Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Former Honolulu politico and mainland transplant, Duke Bainum, ran for mayor against Mufi Hannemann and lost. So bitter in defeat was Bainum that he fled the state.

Meanwhile, Mayor Mufi has an approval rating of about 80-percent or so, which prompts city council person Anne Kobayashi to run for mayor. Why? She doesn’t like Mufi’s rail transit plan.

17 seconds later, the Duke arrives in Honolulu from exile in Arkansas, rents an apartment in Kobayashi’s district, and files papers to run for her soon-to-be-vacant city council seat.

How am I doing so far?

Kobayashi picked Hannemann over Bainum in the mayor’s race a few years ago. Meanwhile, Bainum has had a change of heart from his self-imposed exile, has returned to Hawaii, and is now a Kobayashi supporter.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, no?

Life in Hawaii is normal. If writing about paradise from a day at the beach is normal.

Relative to many mainland locations Hawaii is rather high tech. Mostly. We have cell phones, Internet connections via DSL, cable TV, and the iPhone.

Today’s mini-article was created using the Blackberry-like keyboard on my iPhone. The typing speed is relatively slow, even with the on-the-fly spell checker.

But I’m on the beach and using my cell phone.

The iPhone has the ability to upload photos, edit text, set categories, and track articles.

From the beach. Or, nearly anywhere AT&T’s connection reaches. All I need now is an audio transcription service. Yes, the iPhone also does voice recording.

And photos.

Best Life is a men’s magazine that knows something about Honolulu that many of us suspect, but didn’t know it was official.

Of the Top 100 Best Places to Raise a Family, Honolulu comes in at #1. 

#1? That’s not a typo. It’s not #111 out of the Top 100. Best LIfe looked for good schools, above-average test scores, respectable budgets. Honolulu came in #1 anyway.

They also looked at cities with plenty of museums, parks, pediatricians, and a short commute. OK, so Honolulu has lots of parks. 

Here’s what I figure: the representatives from Best Life magazine came to Honolulu on a fact finding tour, stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village instead of the Pagoda, had their credit cards lifted while cruising Waikiki, couldn’t pay their hotel and room service bills, and were forced by hotel executives to write something good about Honolulu or go to jail.

Hey, a #1 is still #1.

Somehow they obviously didn’t bother to check out the young kids cruising the streets in pickups and mopeds, sporting 17 tattoos and 15 kinds of perforating decorative metal ornaments, still smart enough to know he or she will never afford a $600,000 home unless someone related dies. Soon.

Look around. Hawaii is beautiful, thanks to mother nature. What’s not beautiful about Hawaii isn’t all the fault of her temporary inhabitants. Mother nature can unleash the nasty, too.

Over the past year we’ve had more ‘vog’ days than ever, even here on Oahu. Vog is here again. It’s highly reminiscent of fog, more closely resembles smoke from a forrest fire, but in a more noxious way.

Remember the trade winds? Through all of Hawaii’s recorded history the trade winds have made life bearable on these rocks. Without the trade winds we’re just another hot rock in the middle of nowhere. The vog and kona winds are a reminder of that.

Today, the flags in front of the Hawaii State Capitol Building were limp. A subtle reminder of what seems to reflect what takes place inside.

The city may waste billions on a rail transportation system that few people will use. The state may waste billions on employees who don’t do much. But in one day mother nature can clean out the vog and restore Hawaii’s beauty.

She’d better hurry.

We have a few earthquakes in Hawaii; many more on the Big Island, of course. Our quakes are tame compared to some regions. We shake, we rattle, we roll a little, but whatever damage there is in the islands appears to be minor (unless your home was the one knocked off the foundation by the rolling) when we consider the aftereffects of quakes in China, Iran, and elsewhere.

Generally speaking, Hawaii’s building codes provide for sturdier structures able to withstand larger quakes. Not so for China, which still hasn’t learned what the Japanese learned about earthquakes.

Europeans build structures to last for centuries. Or, they once did. Asians built structures to last until the next big storm or earthquake. That building philosophy won’t do in the 21st century. People expect safety in buildings.

If you’ve never been in an earthquake, consider yourself fortunate. It’s a mind numbing experience, made all the more so depending on where you live, as in, how high up in the air your condominium or hotel room is.

I don’t fear so much the quakes in Hawaii as I do those in California, Japan, South America, even Alaska. A couple of big quakes in those areas, especially along their coasts, could result in a tsunami wave of seismic proportions.

It’ll make for awesome surf.

Aloha Airlines closed down. ATA Airlines closed down. Now, Aloha Airlines Cargo closed down. The cargo group has had 85-percent of the island’s air cargo and ends up worth nothing to anyone except customers, and a few remaining employees.

How bad was the management at Aloha?

Most of what Hawaii needs in goods is imported, and most of that comes by container ship. The rest arrives via air cargo, and Aloha Airlines Cargo had the larger-than-lions share of that business.

