurant in Kaimuki is closed. Why? Hawaii’s worst outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 ever gave some Sekiya customers bloody diarrhea in the past few months.

Worse, the Health Department says Sekiya’s had repeated health inspection violations and will remain closed until the entire facility is decontaminated, disinfected, and sterile. All anyone knows is that the restaurant may open in the future.

It may be safe to say that customers who became sick because of the E. coli outbreak at the restaurant are not likely to attend Sekiya’s Grand Re-Opening. I think I’ll wait awhile.

Of greater interest is the Department of Health’s response to the situation. Apparently, the State doesn’t have enough inspectors to inspect restaurants with sufficient regularity. Problems like that experienced by Sekiya’s and their former customers come about because the Department of Health doesn’t inspect often enough.

Is that a cry for help, or business as usual?

Even after six customers complained of bloody diarrhea in December, Sekiya’s continued to serve contaminated food to customers until the latest crackdown. Now employees will have to learn how to wash their hands and handle food properly.

Even after going to the unprecedented measure of closing down a restaurant and dumping their food stock, the Department of Health continues to inspect restaurants. Sometimes.

Hillary Clinton was asked when she plans to release her income statement. Why is that important? Because people want to know how much money she and Bill made last year, and how she could afford to loan $5-million to her presidential campaign. She refuses to release the details.

What is she hiding?

Voters want to know how much money they have and where it came from. Hillary doesn’t want them to know. Not yet, anyway. After she’s nominated or lost to Obama? Sure, why not? How can it hurt?

Hawaii’s Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection pushed Bill 1789 out the door today. The bill would exempt Oahu’s PEG providers (public, educational and government) from the procurement disclosure process. In other words, PEG access provider Olelo could spend money and not have to disclose why or how or to whom.

What are they hiding?

Granted, Olelo does a wonderful public service by presenting locally produced television programs on six local cable channels (49, 52, 53, 54, 55, and 56). Oahu’s citizens have access to information not otherwise easily available. Civic groups, organizations, and others have free access to video production equipment to deliver non-commercial messages to the community.

That’s all good, right?

The State’s procurement law is designed to make visible that which has been mostly invisible, behind the scenes, non-public, sometimes buried. Procurement details. How much money went to whom and for what.

Eventual passage of Bill 1789 and a variety of companion bills would exempt all of Hawaii’s PEG providers from the State’s procurement (and disclosure) process.

What are they hiding? And why?

I remember the first desktop computer spreadsheet. It was called VisiCalc and I first saw it running on a CP/M card stuck in an Apple IIe back somewhere in the early 1980s. Computers were powered by pedals and cranks in those days. Yes, I’m that old.

There was VisiCalc, then SuperCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, Excel, and a few others. Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet has been the most used spreadsheet software since the early 1990s.

Spreadsheets have become the staple financial tool of business. They’re used to track data, display data, and even project data. Few successful business ventures these days come without a spreadsheet stuck somewhere in the business plan. It’s funny, but all the unsuccessful business ventures also have a spreadsheet in their business plans. Go figure.

Now we hear that Norwegian Cruise Lines will pull their second cruise ship from Hawaii. What went wrong with the NCL financial spreadsheets for their Hawaii cruise business? Surely, Norwegian Cruise Lines had a spreadsheet somewhere in their business plan for Hawaii. Surely those spreadsheets projected great profits if the company invested a few hundred million dollars in new cruise ships for Hawaii. Surely.

So, what happened?

It’s a case of ‘what if?‘ That’s what spreadsheets do best. They provide an easy way to say, ‘What if?‘ Financial projections are based on a number of variables, all of which can be manipulated at will, adnauseum, and the spreadsheet does variables better than any other common financial tool. In other words, a spreadsheet can be doctored with various ‘what if‘ variables to provide an endless array of scenarios, some of which look great on paper (what happens to a spreadsheet when it gets printed) and in proposals, from which financial decisions are made.

