Entries Tagged 'Opinions' ↓

Despite reports to the contrary, cheerleading is not a sport. Otherwise, Bill Clinton would be a professional athlete, right?

There’s little doubt that cheerleaders have a place in American sports. Football and basketball teams have cheerleaders. Baseball does not. I wish they did. Maybe attendance at the ball park would go up if scantily clad female ‘athletes’ bounced and jiggled on deck.

The Advertiser headline screamed, “Cheerleading Gaining Popularity as a Sport.’ Only cheerleaders can say that. Gone is sis boom bah, hello acrobats, stunts, dancing and tumbling. This is a sport?

First, it can’t be a sport unless there’s a ball of some kind. Baseball, football, basketball all have a ball. All are sports. The same holds true with golf, tennis, volleyball, even soccer. Balls, balls, balls.

Fishing is not a sport. It’s entertainment. Who wins? The fish? The fisherman? Who keeps score? Everyone knows that fishermen lie about their catches, that’s why there’s no score.

What’s the latest score in cheerleading? Who’s in first place? Who’s got the best tumbling percentage? If those questions can’t be answered, then cheerleading isn’t a sport. It’s a diversion. Nothing more, nothing less. Alright, maybe it’s a dance competition but without high heels and good music.

Cheerleading has degraded through the years. Guys are cheerleaders these days. What’s with that? What kind of guy wants to be a cheerleader? Guys want to watch cheerleaders, not be a cheerleader.

Cheerleading is not a sport.

I saw a Hawaiian Electric commercial on television last week which said something to the effect that ‘we need to reduce our need for imported oil’ in Hawaii.

Unless I’m mistaken, all the oil we use in our refineries in Hawaii is imported, and barring a huge deposit of oil found somewhere in the Hawaiian archipelago, we are unlikely to reduce our need for imported oil, despite the continued search for energy alternatives.

What energy alternatives do we have available? Solar energy sounds good since Hawaii has an abundance of, well, solar energy. Capturing that energy and converting it to anything more than running a water heater seems to be a technology challenge that has gone unanswered.

There’s thermal energy, using the heat from volcanoes on the Big Island. It sounded promising when gasoline was under $1.00 a gallon in Hawaii over 25 years ago. With oil prices four times what they were back then, thermal energy would seem more feasible.

There’s wave energy, though no one seems to have figured out how to convert that energy into something we can use in our cars.

Whatever happened to wind energy? I see a few windmills on Oahu and the Big Island, perhaps elsewhere. Whatever they’re doing to reduce the island’s dependency on imported oil doesn’t seem to have had much effect.

If energy conservation is the objective, there’s one sure-fire alternative that will meet the goal to reduce the amount of fossil fuel we use in Hawaii. Higher taxes. In England, the Brits pay about $9.00 for a gallon of gasoline. We pay less than $4.00 a gallon in Hawaii. The $5-difference is the amount of taxes they pay in England, Europe, Japan and elsewhere.

Higher taxes means fewer trips to the pump. Now, if we could just figure out a way to produce a solar-powered, hydrogen-powered hybrid automobile for the price of a Camry.

As Hawaii’s population ages, our desire to relive bits and pieces of days gone by seems to increase. Welcome back, Primo beer.

Starting today, Honolulu retailers will get their first bottled taste of one of Hawaii’s best known, and sometimes loved, local beers. The draft Primo has been available at some local restaurants since December.

Primo Brewing & Malting Company is rolling out the new bottled version of Primo to a handful of specialty beer and wine shops. The original Primo beer was brewed first in 1898 by Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company. These days the brand is owned by Pabst Brewing Company and bottled in California.

No matter how you look at it, bottled Primo is imported beer. Just like Heineken. The real question is, ‘Does today’s Primo beer taste like yesterday’s Primo beer?’

I’ve tried the draft Primo and I can tell you what it tastes like. It tastes like Pabst. I suspect the bottled Primo will taste like Pabst. Pabst is the chickenized rattlesnake meat of beers. Rattlesnake meat tastes like chicken. Nostalgia beer tastes like Pabst.

There are fewer college degree classifications than there are job classifications. For example, when a graduating college student gets a degree in, say, Library Sciences, where are they expected to find a job?

At a library, right?

A degree in marketing has many different job options, ranging from sales to advertising to public relations. A degree in political science may prepare a student for a life as a politician at a local, state or federal level. Or, if they’re a very smart student, they find a real job.

