News, Reviews, Opinions from Hawaii

Winter is over, spring is here, summer is on the way. Then why was it so cold last night?

Yes, I know. Cold is relative. An overnight low in the mid-60s can’t be considered cold, especially to those who shiver day and night where it’s really cold (Missouri, I’m lookin’ at you!). It’s not really cold here. It just feels like it sometimes.

It felt cold this morning.

There was a bit of a wind, which, for those who understand the Wind Chill Factor, makes whatever temperature feel cooler than that temperature, whatever it is. I tell my relatives from Missouri that I don’t bother to go outside when the daytime temperature hits below 70-degrees.  I like the overnight low at 70-degrees and the daytime high at 80-degrees. That’s perfect.

Hawaii may have more perfect days like that than any other place on the planet. I’m not keeping track and I haven’t been to all the other places on the planet but I grew up in Missouri and all the weather that everyone else on the planet gets they get in Missouri.

Sometimes in the same week.

I don’t know whether we’re in the middle of a global warming crisis or not, but it hasn’t been as cold and wet on an annual basis in Hawaii as it was 20 years ago.

First Aloha Airlines, now ATA. This has been a bad week for anyone associated with airlines in Hawaii.

In an odd sort of way, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Aloha Airlines finally closed the doors, and parked the planes. The airline struggled for much of the past 20 years, and was involved in several near-death experiences in recent years.

What about ATA?

I flew back and forth from Hawaii to the mainland a few times on ATA, and I admit the experience was poor each time. All airline seats and services are not created equal. There is something to the saying that ‘you get what you pay for.’ I paid for a seat. That’s about all I got. A seat. A small seat. An unclean seat. And transportation from here to there.

Other than the timing, it did not come as a surprise that ATA went belly up. The surprise was two airlines serving Hawaii going belly up in the same week.

Local folks say that ‘death comes in threes.’ Who’s next?

Hawaii has too many men and women in prison. It’s not that they shouldn’t be there. They probably should be in prison for whatever crimes they committed. 

The problem is that so many of Hawaii’s men and women go into prison in the first place. The cost is staggering, often estimated at over $30,000 per year, per inmate. The number of prison inmates is growing at an alarming rate, too, around 4-percent per year in Hawaii since 2000, 20-percent faster than the national average.

Why?

It would be interesting to see the difference in prison inmate numbers as a percentage of population between states where the cost of living is high vs. those near average vs. those states well below average. 

Hawaii has over 2,200 people who guard Hawaii’s over 5,500 prison inmates. That’s two inmates for each job. $12 and shipping costs will get you a book about profiting from prisoners, “Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration.”

Apparently, prisons are big business. Not for taxpayers, but for businesses which use the cheap labor found in prisons. Being in prison in paradise cannot be a good experience for anyone, though victims of violence or theft may not agree. What can be done to help offset the cost of maintaining Hawaii’s prisons?

When local prisoners are sent to prisons on the mainland does Hawaii get a cut of whatever labor revenue they bring in?

The Niu Valley home of Nainoa Thompson and his wife Kathy Muneno was destroyed recently by a fire, possibly caused by a malfunction in or near an electric tankless water heater. We’re saddened to hear of their loss and thankful that neither Nainoa nor Kathy was injured.

My wife asked me if we should get our water heater checked. It’s the second time in a couple of weeks that my wife heard of a water heater causing a home fire. Things happen. When things happen in twos or threes, it’s a trend.

The water heater in our condo is the tank variety, unlike the Thompson-Muneno water heater, which heats water quickly and does not store water in a tank. Fire department officials said the fire started due to an electrical short in the crawl space under the house.

Rats? Or, Gecko? Bad wires? Or, a faulty water heater?

What we need to know, and what should be reported in the local newspapers and on television news is, well, ‘what happened?’ What caused the problem? How can it be prevented?

Inquiring minds want to know.

On most weekdays I drop my wife off at work in downtown Honolulu. I tell people that I work at home but have a 90-minute commute. Both are true. I pick her up from work, too.

Each afternoon there’s a local woman polishing a brass knob which opens an automatic door for people who need wheel chair access to a building downtown. I vary the time I’m downtown by 20 to 30 minutes, yet, there she is, day after day, polishing that brass knob.

Assume that the woman’s job costs some company about $15 an hour, including hourly salary, insurance, taxes, social security, vacations, and so on. Also assume that she devotes only 30-minutes a day to knob polishing. Keeping that brass knob polished results in some staggering numbers over the years.

Maintenance for the knob polishing is $38 a week. On average, $165 a month, and almost $2,000 a year. If the same knob has been in use in the building for only 10 years, the maintenance cost is now $20,000.

That’s $20,000 to polish a knob on a building door, and doesn’t include the rags or polishing cream costs.

Extend that same kind of math to mowing the lawn and trimming weeds around a state building in Honolulu. Assume the building’s lawn area requires four hours of lawn care– mower, trimming, fertilizer, and whatever else is needed– each week, and the maintenance worker costs the state $25 an hour. That’s $100 a week, $5,200 a year, or $52,000 over a 10 year period, and doesn’t include materials costs, or equipment.

It’s likely that some of our government buildings in downtown Honolulu have lawn care every week and it’s been that way for many decades. Maintenance costs may not be much of a total annual budget, but it never ceases. I’m all in favor of grassy areas and shiny knobs, but I wonder if anyone pays attention to the costs of such glitter.

Now we find out that the University of Hawaii athletics department was losing money the past few years. What a surprise. What? The department doesn’t want another independent audit of their financials? What a surprise.

New Athletic Director Jim Donovan was required to apologize for the lack of transparency regarding the University’s athletic financial condition. In the meantime, he gets to use one of his nine lives early in his tenure as the AD who followed the deposed Herman Frazier.