For example, I envision this scene which probably took place at an NCL office somewhere: “What if we had a million customers a year who paid $5,000 each to stay in one of our floating hotels in Hawaii for a week. We’d be rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

Based upon a spreadsheet which said the same thing, but in numerical terms, NCL brought three cruise ships to Hawaiian waters. It would appear that NCL’s plans, their ‘what if‘ scenario, was foiled by just two variables. NCL couldn’t get a million customers to cruise around on their ships. And, of those that did, they refused to pay the aforementioned $5,000 each.

That resulted in huge losses for NCL over the past few years, then an exit of two of their three ships from Hawaiian waters, and now a threat to remove the third ship from Hawaii for financial reasons, or just for spite, or because some spreadsheet told them it would be good for the company.

It’s still possible that NCL will keep the last ship in Hawaii because now the average price to cruise Hawaii’s islands on an NCL ship, or any other cruise line, is closer than ever to that magical, mystical and highly profitable $5,000 number.

If you can’t afford to cruise Hawaii with NCL just blame it on spreadsheets.

The web site LendingTree says, “When banks compete, you win.” The idea is simple enough. If you need a home mortgage, your application gets shopped among different banks so you can choose the best offer from multiple offers.

In a local exercise of what could pass as real investigative journalism, the Honolulu Advertiser shows that when local banks compete, it doesn’t necessarily mean lower rates for bank service fees. In fact, they’re higher. Much higher.

Local bank service fees are higher again this year, up over 14-percent, to over $100-million, and unlike what competition is supposed to do, there is nothing you can do about it. Bank service fees are on the rise because so many banks have been hurt in our recent home mortgage and credit crunch. Oh, and because banks love to take our money.

In other words, banks are not as profitable as they want to be so they’re taking out their frustration by charging you more for services. Fees are highly profitable for banks. If you bounce a check, you’re charged a fee, usually $25 the first time. If you use a non-local bank ATM, those handy automatic teller machines, you’re usually charged a fee for the privilege of pulling your money out of their bank.

I loved the quote in the Advertiser from Blenn Fujimoto, vice chairman of Central Pacific Bank which made less service fee money last year by “focusing on long term relationships and cross selling opportunities” instead of going after “transactional types of accounts.”

Translation: ‘We only want customers with a lot of money.’

Banks love to float money because the longer they have your money the more money they make. State Senator Sam Slom, also president of Small Business Hawaii pointed out the issue with bank float in the same Advertiser article. The bank float got so bad that he stopped doing business with Bank of Hawaii. Why? Deposits were held so long before clearing that checks written on the deposit bounced. Bank of Hawaii made money on the float and on service fees they collected on the checks they bounced back.

Bank of Hawaii spokesman Stafford Kiguchi said the ‘bank regrets that it wasn’t able to resolve Slom’s concerns.’

Translation: ‘Damn, we didn’t want anyone to find out about the double dipping.‘

In reality, when banks compete, you pay anyway. When they don’t compete, you pay even more.

News that shows up on Saturday and Sunday, good, bad or incidental, usually does so for one of three reasons.

Weekend incidental news is news which happened on a weekend, which includes very late Friday, all day Saturday, and most, but not all of Sunday. If incidental news happens too late on Sunday it gets reported on Monday.

That leaves the other two reasons, both non-incidental, mostly fabricated news.

The first kind of non-incidental news is published on weekends because those who publish the news for newspapers and television stations to print and broadcast are inept, and don’t fully appreciate that most people don’t pay attention to that kind of good news, and pay even less attention when it is published on a weekend. Or, those who make up such news are afraid their message will be drowned out among real news during weekdays.

Whichever it is, The Great Whale Count on Maui is such news. It’s important news and this year it was good news. 1,726 whales were sighted in a three-hour period Saturday morning. Unfortunately, most people don’t care much about whales(dinosaurs are #1), care less for real news on the weekend (shopping is #1), and the rest of us wonder about the counting methodology.

