DID YOU KNOW OR NO, YA KNOW?: The more you know the less you know because as you come to know what you now know you also come to know what you don't know. The trick is to know now what you don't know now and what you didn't know then... ya know?
Didn't think so.
What we do know is that even a gallon of hot sauce isn't going to make our keyboard more palatable after our misguided ingestion pledge last week.
Civil Beat's (CB) robo-calling poll accurately predicted an astonishing 20+ point win by Tulsi Gabbard (54.0%) over Mufi Hannemann (33.6%) in the 2nd US Congressional District Democratic Primary, proving to be more accurate than the Honolulu Star-Advertiser "real live person" poll, which had Mufi up by10. The fact that the difference was apparently due to exceptionally low totals for Esther Kia`aina (5.7%) and Bob Marx (3.7%)- who had been predicted to come in closer to 10% each- doesn't make our esophagus any wider or teeth any sharper.
But the results may have had little or nothing to do with the polling method because in the US Senate race it was the reverse with CB predicting a virtual tie and the S-A prognosticating a 12% margin for Mazie Hirono who actually won by 17% over Ed Case.
Go figgah.
Another thing we we got wrong, albeit a year ago, was our support for the winner of this year's Corrupt Pol of the Year award, Kaua`i Councilmember KipuKai Kuali`i. Though he didn't actually win in 2010 he wound up being appointed to the council. But the worst part is that he finished in the money this Saturday with an appropriate 666 finish - 6th place with 6.6% of the vote.
We do know now what we didn't know then- that asking people to "plunk" for Kuali`i in 2010 joins our qwerty-chewing pledge as one of our more bone-headed moves because he's turned out to be a first-class hack who's traded in his political soul in support of Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's prosecutorial crime spree.
He now blindly follows Iseri adherent, her boot-licker-in-chief Mel Rapozo. Together they lead the goose-stepping cadre that champions our favorite race-baiter, "Ms Shay it, don't spray it."
That support grew out Kipukai's apparent back room deal for the redirection of a Victim-Witness program grant from Iseri's office to Kualii`s employer at the YWCA.
It's become laughingly obvious to anyone who watches the council in action that Kipukai has now gone to the dark side. But not only did he trade various votes to allow Iseri to get away with a slew of shenanigans and outright unlawful activity, it has cost the county a hefty chunk of cash in the form of an EEOC settlement for the firing of Victim Witness Counselor Erin Wilson.
Wilson was succinctly described by Joan Conrow as "the single mom who moved here all the way from Colorado to work as a victim witness coordinator, only to be fired a couple of months into the job because there supposedly wasn't enough work."
Of course there wasn't enough work because Iseri shuffled the job over to the "Y" in exchange for Kipukai's undying support for Iseri in the slew of past, present and we presume, future Shay-related scandals.
We do know that, unbelievably enough, for now, Kuali`i finished 1/10% (102 votes) ahead of Gary Hooser and 2/10% (152 votes) ahead of Tim Bynum in Saturday's useless election.
What we don't know is how to make sure that by Nov. 6 everybody knows about Kualii's little pact.
Showing posts with label Star-Advertizer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star-Advertizer. Show all posts
Monday, August 13, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
HUNG UP?
HUNG UP?: Getting telephone polled (and everyone knows how painful that can be, as Steve Allen used to say) used to be a rare event. While some were annoyed at having to answer questions from a stranger at dinner time, more often "poll-ees" felt that it was so out of the ordinary that they might as well thoughtfully answer the "poll-ers'" questions.
But this year, with the ubiquitous use of the "robo-call"- those pre-recorded "push '1' if you plan to vote for candidate 'X'" calls- we knew it couldn't just be our imagination that the phone seems to ring with these things once a day and twice on Sunday.
We've actually answered at least a half a dozen of theses things this year and screened out another large handful- usually with an "egad, not again" attitude- more than the total number we've ever received over the years.
We'd gotten a strange feeling that these robo-calls- a term that some consider pejorative even though it's the common parlance for any pre-recorded call- were yielding bogus results for a long time, for many reasons.
But the absurdly counter-intuitive results of a "Civil Beat (CB)" poll yesterday that has Tulsi Gabbard taking a sudden and stunning 49%-29% lead over Mufi Hannemann in the 2nd U.S. Congressional District race, all but confirms our suspicions... especially coming, as it does, on the heels of a CB-reported tie a few weeks back and a 10 point lead by Hannemann in a "Hawai`i News Now/Star Advertiser HNN/SA" poll a week before.
Even with the respective "margins of error" a simply statistical explanation doesn't cut it. There has to be something else going on here.
And if our experiences, along with those of some of our Facebook "friends," is any indication it is the robo-calls themselves that provide an explanation.
First of all it appears that only those with a "land-line" have been robo-called. Those with cell phones need not apply. Some say that this discriminates against younger and poorer voters being included but no matter what demographic groups it favors, the results are going to be skewed one way or another.
It may be simply the annoyance factor that causes people to auto-hang-up on auto-calls.
We've developed a habit of doing just that. Whether it's the recent polling or other calls of late, as soon as it becomes apparent that the call is a recording, we hang up,`` having developed the attitude that if it's not important enough for them to call personally it's not important enough for us to answer.
Plus of course there is the modern phenomena of screening calls based on caller ID. This may vary with how busy one is at the moment but if we're busy in the kitchen and an unknown mainland number comes up, we're a whole lot less likely to answer it- and even less so if the caller's number and name are blocked.
We basically asked our Facebook "friends" if they had landlines or cells, how many calls they got and whether the calls were "live or Memorex" ("taped," for all you youngsters) as well as how the number of calls compared to past years.
What we found is that that we're not alone in our response to robo-calls or "touch-tone polling" as Civil Beat would prefer they be referred to. Here are some of the responses left on on our Facebook page (all "Sic"):
- I have been getting at least 3 to 4 a week on land line. I hang up or don't take calls but then they go to message and I still have to deal with them. Most of them come in early evening. They are from everywhere; local, state, fed.
- I think I've probably gotten about 3 in the last month. Not sure. I hang up as soon as I realize its a computer. Been getting a few voice mails asking me to vote for their candidate
-1) hangup on robo-calls, 2) Ask any live person who commissioned the poll, have yet to get an answer and hang-up, 3) if they tell me who commissioned the poll I throw flak at the pollster.
- I have had more survey calls than ever before. Maybe a total of six, four were robo calls. Two were definite push polls, maybe three. All calls were to a land line. Only screened one that I did not take, a repeat call from one surveyor I hung up on for being a push poll. One seemed pointed at prosecutor office, all others combined house and senate. One earlier included county council questions.
In response to that last one, probably because it wasn't clear, candidate for Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar responded, "Just so everyone knows, my campaign has done no robocalling. ZERO."
That concurs with a report from Joan Conrow- one that quite a few others have independently confirmed for us- that described what could only be called a "push poll" and seemed to be from Kollar's opponent, incumbent Shaylene Iseri Carvalho.
Our favorite questions from that Iseri push poll was "do you read the blogs?" quite obviously because she's in trouble if they do.
Oh, and here's one response we got via email,
I've had about the same experience you have Andy, though far more than a half dozen, with many calls being from out of the area and automated, a few were actual live interview calls. Some are obviously partisan, others I could not tell who was sponsoring them. I screened one caller, Bob Marx, as noted on my caller ID, and they called back 4 times within a couple of hours. They have all been on my land line, apparently gotten from the phone book. They are a nuisance.
But though this is a small sampling and of course is not a "scientific poll" it is significant in that everyone who responded did so with frustration- oh, all right call it anger- over robo-calls. Remember they don't seem to object to getting polling calls, just that they were the recorded type.
One factor we haven’t heard mentioned is the relative difficulty of the whole "touch tone call" phenomena. Although most of us are used to it by now, no one likes it. Humorists and comedians have had a field day with them for more than a decade now.
Arguably, once you get past the usual desire to talk to a live person- and the fact that that option either doesn't seem to be on the list or is the last one of 10 choices (and is never "0")- the worst part is trying to find the right button on these telephones that no longer have a separate receiver and number pad, but instead have the keypad right next to where you talk and listen so that you have to keep taking the phone away from your head to push the right button and bringing it back to your ear... until your arms (or ear) starts to fall off.
And boy are you in trouble if you didn't catch the first couple of selections of what has become a long, bewildering set of choices. Are you really going to have the machine read the selections again? Or are you more likely to just push any button just to get the thing over with?
And then there's the regular poll that turns into a push poll. Although there's been some argument- usually from the people who run them- that they aren't push polls for one double-talking reason or another, everyone knows them when they hear them.
And they've heard quite a few this year.
Our favorite was one where, five minutes in, the "caller" asks a series of questions beginning with "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Mufi if you knew that he" followed by some horrendous anecdotal tale of apparent avarice or corruption. One question included the words "Pearl Harbor" and "Senator Inouye" and if you weren’t paying close attention you might get the impression that Mufi was at the controls of a Japanese Zero honing in on the 442nd.
Another negative of robo-calls is the impatience factor with a long list of choices. You just know that 10 minutes into a call that had asked for "five minutes of your time" people are starting to push "1" or "2" just to make the process go faster, thinking they already have 10 minutes invested so they don't want to hang up now, they just want it to be over.
Whether these things we do make sense or not isn't important- it's simply what we do without really thinking about it.
Then of course there's the one where the choices change and they type of question remains the same. After a list of four or five questions with the same two possible answers, all of a sudden you realize there are now seven different choices and you just pushed "1" only because that was the one you had been pushing on similar questions.
But the big question here is, assuming that robo-calls give skewed data, why would it favor Tulsi over Mufi?
Well, let's look at those specifics.
Mufi is not exactly the kind of candidate that makes people excited about his candidacy. First of all he's a conservative candidate in what has been arguably described as "the most liberal district in the country." And he's running in a Democratic primary where he started with a big lead without any real progressive oppositions.
The Democratic base had been craving a candidate they could get excited about. Former Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser apparently chose not to run for the post he ran for some years back and many suspect it was because of the daunting task of raising enough money to take on the presumed favorite, Hannemann. And he had name recognition after also running for lt. governor last year whereas Gabbard has never run for statewide office before, just state representative and Honolulu county council.
Enter Tulsi. Then enter lots of money- much of it from the mainland- to publicize her status as a "born-again lefty."
Even though anywhere else he'd be a Republican, Mufi's support has come from the Democratic "machine" who are supporting him as the "establishment" candidate. Many have been supporting him simply because of name recognition.
But as Gabbard started to raise money and get her name out there she negated much of that and now has become the "go to" candidate who, although they were probably going to vote for Mufi before, has now excited those who were looking for a "progressive alternative."
And make no mistake about it- the Democratic progressives have become excited having long "got over" her former radical right wing stance on marriage rights and other issues.
Those are the people who would be more likely to stay on the phone to get their "choice" registered with the thought that polls numbers create the bandwagon effect.
No one's getting "excited" over the prospect of Congressman Hannemann... except maybe for those who expect a federal contract from the well "know pay-to-play" pol.
And don't forget about the "Mufi haters." Hannemann has tremendous negatives with high "dislike" numbers that he's generated over the years. He's been characterized, if not caricatured, as having a "bullying" style and has been accused of negative- even allegedly racist- campaigning, most recently in his run for governor where he lost to Neil Abercrombie two years ago.
Not too many Mufi Mavens are going to stay on the phone through a robo-call to register their support for him. As a matter of fact, we'd venture to say most of his supporters think it's "in the bag" already- don't forget, this poll wasn't out at the time.
All that could lead to a situation where those most likely to stay through a recorded call- even though they hate robo-calls- would be Gabbard supporters whereas the least likely would be Hannemann supporters.
And for what it's worth, it's a lot easier to hang up on a recording than a person, especially in the "Aloha State" so there's a natural skewing at the most basic level.
We really feel sorry for our friend Mike Levine whose job at Civil Beat was to try to explain how such an anomaly could possibly be valid. He actually did a good job of it and you come away thinking "well, it could happen."
But, upon reflection, no- it couldn't happen. A 30 point difference in two almost simultaneous polls cannot be reasoned away even with the old standby of "it's just snapshot."
When you look at the difference between the HNN/SA and CB polls, the main thing- maybe the only thing- that sticks out is the method of gathering the information. And if it's the method that's in question and one candidate is roundly not just disliked but actively hated then, as most critical thinkers and rational people will tell you, the likely answer is going to be the correct one- that something is kapakahi with the robo-call methodology.
If Tulsi Gabbard beats Mufi Hannemann by 20 points this Saturday we'll eat this keyboard. Because it would be easier to ingest a pound of plastic and metal than it would to swallow the validity of these robo-calls.
But this year, with the ubiquitous use of the "robo-call"- those pre-recorded "push '1' if you plan to vote for candidate 'X'" calls- we knew it couldn't just be our imagination that the phone seems to ring with these things once a day and twice on Sunday.
We've actually answered at least a half a dozen of theses things this year and screened out another large handful- usually with an "egad, not again" attitude- more than the total number we've ever received over the years.
We'd gotten a strange feeling that these robo-calls- a term that some consider pejorative even though it's the common parlance for any pre-recorded call- were yielding bogus results for a long time, for many reasons.
But the absurdly counter-intuitive results of a "Civil Beat (CB)" poll yesterday that has Tulsi Gabbard taking a sudden and stunning 49%-29% lead over Mufi Hannemann in the 2nd U.S. Congressional District race, all but confirms our suspicions... especially coming, as it does, on the heels of a CB-reported tie a few weeks back and a 10 point lead by Hannemann in a "Hawai`i News Now/Star Advertiser HNN/SA" poll a week before.