What happened?

Whatever it was it doesn’t matter much to Matson or Hawaiian Air or United or Delta who will swoop in to pick up the pieces of air cargo to and between the islands.

Aloha Airlines was so well run it ended up being worth next to nothing by everyone except customers and employees. If creditors don’t think much of your business it doesn’t matter what customers and employees think.

The only poetic justice in the whole Aloha Airlines mess is that the executives who flew the airline into the ground are also unemployed.

I’m sure Honolulu elected a new Mayor a few years ago. Since Waikiki spilled all that raw sewage in the Ala Wai Canal we haven’t seen much of the city’s Mayor.

That stands in stark contrast to the high profile of Honolulu’s last two Mayors of note; Frank Fasi and Jeremy Harris, both of who were on the evening news nightly pandering to voters, spending money like drunken sailors while the city’s sewers, streets, and services went unattended.

I remember his name now. He was in the news recently telling the City Council to squat out, it’s steel or no deal. Poor Mufi Hanneman. I think that’s his name. We don’t hear much from Mufi these days.

Most voters hope he’s busy figuring out ways to fix the streets, repair and replace the dilapidated sewer system, and undo the damage caused by his neglectful predecessors.

What a job. Being Mayor of Honolulu was once glamorous. These days it appears to be an exercise in futility.

This is an idea whose time has come. Let the public decide whether to spend money on steel rail mass transit or not. The Stop Rail Now organization wants to put the issue of ‘to rail or not to rail’ on the ballot to let Oahu’s voters decide the issue.

Think about the advantages such a platform would give to voters. True, Hawaii’s voters cast their ballots for men and women to run their cities and the state. Why not cut out the middle man and just vote for each issue?

Let’s say you got a traffic ticket. Instead of going to court, let’s have a vote to see if you’re guilty or not.

So we have financial problems in our public schools. Let’s vote to see how much money the schools would be allowed to spend.

Carry this great idea to another level. Sure, we vote the governor or mayor in for a four year term, but let’s have a vote once a year, sort of a ‘confidence’ builder. If the elected official loses two ‘confidence’ votes in a row, he or she is kicked out of office.

This is an idea with endless possibilities.

Laura Brown asks, “Is Hawaii’s Government as Smart as a Fifth Grader?“ Before you answer the question yourself, consider the situation.

There’s math and there’s logic, and sometimes the two don’t fit well together. It’s something like Mark Twain’s ‘Lies, damned lies, and statistics.’

State legislators may cut per-pupil charter school funding, but it’s a lump sum cut, not a per-pupil cut. Steve Hirakami, as principal of the Hawaii Academy of Arts & Sciences went to a charter school rally at the state Capitol and demonstrated what his 5th graders knew about math.

Based on current funding, how much do charter schools have to spend per student enrolled? The students came up with about $8,000. With a new proposed budget, how much per student? The students came up with about $7,000 per student, $1,000 less, per student, than the current year.

It’s math, right? Not quite. The math used by Principal Hirakami and the students displays averages from a total, rather than actual money spent, or not spent. It’s math, but it’s not necessarily accurate.

How so? Assume that each charter school classroom has 20 students. Assume that the budget for charter school funding is cut by 10-percent. Do the schools only have enough money to teach 18 students per classroom? What would happen if the charter schools put 22 students in each classroom? All things considered, and somewhat equal, the average cost per classroom of students would be the same even after a 10-percent budget cut. See? It’s math.

Hirakami is quoted as saying, “Our legislators are choosing not to educate 1 in 8 children.” Yet, his math is as faulty as his reasoning. The state is not choosing not to educate 1 in 8 children, they’re choosing a smaller budget for charter schools. The charter schools are required to figure out how to educate the same number of children (or, a larger number, accounting for annual growth), on less money per child, not necessarily per classroom.

Put more students into a classroom and the whole problem is solved, right? Logically, yes. In reality, no. Or, at least, not quite. Either way, nothing got fixed.

Hopefully, students will learn the various nuances and shades of ‘math‘ and be able to take a different perspective when looking at the problems schools face. The solution to a problem isn’t always money. Some in the legislature have figured that out.

It’s always interesting to see where the state spends money. New laws usually mean money out the door in the form of appropriations.

Governor Linda Lingle signed a bill which appropriated $38-million for the expenses of state government. A month later she signed a bill, an emergency appropriation at that, for $270,000 to pay for electricity, sewer, and insurance for The Aloha Stadium.

Non-appropriation laws include granting automated teller machine owners to charge a transaction fee to international cardholders. That bill was so important that Governor Lingle didn’t sign it, granting Lt. Governor Duke Aiona something to do.

Curiously, another law changed the name of the Board of Medical Examiners to the Hawaii Medical Board.

Legislators engage in all kinds of activity, and occasionally, some accomplishment. That Medical Examiner name has bothered me for years.