How do a few hundred people out and about around Maui’s coastal waters count the whales in such a way that there are no duplicates in the count? A whale is pretty much a whale, right? This year’s record turnout of whales topped the previous record of 1,265 whales counted in 2006. Last year there were only 959 whales counted. Whatever the methodology, the count is not very consistent, hence the doubt about methodology and accuracy.

The second kind of this kind of weekend news is news which must become news, therefore public, but the kind of news whereby the newsmaker doesn’t really want you to pay attention. In other words, it’s better that no one hear of bad news or unpopular news which must be published so it’s usually published on a weekend.  Politicians bearing bad news use the weekend technique all the time.

Honolulu’s Fixed Guideway Technology Selection Panel selected steel wheels on steel rail for Oahu’s ‘soon to be more expensive than a bus ride to Jupiter mass transit system.’ Knowing that any news having to do with fixed rail transit on Oahu will be unpopular, the city chose to dump the news deep into the bowels of a sunny weekend. Why? Because most people don’t pay attention to news, good or bad, on weekends.

Bad news that gets released on a Monday or Tuesday and climbs to the top of the media psyche could stay there and fester like an open puss-filled wound for days. Smart political hacks don’t want that, hence not-so-good news, and totally-bad bad news sees light of day in the dark of the weekend.

Honolulu residents are going to love the clatter, clank and clang of their own personal railroad wafting through our once clean island air. Anyone who’s ever lived near a railroad will tell you how enjoyable it will become for island residents, now stunned into stunted  and deafened submission by the daily noise buses, cars, trucks, mopeds, motorcycles, planes, helicopters, garbage trucks, and screaming neighbors (over stressed by noise, obviously).

What’s another 20 or 30 decibels of metal-on-metal sound between friends?

Life is full of little catch phrases that add meaning and communication to our lives. Back when beef was bad and carbohydrates were good, the beef industry came up with, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” I haven’t heard or read of a counter phrase from the bread industry.

Nike scored big with, “Just do it.” The dairy industry published and broadcast plenty of “Got Milk” ads to defend itself against those who think milk is really bad for us even when it’s supposed to be good. Hint: It’s really bad for us.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s humorist, Charles Memminger, has what he calls the next great inspirational slogan: “Get Life On.” He owns the web site variations of Get Life On and has launched a media campaign to license the slogan.

Slogans come and go. We’re inundated with a constant barrage of slogans. They’re everywhere. Television, radio, web sites, newspapers, magazines, schools, books, bumper stickers (my favorite is ‘Visualize Whirled Peas‘). Most slogans are easily understood and most are easily ignored.

What’s wrong with “Get Life On?” Is it clothing for life? Is it an attitude to be wrapped up in? If it’s motivational and inspirational, for what does it motivate or inspire (other than licensing fees payable to Charles Memminger)?

Burger King did well with, “Have it your way.” Whenever I asked them to cut my burger in half they would forget about half the time. Maybe the slogan should have been, “Have it your way, sometimes.” Miller sold a lot of beer at “Miller Time” which means right after work as you’re driving home. That’s not the best time to drink beer. BMW produced, “The ultimate driving machine.” I drove it. It wasn’t.

Ala Moana is “Hawaii’s Center.” Center of what? Honolulu? Oahu? Shopping? Debt? It’s not parking. It’s gotta be the center of consumer debt. Pearlridge is “One good thing after another.” That’s true if you find an empty parking spot next to another empty parking spot. Like that’ll happen. Taxpayers spend millions each year on the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and the best slogan that their money can buy is “E Komo Mai.” That’s as easily understood in the Midwest as Get Life On is in Berzerkistan.

Phrases are easy. Phrases that mean something are more difficult. Phrases to be remembered are next to impossible without an ad budget. Get Life On needs an ad budget. A very big ad budget.

There once was a phrase often heard on television stations across the U.S., right before the local news, “It’s 10:00 PM. do you know where your children are?”

That simple question is loaded with consideration and issues.