Even with the respective "margins of error" a simply statistical explanation doesn't cut it. There has to be something else going on here.
And if our experiences, along with those of some of our Facebook "friends," is any indication it is the robo-calls themselves that provide an explanation.
First of all it appears that only those with a "land-line" have been robo-called. Those with cell phones need not apply. Some say that this discriminates against younger and poorer voters being included but no matter what demographic groups it favors, the results are going to be skewed one way or another.
It may be simply the annoyance factor that causes people to auto-hang-up on auto-calls.
We've developed a habit of doing just that. Whether it's the recent polling or other calls of late, as soon as it becomes apparent that the call is a recording, we hang up,`` having developed the attitude that if it's not important enough for them to call personally it's not important enough for us to answer.
Plus of course there is the modern phenomena of screening calls based on caller ID. This may vary with how busy one is at the moment but if we're busy in the kitchen and an unknown mainland number comes up, we're a whole lot less likely to answer it- and even less so if the caller's number and name are blocked.
We basically asked our Facebook "friends" if they had landlines or cells, how many calls they got and whether the calls were "live or Memorex" ("taped," for all you youngsters) as well as how the number of calls compared to past years.
What we found is that that we're not alone in our response to robo-calls or "touch-tone polling" as Civil Beat would prefer they be referred to. Here are some of the responses left on on our Facebook page (all "Sic"):
- I have been getting at least 3 to 4 a week on land line. I hang up or don't take calls but then they go to message and I still have to deal with them. Most of them come in early evening. They are from everywhere; local, state, fed.
- I think I've probably gotten about 3 in the last month. Not sure. I hang up as soon as I realize its a computer. Been getting a few voice mails asking me to vote for their candidate
-1) hangup on robo-calls, 2) Ask any live person who commissioned the poll, have yet to get an answer and hang-up, 3) if they tell me who commissioned the poll I throw flak at the pollster.
- I have had more survey calls than ever before. Maybe a total of six, four were robo calls. Two were definite push polls, maybe three. All calls were to a land line. Only screened one that I did not take, a repeat call from one surveyor I hung up on for being a push poll. One seemed pointed at prosecutor office, all others combined house and senate. One earlier included county council questions.
In response to that last one, probably because it wasn't clear, candidate for Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar responded, "Just so everyone knows, my campaign has done no robocalling. ZERO."
That concurs with a report from Joan Conrow- one that quite a few others have independently confirmed for us- that described what could only be called a "push poll" and seemed to be from Kollar's opponent, incumbent Shaylene Iseri Carvalho.
Our favorite questions from that Iseri push poll was "do you read the blogs?" quite obviously because she's in trouble if they do.
Oh, and here's one response we got via email,
I've had about the same experience you have Andy, though far more than a half dozen, with many calls being from out of the area and automated, a few were actual live interview calls. Some are obviously partisan, others I could not tell who was sponsoring them. I screened one caller, Bob Marx, as noted on my caller ID, and they called back 4 times within a couple of hours. They have all been on my land line, apparently gotten from the phone book. They are a nuisance.
But though this is a small sampling and of course is not a "scientific poll" it is significant in that everyone who responded did so with frustration- oh, all right call it anger- over robo-calls. Remember they don't seem to object to getting polling calls, just that they were the recorded type.
One factor we haven’t heard mentioned is the relative difficulty of the whole "touch tone call" phenomena. Although most of us are used to it by now, no one likes it. Humorists and comedians have had a field day with them for more than a decade now.
Arguably, once you get past the usual desire to talk to a live person- and the fact that that option either doesn't seem to be on the list or is the last one of 10 choices (and is never "0")- the worst part is trying to find the right button on these telephones that no longer have a separate receiver and number pad, but instead have the keypad right next to where you talk and listen so that you have to keep taking the phone away from your head to push the right button and bringing it back to your ear... until your arms (or ear) starts to fall off.
And boy are you in trouble if you didn't catch the first couple of selections of what has become a long, bewildering set of choices. Are you really going to have the machine read the selections again? Or are you more likely to just push any button just to get the thing over with?
And then there's the regular poll that turns into a push poll. Although there's been some argument- usually from the people who run them- that they aren't push polls for one double-talking reason or another, everyone knows them when they hear them.
And they've heard quite a few this year.
Our favorite was one where, five minutes in, the "caller" asks a series of questions beginning with "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Mufi if you knew that he" followed by some horrendous anecdotal tale of apparent avarice or corruption. One question included the words "Pearl Harbor" and "Senator Inouye" and if you weren’t paying close attention you might get the impression that Mufi was at the controls of a Japanese Zero honing in on the 442nd.
Another negative of robo-calls is the impatience factor with a long list of choices. You just know that 10 minutes into a call that had asked for "five minutes of your time" people are starting to push "1" or "2" just to make the process go faster, thinking they already have 10 minutes invested so they don't want to hang up now, they just want it to be over.
Whether these things we do make sense or not isn't important- it's simply what we do without really thinking about it.
Then of course there's the one where the choices change and they type of question remains the same. After a list of four or five questions with the same two possible answers, all of a sudden you realize there are now seven different choices and you just pushed "1" only because that was the one you had been pushing on similar questions.
But the big question here is, assuming that robo-calls give skewed data, why would it favor Tulsi over Mufi?
Well, let's look at those specifics.
Mufi is not exactly the kind of candidate that makes people excited about his candidacy. First of all he's a conservative candidate in what has been arguably described as "the most liberal district in the country." And he's running in a Democratic primary where he started with a big lead without any real progressive oppositions.
The Democratic base had been craving a candidate they could get excited about. Former Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser apparently chose not to run for the post he ran for some years back and many suspect it was because of the daunting task of raising enough money to take on the presumed favorite, Hannemann. And he had name recognition after also running for lt. governor last year whereas Gabbard has never run for statewide office before, just state representative and Honolulu county council.
Enter Tulsi. Then enter lots of money- much of it from the mainland- to publicize her status as a "born-again lefty."
Even though anywhere else he'd be a Republican, Mufi's support has come from the Democratic "machine" who are supporting him as the "establishment" candidate. Many have been supporting him simply because of name recognition.
But as Gabbard started to raise money and get her name out there she negated much of that and now has become the "go to" candidate who, although they were probably going to vote for Mufi before, has now excited those who were looking for a "progressive alternative."
And make no mistake about it- the Democratic progressives have become excited having long "got over" her former radical right wing stance on marriage rights and other issues.
Those are the people who would be more likely to stay on the phone to get their "choice" registered with the thought that polls numbers create the bandwagon effect.
No one's getting "excited" over the prospect of Congressman Hannemann... except maybe for those who expect a federal contract from the well "know pay-to-play" pol.
And don't forget about the "Mufi haters." Hannemann has tremendous negatives with high "dislike" numbers that he's generated over the years. He's been characterized, if not caricatured, as having a "bullying" style and has been accused of negative- even allegedly racist- campaigning, most recently in his run for governor where he lost to Neil Abercrombie two years ago.
Not too many Mufi Mavens are going to stay on the phone through a robo-call to register their support for him. As a matter of fact, we'd venture to say most of his supporters think it's "in the bag" already- don't forget, this poll wasn't out at the time.
All that could lead to a situation where those most likely to stay through a recorded call- even though they hate robo-calls- would be Gabbard supporters whereas the least likely would be Hannemann supporters.
And for what it's worth, it's a lot easier to hang up on a recording than a person, especially in the "Aloha State" so there's a natural skewing at the most basic level.
We really feel sorry for our friend Mike Levine whose job at Civil Beat was to try to explain how such an anomaly could possibly be valid. He actually did a good job of it and you come away thinking "well, it could happen."
But, upon reflection, no- it couldn't happen. A 30 point difference in two almost simultaneous polls cannot be reasoned away even with the old standby of "it's just snapshot."
When you look at the difference between the HNN/SA and CB polls, the main thing- maybe the only thing- that sticks out is the method of gathering the information. And if it's the method that's in question and one candidate is roundly not just disliked but actively hated then, as most critical thinkers and rational people will tell you, the likely answer is going to be the correct one- that something is kapakahi with the robo-call methodology.
If Tulsi Gabbard beats Mufi Hannemann by 20 points this Saturday we'll eat this keyboard. Because it would be easier to ingest a pound of plastic and metal than it would to swallow the validity of these robo-calls.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
SCATTING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER
SCATTING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: A few weeks back we got disgusted enough to pass on that retching sound to our readers regarding the entro-bacterial levels in the ocean on the North Shore of Kaua`i, specifically Hanalei Bay. Seems that, as we wrote then,
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) 22nd annual beach water quality report on the cleanest beaches in America- as reported in today's pay-walled Honolulu Star Advertiser-
"Out of the country's 200 most popular beaches, no Hawaii beach earned the council's 5-star rating, which 12 beaches received."
We went on to make the point that many, notably the Surfrider Foundation of Kaua`i, have generally been calling bullsh*t on the contention that the source was, well, bull sh*t.
While Deputy Director of the State Health Department's environmental health division Gary Gill is quoted as saying "it's not an indication of sewage pollution," Surfrider Kaua`i- which has been doing its own testing- has said that the exceedingly high levels are primarily due to human excrement from the plethora of cesspools that still quasi-legally exist in Hanalei, especially those hooked into "illegal" transient vacation rentals (check out our original post for why illegal is in quotes).
But the original article was actually trying to make a different point than the one we picked up on. The second paragraph read:
On the other end of the scale, no Hawaii beach made the list of 15 "repeat offenders" for storm water runoff and sewage pollution that sicken people and harm coastal economies, the council said.
It went on to say:
The Hawaii percentage was up from 3 percent in 2009 and again in 2010, but down from the 9 percent measured in 2007, the council said.
Kauai County beaches had the highest "exceedance rate" — percent of beach water samples exceeding state standards in 2011 — at 9 percent, followed by Hawaii County (4 percent), City and County of Honolulu (2 percent) and Maui County (2 percent).
Really? It seems to be saying it's getting better... cleaner... less, uh, full of crap.
Well maybe not. According to marine biologist and head of the Kauai Surfrider Foundation Dr. Carl Berg it's not because it's any cleaner it's simply because the entity that's actually fullest of crap is the DOH which has simply stopped testing as often.
In an email Dr. Berg told us:
One way to get really bad beaches off the list of year-after-year high exceedance? Just stop sampling them! Then they don't show up on the list. Take for example, Hanama`ulu Beach Park which was tied for 10th place in the nation for greatest percent of the time in exceedance. What happened?.. no more sampling, so no data, so off the list. It is now being re-sampled periodically.
The reason Hawai`i beaches are not in the NRDC 5 star category is the fact that DOH does not meet some of the criteria.
NRDC says "Criteria include testing more than once a week (They do that), notifying the public promptly when tests reveal bacteria levels violating health standards (nope), and posting closings and advisories both online and at the beach (nope). Hopefully we will determine if the high bacteria counts are coming from human or animal feces this summer. If human feces, then Surfrider will be screaming to have a lot more Kauai beaches and streams posted with signs like the ones that were up at Nawiliwili Stream after the sewage spill.
We have a feeling that the Hawai`i Visitors' Bureau is just fine with the way DOH is doing its work. To complete Dr. Berg's thought "no more sampling, so no data, so off the list," so... instead of the headlines on the mainland screaming "Come to Hanalei and take a Dip in Sh*t" it reads "Hanalei: Jump Right In, Dipsh*t- The Water's Fine.
When the choices are "lies, damnable lies and statistics" it's easy to confuse the shibai and the kukai. But if you simply don't look for any of the three you don't have to fudge anything.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) 22nd annual beach water quality report on the cleanest beaches in America- as reported in today's pay-walled Honolulu Star Advertiser-
"Out of the country's 200 most popular beaches, no Hawaii beach earned the council's 5-star rating, which 12 beaches received."
We went on to make the point that many, notably the Surfrider Foundation of Kaua`i, have generally been calling bullsh*t on the contention that the source was, well, bull sh*t.
While Deputy Director of the State Health Department's environmental health division Gary Gill is quoted as saying "it's not an indication of sewage pollution," Surfrider Kaua`i- which has been doing its own testing- has said that the exceedingly high levels are primarily due to human excrement from the plethora of cesspools that still quasi-legally exist in Hanalei, especially those hooked into "illegal" transient vacation rentals (check out our original post for why illegal is in quotes).
But the original article was actually trying to make a different point than the one we picked up on. The second paragraph read:
On the other end of the scale, no Hawaii beach made the list of 15 "repeat offenders" for storm water runoff and sewage pollution that sicken people and harm coastal economies, the council said.
It went on to say:
The Hawaii percentage was up from 3 percent in 2009 and again in 2010, but down from the 9 percent measured in 2007, the council said.
Kauai County beaches had the highest "exceedance rate" — percent of beach water samples exceeding state standards in 2011 — at 9 percent, followed by Hawaii County (4 percent), City and County of Honolulu (2 percent) and Maui County (2 percent).
Really? It seems to be saying it's getting better... cleaner... less, uh, full of crap.
Well maybe not. According to marine biologist and head of the Kauai Surfrider Foundation Dr. Carl Berg it's not because it's any cleaner it's simply because the entity that's actually fullest of crap is the DOH which has simply stopped testing as often.
In an email Dr. Berg told us:
One way to get really bad beaches off the list of year-after-year high exceedance? Just stop sampling them! Then they don't show up on the list. Take for example, Hanama`ulu Beach Park which was tied for 10th place in the nation for greatest percent of the time in exceedance. What happened?.. no more sampling, so no data, so off the list. It is now being re-sampled periodically.