Frazier had already used his nine lives, so he left. That’s how it works. You only get nine. Evan Dobelle used up his as President of UH. When the UH Board of Regents did a Nine Lives Audit, they found Dobelle at the maximum already, so they canned him and restarted the Nine Lives Clock on new President, David McClain.

Looking back, Herman Frazier probably wasted two or three of his nine lives just with the June Jones contract fiasco. New AD Jim Donovan gets to use the New Guy life, which is usually the first of the Nine Lives to go. It can’t be used again, but he still has eight.

How will they be used? Upgrading UH facilities will cost Donovan at least two or three lives. Those money fights drag on for years. June Jones was so popular in Hawaii that he could have been elected Governor, yet he wasn’t able to get facilities upgraded. What chance does Donovan have?

Once the nine lives are gone, officials are required to hit the road. The really smart officials start looking for a new job when they’re at five or six lives, and make a jump before they hit number eight.

I had to laugh when I read Malia Zimmerman’s article about following the money trail at Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

A few years ago Hawaii Reporter wanted to know where OHA’s money went. After all, it is public money. Does the public not have a right to know how the money is spent?

Apparently not.

At first, and as would  be expected by anyone with lots of money who doesn’t want others to know where it gets spent, their requests for financial information were ignored by the OHA powers that be. Or, were.

With a little legal pressure, OHA blinked. Sort of. It could have been a blink. Was it a blink or a wink? Under pressure, OHA was willing to provide the information for a price. $11,000. OHA representatives have promised, in public, to provide requested financial information. To date, they have not.

Why not?

Because. Because that’s what greedy money hoarders do. They connive to get money. Then they hoard the money they keep. Then then spend the money in ways they should not. Then they become indignant when someone asks for even a little accountability. Politicians do it. Embezzlers do it. Bishop Estate trustees did it. Now OHA trustees are doing it.

If you want to get to the Emerald City of Truth, all one needs to do is follow the Yellow Brick Money Trail. It may not be easy, but it is always an adventure.

Oh, take notes along the way. It’ll make for a good story, just like Broken Trust. As Dickie Wong is probably thinking, “These are not good days to be an OHA trustee.“

Uh oh. Insurance rates are about to go up again. Why? Because that’s what they do. In the age of computer efficiency and worldwide interconnected networking, large bureaucracies have figured out how to parlay technological efficiency into more profits.

Make no mistake. HMSA, Hawaii’s leading HMO, is a bureaucracy. Despite legislation and seemingly altruistic motives, they’re in business to do one thing– perpetuate money making.

Some may say that HMSA loses money from time to time, right? Right. But did executives take a pay cut, trim salaries, cut expenses, or get a pay raise with a bonus? Did they layoff a few hundred employees?

Uh uh. See?

When things get tight, they just raise their rates. Think of HMSA and other HMOs as public utilities for health care.

To say that Aloha Airlines is struggling is to say that beer is an acquired taste. Both take a little time to get used to, but too much of either leaves you feeling worse off.

In a competitive inter island airline market, Aloha can’t seem to do anything but spend money. They’re losing it faster than Ed Case moves toward political oblivion. Ed who? See?

I sympathize with Aloha’s investors and employees. It can’t be fun watching the airline spend your hard-earned investment money faster than it can be replaced. It can’t be fun working for an airline that claims to be the On Time Airline but can’t pay bills on time.

Aloha blames little go! airlines for their financial woes. I blame common sense. Aloha’s investors have the common sense to recognize that there’s something else amiss besides go!’s lower-than-cost competition. After all, Hawaiian Airlines didn’t file for bankruptcy. What is Hawaiian doing that Aloha can’t do?

The U.S. is heading into what appears to be a full-on recession. Cruise ships are leaving the islands. That does not bode well for the tourist industry in Hawaii, and can’t make for an attractive future for Aloha Airlines.

There are plans afoot for the state to bail out Aloha however possible; tax reductions, loan guarantees, a resolution of support, or whatever. The loss of a few thousand jobs as a large local airline goes bust will resonate far longer than the news headlines. Fortunately for Aloha, politicians have short memories.

Remember Hamakua Sugar? How’s that bail out plan working?

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. Sometimes the competition is just better. Either do what the competition does or find something else to do. Aloha couldn’t do either and will end up closing the doors unless a suitable sucker investor is found. Perhaps Governor Lingle would consider becoming Aloha’s savior and come up with a plan for the state to buy Aloha. Why not? She wants the state to get into the hotel and resort business.

What’s wrong with a state owned airline?

Hawaii lawmakers are working on a bill to curb domestic violence. That’s a good thing, right? Not so fast. How do we define domestic violence?

My mother and fathers spanked me. Sometimes it was deserved, sometimes not so much. Would mom and dad be criminals in Hawaii?

House Bill 3379 covers domestic violence, and creates a new crime (if that’s really possible; we have so many). This one is called third degree family abuse, a petty misdemeanor. Spanking your child could get you arrested.

Could your mother or father be arrested? The proposed bill states, “‘Physical abuse’ means striking, shoving, or kicking a person in an offensive manner, or subjecting a person to offensive physical contact with the intent to harass, annoy, or alarm.”

I don’t recall my parents ever kicking me, but there were more than a few instances of offensive physical contact with intent to harass and annoy. Apparently I managed to overcome those childhood tragedies and become a somewhat normal citizen despite the scars of abuse from my fair share of lickings.

If the bill passes and becomes law, I wonder if  a statue of limitations will apply? Otherwise, my parents could get arrested at the airport the next time the fly to Hawaii.

I promise to visit them in jail.