For example, the question assumes that 10:00 PM is too late for children to be out and about, though it doesn’t specify the acceptable age (to be out and about). It also implies that many parents are so pre-occupied with their busy and self-indulgent lifestyle that they may not know where their children are, so a gentle question will get them to look around the house to see if, indeed, their children are where the parents think they are or should be.

Also implied is the concern that if children, whatever age they may be, are not at home with their parents, then they’re up to no good, causing trouble, heading for juvenile delinquency. Based on the number of car, truck, moped, and motorcycle accidents that take place after 10:00 PM, additional parental concern regarding the whereabouts of their children is probably warranted.

It takes about five seconds to ask the question, “It’s 10:00 PM. Do you know where your children are?” Television stations make money by selling advertisements to be watched by viewers. I’m certain no television station ever went broke by running a five second public service announcement just before the 10:00 PM news.

Why are such questions not asked in public anymore?

I read with amazement Monica Hatori’s thinly veiled A Call to Arms, Stand With Your Alii, which, among other things, advocates that the United States Supreme Court return the Kingdom of Hawaii to Hawaiians.

As yet another in a growing list of Hawaiian sovereignty groups, the so-called living heirs of Hawaii’s Alii, the Kamehameha’s, seek to rule Hawaiians, and presumably, all of Hawaii. Hatori’s Call to Arms advocates that the Hawaiian Constitution of 1864 be re-established.

What I have neither seen asked, nor answered, is any of a lengthy list of easily gathered questions and considerations about the various movements underway, and their potential impact upon those living in Hawaii. For example, how would sovereignty take place? Would citizens of whichever sovereign group eventually rules Hawaiians also be subject to the laws of the State of Hawaii and the United States of America? If so, then what’s the point of sovereignty? Or, if not, would sovereign Hawaiians be subject only to their own laws. And who decides what those laws would be? Questions are easy. Answers are more difficult.

Of even more interest to local residents throughout Hawaii would be the answer to another straightforward question. Do the various sovereignty groups advocate the overthrow of the State of Hawaii, and Hawaii as part of the United States? If so, will they pay reparations for the value of land, homes, businesses, and condominiums taken during the re-overthrow of Hawaii? Some would argue that such reparations to current residents would be fair and just since the increase in property values only occurred between the Kingdom of 1864 and the new Kingdom of 2000-whatever.

If the Hawaiian Constitution is re-established, over whom will it govern? What of Hawaiians who do not wish to engage in the various sovereignty movements, or who do not wish to be subjects of a newly established Kingdom of Hawaii? Would they be forced into servitude anyway, or be given sufficient time to leave Hawaii for Las Vegas?

I sympathize with anyone whose family has lost freedom and property through any unjust or illegal means. I’m certain, too, that somewhere, someplace in my family’s much longer history, which dates back through the centuries to Scotland, France, England, the Netherlands, or Germany, that someone I’m related to lost freedom or property through unjust means.

Do I have the right, or the obligation to my family, to go back and reclaim from the past property that has been lost for generations, yet, some would argue, which remains rightfully mine (obviously shared by me and my relatives, though I claim ownership and the right to rule such property, should it ever be retained)?

I see only a can of worms being opened by such a scenario. Yet, assume for a moment that I’m able to travel back to what once was a large family property in Edinburgh, Scotland; valuable property that was taken unjustly and illegally by whomever ruled England at the time, and prove that the property belonged to me (acting on behalf of my family through the generations).

Now what?

Will the current owners of my reclaimed family property in Scotland, which was illegally overthrown and taken from my family centuries ago, simply hand over the property to me? Would I then be free to return there to live and declare my independence and sovereignty over that property, separate and distinct from the laws which govern modern Scotland? Or, barring reparations of property, would I simply be able to return to modern Scotland, declare my sovereignty over myself and get the fair minded and independent Scots to pay me to remain sovereign?

Perhaps. After all, dreams do come true. In the meantime, between the reality of the here and now, and the romanticized life of where my thoughts and desires can take me, and well before any of my aforementioned dream comes true, I see many very real nightmares.