The reason Hawai`i beaches are not in the NRDC 5 star category is the fact that DOH does not meet some of the criteria.
NRDC says "Criteria include testing more than once a week (They do that), notifying the public promptly when tests reveal bacteria levels violating health standards (nope), and posting closings and advisories both online and at the beach (nope). Hopefully we will determine if the high bacteria counts are coming from human or animal feces this summer. If human feces, then Surfrider will be screaming to have a lot more Kauai beaches and streams posted with signs like the ones that were up at Nawiliwili Stream after the sewage spill.
We have a feeling that the Hawai`i Visitors' Bureau is just fine with the way DOH is doing its work. To complete Dr. Berg's thought "no more sampling, so no data, so off the list," so... instead of the headlines on the mainland screaming "Come to Hanalei and take a Dip in Sh*t" it reads "Hanalei: Jump Right In, Dipsh*t- The Water's Fine.
When the choices are "lies, damnable lies and statistics" it's easy to confuse the shibai and the kukai. But if you simply don't look for any of the three you don't have to fudge anything.
Friday, May 4, 2012
SPIT IT UP
SPIT IT UP: No, Shaylene didn't grab us off the street and throw us in her own personal dungeon. Nor did Beth Tokioka get out the pins and the voodoo doll.
And after an MRI "gut check" we've confirmed that our recent nausea is not, as we suspected, due to the prospect of four years of having to listen to the voice of former Governor Ben Cayetano should he become the mayor of Honolulu.
We regret the lack of a high fiber diet for the past 20 years (damn, dem Safeway baguettes is tasty), but the diverticular gods apparently have other people to sicken today so maybe between bathroom runs we can play a little catch-up today.
Of course the news that Judge Kathleen Watanabe threw out Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's politically motivated charges against her blood-feud enemy Councilmember Tim Bynum in the "Rice-Cooker-Gate" case- and made sure she couldn't file them again- wasn't much of a surprise. The real laughter was that the "special prosecutor" assigned to the case was none other than former one-term Kaua`i Councilmember and current Deputy Prosecutor on Maui, Richard "Sweating Bullets" Minatoya.
Minatoya really had little choice but to go along with Watanabe's charade of taking Iseri's department off the case and then getting someone else to "investigate" Iseri's envisioned manifestations of the criminal mind of Tim Bynum.
Apparently Watanabe couldn't bring herself to just dismiss the charges all by herself, or better still jail Iseri for fraud and other "alleged" misconduct. The Judgy-Wudgy wouldn't want to deprive Iseri of due process just because Iseri has so little regard for due process herself.
(Parenthetically we just have to ask why it is that people who hate lawyers have such reverence for judges. Where do they think judges come from- the Judge Fairy?)
Once Minatoya talked to Iseri's hench-persons in the planning department and examined some of the evidence of Shay's and her "Igor," First Deputy Prosecutor Jake Delaplane's crimes and misdemeanors, he fulfilled his role of being "shocked, shocked" to find gambling at Rick's.
As an aside we can't let the fact that Minatoya's name is in the news go by without telling the tale of how he got that middle name.
It was we believe 1998 (we don't need no stinkin' fact checks) when then one-term Councilmember Mary Thronas decided to run for mayor (if we remember the correct chronology), trying to unseat then-Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.
Thronas failed in her mayoral bid after referring to Kusaka's office as "a Filipino taxi cab" and talking about "jewing-down" somebody-or-other... all within earshot of a reporter who apparently didn't know that those kinds of things aren't supposed to be reported on Kaua`i.
We were helping produce a "Video Voters' Guide" and had a couple of freebie rooms at the old Kaua`i Resort to do it. We had prepared questions for council and mayoral candidates and the questions were to be provided to each candidate exactly one hour before their individually scheduled taping times.
When Thronas came in we handed her the questions. She looked the piece of paper and then looked back at us and then looked back to the paper as if to ask "what the heck am I supposed to do with this?"
She never did glance at the content but rather spent the next hour gossiping with her hair and makeup people as they put her face in order. We actually had to read her the questions to her before she answered them... without of course really answering them, in quite the "accomplished politician" style .
Next up was the head-shaven Minatoya who had squeaked onto the council two years previously and had not exactly spent the biennium endearing himself to the electorate, serving as just another "bum" to be thrown out... just like the bum he had replaced.
Minatoya came in ten minutes before his appointed time to receive the questions and when we told him that, to be fair, we had to wait until exactly one hour before his taping time to give him the questions, he proceeded to stare at his watch for the next 10 minutes like he was waiting for the priest to arrive for last rites.
When we finally gave him the paper he began to look it over like it was his death warrant. What had previously been a trickle of perspiration now began flowing from his chrome-dome by the barrel-full. We didn't take a lot of notice and continued to yack about nothing in particular until Minatoya jumped up and, loud enough for them to hear him at the nearby Lydgate Park Pavilion, screamed "SHUT UP- I'VE ONLY GOT AN HOUR."
Needless to say by "showtime" Minatoya looked like he'd stepped out of a dunking booth. He stumbled his way through his answers, lost the election (some say because of the performance which played for months on public access TV) and was never heard from again on Kaua`i- until now.
Anyway, now we wait for the other shoe to drop as Bynum plots his revenge against Iseri, who has been busy lawyering-up over budget-related as well as other questions the council has over her P.O.H.A.K.U. program and other assorted sordid activities.
The council met in secret executive session on Wednesday regarding P.O.H.A.K.U. and next Wednesday will discuss it in public although the effect on Iseri's budget- which goes to public hearing next Wednesday at 5 p.m.- may be negligible in an election year since "dollar-funding" the entire Office of the Prosecutor (OPA) isn't really an option.
By the way, we just can't let this go without noting how hilarious it is that other island media have- due to a well established hatred of Bynum over the transient vacation rental issue- credited Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura with leading the investigative battle to reveal Iseri's "alleged" crimes.
The fact is that Yukimura has actually been serving as a mouthpiece for Bynum's research into Iseri's activities, but because Bynum wouldn't exactly be the best front-man for any public interrogation, Yukimura, to her credit, as taken up the reigns of the fight to publicize Iseri's shenanigans.
But the real news this week is the sudden departure of the local newspaper's "new" editor Renee Haines. We hear she was fired, not because she was censoring huge swaths of copy filed by her less-than-competent staff regarding Shaylene-related scandals and instead running fluff pieces Iseri gave her.
The publisher could care less about that and might have even been ordering it. They don't really care about much as long as the Happy Camper's column isn't printed blurry.
But apparently Haines had so little news savvy after coming over from the advertising side of the newspaper business that, as a fake newsperson, she personally wrote and published a fake story from fake marine biologist named Terry Lilley- who works for fake-everything Hanalei boatyard owner Mike Sheehan- and Lilley's fake "toxic levels of heavy metals in Hanalei Bay" report- all without checking with anyone as to what the truth is.
But if the local paper is a joke, the real joke is of course the Honolulu Star-Advertiser which has yet to say a word about the whole Iseri-Bynum brouhaha. That may be changing after Bynum's attorney Dan Hempey sent out a press release regarding Watanabe's ruling yesterday. But the joke may be about to become a shaggy dog story because the reporter assigned to the neighbor islands, Rosemary "No Dateline" Bernardo, has apparently yet to set foot on a neighbor island for a story, preferring to file her stories from the S-A's city desk.
We just love this place. Even bending over the toilet, it's endlessly entertaining.
We'll be posting whenever we can.
Eat your fiber kiddies.
And after an MRI "gut check" we've confirmed that our recent nausea is not, as we suspected, due to the prospect of four years of having to listen to the voice of former Governor Ben Cayetano should he become the mayor of Honolulu.
We regret the lack of a high fiber diet for the past 20 years (damn, dem Safeway baguettes is tasty), but the diverticular gods apparently have other people to sicken today so maybe between bathroom runs we can play a little catch-up today.
Of course the news that Judge Kathleen Watanabe threw out Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's politically motivated charges against her blood-feud enemy Councilmember Tim Bynum in the "Rice-Cooker-Gate" case- and made sure she couldn't file them again- wasn't much of a surprise. The real laughter was that the "special prosecutor" assigned to the case was none other than former one-term Kaua`i Councilmember and current Deputy Prosecutor on Maui, Richard "Sweating Bullets" Minatoya.
Minatoya really had little choice but to go along with Watanabe's charade of taking Iseri's department off the case and then getting someone else to "investigate" Iseri's envisioned manifestations of the criminal mind of Tim Bynum.
Apparently Watanabe couldn't bring herself to just dismiss the charges all by herself, or better still jail Iseri for fraud and other "alleged" misconduct. The Judgy-Wudgy wouldn't want to deprive Iseri of due process just because Iseri has so little regard for due process herself.
(Parenthetically we just have to ask why it is that people who hate lawyers have such reverence for judges. Where do they think judges come from- the Judge Fairy?)
Once Minatoya talked to Iseri's hench-persons in the planning department and examined some of the evidence of Shay's and her "Igor," First Deputy Prosecutor Jake Delaplane's crimes and misdemeanors, he fulfilled his role of being "shocked, shocked" to find gambling at Rick's.
As an aside we can't let the fact that Minatoya's name is in the news go by without telling the tale of how he got that middle name.
It was we believe 1998 (we don't need no stinkin' fact checks) when then one-term Councilmember Mary Thronas decided to run for mayor (if we remember the correct chronology), trying to unseat then-Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.
Thronas failed in her mayoral bid after referring to Kusaka's office as "a Filipino taxi cab" and talking about "jewing-down" somebody-or-other... all within earshot of a reporter who apparently didn't know that those kinds of things aren't supposed to be reported on Kaua`i.
We were helping produce a "Video Voters' Guide" and had a couple of freebie rooms at the old Kaua`i Resort to do it. We had prepared questions for council and mayoral candidates and the questions were to be provided to each candidate exactly one hour before their individually scheduled taping times.
When Thronas came in we handed her the questions. She looked the piece of paper and then looked back at us and then looked back to the paper as if to ask "what the heck am I supposed to do with this?"
She never did glance at the content but rather spent the next hour gossiping with her hair and makeup people as they put her face in order. We actually had to read her the questions to her before she answered them... without of course really answering them, in quite the "accomplished politician" style .
Next up was the head-shaven Minatoya who had squeaked onto the council two years previously and had not exactly spent the biennium endearing himself to the electorate, serving as just another "bum" to be thrown out... just like the bum he had replaced.
Minatoya came in ten minutes before his appointed time to receive the questions and when we told him that, to be fair, we had to wait until exactly one hour before his taping time to give him the questions, he proceeded to stare at his watch for the next 10 minutes like he was waiting for the priest to arrive for last rites.
When we finally gave him the paper he began to look it over like it was his death warrant. What had previously been a trickle of perspiration now began flowing from his chrome-dome by the barrel-full. We didn't take a lot of notice and continued to yack about nothing in particular until Minatoya jumped up and, loud enough for them to hear him at the nearby Lydgate Park Pavilion, screamed "SHUT UP- I'VE ONLY GOT AN HOUR."
Needless to say by "showtime" Minatoya looked like he'd stepped out of a dunking booth. He stumbled his way through his answers, lost the election (some say because of the performance which played for months on public access TV) and was never heard from again on Kaua`i- until now.
Anyway, now we wait for the other shoe to drop as Bynum plots his revenge against Iseri, who has been busy lawyering-up over budget-related as well as other questions the council has over her P.O.H.A.K.U. program and other assorted sordid activities.
The council met in secret executive session on Wednesday regarding P.O.H.A.K.U. and next Wednesday will discuss it in public although the effect on Iseri's budget- which goes to public hearing next Wednesday at 5 p.m.- may be negligible in an election year since "dollar-funding" the entire Office of the Prosecutor (OPA) isn't really an option.
By the way, we just can't let this go without noting how hilarious it is that other island media have- due to a well established hatred of Bynum over the transient vacation rental issue- credited Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura with leading the investigative battle to reveal Iseri's "alleged" crimes.
The fact is that Yukimura has actually been serving as a mouthpiece for Bynum's research into Iseri's activities, but because Bynum wouldn't exactly be the best front-man for any public interrogation, Yukimura, to her credit, as taken up the reigns of the fight to publicize Iseri's shenanigans.
But the real news this week is the sudden departure of the local newspaper's "new" editor Renee Haines. We hear she was fired, not because she was censoring huge swaths of copy filed by her less-than-competent staff regarding Shaylene-related scandals and instead running fluff pieces Iseri gave her.
The publisher could care less about that and might have even been ordering it. They don't really care about much as long as the Happy Camper's column isn't printed blurry.
But apparently Haines had so little news savvy after coming over from the advertising side of the newspaper business that, as a fake newsperson, she personally wrote and published a fake story from fake marine biologist named Terry Lilley- who works for fake-everything Hanalei boatyard owner Mike Sheehan- and Lilley's fake "toxic levels of heavy metals in Hanalei Bay" report- all without checking with anyone as to what the truth is.
But if the local paper is a joke, the real joke is of course the Honolulu Star-Advertiser which has yet to say a word about the whole Iseri-Bynum brouhaha. That may be changing after Bynum's attorney Dan Hempey sent out a press release regarding Watanabe's ruling yesterday. But the joke may be about to become a shaggy dog story because the reporter assigned to the neighbor islands, Rosemary "No Dateline" Bernardo, has apparently yet to set foot on a neighbor island for a story, preferring to file her stories from the S-A's city desk.
We just love this place. Even bending over the toilet, it's endlessly entertaining.
We'll be posting whenever we can.