Teachers? Same thing. There are a handful of teaching degrees but many different subjects for teachers to teach. Travel Industry Management is big in Hawaii due to our large and robust travel and hospitality industry.

Honolulu Community College now has two new associate degree programs. HCC students can get an associate in science degree for the music business and production, and audio engineering technology.

How many newspaper want ads are there for someone with a degree in the music business, or a degree in audio engineering technology? I’m not say either should not be taught, but the question can be asked, ‘How much are those industries clamoring for more highly educated entry level personnel?”

A degree in History seems to prepare a college grad for watching the History Channel while receiving unemployment. Otherwise, what good is it? I’m not saying anything bad about history as a subject, but other than making money on Jeopardy, what good is all that knowledge?

Talk about biting the hand that feeds us. Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala found that tourists in Hawaii make lousy neighbors.

Tourism is Hawaii’s biggest industry. That and Dan Inouye and the military industrial complex that resides here. Oh, and state government. But tourism ranks up there among the Top 5, for sure.

Sudhin did some investigative reporting and found that not all of Hawaii’s residents are thrilled to have six or seven million strangers wander through the state each year. Some of them rent homes or hotel rooms that are not even in Waikiki which is where locals want tourists to go and stay, so they don’t bother the rest of us.

Instead, according to the APstory, some tourists leave the designated tourist zones and visit regular neighborhoods where regular folks live and that makes noise beyond what regular folks make, and drive up home prices, and destroy the sense of community. I don’t know about elsewhere, but it’s easy to see what they’ve done to Papakolea and Kalihi.

Somehow or another Oahu now has a ban on short-term rentals, which many locals want to expand, while others, especially those with bed and breakfast establishments in their homes, want to see lifted.

The solution is simple. Quiet tourists who pay in advance. Tourists coming to Hawaii, those who don’t intend to stay in the designated tourist dwelling zones such as Waikiki, would be required to bid on short-term rentals a year in advance with a non-refundable deposit.

Prior to entering Hawaii, said tourists would then be required to undergo a psychological examination as to mental and emotional worthiness, and put up a bond, you know, just in case they make noise sufficient to ruffle a few local feathers when they’re finally awarded a stay at one of the short-term rentals.

Once word about Hawaii’s new tough love policy toward tourists gets out, there won’t be any tourists are lousy neighbors problem to worry about.

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.

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.

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.

I like to read Letters to the Editor in the newspaper. Local television and radio stations don’t have a similar outlet for those with an opinion.

Internet sites often have a Comments section which allows opinions to be expressed and shared with relative anonymity. Few people read my site, and fewer leave comments, which means that few have opinions that differ with mine. It’s good to know I’m in the mainstream among great thinkers.

Most letters to the editor, and many comments left by readers on web sites, are complaints. It seems as if there are plenty of disgruntled people in the world.

These letters are interesting. Some complain about specific bills passed or considered by the state legislators. Another said the state lawmakers have to make life easier for doctors in Hawaii so they won’t leave. I don’t imagine it’s easy being a doctor but I don’t see any that look hungry.

A couple of other letters to the editor complained about tipping. One said that members of the military shouldn’t need to tip. Another said it’s time to end tipping by paying people a decent wage. I never leave a tip for the clerk at Macy’s or someone who works at McDonald’s, so why is it necessary to tip at restaurants?

Somehow or another it has become a combination custom and obligation to tip at restaurants. Why?

See? That’s the beginning of a Letter to the Editor.

Scan the local newspapers to see how much of the news that is printed is local news. Most news is not local news, it’s national or international or features, which isn’t really news, but takes up a lot of reading space.

Either there just isn’t much news going on in Hawaii, or local news is too expensive to gather and report. After all, if there’s no money in it, why bother?

The local television stations have newscasts at 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM, but the local news that makes it to TV is shared, 20-minutes or so for each half hour newscast, with national news, feature items, weather, and sports. Not much local news makes it to local television.

The local newspapers are mostly advertising, which is mostly local advertisements, which adds support to the issue about money. There’s money in local advertising, so the newspapers bother with it. There must not be much money in local news because what local news shows up in the local newspapers is shared by national news, features, sports, stocks, business, weather, etc.

My rough estimate indicates that less than 10-percent of a local newspapers pages, on a column inch basis, are devoted to local news. How about online? HawaiiReporter is full of news, though little of it is local, much of it does not pertain to Hawaii, much is opinion or perspective rather than news.

It’s not my intent to fault local media, but it should be obvious that there isn’t much money in reporting local news, or there’s little of interest to report.