Eat your fiber kiddies.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
NEWS DIRECT FROM THE MAGIC KINGDOM
NEWS DIRECT FROM THE MAGIC KINGDOM: We've done a lot of kvetching over the years regarding what passes for news reporting in our local Kaua`i newspaper. Although the depth of the newspaper's recent reporting has been particularly abysmal, it positively glows when compared to what the Honolulu press collectively thinks is going on over here.
The contraction of both the print and TV press in the "city and county" hasn't helped. Not only did the Honolulu Star-Bulletin somehow "buy out" it's mammoth competitor the Advertiser, even before they became the pay-walled "Star-Advertiser (S-A)" they had eliminated their permanent news bureaus on the neighbor island.
That, along with a decision to forgo even "stringers," has left their coverage of all things Kaua`i to either non-datelined blurbs containing city-desk-generated, re-written press releases or synopses of articles from our local Kaua`i newspaper.
When there is a byline on a "news" article about Kaua`i, the lack of a dateline (the name of the place the reporter is physically reporting from), noted at the start of an article indicates the closest anyone came to Kaua`i was their travel section.
TV is even worse. With the "merger" of KHNL and KGMB there is one less local news program- not that the Honolulu-centric nature of any of the Honolulu TV news outlets has ever really served Kaua`i.
Case in point has been the recent coverage of the Kaua`i Charter Review Commission's (CRC) so-called "hearings" on the recent kerfuffle between Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. and Chief of Police Darryl Perry.
At issue, as those who haven't been on Jupiter for the last couple of months have heard, is whether Carvalho overstepped his authority in "suspending" the chief over, well, no one will really say over what, but there sure has been a lot of speculation.
The problem with the way the Honolulu press covers Kaua`i might be summed-up by looking more closely at a blurb from the "Newswatch" column- a daily series of news briefs- in today's S-A.
It repeats a notion that has crept into reports on the matter from all the Honolulu news outlet for weeks now. Their "lede" says:
The Kauai County Charter Review Commission has yet to rule on whether the mayor has the authority to suspend the police chief.
We're not sure where they got the idea that our CRC has any power whatsoever to "rule" on the subject but if any of them had bothered to peruse the Kaua`i County Charter they would have found that ruling on interpretations of the charter is not one of the CRC's enumerated powers.
Section 24.03 of the Kaua`i charter, "Charter Review," says that the seven members of the CRC are to be appointed by the mayor and "serve in accordance with Section 23.02C of this Charter."
The only power enumerated is that:
In the event the commission deems changes are necessary or desirable, the commission may propose amendments to the existing charter or draft a new charter...
Then it explains how any such change is submitted to and voted upon by the electorate.
But there is, if anything, a prohibition on any "ruling." The aforementioned Section 23.02, "Boards and Commissions," enumerates 14 general provisions regarding boards and commission. And the 13th, section M, says that:
Except for purposes of inquiry, no board or commission, nor its members, shall interfere in any way with the routine administrative affairs of its department normally administered by the department head.
We don't know from which orifice this "fact" about waiting for a "ruling" was originally pulled. Perhaps the Honolulu Charter gives their CRC- assuming they have one- a similar power. But it's the very presumption itself- that neighbor islands are "just like Honolulu, only smaller" that represents the uselessness of the S-A to those on Kaua`i, if not Maui and Hawai`i Island.
It took us all of 10 minutes, tops, to look this up. Yet this business of some forthcoming "ruling" from CRC has been repeated over and over by all three Honolulu TV news outlets and the local newspaper. Not only is it "statewide news" regarding the Perry-Carvalho dust-up, it is the ONLY statewide news recently regarding the subject.
Due to the nature of this column, we're sort of forced to pay the fee to read the S-A, which actually is pretty cheap- around $20 for the year for neighbor islanders.
Apparently you get what you pay for.
The contraction of both the print and TV press in the "city and county" hasn't helped. Not only did the Honolulu Star-Bulletin somehow "buy out" it's mammoth competitor the Advertiser, even before they became the pay-walled "Star-Advertiser (S-A)" they had eliminated their permanent news bureaus on the neighbor island.
That, along with a decision to forgo even "stringers," has left their coverage of all things Kaua`i to either non-datelined blurbs containing city-desk-generated, re-written press releases or synopses of articles from our local Kaua`i newspaper.
When there is a byline on a "news" article about Kaua`i, the lack of a dateline (the name of the place the reporter is physically reporting from), noted at the start of an article indicates the closest anyone came to Kaua`i was their travel section.
TV is even worse. With the "merger" of KHNL and KGMB there is one less local news program- not that the Honolulu-centric nature of any of the Honolulu TV news outlets has ever really served Kaua`i.
Case in point has been the recent coverage of the Kaua`i Charter Review Commission's (CRC) so-called "hearings" on the recent kerfuffle between Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. and Chief of Police Darryl Perry.
At issue, as those who haven't been on Jupiter for the last couple of months have heard, is whether Carvalho overstepped his authority in "suspending" the chief over, well, no one will really say over what, but there sure has been a lot of speculation.
The problem with the way the Honolulu press covers Kaua`i might be summed-up by looking more closely at a blurb from the "Newswatch" column- a daily series of news briefs- in today's S-A.
It repeats a notion that has crept into reports on the matter from all the Honolulu news outlet for weeks now. Their "lede" says:
The Kauai County Charter Review Commission has yet to rule on whether the mayor has the authority to suspend the police chief.
We're not sure where they got the idea that our CRC has any power whatsoever to "rule" on the subject but if any of them had bothered to peruse the Kaua`i County Charter they would have found that ruling on interpretations of the charter is not one of the CRC's enumerated powers.
Section 24.03 of the Kaua`i charter, "Charter Review," says that the seven members of the CRC are to be appointed by the mayor and "serve in accordance with Section 23.02C of this Charter."
The only power enumerated is that:
In the event the commission deems changes are necessary or desirable, the commission may propose amendments to the existing charter or draft a new charter...
Then it explains how any such change is submitted to and voted upon by the electorate.
But there is, if anything, a prohibition on any "ruling." The aforementioned Section 23.02, "Boards and Commissions," enumerates 14 general provisions regarding boards and commission. And the 13th, section M, says that:
Except for purposes of inquiry, no board or commission, nor its members, shall interfere in any way with the routine administrative affairs of its department normally administered by the department head.
We don't know from which orifice this "fact" about waiting for a "ruling" was originally pulled. Perhaps the Honolulu Charter gives their CRC- assuming they have one- a similar power. But it's the very presumption itself- that neighbor islands are "just like Honolulu, only smaller" that represents the uselessness of the S-A to those on Kaua`i, if not Maui and Hawai`i Island.
It took us all of 10 minutes, tops, to look this up. Yet this business of some forthcoming "ruling" from CRC has been repeated over and over by all three Honolulu TV news outlets and the local newspaper. Not only is it "statewide news" regarding the Perry-Carvalho dust-up, it is the ONLY statewide news recently regarding the subject.
Due to the nature of this column, we're sort of forced to pay the fee to read the S-A, which actually is pretty cheap- around $20 for the year for neighbor islanders.
Apparently you get what you pay for.
Monday, March 12, 2012
ALL TONGUE
ALL TONGUE: Aw, isn't that cute. Now kiss and make up.
Apparently it was all a silly lover's spat now that Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) Chief Darryl Parry and Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. have decided that Perry can return to work after they and the police commission chair "held a joint news conference this morning to announce the chief’s return to duty."
We say apparently because strangely, although a Honolulu Star Advertiser "breaking news" item quotes "a news release" saying that, no such release appears on the appropriate page of the county's web site.
The article quotes Carvalho in the release:
“Discussions among our administration, our legal team, the leadership of the police commission and the chief himself have helped us to arrive at this decision, where we are confident that the chief can provide the leadership for this organization while the investigation into an employee complaint is conducted with integrity to its conclusion...
“I also believe that through discussion with the commission we have reached a place of consensus on how the department should be managed beginning today.”
What that "way" in which "the department should be managed beginning today" is anybody's guess.
Like most lovers' spats, who was right and who was wrong is a function of silence, with the press conference substituting for makeup sex.
The article also says:
Carvalho said he still “firmly” believes that he has the authority to put the chief on leave.
Perry, for his part:
thanked the police commission and the public for their support and said he “looked forward to continued collaboration with the commission and the mayor.”
But Perry noted that it is important that the lines of authority be clarified for future police chiefs, commissioners and mayors.
Despite the apparent contention of County Attorney Al Castillo that Carvalho had the authority to suspend the chief versus Perry and the commission's adamancy that he didn't, the fact is that the issue is not addressed in the laws governing the police chief, notably the county charter.
Yet apparently they can't even agree on that.
We've taken our share of flack for supporting Carvalho's suspension of Perry, albeit a limited support due solely to Perry's apparent bungling of an earlier almost identical complaint. That came despite a recent effort to educate Kaua`i county employees, especially department heads, on how to avoid yet another in a string of "sexual harassment/hostile workplace " lawsuits that have plagued the county for decades.
Perry apparently still doesn't "get it" that when you are "in charge" you don't try to get the complainant to drop the complaint. That is, in fact, an implicit threat of retaliation and, in and of itself, "harassment."
Any "manager" in private or public sector either knows this or isn't a manager for every long, especially after they have all, no doubt, been sent to "school" where they have this drummed into their heads, leaving class with an organization-developed-and-issued "handbook" of how to treat such complaints.
That is, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) essentially says, how to avoid letting a single episode of sexual harassment among co-workers turn into an organization-wide "hostile workplace" leading to million-dollar settlements that otherwise might have been settled for a small fraction of the amount.
Plus a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Yet despite the county's "plan" there's no accounting for the type of, to coin a term "troglodism," of which Perry has apparently been charged.
The "who's in charge here" issue, while a serious "constitutional crisis" for Kaua`i, is nothing that can't be solved with a lawyer drawing up clear lines of authority and the county submitting them to the voters this fall. However, if we know Carvalho, the council and the Sherman-Shiraishi-led Charter Review Commission, this will no doubt be a politically-tainted process leading to some kind of power grab on Carvalho's part.
But that will sort itself out, we can only hope, by making sure the electorate demands a police department that is as far from political control as possible.
So now the question is not who has the authority but who SHOULD have the authority.
By all rights, the intent should be to give the authority to discipline the chief to the ones who hire and fire him or her- the police commission. If we've set up a quasi-independent body to keep politics out of the department in the first place, consistency would dictate that the commission should be the ones to discipline the chief.
But the Kaua`i Police Commission is notorious for its insularity being comprised of almost all "good old boys"- with an extra accent on "boys." Most have been a product of the department- either ex-KPD brass or those who have been close to the department for years.
The two historical exceptions- former Chair, businessman Michael Ching and Vice Chair, tourism industry executive Carol Furtado- found out what happens when you try to change that set up--you get put "on trial" on trumped-up charges by a corrupt ethic board doing the bidding of the mayor, council and many of those in the department and on the commission who wanted a different chief and who didn't like Ching and Furtado sticking their noses "where they didn't belong."
But we digress... sort of. The power must be placed somewhere. And the "best practice" resolution of this is to give that power to the commission. But what's been needed all along is a truly independent commission that inspires the confidence of the public.
Change on Kaua`i is not usually incremental. Those in power are skilled at cosmetic modifications that quell the demands for reform but actually further entrench power.
Can the people of Kaua`i seize this opening and bring about sudden reform ? Not likely, especially if this is seen as just another power struggle between outsized egos.
Which may, in the final analysis, be exactly what it was.
Apparently it was all a silly lover's spat now that Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) Chief Darryl Parry and Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. have decided that Perry can return to work after they and the police commission chair "held a joint news conference this morning to announce the chief’s return to duty."
We say apparently because strangely, although a Honolulu Star Advertiser "breaking news" item quotes "a news release" saying that, no such release appears on the appropriate page of the county's web site.
The article quotes Carvalho in the release:
“Discussions among our administration, our legal team, the leadership of the police commission and the chief himself have helped us to arrive at this decision, where we are confident that the chief can provide the leadership for this organization while the investigation into an employee complaint is conducted with integrity to its conclusion...
“I also believe that through discussion with the commission we have reached a place of consensus on how the department should be managed beginning today.”
What that "way" in which "the department should be managed beginning today" is anybody's guess.
Like most lovers' spats, who was right and who was wrong is a function of silence, with the press conference substituting for makeup sex.
The article also says:
Carvalho said he still “firmly” believes that he has the authority to put the chief on leave.
Perry, for his part:
thanked the police commission and the public for their support and said he “looked forward to continued collaboration with the commission and the mayor.”
But Perry noted that it is important that the lines of authority be clarified for future police chiefs, commissioners and mayors.
Despite the apparent contention of County Attorney Al Castillo that Carvalho had the authority to suspend the chief versus Perry and the commission's adamancy that he didn't, the fact is that the issue is not addressed in the laws governing the police chief, notably the county charter.
Yet apparently they can't even agree on that.
We've taken our share of flack for supporting Carvalho's suspension of Perry, albeit a limited support due solely to Perry's apparent bungling of an earlier almost identical complaint. That came despite a recent effort to educate Kaua`i county employees, especially department heads, on how to avoid yet another in a string of "sexual harassment/hostile workplace " lawsuits that have plagued the county for decades.
Perry apparently still doesn't "get it" that when you are "in charge" you don't try to get the complainant to drop the complaint. That is, in fact, an implicit threat of retaliation and, in and of itself, "harassment."
Any "manager" in private or public sector either knows this or isn't a manager for every long, especially after they have all, no doubt, been sent to "school" where they have this drummed into their heads, leaving class with an organization-developed-and-issued "handbook" of how to treat such complaints.
That is, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) essentially says, how to avoid letting a single episode of sexual harassment among co-workers turn into an organization-wide "hostile workplace" leading to million-dollar settlements that otherwise might have been settled for a small fraction of the amount.
Plus a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Yet despite the county's "plan" there's no accounting for the type of, to coin a term "troglodism," of which Perry has apparently been charged.
The "who's in charge here" issue, while a serious "constitutional crisis" for Kaua`i, is nothing that can't be solved with a lawyer drawing up clear lines of authority and the county submitting them to the voters this fall. However, if we know Carvalho, the council and the Sherman-Shiraishi-led Charter Review Commission, this will no doubt be a politically-tainted process leading to some kind of power grab on Carvalho's part.
But that will sort itself out, we can only hope, by making sure the electorate demands a police department that is as far from political control as possible.
So now the question is not who has the authority but who SHOULD have the authority.
By all rights, the intent should be to give the authority to discipline the chief to the ones who hire and fire him or her- the police commission. If we've set up a quasi-independent body to keep politics out of the department in the first place, consistency would dictate that the commission should be the ones to discipline the chief.
But the Kaua`i Police Commission is notorious for its insularity being comprised of almost all "good old boys"- with an extra accent on "boys." Most have been a product of the department- either ex-KPD brass or those who have been close to the department for years.
The two historical exceptions- former Chair, businessman Michael Ching and Vice Chair, tourism industry executive Carol Furtado- found out what happens when you try to change that set up--you get put "on trial" on trumped-up charges by a corrupt ethic board doing the bidding of the mayor, council and many of those in the department and on the commission who wanted a different chief and who didn't like Ching and Furtado sticking their noses "where they didn't belong."
But we digress... sort of. The power must be placed somewhere. And the "best practice" resolution of this is to give that power to the commission. But what's been needed all along is a truly independent commission that inspires the confidence of the public.
Change on Kaua`i is not usually incremental. Those in power are skilled at cosmetic modifications that quell the demands for reform but actually further entrench power.
Can the people of Kaua`i seize this opening and bring about sudden reform ? Not likely, especially if this is seen as just another power struggle between outsized egos.
Which may, in the final analysis, be exactly what it was.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
WELL I WONDER, WONDER, WONDER, WONDER WHO
WELL I WONDER, WONDER, WONDER, WONDER WHO: The "fact" that Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) Chief Darryl Perry "is on leave" seems to be the only thing that is clear after chapter two of the latest departmental saga hit the streets.
Chapter one was the leave that was apparently forced on two assistant chiefs by Perry on Tuesday. But as to how Perry wound up on leave there seems to be about as much confusion in the press as there is silence on the part of the administration of Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.
The first report of Perry's "situation" came from a county press release last night and simply said:
As of this morning, Police Chief Darryl Perry is on leave and Deputy Police Chief Michael Contrades will serve as Acting Police Chief until further notice.
The local Kaua`i newspaper claims to have reached Perry who told them that indeed it was hizzonah who did the deed saying:
While the county offered no explanation in terse statements that were released Tuesday and Wednesday, Perry said late Wednesday that“the truth will come out,” and that the actions were brought about by the mayor’s office.
The pay-walled Honolulu Star Advertiser, while detailing some of the ways past chiefs have departed on less than friendly terms with the county apparently reached county KPD spokesperson Sarah Blane who told them "she was not told who placed Perry on leave."
Although the county claims it cannot say anything because it is a "personnel matter" the sunshine law says that, if appropriate in the specific case, the public's interest in the information can trump privacy concerns. That, however, would be a matter for the toothless Office of Information Practices (OIP) to determine and, even if they had fangs, they seem to work at glacial speeds.
So who dunnit?
Well if it was the mayor all we can say is "here we go again."
According to Section 11-4 of the Kaua`i County Charter
The chief of police shall be appointed by the police commission. He may be removed by the police commission only after being given a written statement of the charges against him and a hearing before the commission.
And while the power to place the chief on leave is not directly addressed, Police Commissions statewide are, according to state law, supposed to be autonomous in their dealings with the police chiefs.
But while it's not within Carvalho's powers to remove- or even place on leave- the chief, it's not for lack of wishing on his part. He has been engaged in a campaign to have the state law changed so that the chiefs of the police departments across the state would be hired and fired by the mayors, making the police commissions little more than advisory boards.
It may be of note that both Perry and the commission have gone on the record opposing Carvalho's would-be new law.
A perusal of the police commission's most recent agenda produces no recent "emergency" meeting where any executive session placing Perry on leave might have taken place and to do so would have violated the state sunshine law anyway which requires six days notice before a meeting can be held.
However this morning at 8:15 an agenda for a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday February 7- the first day one could be legally held- calls for no less than three "executive sessions."
The first, ES 5 reads in part
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4, 92-5(a) (2) and (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho Jr. to provide the Commission with a briefing regarding personnel and/or disciplinary actions related to notarized complaint filed with the Police Commission on 01/31/12, and for the Commission to further consider and discuss said personnel and/or disciplinary actions.
While it's not clear what "disciplinary action" Carvalho has taken it seems pretty clear it refers to placing Perry on leave because the next item, ES 6 reads
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4 and 92-5 (a) (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for the Commission to consult with its attorney as to its powers, duties, privileges, immunities and liabilities as they relate to Section 11.04 of the County of Kaua'i Charter
Charter section 11-4 of course is the one cited above about the hiring and firing of the chief being the sole kuleana of the police commission.
The third item on the 2/7 agenda reads:
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4 and 92-5 (a) (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for the Commission to consult with its attorney as to its powers, duties, privileges, immunities, and liabilities as they relate to Rule 6-1.f of the Rules of the Kaua'i County Police Commission.
But if you thought that would clarify what was going on you'll be sorely disappointed because Rule 6 is entitled "Control, Management And Direction Of The Department" and 6-1 is an incredibly long and list of the "Powers, Duties and Responsibilities of the Police Commission."
Although 6-1-3 does deal with "Investigation of Charge (sic)" it does not directly address what happens if the target of the investigation is the chief.
So what does it matter who put Perry on leave?
Well if past is prologue the county might just be in for another big settlement should Perry decide to sue for denying his rights under the charter.
To make a long story short, back when George Freitas was the chief and Maryanne Kusaka was the mayor- this during the time when Kusaka was allegedly covering up for her buddies with grubbing and grading violations by allegedly telling a Department of Public Works engineer to butt out when it came to Jimmy Pflueger and the Ka Loko Dam area that later burst during a storm killing seven people- Kusaka "removed" Freitas from his office.
She apparently got the long time secretary for Freitas and past chiefs to take his gun and badge from his desk and give it to her. There was a long list of serious charges made but when it was all over the only one the police commission upheld was that Freitas had given a ride to his girlfriend in his police car.
And in the end Freitas settled for a reported half-million dollar golden parachute and "retiring" from the force.
Hard to say what will happen tomorrow- or next Tuesday for that matter because the usual open session for decision making after executive sessions on complaint against KPD personnel is decidedly missing from the 2/7 agenda.
But one thing is clear- in his notorious quest for power Carvalho is certainly putting the county in jeopardy by usurping the commission's oversight.
Chapter one was the leave that was apparently forced on two assistant chiefs by Perry on Tuesday. But as to how Perry wound up on leave there seems to be about as much confusion in the press as there is silence on the part of the administration of Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.
The first report of Perry's "situation" came from a county press release last night and simply said:
As of this morning, Police Chief Darryl Perry is on leave and Deputy Police Chief Michael Contrades will serve as Acting Police Chief until further notice.
The local Kaua`i newspaper claims to have reached Perry who told them that indeed it was hizzonah who did the deed saying:
While the county offered no explanation in terse statements that were released Tuesday and Wednesday, Perry said late Wednesday that“the truth will come out,” and that the actions were brought about by the mayor’s office.
The pay-walled Honolulu Star Advertiser, while detailing some of the ways past chiefs have departed on less than friendly terms with the county apparently reached county KPD spokesperson Sarah Blane who told them "she was not told who placed Perry on leave."
Although the county claims it cannot say anything because it is a "personnel matter" the sunshine law says that, if appropriate in the specific case, the public's interest in the information can trump privacy concerns. That, however, would be a matter for the toothless Office of Information Practices (OIP) to determine and, even if they had fangs, they seem to work at glacial speeds.
So who dunnit?
Well if it was the mayor all we can say is "here we go again."
According to Section 11-4 of the Kaua`i County Charter
The chief of police shall be appointed by the police commission. He may be removed by the police commission only after being given a written statement of the charges against him and a hearing before the commission.
And while the power to place the chief on leave is not directly addressed, Police Commissions statewide are, according to state law, supposed to be autonomous in their dealings with the police chiefs.
But while it's not within Carvalho's powers to remove- or even place on leave- the chief, it's not for lack of wishing on his part. He has been engaged in a campaign to have the state law changed so that the chiefs of the police departments across the state would be hired and fired by the mayors, making the police commissions little more than advisory boards.
It may be of note that both Perry and the commission have gone on the record opposing Carvalho's would-be new law.
A perusal of the police commission's most recent agenda produces no recent "emergency" meeting where any executive session placing Perry on leave might have taken place and to do so would have violated the state sunshine law anyway which requires six days notice before a meeting can be held.
However this morning at 8:15 an agenda for a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday February 7- the first day one could be legally held- calls for no less than three "executive sessions."
The first, ES 5 reads in part
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4, 92-5(a) (2) and (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho Jr. to provide the Commission with a briefing regarding personnel and/or disciplinary actions related to notarized complaint filed with the Police Commission on 01/31/12, and for the Commission to further consider and discuss said personnel and/or disciplinary actions.
While it's not clear what "disciplinary action" Carvalho has taken it seems pretty clear it refers to placing Perry on leave because the next item, ES 6 reads
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4 and 92-5 (a) (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for the Commission to consult with its attorney as to its powers, duties, privileges, immunities and liabilities as they relate to Section 11.04 of the County of Kaua'i Charter
Charter section 11-4 of course is the one cited above about the hiring and firing of the chief being the sole kuleana of the police commission.
The third item on the 2/7 agenda reads:
Pursuant to Hawai`i Revised Statutes, §92-4 and 92-5 (a) (4), the purpose of this Executive Session is for the Commission to consult with its attorney as to its powers, duties, privileges, immunities, and liabilities as they relate to Rule 6-1.f of the Rules of the Kaua'i County Police Commission.
But if you thought that would clarify what was going on you'll be sorely disappointed because Rule 6 is entitled "Control, Management And Direction Of The Department" and 6-1 is an incredibly long and list of the "Powers, Duties and Responsibilities of the Police Commission."
Although 6-1-3 does deal with "Investigation of Charge (sic)" it does not directly address what happens if the target of the investigation is the chief.
So what does it matter who put Perry on leave?
Well if past is prologue the county might just be in for another big settlement should Perry decide to sue for denying his rights under the charter.
To make a long story short, back when George Freitas was the chief and Maryanne Kusaka was the mayor- this during the time when Kusaka was allegedly covering up for her buddies with grubbing and grading violations by allegedly telling a Department of Public Works engineer to butt out when it came to Jimmy Pflueger and the Ka Loko Dam area that later burst during a storm killing seven people- Kusaka "removed" Freitas from his office.
She apparently got the long time secretary for Freitas and past chiefs to take his gun and badge from his desk and give it to her. There was a long list of serious charges made but when it was all over the only one the police commission upheld was that Freitas had given a ride to his girlfriend in his police car.
And in the end Freitas settled for a reported half-million dollar golden parachute and "retiring" from the force.
Hard to say what will happen tomorrow- or next Tuesday for that matter because the usual open session for decision making after executive sessions on complaint against KPD personnel is decidedly missing from the 2/7 agenda.
But one thing is clear- in his notorious quest for power Carvalho is certainly putting the county in jeopardy by usurping the commission's oversight.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
BURN BABY BURN
BURN BABY BURN: Ian Lind used to call it a "two newspaper day" when, first of all Honolulu had two newspapers and, they apparently got different information resulting in a different "lede" in each.
But even after the so-called merger of the two, today's treatment throughout the state on Kaua`i Island Utility Coop's (KIUC) announcement that they're going to try to take money they borrowed for a generation unit and instead build "the largest solar installation in the state," yielded at least two distinctly different stories nonetheless.
The local Kaua`i newspaper's Business Editor Vanessa Van Voorhis started by regurgitating the KIUC press release announcement, writing in her lede
Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative on Wednesday announced its intent to pursue the development of a 10-megawatt solar farm, which would be the largest of its kind in the state.
“KIUC would have more solar PV concentration (per capita) than any utility in the U.S., if this project can be successfully developed,” KIUC CEO David Bissell said in a press release.
The co-op intends to construct the integrated PV and Battery Energy Storage System project by reallocating a $68 million previously approved loan from Rural Utility Service. RUS had approved the funding for a 10-MW “Gen X” or “CT2” combustion turbine generator.
But then well into the article she pulls the following fact from, well, apparently nowhere:
KIUC says the combustion turbine was originally hoped to be fueled by renewable bio-diesel, but that technology has not developed quickly enough to realistically use the RUS funds in the approved timeframe.
Who "KIUC" is in this case is unknown since the press release doesn't say a thing about what kind of fuel the "10-MW 'Gen X” or “CT2' combustion turbine generator" uses. Perhaps Van Voorhis was confused by an announcement a year ago that KIUC had signed an agreement to buy bio-diesel for their Ele`ele power plant. But the term "combustion generator" sounds like something quite different from burning bio-diesel. Then again what do we know.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser wasn’t much help since they apparently didn't even bother to call anyone, re-upchucking the original KIUC chuck.
But, as many have found, there's a new kid on the block.
At the on-line "newspaper" Civil Beat we apparently get the real story from reporter Sophie Cocke. She spoke to KIUC Production Manager Brad Rockwell, before writing the following headline and lede.
Kauai Scraps Biomass Plant for Solar Farm
Biomass is out, solar is in.
The Kauai utility is planning to use $68 million in funds that had originally been allocated for a biomass plant to build the largest photovoltaic array on the island – 10 megawatts.
Jeez- was that so hard? And all in 38 words.
Two different "newspapers of record" and one can't bother to make any phone calls and the other calls only the spokesperson for KIUC and seemingly gets the story wrong.
The usual excuse at the paper on Kaua`i is that, as local people often say to their often FOB reporters, "you ain’t from around here, are ya?". But Cocke isn't exactly from Makaweli either.
Guess it's just another "can't anyone here play this game?" day.
But even after the so-called merger of the two, today's treatment throughout the state on Kaua`i Island Utility Coop's (KIUC) announcement that they're going to try to take money they borrowed for a generation unit and instead build "the largest solar installation in the state," yielded at least two distinctly different stories nonetheless.
The local Kaua`i newspaper's Business Editor Vanessa Van Voorhis started by regurgitating the KIUC press release announcement, writing in her lede
Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative on Wednesday announced its intent to pursue the development of a 10-megawatt solar farm, which would be the largest of its kind in the state.
“KIUC would have more solar PV concentration (per capita) than any utility in the U.S., if this project can be successfully developed,” KIUC CEO David Bissell said in a press release.
The co-op intends to construct the integrated PV and Battery Energy Storage System project by reallocating a $68 million previously approved loan from Rural Utility Service. RUS had approved the funding for a 10-MW “Gen X” or “CT2” combustion turbine generator.
But then well into the article she pulls the following fact from, well, apparently nowhere:
KIUC says the combustion turbine was originally hoped to be fueled by renewable bio-diesel, but that technology has not developed quickly enough to realistically use the RUS funds in the approved timeframe.
Who "KIUC" is in this case is unknown since the press release doesn't say a thing about what kind of fuel the "10-MW 'Gen X” or “CT2' combustion turbine generator" uses. Perhaps Van Voorhis was confused by an announcement a year ago that KIUC had signed an agreement to buy bio-diesel for their Ele`ele power plant. But the term "combustion generator" sounds like something quite different from burning bio-diesel. Then again what do we know.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser wasn’t much help since they apparently didn't even bother to call anyone, re-upchucking the original KIUC chuck.
But, as many have found, there's a new kid on the block.
At the on-line "newspaper" Civil Beat we apparently get the real story from reporter Sophie Cocke. She spoke to KIUC Production Manager Brad Rockwell, before writing the following headline and lede.
Kauai Scraps Biomass Plant for Solar Farm
Biomass is out, solar is in.
The Kauai utility is planning to use $68 million in funds that had originally been allocated for a biomass plant to build the largest photovoltaic array on the island – 10 megawatts.
Jeez- was that so hard? And all in 38 words.
Two different "newspapers of record" and one can't bother to make any phone calls and the other calls only the spokesperson for KIUC and seemingly gets the story wrong.
The usual excuse at the paper on Kaua`i is that, as local people often say to their often FOB reporters, "you ain’t from around here, are ya?". But Cocke isn't exactly from Makaweli either.
Guess it's just another "can't anyone here play this game?" day.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
DOIN' A BANG-BANG UP JOB
DOIN' A BANG-BANG UP JOB: Kaua`i police, weapons drawn, descended on the old Lihu`e courthouse today, firing at random.
And they will be all week if they act in accordance with a press release issued by the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) yesterday afternoon that apparently somehow failed to make it into today's local newspaper.
Although according to the press release it's only an "official training" exercise using "blanks," with the total lack of notification of the populace at large we expect that if all goes as planned, people will be diving under cars or running in circles, hands to cheeks, shrieking at the top of their lungs in fright since no one in KPD thought to issue the release earlier or make sure people were properly informed.
The whole release reads:
Police to conduct training exercise this week
LĪHU`E – The Kaua‘i Police Department (KPD) will be conducting official training today through Thursday, between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., at the former Fifth Circuit Court Building located on Umi Street in Līhu‘e.
The public may see officers in the vicinity of the building with weapons drawn. Please note that this is only training. No live munitions will be used, although the sounds of blank rounds may be heard.
KPD requests the public’s assistance in keeping a distance from, and not interfering with the training exercise.
Of course it would have helped if the Honolulu newspaper's on-line edition wasn't hidden behind their pay wall because in a tiny, buried, somewhat more sensational blurb in their "Newswatch" briefs they told people- well actually they told only their paid subscribers- that:
Police training on Umi Street will involve guns
The Kauai Police Department will be conducting realistic-looking training through Thursday at the former 5th Circuit Court Building on Umi Street in Lihue, the county said in a news release.
The public might see officers in the vicinity of the building with weapons drawn and might hear gunfire, but the rounds will be blank. The exercise began Monday and will run between 7:45 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Of course if people drop dead from a heart attack or do something stupid like get hit by a breadtruck after running out into traffic in a panic, there will be plenty of blame to go around since the local newspaper apparently had plenty of time and opportunity to get the news out by press time.
You would think with something as important as the fact those cops firing weapons in an apparent assault on a building in the central Lihu`e Civic Center area are, in fact, "only joking" would be something people would actually be informed about.
But noooo- not on Kaua`i. Apparently it's just another one for the "can't anyone here play this game?" file.
And they will be all week if they act in accordance with a press release issued by the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) yesterday afternoon that apparently somehow failed to make it into today's local newspaper.
Although according to the press release it's only an "official training" exercise using "blanks," with the total lack of notification of the populace at large we expect that if all goes as planned, people will be diving under cars or running in circles, hands to cheeks, shrieking at the top of their lungs in fright since no one in KPD thought to issue the release earlier or make sure people were properly informed.
The whole release reads:
Police to conduct training exercise this week
LĪHU`E – The Kaua‘i Police Department (KPD) will be conducting official training today through Thursday, between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., at the former Fifth Circuit Court Building located on Umi Street in Līhu‘e.
The public may see officers in the vicinity of the building with weapons drawn. Please note that this is only training. No live munitions will be used, although the sounds of blank rounds may be heard.
KPD requests the public’s assistance in keeping a distance from, and not interfering with the training exercise.
Of course it would have helped if the Honolulu newspaper's on-line edition wasn't hidden behind their pay wall because in a tiny, buried, somewhat more sensational blurb in their "Newswatch" briefs they told people- well actually they told only their paid subscribers- that:
Police training on Umi Street will involve guns
The Kauai Police Department will be conducting realistic-looking training through Thursday at the former 5th Circuit Court Building on Umi Street in Lihue, the county said in a news release.
The public might see officers in the vicinity of the building with weapons drawn and might hear gunfire, but the rounds will be blank. The exercise began Monday and will run between 7:45 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Of course if people drop dead from a heart attack or do something stupid like get hit by a breadtruck after running out into traffic in a panic, there will be plenty of blame to go around since the local newspaper apparently had plenty of time and opportunity to get the news out by press time.
You would think with something as important as the fact those cops firing weapons in an apparent assault on a building in the central Lihu`e Civic Center area are, in fact, "only joking" would be something people would actually be informed about.
But noooo- not on Kaua`i. Apparently it's just another one for the "can't anyone here play this game?" file.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
OXYMORONICALLY SPEAKING
OXYMORONICALLY SPEAKING: Little kids and we old futs have something in common- we both refuse to fall for BS conundrums.
While sophomoric angst-ridden teens may obsess over questions like "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does make a sound " any wise-ass seven year old will suggest using a tape recorder to show it does and the crotchety crowd will just say "of course it does- what are you an idiot?".
But today that very question- or an approximation thereof- presents itself by asking "if a newspaper that has a 'paywall' sues the the governor's for his refusal to release the list of judicial nominees, does anyone hear about it?".
The answer is only if you find out through "'Civil Beath'" which, though similarly paywalled, offers as many free one-month subscriptions as you have email addresses.
That's a long way to go to say that the news itself is certainly welcome in that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (S-A) is dipping into it's monopolistically-engorged pockets to do what they should have done the first time Governor Neil Abercrombie decided to flout tradition- and an Office of Information Practices (OIP) opinion- by refusing to release the list (after state senate approval).
The suit itself- provided in copy-protected form by Civil Beat which has come under fire for copy-protecting other public documents- attempts to refute the governor's claim that to release the list would, as the law says, "frustrate a legitimate government function"- that of appointing judges from a list provided by a judicial selection committee.
But strangely enough the suit fails to try to refute Abercrombie's contention other than essentially saying "no it doesn't."
Are we to assume the hearing will feature ten year old attorneys alternately screaming "yes it does... no it doesn't... yes it does... no it doesn't." until one grabs the others hair and the other bites the first one on the leg?
Abercrombie claims is that attorneys will be less willing to submit their names to the selection committee because they risk the ire of their employers, partners or even clients- both current and future- by letting them know they might be leaving.
But the S-A suit simply ignores the argument itself by refusing to address either of the two issues- first, whether a public announcement will in fact cause problems for the applicant and two, if that's true- whether it rise to the level of "frustration of a legitimate government function."
Now we're normally an unqualified supporter of the preamble to the Sunshine Law which presumes that government documents are to be made public unless they are specifically exempted by law- and that the law should be "liberally applied."
But we've got to admit that, after talking about this with five different attorneys over the past few months, we have come around to the governor's thinking. All five said that the fact that their names would become public has colored their decisions as to whether or not to apply for a judgeship.
The five include lawyers, who both work with partners and without, are in the government's employ and in private practice and do both criminal and civil law. And all said that the release of their names is a consideration and some said that indeed it has influenced their decision not to apply.
That means that- our admittedly small sample notwithstanding- the only question is whether, assuming the "fact" that what Abercrombie claims is true, does it actually "frustrate a legitimate government function?".
Whenever we've seen these kinds of determinations the "function" is stated. In this case it would be "the appointment of judges by the governor."
But the problem for the governor is that the law does not state that his job is to appoint judges from the widest possible pool, just that he pick from a list provided by the selection committee.
Attorneys will make the decision as to whether to seek a judgeship for any number of reasons. Certainly the usual drop in pay is a consideration so should the law require the state to make up the difference to widen the pool? Suppose the appointment requires a move from a neighbor island to Honolulu and the attorney has children who are in an excellent public school? Should he or she be compensated for having to put them in a private school if there is no comparable public school available?
Of course not. The legitimate government function is to provide a list, not to insure that the list includes every attorney in the state who otherwise would consider a judicial appointment.
The governor's claim regarding the release of the names of attorneys who aren't selected may be true. But it is for all intent and purpose it is irrelevant because unless the attorney general comes up with a heretofore unspoken rationale to say that this actually frustrates a legitimate government function Abercrombie's claim doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
While sophomoric angst-ridden teens may obsess over questions like "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does make a sound " any wise-ass seven year old will suggest using a tape recorder to show it does and the crotchety crowd will just say "of course it does- what are you an idiot?".
But today that very question- or an approximation thereof- presents itself by asking "if a newspaper that has a 'paywall' sues the the governor's for his refusal to release the list of judicial nominees, does anyone hear about it?".
The answer is only if you find out through "'Civil Beath'" which, though similarly paywalled, offers as many free one-month subscriptions as you have email addresses.
That's a long way to go to say that the news itself is certainly welcome in that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (S-A) is dipping into it's monopolistically-engorged pockets to do what they should have done the first time Governor Neil Abercrombie decided to flout tradition- and an Office of Information Practices (OIP) opinion- by refusing to release the list (after state senate approval).
The suit itself- provided in copy-protected form by Civil Beat which has come under fire for copy-protecting other public documents- attempts to refute the governor's claim that to release the list would, as the law says, "frustrate a legitimate government function"- that of appointing judges from a list provided by a judicial selection committee.
But strangely enough the suit fails to try to refute Abercrombie's contention other than essentially saying "no it doesn't."
Are we to assume the hearing will feature ten year old attorneys alternately screaming "yes it does... no it doesn't... yes it does... no it doesn't." until one grabs the others hair and the other bites the first one on the leg?
Abercrombie claims is that attorneys will be less willing to submit their names to the selection committee because they risk the ire of their employers, partners or even clients- both current and future- by letting them know they might be leaving.
But the S-A suit simply ignores the argument itself by refusing to address either of the two issues- first, whether a public announcement will in fact cause problems for the applicant and two, if that's true- whether it rise to the level of "frustration of a legitimate government function."
Now we're normally an unqualified supporter of the preamble to the Sunshine Law which presumes that government documents are to be made public unless they are specifically exempted by law- and that the law should be "liberally applied."
But we've got to admit that, after talking about this with five different attorneys over the past few months, we have come around to the governor's thinking. All five said that the fact that their names would become public has colored their decisions as to whether or not to apply for a judgeship.
The five include lawyers, who both work with partners and without, are in the government's employ and in private practice and do both criminal and civil law. And all said that the release of their names is a consideration and some said that indeed it has influenced their decision not to apply.
That means that- our admittedly small sample notwithstanding- the only question is whether, assuming the "fact" that what Abercrombie claims is true, does it actually "frustrate a legitimate government function?".
Whenever we've seen these kinds of determinations the "function" is stated. In this case it would be "the appointment of judges by the governor."
But the problem for the governor is that the law does not state that his job is to appoint judges from the widest possible pool, just that he pick from a list provided by the selection committee.
Attorneys will make the decision as to whether to seek a judgeship for any number of reasons. Certainly the usual drop in pay is a consideration so should the law require the state to make up the difference to widen the pool? Suppose the appointment requires a move from a neighbor island to Honolulu and the attorney has children who are in an excellent public school? Should he or she be compensated for having to put them in a private school if there is no comparable public school available?
Of course not. The legitimate government function is to provide a list, not to insure that the list includes every attorney in the state who otherwise would consider a judicial appointment.
The governor's claim regarding the release of the names of attorneys who aren't selected may be true. But it is for all intent and purpose it is irrelevant because unless the attorney general comes up with a heretofore unspoken rationale to say that this actually frustrates a legitimate government function Abercrombie's claim doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
DO YOU SMELL THAT?
DO YOU SMELL THAT?: They say that justice delayed is justice denied but what about news? Well, they also ask, who needs yesterday's papers?
While it's widely acknowledged that our local newspaper is, um, shall we say, "content challenged," perhaps their worst feature is the lack of timely reporting of government doings unless it's a spoon-fed and regurgitated press release from the county's public information officer.
This "when we get around to it" style of journalism is not just an affront to those who have a need to be informed but makes it particularly difficult to get involved in government when, say, there's an article on Tuesday about a bill that passed out of a council committee at the previous Wednesday's meeting and is due for final approval the following day- leaving less than 24 hours to arrange to be there to give testimony.
But while today's Kaua`i newspaper is devoid of coverage of yesterday's meeting, real journalism is happening- not just the next day but item by item in real time- not far away.
And wouldn’t you know it? It's none other than our old friend Micheal Levine, late of the Kaua`i press corps who has taken up residence at Honolulu Hale and is using 21st century technology to do his reporting for "Civil Beat".
A look at his daily "Inside Honolulu" column shows no less than 9 blurbs in covering and posting the actions of the Honolulu City Council at various times throughout the day, with the headings:
10:36 a.m. The 'Million-Dollar Baby Toe'
10:51 a.m. Godbey Confirmed As Corp Counsel
11:19 Council Sends Ag Property Tax Bill To Mayor
12:26 p.m. Council To Defer Laie Hotel Vote
12:49 p.m. 'You Got Shafted, I Got Shafted'
3:06 p.m. Laie Hotel Deferred One Month
3:54 p.m. Mililani Senior Development Gets OK
4:22 p.m. $1 Million Settlement Approved
5:38 Council Advances Campaign Sign Rules
Why even the lowly Hawai`i (Island) Tribune Herald has an article today about a controversial bill taken up at their council's Wednesday meeting.
But it’s a rare occurrence when we get coverage of Wednesday's meeting by Friday with the usual routine being a Saturday or Sunday entry... usually a muddled attempt by a certain story-telling-challenged individual- whose name rhymes with Slazumbuja- apparently trying to make sense of what he saw.
It gets worse by the day. For today's news of a $215,000 settlement of a sexual harassment suit filed by PMRF firefighters against ITT one had to turn to the pay-walled Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
And for news of the scandalous allegations of misconduct on the part of the "old" Kaua`i Independent Foodbank- made by the "new" Hawai`i Foodbank- you had to turn to Bob Jones' last two columns in "Midweek." Or you could check out Joan Conrow's "heads up" on the story where the news that the reason for the non-coverage may just be that the publisher of the local paper sits on the "old" foodbank's board of directors.
All we got today was a confusing account of some plea agreement- from who knows how long ago- in what appeared to be a dispute between Kilauea neighbors that resulted in threats.
At least the local paper does serve one constituency- the fishing community is happy to have something in which to wrap their catch. Either way, if you leave your catch lying around for a few days the fact that it stinks is bound to be evident.
--------
Note: While the local newspaper remains silent on their naming of victims of crime as we discussed on Monday, we did receive the following comment purported to be from Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri Carvalho:
I have no idea how the paper's new police beat reporter Tom LaVenture got the list, although I suspect it was from the indictment, which by law, is public record.
As you correctly noted, the victims' names did not appear on any official county press release page or the prosecuting attorney's page at the county web site. It is for those very reasons that you state below:
"It's bad enough to list the victim of a burglary, letting potential crooks know who might might be making themselves a good target for another burglary. But to list the name of an abuse victim and potentially subject the person to the unwarranted taunts, ridicule and shame that many times unfortunately accompany such situations, is just plain professional misconduct"
that the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney(OPA) has NEVER released victims' names to be published.
Thank you for addressing this issue, as the OPA strongly seeks to protect against the revictimization of victims.
Mahalo,
Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho
Kauai Prosecuting Attorney
While it's widely acknowledged that our local newspaper is, um, shall we say, "content challenged," perhaps their worst feature is the lack of timely reporting of government doings unless it's a spoon-fed and regurgitated press release from the county's public information officer.
This "when we get around to it" style of journalism is not just an affront to those who have a need to be informed but makes it particularly difficult to get involved in government when, say, there's an article on Tuesday about a bill that passed out of a council committee at the previous Wednesday's meeting and is due for final approval the following day- leaving less than 24 hours to arrange to be there to give testimony.
But while today's Kaua`i newspaper is devoid of coverage of yesterday's meeting, real journalism is happening- not just the next day but item by item in real time- not far away.
And wouldn’t you know it? It's none other than our old friend Micheal Levine, late of the Kaua`i press corps who has taken up residence at Honolulu Hale and is using 21st century technology to do his reporting for "Civil Beat".
A look at his daily "Inside Honolulu" column shows no less than 9 blurbs in covering and posting the actions of the Honolulu City Council at various times throughout the day, with the headings:
10:36 a.m. The 'Million-Dollar Baby Toe'
10:51 a.m. Godbey Confirmed As Corp Counsel
11:19 Council Sends Ag Property Tax Bill To Mayor
12:26 p.m. Council To Defer Laie Hotel Vote
12:49 p.m. 'You Got Shafted, I Got Shafted'
3:06 p.m. Laie Hotel Deferred One Month
3:54 p.m. Mililani Senior Development Gets OK
4:22 p.m. $1 Million Settlement Approved
5:38 Council Advances Campaign Sign Rules
Why even the lowly Hawai`i (Island) Tribune Herald has an article today about a controversial bill taken up at their council's Wednesday meeting.
But it’s a rare occurrence when we get coverage of Wednesday's meeting by Friday with the usual routine being a Saturday or Sunday entry... usually a muddled attempt by a certain story-telling-challenged individual- whose name rhymes with Slazumbuja- apparently trying to make sense of what he saw.
It gets worse by the day. For today's news of a $215,000 settlement of a sexual harassment suit filed by PMRF firefighters against ITT one had to turn to the pay-walled Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
And for news of the scandalous allegations of misconduct on the part of the "old" Kaua`i Independent Foodbank- made by the "new" Hawai`i Foodbank- you had to turn to Bob Jones' last two columns in "Midweek." Or you could check out Joan Conrow's "heads up" on the story where the news that the reason for the non-coverage may just be that the publisher of the local paper sits on the "old" foodbank's board of directors.
All we got today was a confusing account of some plea agreement- from who knows how long ago- in what appeared to be a dispute between Kilauea neighbors that resulted in threats.
At least the local paper does serve one constituency- the fishing community is happy to have something in which to wrap their catch. Either way, if you leave your catch lying around for a few days the fact that it stinks is bound to be evident.
--------
Note: While the local newspaper remains silent on their naming of victims of crime as we discussed on Monday, we did receive the following comment purported to be from Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri Carvalho:
I have no idea how the paper's new police beat reporter Tom LaVenture got the list, although I suspect it was from the indictment, which by law, is public record.
As you correctly noted, the victims' names did not appear on any official county press release page or the prosecuting attorney's page at the county web site. It is for those very reasons that you state below:
"It's bad enough to list the victim of a burglary, letting potential crooks know who might might be making themselves a good target for another burglary. But to list the name of an abuse victim and potentially subject the person to the unwarranted taunts, ridicule and shame that many times unfortunately accompany such situations, is just plain professional misconduct"
that the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney(OPA) has NEVER released victims' names to be published.
Thank you for addressing this issue, as the OPA strongly seeks to protect against the revictimization of victims.
Mahalo,
Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho
Kauai Prosecuting Attorney
Thursday, August 4, 2011
BUDDING GENIUSES
BUDDING GENIUSES: We don't often follow trials, especially in Honolulu, mainly because the news outlets there don't do so either except for those that bleed profusely.
But because of the extensive coverage and rare live bogging by "Civil Beat" of the human trafficking trial of the Sou brothers of Aloun Farms, today we turned first to Sara Lin's blog only to discover that the prosecution apparently bungled the case so badly they were forced to permanently drop all charges today.
But what's even more shocking is that it appears that the reason is that they actually did not even know what the law said at the time the alleged crimes took place.
Piecing together the events this morning from various accounts- Ken Kobayashi of the Star Advertiser being the only one to note that the charges were dropped "permanently"- it appears that the lead attorney flown in from Washington D.C., Susan French, only figured out last Friday that the law had been changed in 2008 or 2009 (depending on the news source) and, in fact, that she had even misled the grand jury in obtaining the indictment.
Though no one will admit it, according to Hawaii Reporter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Cushman told U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway this morning that "the dismissal was caused 'by the discovery of new evidence Friday,'” which was the day that French apparently discovered her blunder.
It's rare that we're at a loss for words but the level of incompetence here- especially given how many lives have been effected including the Sous and the dozens of Thai workers involved- is unfathomable.
While the brothers weren't actually charged with a violation of the law that changed- making it now illegal to pay for the transportation of foreign contract labor- it was apparently a major part of the case against them.
What kind of utter malpractice rules not just our local U.S. attorneys' office but the U.S. Justice Department itself, that no one among the slew of lawyers discovered the error?
It kind of makes you wonder what they are busy with... maybe harassing Roger Christie, the head of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry in Hilo who has been held without bail in federal detention for over a year now for his marijuana church activities. Or could it be threatening state legislators that if they pass a law to allow "compassion centers" to legally distribute medical marijuana they might just arrest the government officials that would administrate the program?
The Hawaii U.S. Attorney's office has been an out-of-control joke for a long time now with justice being determined by U.S. administration policies as evidenced by the Bush appointment scandal a few years back.
We've watched as they use high handed tactics as well as threats and detentions based on thread-bare evidence to force plea deals when their cases are weak for way too long now but this insanity takes the cake.
We'll leave the details of that for another day. Today we simply await the impending justice of seeing the rolling heads that are sure to come from this case.
But because of the extensive coverage and rare live bogging by "Civil Beat" of the human trafficking trial of the Sou brothers of Aloun Farms, today we turned first to Sara Lin's blog only to discover that the prosecution apparently bungled the case so badly they were forced to permanently drop all charges today.
But what's even more shocking is that it appears that the reason is that they actually did not even know what the law said at the time the alleged crimes took place.
Piecing together the events this morning from various accounts- Ken Kobayashi of the Star Advertiser being the only one to note that the charges were dropped "permanently"- it appears that the lead attorney flown in from Washington D.C., Susan French, only figured out last Friday that the law had been changed in 2008 or 2009 (depending on the news source) and, in fact, that she had even misled the grand jury in obtaining the indictment.
Though no one will admit it, according to Hawaii Reporter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Cushman told U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway this morning that "the dismissal was caused 'by the discovery of new evidence Friday,'” which was the day that French apparently discovered her blunder.
It's rare that we're at a loss for words but the level of incompetence here- especially given how many lives have been effected including the Sous and the dozens of Thai workers involved- is unfathomable.
While the brothers weren't actually charged with a violation of the law that changed- making it now illegal to pay for the transportation of foreign contract labor- it was apparently a major part of the case against them.
What kind of utter malpractice rules not just our local U.S. attorneys' office but the U.S. Justice Department itself, that no one among the slew of lawyers discovered the error?
It kind of makes you wonder what they are busy with... maybe harassing Roger Christie, the head of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry in Hilo who has been held without bail in federal detention for over a year now for his marijuana church activities. Or could it be threatening state legislators that if they pass a law to allow "compassion centers" to legally distribute medical marijuana they might just arrest the government officials that would administrate the program?
The Hawaii U.S. Attorney's office has been an out-of-control joke for a long time now with justice being determined by U.S. administration policies as evidenced by the Bush appointment scandal a few years back.
We've watched as they use high handed tactics as well as threats and detentions based on thread-bare evidence to force plea deals when their cases are weak for way too long now but this insanity takes the cake.
We'll leave the details of that for another day. Today we simply await the impending justice of seeing the rolling heads that are sure to come from this case.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
THERE''S NO BUSINESS LIKE NEWS BUSINESS
THERE''S NO BUSINESS LIKE NEWS BUSINESS: It's not as bad as we expected it to be to skip the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (S-A) when their paywall went up today because we realize now how little information we actually got from our morning perusals.
But that reality has spurred the realization that the one thing that the "newspaper of record" accomplished is to lose that status and throw itself into an all-out "NewsWar" with the nascent on-line news provider Civil Beat (CB).
Presumably the S-A started charging for their on-line version in an attempt to capitalize on what they thought was the fact that they are the 'real' newspaper. But, with the addition of their own "breaking news" section linked to the neighbor island papers and the AP feed, Civil Beat has positioned itself to go head to head with the S-A.
And, it's no contest. The group of young eager journos at CB actually like where they work and it shows in their work. But the old line "survivors" that populate the news desks at the S-A have all been to hell and back recently after the so-called "merger" made jobs in reporting scarce. They all no doubt resent the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads- the unspoken fact that "you can be replaced chickie-baby."
It shows in their work. It's rote and formulaic. There's very little depth and there's nary a link to any additional information. The S-A's coverage hit only the surface of the news like a flat stone skimmed across the water.
While over at CB the writing is lively and inventive and the reporters seem to have the attitude that even coverage of daily events should be treated as "enterprise" journalism that digs into the subject and provides the kind of full perspective that comes from writing for on-line consumption.
For CB reporters, space is unlimited and not just the result of a "news hole"- a term used for what is left over for content when the advertising is laid out in a print newspaper.
But the S-A isn't taking things lying down if yesterday's "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"- or at least do too- moment during the Sou trial in any indication,"
CB reporter Sara Lin, in the Annie Oakley role, had unsurprisingly taken the initiative weeks ago in making the enterprising move of asking Chief U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway if she could "live blog" from the human trafficking trial of Aloun Farms owners Mike and Alec Sou.
Mollway okayed the request after a much published discussion and said that Lin could do it but would be the only one and had to share her information with the rest of the press in a "press pool" arrangement.
Then S-A courts reporter Ken Kobayashi in the Frank Butler role decided that, a week into the trial, he wanted "in" on the action in a seemingly day late and dollar short decision that reeks of a distinct "what exactly are we" through process from the S-A publisher, sent a letter to Mollway asking to join Lin in live blogging.
Mollway told Kobayashi that essentially that boat had sailed and that she would have to think about a fair way to do it again in the future should she or others in the federal court decide to do it at all.
That came with a caveat on Mollway's part as to whom she would consider in the future for such blogging, noting that requests would have to come from "authorized" or "credentialed" press because she didn't want, for instance, the defendant's "spouse (to) set up a blog to advocate the party's case."
She also noted that a "one blogger only" policy would likely be imposed so that the U.S. marshals could keep track to make sure that there were no recordings or pictures, which are forbidden by federal law.
That of course brings up the matter of who would be considered for this pool assignment.
Because while Lin and Kobayashi might think they are the only marksmen in town, "I'm just a blogger" Larry Geller of Disappeared News might just stake a claim as the new gun in town.
Apparently Geller has also been attending the trial and giving his account after he gets home every day. We're sure he would like to be considered to be part of that "pool"- if not THE live blogger.
But although Lin said that CB has emailed each blurb to various news outlets before she hit the "post" button we seriously doubt any bloggers were included.
The fact is that while the winner in the S-A's decision to charge for the on-line news is undoubtedly Civil Beat- which is now a direct competitor whereas yesterday they weren't- it also opens up the field for other news providers, even if they are "just bloggers."
When Blogger Geller comes to Chief Sitting Bull Mollway and says "I'm An Indian too," in light of today's leveling of the table, he's as entitled as anybody to be "Doin' What Come Naturally."
But that reality has spurred the realization that the one thing that the "newspaper of record" accomplished is to lose that status and throw itself into an all-out "NewsWar" with the nascent on-line news provider Civil Beat (CB).
Presumably the S-A started charging for their on-line version in an attempt to capitalize on what they thought was the fact that they are the 'real' newspaper. But, with the addition of their own "breaking news" section linked to the neighbor island papers and the AP feed, Civil Beat has positioned itself to go head to head with the S-A.
And, it's no contest. The group of young eager journos at CB actually like where they work and it shows in their work. But the old line "survivors" that populate the news desks at the S-A have all been to hell and back recently after the so-called "merger" made jobs in reporting scarce. They all no doubt resent the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads- the unspoken fact that "you can be replaced chickie-baby."
It shows in their work. It's rote and formulaic. There's very little depth and there's nary a link to any additional information. The S-A's coverage hit only the surface of the news like a flat stone skimmed across the water.
While over at CB the writing is lively and inventive and the reporters seem to have the attitude that even coverage of daily events should be treated as "enterprise" journalism that digs into the subject and provides the kind of full perspective that comes from writing for on-line consumption.
For CB reporters, space is unlimited and not just the result of a "news hole"- a term used for what is left over for content when the advertising is laid out in a print newspaper.
But the S-A isn't taking things lying down if yesterday's "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"- or at least do too- moment during the Sou trial in any indication,"
CB reporter Sara Lin, in the Annie Oakley role, had unsurprisingly taken the initiative weeks ago in making the enterprising move of asking Chief U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway if she could "live blog" from the human trafficking trial of Aloun Farms owners Mike and Alec Sou.
Mollway okayed the request after a much published discussion and said that Lin could do it but would be the only one and had to share her information with the rest of the press in a "press pool" arrangement.
Then S-A courts reporter Ken Kobayashi in the Frank Butler role decided that, a week into the trial, he wanted "in" on the action in a seemingly day late and dollar short decision that reeks of a distinct "what exactly are we" through process from the S-A publisher, sent a letter to Mollway asking to join Lin in live blogging.
Mollway told Kobayashi that essentially that boat had sailed and that she would have to think about a fair way to do it again in the future should she or others in the federal court decide to do it at all.
That came with a caveat on Mollway's part as to whom she would consider in the future for such blogging, noting that requests would have to come from "authorized" or "credentialed" press because she didn't want, for instance, the defendant's "spouse (to) set up a blog to advocate the party's case."
She also noted that a "one blogger only" policy would likely be imposed so that the U.S. marshals could keep track to make sure that there were no recordings or pictures, which are forbidden by federal law.
That of course brings up the matter of who would be considered for this pool assignment.
Because while Lin and Kobayashi might think they are the only marksmen in town, "I'm just a blogger" Larry Geller of Disappeared News might just stake a claim as the new gun in town.
Apparently Geller has also been attending the trial and giving his account after he gets home every day. We're sure he would like to be considered to be part of that "pool"- if not THE live blogger.
But although Lin said that CB has emailed each blurb to various news outlets before she hit the "post" button we seriously doubt any bloggers were included.
The fact is that while the winner in the S-A's decision to charge for the on-line news is undoubtedly Civil Beat- which is now a direct competitor whereas yesterday they weren't- it also opens up the field for other news providers, even if they are "just bloggers."
When Blogger Geller comes to Chief Sitting Bull Mollway and says "I'm An Indian too," in light of today's leveling of the table, he's as entitled as anybody to be "Doin' What Come Naturally."
Thursday, July 28, 2011
HOME HOME ON THE RANGE
HOME HOME ON THE RANGE: It didn't take long for the other shoe to drop after the eyebrow-raising buyout of the Goliath Honolulu Advertiser by the David Star Bulletin.
But the reasoning for the new pay wall for on-line readers of the new Star-Advertiser (S-A) had us in stitches as Publisher Dennis Frances claimed they were just following the lead of the New York Times, as if the two had anything in common journaistically other than the fact that both call themselves newspapers.
It kind of reminded us of when our own local Kaua`i newspaper informed readers of their then-owners by printing a blurb on the masthead saying "A Pulitzer Newspaper"- as if they were actually somehow associated with the prize instead of the chain of small fluff and pap publications.
But if a story in today's S-A is any indication news seekers may not be missing much if they eschew the "newspaper of record"- because if you're the only newspaper in town you are, by definition, the newspaper of record- in favor of other news sources.
While the S-A was busy telling it's readers about how the APEC will conclude at Ihilani resort in Ko Olina and wondering how the sharing of the wealth with out of town facilities might effect traffic, those who turned to KITV's web site got the real story.
In an un-bylined report, they repeated their exclusive from yesterday's 6 p.m. telecast saying that
APEC's two most important events with 21 world leaders attending will not be held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki.KITV4 first reported in May that law enforcement officials raised security concerns about the glass throughout the convention center. If a bomb was detonated even fairly far away from the building, shards of the glass ceiling and glass walls could injure people inside and outside the building, sources said. As a result, security experts recommended against having APEC leaders' meetings at the convention center involving President Barack Obama and heads of state from APEC's 21 countries, sources said.
The worst part is that the exorcizing of the real news wasn't because the KITV report was too late in the day to make the morning paper but rather because the S-A either intentionally ignored or didn't bother to seek out the KITV's earlier May and January reports on security- which, given the history of these kinds of gatherings should be issue number one.
That or, more likely, they simply regurgitated a pre-packaged press release without, as they are wont to do, any attribution- a lapse of ethics that neither the Times or even the local Kaua`i paper would allow.
If the S-A insists on being a paper where never is heard a discouraging word there are few, if any, that are going to pay the $120 a year for very long especially if all they get is a watered down product that reports only what their advertisers and the Chamber of Commerce want readers to know.
The worst part is that the reasonable rate of $1.95 a month is available to mainland subscribers.
Some may say that $10 a month is not a lot of money to pay for news. But the problem is that those who read news on-line don't read just one source. And if this trend continues it will be ten dollars and ten dollars and ten dollars and... well you get the point.
There has to be a way for newspapers to reap revenues for the on-line versions of their newspapers. But having all the individual publications each charge their own fee for their limited coverage isn't it.
We've long advocated for an "all you can eat" pricing for a massive consortium of newspapers including those with a national readership such as the NY Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as well as the vast number of city and community newspapers... all for one reasonable fee, perhaps to be distributed via a "per-click" system.
Systems like ASCAP and BMI have been working for music publishing and radio play for decades and nascent music subscription services are cropping up everywhere and will soon be ubiquitous, as the large record companies as well as the independents come around to a business model of necessity.
But apparently the "news industry" feels like it has to go through all the wrong moves that the music business did rather than learning from them and creating a business model with will serve everyone going into the future.
All that will happen as medium sized newspapers like the Star-Advertiser become providers and aggregators is that the number of independent news sources will be diminished. And of course each one thinks that they will be the sole survivor of a war like that. And in the S-A's case that would be to ignore their own history wherein the size of the publication had nothing whatsoever to do with who "won" the contraction of Honolulu newspapers.
We fully expect the quality of the Star-Advertiser to diminish further with this pay wall as they become even more alienated from their readers. And if today's coverage is any example that inexorable march has already begun.
But the reasoning for the new pay wall for on-line readers of the new Star-Advertiser (S-A) had us in stitches as Publisher Dennis Frances claimed they were just following the lead of the New York Times, as if the two had anything in common journaistically other than the fact that both call themselves newspapers.
It kind of reminded us of when our own local Kaua`i newspaper informed readers of their then-owners by printing a blurb on the masthead saying "A Pulitzer Newspaper"- as if they were actually somehow associated with the prize instead of the chain of small fluff and pap publications.
But if a story in today's S-A is any indication news seekers may not be missing much if they eschew the "newspaper of record"- because if you're the only newspaper in town you are, by definition, the newspaper of record- in favor of other news sources.
While the S-A was busy telling it's readers about how the APEC will conclude at Ihilani resort in Ko Olina and wondering how the sharing of the wealth with out of town facilities might effect traffic, those who turned to KITV's web site got the real story.
In an un-bylined report, they repeated their exclusive from yesterday's 6 p.m. telecast saying that
APEC's two most important events with 21 world leaders attending will not be held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki.KITV4 first reported in May that law enforcement officials raised security concerns about the glass throughout the convention center. If a bomb was detonated even fairly far away from the building, shards of the glass ceiling and glass walls could injure people inside and outside the building, sources said. As a result, security experts recommended against having APEC leaders' meetings at the convention center involving President Barack Obama and heads of state from APEC's 21 countries, sources said.
The worst part is that the exorcizing of the real news wasn't because the KITV report was too late in the day to make the morning paper but rather because the S-A either intentionally ignored or didn't bother to seek out the KITV's earlier May and January reports on security- which, given the history of these kinds of gatherings should be issue number one.
That or, more likely, they simply regurgitated a pre-packaged press release without, as they are wont to do, any attribution- a lapse of ethics that neither the Times or even the local Kaua`i paper would allow.
If the S-A insists on being a paper where never is heard a discouraging word there are few, if any, that are going to pay the $120 a year for very long especially if all they get is a watered down product that reports only what their advertisers and the Chamber of Commerce want readers to know.
The worst part is that the reasonable rate of $1.95 a month is available to mainland subscribers.
Some may say that $10 a month is not a lot of money to pay for news. But the problem is that those who read news on-line don't read just one source. And if this trend continues it will be ten dollars and ten dollars and ten dollars and... well you get the point.
There has to be a way for newspapers to reap revenues for the on-line versions of their newspapers. But having all the individual publications each charge their own fee for their limited coverage isn't it.
We've long advocated for an "all you can eat" pricing for a massive consortium of newspapers including those with a national readership such as the NY Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as well as the vast number of city and community newspapers... all for one reasonable fee, perhaps to be distributed via a "per-click" system.
Systems like ASCAP and BMI have been working for music publishing and radio play for decades and nascent music subscription services are cropping up everywhere and will soon be ubiquitous, as the large record companies as well as the independents come around to a business model of necessity.
But apparently the "news industry" feels like it has to go through all the wrong moves that the music business did rather than learning from them and creating a business model with will serve everyone going into the future.
All that will happen as medium sized newspapers like the Star-Advertiser become providers and aggregators is that the number of independent news sources will be diminished. And of course each one thinks that they will be the sole survivor of a war like that. And in the S-A's case that would be to ignore their own history wherein the size of the publication had nothing whatsoever to do with who "won" the contraction of Honolulu newspapers.
We fully expect the quality of the Star-Advertiser to diminish further with this pay wall as they become even more alienated from their readers. And if today's coverage is any example that inexorable march has already begun.
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